Interview: Don Letts
Back in the mid-eighties when you started , Big Audio Dynamite looked like a gang of swashbuckling, stylish, righteous dudes who knew all the best tunes. Was that the kind of image you were trying to put across?
I
think ‘Medicine Show’ [from 1985 debut album This is Big Audio Dynamite]
was really like a manifesto of what the band was about. We were just doing our
thing and having a good time, and that imagery - that's just how we dressed at the time,
you know? We didn't get dressed up to look like that. That's how we really were back
then.
You were a multiracial group doing this hip-hop/rock hybrid music, that
was quite unusual in Britain at that point, wasn't it?
Well,
apparently so. Big Audio Dynamite was just a reflection of the multicultural
way that London was going at that time and the sounds that we were tuned into –
Jamaican basslines, the New York hip-hop beats that were coming out stateside,
with UK rock’n’roll guitar all over it.
It
wasn’t like, “OK, let’s have a Black guy in the group, let’s have a dread in
the group.” We were mates. Essentially we were working-class kids in a
multicultural city who turned our combination of music and style into an art
form.
You were also one of the first bands to use samples live.
I
played samples because I couldn’t fucking play anything else. I mean,
basically, I don't know if you know the back story of this - Mick Jones gets
kicked out of The Clash, and he's moping around for a while. And one day, I'm
in a club with him and my Rasta mate, a guy called Leo Williams, he's in
Dreadzone now. And Mick's standing between us and he says, “We look like a
group! We should start a group.” And I'm like, “What the fuck, Mick - I can't
play anything.” To which he basically said, “Well neither could [The Clash's bassist]
Paul [Simonon] initially.”
Which
is true. Paul Simonon couldn’t play when he joined The Clash and used to have
coloured stickers on the frets of his bass to show him what to do. The
difference between me and him is that Paul eventually got rid of his stickers.
I never did and through my whole time with Big Audio Dynamite, when I was on
stage I had coloured stickers on my fucking keyboard to know where to trigger
the samples.
How did you go about choosing which samples you wanted to use?
So
Mick's got me in the band, Big Audio Dynamite, and everybody can play an
instrument except Don Letts. Pre this happening, The Clash had released Sandinista!
with the track ‘Magnificent Seven’. One of the Black New York radio stations,
WBLS, picked up on it and did a remix where they put in samples of Clint
Eastwood in Dirty Harry, “Come on
punk, make my day!”, and a bit of Bugs Bunny. I’m sure that that sowed some
seeds in Mick’s head with the whole sample and dialogue thing.
So
Mick just left me to it. So while they're laying down the tracks, I'm listening
to bits and pieces of things because we have similar tastes, me and Mick, you
know, we're of the same age, we have same kind of cultural totems, particularly
in cinema. And I'd start putting things that I thought were appropriate to some
of the subject matter that Mick was developing, for instance, Medicine Show,
which we actually co-wrote, you know, it was kind of based on the whole idea of
conmen in the West robbing people, taking their money, tricksters basically,
hustlers, and we saw ourselves as kind of musical hustlers.
Anyway,
somewhat predictably, we’re both fans of Sergio Leone and we're just straight
in there with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and stuff like that. And
obviously gave the songs a distinct flavour. But I've got to say this, the
thing about BAD is that the samples and the dialogue were only salt and pepper
to that main meal. As far as we were concerned, you should be able to take the
samples and loops out and still have a song.
The
other thing I guess I've got to point out is that we did this before anybody
else commercially. Obviously I knew Holger Czukay was sampling stuff from FM
radio back in the day [on the album Movies]
and I knew Byrne and Eno’s Life in the
Bush of Ghosts. So I wouldn’t say we originated it, I’d say that we were
the first to have commercial hits with it.
And
it was so early in the day that the lawyers didn’t know what was going on and
we got away with it. We sampled from the fucking best – from Scarface right through to Sergio Leone
to the Ealing comedies and Nicolas Roeg, and we only got hammered for using a
song from West Side Story.
