While some label this as Reggae, these albums are more a Nyabingi fusion style; fresh sounds from Jamaica to listen absolutely! Some talents are just bound to connect, no matter how long it takes for the results to hit the charts. This particular osmose started in the late 1972, when the Rolling Stones landed for an extended layover in Kingston, Jamaica—a fitting locale to “simmer down” and ease into the sessions for Goats Head Soup at Byron Lee’s laid-back Dynamic Sounds Studio. As guitarist Keith Richards would tell later, "it seemed Jamaica was one of the few places in the northern hemisphere where the Stone’s rockstar status didn’t cause a stir". |
“In Jamaica, I was just one of the crowd; the Rasta thing was really popping, and there were a lot of young dreads around, so I started to drift up to the villages, up in the hills. They had no idea who the Rolling Stones were. They didn’t even give a shit. I guess we were just taken at face value, and the fact that we all got to know each other—I mean, my kids would be up in Steer Town for weeks at a time – no problem.”
A fart wind from the birthplaces of Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley, Steer Town overlooks Ocho Rios, and lies in the heart of reggae origins. It was also the den of Justin Hinds an outstanding Reggae singer who had just made a name for himself with the help of producer Duke Reid with their ska release “Carry Go Bring Come” in the early sixties. Hinds and his band the Dominoes were in the close influence of young Bob Marley.
Hinds was 30 in 72 while Keith Richards was 29, he’d just separated from Reid and was at a stand and he was joining up in Steer Town's Niabingi while Richards was enjoying Mammee Bay where had met some of Hinds’ friends. This is where he got invited to watch a real live Nyabinghi grounation and he was caught instantly.
“As I listened to what they were playing, I thought, ‘This is something else'. Justin would never put himself forward because he was so humble, so it took me a couple of years to learn who he was, but I could see that sometimes he was playing the bass drum, and that’s what sets the whole thing up. He gave me the nod to start strumming an acoustic, and because he said it was okay, I think the rest of them had to accept it; otherwise I was still just a listener, you know?”
Richards purchased the drums and set them in his house in Ocho Rios where he recorded a core group of drummers and singers, including Hinds, who would come over to his house to play. As a professional he would always tape the sounds. “From ’72 on, I have some incredible cassette recordings and those things still hang today.”
It took until 1995 befor an album could be produced when Rob Fraboni who collaborated with the Rolling Stones for the album Goats Head Soup recorded some jams directly from the house. After a week the taped tracks would become the first album of the Wingless Angels.
By the time Wingless Angels was completely launched in 1997 it had become a fully commercial entity with a deal with Chris Blackwell and Island Records. Original group member Vincent Jackie Ellis died just before the album was released. Justin Hinds, and Locksley Whitlock died in 2005. But Richards already had the foresight to record the year before Hinds’ death, this time in a much more professional studio which allows Wingless Angels to continue to build on the work of the original performers.
Richards at the base guitar, Brian Jobson organized the second recording in a friend’s studio space above Ocho Rios. “We jammed for a couple nights before we went in,so there was a continuity going. We just miked up all of the drums, then Justin was to one side with a mic on his voice alone, and he was playing a drum as well. It was very organic, yunno? Justin would just say, ‘Okay, let’s take up a beat,’ and he would start chanting, with the drums going. We’d start in the afternoon and go ’til 11 or 12 o’clock at night.”
As Richards likes to describe it, Wingless Angels make “marrow music.” As old as time itself, this is the Nyabinghi style—calling on the drum and voice to make music that cuts right to the bone, stripping away all but the essence, the raw and righteous spirit of the common people. “I think everybody knows what they have to do day in and day out, and this music is a way of separating from that, and getting as pure a spirit going as you can. Everybody knows that you’re still living on this earth, and you’re still gonna have to go through whatever you gotta go through, but it’s a release—an uplifting moment where you can actually forget all your sorrows and cares.”
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