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With a legacy
stretching back nearly 50 years,
the Honorable Jimmy Cliff is
still standing as one of the
prime movers and continuing
shapers of modern music. With a
catalog that ranks among the
most influential in global
culture, Cliff remains a
forceful voice of power and
conscience, creating new music
as vital and vibrant as ever.
Teamed with producer Tim
Armstrong — the Rancid front man
who has cited Cliff as his most
admired artist — Cliff is
working on his first new album
in seven years, a set which
builds on his unparalleled
history and points to a
wide-open future.
The power and promise of the
pairing jumps out from a
five-song EP previewing the
album. Together they bring fire
to both compelling Cliff
originals and a couple of
pointedly chosen covers. The
above-quoted “World is Spinning”
and the steely “One More” show
an artist as engaged with — and
troubled by — the state of the
world as much as he was when he
made such landmark songs as “You
Can Get It If You Really Want”
and the title song of the movie
The Harder They Come, both
game-changers that will mark
their 40th anniversary in 2012.
A version of the Clash’s “The
Guns of Brixton” taps into the
popular uprisings for freedom in
the Middle East, not to mention
the recent London riots, which
took place as sessions for the
album were underway. Rancid’s
affectionate portrait “Ruby Soho”
brings the generations together,
a full-circle journey of icon
and acolytes. The two also
teamed on a forceful
interpretation of Bob Dylan’s
generation-defining — and
generation-crossing — “A Hard
Rain’s Gonna Fall,” a featured
track on the upcoming all-star
Dylan tribute album benefiting
Amnesty International.
It comes at a time in which
Cliff’s legend has only grown,
reaching new ears from many
tastes and walks of life, with
much more to come as the
milestone anniversary for The
Harder They Come is celebrated.
Additionally, Paul Simon
featured Cliff’s 1970 song
“Vietnam” in his electrifying
2011 concerts. Simon introduced
the song — which Dylan had
called the greatest protest song
ever written — as having
inspired him to head to Jamaica
and record “Mother and Child
Reunion” with Cliff’s band.
Cliff himself has in recent
years revived and revised the
song to address the current wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq,
bridging his past and present.
“I have great respect for what
we did [in the past] and what
other people have done,” says
Cliff, the only living musician
honored with Jamaica’s Order of
Merit and a 2010 Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame inductee. “At the
same time, I am always looking
for the new.”
In fact, Armstrong’s great love
for and knowledge of Cliff’s
past music offered fresh
insights for the artist.
Armstrong recruited his studio
band, The Engine Room, to play
on the sessions – featuring J
Bonner (bass and percussion),
Scott Abels (drums and
percussion), Dan Boer (organ and
percussion), Kevin Bivona (piano
and lead guitar), with Armstrong
producing and playing rhythm
guitar.
“For someone like Tim having a
great foothold on the
traditions, it woke me up to
some things that had been done,”
Cliff says. “The drummer played
some patterns I forgot we had
done! It’s a reawakening to
those things, knowing they are
not lost, preserved by younger
folk, passing them on.”
The two had never met before
this project began, and Cliff
was not really familiar with
Armstrong’s music. But he had
heard the younger musician’s
name, with a premium
recommendation. The Clash’s
co-founder Joe Strummer talked
up Armstrong while he and Cliff
were recording “Over the
Border,” a song from Cliff’s
2004 album, Black Magic — a
session that sadly was to be
Strummer’s last before he passed
away. Strummer, another top
Armstrong hero, released his
last three albums on the
latter’s independent Hellcat
Records label.
“I was talking with Joe, talking
about music and people, and
Tim’s name came up,” Cliff says.
“I had never had the opportunity
to hear his music, but it was a
great thing how we hit it off in
the studio.”
The first song they did together
“Ruby Soho,” gave the two a
chance to see how they worked
together and offered Armstrong a
chance to have an idol sing one
of his songs.
“I knew the song
but never got deep into it,”
Cliff says of the ska-tinged
tune. “I didn’t know it was one
of Tim’s songs, but I liked it
and could identify with the
sentiments. A musician has to go
on tour, do his thing, miss his
woman. I know the life, yeah.”
