FILTER BOOKS
Raising Sand
The man who gave us Millie, Bob, Traffic, Roxy, Grace, Nick et al looks back on a life spent in shorts and flip-flops.
By David Hutcheon.
Island life: the self-described “Anglo-Irish-Jamaican boarding school flameout” Chris Blackwell with (from left) Junior Marvin, Bob Marley and Jacob Miller, 1980.
© Nathalie Delon/Island Trading Archive
WHAT WE’VE LEARNT
● Blackwell’s mother, Blanche Lindo, was the inspiration for both Honeychile Ryder and Pussy Galore in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.
● The original Island label logo was designed by Charles Saatchi.
● Blackwell doesn’t own a copy of The Wailers’ Catch A Fire LP in the original Zippo sleeve. Nor does he lock his car, as Bob Marley told him that creates a barrier for the people.
● Grace Jones is “where disco would have gone if it had been an experimental art form, not a moneymaking scam for lazy record companies.”
● Blackwell wanted Jimmy Iovine (Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty) to produce U2 and thought Eno would be a “huge mistake”.
● “You shouldn’t buy an old house if the windows are too high.”
The Islander: My Life In Music And Beyond
★★★★
Chris Blackwell with Paul Morley
NINE EIGHT BOOKS. £20
“MYwrong side of histor y,” the old Harrovian behind Island ACCENT put me on the Records confesses early in this thoroughly quotable autobiography, a book it’s hard to put down because you know that in a page or so Blackwell is going to pithily dismiss yet another of the superstars he signed against his better judgment. Few escape: U2 (“a bit rinky-dink”), Cat Stevens (“I couldn’t have been less interested”), Frankie Goes To Hollywood (“all smoke and mirrors”), Roxy Music (“like The Tremeloes” – actually, it was Muff Winwood who thought that) and the author himself (“an Anglo-Irish-Jamaican boarding school flameout”). g ained at his English public school, the ability Yet, thanks to a blend of the self-confidence to identify rare talent, and a unique upbringing among Jamaica’s highest society (“Compared to Errol Flynn, the antics of Ginger Baker, Keith Moon, Marianne Faithful and Grace Jones were child’s play”), he would forever land on his feet and let others work their magic. “My role was to listen to an idea,” he says of producing records, “and say, ‘That sounds good, let’s do that.’” Yet he instinctively knew the difference between a lucky idiot and a genius: Guy Stevens, the Mod DJ sine qua non, was Island’s “most significant signing after Bob Marley”.