John Masouri’s excellent Pressure Drop chronicles reggae’s most tumultuous decade. An over-eager Groovy Times questions him about his book anf the genre’s vinyl output in the 70s

Why was the 70s such a pivotal decade for reggae?
It was a decade in reggae history that offered an embarrassment of riches and a kaleidoscope of different forms, sounds and innovations. It started with the rise of deejays: artists who pioneered the art of chanting rhyming verse on records and sparked off a global love of rapping, since there was no hip hop when Count Machuki and Sir Lord Comic first strutted their stuff on local sound systems. A cultural revolution began when Count Ossie took the sounds of nyahbinghi drumming from the Rasta camps and into the consciousness of young rebels such as Bob Marley and the Wailers. 

It was the decade when proud African descendants fulfilled the dreams of Rastafarian elders who’d suffered persecution and discrimination and stepped from out of the shadows to make their voices heard. Shanty towns and ghettos were transformed from burial grounds of poor people’s hopes into cradles of lyrical and musical brilliance. We witnessed the coming of dub – a Jamaican art form where music was freed from all the usual strictures and delivered into the hands of magicians like King Tubby and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, whose ability to manipulate sound would attain near mystical qualities.”

Pressure Drop unfolds chronologically and each year of the decade has its own dedicated chapter. Was there a reason for this structuring? 
I decided to write the story of 70s reggae in the way I did – as it unfolded – because that’s how I and fans of the music first experienced it. We eagerly awaited each new release or tour and read about the latest developments in the music press or news reports from Jamaica, thanks mainly to The Voice and Daily Gleaner. There was a lot to write about, especially after weaving in the political turmoil that permeated the consciousness of musicians on both sides of the Atlantic.

I know you’ve spoken about your love of this 45 before, but how important was Millie’s My Boy Lollipop in the UK?
I was too young to experience My Boy Lollipop as a 45 – it was the sight of a vivacious, girl singer from Jamaica (my first crush aged just 11), and the sound and excitement of a genre – ska – that was just as new, exciting and vibrant which proved such a heady combination back in 1964. Whilst it wasn’t a Jamaican record per se, having been recorded in London, it was a first for the UK pop world and the beginning of a lifelong love affair for many people of my generation.  

Wasn’t the initial Jamaican music scene driven by 45s and not LPs? When did reggae LPs start to gain popularity?
All of the music that I grew up listening to – pop, Blue Beat, rock and soul were almost entirely experienced via 45 singles and EPs, whether heard at school, friends’ houses, on the radio, the occasional TV show like Ready Steady Go or Top Of The Pops, and jukeboxes in coffee shops. Also a little later on, in clubs and shebeens. LPs were something that we got for Christmas when I was of school age, and only became culturally significant in the hippy era, once the Beatles released Sgt Pepper. Reggae LPs took much longer in attaining that kind of status, and were mostly singles collections back then. Trojan’s Tighten Up and and Pama’s Straighten Up series were very popular but that wasn’t where my own vinyl journey started. My first 45 (Hey Joe), LP (Are You Experienced?) and gig (a package tour also featuring Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett) all centred around Jimi Hendrix. It was the 1968 reissue of Prince Buster’s Al Capone that started the flood of Jamaican releases to my red Dansette, and I still consider it a cornerstone of Jamaican dancehall music. 

Punk and reggae formed an unlikely alliance in the 70s – culminating with Bob Marley’s Punky Reggae Party – why did the two genres associate with each other so closely?
I’m not entirely convinced they did “associate with each other so closely” as I’ve yet to meet a Jamaican reggae musician who actually liked punk music! Most admired the spirit and rebellion in punk, but reggae was almost always about the betterment of society, and the nihilism of punk was far removed from what the majority of 70s’ reggae songs were trying to express. It was certainly helpful in terms of exposure for reggae acts to tour and share a bill with punk bands here in the UK, but I can’t think of any punk groups who performed in Jamaica, or toured with reggae acts to any notable extent. Like it or not, but US soul and R&B, and also rock music – the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker etc. – had a far greater involvement with (and also influence on) reggae than punk. Incidentally, there’s a quote from Chris Blackwell in Pressure Drop where he says that he hated Punky Reggae Party and thought it was the worse record Bob Marley ever made. I must admit, I’m not keen on it either!

Richard Branson’s Virgin and Chris Blackwell’s Island labels seemed to be in competition to sign up as many of Jamaica’s artists as possible in the 70s. Was it a genuine rivalry?
It’s no accident that reggae flourished like never before when both Island and Virgin were signing acts and promoting the music just as they would rock acts, by ensuring that people could buy it in the high street shops and read about it in the popular music press. I’ve never met or interviewed Richard Branson but people close to him have said that he has great respect for Chris Blackwell. The latter once told me that he welcomed Virgin’s involvement as it could only help strengthen reggae’s market share and let’s face it, there was plenty of talent to go around! 

