Well, yeah, it was disagreements in the group. Because every time, y’know, groups are basically like that; you have one guy making an arrangement and the other guy disagree, and because of that we weren’t getting anywhere. They didn’t have no ideas – I had the ideas, and I make arrangements, they make other demands. So I couldn’t deal with it, I just branch off on my own.
Right. How did you feel about that? ‘Should I join another band, or should I try it solo?’
Well, it wasn’t really a hard decision to me, because at the time…
Too much pressure in the group you mean?
Yeah, too much pressure and basically I was a little selfish at the time, it was all about ‘me’ then, y’know. It was all about me wanting to make it in life. I wasn’t gonna make anybody hold me back, that was the attitude actually.
But how was the general attitude at the time, we’re talking ’68 and Desmond Dekker hit big, and I suppose a lot of you looked at to get the big break overseas.
I didn’t have no sort of any overseas ambition or anything like that, I didn’t see myself in that light. I just see myself mediocre on the Jamaican scene. And then I did break through and that’s what start the whole revolution of my whole career.
But I heard something that you were more or less ‘forced’ to voice that tune, ‘Wet Dream’.
Yeah, I wrote the lyrics. But at the time I was, y’know, I didn’t want to take that direction in music. You know, I wanted to sing about love in another light, not deal with sex. So although I had the idea, but I didn’t want to do it. I mentioned it to Bunny Lee and he had a few ideas of his own work into it. So he said, well, I’m the person that he wants to sing it. I wasn’t in his crew at the time, y’know. And I didn’t really want to, but he said, “Well, if you don’t want to you can’t stay around here”. It wasn’t really a serious thing, it was just suggestion. So I said, “All right, since you feel that way about it I’ll do it”. I reluctantly did it and out of all the songs that was done on the session, it was the only one that made the international market.
Mainly because of the lyrics, but was that one like a forerunner to what Lloyd Charmers did a bit later, or he was before this? He did have at that time a ‘suggestive’ act called Lloydie & The Lowbites, if you remember that?
Yeah, right after I come everything… Beca’ what happened; that England was such a stuck-up society and the morality at the time was at an all time high. I mean, immorality was in the closet. So, for me now to come with a song like that, and then again it was being supported by the skinheads at the time. You know, they took onto it, because in a society where you can’t even say ‘damn’, here you are talkin’ about ‘wet dream’, y’know what I mean (chuckles)? It was a low note. So they played it once on the BBC and some Jamaicans hear it and call in and protest that the lyrics are lewd. And up to they repute the whole thing it was banned, and that make it even bigger. It stays in the British charts for twenty-six weeks and reach as far as number two. It was heading for the number one position. The Beatles kept it out with a song called ‘Get Back (To Where You Belonged)’, y’know (giggles).
Ah, so you actually ‘competed’ with the Beatles, that’s something to say the least.
Yeah.
So, obviously, in a perfect world, you should’ve made some good money for this. But no reward?
Nah, there was no financial reward. But what happened was that it sort of launched my solo career, and I get the opportunity to do tours in England at the time. It take me a lot of time before I come across royalties. But, basically, at the time in England, that song was big.
Before I forget, how was the encounter with Bunny Lee, or you had met him before this?
I knew Bunny Lee before he start produce. As a matter of fact, the first session he did – as a matter of fact – I influenced him.
He wasn’t established at that point?
I was in the business long before Bunny Lee. Bunny Lee was a desk clerk for an auto supply place in Kingston. And he was also – because he likes the badness, he was a bouncer for Duke Reid, and he used to take – the same job I was doing for Ken Lack, he was doing that for Duke Reid, taking samples to the radio stations and go down to the shops, before he get involved in business.
You said at some point that Bunny Lee was one of the persons who – for whoever it was – had to get the records played ‘by any means necessary’. You meant forcing, simple as that.
Yeah, he forced DJ’s, beat up DJ’s to play the record and stick them up with guns, if necessary, for them to get played.
So that was the norm even in the sixties, a common practice among some producers the decade after.
Yeah, that was ’66, ’68 to ’69. ’70, that’s when that whole thing start happening. Radio change taking payola from people, which was against regulations and the rules. And there was a very prominent radio guy in Jamaica at the time that Bunny Lee cause him to lose his job. But Bunny gave him a cheque to play the songs, to plug the songs, and then he take the cheque up to the station controllers, and the guy was fired. Yeah.
Not common knowledge, perhaps. Well, it should be.
Well, those were the early days, y’know. It’s the early days.
And everything was still at a infantile stage at that time.
Yes, everybody was new to it. We didn’t know anything about copyright or publishing or anything like that.