The Upsetter – Lee Perry remembered on a rare meeting in Kingston

(c) Hugh Thomson 1994. The photograph I took of Lee as he sang to me in the burnt out husk of the Black Ark studio.
“Who am I? I’m the Mystic Warrior. Because I am what I am, and I am he that I am. I am a technological man, I am not a reggae star, I am a technological star. I am [with an intense look past my shoulder] the Upsetter”.
When Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry granted me a rare interview on his first visit to Kingston in years, I always knew it would throw up surprises. Here, after all, was a man who had created some of the greatest and wildest reggae songs of all time and was considered eccentric to the point of insanity. A man who planted the records he made in his garden and watered them. A man who wore compact discs glued to his baseball cap and mirrors on his trainers so that he could reflect light back over walls to ‘own them’. Read more…
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