Max Romeo remembers ‘Scratch’ Perry, the man who gave him the ‘iron shirt’
Published:Thursday | September 2, 2021 | 12:06 AMYasmine Peru/Senior Gleaner Writer
Singer Max Romeo remains forever grateful to Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, the man who, more than four decades ago, produced a single and an entire album that are now enshrined in the catalogue of esteemed dub classics.
“Lee Scratch Perry has left us. The man who gave me the iron shirt. Jamaica has once again lost a real icon, a real musical genius. A man that lived all his life for the advancement and betterment of our heritage, reggae music. Thank you for gifting me with your talent on my most prolific piece of work, War Ina Babylon,” Romeo wrote on social media following Perry’s passing.
“Iron shirt” is a reference to the 1976 song, Chase the Devil – I’m gonna put on a iron shirt, and chase the devil out of earth – which was written by Max Romeo and Perry and produced by Perry. The album on which it appears, War Ina Babylon, is acknowledged as Romeo’s seminal work and was also produced by Perry, who incorporated the musicians from his own backing band, The Upsetters.
“Me and Scratch go back a long way. When we met, I was in my 20s, and he was in his 30s. He had hits before me. The song People Funny Boy did a gwaan good for him. Him always seh, ‘Look, don’t start from the bottom, start from scratch.’ So I get my real start from Scratch,” Max Romeo told The Gleaner.
He continued, “The songs he produced for me topped many charts, were used in a couple [of] movies and sampled by Jay Z, an artiste out of England named Prodigy, and others.”
In 1992, The Prodigy sampled Chase the Devil on his track Out of Space, and Kanye West also used samples in the production of Jay-Z’s song Lucifer, for that artiste’s 2003 project, The Black Album. Earl Sixteen covered Chase the Devil in 2008, and other reggae acts, including Macka B, Susan Cadogan and Mad Professor, have also recorded their own versions.
Max Romeo said that the last time he saw Perry was three and a half years ago at the Rototom Sunsplash Festival in France. For him, Perry’s sudden death last Sunday, while surprising, was not shocking.
“We would meet up in Europe at the various festivals and always have wonderful times. Scratch was 85, and he didn’t look it and certainly didn’t act it. Scratch acted more like he was 35. He is a Maroon; he doesn’t get sick, he just dies,” Max Romeo said philosophically.
‘LEFT A LEGACY’
Reacting to suggestion from his colleague, Niney the Observer, that Scratch Perry, the renowned “mad, musical genius”, was really not insane, Max Romeo declared, “I would definitely second that. There is nothing wrong with Scratch. He is definitely eccentric; he tries to be different, he dresses crazy. But if Scratch was crazy, then he was the smartest crazy man ever. He made millions out of it and left a legacy that includes even Bob Marley.”
He continued, “I hear that he is very extreme on stage, and sometimes he does some real X-rated acts, but I personally have never witnessed them. One of the things I can recall is being at a show with Scratch, and we kept on smelling gasoline backstage. We later found out that it was coming from Scratch. He had a glass with ice filled with gas. He actually put some in his mouth, but he didn’t swallow it.”
Perry, he said, was trying to figure out the connection between petrol why it made cars go fast.
Quizzed about the lessons he learnt from Scratch, he answered without missing a beat, “I learnt to be patient and to be humble. Scratch was a genius who never hurried anything, and it is hard to find a more humble person. We are going to miss him a lot. Any time I want to laugh, I know that I can call Scratch.”