Oral History Interview - Steve Marshall

Video File

16/05/2018

2018.75

Filmed recording of an oral history interview with Steve Marshall, a singer, song writer and producer who co-founded Pyramid Arts in Dalston.

Pyramid Arts

No

Q. So, this is Etienne Joseph. It's the 16th of May, 2018. I would like to ask you to please introduce yourself and when you're born and where you were born. [00:38]

Steve Marshall (SM). My name is Stephen Marshall and I was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, in 1961.


Q. This interview primarily will be around music. Although not entirely, but primarily. So I am going to start with the music theme quite early and ask you; what are your earliest experiences of music? [01:04]

SM. My dad playing the Light radio in the car during the 1960s. They called it the ‘[BBC] Light Programme’. I think there were only two channels on the radio in the 1960s, so pop music was on one of those channels. So, my earliest memories of music - probably ‘She Loves You’ with the Beatles, and ‘Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa,’ and artists like Kathy Kirby and Herman's Hermits, Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen. Just everything that was coming on the radio in the 1960s, I was hearing that.


Q. So, radio more than your parents' collection. Did they have a music collection? [01:44]

SM. They did have a record collection. They had 78s as well as 45s, and albums. They had a collection of 78s, probably from a previous generation. My dad, he liked things like Les Paul. He was a big fan of Les Paul, so we had a whole collection of Les Paul 78s. ‘How High the Moon’, and all these big hits there. Some big band recordings, as well. So, there was something from the previous era as well.

My mum was a big fan of Frank Sinatra and she was also a big fan of the musicals. So musical, film musicals was also always on the cards. So, music from going to see musicals in the 1960s, the Disney musicals, ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘The King and I’, that whole repertoire was well-ingrained into my mind by the time I was a teenager.


Q. So when you were a teenager, were you still based in Hitchin? [02:53]

SM. We moved around a little bit, but we were still basically in the same area, although I was three years in Winchester, which was quite interesting, because there was an art school there, and Brian Eno was at the art school. So, there was a wave of interest in music. That is my early teens, so I was very drawn to people like David Bowie, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Roxy Music, all the glam rock.

But at the same time I developed a passion for blues. Somehow, the blues came into my field. And also my cousin gave me a cassette of Stevie Wonder's ‘Talking Book’, because she didn’t like it! She didn’t like ‘Talking Book’, so she gave it to me, and that was really an eye-opener, that album. One of the first albums that I bought - because of my love of blues and my interest in blues at the time - was called Raw Blues. And it had Otis Spann, Champion Jack Dupree, Peter Green and Eric Clapton. It was introduced by the guy John Mayall, of the Blues Breakers.

So, blues and glam rock, I was completely open to popular music. And the 1970s opened with a real golden age of soul music. And also rock and progressive rock, you know, from the time of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. And the soul music developing into the middle of the 1970s, when you get the outbreak of disco. So, I’m a teenager then, and so dancing to all the great disco music in the middle 1970s.


Q. So you weren't anti-disco, you were pro-disco? [04:46]

SM. Definitely, pro-disco. Yes, and singer/song-writers of the 1970s too, especially.


Q. So, quite a broad range, actually. It sounds like you had a quite broad range of influences. Thinking about … I don’t want to assume that you went from Hitchin, Hertfordshire, directly to Hackney? [05:19]

SM. No.


Q. What happened in between that? What was the trajectory? [05:24]


SM. So, I was in a band from probably the age of 14 or 15.


Q. What kind of band, may I ask? [05:31]

SM. We were doing covers of things like ‘Knock on Wood’ or ‘I Can't Get No Satisfaction’, and then starting to write my own songs. Then, by the time I got to go to university, I was writing my own songs very much and I had my own band. The band actually moved with me to London to do higher education. So, I was studying English in Mile End, but my band was my preoccupation, and touring around the London circuit was my preoccupation at that time.

This is 1979 to 1982, we were doing the kind of … Everyone had been affected by punk rock. So, I didn’t mention that before, because punk rock hit us in 1977. And that was a real game changer.


Q. In what way, if you don’t mind me asking? [06:34]

SM. It meant that blues was really unfashionable. From my point of view, that was not a good thing because…


Q. Your band was a blues band? [06:41]

SM. No, we weren't a blues band, but I had a very strong feeling for the blues. And it seemed like if you'd even mention the blues, you were very unfashionable instantly.

I remember my band… Let's call it a kind of … I don’t even want to call it anything. We still had traces of Bowie. New romantic, it might be called. It was post-punk, new romantic, songwriting at the centre of it. But we won a competition, and for an encore, I did ‘Little Red Rooster’ from the Rolling Stones, and the audience who had loved us up to that point, they literally booed! And turned away from us. I said, “This is funny.”

I seemed to be completely out of step with the times, because I liked the blues and I had a feeling for it. So, my band went more experimental, further away from the blues. We went into abstract music, sound sculpture, pure noise. And we went on tour in Germany, because we met some people that liked that kind of music and took us over there. And there was a bit of a legacy from the Bowie days as well, when he did those electronic albums in the 1970s. There was an interest in that kind of music and we started to fit into that world of experimental music.

That took us to Germany and we lost our drummer on tour in Cologne.


Q. Lost him? [08:09]

SM. He left us. And I was lucky enough to go to the house of Conny Plank, who was a pretty well known record producer, who had worked with the German progressive band Can. We went up to Conny Plank’s studio where he was producing Killing Joke at the time. I said “We've lost our drummer, what can you suggest?” He said, "I'll introduce you to a really good drummer." He gave me a phone number, and it was a Dalston phone number. It was a 254 number. 01-254-9761. I remember it, 35 years later!

So to cut a long story short there, from touring as an abstract experimental band, we got back to London and I called this number. It was Clive Roper. Clive Roper was a Jamaican guy, 10 years older than me and a drummer. He had a recording studio, which was in a 500 square-foot unit in the back of Kingsland Waste, on Glebe Road. Many years later, Passing Clouds set up there, on the corner of Glebe Road.


Q. In the same place? [09:36]

SM. Not in the same building, but just very, very close.


Q. So, close to train tracks then? [09:42]

SM. Right. Close to the train track, where the wall goes along - it's called Glebe Road.

I suppose the context is that I wanted to play the blues. I had this feeling for soul and blues and yet it seemed really unfashionable to do it. I was okay with experimental music, as well, to me there is not a lot of barriers between musical forms. But I had a feeling for the blues, and it wasn't being allowed. There may have been a few freak exceptions to the rule, in 1980-1981. Certainly in America, there were, but not in the UK. Maybe on the continent as well, but not in the UK. UK was pretty focused on its punk, and then the legacy and the aftermath of punk, and the beginning of what you might call Indie.

So, it was a very different vibe from the blues and soul. But meeting Clive Roper, we phoned him up and said “We are looking for a drummer and somebody recommended you, it was Conny Plank.” Clive Roper had been a session drummer, an in-studio drummer for Conny Plank for two years or maybe more in Germany, sometime during the 1970s. So, he'd been a house drummer for various projects that Conny had been recording and producing. But he was back in Dalston, setting up his own studio.

When I met him, I played him my recordings, which didn’t have drums in them at that time. It was just sounds, a lot of noise really. And he said he liked it, and to our great surprise, he wanted to play drums with us.

[Part_B]

It turned out he was a free improvising drummer. Jazz was a big thing to him. Reggae and Jamaican cultural music was a big thing to him too. But I think he wouldn't categorise himself too much at all, he was really a free player. Free improvisation was his interest.


Q. You said he was Jamaican, but he was based in Dalston. Is that why he set up the studio there or …? [12:20]

SM. He set up that studio with a partner called Charles McKay. So, originally, when I came there that studio was called R&M Studio, Roper and McKay Studio. And Charles McKay was a bass player, a rock bass player.

Charles McKay, I think he was from Antigua. So, the two of them had this studio and it had quite a buzzing little community of musicians around that studio. A number of them from Caribbean, a number of them from Africa. A number of them English or Europeans. So, it was quite a nice little community there. And the thing that hit me pretty hard at that point was that here was the world of reggae, and the door to that world of reggae was open, and I was very inspired by that.

What I felt straight away was here was ‘the blues’. This was the blues that I'd been looking for. This was the feeling that I'd been looking for. The blues scene in London, there was a blues scene, I expect, but I didn’t find that feeling there. I found it in the reggae. So that drew me like a moth to a flame.


Q. It's a very difficult question but I am going to ask it. When you said that feeling wasn't in blues but it was in reggae, what feeling? What do you mean by that? [13:48]

SM. It's an emotional feeling then, or a deeper feeling of emotion and depth. And I suppose pain, suffering. That's probably what I'm recognising in the music. And the other side of it, the joy. Which are like two sides of the same coin.

