Max Romeo

Max Romeo infused rude boy culture with its signature edge, pioneering a fresh reggae offshoot whose boldly suggestive words sparked public backlash yet seized the soundscape anyway. Before his notorious “Wet Dream” appeared, however, the vocalist had already collected a run of tender successes alongside the vocal trio the Emotions. Once that late-night mischief subsided, he solidified his place among the roots movement’s pivotal voices.

Born Max Smith on November 22, 1947, in St D’Acre, St. Ann, Jamaica, the future singer faced bleak early prospects. At fourteen he abandoned home for grueling work clearing irrigation ditches on a sugar plantation, a path that might have defined his life had he not triumphed in a neighborhood talent contest. Filled with youthful ambition, the eighteen-year-old headed to Kingston intent on stardom. There he joined forces with Kenneth Knight and Lloyd Shakespeare, forming the Emotions. Their 1966 debut “(Buy You) A Rainbow,” helmed by producer Ken Lack, scored an instant hit, and the group followed with a strong succession of singles over the next two years.

Confident enough to strike out alone in 1968, the singer—now known as Max Romeo—teamed with Bunny Lee for several romantic ballads and lighthearted tracks that failed to register on the charts. He briefly rejoined the Emotions, simultaneously assembled the Hippy Boys (a unit that later became the Upsetters), and took a sales-representative post with Lee Perry. Later that year Romeo reworked the rhythm of Derrick Morgan’s “Hold You Jack,” adding fresh lyrics that he passed to Lee Perry. Morgan and other vocalists declined the session, leaving an exasperated Perry to press Romeo himself behind the microphone.

The resulting “Wet Dream” exploded across Jamaica, even though suggestive lyrics were hardly novel on the island. Its meaning proved unusually transparent, however, and British listeners grasped it without difficulty. The single climbed the U.K. charts despite radio silence; censors dismissed Romeo’s claim that it concerned a leaking roof and banned the track, an action that paradoxically propelled it into the Top Ten.

A wave of similarly suggestive follow-ups flooded the market, including Romeo’s own 1970 album A Dream. In Britain the trend fueled the rise of homegrown artist Judge Dread and his string of cheeky nursery-rhyme hits. Back in Jamaica, Romeo launched his short-lived Romax label and sound system in 1970. The venture collapsed, prompting a return to Bunny Lee the next year for a series of singles built on the producer’s classic rocksteady rhythms. Among them, “Watch This Sound” married a rocksteady backing to Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” Additional sessions with Winston Riley, Sonia Pottinger, and Alvin Ranglin yielded culturally charged material that signaled Romeo’s shift toward roots. Some of the strongest cuts emerged with Niney Holness: “Beardman Feast,” “The Coming of Jah,” and the apocalyptic “Babylon Burning,” co-written with Lee Perry.

Rastafarian expectations of impending upheaval gripped Jamaica ahead of the 1972 election. Political violence, always part of island democracy, intensified as the ruling Jamaica Labour Party confronted its first serious challenge from the socialist People’s National Party. Street clashes erupted; urban poor and Rastafarians rallied to the PNP, while artists signaled allegiance through Old Testament imagery. Michael Manley appeared as the biblical “Joshua,” while JLP Prime Minister Harry Shearer was cast as antagonist.

An ardent PNP supporter, Romeo issued several political sides, among them “Press Along Joshua” and “Pharaoh.” His cover of the Rastafarian spiritual “Let the Power Fall on I,” produced by Derrick Morgan, proved most influential; the PNP adopted it as its campaign anthem, and Romeo joined Bob Marley and other performers on the hustings. The 1972 album Let the Power Fall compiled these tracks. After the PNP’s landslide victory, Romeo released “No Joshua No,” an open letter gently rebuking Manley over the ongoing hardships of the poor. The prime minister responded with sweeping social programs and land reform.

Romeo then withdrew from politics to concentrate on devotional songs. Revelation Time (1975) gathered many of the dread and gospel-infused singles he had recorded with assorted producers. Economic fallout from the global oil crisis and another looming election again drew him into political awareness. The January 1976 IMF conference in Kingston ignited riots that persisted throughout a year of turmoil; JLP agitators sought to render the capital, and the island, ungovernable. Only after the PNP’s decisive re-election did the violence subside. During this period Romeo issued a series of seminal singles shaped by Lee Perry’s deep-roots production: the blazing “Sipple out Deh,” the reflective “One Step Forward,” the stepper classic “Chase the Devil,” and the revolutionary nursery rhyme “Three Blind Mice.”

Island Records signed him and retitled “Sipple out Deh” as “War in a Babylon” for the U.K. market. The single resonated in Britain amid its own political unrest and lent its name to Romeo’s acclaimed album, widely regarded as the pinnacle of both his career and Perry’s production legacy. The partnership ended abruptly, however, and the self-produced follow-up Reconstruction suffered by comparison. Feeling adrift without Perry, Romeo relocated to the United States in 1978.

Settling in New York City, he co-wrote and starred in the Broadway musical Reggae, though the production enjoyed only a brief run. The Rolling Stones welcomed him, and he contributed backing vocals to “Dancing” on Emotional Rescue. In 1981 Keith Richards co-produced Holding Out My Love to You, with Sly & Robbie supplying the rhythms. The set improved on the earlier I Love My Music (1979) and Rondos (1980), yet lacked the caliber of War ina Babylon. His strongest release of the decade proved to be the 1984 split album Max Romeo Meets Owen Gray at King Tubby’s Studio, drawn from Bunny Lee productions recorded a decade earlier.

Thereafter Romeo receded from view. Reluctant to return to a Jamaica now under JLP control following the bloody 1980 election that claimed nearly seven hundred lives, he issued only two more albums before decade’s end, both produced by Lloyd Barnes and both commercially overlooked.

By the late ’80s, roots music resurfaced within a dancehall framework. Romeo moved back to Jamaica in 1990 and resumed regular touring. His visibility rose with the U.K. compilation The Many Moods of Max Romeo, spanning 1967–1971. During a subsequent British visit he connected with Jah Shaka, whose sound system had sustained roots in the U.K. Jah Shaka’s production style remained rooted in steppers rhythms, precisely the approach Romeo sought. Their collaborations yielded Fari Captain of My Ship and Our Rights, both issued in 1992 and widely viewed as a return to form.

Cross or the Gun (1995), produced by Tapper Zukie, surpassed them; Zukie’s grasp of contemporary rhythms gave the album a modern edge while preserving its roots foundation. Mafia & Fluxy’s electronic aesthetic shaped Selassie I Forever (1999), a partnership that succeeded despite initial doubts. Pray for Me: The Best of 1967–1973 appeared the following year. Later highlights include the conceptual Perilous Time (2001), the tribute set Sings Hits of Bob Marley (2006), and Horror Zone (2016), which reunited Romeo with Lee “Scratch” Perry.