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	Jah Wobble
	An interview at the Compass Club Part 2
	PB: How important are your roots still? Your Stepney roots, your East End roots? JW: Very. But I do feel very sad about it all, because it's all gone. A lot of Cockneys talk this way. Bob Hoskins, who's not from the East End, he's an Islington boy, I believe, Finsbury Park, he described it like Red Indians. You know, it's kind of gone.You go to reservations in Essex sort of thing. (laughs) So when I moved, it was time definitely to go. But it is .... I feel very much from another time, another place, and I suspect the way my attitudes are, and the way I talk, is the way my grandad would have talked at eighty. Do you know what I'm saying? Things have moved on. And I suspect it's probably pretty similar here in the North-East. I think the Eastenders, Tower Hamlets especially ... that's just a fact. I think we're probably the most extreme example of that kind of demographic change, in a way even more than coal-mining communities. And it's all good, what's the big deal, I don't want to be ...we move forward. PB: Who want's to be down a pit. JW: Yeah, don't get me wrong. I'm not going to be romantic .... like the dockers. I read some book the other day, slagging the dockers, and saying that they were their own worst enemies, and it's like, fucking hell, what? For that little post-war period? Because they had to queue. My grandfather was a lighterman, which was one of the better ... it was a good job to have on the river. But they didn't get bundles of dough, do you know what I mean? And it was a dangerous job ..... a lot of them dockers got hurt. They got crates of bananas falling on them, and all that. I wouldn't romanticise it. But it's a fact that at Tower Hamlets you've had huge demographic change. You've got the very poorest ward in the country there. I was living there, Shadwell, which is right next to Stepney, I had a little flat there. Then you've got all the Canary Wharf thing. You can't have a society with that much of these gated community larks. It's just a fact that from what all sociologists' surveys seem to indicate, that doesn't work. It doesn't promote community, therefore it doesn't promote good health, both physical and mental. PB: And the whole social thing, and the cultural thing. JW: Free economics, free market economics. Thatcher. Winners and losers, law of the jungle .... you take civilisation away. It's just the same thing with the crack thing ... You lose it, you get fear. You get horrible fear, which you don't need. You even lose the social contract, which is, "I won't come and rob your house, and you won't come and rob mine. Even if we don't like each other, we're not going to steal off each other". And even that's gone. Like that. PB: Your music - "Rising Above Bedlam", a great album. Helped by Charlie Gillett of course, who's from Stockton. Through - what's the name of the record company? JW: Oval.Yeah. PB: In a sense, there's a great difference between that very broad 'world' base - (you were one of the first people to introduce those things weren't you) and the stuff you do now, which is in a sense really back to roots, English roots. I suppose the William Blake things were similar in that you were going to him like a London boy who was speaking the truth, something of a renegade. JW: You can take a particular, like the Blake thing, and of course Blake will lead you into the eternal, into infinity. One particular conduit into this whole wide world. PB: I was just going to ask you to describe the continuum. JW: It's always a particular thing, like the modal thing. You take an English folk song, and the mode will connect you to Arabia. Everything's interconnected in so many ways. And what I always feel, when I play music, is this widening, a broadening of the horizon. And in a way that's why I don't even - I know it's silly to get too soppy about roots and all that, because everything comes to pass, and nothing has a centre. So everything goes on .... it's okay to feel a bit sad, but it's no more than a tinge, a hue, that's a little bit of a minor note going into a major note. So it doesn't make any odds. And I like up north. I'm very happy where I live, I've got nice neighbours. When I moved to where I moved to, all the neighbours gave us a card when we moved in ... you know what I'm saying? I've got friends and all that here. PB: Can you tell us a little bit about your influences? JW: Musically? PB: Yeah. JW: It was pretty straightforward, I really love music. I listened to Stevie Wonder, people like that. The first record I ever bought was with me Mum at Paul's record stall in Whitechapel, and that was Jim Reeves, "Welcome to my World". I can remember mad songs like "Froggie Goes A-Courting". I think that was one of the first singles. Me Mum would always buy a single with me every Friday at Paul's record stall. And I got into Stevie Wonder. I just put meself about, listened to lots of different music. And I discovered stuff I hated, along the way. Emerson, Lake and Palmer, that sort of stuff, do you know what I mean? I'd see these records that are top of the.... "I'll have some of that.... Oh, this is horrible!" I'd take it back, "There's a scratch on this, mate, it's not ... I'm not having that." Reggae. PB: When did you get into reggae? JW: Oh, very young. A suedehead sort of thing. Everyone around me, they was skinheads and all that. So, you know, all the Trojan stuff. Tighten Up. Ansel Collins and all that lark. So I really loved all that. And I stayed with it. Whereas a lot of people let it go, probably '73, I stayed with it. I used to listen to Radio London, they had a reggae show on Sunday afternoon, and there was a reggae show on the Saturday night, Tommy Vance used to do a reggae show, believe it or not, on Saturday night. On Capital Radio. So I listened to a lot of it. And we'd been round Dalston, we'd go slightly into North London, and slightly further out to Bow and all that, getting to a few blues dances, we knew a few people. I wanted to check the heavy bass. When I first heard that heavy bass and the dub thing, it was like music from Mars. It ws just like some ....you'd just fallen into a heaven of sound. You know. PB: Bass players, who are the guys that you respect? JW: There's a lot of them. Obviously Robbie Shakespeare. Who was the feller who played with Bob Marley? 'Family Man' Barrett. I saw them at the Lyceum in '75, .... Marley. The best gig I've ever seen. So I've actually ...I not only hear this band, I saw them, I actually saw them, so I could really see what was going on. 