Rebel Rebel

The rebirth of Jimmy Cliff and his ongoing cycle of passion and protest.

Originally published by Clash Magazine 
July 2012
Words by Matthew J Bennett

Jimmy Cliff is all about the circles. He’s possessed by the rhythm of the world and seems self-perpetuating in his quest to relentlessly spread good vibes.

He’s back with a new LP called ‘Rebirth’. Somewhere between his 28th and 33rd long player. It’s hard to tell when someone’s been this prolific. It’s a Grade-A Jamaican belter of an album that hammers together jump-up ska, skanking reggae and the expectant politics and injustice angled at our heavens. Whereas many ‘legends’ surfing retirement age could be seen to be just going through the motions, Jimmy Cliff has been sucked back to his roots; to rectify a wrong.

“The significance of this album…’ pauses Jimmy from the lush interior of the St Pancreas Hotel, King’s Cross in London ‘is that it completes a chapter that was incomplete, which is a chapter of reggae. After I had a hit with ‘The Wonderful World…’ album I did another album which was a different category of music - so the reggae chapter was not completed.”

The singer pauses again to drink some of his 5 star cuppa, and to reflect on his achievements. “What I’m learning is the importance of what we did back then. I didn’t realise the importance of those early songs because my way of looking as a creative person was to move on, move forward, create new sounds, new rhythms and stay with the time, but this one is really going back. I learned that what you did back then can still have a big relevance today.”

“Reggae had an influence on punk, it’s the same anti-establishment, rebellious music.”

Another circle that Jimmy is revisiting is that of Joe Strummer and The Clash. In a wonky triangle Jimmy teamed up with Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, who had worked with Strummer in the past, the Rancid punk produced and worked on ‘Rebirth’ with Jimmy in LA. Each song was mainly recorded in one take, as Jimmy prefer to do.

“Tim had come out of the Punk era,” recalls the Jamaican. “So you know, reggae had this kind of influence on punk. It’s the same kind of anti-establishment, rebellious kind of music. So it was easy to work with him.”

Likewise Jimmy had briefly worked with Strummer and in fact they were working on a song together called ‘Over the Border’ when Joe sadly died: “I came to Britain in the ‘60s, around ‘65 and I was here until late ’70s,” he smiles. “I never had an opportunity to sit down and talk with Joe, but we’d be passing each other going to gigs – ‘hey Joe, hey Jimmy’. But on the last session on that last album he walked in with some lyrics one day and said: ‘You know I need to see Jimmy Cliff sing these lyrics’, I was like ‘how does the melody go?’. Then we got a melody together, Dave Stewart started playing guitar and I came up with the melody, and that’s how we had a real connection after all these years.”

The Clash overlap doesn’t stop there either. The new LP features a cover version of ‘Guns of Brixton’, a timely release after 2011’s youth riots ripped through South London’s hinterland of Lambeth, and such social commentary and politics runs through ‘Rebirth’ like an artery. In 1970 Jimmy’s anti-war protest song ‘Vietnam’ was a hit around the world. So much so that Bob Dylan called it ‘The best protest song ever written’ … so the Jamaican has versioned it, with new lyrics and re-titled it as ‘Afghanistan’.

“Yeah, I change a few of the lyrics, not a lot, because it’s kind of the same thing, Vietnam war and the Afghanistan war, and in my view it’s completely senseless. I don’t think anybody is going to win. Afghanistan is still going to remain Afghanistan, the world, maybe cultural things will change, but it’s really hard to change generations of culture. Those people are going to remain who they are. Everybody will be lost. It’s just a waste of lives and money. Somebody talking about bad economic times, that money could be helping a whole lot of people. It’s costing a whole lot of money, and the life for me is even more important than the money.”

Intriguingly Jimmy converted to Islam in 1973 and found love in Africa. He changed his name to El Hadj Naïm Bachir. So as a Muslim how does he feel about the Afghanistan war? “My position on religion now is very different to my position on religion then,” he reveals quietly. “I grew up accepting a religion because my family were that religious people so I got it. In my teens I started rejecting it because I couldn’t get clear answers. Then I went into Rastafari and that seemed more realistic to me and then I went into Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism – all of them. It is just religion. It’s fiction but we all get our answers from religion. People say I was converted to it, but I consider it more a study.”

This holistic view on religion is rare. But it belies just the tip of singer’s deep understanding of personal faith and the workings of the cosmos. We quickly traverse into more metaphysical banter. “The process of life is birth, you live for the period, then death, gestation, and rebirth – so that’s the cycle I’m on right now. Rebirth. That’s what I’m on right now rebirth in this life. What I call your dry periods can be gestation. You shouldn’t look at it as ‘everything’s going bad for me,’ it’s just a part of the process of life.”

The rebirth of Jimmy as a recording artist has been impressive in its musical quality. The new LP is riddled with infectious music drenched in integrity, and packing a message. The 64-year-old whizzes us through some of his teachings: “‘World Upside Down’, that song was originally a Joe Higgs song. Joe Higgs played a great part in the history of reggae music. The world know of Bob Marley and the Wailers as the torch-bearers, carrying it in one sense but sometimes when you see a light-bulb a transformer is behind it, a huge power is behind it and Joe Higgs was that kind of a person.”

Next up we ask about the plaintive ‘Reggae Music’: “This is like telling the history of reggae. My history, like when I wrote ‘The Harder They Come’, and how I went from writing ‘Harder They Come’ all the way up and it’s telling the whole story, all the way up to 2012 so I really love that. ‘Children’s Bread’ is a song about the injustice and the greed of not just politicians but the capitalist society, or communist society because capitalism is just corporations running things and communism is just elites. Neither really have the answer. I’m talking about them as taking the children’s bread and giving it to the dogs while the cats get fat and the rats come in and steal the cheese.”

One of the strongest tracks is the earworm called ‘One More’, a stomper of a ska track: “We always got one more thing to give you know? Even if it’s one more breath to blow we’ve always got that. It’s a song about resilience in life and recognising of what you have, you are, you can do. It’s my story. And everyone’s got their own story to tell.”

Finally he talks about ‘Bang’, and we return to his fatalistic predictions on life and our roles on earth: “’Bang’ is a song about how we came into this life, how I came into this life. I prefer living my life with a bang rather than as a wimp; so I’m passing that on to say we all have a purpose here, and everyone has a bang to make, whether your bang is a big bang or a small bang. You’ve got a right to make you’re bang, don’t let no-one stop you making your bang.” he lectures with a finger.

And with this run down we’re nearly out of time with our reggae guru as he prepares to flit to Paris on the Eurostar. I ask him how he keeps his energy, this vital coursing of power that we’ve seen from his protest concerts in the ‘70s in Brazil to the main stages of Glastonbury where he’s jumping higher and faster than anyone else around. Any straight up answer would never do. And Jimmy skips past the issue of his age and any linear explanations, as he declares: “I’m living. I find myself living. Whatever date my father or mother gave is ok. The concept of age is one of the things that make people get older than his time. When you say ‘I’m 60 I shouldn’t be doing this,’ and you put that in your mind, it kills you. I’m ‘the living’. I live every day. I’m here. I’m alive, sharing this time with you and enjoying it. … After this is finished I’m gonna get on a train and enjoy the ride.”