Farewell Robbie Shakespeare
- Thread starter Mark_GT
- Start date
hertfordseasider
Well-known member
RIP Robbie, legend. Saw him and Sly play in the band behind Gregory Isaacs at Dunstable in 1980, one of the best gigs I've been to.
CompleteControl
Well-known member
I saw them at a gig in the early ups. You could get stoned just from the secondary smoking.
CompleteControl
Well-known member
Amend ups to eighties. Bloody corrective texting.
hertfordseasider
Well-known member
I have never been in a ganja Fug quite like it, it was unbelievable!!
Budgies-Budgie
Well-known member
Sad news RIP - off to play 'a dub experience' out of respect for a reggae great
Mark_GT
Well-known member
Think I saw the same tour or close to it - Leeds University 1981 - though seeing anything through a fog of weed was a challenge!
hertfordseasider
Well-known member
I have a friend who has been working for me for the past 3 years and he has just gone off to Thailand yesterday with his girlfriend for 2 months to do a dive masters course. I spoke to him on Monday, although he was gardening and landscaping with me he has a PhD in Classical composition and on Monday he went to speak to a very famous reggae band to speak about doing the arrangement for a symphony orchestra for an upcoming tour and album. He got the gig so I have already bagged a back stage VIP day at one of the gigs. No dates yet.
tangysider
Well-known member
John Miles whose hit "music"
Really talented musician also died this week
Really talented musician also died this week
20togo
Well-known member
think Music was a massively under rated song.
Toastrack
Well-known member
Robbie Shakespeare's Times obituary, with some great quotes...
Influential bassist and record producer who, as one half of Sly and Robbie, infused Jamaican reggae music with a sonic sound
If the defining sound of rock’n’roll is the electric guitar, the quintessential motif in reggae and dub music is the deep, throbbing frequency of the bass, and nobody captured its potency with greater artistry than Robbie Shakespeare.
Together with the drummer Sly Dunbar, he formed a powerhouse rhythm section that took Jamaican reggae into new and experimental sonic territory, utilising electronics and inventive studio effects. Sly and Robbie’s syncopations powered not only countless reggae and dub hits but made them in demand with A-list rock stars seeking to deepen their sound. Shakespeare’s claim that they had played on “200,000 songs” was a characteristic example of Jamaican “braff”, a patois expression for braggadocio, but the number certainly ran into several thousand.
Often referred to simply as the Riddim Twins, the duo appeared on albums by Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Madonna, the Rolling Stones, Sting and Sinéad O’Connor. Dylan was a particularly big fan and recruited the duo to play on a trio of albums in the 1980s. “Bob was one of my all-time favourite writers and singers from a long time,” Shakespeare said. “He worked the way we work. He’d just go in the studio and start playing and we’d just jump in.”
Among Jamaican musicians, Rolling Stone rated Shakespeare’s influence second only to Bob Marley and the Wailers, to whose international breakthrough album Catch A Fire he contributed. “No other musical entity in the post-Marley era has been so omnipresent in shaping the sound of Jamaica and bringing it to the world,” the magazine noted.
Yet he gave equal credit to his drumming partner. “Sly might start with a drum tone, and I say: ‘Boy, where the tempo at?’ He say, ‘Ay, nice one, just do your thing’ and then everything it falls in place,” Shakespeare said. Their personalities complemented each other too. While Dunbar, who survives him, was stick-thin, mild-mannered and articulate, the heftily built Shakespeare, who once served time in a Jamaican prison on a gun charge, was as deep as his bass lines and not to be trifled with. He was also a man of few words. During an interview with The Times in 1999, he not only left Dunbar to answer the questions but promptly fell asleep. “Man, yuh nuh dun yet?” he demanded when he awoke to hear his partner still talking.
For many years Shakespeare and his wife, Marian, lived near Dunbar and his wife, Natasha. Latterly he divided his time between Jamaica and Florida, where he died.
Robert Warren Dale Shakespeare was born in 1953 in Kingston, Jamaica, the son of domestic workers. His older brother Lloyd sang with the future reggae star Max Romeo in a group called the Emotions, who rehearsed in the family’s yard. Shakespeare was soon playing an acoustic guitar before switching to bass under the influence of Aston “Family Man” Barrett, whose band the Hippy Boys also used the yard to rehearse. When Barrett left to join the Wailers, Shakespeare took his place in the Hippy Boys. He met Dunbar in a Kingston club in 1973. “We started playing and everyone was jumping. We locked into that groove immediately. Everyone said, ‘Yeah, that combination is wicked.’ It started from there.”
The pair played together in the Revolutionaries, the house band for Jamaica’s Channel One studio, and started their own production company and record label, Taxi. After appearing on landmark reggae albums by Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Gregory Isaacs, Culture and others, by the late 1970s they had joined the Jamaican reggae band Black Uhuru, who were signed to Island Records by Chris Blackwell.
