Anthony of Black Slate talking to John Masouri for Reggae Vibes “How long have you waited for Black Slate?” asked the MC who introduced them at last year’s Sierra Nevada World Music Festival. Hype comes with the territory but the guy wasn’t joking when he called it “an historical moment.” That was only their third gig since reforming three years ago, after most of the original band members had gathered to celebrate their 40th Anniversary. They’ve been touring America’s West Coast since then, with dates in Brazil, the Caribbean and the US to come. Whilst they’re missing lead singer Keith Drummond and bassist Ras Elroy Bailey, the others are still there – most importantly drummer Desmond Mahoney, lead guitarist Chris Hanson and Anthony Brightly, his keyboards slung round his neck just like Herbie Hancock. These three were the nucleus of the band in any case and that’s where the band’s USP resides – in a blend of sounds, melodies and production style, rather than a single lead voice. “The first Black Slate record was made in 1972, when I was still at school,” says Anthony, who was born in North London to Caribbean parents. “I saved some money and asked Keith to sing for me. He came to my house and we rehearsed this song Mix Up Man, then he came to the studio with me. It was just the two of us and some friends from school. This was before I met Chris and Desmond.” Anthony had played organ with the house band at Phoebes in Hackney from the age of eleven. They played talent competitions before regularly backing visiting Jamaican stars. “We played with Ken Boothe, Leroy Smart, Roy Shirley, Owen Gray and Dennis Brown... If you were a Jamaican artist who came to London back then, Black Slate would back you. We knew all the hit reggae songs like the back of our hands. “We were called the Young Ones at first. We had that name until I was about fourteen, and then we changed it to Black Slate. We used “slate” because we’d seen the writing the wall, whereas “black” referred to us as a people. We always said that we’d make music that carried a message because Desmond and I had seen the Wailers play at the Sundown Theatre and that show changed our lives!” It was time to get serious, which meant making records. The earliest Black Slate releases started out as dub plates for Anthony’s sound-system Sir George, which he inherited from his father. “We played at the Club Noriek with Fatman and he annihilated us. That’s when I went into the studio and cut some tracks. I couldn’t afford to buy dubs from Jamaica so I had to make them. Before Sticks Man we recorded a song called Live Up To Love, and then we booked Island studios for Lay Your Head On My Shoulder and another attempt at Mix Up Man, which came out on the King George label. All the others came out on the Black Slate label.” Sticks Man was their breakthrough hit in 1976. It was a No. 1 hit on the Black Echoes reggae charts for weeks and an update on the rude boy theme, or so we thought. “It was written about a girl being spoilt, and telling people what they should and shouldn’t do,” says Anthony. “It was originally an instrumental. I made Piano Twist, Sticks Man and Suzy Wong all at the same time, for the sound-system. Then after I had an argument with this girl I went back and recorded Sticks Man, after I’d wiped the melodica from the original version. “Elroy voiced it for me and I paid him for doing it. Every morning after that my dad would say, ‘what about this record?’ He wanted me to release Sticks Man but it was carrying the sound.” The success of Sticks Man was followed by band’s debut album Black Slate, which they released on the TCD label, jointly owned by Tony (Anthony), Chris and Desmond. This trio handled production between them – they even paid for the sessions – although Keith Desmond wrote most of the songs. Key tracks included Freedom Time, Sticks Man and Reggae Music. All were guaranteed crowd-pleasers, whilst Mind Your Motion was cut in a late rockers style that Anthony describes as “straight Channel One.” Twelve months later and Amigo went Top 10 in the UK. “I’d made it to play on the sound,” he says of Black Slate’s most successful hit. “It’s a Rasta song, and yet very commercial as well. We wanted to put people into a trance and that’s what it did. It put us in every club in England. Not even Matumbi could get the bookings we did.” It was their unique brew of reggae, jazz and pop that made Black Slate different from other British reggae bands of that era. They could drop heavy roots with the best of them, but there was a sophistication to what they were doing that betrayed the influence of Jamaican producers like Lloyd Charmers and Derrick Harriott, who mixed a little soul with their reggae. The selectors on Sir George favoured a similar approach, and had London crowds queuing round the block circa 1978-80. “We created this go-between,” Anthony explains. “We were a merge of two kinds of music and that’s where lovers’ rock came from. We were the first sound to play Silly Games and I’m So Sorry. When I finished with crowds back then, they left the dance making babies!” Phonogram subsidiary Ensign Records signed Black Slate for the Amigo single and album. The latter featured a changed line-up from that debut TCD set, with the