The following interview with Dennis Bovell, conducted by the Ranking Miss P, was broadcast on GLR 94.9 FM on Sunday 14th November 1999.

(intro music: The Man In Me by Matumbi)

Miss P: The Man In Me, from the man who's done it all,. The man, pardon the pun, who's been dubbed Britain's most successful, and innovative reggae producer. I'm talking about the legendary Dennis Bovell, good afternoon Dennis!

Dennis: Good afternoon.

Miss P: How are you first of all?

Dennis: Well. I'm well.

Miss P: "Man In Me", you are never going to be able to escape that track. We think of Dennis Bovell, and we think of classic UK lover's rock.

Dennis: Well, in the time when we were struggling to identify the reggae players from this part of the world, where people were saying that reggae could not be made in London. Or could not be made outside of Jamaica, we were desperatley trying to prove them wrong. Me, with my sound system, and with my band Matumbi, we tried to create something that would be our very own. And we didn't care if it was not the same as the Jamaican reggae, but as long as it was as good as, or better, or people were appreciating it.

So we set out to first of all, disguise the name on the record label of whoever the artist was, because firts of all they'd see the record come out, and they'd see that little small hole in the middle, and they'd go "ah! English record!" and they wouldn't want to buy it. So we bought a dinking machine, and we stamped the middle out! In fact this Man In Me, we put it out on the Matumbi label, and we knocked a big hole in the middle, to make it look like some kind of outside of England release. Some kind of Jamaican release, or American release, but not a local release.

Miss P: So you went through great lengths to hide the fact that this music was being made here in England, and to sort of palm it off as...

Dennis:...Well, not hide it. I think we tried to take that obstacle out of it's way. Because it was holding back peoples minds about the music, if you were listening to it with a prejudice view, instead of just listening to it.

Miss P: And saying this is a nice record. A lovely track. They're saying "oh yeah, but this is made in England", the first thing they jump on.

Dennis: Some sound systems were saying "we don't play English record"

Miss P: This is like a history lessson for me, and it's like a trip down memory lane. You talked about sound system, we're talking about Sufferer Sound right ? Which I used to follow as like a little kid...

Dennis: Oh please, you make me feel old!

Miss P: I make my self feel old! And not only did you select for that sound, you made dubs for that sound.

Dennis: That's right. I was the DJ, I was the selector, I was the front runner.

Miss P: You was the sound. And that time as I said I was a kid, and I used to look at you in awe, 'cos obviously I had an interest in selecting, and music and sound systems. But at that time, being a little girl, it just wasn't the done thing to go and stand up around a sound.

Dennis: Absolutely. Well, that was how Louisa Mark, who I ended up making that record Caught You In A Lie with, she was similar to yourself. She used to come and listen to the sound system down the Metro on a Friday night, and we used to give her the microphone sometimes to sing.

Miss P: I remember, yes!

Dennis: Great singer. One day Lloydie Coxsone came to me and said "look!", he used to sign on his sound system with that song, Caught You In A Lie, when he was testing the amplifier and everything.

Miss P: The original Caught You In A Lie.

Dennis: Yes, the Robert Parker version. And he said "look, it would be great to make a reggae version of this", and I was like "yeah, on it, straight". "Who is gonna sing ?" "Louisa" "right! On it!" And it broke the ice, as far as records being made in England, being appreciated by the English audience in the sound system vein. Because the English kids, or say West Indians, or say British, 'cos they're all coming from Britain - 'cos I'm a firm believer that outside of England, Britain existed when Britain ruled the waves as it were. And a lot of people came from, not an emigrant place, but another part of Britain. They were re-locating within Britain

Miss P:That's right. Well, it was the mother country.

Dennis: Absolutely. Britains who had just re- located in London, and were listening to reggae, were awful special. They were very choosey, "ah! We must have the latest thing from Jamaica". And they were feeling that. And so we thought, yeah, we must have the latest thing-from Battersea!! Or the latest thing from Ladbroke Grove, or the latest thing from Shepards Bush. And that was the way we kind of took it away from, the focus from Jamaica.

