Joe Boyd: belief

Transcript context

…They varied over time. Yes. Toots and the Maytals is a vocal trio originally, Toots with two guys who sang harmonies. Over the years, I think Toots began doing most of the harmonies himself in the studio, so it’s really about Toots Hibbert. As I say in the book, to me, Toots is as great a songwriter as Bob Marley. It’s fascinating, the difference between them. Marley has this wonderful sense of sweeping statements. If you listen, so many of Marley’s songs are didactic. “Do this, get up, stand up, lively up yourself.” You take orders from Marley in the most wonderful way. Toots finds these little vignettes of daily life in Jamaica and makes a song out of them. I think he’s a poet. He’s a Balzac. He’s a genius of the romance — as they used to say about Osip Mandelstam, the Russian poet — the romance of the precise. He goes into nuanced details of life, like “54–46 That’s My Number.” That was his number in prison. He built a whole song about his number on the back of his prison uniform. His songs are known around the world. Everybody recognizes “Pressure Drop” and “54–46” and “Monkey Man.” Sweet and Dandy is great.…

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