It was something that was apparent in the music and it attracted me. I wanted to learn about that music. So, not only did Clive start playing drums with my band …


Q. What was your band called? [14:35]

SM. We were named after something in a Hermann Hesse novel and we were called the Devilish Tin Trumpet, which was in Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse. He talks about jazz music and somebody in disparaging terms describes jazz music as that ‘devilish tin trumpet’. So we called ourselves that, for some reason we called ourselves that for a little while. But after we met Clive, we dropped that name and we formed a new band. But also I started to work in the recording studio there.


Q. Work? So you were an engineer as well at the time? [15:24]

SM. I started to learn to become an engineer, yeah, and I started working in there. I was an engineer partly.


Q. Was this informal learning? Or was this you went to a college learning? [15:36]

SM. There weren't any colleges for learning sound engineering in Britain at that time. Except Salford, Manchester, which was training the BBC engineers. So, if you wanted to learn engineering for music, you had to learn it on the job inside a studio. So, it was a bit like being tea boy, broom, sweep up and run errands, and gradually, watching and learning the craft of recording and getting some time to do my own, and then practice at night. It was that kind of scenario.


Q. So you were learning from engineers in the studio. Can you remember who was engineering in there? [16:39]

SM. The house engineer was a guy called Andy Parker. I'm going to come to Andy Parker…

Because the thing is, once we got together as a group of people - Clive Roper, Charles McKay, myself and the other members of my band (Brian O’Lenahan and Rod Arran), and other friends and associates around the meeting of these two groups - it wasn't long before we came to the idea that we should form some kind of a company of our own, and start a venture together. That venture was Pyramid Arts Development.

So, we're talking 1983 when I came into R&M Studio, and 1984 we set up the company, Pyramid Arts Development. And here are the memorandum and articles of association, which is dated 4th of June 1984.


Q. So you were what? 23? [17:54]

SM. I was 23. And I would say Pyramid started a year before that, but we were incorporated in June 1984. The purpose of this was to start a company that - principally music, but we also brought in other art forms as well, and invited other people to be part of that. Dancers, visual artists as well - to form a company, so we could formalise our business and then start to make an attempt to operate in the world, and in the business world of music.

So, I wanted to talk about this document first, because it laid out quite clearly what Pyramid Arts Development's intention was, and it was to, it says, "The objects for which the company is registered are to promote, maintain, improve and advance education, particularly by the encouragement of the arts, including the arts of drama, ballet, music, singing, literature, sculpture and painting." By ballet, they mean dance.

So, I wanted to talk about some of the people involved with the foundation of Pyramid Arts Development, and the best way to start would be by talking about the people that signed this document who were the first board of directors, if you don't mind?


Q. It's perfect. [19:28]

SM. At the back of this, it says, "Name and addresses, and description of subscribers." So these are the first board of directors and also the first members of Pyramid Arts Development. The membership over the next ten years or eleven years grew to about 150, but there were just nine directors, nine members at the beginning. And one was Lloyd King - he’s down here as an engineer and a teacher. I think Lloyd was a local businessman in Hackney, maybe still is. I haven’t seen him for years.

The second was Carmen Creary, who is down here as an administrative assistant. I think Carmen went on to work in social services or was a social worker in Hackney.

The third person on the list is Habrey Potipher Ellington, who you may not have heard of, but his other name is Jah Globe, musician and sign artist. Jah Globe was a real big figure in music in Hackney. Not just in Pyramid, but in every corner of the community, the people knew who Jah Globe was. If you see the mural on the edge of the building on Dalston Lane [Dalston Peace Mural], there is a man playing a saxophone in the middle of that, and that is Jah Globe. So he is remembered in that mural and by a lot of people that knew him. He touched a lot of lives.


Q. Has he passed? [21:09]

SM. Yes, he's passed now. But he was a big influence on everybody and a good friend. A big character and a great musician. Song-writer, painter and a cool person. He understood what was going on around the area. Sensitive person and lovable person.

The next person on this list is Frederick Williams. He was a writer and a poet. Frederick was part of the Pyramid collective right from the start and he would perform with us. We formed a band at the centre of Pyramid Arts, which had Clive Roper playing the drums and me playing bass, and Brian O’Lenahan on guitar. Jah Globe was playing saxophone and Frederick Williams would perform with that band, and read his poetry. So, a Jamaican poet.

Next, Al Crosdale - a guitarist. Maybe still is a guitarist. I couldn't say … I don’t know if Al is still around, but was also known as Paul Crosdale. Down here as a musician, close friend of Clive's and a supporter of Pyramid from day one.

Also, Peter Scott Blackman. Down here as a community artist. Peter Blackman had been-


Q. I've heard his name, actually. [22:38]

SM. Yes, he'd been the leader of a company called Steel an' Skin.


Q. Yes, there we go. With Emmanuel Tagoe… [22:45]

SM. So, Clive Roper had been one of the drummers in Steel an' Skin.


Q. Oh really? Interesting. [22:51]

SM. So Peter was also one of the first members of Pyramid.

And then you've got Roderick Arran, who was a teacher and musician. As I said, he was a member of my band and he came also from the country with me to London.

And the final one is Deborah Baddoo. Down here as a community arts worker, but she is principally a dancer. And she is a great dancer too, because she is my wife. [Laugh] And she joined the Pyramid collective as principal dancer.


[Part_C]

Q. As principal dancer, okay. [23:30]

SM. The witness to this is Clive Roper. So, witness to the above, Clive Roper. I hope this is useful way of doing things?


Q. Certainly. It's really good to know. There is a sense already of a collective effort and that’s quite important. It's especially important to hear people's names, both just for citation purposes but also for, I am thinking about, other possible connections for other interviews and if people are still around, to connect with them is actually very useful. Thank you. [24:20]

SM. Good. That's fine. They were the people that were named in the document and thanks to them, Pyramid Arts Development became a legal entity.

And this was signed in 1984. It was by the end of 1984 that we'd already been awarded a fairly substantial grant from the Department of Environment, and Hackney Council gave us a building to run an art centre. So, it was by the end of that year, we moved from a 500 square-foot recording studio into a 10,000 square-foot building with six warehouses and 12 offices.


Q. So, just backtracking slightly. What were the main drivers to say, we need this art centre and it needs to do the articles mentioned, and this is what it needs to do and this is why? Can you remember what that was about? [25:52]


SM. For me or for everybody? I guess it's different for everybody, to a degree.



Q. Yes. For you is good. If you have any general observations, that's useful as well. [25:52]

SM. Two things that come straight to mind: One is I wanted to create music and art. And I wanted a place to do that in. And I wanted to interact with many artists and musicians. That was a driver for me.


Q. Weren't you doing that in the studio already then? [26:12]

SM. Before I got to R&M Studio, I was operating in a very small isolated way within a band, and touring around with a band. When I got to R&M Studio, it was a community of artists rather than a band. So, that was one thing. People wanted to create their work. A lot of artists together and they all were driven by a motivation to create their art. So, that’s one aspect.

The other aspect was that we wanted to help the community. We wanted to do something that would have a good impact in that community and help people.


Q. What were the issues that the community were facing at the time then? And maybe we should also unravel a little bit, and pick what a community means as well? [27:31]

SM. Yeah, well, the neighborhood. When I say the community, I mean the neighborhood. Because there’s two groups of people here, one is the neighborhood, and the other is the artists who come, some from the neighborhood and some from elsewhere. So, artists were attracted to Pyramid from all over London and also from all over Britain, and from Europe, and eventually, from all over the world. But there was also a neighborhood. So there is always this interaction between two sets of people, many sets of people.

That's a good thing, but it also creates dilemmas as well. There was an atmosphere in East London, it was a deprived area. Dalston was a very deprived area. It was classified as a deprived area, poverty and social problems. And there were no riots in Dalston, but there had been riots in Tottenham and other areas, and around Britain. Since 1981, I think, there had been a lot of problems.

There had always been problems, but I think I am right in saying that things probably heated up after Mrs. Thatcher came into power. She came in 1979, so by 1981, things were getting quite stressed. And being a young man, I wasn't aware of every aspect of it, but looking back now, I know that some of the things she was doing. I know the Metropolitan Police were going to places like South Africa to learn about how to keep order, let's say, in the inner cities. One of the promises that Mrs. Thatcher had made to the electorate in 1979 was that she was going to ‘clean up’ inner cities, or some words to that effect. Which were probably taken in a certain way by some of her fans and voters. [29:45]

So, then she was trying to keep her promises and clamped down on problems in the inner city. She used tactics which were unacceptable, which were tough, rough and brutal, and unfair. People reacted accordingly. Social deprivation, poverty and heavy-handed policing led to a really toxic environment and a toxic atmosphere in those communities.

