Then an' reports in Britain that theBeatles — once- the greatest pop muskgroup in die world - may get togetheragain, five years after they broke up.

Huge offers, so big they can hardlyrefuse to seriously consider them, areflooding in: One offer is for a single con-cert in the United States reportedly for afee of $5,000,000. Other offers havecome from Europe, Britain, Australia,South Africa and even one from the oil-rich Middle East.

But much secrecy surrounds the sever-al endeavours to bring the Beatles together again. Mr. Jonathan Clyde of DarkHorse Records in Britain which now distributes former Beatle George Harrison's,recordings, said: "They (the four Beatles)are now very friendly again and haveresolved their differences. Various proj-ects have been discussed."

Ihdividupl starsThe other Beatles, John Lennon, Paul

Me Cartney and Ringo Starr, have eachgone their separate ways and earnedthemselves enviable reputations as individ-ual pop stars since the group broke up in1970 after their records sold 100,000,000copies worldwide.

One report in Britain is that John,Paul and Ringo have already had a secretmeeting in Lot Angeks to discuss gettingtogether again.

Afterwards, John Lennon, always themost forthcoming of the quartet, said:"There is nothing in the world I would.like more than getting the .group togetheragain.

"Ringo and Paul are also interested injoining up again, but I'm not sure about

, George, I cannot speak for him at thisstage.

"I have always felt that splitting thegroup up was a mistake in many ways.We could and should have stayed togeth-er. But at the time we split we felt weneeded to work in different areas -ofmusic and basically we were bored with

. each other and with the sort of music wewere playing at that time. It was a diffi-cult business, but we felt it was necessaryto end as~~ar group.

"Getting together again wouldundoubtedly produce some great music."

ObstaclesBut having said all that, there are sev-

eral obstacles in the way of,any imminentreunion.

One is that the four Beatles havebecome so successful working individuallythat all are booked solidly for at least ayear ahead. One London agent who isconfident he"would be deeply involved inany reunion told me: ""March next yearwould be the very earliest we could getthem all together."

Another reason is that if the Beatlesdid rejoin forces, the most powerful fac-tor behind such a reunion would be mon-ey, and they would be seeking such feesas Would stagger even the high-payingU.S. pop festival circuit.

They have already corned down theU.S. 15,000,000 offer for one concert inthe States. John Lennon said: "We havedecided that we would want more money.We know what the reunion of the Beatleswould be worth."

Before taking to the concert circuitagain, it is believed in London they willmake several records together. Their rat-ings on the charts, once the initialenthusiasm for the reunited group hadworn off; would determine whether toreform the once most famous of allgroups for festival and concerts^

Second in a series of articles by VIVIAN GOLD-MAN on The Reggae Merchants in Britain.

ETHNICRECORDS

A T T H ET I M p of

writing, EthnicRecords are of nof ixed abode.

being "a nice little sellerin the ethnic market".Like many "other people,Larry utilises Harry J'-sJoe Gibbs, and ChannelOne studios in Jamaicafor his productions.- Larry hops back andforth between here and

- ISLANDRECORDS

22 St. Peten Square,Chifwkk, London, W6.

BOB MARLEY.

When I spoke toLarry Lawrenceon the phone, hetold me he wasmoving to Brix-ton but wasn'tquite sure where.We' l l let youknow in Soundsas soon as he'sgot an addressa n d p h o n enumber.

Considering the lim-bo they're currently oper-ating in, Ethnic areq u i t e w e l l known,notably for their EthnicFight Band, a- bunch ofsession men, includingthe likes of Carlton andFamily Man Barrett,and Jackie Jackson. Youcan hear them on theEthnic album, 'Out OfOne Man Comes ManyDubs'. You can alsoexpect a new Fight Bandalbum. 'Dub Explosion',any moment — _butdon't expect to hear thesame line-up, becausethe Ethnic Fight Bandhas a distinctly fluidmembership.