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Even more relevant to current
events is “World Upside Down,”
though that song’s roots reach
back even further than the Clash
song, to the ‘70s period right
after The Harder They Come.
“I wrote the lyrics, but it was
a song originally written by
[late reggae great] Joe Higgs,”
Cliff says. “Joe and I were very
close. People knew the role he
played with Bob Marley & the
Wailers. He for me was one of
the unsung heroes of Jamaican
music. This was a song I always
felt I would do. I recorded the
song in 2009 in Jamaica, played
the tapes for Tim and he pulled
it out as one he wanted us to
do. The song was originally
called ‘World Turned Upside
Down,’ but I re-wrote the lyrics
and made it for the world today.
Joe’s was not as broad a
subject.”
With
“Our Ship Is Sailing,” Cliff
seeks to inspire and embrace
positive movement. “It’s one of
the newer songs that I wrote
this year,” he says. “It’s about
part of the sacred fire that’s
inside of me, expressing that
the ship had been land bound, in
dry dock, not moving. Now the
tide is in and the ship is
moving. Sacred fire is about
myself as an artist and my
aspirations… the goals I’ve
set.”
The song, and all the music
here, has both the global sweep
and the personal focus, just as
it is at once timeless and of
the moment.
“People might say, ‘Jimmy Cliff,
you’ve done a lot, achieved a
lot. What more can you want?’
That’s what I want. I keep
things to myself, but things are
opening again and the ship is
sailing.”
Fittingly, then, the EP-closing
“One More” serves as a personal
statement of purpose and a
promise to both himself and the
world that he has much left to
do.
“‘One More’ kind of speaks to
that,” he says. “One more shot
at the prize. One more shot at
the goal. Straight from the soul
and in control.”
Cliff has hardly been idle in
the seven years since his last
album, “constantly touring,” he
says. Meanwhile he was just
waiting for the right time, the
right opportunity and the right
collaborators before making a
new album. With The Harder They
Come marking its milestone, it’s
a full-circle coup for the
now-elder statesman of reggae.
When the film and album came out
first in Jamaica in 1972 as an
instant national sensation,
great acclaim in Europe and the
U.S. followed, exposing reggae
music to listeners outside its
homeland.
At that time, Cliff was already
a huge star in Jamaica. Coming
from the small town of St.
James, Jamaica, he headed to
Kingston while still a boy and
quickly convinced record store
proprietor Leslie Kong to
produce him. His first hit,
“Hurricane Hattie,” was released
when he was just 14. After
representing Jamaica at the 1964
New York World’s Fair, he signed
with Island Records and moved to
London, making such hits as
“Waterfall” and “Wonderful
World, Beautiful People,” which
won him international success
and acclaim.
The Harder They Come brought him
unprecedented renown at home and
global stardom. The title track,
“You Can Get It If You
ReallyWant,” “Many Rivers to
Cross” and other songs quickly
became mainstays of FM radio,
opening a whole new world of
music and, arguably, opening the
door for reggae’s journey to
being a universal sound,
embraced and adapted in cultures
throughout Europe, Africa, Asia
and the Americas.
With that to his name, Cliff was
sought out as a collaborator by
artists ranging from the Rolling
Stones and Elvis Costello to
Annie Lennox, while Willie
Nelson, Cher, New Order, Jerry
Garcia and Fiona Apple are among
the many who have performed and
recorded his material. His song
“Trapped” reached a vast new
audience in the 1980s when Bruce
Springsteen performed it
regularly and contributed his
version to the 1985 mega-hit
charity album We Are the World.
In 1993, Cliff returned to the
mainstream pop charts in he U.S.
with his version of Johnny
Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now”.
“The music was fresh and this
introduced it to the world,” he
says. “A few countries had been
hearing it, but this is where it
all came from.”
The key?
“It captured a moment in time,
but had lasting quality.”
With his new music, Jimmy Cliff
has done exactly that again.
Cliff has just completed his
first new album in seven years
entitled Re.Birth, a set which
builds on his unparalleled
history and points to a
wide-open future. The new record
available June 2012.
Listen to the Music of Jimmy Cliff
Jimmy Cliff
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