Blackwell employed the duo to back Grace Jones on her 1981 hit Pull Up to the Bumper. A seminal recording that helped to launch a new style of electronic dance music, it turned Sly and Robbie overnight into the rhythm section every star wanted on their records.
In 1985 the Grammys introduced a best reggae recording category and they won the inaugural award for their production on Black Uhuru’s album Anthem. They won their second Grammy in 1999 for their album Friends.
“No matter how much people hail Sly and Robbie as legends, we never feel like anything we get in life, we must get it,” Shakespeare said. “There have been a lot of sleepless nights and nuff time we go to bed hungry, so we remember these things and take stock.”
Robbie Shakespeare, bass player, was born on September 27, 1953. He died of complications arising from diabetes on December 8, 2021, aged 68
Influential bassist and record producer who, as one half of Sly and Robbie, infused Jamaican reggae music with a sonic sound
If the defining sound of rock’n’roll is the electric guitar, the quintessential motif in reggae and dub music is the deep, throbbing frequency of the bass, and nobody captured its potency with greater artistry than Robbie Shakespeare.
Together with the drummer Sly Dunbar, he formed a powerhouse rhythm section that took Jamaican reggae into new and experimental sonic territory, utilising electronics and inventive studio effects. Sly and Robbie’s syncopations powered not only countless reggae and dub hits but made them in demand with A-list rock stars seeking to deepen their sound. Shakespeare’s claim that they had played on “200,000 songs” was a characteristic example of Jamaican “braff”, a patois expression for braggadocio, but the number certainly ran into several thousand.
Often referred to simply as the Riddim Twins, the duo appeared on albums by Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Madonna, the Rolling Stones, Sting and Sinéad O’Connor. Dylan was a particularly big fan and recruited the duo to play on a trio of albums in the 1980s. “Bob was one of my all-time favourite writers and singers from a long time,” Shakespeare said. “He worked the way we work. He’d just go in the studio and start playing and we’d just jump in.”
Among Jamaican musicians, Rolling Stone rated Shakespeare’s influence second only to Bob Marley and the Wailers, to whose international breakthrough album Catch A Fire he contributed. “No other musical entity in the post-Marley era has been so omnipresent in shaping the sound of Jamaica and bringing it to the world,” the magazine noted.
Yet he gave equal credit to his drumming partner. “Sly might start with a drum tone, and I say: ‘Boy, where the tempo at?’ He say, ‘Ay, nice one, just do your thing’ and then everything it falls in place,” Shakespeare said. Their personalities complemented each other too. While Dunbar, who survives him, was stick-thin, mild-mannered and articulate, the heftily built Shakespeare, who once served time in a Jamaican prison on a gun charge, was as deep as his bass lines and not to be trifled with. He was also a man of few words. During an interview with The Times in 1999, he not only left Dunbar to answer the questions but promptly fell asleep. “Man, yuh nuh dun yet?” he demanded when he awoke to hear his partner still talking.
For many years Shakespeare and his wife, Marian, lived near Dunbar and his wife, Natasha. Latterly he divided his time between Jamaica and Florida, where he died.
Robert Warren Dale Shakespeare was born in 1953 in Kingston, Jamaica, the son of domestic workers. His older brother Lloyd sang with the future reggae star Max Romeo in a group called the Emotions, who rehearsed in the family’s yard. Shakespeare was soon playing an acoustic guitar before switching to bass under the influence of Aston “Family Man” Barrett, whose band the Hippy Boys also used the yard to rehearse. When Barrett left to join the Wailers, Shakespeare took his place in the Hippy Boys. He met Dunbar in a Kingston club in 1973. “We started playing and everyone was jumping. We locked into that groove immediately. Everyone said, ‘Yeah, that combination is wicked.’ It started from there.”
The pair played together in the Revolutionaries, the house band for Jamaica’s Channel One studio, and started their own production company and record label, Taxi. After appearing on landmark reggae albums by Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Gregory Isaacs, Culture and others, by the late 1970s they had joined the Jamaican reggae band Black Uhuru, who were signed to Island Records by Chris Blackwell.
Blackwell employed the duo to back Grace Jones on her 1981 hit Pull Up to the Bumper. A seminal recording that helped to launch a new style of electronic dance music, it turned Sly and Robbie overnight into the rhythm section every star wanted on their records.
In 1985 the Grammys introduced a best reggae recording category and they won the inaugural award for their production on Black Uhuru’s album Anthem. They won their second Grammy in 1999 for their album Friends.
“No matter how much people hail Sly and Robbie as legends, we never feel like anything we get in life, we must get it,” Shakespeare said. “There have been a lot of sleepless nights and nuff time we go to bed hungry, so we remember these things and take stock.”
Robbie Shakespeare, bass player, was born on September 27, 1953. He died of complications arising from diabetes on December 8, 2021, aged 68
ChallengerDeep
Well-known member
Robbie at his finest.
Rest in Eternal Power.
Rest in Eternal Power.
hertfordseasider
Well-known member
My all time favourite, still got this on red vinyl too.
ChallengerDeep
Well-known member
Top 12"!