Ethnic has beengoing for two and a halfyears. In that time LarryLawrence has producedmany singles himself, hismost recent favouritesfor you to catch up onare Sidney Rogers''Another Lonely Night'and the upcoming "Mir-acle Worker' from thesame artist, also Barring-ton Spence's "Tears OnMy Pillow". Sidney wasdiscribed by Larry as

Jamaica, and when Icaught him on the wing,as it were, was about to ,leave for the States andCanada, to set up distrivbution deals for his prod-

SLAND ARE notwholly a reggae com-

pany, of course. It cer-tainly wasn't Bob Marleywho paid for their ele-gant buildings, set in aleafy square in the betterside of Chiswick. Rockmusic put that placidsmile on the faces of thebig stone dogs, thatguard the front door,but many would agreethat reggae remains thesoul of the company.

At the time of writ-ing, Island have virtuallyall the top-name Jamai-can music acts. Assimple as that. Theyhave Toots and the May-tals. Burning Spear, BobMarley and the Wailers,and in terms of younghopeful they have ThirdWorld, and the Hep-tones (though they're notquite as young). If theyhad Big Youth, their ros-ter of reggae superstarswould be complete Addto that a profusion ofgood, one-off reggae sin-gles, including, the clas-

_sic Augustus Pablo.'King Tubby Meets TheRockers Uptow^ On ASaturday Night' 'single,Lorna Behnet's 'Break-fast In Bed', JustinHinds and the Domin-

TOOTS HIBBERT

pop', back in the dayswhen reggae was blue-beat or ska.

Blackwell still has ahome in Jamaica, spendsa lot of time there, andmust be one of the onlywhite men that the Ras-tas relate to, talk to, andrespect. It was hisunswerving faith in BobMarley that led him topump cash in to what

"But we're not neces-sarily working on particu-lar artists You go intothe studio and make arecord, and according tohow the record comesout you decide w h a tyou're going to do Sayyou have 10 artists thebest single goes, and youget behind that oneBob Mar ley ' s breakthrough in this country

From the way TitoSimon was hanging casually around their SouthLondon store front premises, it looks as if Jamahave still more plans uptheir sleeve

KLIK2 Library Parade.

Craven Park Road, NW10

K LIK IS a verynew company one

of those that has risen

Joe Our policy isbe an album compair a t h e r t han a singcompany We re v «c h o o s y a b o u t oproduct '

Lar rv Our m*o b j e c t is to get omusic through to tE n g l i s h w h i t e poplation It s a \erv h<b a t t l e we comeagainst lots of prejudi

Regg comjcx

uct over there. "Thingsare really happeningnow," he informed megleefully.

One .of the thingsthat's really happening is .a band called The Uni-Rock Movement, who Ibelieve hail from Bir-mingham.' They, have'as ingle c a l l e d 'Civ-^ilisation', which may'"beout when you read this'.1'Larry described them asbeing like Burning '•Spear, "Very rootsy.Ought to do well riow.'""

oes, Tyrone Taylor andmany others. %

For those that know1

and love the companyfor the likes of RoxyMusic, Fairpqrt Conven-tion ,and Free, this pre-ponderance of reggaemay commas rather asurprise., Not, so kwhenyou consider that thrisBlackwell, who 'foundedowns and still runs .thecompaiy 'comes fromJamaica himself, and got ̂his first big hit with Mil-'lie'Small1* 'My Boy l-olli-

must at times have seem-ed a hopeless cause.

Over to Brian Ble-vins, Island press officer."You can't ignore • thefact that Island's founda-tion is Jamaica., That'swhere the name Islandcomes from, our singlescatalogue numbers beingwith WIP, which standsfor West Indian Prod-uct." Our Help label iscalled Antilles in thestates (the Antilles are agroup of islands in theWest Indies).

