The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah

by Benjamin Zephaniah

  Actually, by now, I was living quite contentedly in another housing co-op place in Ruskin Avenue, East Ham. I wasn’t at home very often, as I was constantly creating new music and being active in the political protest movement, but Mum was still with me and life was throwing opportunities my way.

  30

  THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

  One day Roland Muldoon came to me with an idea. He had seen a building he thought would be perfect to revamp as a home for alternative comedy away from the centre of London. It was called the Hackney Empire. Although it had once been a notable venue where music hall stars such as Marie Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin performed, by the mid-1980s it was being used a bingo hall.

  I went along to see it. The first fifteen rows were being used by the bingo people but the rest of the building was gathering dust. It was owned by the games company Mecca, and it was obvious they weren’t sure what to do with it. Roland was excited, and so we formed a company with me as the chairman and put in a bid for the building, which was under threat of demolition. After going to and fro for a few months and pushing some papers around, we did a deal. We bought it for a token price – I think it was £1 – but we were committed to paying the rates and raising the money needed to restore it. We wanted to make Hackney Empire the home of New Variety. The Theatre Royal in Stratford was good at connecting to people in its community but we wanted Hackney to achieve even more.

  The building had been left in a terrible condition: the seats needed replacing, structural work was required and the top gallery needed complete refurbishment. So we started fundraising and putting together plans to restore it to good order. After a long campaign that won the hearts of the public and local people, we opened.

  I was occupied for much of the time with practical matters, like overseeing the building work. In some ways the organisation was similar to the collectives I’d been a part of. It was run by a great group of people who were dedicated to providing excellent egalitarian entertainment. Many of the performers who played there were about to break into public awareness as huge stars, including Ben Elton, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, Paul Merton, Julian Clary and Harry Enfield, whose character ‘Loadsamoney’ perfectly lampooned the brash and greedy attitudes of the era.

  I only played there a couple of times. I didn’t play there more than that because I didn’t want to abuse my position as chairman. I got my satisfaction from knowing that the theatre belonged to the people and served the community with a diverse range of acts and performances. It was always a struggle to keep it going, but it survived against the odds and maintains its place in London working-class history, showcasing everything from community choirs to panto.

  31

  THE YUGOSLAVIAN AFFAIR

  In keeping with what was becoming a very interesting and at times bizarre life, I became big in Yugoslavia. My poems became anthems and my Rasta album really took off there. Initially the Yugoslavs imported copies, but then I was contacted directly by a guy called Igor, who worked for a local radio station and was a fan of reggae and punk music. In spring 1985 he invited me over to do a one-off concert, and I immediately said yes.

  My band then comprised a great bass player called Jeff Merrifield, my ever-faithful guitarist Tony Ash and two backing singers, or backing poets, as I preferred to call them: Deborah Asher and her twin sister, who sang in perfect harmony, as if they had sung together in the womb. Then there was a drummer called Joseph, who on a good day was great but, like so many drummers, was as miserable as sin on others.

  I ended up doing everything for that band. I was the writer, front person, manager, stage manager, accountant, travel agent, babysitter and marriage guidance counsellor. When we were rehearsing and preparing for the tour, Igor sent me some money in advance. It was a large amount, half the fee, but I somehow managed to lose it. I called a meeting and told the band. There was a grim look on all of their faces, so I just gave them a grim look back and said, ‘I don’t want any of you to say anything. If you choose to leave it all to me you should expect that at some point something has to give. You’re all stoned and lazy. I’ve lost the money and that’s it.’ They couldn’t argue with me and off we went to Yugoslavia.

  All of the disappointment of the lost money was forgotten when we arrived. The first, and biggest, gig was in Ljubljana. There were thousands and thousands of people. From my view on stage there were people as far as I could see, and it felt great to be alive. To stand on a stage and say ‘Yeah’ and hear thousands of people shouting ‘Yeah’ in return is truly awesome. I don’t want to get technical, but on a stage like that you have to really control yourself. There is a temptation to shout louder to reach the people at the back and, of course, that’s impossible; you have to trust the equipment.

  This was also the first big gig in communist Yugoslavia, and it was their first ever reggae gig. People from all over the country went to it; it was their Woodstock. I went back there to do a television show twenty years later; it was a chat show with people phoning in and sharing memories of that day, and I was amazed to hear what people had to say. Many had absconded from the army to get to the gig; hermits came down from the mountains, and one young man said he’d been conceived there. The Rasta album had such an impact in the country that, after the tour, it was released by a local label.

  Many years later, a long time after the old Yugoslavia collapsed, the album was rereleased. There is also a live recording of the gig that I’ve been asked to release but I won’t. The overall performance on the recording is good, but it didn’t start well. The first note we struck was awful and the drummer messed up. I fumed. But on the day the band managed to get it all back together and it was really, really incredible. The atmosphere, that is, not the playing; we only just got away with that.

