The DJ Who Had No Punk Records
In January 1977, Don Letts took a DJ residency at the Roxy, a punk club at 41–43 Neal Street in London’s Covent Garden. The problem: almost no British punk records existed yet. Letts, a first-generation British Rastafarian who managed the punk haberdashery Acme Attractions on King’s Road, played what he had. Heavy dub. Roots reggae. Lee Perry. Big Youth. Between the furious live sets by the Clash and the Damned, he filled the room with Jamaican bass music. The punks loved it. Two outsider cultures, both rooted in working-class rebellion, recognized each other instantly.
The Clash acted first. Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon had witnessed the Notting Hill Carnival riots of August 1976, which pushed them toward Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves, produced by Lee “Scratch” Perry at his Black Ark studio with Boris Gardiner on bass and Sly Dunbar on drums. The Clash covered it on their 1977 debut, stretching three minutes to six. Perry called it a ruin of his work but collaborated with them later anyway. By June 1978, the Clash released (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais, which AllMusic’s Denise Sullivan called possibly “the first song to merge punk and reggae.” The template crystallized: ska-inflected verse on the offbeat, hard punk chorus on the beat.
Three Chords and a Skank
The Police formed in 1977, though their roots ran deeper than punk. Drummer Stewart Copeland came from progressive rock group Curved Air; guitarist Andy Summers was a veteran of 1960s R&B outfits. Sting, a former schoolteacher from Wallsend, conceived Roxanne as a bossa nova. They recorded it at Surrey Sound Studios in Leatherhead, a converted community hall where brothers Nigel and Chris Gray ran a 16-track Alice desk and an Ampex MM1000, on secondhand tape from manager Miles Copeland’s garage. In the session, Copeland shifted the snare to the offbeat; Summers played four-in-the-bar chords while Sting rearranged his bass accents. Outlandos d’Amour (1978) established the formula: reggae verses providing tension, rock choruses delivering release.
The Clash pushed further. Sandinista! (1980) sprawled across 36 tracks on six sides, recorded partly at Channel One Studios in Kingston with engineer Lancelot “Maxie” McKenzie and dub versions by Mikey Dread.
Hardcore Meets Jah
In Washington, D.C., Bad Brains began in 1976 as Mind Power, a jazz fusion outfit modeled on Return to Forever. Bassist Darryl Jenifer, guitarist Dr. Know, drummer Earl Hudson, and vocalist H.R. pivoted to hardcore after discovering the Ramones, taking their new name from the Ramones song “Bad Brain.” Then they saw Bob Marley live. H.R. and Hudson embraced Rastafari, and the band began alternating between blistering hardcore and meditative reggae, sometimes within a single song.
Their self-titled debut, released on ROIR in February 1982 as a cassette-only release (fans called it “The Yellow Tape”), captured both sides raw. Ric Ocasek of the Cars produced Rock for Light (1983) at Synchro Sound Studios in Boston, personally supplying amplifiers after the band’s gear was stolen. By the I Against I era (1986, SST Records), tensions between Dr. Know’s pull toward heavy rock and H.R.’s devotion to reggae split the group. A 1987 live recording from the Paradiso in Amsterdam caught both impulses at their peak, but H.R. quit shortly after.
In Los Angeles, Fishbone formed in 1979 at El Camino Real High School. Six Black teenagers, led by vocalist/saxophonist Angelo Moore and bassist John Norwood Fisher, welded ska, punk, funk, metal, and reggae into a single hyperkinetic act. Truth and Soul (1988) proved genre fusion did not require choosing sides.
Long Beach and the California Blueprint
Bradley Nowell, born February 22, 1968, in Belmont Shore, Long Beach, met bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh at Cal State Long Beach and introduced them to reggae; both had listened exclusively to punk. Sublime’s first show was July 4, 1988, on the Long Beach Peninsula. Their debut, 40oz. to Freedom (1992), was recorded partly by breaking into studios at Cal State Dominguez Hills after hours and partly at Mambo Studios, sneaking in at 9:30 p.m. and hiding from security guards until 5 a.m. Nowell estimated they got $30,000 of studio time for free. Released on the band’s own Skunk Records, it sold 60,000 copies on word of mouth alone.
In Ocean Beach, San Diego, Miles Doughty and Kyle McDonald formed Slightly Stoopid in 1994. Nowell discovered them by accident: staying at Doughty’s mother’s house during drug rehabilitation, he woke to hear the band rehearsing in the garage. He signed them to Skunk Records in 1995 and sent them to record at Sublime’s Fake Nightclub studio with co-founder Miguel Happoldt. Slightly Stoopid’s debut arrived months after Nowell died of a heroin overdose on May 25, 1996, in a San Francisco hotel room. He was 28. Sublime’s posthumous self-titled album reached the Billboard Top 20; What I Got hit number one on the Modern Rock chart. The record eventually sold over five million copies.
The Cali Reggae Boom
From Omaha, Nebraska, 311 had been building their own fusion since 1988. Nick Hexum, Tim Mahoney, Chad Sexton, P-Nut, and SA Martinez played their first gig opening for Fugazi on June 10, 1990. Their self-titled 1995 album went triple platinum on the strength of Down and All Mixed Up, reaching number 12 on the Billboard 200, proving reggae rock could sell in Middle America without a beach in sight.
The Vans Warped Tour (1995–2019) became the genre’s traveling incubator. Pepper, formed in 1997 in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, by Kaleo Wassman, Bret Bollinger, and Yesod Williams, earned a 2001 Warped slot on one condition: they had to build and tear down the Volcom Stage every day, in every city. They did it.
By the mid-2000s, a wave emerged from the UC system. Rebelution formed in 2004 in Isla Vista, adjacent to UC Santa Barbara; their debut Courage to Grow (2007) hit number four on Billboard’s Reggae Albums chart. Iration, whose members grew up together in Hawaii before reuniting at UCSB, topped the same chart with No Time for Rest (2007). The Dirty Heads, from Huntington Beach, collaborated with Rome Ramirez on Lay Me Down, which hit number one on Billboard’s Alternative Songs in 2010 and set a record for the longest run atop that chart by an independent release.
On the East Coast, SOJA had been building since 1997 in Arlington, Virginia. Vocalist Jacob Hemphill and bassist Bob Jefferson met in first grade, shortly after Hemphill’s family returned from Liberia, where his father served as the IMF representative. In April 2022, Beauty in the Silence won the Grammy for Best Reggae Album, making SOJA the first American reggae rock group to take that prize.
Essential Listening
- The Clash – London Calling (1979)
- The Police – Reggatta de Blanc (1979)
- Bad Brains – Bad Brains (1982)
- Bad Brains – Rock for Light (1983)
- Fishbone – Truth and Soul (1988)
- Sublime – 40oz. to Freedom (1992)
- Sublime – Sublime (1996)
- 311 – 311 (1995)
- Slightly Stoopid – Closer to the Sun (2005)
- Rebelution – Courage to Grow (2007)
- SOJA – Strength to Survive (2012)
- Pepper – Kona Town (2002)