COLLAPSE BOARD

extracts from Conversations with Punx – 3. Don Letts

Don Letts was right there when the punk explosion began in the UK during 1976. In 1975, he was the face for a clothing store on Kings Road in Chelsea called Acme Attractions where he spun dub and reggae in store, attracting a following that included members of The Sex Pistols, The Clash and many others. Don later became the first in house D.J. at the seminal London punk club The Roxy and has been credited for helping bring reggae into punk rock. A British film maker and musician, Don has seen punk evolve over the last three decades and has documented the movement staring with the 1978 film The Punk Rock Movie and more recently, Punk Attitude (2005). He has also directed documentaries on bands, musical artists and various music genres including The Clash (Westway To The World won him a Grammy Award in 2003), The Pretenders, Franz Ferdinand, George Clinton and more. Don also spent time managing the all-female punk band The Slits. He was also a founder of Big Audio Dynamite with Mick Jones from the The Clash. His friendships and association with everyone from Bob Marley to Joe Strummer (The Clash) to John Lydon (Sex Pistols/PIL) to Richard Branson is the stuff of legend. In 2006 Don released his autobiography Culture Clash: Dread Meets Punk Rockers. Don currently hosts his own show on BBC radio.

You’ve told me that you’ve always acted on your gut instinct…

DON LETTS: I’ve always followed my instincts. As a youth I looked towards Rastafari as some form of spiritual enlightenment and it certainly gave me that. It certainly taught me self-esteem, pride and the knowledge of my own history and showed me that … there’s two schools of thought out there — one school of thought says we’re risen apes and the other says we’re fallen angels. I look at my history and see myself as a fallen angel. A white man would tell me that I was a slave 400 years ago, so that school of thought would say that you’re a risen ape. But history shows me that we have been higher than this. That’s not Rastaman rhetoric; your own Caucasian historians will show you that I have a history and a culture that predates yours by thousands of years. It’s not about who came first and whatnot; all I’m saying is through particularly music, I’ve come to understand these things. I didn’t get anything like that through school. This stuff is tremendously important to young people growing up, to know where they fit in the scheme of things and what they have to offer, not always having to fulfil the aspirations of some kind of host nation. For instance I was growing up in England and the way they judged me was by how English I could be. I’m not being funny but I’m down with Bob Marley when he says, “I’m not here to be justified by the laws of men”. I still feel like that.

I understand you’ve been to Jamaica.

DL: Yeah, I get to travel quite a bit.

Has anywhere you’ve been had a really positive energy about it?

DL: There aren’t many places that don’t if you feel that way inclined. You can always find something positive even in a negative situation, which is kind of a punk rock thing. I still think the world is a big and beautiful place. One thing that keeps me grounded is that I watch the news every single day of my life because that stops me disappearing up my own arse because it makes me look at the cards that most people are dealt on a day-to-day basis on this earth. A lot of people don’t even get off the starting line. I wake up, I have a roof over my head, I got food, I make choices, I’m alive, I’m 52 — where I’m coming from I’m a fucking millionaire! There’s the expression: is your glass half full or half empty and people don’t realise that. For most of the planet they’re like, “Yo, where’s my cup?” That keeps you fairly grounded.

The way I see God … I still look at the blue sky or I’ll look at a leaf and I’ll look at an ant or a bird and that’s how I see God. I don’t know if that makes sense or not?

Total sense, I agree. I see so much destruction that we do to this planet and how we at times may not treat each other so nice, but then I can look at nature and that never ceases to amaze me.

DL: I could stop everything I’m doing now and just spend my life looking at everything this world has to offer. It’s a fucking amazing place and we got to get with the program. We’re always looking up to the sky, but we don’t even know what’s going on in front of us. We’re always looking to invent something new when probably it doesn’t need to be invented — it probably just needs to be discovered. It’s probably all here for us to access if we’re that way inclined, if we’re in harmony with the planet. This all sounds like hippie shit, but it gets me through the day, I tell ya.

Another 3,000 words of this conversation is featured in limited edition zine series, Conversations with Punx: A Spiritual Dialogue Zine #1 – Truth

Photography: Gary Lawson

This entry was posted on Monday, February 7th, 2011 at 1:53 pm. It is filed under Interviews and tagged with Big Audio Dynamite, Conversations With Punx, Don Letts, Punk Attitude, punk rock, reggae, The Clash, The Punk Rock Movie, The Roxy, The Sex Pistols, The Slits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.