So, Pyramid, before it was Pyramid even, the R&M Studio had the idea to open its doors to the neighborhood. The first job that we ever had, I think, before Pyramid was incorporated was running workshops for what they called ‘intermediate treatment’, and I think Carmen Creary was instrumental in helping us to interact and speak with the people in the social services to do some workshops. We did music workshops for young people, which was seen as a positive way of spending time in a more constructive way. Some kind of help, or remedy, to social difficulties. [31:12]

Then I think that gave our group a reputation as having a usefulness. And that’s probably why the Department of Environment - well it definitely is why - the Department of Environment and Hackney Council decided to put some money behind us and give us a building, so we could project that further.

So, I think I've described what could be a dilemma, because on one hand you've got a set of artists that want to create art. And on the other hand, you've got authorities who want to provide something to quell social difficulties. There’s going to be some problem there, really, because you've got a kind of … Although artists, they do care. That's the thing, you can easily … artistry is not exclusive to itself. It has a social significance. So, there we go, you've got a situation starting.

So, I wanted to come on to the way we tried to organise Pyramid Arts to deal with that situation, because that's the key point. Clifford Jarvis joined us Christmas 1984. Just as we were going into the new building, Clifford joined us. Prior to Clifford, our drum master was Jimmy Scott. He was a Nigerian conga drummer, who had worked with Georgie Fame and the Beatles, he was with a band called Eye Witness, he'd been our master drummer at Glebe Road.


Q. What is he a master for? [33:23]

SM. He was our drum teacher.


Q. Trap drummer?

SM. No. Conga player. And then when Jimmy passed away, his job went to a guy called Sonny Akpan. Sonny is another Nigerian master drummer.


Q. Was that Sonny Akpan of the Funkees?

SM. He was in the Funkees and he was in the Eddy Grant band. But then when Clifford came in end of 1984, we were in the new building and Clifford used to start to talk about it as ‘The school’, because Clifford had been to Berkeley School of Music in the USA and he could see the potential for us to set up our own Berkeley School of Music in Hackney.

So, what I was going to talk about was the educational provision. So, I wanted to talk about the teachers.


Q. I would like to talk about that. I would like to talk now or come back to how Clifford Jarvis turned up and started working at Pyramid Arts with you guys. So, wherever it's appropriate, it would be good to touch on that. [34:43]

SM. I remember him turning up and a lot of excitement amongst the musicians. This renowned drummer was with us. And he just had his kit set up, and in the new building he had a room given to him where he could practice each day. And Clifford would practice for four, five or six hours a day in that room and take students. We did a short interview with Clifford at the time, although most of that footage,

[Part_D]

I can't find it. He said he saw a spiritual light shining out from Pyramid Arts, which attracted him, and it reminded him of that tumbled down shack on the corner which became Berkeley School of Music.

So, I don’t know who introduced Clifford Jarvis to Pyramid Arts, I just remember him arriving and being there, and becoming a presence.


Q. Was he living in Dalston or in Hackney somewhere? [35:52]

SM. He lived on Morning Lane. At least he did for most of the years that I knew him.


Q. So he was local? [36:02]

SM. Yes. Clifford is an ideal example to demonstrate that point about neighborhood and international musician community, because he loved to be in the neighborhood. Clifford had a feeling for the neighborhood and for the local people. He liked to be part of that. But he was also an international artist and a drummer of renown, and there was no problem being both, really.

So, right from the Glebe Road days, we had a system of classes for music. And Ray Carless taught the jazz workshop originally, and he did that from the Glebe Road premises. And then when we moved to the bigger building, he did it for a while, and then he passed it to Alan Weekes. Alan Weekes taught jazz workshop for years at Pyramid Arts. As I said, Jimmy Scott, the Nigerian drummer was our first drum teacher and then taken over by Sonny Akpan, and then Clifford Jarvis. Michael ‘Bammi’ Rose taught sax. He is from the Jazz Warriors, as well. A guy called Russell Pratt taught bass and there was a guy called Lenny Edwards teaching percussion, as well.


Q. Ray [Carless] mentioned the workshops, and he was talking about lack of opportunities at the time for learning jazz, for example. So, in terms of the education, what were the opportunities for people that wanted to learn music, and specifically the sort of music that you guys were working with? Were there a lot of opportunities, or was it limited? Were those class and education dependent? What was the landscape like, I suppose, for learning? [38:23]

SM. The landscape in the early 1980s was that there was nothing … in the universities and music colleges in the United Kingdom, it was a classical music curriculum. I don’t think jazz was taught until later. I think jazz became part of the music curriculum in the education system in Britain later than the early 1980s, and probably 10 years later. The popular music as well. Popular music styles were not taught in British higher education until probably the 1990s. So the early 1980s was a time when if anybody wanted to get this kind of education, they had to just get it by following other musicians. So, we thought, if we started a programme of classes, it could develop into something more structured.

I think there were other organisations having similar ideas at the same time. It wasn't exclusive to Pyramid, but it was an important step in that part of London. We wanted to formalise that in the new building and make it an established school. It seemed like there was a place for that. And Ray was right, because there wasn't the opportunity, we just weren't supported. And although we'd had a chunk of money from the Department of Environment, and they'd given us a building, it wasn't enough to really establish a school. Our expectations were way higher than the reality.

So we tried to do that and we did it for 11 years. There were other artists that gave these classes. I think at its height, there was something like 17 classes running - music, dance and art classes in the building. And they were well-attended.


Q. Who was coming to them? [40:46]

SM. Well, I was going to say, some of the artists that came to Pyramid were like the Jazz Warriors. They were there from the time of R&M Studio. We'd see the Jazz Warriors come and rehearse in the rehearsal studio there, and then members of the Jazz Warriors became teachers, like Alan Weekes and then others like Kenrick Rowe would be a student of Clifford, coming in and out doing his classes. We'd see Gary Crosby and Trevor Watkis, Bucky Leo, Kevin Haynes, Byron Wallen. These guys would come down and do their rehearsals and sometimes, we'd have projects that might involve them as well, like we started to develop a recording project, a project where dance and music could interact.

We had a time when we ran a thing called Pyramid Agency, where we'd set up shows around the community, go to festivals, local festivals and further afield in London and sometimes out of London, go to Oxford. And there would be a chance for people to perform, and it had an agency aspect to it as well.

Another musician that came there was Ike Leo. And then on the reggae side, you got bands like the Travellers with George Kelly and Black Slate with Keith Drummond and Ras Elroy Bailey, the bass player. A band called Group Cas A Nova was a lovers rock band that was led by Steve Prince and a guy called Kojak. They had two female singers, Pauline Oduro and Elaine Wellington. The Simms Brothers. Patrick and Collin Simms. A guy called Ezra, he used to chat on the mic from time to time, with Group Cas A Nova. Bass player Adam Langley. There was a girls reggae band at Pyramid called Equity, led by Donna Lee.

Then a lot of musicians who just helped us in a lot of different ways, like Lloydie Dread, The Buggis and musicians, professionals musicians like Don Juma the guitarist and Ojemba,the keyboard player. They were working in the more commercial reggae scene as well, and coming in and out of the community.

There were guys like Ronnie Tafial, who was a Guadeloupian folk musician who would come and help Pyramid and also sing and play at our events. Danny Dread, Half Pint, MC Half Pint, older guys like Bode, another Rasta musician. Sir Collins came and worked at Pyramid Studios, at the R&M Recording Studio. I saw him in action, producing and engineering.


Q. All right, so before… Was R&M kind of running alongside still? [43:06]

SM. No, R&M was probably started about 1980 and finished when Pyramid started in 1983. So it turned into Pyramid.

You got people like Tony Fergus, who was the leader of another music venture in Hackney called Triangle Music Workshop, which is very influential.


Q. Ray mentioned them. I need to connect. [44:39]

SM. Tony has passed away now, but he became a Pyramid director for a period too.


Q. So what was Triangle? [44:46]

SM. Triangle was another music workshop, similar to Pyramid. It was up in Clissold Park area, I think. I did visit a few times, and there was a relationship between Triangle and Pyramid. Slightly different catchment of musicians, but some of the musicians would go between the two freely. Some of them felt that Triangle was their team and some of them felt Pyramid was their team. It was a little bit of that as well, but generally, relations were very cool between us.

The other agency that I remember in Hackney at that time was the African Art music agency called Jenako, which was in Balls Pond Road, run by Richard Austin and those guys from Super Combo, and Orchestra Jazeera. They would come into Pyramid as well. Isaac and Emmanuel.

So those were the three music projects really at our time. Later, Mellow Mix comes along. That's still going and that kind of was born out of Triangle.


