She gave my drummer a CD at a gig to pass on to me he recalls I called her almost as
“She gave my drummer a CD at a gig to pass on to me,” he recalls “I called her almost as soon as I heard it. There was something about her broken English that I liked and her vocals sounded pure. You could tell she wasn’t a songwriter, there was nothing technical there. The sound was too pure.”Nowadays Tricky has a studio in his house in Los Angeles and he can make music whenever and however he pleases. His idea of success, he insists, has less to do with record sales than how individuals react to his music.
“This woman came up to me at a gig about seven years ago and she said ‘You’re in my house and in my children’. It turned out she’d been playing my music to her kids – one was four, the other six That was really touching. I’ve never forgotten that.”In between albums he works on re-mixes, film soundtracks (“The last one was for Bad Company Shit movie”) and other projects. He also runs a record label, Durban Poison, where the acts include his prot?s the Baby Namboos. Alas, the very mention of their name sends Tricky into another rant about a journalist, a “yuppie” who dared suggest that the band weren’t “real”.”Now, one boy had been in prison for eight years, another went to prison when he was 17 for manslaughter And [the writer] said this band is not real. These are some scary people you’re dealing with.”And with that, our interview seems to be over.
Tricky gets up out of his chair, shakes me by the hand and smiles broadly “See?” he says with a wink. “I’m not so bad, am I?”‘Vulnerable’ is released on Monday on Anti records. Tricky plays at the Royal Festival Hall (020-7960 4242) on 16 June as part of the Meltdown 03 festival. It may not be entirely obvious from his frequent outpourings of inter-stellar philosophy, but Lee “Scratch” Perry has gone on a health kick to get himself straight. The eccentric reggae production genius has cut down on his intake of red meat and stopped drinking wine He has even given up smoking the sacred herb. At the age of 67, the man who pioneered the dub sound, produced some of Bob Marley’s best-loved material and inspired artists from Sir Paul McCartney to The Clash is under doctor’s orders to clean up his lifestyle “If I want to stay alive, then I’ve got to stop smoke I have to stop joke.
I don’t eat pork, red meat anymore, I don’t drink wine anymore and I never take coke,” he explains poetically. Now I’m feeling like Superman!” says the Jamaican producer who once called himself Super Ape. News of Perry’s fine fettle is mostwelcome, coming as it does ahead of his imminent artistic directorship of London’s ambitious Meltdown music festival. For three weeks on the South Bank, Scratch will oversee performances by a spectacular array of global artists.