Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry: a limitless genius who took Jamaica into the future

“Until reggae it was all Kingston … Kingston, Kingston, Kingston! Ska? … Rocksteady? … they were Kingston things with the same Kingston men doing the same Kingston things.”

Lee “Scratch” Perry – who has died aged 85 – was talking me through perhaps the most significant gear change in the earlier years of Jamaican music – and was understandably animated, even by his own hyperactive standards.

His statement sums up so much of what made his music so special. “It was when the country people come to town and bring with them the earth, the trees, the mountains – that’s? Sometimes it takes a madman, because these madmen can’t play the same thing the same way because it don’t mean nothing to them.”