  32

  BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH AND THE WAILERS

  Soon after the Yugoslavian tour I told Bill Gilliam of Upright Records that I wanted to record in Jamaica, where there was a proper reggae vibe. He was happy to back me. Well, all he had to do was give me the money. Recording was a completely different proposition back in those days. There was no such thing as computerisation or even digital audio tape; you had to lug 24-track, 10-inch analogue tape reels around, and I had to be extra careful because some of those old X-ray machines in airports would wipe tapes clean.

  I’d been visiting the Caribbean frequently since that first time when I was still living in Birmingham, being a painter/decorator. More recently I had been visiting the island to get to know my grandparents and extended family. I’d travel to St Elizabeth, about sixty miles outside of Kingston – and spend time with cousins, second cousins and third cousins twice removed. I’d got used to the way of things in Kingston, but I’d been warned how basic things were in the countryside – especially the lack of flushing toilets. It would be the dreaded ‘hole in the ground’ and no electricity. After a couple of trips, I got the whole family to club together and we installed a flushing toilet; then my family was the talk of the area.

  Even in England people with a Kingston heritage would talk about the country folk – the ‘red’ people. What struck me when I first went to St Elizabeth was the number of people who looked like me, or were even lighter skinned. The black community in the UK is all kinds of shades, but if you go to St Elizabeth it’s easy to see how everyone is blended from about ten families, with the majority being ‘red’. A few names crop up all the time: Honeyghan (my mother’s maiden name), Moxam, Ebanks.

  When I first saw the way they had to live, I realised how it could so easily have been me. I’d hang out with my mum’s sisters’ boys, who were the same age as me. Next time I’d go back and ask for them and be told, ‘Oh, him dead in a hurricane’ or ‘Him go fishing and never come back.’

  When I look at the people I’m related to in JA, who’ve made it to my age, there are only a few left. Women tend to fare a little better, as they aren’t on the high seas or so exposed to the elements. One of my female cousins has owned a little corne
r store since she was about eighteen. Many become midwives, learning on the job, as used to be the way in the UK.

  On this visit to the Caribbean, I was also going to Barbados before I went to Jamaica. I had decided to go and see my dad. I didn’t really know him, I hadn’t seen him for years, but he had retired there after being told by his doctor that he had only a year to live. He emptied his bank account, withdrew his pension, and six years later I felt I had to go and make peace with him.

  When I first arrived in Barbados, customs officers took me aside and quizzed me about drugs, saying, ‘You’re well dressed.’ At that time Rastas were taken in by the police and made to cut their hair and all sorts. But after holding me a while they let me go. The airport was quiet and my dad was waiting outside. When one of the airport staff saw us together, she said, ‘Oswald, it your son, dis? You never said you had a son that is a Rasta!’

  For the first time in my life I enjoyed my time with him. He seemed younger. Every day he went for a dip in the sea, and he was happily entertaining three girlfriends. He had a Ford sports car with the wildest sounding horn I had ever heard, and he spent a lot of time and energy trying to find a girl for me to have sex with. I spent a lot of time and energy telling him that I didn’t feel the urge and I just wanted to hang out with my dad, but he didn’t see the sense in that.

  He set me up with one girl who said she would give me the sweet thing if I went to church with her. I told her that my body is my temple and she should come to my church, then she called me a Jamaican devil and threatened to kill me. Every now and again he would want to talk about Mum, but in the most negative way, so I kept telling him to shut up and let bygones be bygones. I had to do that to agree to visit him in the first place.

  I’d always known him as this very conservative guy, and there I was telling him to control himself. It was like returning to Barbados had given him a new lease of life. At one point the island had the most up-to-date telephone system of any Caribbean nation, and my dad was one of the people who sorted that out, from his time with the GPO, so he was well known. I considered the idea that he must have felt he had to act strait-laced when he came England – stiff upper lip and all that. He was certainly making up for lost time, especially where women were concerned.

  I left Barbados and landed in Jamaica in summer 1986, where I wanted to work with the legend known as Burning Spear, but when I went to his house in St Anne’s I found he was away touring in the USA. With no Burning Spear I decided to go and see the mighty Fred Locks, who I’d always admired. Fred Locks was a Rastaman who had given up on the material world and lived in a cave near a beach. He had a reputation for living very naturally, and although he made one of the best reggae albums of all time, he wasn’t that interested in the music business. I couldn’t find him either, so I was racking my brains about who to approach next.

  I was staying in the house of a well-known Canadian–Jamaican woman called Honor Ford-Smith, who was involved in an all-woman theatre group called Sistren, who toured around Jamaica. She lived in Stony Hill, a leafy mountain on the outskirts of Kingston, along with another woman called Hilary. One day they sat me down to talk about my plans. They knew that my search for a producer and backing musicians wasn’t going too well – everyone was either away on tour or meditating in the hills. Suddenly, out of the blue, Hilary said, ‘Hey, Benjamin, why don’t you work with the Wailers?’

  ‘Are you joking?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘they would like you.’

  I was doubtful. The Wailers were the best reggae band in the world and I was just a street poet from Birmingham with a few extra fans in Yugoslavia; they wouldn’t want to work with me, not after working with Bob Marley.

