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"FacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n For a working musician, the veneration that comes with being inducted into the Rock n\u2019 Roll Hall of Fame can be read as the proverbial gold watch, if not the measuring of the proverbial coffin. But as 63-year-old Jimmy Cliff\u2019s will soon make clear, he will not go gently into that good night. If anything, Cliff comes off as more of an Angry Young Man on his new EP (due in November, with a full LP to follow next year), produced by Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong, than he did cementing his place as a reggae icon, playing the role of gunman Ivanhoe Martin in the 1972 film, The Harder They Come. \n\nGQ: I usually start at beginning but I really want to ask you about this new project with Tim Armstrong of Rancid. Can you tell me how that came about?\n\n Jimmy Cliff: Well, Tim and I knew each other\u2019s work\u2014we\u2019d never met before but we\u2019d talked on the phone. Then when we met in the studio, everything just flowed, you know. We started off with one of the tracks I was excited about and I just put my voice on and it felt really good. We just continued from there.\n\n GQ: What was the first track you worked on?\n\n Jimmy Cliff: &amp;quot;Ruby Soho&amp;quot;\u2014that was a song that he wrote. When I heard it in the reggae style, it took me back to the beginnings of reggae music. Some of the sound and instrumentation I had kind of forgot.\n\n\n\nYour browser does not support iframes.\n\n |||\n\nGQ: The songs I\u2019ve heard have a very rocksteady feel, early reggae or almost pre-reggae.\n\n Jimmy Cliff: Yeah, I\u2019ve always wanted to incorporate the whole spectrum of reggae music from the ska era right up to this era. And then the rocksteady-type tracks he got down\u2014especially the drum patterns. Wow. I was really amazed that Tim got the drum patterns down so fantastic.\n\nGQ: Where did The Clash track, &amp;quot;Guns of Brixton,&amp;quot; fit into that spectrum?\n\n Jimmy Cliff: Oh, that track was a suggestion from someone in my management, because I had known The Clash back in the day. They were great fans of Jimmy Cliff, in addition to the fact that [Paul Simonon] was saying things about The Harder They Come and all of that. Actually the last song that [Joe Strummer] wrote before he passed away, was a song that, when I was doing my last album, he just walked into the studio with the lyrics... He was one of the people who took the reggae music, brought the punk feeling to it and established that branch of it in Europe, before it spread over to the U.S. So I thought it was really a cool thing to do.\n\n\n\nGQ: Can you tell me the name of the song you and Joe Strummer worked on?\n\n Jimmy Cliff: It\u2019s a song called &amp;quot;Over the Border.&amp;quot; It\u2019s on the last album I made, Fantastic Plastic [2002\u2019s Fantastic Plastic People, re-released as Black Magic in 2004].\n\nGQ: How did you hook with Strummer in the first place?\n\n Jimmy Cliff: I and the Clash used to cross each other\u2019s path when we did concerts in Europe. We never had time to like, stop and talk, but we\u2019d just say, &amp;quot;Hey Joe!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Hey, Jimmy. What\u2019s up, what\u2019s going on?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;All right. See you.&amp;quot; It was always more or less like that. Like a respectful artistic nod to each other, you know. So when he came into the studio while I was doing the Black Magic album\u2014it had two titles, Fantastic Plastic and Black Magic\u2014I thought he just came in to greet me. We sat down talking a little about music, and he came out with these lyrics and said, I hear you singing these. He showed them to the producer who said, Well how does the melody go? And he said, I don\u2019t have any melody! I just have these lyrics and I hear Jimmy singing them. So we three of us sat down and put the melody together. It was really a great track.\n\nGQ: Of the new material, what did you have a hand in writing?\n\n Jimmy Cliff: I wrote &amp;quot;One More&amp;quot; and I rewrote &amp;quot;World Upside Down&amp;quot;\u2014the original melody and title was by Joe Higgs. I just rewrote it, again to honor Joe Higgs\u2019 memory because he was the one of the foundations of reggae music. I wanted to put a spin on it with so it fits right in with what\u2019s actually going on right now in the world today. The other one I wrote is &amp;quot;Our Ship is Sailing.&amp;quot;\n\nGQ: &amp;quot;One More&amp;quot; almost seems like a bit of a\u2014not a manifesto, but a statement about where you\u2019re at in your life.\n\n Jimmy Cliff: No doubt about that. The &amp;quot;one more song&amp;quot; that I have to sing is not just that song. The story I have to tell is not just that story. I\u2019m taking aim. All of that is to come.\n\nGQ: You\u2019ve been so identified with the genre of reggae\u2014because you were there at the foundation, and because of the iconic status of The Harder They Come\u2014 but you\u2019re also such a citizen of the world at this point. Do you still feel like a reggae artist?\n\n Jimmy Cliff: Well evidently I am an artist first. Look at all of the things I\u2019ve done that are really not reggae: &amp;quot;Sitting in Limbo,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Many Rivers to Cross,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Trapped.&amp;quot; So really first and foremost, I\u2019m an artist. And I\u2019m happy that I was there at the commencement of this music, this Jamaican music, to put my contribution and help to establish it. This record now is putting my seal on that part of my artistry. At the same time, the next album that I do might not be in that genre. It might be in the genre of &amp;quot;Many Rivers to Cross,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Sitting in Limbo&amp;quot; or something completely fresh. Because that\u2019s what I do. I love to create and that\u2019s what gives my soul the satisfaction.\n\nFacebookPinterestundefined \n\nGQ: So where do you call home these days?\n\n Jimmy Cliff: Jamaica is still home. However, I spend a lot of time in Paris and in Europe\u2014between Paris and London.\n\nGQ: When you go to Jamaica, do you seclude yourself or are you picking things up from other people on the scene in Kingston?\n\n Jimmy Cliff: I visit studios. Just to get the feel, the smell, and see what other people are doing. Not only listening to the radio, but going to studios, greeting musicians and artists, just getting a vibe. It\u2019s important for me to go back into the ghetto, where I\u2019m from. I still get my oxygen from there. I don\u2019t live in the ghetto anymore but every time I go back, I\u2019m still seeing the same things that I lived. That\u2019s one of the things I mean when I say, &amp;quot;My feet back onto the ground.&amp;quot; I would love to see no more ghettos but the things is, there\u2019s no diplomacy in the ghetto. They want to tell you something, they tell you straight! An upper class, more educated person\u2014they find a diplomatic way to tell you the thing. I love it when you just come heart to heart. That\u2019s the way I knew it coming up, so that\u2019s the way I like it.\n\nGQ: Did you grow up in Kingston?\n\n Jimmy Cliff: I grew up twelve miles outside of Montego Bay. In my early teens, I went to Kingston. It was like a different planet for me. In the country, people are kind. In the city, people are hard an\u2019 cold, like the concrete and steel.\n\nGQ: So in that sense your real life mirrored the story of Ivanhoe Martin in The Harder They Come\u2014the culture shock of coming from the countryside into the ghetto.\n\n Jimmy Cliff: It was culture shock, and Perry Henzell, the director, he knew that. His original script didn\u2019t have that, so when I decided to do the movie he rewrote a lot of the parts, paralleling parts of my life.\n\nGQ: I\u2019ve been told there is a remake of The Harder They Come in the works.\n\n Jimmy Cliff: Yes. We did not complete or erase the cause that brought about the effect. That\u2019s why the story has to be retold again.\n\nFacebookPinterest"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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