Blackwell has outlived many of his successful artists, his enemies as well as his friends. He began writing his memoir “The Islander: My Life In Music And Beyond” on the cusp of the Covid-19 Pandemic as he says it was the most extraordinary time he has experienced in his life. This was around the time we met for a second time, in March 2020.
Our first meeting was at a Jamaica Stock Exchange Capital Markets Conference at the Pegasus Hotel In Kingston. We had a small talk and I told him that there was tremendous potential in developing Navy Island in Port Antonio into a movie studio. His response was, “The things I don’t get to complete, you will have to do them.
The next time we met was to shop a publishing deal by invitation to the Island Outpost, Golden Eye resort. At 86 he is still curious about how music is being developed in the streaming era. He said to me “Donovan, you must find a place to live and then find a way to let it pay for itself.”
Being Blackwell is a lifestyle and he could afford his errors, being from a privileged family, The Lindos, former owners the Wray and Nephew Rum. He made up for the mistakes he made in life with a remarkable 60 plus year career of successive wins. His tell-some book, highlights the most important meetings and relationships that shaped him into a bonafide impresario. He left out juicy stories like the time in January 1996 when the Jamaican police fired shots at Jimmy Buffets’ plane in Negril while he was onboard with Bono of U2, or the story of how he got Chronixx to perform on Jimmy Fallon’s Show.
However in the book, he addressed several misconceptions about himself, and his way of doing business. His critics who believe he benefited greatly and unfairly earned from reggae music and culture in The Islander: My Life In Music And Beyond he tackles them head on from the perspective of an innocent survivor.
As an only child to a heiress, he was often left alone with a life of luxury on the lawns of what is now the Terran Nova hotel . Blackwell speaks of always knowing he had a secure future even as his unfocused upbringing made him flunk school.
“For all of my academic failure, I had a ready made future in the Lindo family business, there would always be a well paid position for me at Wray and Nephew, the Island’s leading rum manufacturer.”
Then the Lindo family sold the world famous company in the mid-1950s, “So much for my secure future,” he understates. He credits his spontaneity to the “Blackwell genes” and “life lessons picked from Errol Flynn”, his mother’s muse.
Blackwell’s Island artists, turned enemies, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer are featured in the The Islander. “Peter Tosh didn’t like me,” he reflects. This is the first time he has ever addressed Tosh’s numerous comments against him. He however gave salutes to the greatness of each member of the Wailers including Bunny who died recently.
His time with Bob Marley, spawned several struggles and triumphs which resulted in the groundbreaking Wailers debut album “Catch A Fire”.
“From the moment that Bob and I set to work remixing Catch a Fire in London, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer felt threatened. To them, it seemed it was now me and Bob. They were so protective of the three of them, which was understandable. It had always been their thing. They had fought hard to keep their band going when so much conspired against them, and then here, all of a sudden, was this white guy deciding for them that they needed to move in a different direction.” The Islander Excerpt.
Blackwell said Catch a Fire didn’t catch on in the major music markets in its first year of release. It sold 14000 copies at the time. His previous success came from “My Boy Lollipop” by Millie Small, which sold 7 million copies. He didn’t mark the low sales as a failure, instead he insisted that the label put the necessary support behind the album. Now, Catch A Fire is one piece of the Bob Marley and The Wailers catalogue of albums that sells forever.
“Pop is a competitive game,” he states as he diversifies by following in his family’s footsteps, the career music entrepreneur now owns the darker, more digestible Blackwell Rum distributed by Wray and Nephew.
Grace Jones helped him to choose the perfect blend, the one he didn’t like, but he went with her judgment after getting a hint that dark rum will be the next best thing.
At 86 years old, most of his peers are either dead or wealthy. Grace left Island for a lucrative deal with another label that would set her for life. He says, that is something he wouldn’t do. He sold Island Records for £180 million or US$300 million, and for a while stayed on as CEO to ensure the buyers didn’t erase the Marley and Jamaican legacy from the brand. The sale of Island Records and Island Music happened in July 1989, to the PolyGram UK Group. His reason? “It had gotten too big and too corporate for me and I couldn’t really handle it.”
(Read more on Chris Blackwell and the Polygram story)
Richard Branson, who is now focused on putting life into space, is another one of his “old colleagues.” He admires Richard’s barrier breaking sojourns to fly on rockets from a far, but says he gets his sense of adventure from being in Jamaica with his rum and resorts.
As for regrets, he has none, not even the missed opportunities to sign Pink Floyd and Elton John. Still on his adventure He harbors no sadness, even as news come of his actress ex-girlfriend, who died last year and the many artists or musicians who he worked with that have passed. Among them Toots Hibbert, Millie Small who he started with. He says “Millie is so important to me”, Neville “Bunny Wailer” Livingston, Lee “Scratch Perry”, Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, in December 2021 Robbie Shakespeare, the legendary Jamaican bass player. “The world got a whole lot less bass,” Blackwell reminds himself.
“I have to keep a distance as I hear the people who meant a lot to me have died.”
Conscious of his own mortality, but with a sharp memory he recalls an anecdote with “Countryman” who told him the purpose of life is to live as long as possible. His mother, Blanche Lindo Blackwell lived to be 104 and he, still fit at 86, says he plans to see Bob Marley’s music become even more impactful and integrated into societies in the coming years.
The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond By Chris Blackwell With Paul Morley is available on Amazon.