When we made songs like Silly Games with Janet Kay, we'd definately taken it away then. And then Matumbi, we were going up and down the country, and playing at different places. I mean we were playing from Wigan to, I don't know, Walsall, down to Portsmouth. Wales we were in, we played in Ireland. And we were taking our brand of what we would call reggae, and the lovers style.

Miss P:Now this approach was very, very, very succesful, as we're still seeing the fruits of. I mean Louisa Mark, even though she made one album, she is a legend. Marie Pierre also, Janet Kay. I'm picking up a female thing here Dennis. Was it a deliberate...

Dennis: ...Yes, because women were put in the back. And apart from you own dear sister (Rita Marley) and Judy Mowatt, and Marcia Griffiths, they were the only women holding the flag up, and women were in the back in vocal vein, as opposed to the lead vocalists. And I tried with a friend of mine Dennis Harris, who's dearly departed now, on the lovers rock label, and also with my great friend John Kpiaye, guitar player, to establish a kind of thing where there was female vocalists. Singing out in the front.

Miss P: It has been said that between yourself, Dennis Harris (& John Kpiaye), you created the term lovers rock, you actually created the genre.

Dennis: Absolutely. Because we were looking for a label to put this new music with women singing on it. Dearly departed Augustus Pablo had a song that was a real, real favourite of mine called Lover's Rock, and we thought those two words just went together well, lover's rock. And you can picture the cupid, the heart with the arrow in it, so the first song on it was called I'm In Love With A Dreadlocks, Brown Sugar.

Miss P: Now, as well as creating this new genre, having massive success with it, encouraging people to listen to females and listen to British made music, you also was running your own successful career. Now at one point you seemed to be doing it all.

Dennis: Then after that I went into doing some rock things, with the Slits and the Modettes, and the Pop Group, and even Bob Geldof, and at one time found myself working for Marvin Gaye.

Miss P: You remixed some stuff for him didn't you.

Dennis: That's right. And doing remixes for Bob Geldof's group Boomtown Rats, or being called in to do David Essex remixes, Bananarama.

Miss P: I'm missing something here, I know I am. Janet Kay, Louisa Mark, Boomtown Rats! What's missing in the middle ? There must have been, what got you from that stage to that stage?

Dennis: Before I started to play reggae, I used to be a keen Jimi Hendrix fan. Jimi Hendrix was for me, the musician that I...I had all his records, I listened to everything. And I'd also been keen on groups like the Who, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. The Kinks. So when I was asked to do some production for the Slits, it was like three girls trying to thrash out some of the punk era. And I listened to some of their material and thought "yeah, I'll have a go at this". And that sort of dragged me into other people who'd heard about me, the Thompson Twins, their first album, groups like that. If it was what I considered good, solid compositions, and needed a bit of direction and I could help, yeah I jumped in.

Miss P: So what ears did you use to do this sort of work. I mean, obviously you're firmly entrenched in the reggae sound, so much so you created your own reggae sound, and then you fast forward, or move swiftly along...

Dennis: Sideways! (laughs)

Miss P: Sideways. You sort of bop and weave and come up with the Slits punk stuff, pop, rock. Did you have to seperate the reggae side of yourself, or was it all just a part of Dennis Bovell...

Dennis: I just looked at it as the same way a chef might, if he was asked to make a Welsh rarebit, or a plate of chips, it's like different tastes. And as a musician, and as a producer, you have to be cooking different dishes, 'cos there's different listenership out there. Some people like rice and peas, some people like plain rice! So if you're able to cook all this, where people are saying "yeah, that taste good", you might as well cook it if you can.

Miss P Now, as well as doing your own stuff, creating all this music, I don't know if I'm getting this over to the listener, how important you are in terms of the development of black music in this country, in terms of the developement of reggae in this country. In terms of the work you did outside of the artists here, because I travel the world. I was in Japan, and they're saying "yeah, yeah, yeah, we've got to get Dennis Bovell to mix this, and we've got to get Dennis Bovell to engineer Sunsplash". Wow, he's like doing it all!

Dennis: Well in 1980, Ryuichi Sakamoto, who's the principal musician of a group called the Yellow Magic Orchestra, came over with Don Letts, a friend of mine, and we met and decided we should work together. And it was his first solo album after leaving Yellow Magic Orchestra, an there's an album called B2-Unit. He wanted to be the first person to use MY studio, that I was building for ME, he wanted to use my studio before me.

