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Today is a pretty average day in the life of Barry Ashworth.
Outside his West London home, kids are playing football in
the Victorian terraced street, in much the same way they have
for the last hundred years, burning off steam, boredom. In
his brilliant yellow living room, Barry is sitting on his
party weathered, leather couch, phone in one hand, Marlboro
light in the other, the mirror behind him covered with pictures
of nights out with his friends, happy memories.
In the studio upstairs, programmer Will Hensell is pragmatically
putting touches to a new track. Just back from LA and New
York where he DJed at the MTV awards, Barry’s got a
lot of catching up to do. The people on the phone want to
know whether he can get back to America to work on a soundtrack
with Snoop Doggy Dog. Tonight he plays his regular Wednesday
club night for his label Ugly, at Brixton’s Dogstar
and at some point today he needs to place the records he’s
just picked up in Camden into his set. His table, is overwhelmed
by the tabloids; headlines screaming "Wanted Dead Or
Alive" partially cover the book he picked up in America,
"Killing Pablo" by Mark Boden. We’re at war,
with someone, and Barry is looking for answers but I fear
he senses them already.
The scene was just the same two weeks before but our conversation
has now taken on a completely different twist. We’d
spoken hard and long about his new album, the positively titled,
‘Six Million Ways To Live’ and something struck
me as curious, that now, I’d had to reconsider completely.
An eternal optimist, Barry’s new album with the Dub
Pistols had, I felt, reflected a strange preoccupation with
War. Of the 12 tracks, ten spoke of conflict, war, terrorism,
and disaster. It seemed strange at the time. He said that
he felt this album "was representative of life around
him, you can’t be anything other than the product of
life around you."
Did he genuinely think that conflict took up such a huge proportion
of our existence? "Yes totally, probably more than that.
Then there’s the personal conflict," he jokes –
making the point lighter and heavier at the same time. "I
think everybody is at war. Everyone is in conflict with one
another. You know what people are like, jealousy, greed, everywhere;
power, corruption... There’s never a solution. It never
ends. It can’t ever end can it? Not while there are
human beings on this planet. Not just humans: every single
living thing by definition has to kill, destroy, for it’s
continued existence."
So ‘Six Million Ways To Live" is a soundtrack of
conflict within society from the micro to the macro. A journey
of understanding, the album provides a commentary on the 21st
century world we live in, from racism and religious hatred,
to the threat of global terrorism, armed combat and eventually,
if we all learn to live together, peace. Opening with an exploration
of the origins of the music Barry loves and reflects foremost,
Dub, ‘Soldiers’ is about the wars between soundsystems
"It’s almost as if it were war" comments San
Francisco’s Planet Asia in his intro to the track. "That’s
what soundclashes are all about," explains Barry. "It
happens at Notting Hill Carnival today. Our soundsystem, our
club, our football team – we’re best, our gang."
Today all this sounds strangely prophetic. It was this eternal
battle he found on the streets around him, in the newspapers
and on TV, along with an urbanite’s love of Weller,
the Clash and other people’s poets that crafted this
album. Inspiration has come across era’s as well as
oceans to make this album. One track in particular, ‘Dropping
Bombs On The White House’, an instrumental track on
the Style Council’s 1983 album ‘Cafe Bleu, inspired
Barry. The result, ‘Big World’, has rapper James
?Surname?, from NYC crew Sight Beyond Light, based in Tribeca,
the area just above the World Trade Centre, "Blowin’
up The Whitehouse like I was an alien in Independence Day
‘cos we ain’t seen no liberation". While
on the title track the lyrics delivered by fellow rapper TK
Lawrence become even more poignant.
"Six million ways to live, we live lavish... beyond all
the misery and mathematics ... leaving scratches across the
Atlas... Building above civilians, takes two looks to recognise
the villain, two blinks to make your heart sink..." sounds
today like the soundtrack to the tragedy.
