LAST NIGHT A RECORD CHANGED MY LIFE
Don Letts
Punk’s reggae consigliere bows down to Catch A Fire by The Wailers (Island, 1973).
I was 17 and working on the King’s Road at Acme Attractions, and this was one of two records being played all the time along there, the other being Bowie’s
Ziggy Stardust,
and what got me immediately was the sonics. I was a child of the Windrush generation so I’d grown up with reggae coming in one ear and the pop and rock my white mates were listening to in the other, and this had the heavy bass and the rock edge so it spoke to that duality of my existence which was black and British, and it signposted the rebel dread in me. The Wailers didn’t live in a bubble, they were open to all music, I liked that.