Anyway,
about the sample and dialogue thing, like I said, we started early and got away
with it but the law suits were just around around the corner, as demonstrated
by [the legal action against hip-hop band] De La Soul [over their sample-heavy
1989 album Three Feet High and Rising].
But
I quickly realised that you also don't get paid for stealing other people's
shit. So I quickly threw myself, again with Mick's guidance, into lyric
writing. And that was really my main contribution to the band. I mean, the
first thing I cowrote with Mick was ‘E=MC2’ - full of samples by the way, various Nic Roeg
films, who we were both big fans of. And from then on, you know, I co-wrote lots
of the songs with Mick. So everybody makes a big deal out of the sampling
thing, but what I'm most proud of, besides getting to write some songs with
Mick Jones, is my lyrical contribution.
But
I felt Joe Strummer breathing down my neck the whole time. Because I mean, how
the fuck do you compete with that? No, really! I The whole time I was with
Mick, I felt a tremendous responsibility. I can't lie. You know, it's not a
space to fuck around with. Even though I can't play anything, I have tremendous
respect for that space. That's why when people call me a musician, out of
respect for what I understand that to be, I put my hand up and go, “I'm not
really a musician”... says the man who has just signed a record deal with Cooking
Vinyl!
Not bad for a non-musician.
Well,
obviously, over the years I've co-written stuff with BAD and Dreadzone, and
I've done other musical bits and pieces. And people say to me, you'd be
surprised how many people are in this business that can't actually play an
instrument.
But
I still don't feel comfortable calling myself a musician because I can't stand
toe-to-toe with somebody like Mick Jones in the studio where he throws
something down and I throw something back. That's not me. You know, God forbid
that I ever could be a musician because I'd be fucking intolerable! I'm being
serious. It keeps me humble, you know?
Big Audio Dynamite established a very specific sound and got great
reviews but never really had massive hits.
I’ve
always said, we were more cred than bread. Chart-wise we didn't do all that,
you know? I've always said, for those that are supposed to know, they know. I'm
a bit too close to see the impact that it had and its legacy. But you know, I'm
proud of being a part of that whole journey.
Big Audio Dynamite was about beats and samples, so what did you think
about the acid house scene when it came along in 1988?
I
saw it as a part of an expression that these youth had to go through, and I
liked that, although it didn't last very long because very soon it got back to
making money and taking everybody's dosh, but initially, it was a beautiful
thing. You know, anything that brings people together for a synchronised
collective experience with a fucking wicked soundtrack, I'm right there. And
tell you what, you know, I ain't gonna lie, the E was alright too before the
crims got involved.
I
spent my time in the fields, I know what I'm talking about. But it was somebody
else's soundtrack. I did recognise that, although the reggae influence never
left that scene. It informed a lot of it.
That's true, reggae was a major factor in some of the tracks made in the
UK.
On
one end of the spectrum, there's The Prodigy. On the other end of the spectrum,
there's The Orb, and within that dynamic there's a lot of room for Don Letts to
operate, you know? So I just saw it as part of this ongoing sonic dynamic that
brought like-minded people together. It was all about the bass. It was all
about the b-line, man. And that was where I was coming from.
You mentioned The Prodigy. There were all these kind of electronic rock
bands that emerged in the 1990s like The Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers.
I
love The Prodigy by the way, fucking wicked!
Do you think Big Audio Dynamite were a kind of precursor to these
electronic rock bands using hip-hop beats and samples with big riffs?
Nah,
nah, I ain't going there! That's for people like you to sit and work out if
there are any dots to join. You know, we had a part to play, might have been a
small part, we might be a rock’n’roll footnote, but we're in the mix. We're in
the mix.
I
wouldn't dare to suggest that we could've inspired anybody. But the fundamental
elements were heavy basslines, cool beats, rock’n’roll guitar and a bit of
hip-hop going on. And that still stands firm, I tell you.
Interview by Matthew Collin for ‘Dream Machines’, July 28, 2022.
Photo: @lettsdon/Instagram.
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