Q. Interesting. [46:00]

SM. Musicians like Greenie, drummer Greenie. He had a project in Stratford called Atom Music Project. He is still around and he is a drummer, reggae musician. Louis Hardcastle was a tap dancer from Philadelphia and the father of Paul Hardcastle but he was always at Pyramid. He was part of the furniture. I should have mentioned the more inner circle people as well. I've really got to mention them, because if they see this and they are going to wonder what I'm talking about.

The inner circle people, apart from Clive Roper, there is a man called Harold Duncan. Harold Duncan was the backbone of Pyramid. He was a bass player, which fits because that's the fundamental centre of everything, isn't it, the bass? He was also in charge of the building. So, he ran the building, because all of us were artists, but we had other roles and for Duncan,

[Part_E]

it was being a bass player and managing the building. He is somebody I would really like you to talk to, actually. Duncan will have important information for you and he is still around.

Then, I mentioned the engineer, Andy Parker. There was another engineer called David Emmanuel. He came in as a trainee and then grew to be house engineer in later years. Francesca La Nave and Michele Gregory were both visual artists, and they both contributed. Michele ran an art gallery in the venue and she is a counselor now in Hackney. Marcia Johnson. Marcia Johnson, another artist who helped in the office as well, she was an administrator. And a lady called Cassandra Harry. She was also known as Sugar Harry. They were around the project a lot, and what I call inner circle people.


Q. You said you had a musical role and an organisational role. What was your role then? [48:20]

SM. They called me administrator, or more a general manager. We didn’t know what these roles meant really. But for the first seven years, I would have called myself administrator. I was wordsmith. And then I had to leave the project for a year or so and I came back. For the last three years, I was leader. So that's 1991 to 1993/1994, I had to take on a multitude of roles to keep the project going for the last three years.

Yeah. This gets ridiculous. This list goes on and on…


Q. It’s quite a list. Let's keep going. [49:16]

SM. Louis Hardcastle is a tap dancer and father of Paul Hardcastle, who had a hit with ‘19’. He was very proud of his son and Louis was here on a daily basis. Good heart.

[Part_F]

And a musician, big supporter.

Jean Toussaint came through, he worked with Clifford and some of the Jazz Warriors. He is an American saxophone player.

Drummers like this guy called Boisey. Boisey is a percussionist. He's passed away too. Tony St. Helene, the original drummer with Tribesman and Johnny Thunders’ band, and many others. He is still around. We work together now.

Pete Nu, the piano player. He is a free improviser. He was a close friend of Clive's. A bass player from New Orleans called Miles Wright, who worked with Gatemouth and also with Sun Ra. So, he knew Clifford and he knew quite a lot of those American musicians.

Passing through, a regular band was The London Afro Bloc.


Q. I remember them. [50:36]

SM. It was a very significant band, because there were at least 20 of them and they were all drummers. They were recreating an Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian style, Afro Bloco, which is a drum orchestra. And Clifford became their chief snare drum player, so he found a real community of other drummers in the Afro Bloc. So they'd take a whole warehouse and rehearse out there, phenomenal noise. It was a noisy building. Steve Henfrey from the London Afro Bloc became a director of Pyramid, later years.

There was a very strong reggae band called One Style [One Style MDV] who I think are still a band and that was Floyd, Femi, Seyi and Hamzah. They were Pyramid stalwarts and always rehearsed there, we presented them on shows. They put out a record through Pyramid.

And my own bands. One was Peoples Unlimited, which was with Clive Roper, which grew out of my first band. That was like the Pyramid house band and we had various, many various guest players in that, for example Jamel, who was a dread Rasta singer, Melvin Aschong, the bass player.

And I had another band later on called World Service, and the drummer was Freddy Nelson. He is still around Hackney, I believe. Peter McIntyre, the bass player, who also turned his hand to film. A lot of the excerpts of films we have of the venue and of performances and concerts, interviews with artists, Peter was behind the camera on a lot of those and deserves credit for that.

Nick O'Conner, from the Babylon Rebels, came down from Birmingham and joined us, got very close with Jimmy Scott and they played together as well. And introduced Lee “Scratch” Perry to Pyramid. Nick actually brought Lee “Scratch” Perry to Pyramid.


Q. Interesting. So, Lee Scratch Perry came to Pyramid? [53:01]

SM. Yeah. That was early on, as well. That was 1984. He brought Lee “Scratch” Perry to Pyramid in 1984. So, I joined his band, and so did Nick.


Q. Sorry, Lee Scratch? [53:19]

SM. Yeah. Lee “Scratch” Perry took a band from Pyramid. He was looking for a band and he took my band, which was called World Service, and he took it on tour at Christmas, right through the winter of 1984. So it was quite an exciting time, moving into new premises, touring with Lee Perry. That was quite an exciting period.


Q. Sounds good for a 20 something year old. That's quite good. [53:46]

SM. Baptism of fire, you call it. A baptism of fire with Lee Perry, blowing smoke into one ear and it comes out of the other. But a very disciplined artist. Lee Perry is the picture of discipline in the arts. He is a firm and dedicated, and focused multi-artist. He is just a multi-artist. Performance, visual art, words, music, and philosophy, and teacher.

He didn’t teach formally at Pyramid, it wasn't his style. But we helped him with his visa and with the Home Office at one point to keep him in Britain because he wanted to stay here. Lee Perry stayed in London from 1984 to 1989. He left London in 1989 and moved to Switzerland.


Q. Was he staying in Hackney at any point? [54:57]

SM. No. Lee Perry lived in West Kenton. After we finished touring, I maintained my relationship with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. So, between 1985 and1986, and when he left in 1989, I'd move around with Lee Perry and was going to recording studios with him as an assistant, and we produced a few records together at that time; ‘Masters of the Universe’ and a thing called ‘AD Vendetta’. We made enough tracks to make an album, but it wasn't released as an album. This was the time when he was making his work with Adrian Sherwood and with Mad Professor.

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry was a man who had survived an incredible situation in Jamaica, I would say, through the 1970s, well through the whole 1960s, 1970s, and into the early 1980s. I think he'd been in New York for a couple of years and he came to England in 1984. But as soon as I met him, I realised that he was very volatile and he'd been through a lot. I think he was a bit broken by it all. Alcohol had affected him and his health wasn't good. But he was still producing and creating with a fury. [56:33]

So, that wasn't really slowing him down. He just had a lot of obstacles to go through mentally and socially. He was moving from Jamaica, trying to live in England and all sorts of things were happening. So, Home Office was hounding him and he was trying to leave behind the devils of the past, as well. And all of the disappointment, I think, of the period of great creativity that had happened in Jamaica, and some of the bad things that had happened as well. And that ending perhaps with the death of Bob Marley. I think that had a big impact. It seemed perhaps that everything was … the dream had kind of crumbled.

But Lee Perry, that was the beginning of him picking himself up and saying, "I am going to be a solo artist now," and I was there to be part of one of his early bands, when he was picking himself up and saying, "Look, I'm going to be the solo artist, it's me now in the spotlight." And he's done it ever since. He is 82 now and he really is a man of great resolve and determination. [57:51]

And he had an influence on Pyramid. I think a lot of the artists at Pyramid were aware of him. I remember him walking into the jazz workshop one day and I had never heard the jazz workshop so silent, because there was a kind of … Yeah, he went to the piano and he played the piano like a madman, and he said, "This is jazz," and they listened to him play jazz.

It's all words, isn't it, when you think about it. We talk about language restraining us, because I saw an interview with Duke Ellington and they said to him, "What about jazz?" He said, "Jazz is freedom." So that's interesting, isn't it? It's not a formal education, it's freedom. It's a concept. You can come to freedom through formality, you can come to freedom through madness. It depends what route you take. So, I think Lee was demonstrating that and there was mutual respect. So, I stopped on Lee Perry for a while there, naturally.


Q. That's interesting. [59:09]

SM. Other reggae artists that came through, Barrington Levy.


Q. I saw the video of that. How did that come about? [59:15]

SM. He came to rehearse. He was looking for a rehearsal room.


Q. So, he was doing shows in the country. [59:24]

SM. Yeah, and he chose Pyramid to do it. But a lot of bands on that circuit would come and rehearse. I can't remember all of them. There was Big Youth, I know there was a lot of excitement when Big Youth came to rehearse. I know there was another artist called Floyd Lloyd, who was perhaps not so well-known but he was touring and making records, and he was a regular rehearsal person at Pyramid.

So, what we had in the building, we had three rehearsal rooms. And then we had one big rehearsal room with a massive sound system in it, and then two smaller rehearsal rooms with little PA systems. And then we had the drum room at the front of the building, and other rooms for teaching, or just private practice, or solos and duets.