  Honor and Hilary were sure they could make it happen but I didn’t think it was possible. The Wailers had endured internal problems and had split up but Honor said she’d talk to Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett for me. The next thing I knew, there was a message for me from Family Man saying that the Wailers would reform for me. They had gone through many incarnations, but Family Man said he’d get some of the original guys, like the keyboardist, Earl ‘Wire’ Lindo, who didn’t tour much but played on all the early albums. He also said he’d get his brother, Carlton Barrett, and we would record in Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong Studio.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I went to see them and played them the rough demo tapes I had. One track, ‘Free South Africa’, was already on the Rasta album, and Family Man knew it, but I wanted to record a new version of the poem, with a completely new tune. The other poem was called ‘Stop the War’, a call to end the cold war and for nuclear disarmament. The guys liked it, and they were particularly happy I had a song that called for the release of Nelson Mandela.

  Family Man told me there’d been lots of people who’d wanted to record with them following the death of Bob, in 1981, but they were all doing imitations of the man, all trying to sound and move like him. The reason they were happy to work with me was that I sounded nothing like him. I wanted to perform spoken word rather than sing, but I was also as politically aware and had a message similar to that of the Wailers. So, although they were divided, they came back together because this was about freeing Mandela. As Family Man put it at the time, ‘We’d be hypocritical if we didn’t do it because of our own personal apartheid.’ It made me think back to the letter I wrote to Bob and his reply to me, and then, there I was, about to do it with the Wailers.

  On the day of recording, I had a freak accident. I was at Honor and Hilary’s place when Family Man pulled up outside the house. He didn’t knock on the door; he did what all Jamaicans do: beeped on his horn and called me. When I heard him I jumped up and started to run for the door, but as I was hurrying along a huge flying cockroach came towards me. I tried to move my head away from it, but as I did I smashed my head against the wall and fell to the marble floor, bashing my head for a second time. I was out cold for a few minutes. When I came round I could hear Family Man getting more and more worked up, shouting, ‘Zephaniah, Zephaniah. Come man.’

  I got my dazed self together, stood up and went to the car outside. I said nothing to him, but in the studio I recorded the poems with a bit of a headache. All the recordings, including the music and the mixing, were done in a couple of days. I had my poems and music in the can, but what saddens me slightly is there aren’t videos of that session, and I only have one rubbish photograph that I took of the two Barrett brothers. I remember saying this to Bill Gilliam, who rightly replied, ‘You have the recording, and that’s what counts.’

  The tracks were released on the 12-inch single, ‘Free South Africa’. We didn’t publish words with it because the poems already existed and it was pretty obvious what I was saying. Not long after the release I heard a story about a couple of young guys in South Africa who got hold of a copy of the record. They transcribed the words and printed them on a design that looked like an album sleeve. They got loads of them and then went up in a helicopter and dropped them over townships and in some of the more uptown parts of South Africa.

  I was told the lyrics fluttered down onto the homes below and the police were ordered to pick them all up, but there were too many of them and the people got to them before the police could. When I first heard the story, I thought it must have been an exaggeration. They would have been shot down and, anyway, my fans over there were poor and wouldn’t have helicopters.

  But a few years later, when I was back in South Africa, I met the guys who’d done it. I’d assumed they would be African National Congress activists, or hardened warriors from the Black Consciousness Movement, but they turned out to be skinny, middle-class white kids who were quite rich; at least rich enough to hire a helicopter. I thanked and praised them for what they did. I had to. After all, they spent two years in jail for my poetry. I’d also been to prison, but never for my own poetry.

  I think that incident, and a few other things, brought me to the attention of Nelson Mandela. I was told some time later
that he had been given a parcel containing some of my printed poems and musical recordings when he was still in prison, and that he had very carefully listened to the music and read the words. The thought that the great man would be paying attention to what a working-class boy from the Midlands had written spurred me on. It brought me the realisation that finally, in Bob Marley’s own words to me, I really was ‘forwarding on’.

  33

  A JOB AT THE COUNCIL

  Around this time I came to the attention of the British Council. Like many people, when I first heard of their existence I thought they were the British embassy. When I was told they were attending one of my gigs, I did an angry, heavy performance, ranting poems about Thatcher, war and capitalism and, as I walked off stage, I thought the men in suits from the British Council would ignore me and never want to see me again. How wrong I was. The men in suits jumped up, saying, ‘Well done’, ‘You tell ’em’ and ‘We have to use you again.’ And so we began a long relationship.

  At that time there was a lot of positive, fresh thinking in the British Council. They wanted to promote the new image of Britain. They were still sending opera singers and Morris dancers around the world, but they were now also using reggae and Asian music, modern dance and literature, and even modern sports to show all aspects of the new British culture.

  It would be easy to think that the people behind this progressive thinking were all young funky things. Some of them were, but there were also a lot of older workers who for years had felt restricted to promoting what some (including me)would consider a colonial relationship. They now felt they could break out. One of the old guard told me that on the day he started work at the Council they gave him his retirement date and told him exactly how many working days and holidays he would have leading up to that date. He was basically told what he would be doing for the rest of his life.