![]() I remember I was still recording with Leslie Kong and Derrick Morgan wrote a song called We're Independent that was a huge hit. People were very upbeat because I think the majority of people didn't really know what independence was but everybody felt like celebrating! It was very festive. What are your memories of that time in Jamaica? It's also 50 years since Jamaican Independence. My first session was at Federal Studios in Kingston and that was quite a memory! The first time you step into a recording studio with all those musicians and you hear the band strike up it sends certain chills through your body! And you know? I still get the chills even now when I hear the band strike a chord! So I still even now feel enthusiastic about what I do - both the thrills and the chills! (laughs) In the marketing for your new album it says it's been 50 years since you first stepped into a recording studio. He was one of the kindest people you could ever find. Every time we were coming back from a gig up north or down south, we'd stop at café and talk about how our gigs went and how things were going. I can just play my guitar" (laughs) Apparently he didn't have all that much confidence in his singing! But then he went on and he tore the place up! After that we became pretty close. do you mind if he opens for you?" It wasn't like a real opener because I used to do two sets so they said "Do you mind if he does one set in between your two?" I didn't mind, I didn't know him, but when he came to the club I had just finished my first set so when I came off he came to me and said "What's the name of your band man?" I said "Jimmy Cliff and the Shakedown Sounds" He said "Maaaaan. A week before my gig they asked me "Y'know there's this new guitarist. Tell me about meeting Jimi Hendrix in Britain for the first time. There's a picture of Jimi Hendrix in the reception area of this hotel. There never used to be all the markets! Notting Hill Gate has changed a lot in terms of people, in terms of housing, architecture but the energy is the same. If you take certain parts like say Kensal Rise and all those areas where the markets are. You have to come back and look at the places you used to know and say "Oh that's changed! That's still the same! Have they got that there now? OK!" So you just familiarize yourself again and it's like my second home. Because when you spend a good deal of time of your life in a particular place you've planted roots which can't just be uprooted. How does it feel to be back in London where you lived during the late sixties? He orders a coffee and a sparkling water with no ice and we begin. We find Jimmy sitting at the Sanctum's wood panelled restaurant, dressed in a red string sweater wearing glasses with red rims. Today, with his album, which revisits the Kong era,, and with the 50th anniversary of both Jamaican independence and Jimmy's debut studio session, it feels like everything has come full circle. Yet critical acclaim has been a fair weather friend due to his restless, experimental nature and his eclecticism (whereas Bob Marley, the youth he helped get a start at Leslie Kong's Beverley's Records, was always, whether philosophically or in marketing terms, a consistent brand). The love fans feel for Cliff, the man who took Reggae international for a whole generation through his music and the film The Harder They Come, has never dimme. ![]() Now Jimmy is back in his former home to promote his new album Rebirth, produced by Tim Armstrong of the punk group Rancid, the follow-up to their Sacred Fire taster EP which was released last year to critical acclaim. A fortuitous meeting, as Jimmy and Jimi became friends in the mid sixties while they were both strangers abroad, trying to shop their then unknown music in the cold ramparts of the United Kingdom. The first legend of music Reggaeville encounters when entering the West End's plush epicurean Sanctum Hotel to interview Jimmy Cliff is not Jimmy himself - but a large gaudy stain glass panel depicting Jimi Hendrix.
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