Whip pan to 2011, Easy Star All-Stars have re-imagined and reinterpreted three of the biggest albums of all time including Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon (with 2003’s Dub Side of the Moon), Radiohead’s OK Computer (2006’s Radiodread) and The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (2009’s Easy Star Lonely Hearts Dub Band) – with intentions as pure as the driven snow.
“It’s dangerous territory dabbling in other people’s music. We’ve touched on very influential music in our career and we never want to do any artist or album a disservice but not putting our heart into it”, explains bassist, Ras I Ray.
This year, the band released their first set of original material, aptly titled First Light. “It was much easier doing our own material in the studio, we were much more relaxed. We didn’t have the same pressure on us like we did re-interpreting Sgt. Pepper’s“. To Ray, it’s a blessing that the fans have embraced their original material – they’ve only demanded to hear it for eight years! “We’re very fortunate that people don’t think of us as a cover band, but recognise we are playing re-interpretations of other people’s songs” he offers.
“There were a lot of songs that we’d written while touring. We’ve been getting great reviews and. I’m blown away by the fact that the fans have really embraced this”. All-Stars fans are not only vocal about hearing original music from the band, they also love to bombard them with requests for their next tribute album, with requests spanning from the sacred (Pink Floyd’s The Wall) to the profane (The Vengaboys, Spice Girls).
“We’ve got some suggestions that make me stop and think, ‘Wow, that, why?’ We have a look into those albums and talk about what we’d do differently about them. We take their requests seriously. Fans are constantly letting us know what they would like to hear us do next. To me, that’s an honour. It means they’ve accepted us as the ‘go-to band’ for re-interpretations.”
Ray admits he had never even heard of Radiohead before working on Radiodread. “When I listened to OK Computer for the first time, I was blown away. It has opened me up to hear things in music that I’ve never really heard before. It made me listen more keenly to music”. He admits to being “blown away” when Radiohead front man Thom Yorke told fans at a concert that the All-Stars reimagining of Let Down was his favourite track from Radiodread. “To get the props from the original artist, that’s an honour. Money can’t buy the little things like that”.
Ray’s musical journey may have begun on the saxophone, but the pieces fell into place, as more sense as he began watching his bass-playing brother, starry eyed, absorbing everything like a sponge. He soon “fell in love” with bass and taught himself from what he remembered. “I just knew I had to be holding down the foundation. To this very day, he sits back amazed and he doesn’t realise what he done for me. He says to me, ‘Now when did I teach you?’ He didn’t realise he was teaching me every day. “
Inspiration soon came in the form of four-stringed powerhouse, Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett of The Wailers – who came to prominence playing with reggae legend Bob Marley. “When I heard the way he played, that was it. He was so melodic with his bass lines, if you just muted everything else from those songs but the bass, it could still be a stand-alone song. His playing style was less like accompaniment; he could really lead that band. That made me gravitate towards his style a lot, he just made the bass sing,” Ray laughs.
He’s glad that working with the All-Stars has given him an opportunity to further his musical development, not just play phat bass lines. “Any song I listen to now… I look beyond it and inside it. I was never able to do that before and I’m really thankful. Being a bass player, I was just listening to the rhythm, the groove, trying to get into the pocket and let [the bass] sing. But now – I can hear things much deeper, more subtle in music. It almost opened up another dimension for me”.
With the details for the upcoming tribute album in 2012 keenly under wraps, Ray has not even heard the rough tapes yet. “The other day, I met one of the interns working with our label [Easy Star Records]. He told me he had a chance to listen to some of the rough tracks and he was blown away”. He hopes that the label gives them the go-ahead to talk about the record soon. “Hopefully by the time we tour, they’ll give us the green light to talk about it. I’m itching to tell you everything!”