"Island's^ in a strongi position as far as reggaeis concerned because ofour foothold ...havingbroken Bob Marley. and"the Wailers, we're begin-ning to see the fruition.of the company's work,"and-eari^ now turn ourattention to other Jamai-can artists, like BurningSpear and Third World,and because of ourstrong foothold is beingso familiar with Jamai-can music for so long,we're in a very good posi-tion to go about acquir-ing other major artists.

There's been a kindof Bob Marley backlashto some degree, the 'hip-per than thou' types com-ing-in and saying 'wherewere you when Bob Mar-ley and Big Youth wereslaving away? I supposeto some extent that's,valid, but we're trying to<-get 'Catch A Fire' (theWailers' first Islandalbum) alight!"

JAMA1 Brixton Station Road,

London, SW9.

J A M A ' S BEENgoing for just over a

year, and already hasthe aura of being one ofthe more bustling andproductive small recordcompanies. Jama's EarlMartin told us "Jamaplans to aim for thecharts while still keepingits identity.' We know it'sdifficult, but we thinkwe can do it with artists

'like the Ebony Sister?,y'know, they have Clau-dette Miller singing withthem on that single 'IMust Be Dreamin'. Clau-

- dette also has her ownsingle out. 'Tonight'sThe Night*.

has made it a lot easierfor all of us

"At the momentwe're planning on break-ing into albums, there'sone by B. B. Seaton dueout called, we're gonnacall it something like"Colour Makes No Differ-ence". We've already

.released a dud album,'Gun Court Dub Wehave a couple of otherlabels besides Jama,Love, which is our mostcommercial label, withroots material on it, andEagle, which is for moremiddle of the road stuff.

"There are lots ofthings going on here atthe moment — there s anew group cal led theMed i t a t i ons t h e y xebacked up W i n s t o nGroovy and T T Ro^sthey have a single cal i f d'Sympathy' and the\ iedue to play gigs beforeEaster, also the EbonySisters wi th C l a u d e t i eand Marilyn Brooks ueexpected over EasterJama is one of the mostrespected independentcompanies For exampU,B. B. Seaton is signed tous, in a way tha t he

from the ashes of B & CJoe Sinclair was a managing director of TrojanRecords at the time thatthey were tied up withthe B & C/Cha i rmancompany When B & Cand therefore Trojanwent bust Joe wenton tofound Kl ik togetherw i t h long t ime f r ienda n d assoc ia te L a r r ySevitt.

They have a brightsparsely furnished modern room in Harlesdenwhere so many reggaecompanies hang outLarry and Joe togetherwith Annette helpingthem out wi th presshaven't released muchproduct as yet but thequality is very hign Twoof their albums 'Negrilby Negril and DreadLocks Dread' by BigYouth , are genera l lyacknowledged as beingtwo of 75 s top reggaereleases

There s a posi t iveatmosphere at Klik that'svery refreshing whilenot actually innovatoryin the way they're goingabout things Klik lookas if they might be one

THE BURNING SPEAR

but the quality of <product make the jotlot easier Besides EMarley has done a m

could get out of it if hewanted to, but see hehas a good relation withus. Trust is a big part ofit, and we want -to keepit that way."

of a new b r e e d ofstraigntshooting reggaecompanies, that actuallypay royalties (somethingalmost, unheard of untilrecently by all accounts)

\ellous job of breakthrough and it s novvto us as a smaller copanv to break throieven more

B u t t h e r e ' - i tastrange a t t i tude in tcountr> towards regj

there s 7000 shehere and no way tlthe shops can find (what s happening in rgae w h a t s populwhat sells what doessell there's no chano regular charts in cof the n a t i o n a l mupapers (excluding BLMusic and Blues aSoul ) so the dealer jleave it alone Theisomething like 300 ••b l a c k shops ghe ishops we call them athese shops aren t e\touched for compilthe charts That IYouth album has dc15,000 copies, it shoihave at least had a taof the charts

"But I shouldn'tsurprised — reggalbums have soldmuch as 70,000, with

PAGE STX V THE SUNDAY GLEANER MAGAZINE. FEBRUARY 29, 1976.