We had a recording studio. We kept the place at the Glebe Road as the recording studio. We maintained that as a recording studio right up to the end. So, other artists would be bands like Mindlinkk with Keith McIntosh and Bobby, Sleepy [Reuban “Doctor Sleepy” White]. Sleepy and Bobby, I think, they are brothers?


Q. I talked to Sleepy, actually. [01:00:58]

SM. Did you? Sleepy has played on a lot of my recordings, congas and percussion. And we had a close friendship, especially over the last few years - we made a lot of recordings together. Always somebody that I've communicated with over music. He is a legend, as well, because he played with these great people, didn’t he? Alton Ellis and The Skatalites and legends of music, and Eric Clapton.

[Part_G]

His brother Bobby, another good guy. There is Tony Green, the guitarist. Tony Green, Rodger Griffiths, the bass player, and Harold Daniel, the drummer. Another one of Clifford's students.

There is a guy called Bonjo I [Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah], you might know about him; Noah House of Dread, they would come and rehearse. He, Bonjo I, was around in the very early times of Pyramid. In fact, I met him before I met Clive Roper. He was working with Adrian Sherwood who was a reggae record producer. African Head Charge, that band came and performed for Pyramid at the Hackney Empire.

Another key artist from South Africa was Dudu Pukwana And Zila. Dudu Pukwana became a very big figure of Pyramid for maybe a year or two, and then his band would perform every Sunday afternoon in the car park. So that was a place where people would come from all over London to listen and dance to Dudu Pukwana.


Q. Could you talk about that a little bit? Is there more to say on that? Because it's a South African connection, and I'm interested, if there is anything else to say about him. [01:03:04]

SM. He is a great person. Lovely personality. Drunk too much. I remember on one of those Sunday afternoon events, someone said, "Mind the bar." I went to the bar to mind the bar for a minute. Dudu Pukwana came and said … he wouldn't speak, he would just say, [mouth click] and point, and by the time I'd look around, he'd have the bottle of whisky and it was gone. It had gone into a glass, and he’d drunk the whole thing, or out of a plastic cup. So that was a shame. But he would blow his horn and everybody was happy. He really attracted a lot of people to Pyramid. I think a lot of people came over from Camden.

So I think having Dudu Pukwana and opening our yard to people attracted a new crowd of people to Pyramid.


Q. You've listed quite a few names. Some of them, I know. Some of them, I don't… [01:04:15]

SM. I nearly finished them all, there is a few more: Ernest Mothle from South Africa too, he is a bass player. Mamadi Kamara, the percussionist. You may have come across him, big London figure. And a group from Zaire called the Malinga Stars - I produced and recorded them at Pyramid, as well.


Q. I'm interested to know, what kind of demographic was coming there as professionals and rehearsing, or teaching, or whatever? And what people were coming to the more public things, like the shows? Who is coming? And the people involved, where were they from? And the background, what kind of ages were they? I know that's a big question… [01:05:03]

SM. There’s a few different types. As I said, we had the Pyramid Agency. The idea of that was that we’d have our school, we’d have our rehearsal room. And we'd have something that could take artists out and put on performances. Performance was a key thing and we thought we could fulfill this role, as well. So we started Pyramid Agency and the first thing we did was get invited to provide bands for summer festivals around Hackney. Haggerston Estate Street Festival, Victoria Park Festival - That was a big thing. We did the whole stage at Victoria Park.

So the kind of people that would go to those were people who lived in Hackney and in the estates, probably around those parks. They were very local events and we would present; some of them were local bands, and some of them were international artists, on the same programme. So, that was the first phase of us putting on shows. We'd also do some small venues like Chats Palace and then sometimes in our own place, but we didn’t have an entertainment license. That would stop us from doing that. [01:06:16]

So, opening the yard, and Zila and Dudu Pukwana was the first band that we put on in the yard. Somehow that attracted a crowd over from Camden. And interestingly, not long after that, Dudu Pukwana And Zila started a residency in Camden and then they stopped playing at Pyramid. He found an audience in Camden which was very useful for him. So that was good.

Then we got invited to do things further afield. So we'd perform at the GLC, and we took bands down to the GLC on the South Bank. We organised a project which combined dance and music, and then that was able to tour outside of London, as well. We went to Oxford and Birmingham, and a few other places. Then we performed at the Shaw Theatre, so up in other parts of London. [01:07:25]

And significantly, we did two big shows at the Hackney Empire, which were The State of Pyramid, 1987 and 1988, where we put on a big … I think the first one we put four bands on, One Style MDV, Orchestra Jazira, State of Emergency and another one, I can't remember. On the second one, we had Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at the top of the bill, and there we had a full house at the Hackney Empire. So, we had 1,400 people, coaches turning up from all over the place to see Lee Perry, but all the other bands that performed under that - including Clifford Jarvis and his jazz ensemble, Look Out, Duncan's reggae-pop band and other less known bands - they got access to an audience, which really was coming from all over. There were buses, I think they came from Holland to see Lee Perry.

You could see the beginnings of how our concept of a business could have worked out. And the other side of it was that we found a way to rent, we found a way to get income by renting out our warehouses for parties.


Q. It was the rave time then? [01:08:44]

SM. Rave time.


Q. We'll get a chance to talk about that at some point. [01:08:44]

SM. Yes, it's significant … I mean, we had to think about how we could survive economically, because they weren’t giving us enough money. The Arts Council didn’t want to know Pyramid. We applied to Arts Council England and they said the centre was only of local significance. So, that's why I said about the dilemma earlier on. I said that servicing the local neighborhood and being artists with an international reach could lead to a dilemma. And part of that dilemma was the Arts Council then looked and said, "You're servicing the neighborhood. What has this got to do with the Arts Council of England?"

They said it was only of local significance. We argued, and said there’s people here from every Caribbean nation. There’s people here from every African country. There’s people here from all over Europe. There are Japanese artists turning up who want to learn drums from Clifford Jarvis. How is this only of local significance? But the doors were kind of shut. They weren't listening to those kind of arguments.

So, for our money, we were relying on the local arts funding. We wanted to become independent of funding and we knew the only way to do that was to turn the building into an entertainment place, where we could get a license for entertainment and start to generate some money from opening the centre as a performance venue, rather than purely a rehearsal studio complex. So that was the mission, really, trying to get everything under one roof and become a centre for entertainment, as well as for education and for recording.


Q. So, you said the warehouses. You mean all part of the complex on Ashwin Street? [01:11:20]

SM. The building on Ashwin Street, which is 10 to 16 Ashwin Street. it's got a front, which is a set of terraced houses, three terraced houses I think, knocked into one, and behind it, there were six warehouses. Each of them was 1,000 square feet. The top floor, we turned into dance studio. So, we knocked the top floor into one. So there was one large double warehouse and we put in a dance floor in there. That became a very viable studio for dance. And it had disability access, because we raised money from the Tudor Trust who put in a lift and disabled access into the building.

That was significant, because it was a good earner. The dance studio became a good earner more than the music studios. My wife, Deborah Baddoo, she led the dance studio initiative and encouraged the companies to come in from around London. People like Candoco Dance Company started off there and Irie! Dance, Adzido Pan African Dance for a while. Union Dance and State of Emergency. We were based in this dance studio. Matthew Hawkins, as well, H Patten, Sakoba, and Graeae Theatre. Yeah.

So, the other warehouses were left and we were able to use them for parties and hire them out on a weekend for raves and parties. We'd have to get what they called a temporary entertainment license.


Q. So it wasn't completely illegal then? [01:13:27]

SM. It was legal, yes.

[Part_H]

Q. Capitalising on the time. [01:13:32]

SM. Yes, we had to find a way to fund this idea and because the funding wasn't coming from the Arts Council of England, it wasn't seen as a significant enough project to merit that kind of investment from central arts funding. We had a little funding from Greater London Arts, which became London Arts Board. So there was some what you might call local funding. There was some funding from Hackney Council, very, very small.


[Part_I 1:17:18]


Q. So, I'm quite interested. You spoke quite a bit about Pyramid, who was there, who kind of contributed in one way or another, or reciprocated. I'm interested in what Hackney was like during that time, kind of socially, what your sense was of the area? And what your sense was of the music scene? Because you mentioned a couple of other places in the area, but I know there was a lot of clubs. And I am talking throughout the 1980s, which I appreciate, 1983 is probably quite different from 1989. I am interested in what was going on around the Pyramid that you remember as well. [01:18:06]

SM. Four Aces was busy.


Q. OK. Busy with what? [01:18:11]

SM. I only really went in there once, but I didn’t go in there for a night out.



Q. And you were across the road. That's interesting. [01:18:18]

SM. Yes. I think I only went in there for a meeting about something.


