Chris Blackwell’s The Islander: My Life in Music and Past was printed on June 7, 2022, by Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster). It’s described as “a lyrical, warmhearted, and inspirational memoir from the founding father of Island Information about his astonishing life and profession serving to to carry reggae music to the world stage and dealing with Bob Marley, U2, Grace Jones, Cat Stevens, and lots of different icons.” Grace Jones (singer and writer of I’ll By no means Write My Memoirs) observes, “C.B. had this fashion of throwing me within the deep finish realizing that I’d thrive on being challenged. As you’ll learn in The Islander, he is aware of easy methods to get the perfect out of individuals – he’s a mover and a shaker and a mischief maker.”
Chris Blackwell, just like the paradigm-shifting artists he got here to help over his sixty-plus years within the music enterprise, by no means took the standard route. He grew up between Jamaica and London, crossing paths with Ian Fleming, Noel Coward, and Errol Flynn. After being expelled from an elite British college for rebellious habits in 1954 at age seventeen, he moved again to Jamaica, and inside 5 years, based Island Information—the corporate that may make an indelible mark on music, shifting with the occasions, however at all times holding its core identification intact.
The Islander is the story of Blackwell and his cohorts at Island Information, who again and again, recognized, nurtured, and broke out musicians who had been neglected by greater report labels, together with Steve Winwood, Nick Drake, John Martyn, and Cat Stevens. After an impromptu assembly with Bob Marley and his bandmates in 1972, Blackwell determined to fund and produce their groundbreaking album Catch a Fireplace. He’d go on to work with Marley over the remainder of his profession, stay his shut good friend, and regularly champion Jamaican tradition and reggae music.
Within the ensuing years, Blackwell labored with U2, Grace Jones, the B-52s, Tom Waits, Robert Palmer, Tom Tom Membership, and lots of different groundbreaking artists. He additionally opened the primary Jamaican boutique resort, on the property of Ian Fleming’s former residence, Goldeneye, the place all of the James Bond books had been written.
Blackwell is a legendary in addition to deeply humble raconteur, and studying The Islander is like spending a day with essentially the most attention-grabbing man on the earth.
For extra data, see https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Islander/Chris-Blackwell/9781982172695