Max Romeo, who died on Friday aged 80 from complications related to a heart condition, was one of Jamaica’s most celebrated vocalists; critiquing the island’s pervasive class divides and wealth disparities with a distinctive tenor, he denounced punitive US foreign policy and detailed the turbulence of world affairs.
Best known for War Ina Babylon, a playful commentary on the factionalism that blighted Jamaican society during the mid-1970s, and Chase the Devil, on which he vowed to banish Satan to outer space, Romeo enjoyed repeated chart success in Jamaica during his long and varied career. Collaborating with the Rolling Stones in the early 1980s, he later opened a recording studio at his home in the Jamaican countryside, helping a younger generation of artists to come to prominence, including his daughter Xana and son Azizi.
Born Maxwell Smith in 1944 in Alexandria, a hillside hamlet below Browns Town in northern Jamaica, he moved to Kingston at 10 years old to live with his father following his mother’s emigration, but clashed with his stepmother and absconded; moving between the disparate homes of extended family members, he was partly raised by strangers after enduring periods of homelessness. In the rocksteady era he began working as a record salesman for Ken Lack’s Caltone label and made his first set of recordings for the label fronting the Emotions harmony trio, the love song I’ll Buy You a Rainbow reaching the Jamaican Top 10 in March 1967.
His determined courtship of a local girl earned him the nickname Romeo and after the Emotions disbanded, he got his first taste of international fame through the ribald Wet Dream, produced by Bunny Lee, which hit the UK Top 10 in November 1969, despite a BBC ban for its suggestive lyrics. The saucy hit brought Romeo to London for his first overseas performances, including at the Caribbean Music Festival held at the Empire Pool with Desmond Dekker and Johnny Nash, the bulk of Romeo’s innuendo-laden debut album A Dream recorded in London with the Rudies backing band.
Back in Jamaica, Romeo began focusing on social commentary, sometimes setting his lyrics to adapted folk songs or spirituals. Macabee Version referenced his newfound Rastafari faith and Black Equality attacked the Eurocentric mindset of postcolonial Jamaica; Chi Chi Bud used coded metaphors to decry the island’s pervasive inequalities. Appearing on the bandwagons that helped bring Michael Manley of the leftist People’s National party to power in 1972, Romeo recorded songs like Let the Power Fall and Press Along Joshua to signal his support for Manley’s vision, but when change was slow to come after Manley took office, Romeo responded with the critical No Joshua No.
After working on the Revelation Time album with arranger Geoffrey Chung at Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Black Ark studio in 1975, Romeo began working more concertedly with Perry, the single War Ina Babylon attracting Chris Blackwell’s interest; the resultant album of the same name was released by Island Records overseas, introducing Romeo to a broader international audience. The follow-up, Reconstruction, was self-produced, with the censorious Melt Away its most outstanding number, but the album was rapidly deleted after financial disputes and the momentum further interrupted when Romeo moved to New York to star in a musical called Reggae, which flopped at the box office. He was an uncredited backing vocalist on the Rolling Stones’ album Emotional Rescue in 1980 and Keith Richards subsequently appeared on Romeo’s Holding Out My Love To You, a crossover attempt that broadened his fanbase in Japan, but failed to ignite in the US.
I remember him appearing in London in the late 1980s, where he had a galvanising effect on Lee “Scratch” Perry. It was a fallow period for each of them and the meeting sparked a new determination to get back on track. Romeo abandoned the courier service he had run in New York for several years to make ends meet and returned to Jamaica shortly before the sensational success of the Prodigy’s Out Of Space, which sampled Chase the Devil, sparking renewed interest in his work; a decade later, Kanye West mined Chase the Devil for Jay Z’s Lucifer, cementing Romeo’s original in the global consciousness. In the interim, albums for Jah Shaka, Mafia & Fluxy and Mad Professor made him a regular on festival stages throughout Europe and North America; the studio he opened at his home in Treadways, near Linstead, enabled his children to launch their own musical careers.
Max Romeo undertook his final tour in 2023, performing in 56 cities throughout Britian and Europe, shortly after he filed a $15m lawsuit against Universal Music Group and Polygram Publishing for unpaid royalties (the companies later sought to have it dismissed). I remember Max as pragmatic, politically engaged and open minded, a thoughtful person with a strong sense of humour whose obvious intelligence and drive belied a lack of formal education. He is survived by his wife, Charm, and several children.