Q. Considering it's literally steps away, why wasn't there more interaction between the places? [01:18:32]

SM. It's only because I wasn't going out clubbing and partying. I wasn't doing that and Four Aces was a big night out. So, I wasn't going out as a punter. So, I wouldn't be experiencing that.


Q. But you were still playing music? [01:18:54]

SM. Yes, I was playing music. So, I'd be focusing on recording my music or going out and doing gigs of my own.


Q. Which wouldn't be in Hackney or …? [01:19:06]

SM. Yes, sometimes. I think there was a pub called the Rosemary Branch, which I played in a few times and there was Chats Palace. Then there was a pub called … which became the Samuel Beckett, and it's called something else now, on Stoke Newington Church Street.


Q. Three Crowns, no? [01:19:37]

SM. Not the Three Crowns. This was at the corner of Church Street and Stoke Newington High Street.


Q. Other people have mentioned it as a kind of a band venue. [01:19:49]

SM. Yeah, we played there too.


Q. What were you playing? I mean, sorry to box you into genres, but what were you playing? [01:19:58]

SM. I'd just find different combinations of musicians. I had this … it’s difficult, the timeline is jumbled, but I had this band called World Service and that was with Freddy Nelson and Nick O'Connor, and Peter McIntyre and we performed at Chats Palace. We went on … I don’t know, and performed with Lee Perry, as I said. In the area though … so, what else did I take? I took to the Rosemary Branch, I remember taking two drummers. Clive Roper and Tony St. Helene, I think, and I was playing the piano, and a girl called Nike Siffre was singing. Labi Siffre’s niece. She was singing with us. She didn’t go onto sing.

I remember playing the opening night at the Jazz Café in Camden. That would be 1991. Around that time, I think. I played with Clifford Jarvis there and Alan Weekes. We took that same outfit to WOMAD, which was in Reading. Clifford Jarvis, Mamadi Kamara, Gary Crosby, myself on guitar. And we had dancers with us there as well. We had Deborah Baddoo, Steve Stevens, Lorna Anderson who was one of three sisters, the Anderson Sisters, and their father Barrington Anderson is a dance pioneer, lived in Bristol.

I did a lot of studio crawling, really. At that time, I was able to get into recording studios around London. So, as well as being in Pyramid studio, I started to get down time in places like RAK Studios in St Johns Wood. I'd go across there and sometimes, I'd take people from Hackney, musicians or rappers, MCs and involve them in my recording. Because a bit later on, I did start to get involved with hip-hop, but that was after Pyramid.

So, after the Pyramid days, I started to record MCs more and-


Q. Since you brought it up, do you remember any names and also just generally, what do you recall of hip-hop being in Hackney? [01:23:06]

SM. Yes, because in the 1980s, it wasn't hip-hop. It was reggae and soul and the MCs were toasters.


Q. So, reggae and soul. The jazz was not featuring then?

SM. No, reggae, soul and jazz.


Q. So, jazz was a thing in Hackney? [01:23:20]

SM. Jazz was a thing in Hackney, for sure. Yes, through the 1980s, it was reggae and soul, jazz and rock and roll, and African music. That was in Pyramid, those were the musics. We'd even have the occasional string quartet come and rehearse there as well.

So, when it comes to hip-hop, it's in the 1990s that I started to work in. We were training young people in the inner city. So after Pyramid, I started to work for Manpower Services and we were offering training courses in sound engineering in East London, and they were in Hackney, actually. One was at Zen Studios, which was up in Stoke Newington. I did two training courses there. Each one of them was 12 weeks, and I had young guys, mainly. There were some girls as well. It was 18 to 24, unemployed people that wanted to get into the music business, but it really was recording hip-hop. Majority, hip-hop. A little bit of garage and house, as well. So, that's into the 1990s now.


Q. Are we talking mid-1990s? [01:24:39]

SM. Yeah, mid-1990s. I then took the same training course to the Premises Recording Studio and I did it there as well. So, it was the third training course I did. I produced some nice recordings there, and the artists, I don’t know if any of them went onto become successful in hip-hop or in grime. I wouldn't be surprised. There was a guy called Styles and there was a guy called Daddy E, who was a very talented MC and singer.

There are more people. There was a guy called … yes, I did work with the guys called Armshouse Crew, Bola and Ice Man, and this is later again. We're getting to the late 1990s now. That wasn't in Hackney. I'd met them somewhere in North London. They came to my house, I was living in Somerset by that time.

So the Hackney MCs that I knew in the 1980s were all in the reggae field, a lot of them.


Q. So, would you say that reggae stamped its character upon Hackney strongly? [01:26:01]

SM. Yes, definitely. When I first got there, Clive Roper took me around to so many places in that community and he'd keep taking me to Rupie Edwards' record shop, which was over in the Lower Clapton, Rupie Edwards had a reggae record shop.


Q. It was not on Ridley Road, have I been misinformed? [01:26:23]

SM. Oh, was it on Ridley Road?


Q. I don’t know. I was told that it was on Ridley Road, but I might have been misinformed. [01:26:28]

SM. I thought he had a shop on Lower Clapton Road, but he might have moved it to Ridley…


Q. So that's not Eddie Regal? [01:26:33]

SM. Well, I went to the shop on Lower Clapton Road and I also met Rupie Edwards, so…


Q. I think it might be Regal. Regal was definitely on Lower Clapton Road. [01:26:42]

SM. Right. I went to both of those. When Clive took me down to what was called The Frontline as well at one time, and it was on Sandringham Road, where there was a centre with a lot of pool tables in it. It's all been raised to the ground now, but that was what they called The Frontline and we made our tours of the community. I mean, Clive was building support for the idea of Pyramid Arts. So I was party to that, and we did a lot of meeting and greeting inside that community.


Q. You mentioned people from the African continent. You mentioned people from Caribbean, Americas. You mentioned people from North America, as well, and I guess you mentioned some people coming over from Europe. Is that a kind of accurate representation of what Hackney was like generally, in terms of who was living there at the time? Because you were living there, right? [01:27:57]

SM. Yes. I was living in Stamford Hill. Stamford Hill is a big Jewish community but Dalston, I think the figures at the time was something like 53% African-Caribbean.


Q. So Pyramid was kind of catering to them. And others. [01:28:17]

SM. I would say Pyramid's clientele was 80% African and African-Caribbean and the other 20% were rock on roll, white guys and rock and roll bands like Primal Scream. There were a certain number of rock and india bands that came over as well. Like Primal Scream and The Ogdens, the Corn Dollies.

And there was another thing that attracted a lot of those rock bands as well. That was the fact that the Pyramid Agency, the idea was taken by the Hackney Council and turned into something called Hackney Agency for Music Marketing Action, HAMMA, and they based it in our building, and it was run by Horace Trubridge who is now general secretary of the Musicians' Union. So Horace was on his way from having been a musician in the band The Darts.

[Part_J]

So they kind of took the idea for an agency and they turned it into an agency for marketing Hackney music, but the music that HAMMA promoted largely was rock and Indie music, for better or for worse. It was part of the times, you know, that was the currency of the times.


Q. We're still talking during the 1980s? [01:29:33]

SM. Late 1980s, early 1990s.


Q. So, there was really not much support for the majority of the musicians that you were working with? [01:29:45]

SM. There were some bands who were involved in that. LOne Style [One Style MDV], the reggae band was a key player in the HAMMA project. So they did support reggae in that respect. There is only so much you can do with any project and marketing project. Again, ridiculously under-funded for the mammoth task that was at hand.

You can't keep blaming the funders, because really, it's a very chaotic situation and a lot of factors involved. A lot of obstacles. So, the fact that it ran for 11 years is a really great success, I think, under the circumstances. And people did forge careers, there are people today who had their feet in Pyramid 30 years ago who are still active in the music industry. Some of them are successful, whatever that means…


Q. How strategic was the idea to…okay, we've got these jazz musicians and these guys from Africa, and these reggae guys who are local. How strategic were all those choices? Or how much of it was just working with the environment and what presented itself? [01:31:30]

SM. It was a concept that we could have an art centre with education and an entertainment business outlook as well. That was a concept. To achieve that concept, that's where the strategy was wanting. I mean, we had the idea but to achieve that concept, it would take probably more money and more organisation, and more unity between the people, because as I said, it was a chaotic environment in many ways, and there were obstacles. One of those obstacles was funding.

Another obstacle was ideological differences between people, artistic differences and personal differences between people. I think when a situation is not funded, and not managed effectively, those things are going to be problematic and they are going to be exacerbated and then you're really up against it. You're really up against it. So, there is a time when it felt like the artists were a community, if you like. They were pulling towards the same … a lot of artists were pulling towards a goal. There was a time when it felt like that, and then there was a time when everybody was trying to save themselves, and that's a natural progression because of economics and politics.

