In 1976, only British pop fans with long memories had heard of reggae singer Max Romeo. If the BBC had had its way, they would not have heard him at all. Banned from broadcast, Romeo’s ‟Wet Dream” was a number 10 hit in 1969 on the strength of word-of-mouth ‟promotion” and skinheads spinning it on the church youth club Dansette while the vicar was out of earshot. His hit was, in reggae parlance, ‟slack”, meaning it was innuendo-strewn or explicitly sexual.
This type of song had entertained Caribbean audiences since before reggae existed, and the wry, innocent-sounding way Romeo delivered his ditty owed something to the occasionally lewd calypsonians of the 1950s. But through the 1970s, the tone of Romeo’s records shifted from satyric to satirical, and many were driven by a crusading anger. One such was ‟Chase the Devil”, which found the singer declaring war on Lucifer, ready to ‟put on an iron shirt and chase the Devil out of Earth” and ‟send him to outer space”.
Island records released ‟Chase the Devil” on Romeo’s War Ina Babylon in 1976, and kept this classic album on catalogue for years. Reggae aficionados were aware that Romeo (born Maxwell Smith) was no longer a purveyor of slackness, but his original fans might have been surprised by the craft and observation within the songs. ‟Chase the Devil” was issued as a single. Its roots message took decades to disseminate, but it eventually reached eager ears far beyond reggae’s heartlands.
As is the way in reggae, the song’s producer and co-writer, Lee Perry, released several other records on the same churning backing track or ‟rhythm”. These included ‟Croaking Lizard” on his dub album Super Ape, featuring rhymes from talking artist Prince Jazzbo, and a new composition from Perry himself, ‟Disco Devil” (1977), attacking what he saw as an invasion of disco and cocaine into Jamaica’s musical culture, which included the lines, ‟Give it to the Pope, make him take the dope”. (The Vatican was regarded as an enemy of Rastafarianism due to Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, which forced Emperor Haile Selassie, the religion’s ‟living God”, into exile.) Some of Romeo’s original vocal lingered in ‟Disco Devil”, a holy ghost behind Perry’s wild rant. That year a French singer, Doudou, covered ‟Chase the Devil” as ‟Vanille Chocolat Reggae”, ignoring the song’s message.
By 1981, reggae’s mainstream was shifting towards dancehall but ‟Chase the Devil” continued its crusade elsewhere. In 1992 dance music stars The Prodigy sampled the track for their fourth single ‟Out of Space”, and Romeo’s voice graced the UK charts for the first time since 1969 when it hit number five. Their head-rush of a tune, suggesting a rise to warp speed emphasised by its use of another accelerated sample, Ultramagnetic MCs’ ‟Critical Beatdown”, somehow seemed to boost Romeo’s message. Boiled down to a few lines, his sermon appeared to be emanating from the cosmos, full of righteous ire. ‟Out of Space” became a dancefloor anthem, and anonymous bootleg 12-inch singles restored all of ‟Chase the Devil” and segued it into The Prodigy’s record.
Further samples followed. German DJ Mellow Trax’s ‟Outa Space” was a hit in several European countries in 1999. Jay-Z and producer Kanye West took its opening line for “Lucifer”on The Black Album (2003), and Madness covered ‟Chase the Devil” on The Dangermen Sessions Vol. 1 two years later. The song featured in two Grand Theft Auto editions and the sci-fi comedy movie Paul. Dreadzone snipped off a patch of “Chase the Devil” for ‟Iron Shirt” (2006) and dubstep artist Coki used the song on ‟Lucifer” in 2011. Reggae returned to ‟Chase the Devil” in 2008 thanks to a cover by Earl 16, further versions by Macka B and Susan Cadogan, plus a dub mix by their producer, Mad Professor.
Romeo says his song was not meant to be taken literally: ‟Chasing the Devil is chasing the negative out of your mind and letting it be controlled by the positive.” The singer claims he should have been better remunerated for his much-sampled classic, but with typically arid wit, told journalist Stephen Cooper, ‟How do you fight the Devil with a lawyer?”
What are your memories of ‘Chase the Devil’? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Charly Records; Mediacom; UMC (Universal Music Catalogue); Trojan Records; XL Recordings; Roadrunner Records; Zeitgeist; Dubwiser Records; Virgin EMI; Ariwa Sounds
Picture credit: Adrian Boot/Urbanimage.tv