Mal Peachey - There and Black Again: Don Letts

When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination.

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

If you have no reason for living/dont determine my life

Dr Alimantado, Born For A Purpose (1977)

Interior. Day. A domestic kitchen in West London. Through large glass doors and windows, a long London garden with a tree to the left, a small patio and a snaking path leads to a home office structure of wood and glass. The sky is an indeterminate colour somewhere between teal and grey. Inside the kitchen two men sit opposite one another. One at a table pushed against the right-hand wall, the other on a deep couch that takes up the left side of the extension. Pan around to show a family kitchen; we see smart grey cupboards, worktops, hob, sink, and door into the rest of the house. Pass over a fridge with various photos and kids drawings fixed to it, linger for a couple of seconds on a pillar so we can make out lines marking the heights of two children showing their progress from toddlers through to late teenage.

The men are talking.

M: So how are we going to start this book, Don?

D: Dont these things usually begin at the beginning, Mal? Or with some major event in the life of the author?

M: You mean like in a great film noir?

D: Yeah I walk into your office and say, I want to report a murder, and you ask whose. To which I reply, Mine!

M: Or we open on a body in the foreground of the shot, a knife sticking out of her back its always a female victim and you waking up beside her, with blood on your hands, looking horrified as you realise the spot youre in.

D: Except I havent killed anyone or been accused of it. Ive been accused of a lot of things, but murder aint one of them.

M: So, what dramatic event from your life should we tease the reader with?

D: It should probably involve someone famous, shouldnt it? How about sitting with Joe Strummer feet away from Alexandra Palace as it burned down in 1979, passing a joint and wondering what had happened?

M: Do you want to begin with The Clash, though? Seems to me that too many people associate you with them, when youve done a lot more work that doesnt involve Joe, Paul or even Mick.

D: How about the story of the photo that Rocco took, and Paul Simonon put on the cover of Black Market Clash, me against hundreds of coppers at the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival riot? Thats the image of me that everyone knows.

M: Yes, and youve told that story too many times. Everyone knows that the angle the photo is taken from is telling an untrue story, that youre actually heading away from them and the fight, toward safety in a friends place up the road.

Portobello Road, 1976, at the Carnival.

ROCCO MACAULEY

D: But thats it, though. My story as were putting it down isnt anyones truth but mine, its what I made of a life, remembered as hazily as I can. Other people see me, a Black man, in situations and places where their prejudices and preconceived ideas cant quite make sense of it.

M: Like the way Bob Marley couldnt help but have a go at you for wearing bondage strides in 1977, or that MTV executive who embarrassed himself having to tell you that they didnt know you were Black.

D: Yep, and the Jamaican customs officer who had to be relieved of his post because he couldnt get how I was the boss of a white documentary crew and that wasnt too long ago. Ive had to deal with other peoples idea of who I am while trying to be me, as the real me watches on. How many points of view is that?

M: Edith Sitwell wrote in one of her biographies there is no truth, only points of view, and the thing is that you, Don Letts, have been the focal point of a lot of different peoples points of view, written into their autobiographies as who they thought you were. Chrissie Hynde, John Lydon and even your brother Desmond have written about a Don Letts who, I have to say, I dont fully recognise. Do you?

D: I recognise the times, the places and events, but not in exactly the same way as they do. Im sure what theyve written is how they remember it, and its their point of view. Ive learned to do that out of necessity. Even today, if Im talking to someone about work, especially if its a younger white guy, I have to be careful about what I say, to make sure that I word things so that they can repeat it back to me in a couple of minutes as if its their idea.

M: Do we start there, then? How the fuck do you manage it?

D: Herb. Its part of my survival kit; it helps defend against people whore insensitive, racist or downright insulting. It can annoy white people that I know more about their culture than they do, and way more about my own, of course. I have to self-censor so as not to appear to be too smart. Which is boring.

M: But all those documentaries that youve made about white youth culture skinheads, punks, mods are all proof that you have a deep and wide-ranging knowledge of their culture. Surely people understand that?

D: Yeah, but remember that after more than forty years of making films about youth culture Im the man they thought of as Britains only Black video director. Not that I ever planned it to be that way, and this book should show that nothing I ever did was premeditated. I was never content to do what I was supposed to. Society made me the way I am because it was always telling me I couldnt do something, and I took that as a challenge, I had to prove them wrong. I became the Don Letts that people see in public because of the cultural climate I existed in. I always had to watch myself being that Don Letts the video director, or that Don Letts the pop star, the DJ. You could say that Ive directed my own biopic without a script, criticising things Ive done after the fact and dealing with it in my own head as best I can. Ive compiled my own soundtrack from stuff that Ive heard and loved throughout the past sixty-four years regardless of where it came from and whether I should be into it or not.

M: A biopic. Theres an idea how about we set this out as if its the basis for a biopic? Start each chapter with a scene in which we reimagine the place, people and conversations that went on at different times in your life? We can move the narrative on in a filmic way.

D: Theres no way I can remember conversations Ive had with people over the years.

M: Of course you cant who can? But that doesnt matter, because this is your story, your point of view of the truth, right?

D: Yknow what? Fuck the truth, Im an artist.

M: So, lets start this story at the beginning, setting the scene for Don Letts the director to show us Don Letts the child

Interior. Night. A cramped kitchen in a terraced house in Brixton, London, 1960. A well-scrubbed wooden table for four is pushed against a wall adjacent to the door, which is not quite closed. A Blue Spot gramophone has pride of place against one wall. Two men in white shirts, no ties, woollen trousers and dark brogue shoes, and two women in shift dresses of bright colours, their hair teased into beehives, their feet in sharply pointed stiletto-heeled shoes, stand laughing in the cramped space between the sink, a mangle and the table. Theyre aged somewhere in the early to mid-thirties. Just outside the door, peering through the crack between jamb and door, is a small boy in his pyjamas.