People just split off into satellites. And there has always been how much are you in it for yourself and how much are you in it for everybody else? Everybody was tested upon that dilemma, and we're all human.


Q. What were the external factors that kind of turned pulling together into pulling apart? Were there any specific things happening in society or in politics, or funding landscape? The things that you can remember. [01:33:57]

SM. Funding landscape is significant, because we knew what we wanted to do. We wanted a venue with an entertainment license. A venue with an entertainment license meant we could earn money every week from box office. We could start to become economically independent. So, the only people that were willing to throw money into the project did it because of disability access, which was a great cause, but it didn’t give us an entertainment license. Another £100,000 would have given us an entertainment license. That became the dilemma.

That is the overriding problem. So then the time scale of completion becomes longer and longer and the delay causes problems, causes other problems to come to the surface, and that's what I would describe as personal and ideological differences between the people, between groups of people. It's hard to be specific, because it's complex and it's personal, as well as social and political.


Q. Do you have any sort of poignant or favorite, or most memorable moments of your time there of working at Pyramid, the time you were being part of it? [01:35:33]

SM. It was just a daily life. It was a way of life. So, most memorable times probably Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry walking into the building, into the recording studio really and taking the mic. The keyboard player said to me, "I'm bringing Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry." I said, I don’t really know much about him. Who’s he? I've heard the name. So what? Then when he arrived, then we realised ‘so what?’ Because he is larger than life. So Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry walking in and taking the mic in my rehearsal session must be a big life-changing experience.

I think playing music with Clifford Jarvis and jamming, and getting to a height of connection. Those are the things you remember. Musical connection between people. Singing and playing with Group Casanova, the lovers rock band. Learning about major seven chords and how they work and operate. Sitting down and playing congas with Jimmy Scott and learning how to cut my hand get a good sound out of a conga drum from the drummers of a master quality like that. [01:37:09]

Singing coaching from Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, in the car, driving. That is my number one benefit from my years in the 1980s in that community. I could sing, but I learned how to do it from there. And he put me on the spot, we were playing at Walthamstow Town Hall with a band from Pyramid backing Lee Perry and I was playing the guitar. I am on the stage, playing my guitar and doing whatever necessary, [singing] “who killed the chicken.” Playing those chips and chops, and Lee came over to me and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to this strange little guy with a strange little voice," and he put the microphone in my face, and then said “Sing.” 800 people in the hall and I've got to sing for Lee Perry. It's an education.

But just being there and learning and understanding what is going on in our society here, and learning about the history as well. The history which we're not taught in schools. Let's face it.


Q. That came through your experience at Pyramid? [01:38:45]

SM. Yes. It wasn't just musical education. It's an education of world history.


Q. You can't really speak for other people, but in terms of people coming to the various workshops and opportunities that the organisation provided, do you think that they were getting something more than what they came for as well? [01:39:15]

SM. Yeah, those who were open. When you're learning, that's the thing. Someone like ‘Scratch’ Perry or Clifford Jarvis passing on their skills to someone like me, I saw Clifford Jarvis approached by people he wouldn't pass his skills onto, no matter what, because they had the wrong attitude. So, if you come to education with a willingness to learn and some humility and some talent, and the ability and willingness to work hard, you're going to derive a lot out of it and you're going to learn something. It's not just education. If you come to any situation, if you come thinking you know it all and you are very arrogant, or you feel hostile all the time, people like that are not going to learn. So, it depends on how people approach it.

So some people approached Pyramid and they saw a wealth of knowledge, something to learn. Again, something to gain and something to improve themselves. Something to contribute and to take away something positive. Other people saw it with pure hostility or jealousy. So they didn’t get anything out of it.


Q. Jealousy of what? The organisation or the people particularly? [01:40:47]

SM. Well some people are jealous of skills, of talent. They want to have that talent.

[Part_K]

So you find that manifests itself in lots of different ways. Those people, they come and they go and that's what we experienced, and we still do experience that. People like that, they come and they go. Some of them learn from their mistakes, because people can learn and overcome those things, because it's about making mistakes, repenting on our mistakes and finding some redemption. That's what it's about.

So music is a good thing. It's more than just entertainment. It's almost like a moral code or a quest.


Q. Interesting. You mentioned Jenako and I'm trying to think if there is anything else locally, but were there…can you say much more about any of the operations that were kind of on your doorstep or in your vicinity? [01:42:17]

SM. Yeah. The Hackney Empire was a very good venture under Roland Muldoon. There was a good opportunity to reach a wide audience, right there on the doorstep.


Q. And you had good relationships? [01:42:40]

SM. Yes. I mean, we managed to put on two shows there. I was hoping we could have done more so that we could bring that 1,000 or 1,400 people to see our work. That was potential. But then you've got a problem there, because as I say about jealousy, it works in all kinds of ways. I think Hackney Council somehow was jealous of the success of the Hackney Empire. And I think they tried to replicate the Hackney Empire in a project they called Ocean.


Q. Right across the road. [01:43:15]

SM. Right across the road. But instead of investing in the Hackney Empire, and indeed Pyramid, and other great cultural opportunities, they thought let's create our own after our own image. Of course, Ocean is no longer there, but the Hackney Empire is. So, it just proves my point, it's not about money. It's about the intention behind it.


Q. I'd heard … I didn’t necessarily view Ocean as a local authority sponsored venture. [01:43:57]

SM. Wasn't it? I might be wrong. I don’t know all the details. It was after my time, as well. It just seemed a bit strange not really supporting the Empire and trying to set up a different one across the road.


Q. Now a cinema. [01:44:15]

SM. Right. Yeah.


Q. So, did you have much dealing with Jenako, or not really? [01:44:25]

SM. In the very early days, we did. We had some dealings with them and it was mainly because we had rehearsal studios and they didn’t. They had workshop space. So their bands would come over and rehearse at Pyramid. There was always a good selection of African bands coming over.


Q. Basically, would you say in terms of music, the African centre of Dalston is Jenako then?

SM. It was to a point, at the beginning of the 1980s. I think it changed. I think later on, you had the Africa House. Africa Centre.


Q. In Covent Garden?

SM. It was in Arcola Street. Dr. Ade.


Q. Again, not far from you. [01:45:12]

SM. It was right across the road from us. Arcola Street leads into Ashwin Street - No, sorry, not Arcola Theatre. It's Ashwin Street I'm talking about, you know where Arcola Theatre is, next door to that was the Africa Center.


Q. Another Africa Centre? [01:45:29]

SM. Yes, run by Dr. Ade. There was often a trade-off between Pyramid Arts and them. We helped each other out on a few occasions and …


Q. Trade-off sounds like it some sort of a competition. [01:45:44]

SM. No, it wasn't a competition. It was like, for example, there was a rave was organised in our venue illegally, without proper consultation and the advertising went out on the radio, and people were going to turn up, but we had to stop it because there was no license. Dr. Ade at the Africa Centre let it happen in his place. So, he helped us out. And I guess he got some money from it. [Laughs] Quite right too, but all the eyes were on us, and so we couldn't put a foot wrong at that time.


Q. So you're saying Jenako and the Africa Centre, and Pyramid, to an extent, were places where African musicians and music happened? [01:46:41]

SM. Yes.


Q. Pyramid also was working with reggae acts, so-called jazz acts, because jazz is, as you said … [01:46:50]

SM. It was jazz, yes.


Q. And dance, and visual arts also. [01:46:56]

SM. Yeah, and rock and roll.


Q. In terms of the pulling apart stage, what finally happened? Why did Pyramid stop, close its doors? I'm sure it's a sad story. When you said three years, you were doing a lot more than…? [01:47:19]

SM. So, what happened? Do you want to know what happened?


Q. Well, I am interested to know what happened… [01:47:30]

SM. It is hard to describe it without bringing up a lot of ghosts from the past there. If I can describe it, technically, what happened was after seven years of Pyramid running, and we're talking 1983 to 1989, seven years. And we were in the building, and we were trying to aim towards getting our entertainment license, and we were trying to develop the school. I think there was a move by Greater London Arts who were funding Pyramid to assess the management capability of Pyramid. So they put in a consultancy which then assessed the capability of Pyramid to fulfill its business plan.

They recommended certain changes, which involved the change of management. So this change of management had to happen obviously through the membership of the company, because it's a voting membership. This was something that happened. So, some of the board of directors brought in new members who were to become the new management. The new management took over and this is 1989. From there, we saw the project collapse. It collapsed. And by 1991, it was £150,000 in debt, including to the electricity board and gas board.

