First published in 1976 – when the world could not care less about the sound coming out of Kingston, then republished in 1982 under the title “Jah revenge – Babylon revisited” – when the western medias were desperately seeking Marley’s successor, ‘Babylon on a thin wire’ has been out of print for almost a quarter of century. Until 2012, when a french editor (Allia) decided to re-publish it as an improved version. For this new version, they added a french translation for the very first time, enhanced with a foreword by US journalist Michael Thomas and an updated photo selection containing some previously unseen shots by Adrian Boot.
One of Great-Britain’s best-known music photographers, Adrian Boot moved to Jamaica in the seventies to teach physics, working at the same time for the NME (New Musical Express), The Times, The Guardian or The Face. By the mid-70s Adrian had become an in-house photographer for the Melody Maker finding himself on the front line at the height of the Punk movement . During the next decade, he became chief photographer for major events like Live Aid, Freedom at 70 or Roger Water’s The Wall in Berlin… Adrian Boot has also worked with the Grateful Dead in Egypt.
Before looking at this selection of Adrian Boot’s photographs, it is important to read what Michael Thomas, his partner during this road-movie in Jamaica through the musical environment, had to say about how the Jamaican society worked, its gangs and its politicians, the way they were all connected in the immediate aftermath of independence. “The politicization of crime and the criminalization of politics goes back a long way, to the Manley (prime minister and leader of the left wing political party, the People’s National Party) years. This book is the story of those years, when the guns came to town and Johnny Too Bad took over the house.”, wrote Michael Thomas in august 2010.
He remembered the ‘electric’ atmosphere in the small island, like the massive sound waves of the dance-hall movement. “You had to have a 4×4 to get there. These days it’s forty minutes on the motorway, it’s a teeming favela full of rum bars and old Rastas like my mate Electric-Power selling tonic to stretch your ejaculation to BREAK-ING POINT etc. But the waves roll in, the way they always have and always will… Babylon is on a thin wire, they were singing back then. The wire just gets thinner and thinner.”
The full story : http://babylononathinwire.com/
The link for the book : http://www.patate-records.com/detail/19103/