more uncompromising roots and reality songs having gone AWOL. Yet another version of it – omitting some of the more commercial tracks – appeared on Alligator Records in the US, just as Black Slate embarked on their first UK tour. The follow-up to Amigo was Boom Boom, which flopped. Not many black acts got back-to-back hits in those days, except for their stable-mate Eddy Grant. Freedom Time might have been a better choice with its molten harmonies – even their cover of the Persuaders’ Thin Love Between Love And Hate, which was another sumptuous fusion of reggae and soul. TCD issued a dub companion to Amigo called Ogima (“Amigo” spelt backwards), after Ensign declined to release it. Shame, because it underlined just how imaginative Black Slate could be given the opportunity. “Ensign wanted to put us with a producer for the second album but we said, ‘Why? We can do it ourselves.’ Keith and Elroy finished the album themselves, with little help from the others but Ensign turned it down. That’s when the band went back into the studio for Sirens Of The City, which pulled no punches either lyrically or musically. Racial tension provided the backdrop. Britain’s black communities were feeling the pressure as Thatcherism tightened its grip and there would be no second-guessing when it came to tracks like Message To Mr. SUS Man and Dread In The House. Black Slate regularly played benefit shows for the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism during that period, and often appeared on the same bill as 2 Tone and punk bands such as the Jam, Boomtown Rats and Generation X. They were doing well, but then split after Keith and Elroy refused to go on a first US tour supporting the Police, on racial and financial grounds. Steel Pulse took their place, whilst Black Slate headed for New Zealand and a major fall-out. Brightly reacted by issuing a slew of the band’s material on the TCD and Top Ranking labels, as if searching for cathartic relief. In 1982 he launched the Sir George label and released two Black Slate songs – Tears On My Pillow (with the Chosen Few) and Wiser Than Before – before producing hits by Raymond Naptali, Sharon Edward, Winston Clark and Trevor Hartley. Wiser Than Before would eventually resurface on the Black Slate album from 1985. Delroy Pinnock deputised for Keith Drummond on tracks like Your Love, Brutality, No Justice For the Poor and Incidents, which Brightly had written about the race riots that had recently turned many UK inner city areas into war zones. The band undertook a short European tour behind this album, which they would later reissue as Midnight, complete with bonus tracks. This burst of activity proved a false dawn. Anthony returned to running nightclubs in Dalston and Hackney, built a studio and continued his experiments with soul and reggae on records by Pure Silk, Wendy Walker and Winsome. Black Slate’s current bass player Colin “Steam Fish” McNeil often joined him on these sessions. Brightly also teamed up with Stone Love, “the biggest sound-system in the world” for a string of album releases and live performances including 2014’s World Cup Clash, which was watched by two million people via live streaming, and twenty thousand at the actual venue. He’d long stopped producing music by then, and turned his attention to social issues affecting his North London neighbourhood, like youth unemployment and police harassment. “I wanted to get involved in politics but I could see that I was going to get diluted so I needed to have a voice in a different way,” he explains. A Scotland Yard initiative called Trident, aimed at fostering relations with the black community, was launched in one of his nightclubs. “We wrote the protocol for how the police are supposed to deal with black people,” he continues. “I closed my club from Monday to Thursday after that and ran it as a school called PROMPT.” Anthony moved to Antigua after a while, but the school’s still operational. Chris Hanson had opened a pressing plant called Music House in the meantime. He and Anthony certainly didn’t reform Black Slate for lack of anything to do! It was that 40th Anniversary show and also a trial session at Unit 8 studios in Hackney that rekindled their passion. Desmond had previously cut an album there with Elroy called World Citizen, but the magic didn’t really happen until Brightly and Hanson joined the fun. “We’d been asking ourselves, ‘Are we fooling ourselves here or do we really have it?’ We did four tracks that day – Bu’n I Herb, Lions Den, Almost Lost My Mind and What’s The Reason – and it was all there, just like always. We were so tight, yet we hadn’t played together for over fifteen years!” You can hear those tracks – together with a cover of Marley’s Redemption Song – on a new album called Now And Then that’s due out in spring 2015. By then, they also hope to be touring Europe, where they’re planning to “make a statement. “A lot of reggae shows are programmed these days, but you won’t find Black Slate doing that,” says Anthony. “I don’t want to be playing the same thing as you can hear on the records. That spontaneity is what makes it exciting. It’s what gives me energy when I’m on stage because when we play, anything is possible and that’s what makes the difference.”