And I was outside the project. I had to leave at that point because I was part of the old management. But in 1991, a group of musicians led by Alan Weekes and Clifford Jarvis came to see me and Charles McKay and Harold Duncan, people from the original part of Pyramid. They came to me and said, "Is there nothing we can do to get our project back? The centre is barren. They've closed down the classes and nobody is rehearsing. They put security wire and , security fences around the building. There are people patrolling the building at night with rottweiler dogs."


Q. Was this the new management? [01:49:55]

SM. I don’t know what they were doing in there, but it wasn’t an art centre. So, we consulted a lawyer and we went to see Mr. Peter De Vic Kerry who was a civil rights lawyer. He looked at our constitution, this one. He read the articles of association and found a clause for the removal of directors, and what was called the ‘requisition’ occurred. In 1991, we had a series of meetings, which involved up to 100 artists. Some meetings in other buildings around the area and some meetings in the street outside the Pyramid Arts Centre. 100 members/artists turned up to an ‘extraordinary general meeting’.


Q. In the street? [01:50:53]

SM. In the street. Demanding the centre be returned to the arts. Then after passing of resolutions, we had the legal right to run the organisation again, but we didn’t have access to the building because the incumbent management would not relinquish the building. So at a certain point, in 1991, a team of musicians with myself and Harold Duncan and Alan Weekes, Clifford Jarvis and Charles McKay, we took the building by stealth in the middle of the night. There was a lot of fear of repercussions and reprisals. But we took the building and in the morning, the incumbent management turned up for work, and they found themselves locked out of the building. And we ran the project then until 1993, which is nearly three years, maybe two and a half years. But without the support of the Greater London Arts.


Q. Because of all that happened? [01:52:06]

SM. They supported the other management. They had been instrumental in bringing the other management in and they were not going to support us. They saw the artists of the project as usurpers of the project.

[Filming break]

Q. You were talking about basically re-occupying the building by stealth. So what happened next? You said you ran the project for another two or three years. [02:01:58]

SM. Yes, about two and a half, three years. Absolutely. Yes. So, we ran with support of … we were getting something from Hackney Council, £ 10,000 a quarter. That's the number that sticks in my head, about £40,000 a year from Hackney Council. So it probably paid some wages, plus the electric bills or something like that, electric and gas bills, and the utilities. The rest of the money that we were getting was from renting the studios and the majority of that was the dance studio.

The dance studio became the main breadwinner in those final few years. We had to shut down the Glebe Road studio, because the rent wasn’t paid. They sent the bailiffs in actually and requisitioned the equipment, which I then went on to buy. I bought it at auction with a loan from an old businessman that I knew, I used to fix his hi-fi for him. And I went into the auction room, I had £2,500 in my pocket. It was all the studio equipment. I can't remember, I paid about £8,000 pounds.

But I had to find the balance of the money by the next day, 24 hours it is. You go to an auction room and you put down 25% of the money, and then the next day, you have to give the rest. Well I didn’t have the rest. So I went to this old man that I knew, I used to fix his hi-fi. I asked him if he could lend me the money and he did. He gave me a banker's draft and I collected the money the next day. I went to the auction room and paid for it. I went with Duncan and Chaz, two originals from Pyramid and we took all the…


Q. Chaz, does he play … what's that called? [02:04:18]

SM. The Melodica? No. He played bass guitar.

So anyway, we took the equipment back and this time, we didn’t have the Glebe Road premises anymore. We put the recording studio into the Ashwin Street premises, which was a bit of a nightmare, because security was difficult to maintain at that time, because we were in financial hardships. The last few years may have been the toughest years, 1991 to 1993/94, but rehearsals took place as normal people came and rehearsed. Dance studio was full. We even did a music and dance project for the Arts Council of England, actually. It was called ‘Dance For Life’.

The Arts Council of England gave us some money at last, in 1991-1992 and it was for a commission, for a new music composition for Clifford Jarvis as an artist. Alan Weekes and myself, we wrote the music for it, and then we performed it in several places, a dance and music collaboration. It was too little too late.

We ran it on a shoestring. We were working 50-60 hour weeks and it was really the three of us doing the running. That's myself, Charles McKay and Harold Duncan. We were really running the building and Clifford was there the whole time. Clifford was not just teaching and playing drums, he was cleaning as well, because we had to pull together and Clifford would clean and sweep. Sometimes, Charles McKay lived and slept in the building. I saw Clifford sleep and live in the building too, during that period, at some point. [02:06:13]

Half Pint was with us and Louis Hardcastle. It was a small core of people just keeping the building alive. Keeping it open for rehearsals. It was ironic, because sometimes Hackney Council would be slow on giving us our quarterly money, and so there would be no wages or something like that. It happened a couple of times. And yet there was aerobics class, which was a good earner, it happened on the Friday night. And the aerobics class was one of these super-dance with an MC and with a microphone, and just about all the people attending the aerobics class were workers from Hackney Council.

We had to stop it one Friday night, because we weren’t getting paid. We're standing here with the keys, opening this building for Hackney Council workers to do their aerobics class and Hackney Council hasn't paid us our wages. So, we just went on strike. It was one of those situations. It wasn't easy and there was some aftermath as well from the dispute between the two management committees, which I think Hackney Council were party to those disputes. There were people in common, individuals in common between the Pyramid situation and the Council, and there was a lot of common knowledge about what was going on. So, there was some hostility towards Pyramid still inside the Council. [02:07:56]

And 1993-1994, the Council stopped their funding to Pyramid. We just couldn't go on and that was it, we just had to go. And one day I just had enough. I left. I took the studio with me. I took it down and put it into a unit in Shoreditch with another very important figure from Pyramid times, Barry Morgan. He was a Jamaican musician, guitarist and producer. We had a little studio unit in Shoreditch. So I moved the Pyramid recording studio into his place, and we shared that unit for another year or so, before he died of a heart attack.


Q. Then the other people from that core group, what happened to them? [02:08:55]

SM. Duncan would still come and see me at the new studio. Charles McKay, I didn’t see him again, none of us have seen him again, and Clifford Jarvis lived for a few more years, but sadly, passed away.

Alan Weekes is still going strong. We got together and started recording music later. In the last 10 years, we've recorded music together. Sleepy [Reuben “Doctor Sleepy” White], Kenrick Rowe, Tony St. Helene, people from that time who I’ve continued to communicate with. And I've also just communicated with Steve Prince. He was the leader of Group Casanova, as well. He was the leader singer of that.


Q. The Lovers Group. [02:09:47]

SM. The Lovers Group, sorry. I talked to him last night.


Q. It would be good to speak to him, actually.

SM. It would be. It would be good to speak to Steve Prince and it would be good to speak to Duncan. Duncan will tell you a story, because as I said, he was on the ground and even during the time that I was not in the project, which was from 1989 to 1991, he was still in the building, and so was Clifford. So, Duncan will tell you what it was like during those years and fill in the story.


Q. When did you leave Hackney then? You are in Shoreditch and you are still living there at that point? [02:10:30]

SM. When I was in Shoreditch, we moved to Somerset. I was commuting. I would come up on a Sunday night, sleep in the recording studio until Friday. Run the recording studio and work at Hackney Community College as a teacher, and go home again on Friday night. I'd sleep next to the mixing desk. So, when Barry Morgan died, he was only 49, he died completely unexpectedly. I arrived from Somerset on Sunday night, slept in the recording studio. It was winter and I thought, it's so cold, it's February and he's taken the heater. I was thinking, Barry, why did you take the heater? It's so cold. Then Monday, I didn’t see him. Tuesday, I phoned his work, where he worked as a pleater and his boss told me he died, which was a shock. He'd died of a heart attack over the weekend.

The same day, I had to get out of Hackney. Don't ask why. I had to get out of Hackney the same day. I spent some time with his daughter and his wife, and explained what had happened, and then by the end of the day, and Duncan helped me. I got out of Hackney for good and took the studio with me.


Q. And that same studio is where you're operating in Somerset now? [02:12:13]

SM. No. There is nothing left of it. There is only a pair of speakers left from that studio, because the mixing desk was one of these great big long things like that. It was redundant. It was like having an old car and you have to keep constantly underneath it fixing it rather than using it.


Q. All right. I think the time is upon us. I think there is a lot I haven't asked you, but I think we have a good picture.

SM. Yeah, I've got some picture. It was a very productive, creative time and a lot of people created a lot of great music and art, and communicated with each other cross-cultures. That was it.


Q. Would you do it again if you had the opportunity? [02:13:04]

SM. [Laughs] I expect I would, yes! Not now. If I knew then what I know now, I may have taken a different approach to life.

Q. Anything I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you?

SM. No, I think we're done.


Q. Thank you very much. [02:13:22]

[End of interview]