Stranded in LA when the terror struck, Barry was horrified
as his album suddenly seemed to take on an altogether more
sinister identity. "I’d been listening to The Beatles’
‘A Day In The Life’, you know "I’ve
been reading the news today, oh boy" and taking that
idea and putting it into a nutshell. The world’s fucking
nuts. You’re all mad," he explains how he came
to write ‘Crazy’. Horace Andy had to sing the
track. And on a trip to London between New York and Jamaica
he did.
He sings: "Terrorists throughout the land try to make
me understand, making your point by killing an innocent man...
Where you gonna run to, where you gonna hide, the rock and
the hill won’t save you, with all your badness inside."
With Barry Ashworth, Bazza, to his friends, it’s very
hard to know where to start the story. When other kids were
taking lessons he was learning his own. In 1981 during the
Brixton riots, he left Sutton, to prowl the battle-ground
that had been city streets, in awe at the presence of the
police’s armoured vehicles, at the virtual state of
emergency the country imposed. He wanted to see for himself,
to cut through the spin - and hurl abuse at the police.
His memory of these times, sound tracked by The Specials ‘Ghost
Town’, inspired him to ask Terry Hall if he wanted to
collaborate. The result, ‘Problem Is’, is a spectacular
achievement. A natural sequel 20 years on, it lacks none of
the original’s poignant magic and yet epitomises the
Dub Pistols’ sound: dark and deadly bass armed with
a super-resilient, upbeat sensibility. Terry Hall’s
lyrics, once again, were a sign of the times. "The problem
is, the problem is” The future is not what it was.
You kill my cat, I’ll kill your dog". Barry was
"very disappointed" when history repeated itself,
and again race riots blazed up and down the country.
"I was pissed off with other country’s race record
and thought Britain actually did a good job in comparison.
I thought that now all the generations had mixed and everyone
had grown up together that most racism had gone. It was a
real pisser when I was proved wrong."
I doubt whether he is often. A natural for living on his wits,
I also doubt any opportunity has ever passed him by. From
an apprenticeship plastering, with a gift of his Grandfather’s
tools, he kept his eyes and ears to the ground, grafted for
his money and went dancing in Streatham. On Friday’s
at the Ritzy, in the early ‘80s, he’d get together
with lads he grew up with and would later form his first band
Deja Vu, watch Oakie spin Hip-Hop and hang out with schoolmate
Carl Cox. Everything was about to change.
When acid house blew in from the Balearic Isles in the mid-80s
it carried Barry all the way. Life became one long party.
Soon too his professional life started to evolve around his
new passion, using the film studios he now worked in to throw
some of London’s grandest warehouse parties. He couldn’t
get enough. He got involved in one of London’s first
house music shops, kept throwing parties, started releasing
trax under a plethora of aliases and labels, bought a pair
of decks, created Monkey Mafia with Jon Carter and then launched
Dub Pistols. Creating progressive beats that took him throughout
Europe and launched him in America at a time when Big Beat
was all. A vast remix catalogue, including Korn and Bush,
as well as the trailer for the last Austin Powers’ movie
won him a place in the US heartland.
Certainly it’s not the foundation you’d expect
if you’ve just tuned into ‘Six Million Ways To
Live’, and with ‘Point Blank’ his last album,
preoccupied by innercity life, there is no way you would garner
that Barry was one of our premier 24-hour party people. Would
you guess it was the work of a successful club promoter who
gave Darren Emerson his first residency at Naked Lunch? You’d
think he’d spent his life cramming books, a political
analyst who had the wisdom to see what we put to the back
of our minds. Of it’s time. It’s the only way
to express it
Bringing the album to a close with the psychedelic chillout
of ‘Together As One’, a flash-forward from ‘Screamadelica’
era Primal Scream, Barry at least leaves us after reaching
a positive conclusion. Or at least feeling as though "the
sun will come up in the morning!"
Just about to leave, he offers to lend me "Bass Culture:
When Reggae Was King" by Lloyd Bradley, "It’ll
tell you everything you ever needed to know." But aren’t
you in the middle if it? "Yes but I want to finish ‘Pablo’,
I think it might supply some answers." Knowledge, as
they say, is the only real power. Take heed. Listen, learn
and arm yourself. Most importantly, remember there are six
million ways to live your life. Live lavish.
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