So I said "alright then Ryui" 'cos I liked their music. And that was my into Japan, in fact just recentley I just produced a group over there. I was over there with my great friend Linton Kwesi Johnson, and I just produced a group, they're called Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, which is pretty heavy. I did a Japanese lover's album over there with a singer called Iriya. Lover's rock in Japanese!

Miss P: OK. Japanese vocals and lover's rock...

(track played Dancing In The Moonlight by Iriya )

Miss P: This is just a slice of the things you do. You're sort of like a crazy bee, from flower to flower, you're doing this, doing that. And you've got a new album. Now you're very much into dub, you know, Dub R Us when you think of Dennis Bovell.

Dennis: It was what I used to do a lot of before. Because, being with Matumbi, and that was a vocal outfit, I didn't want to compete with the band. Because there were members of the band that thought, if you start making singing records, you're directly competeing with yourself, and they were right. So I thought, well the band doesn't make any dub, so I'll just make a few dub albums to keep my hand in. 'Cos I had lots of songs, we were all songwriters in the band, and we couldn't sing all the material we were creating. I used to farm material out to different artists, a song here, song there, and because I worked in a recording studio full of backing tracks and effects...

Miss P: Don't play yourself down, you were a fine singer. I knew where this was going, you were an accomplished singer.

Dennis: Well, I did have some success with singing, yes. But I didn't want to be in competition with my band, as it were.

Miss P: Were you not the lead singer?

Dennis: No, I was not the lead singer. There were three singers, right ? There was Bevin and Glaister (Fagan), two brothers, and me. We did the majority of the singing, but having said that Webster did sing as well, he was our keyboard player. And we thought that any vocal thing we did, we sort of had this idea of vocal harmonies, that was the Matumbi stamp. If anyone of us went and made records using that formula, it would be detracting from the band, so we decided not to do that. And so I became the Dub Master.

Miss P: Apart from the reggae doo-wop, and the Japanese stuff, and the punk stuff, you added the Dub Master to this long, huge list of things that you do. Your latest album is called Dub Of Ages, now, explain.

Dennis: Linton Kwesi Johnson and I decided that it was time for me to put out a new record. I went through some stuff that I had that was previously unreleased, and I was playing it to him one night, and he goes "you should put this out". I said " well, there you go, there's the tapes, put it out!" Because, him and I have been for the last twenty years, going around the world.

Miss P: Because you are his Dub Band.

Dennis: Yeah, me and the rest of the band. And we decided that his purpose would be best championed if he formed his own record label. Then he would know exactly where his records were going, or where they were needed, and all that. So he did! LKJ. And he asked me "what about some stuff from you ?". I put out some albums, and we've got a couple in the pipeline.

Miss P: OK. All dub stuff, so isn't there going to be a return to singing for Dennis Bovell?

Dennis: Yeah. In fact not this album that's out now, or the one after, but the one after that is called Sufferer, that Im working on...

Miss P: You're so far ahead!

Dennis: Well, you have to, because what happens is that you don't know when you're going to be in the studio, because we've been touring extensively. Alreay this year we've touched on Japan, we've touched right through Europe, France, and Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy.

Miss P: You visit this countries on regular intervals. What keeps you fresh ? What keeps you wanting to do it?

Dennis: Because, everytime we go there the people are nice, and we have a nice experience, and the people call us back again.

Miss P: But how do you know they're not calling you back for nostalgia sake?

Dennis: Well, we don't know, but we not really going for them, we're going for the audiences, and how the audiences react. We noticed that all the time Linton's audiences have been getting younger and youngers, so there's some older people telling some younger people "come and have a listen to this", and it's very heart warming. We just finished touring America, we were there for three weeks.

Miss P: That must have been interesting. Do they see you as some sort of loony, British revolutionaries or something?

Dennis: No. I think the more sensible contingent take note of what's being said, and cheer it on. In fact it's quite funny to have been in some part of Northern California, and there's people chanting along to Linton's poems, and knowing every word, every song. I'm thinking, "I'd better not make a mistake here, he's gonna point me out-Oi! it doesn't go like that!" (laughs)

For part 2 of this interview CLICK HERE

The full interview is available on my tape trade list.