It seems incredible now that Althea & Donna had a number one hit – was this the pinnacle of reggae’s mainstream appeal in the 70s?
Uptown Top Ranking wasn’t just a success in the UK – it was also a No. 1 hit in Jamaica but that’s because it was very catchy, sounded great on the radio, and was delivered by two young, uptown girls, deejaying with appealing innocence over an infectious hit rhythm, so what was there not to like? It proved a one-off admittedly but anyone looking for the nadir/pinnacle of reggae’s mainstream appeal” should look first in the direction of Boney M! 

Bob Marley aside – how successful were the other Virgin/Island artists that were signed in the 70s?
The sheer volume of Virgin and Island reggae releases during the 70s should tell us that both labels were making sufficient money from the genre to justify their involvement, and there was a multitude of other independent labels who contributed to that total during that same era. Marley didn’t have his first crossover hit until late 1975 and never had a commercial hit in the US during his lifetime but whilst he became reggae’s main figurehead, I doubt that he ever saw himself as being separate from what other reggae artists were doing. It was overseas’ journalists who made those distinctions, using the same old divide and rule tactics that inevitably surface when discussing… well anything really. We’re conditioned to think it terms of winners and losers, rather than embracing the totality of anything. The irony is that among reggae’s grass roots’ audience, Dennis Brown was arguably more popular than Marley. We certainly heard Dennis Brown a lot more often in reggae clubs and dances. I’d say that Marley was widely respected, whereas Dennis was both respected and loved, and that was the difference.

There were some fantastic UK reggae artists that broke in the 70s – who do you think were the best of them?
I think most fans would agree that Steel Pulse, Aswad, Misty In Roots, Matumbi, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Black Slate, Greyhound, the Cimarrons and Janet Kay were among the frontrunners in that respect, and their most well-known records are invariably representative of their best work. It was during the 70s that UK reggae finally found its voice and discovered a distinct identity of its own, rather than continuing to try and copy what was happening in Jamaica. What we have to remember is that whenever a reggae act was granted airplay and exposure here in the UK, their records invariably did well. Reggae music’s popularity with the British public hasn’t really been in doubt since the late 60s, but talk to old-timers and they’ll tell you that it was consistently prevented from realising its true potential by the lack of proper distribution and promotion. I still don’t believe that UK reggae – with the exception of 2Tone – of any era has received the respect and attention that it deserves, hence the expression “half the story’s never been told.”   

Is dub a 70s phenomenon? ‘Versions’ appeared on the b-sides of 45s, but how did the music evolve into a distinguishable subgenre? Is Keith Hudson’s Pick A Dub part of the story?
Just like deejaying, rockers and songs about herb and Rastafari, dub certainly became part of the reggae canon in the early 70s and I write about this at length in Pressure Drop. Bunny Lee once announced that there’s no absolute truth when it comes to Jamaican music, only “versions.” Both Herman Chin Loy (Aquarius Dub) and Randy’s Clive Chin claim to have recorded the first-ever dub LP although Prince Buster was among the early pioneers where that was concerned too, so who knows? What’s beyond doubt is that Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and King Tubby – aided and abetted by Bunny Lee’s formidable marketing skills – did most to popularise dub music and together with Errol “ET” Thompson and producers such as Yabby You, Keith Hudson and Glen Brown, among others, helped elevate it to one of the most thrilling and inventive musical art forms of the 20th Century. It’s strange to think that by the mid-80s, dub had become devalued by the sheer number of (often) poor quality albums released in a relatively short period of time, yet this strictly Jamaican offshoot has continued to exert a tremendous influence on popular music. 

As a footnote: Pick A Dub was notable because the rhythm tracks featured the drum and bass pairing of Carlton and Aston “Family Man” Barrett, who also played on all of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ hit records. It also got a UK release courtesy of Atra – a label owned by Brent Clarke, who had close ties with both Island and Virgin.

Can you direct us to the reggae sounds of the 70s we should be listening to? Perhaps a Top Ten?
There’s such a wealth of albums covered in Pressure Drop featuring singers, deejays, instrumentalists, vocal groups, nyahbinghi drummers, dub poets and more, and of all types including dub, slackness, roots and culture, 2 Tone, punk, easy listening and fusion that I couldn’t possibly narrow it down to just ten.

In fact, to do so would negate the rich variety that I’ve attempted to portray over the course of its 600+ pages. However, I’ve compiled Spotify lists of singles from each year covered in the book – namely 1970-79 – and so hopefully listeners to those will gain some idea of how the music developed throughout that decade. Aside from all of that, I would urge readers to have Spotify or YouTube at the ready as they turn the pages, and enjoy the ride…

Pressure Drop – Reggae In The Seventies (£28) by John Masouri is a published by Omnibus Press and can be purchased at all good high street and online booksellers