'Matumbi' with Dennis Bovell, he played guitar but I've seen him play bass as well. The Cimmarons, their bass player. Can't even remember the geezer's name. And then there were people to check their records out, Miroslav Vitous .. the Weather Report geezer, that stuff. That stuff...... Robert Johnson, the Johnson who played bass. Bill Laswell. I heard the first Bill Laswell, the 'Tape the Material' cassette. PB: And of course you've done stuff fairly recently with Bill. JW: Yeah, we kept on working and we teamed up.Late '80s I eventually met him. '88. PB: Such a great idea, two bassists working together. JW: Yeah, that's it, yeah. I really like working with him. Bass players tend to be the most sensible musicians, they really do. PB: Well, they always organise, don't they? JW: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. That's it. Because they tend to join everything, rhythm and melody, together. But there were so many great bass players at that time ... Michael Henderson, who was the bass player with Miles Davis on 'Dark Magus' and all those recordings. So that was a classic Fender sort of bass player. Cecil McBee. With Pharaoh and all that. That would be the people I'd hear ...I got into Pharoah Sanders through hearing Cecil McBee playing with Lonnie Liston Smith. And yet again, acoustic stand-up bass, but not afraid to do repetition. You see that tonight - when you get repetitious, that's when you're starting to trance people. PB: "A Love Supreme". JW: There you go. [hums the tune.] Yeah, yeah. Love it. PB: You've got your own record label, haven't you? 30 Hertz Records. How come you don't take on board the production and marketing budgets that the mainstream could offer you? Because no doubt you could walk into a mainstream contract. JW: Probably not, now. I mean .... I did walk away from Island, because there was pressure. Everything changed in the mid-'90s. You started getting a different vibe, because more and more of the companies were sold out. Island was sold to Polygram, who was then sold to Seagrams, I think it was, a booze company, sold to Universal, sold to Vivendi, who are a fucking waterworks company! Excuse me, I'm trying to work this one out. Now that's mad. You just know that's not going to fly. At that point you know that's going to be about catalogue. They've bought catalogue in the way Saatchi buys modern art. It's just, "I own this". And they're not quite sure what to do with it, they'll let it tick over, maybe the catalogue will be managed properly, and they'll still have an A&R department, but everything will be reduced down. Most stuff will be farmed out. They'll look for one or two or three big acts every year or two. Things move on, that's kind of what happens. And I could see all that coming, well in advance. The music business is a funny business: when I said that to people at the time, they don't want to hear it, they put their fingers in their ears. But I don't mind, I can do a lot with five grand, I can do a lot with ten grand. So I'm not frustrated. And I get really bored dealing with those people, because everything takes too long, they're too slow. They're not the brightest lads in the street. So in order to get the money, you know, .... it's taking too long, it's a drag to be honest. It's as simple as that. PB: You were eighteen weren't you, when you were with Public Image Ltd. I know it was mates and stuff, because you were at college together weren't you. JW: Yeah, that's right, College of Further Education, basically having a crack at our O-levels again.
	PB: In at the deep end then I guess at eighteen. (Yeah). Smashing, great albums, great work.(Yeah). How do you feel about that now? Any memories? JW: Fantastic. Yeah, I've got very good memories. I fell out with them, but I still love them. Apart from Levine, he's a ... but that's funny, right? (laughs). Because I genuinely don't like him, but it's funny and I don't care, you know what I'm saying? But yeah, it was a dream, because I was signing on the dole, and then the PiL thing come. I knew John, I was friends with John, I knew Keith, and then the PiL thing happened, and of course it's like "Do you want to come into the band? You can go out and buy a brand new black shiny Fender Precision Bass, with a Soho sound ..... and be a musician!" "Er... yeah." You know. PB: Your first one came from Sid Vicious, didn't it? Or is it part of mythology? JW: The first bass? Yeah,well, I borrowed his for a while. So it's true, it's true that I did borrow his. And he slagged my playing off, because he'd go, "Aah, you don't play it like that, that's useless, what you're doing." And I'd say, "You don't know nothing, you're just a Ramones copyist." That's all he knew, he had it slung low and it was all about posing. So I didn't bother with what Sid was saying at all. He was such a poser it was just not true. I'd never seen him win a fight in his life, I don't think. Although he... sometimes he probably scared people off, because he looked spiteful. But he wasn't really at all, funnily enough, he really wasn't. But me mate Ronnie nicked me a bass. It was useless. A little short scale with a high action. And it had a little amp. I sold the amp to get beer money, very early on in the game. I used to have to put it up against me bed, like that, to vibrate. It was such an awful action, so awkward, that when I was given a Fender P it was like going from an old Cortina with a high clutch to an automatic Ford Zephyr. Woah! You know. (laughs). So that was it. I don't know what it was with bass, what I knew ....my side of it is, I just knew you played patterns, as if you had like five drums around you, like a drum kit, and every fret was a drum, and you made patterns. As simple as that. And that's all I do now. I learned a little bit about how keys work, and how they relate, and I learnt about modes, I learnt what I like and what I didn't like, and I can write for an orchestra now. And I quite like this in pattern mode, I mean pattern mode but I can know about slowing the tempo down, and it's all patterns. And that Bach stuff, the whole Western notation system, it's just a particular form of grammar. It's like grammar. It's just a subjective truth. It's a truth, but it's a subjective truth. PB: I guess Bach was the first composer for bass in a sense. JW: Yeah, yeah, in a way, in a way. He did get the bottom in, I've got to give you that. I like what Tavener said - He said "It's a bit too ... it's not humble enough". Bach. I thought, "Yeah, actually that's quite true."
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