Reggae icon Max Romeo leaves behind a lasting legacy

Reggae icon Max Romeo was born Maxwell Livingston Smith on November 22, 1944, in St Ann, and raised in Greenwich Farm since the age of 12. He took an interest in music immediately after leaving school. In fact, it was while living in Clarendon in the early 1960s, that he got the motivation to record professionally. As he told The Gleaner in a 2005 article:

“I was living in Clarendon, in Vere. I was standing on the corner, and this van was travelling advertising a talent show. A friend of mine asked me why don’t you enter. I tried and I came out on top. I did over a Bob Day song, Rockin’ Robin; that’s what tore the house down. That motivated me to pursue my career.”

Soon after, he moved to Kingston. By 1967, he was working at Kenlac Agencies as a handyman/semi-security guard until the company’s owner, Calnek, launched his music label where Max Romeo helped to make deliveries of records for the only group on the label at this time – the Pioneers. It was while here at Calneck that he started to write music for other musicians, but he faced difficulties. As he told The Gleaner in 2009:

“Nobody would sing my songs. They said they were stupid, so I recorded them myself.”

Eventually, Calneck took a liking to his voice and gave Max the chance to record and release his music on the label. Later in 1967, Max released the record that would launch his career, I Will Buy You A Rainbow. The song charted on both the Radio Jamaica (RJR) and Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) charts. He then teamed up with Kenneth Knight and Lloyd Shakespeare to form the group, The Emotions. However, with a handful of songs under their belt, Max Romeo later left the group and pursued a solo career.

Around this time, he adopted the stage name, Max Romeo – an ode to his incident in his earlier youth. As he told t he Gleaner in 2005:

“I have always been the type of guy to write love verses to girls in school. I loved Shakespeare, I loved Romeo and Juliet. But how I got it. I was at the gate talking to this girl from morning to evening. Her father left and saw me there and came back and I was still there. He told me I was a ‘Romeo’. The guys heard and started calling me that.”

Almost a year later in 1969, Max Romeo had his first international hit – Wet Dream. Recorded with Bunny Lee, the song was banned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) soon after it was released. Despite this, however, it charted for 26 weeks on the British charts. Due to the song’s raunchy lyrics, Max Romeo is considered by many music critics as “the original rude boy of reggae”. Propelled by the song’s success, Max Romeo soon released the album, The Dream.

In the years that followed, he continued to record with Bunny Lee where in 1971, he released his next project, Let the Power Fall. The album spawned the hit, Let The Power Fall On I. During the island’s 1972 general election, the People’s National Party (PNP) asked him and eventually was granted permission to use it on their campaign bandwagon. In 1974, another of his songs, Socialism Is Love, also found favour with the party. However, as political turmoil began to plague the island in 1976, Max Romeo was one of the many musicians who released songs reflecting the times. His song, No Joshua No, spoke of his ills with the government. Soon after Romeo left Jamaica for New York due to the song being misinterpreted by both fractions of the island’s political parties. As he told The Gleaner in 1998:

“The song was misinterpreted by both fractions of the political area, I had the PNP on one hand, and the JLP on the other and they were closing in on me ... I got threatened and because of the level of intimidation by people who would have done me harm but are now deceased, I left.”

In the same year, Max Romeo released the Lee Scratch Perry produced album, War Ina Babylon on the Island Records Label. The album which had backing instrumentals from Perry’s band The Upsetters, spawned what is considered the biggest hit of Max Romeo’s career, Chase The Devil. He worked out of the city for 14 years. During this time, he released several albums and embarked on numerous tours. He also continued other writing endeavours. This time, he wrote the music and performed in the musical, Reggae, which ran for seven weeks on Broadway. He also provided backing vocals for the Rolling Stones on their 1980 album, Emotional Rescue. The band’s Keith Richards played on and co-produced several songs on Romeo’s 1981, album Holding Out My Love to You.

By 1990, Max Romeo returned home to Jamaica. As the decade and the new millennium rolled on, he continued to record and perform on local shows. He also embarked on several tours overseas alongside his musician children, Azizzi Romeo and Xana Romeo. During this time, his 1970s hit, Chase The Devil, was sampled on several hit records. In 1992, The Prodigy sampled the track for their track Out of Space, and in 1999, it was sampled on DJ Mellow Trax’s hit track Outa Space. In 2003, the song’s opening line was sampled for Jay-Z’s Lucifer, off his 2003 album, The Black Album. Then, in 2005, Madness covered the song for their album, The Dangermen Sessions Vol. 1. The song was also covered by Earl 16 and Macka B and Susan Cadogan who had a dub version, remixed by Mad Professor. The song has also been featured in the video game, Grand Theft Auto and the film, Paul (2011). Most recently, another of his songs, War Ina Babylon, was featured in the 2018 film, Yardie. However, in 2023, Max Romeo sued Universal Music Group Recordings and Polygram Publishing, Inc. He described that for over 40 years, he has not received any royalties for the use and sample of his music on several projects.

Shortly after he embarked on his final tour. The Ultimate Tour saw him performing in 56 cities in the UK and across Europe with Lutan Fyah and Droop Lion. He was inducted into the Jamaica Music Museum Hall of Fame earlier this year at the Reggae Gold Awards Ceremony.

On April 11, it was announced that Max Romeo had died at a private medical facility in St Andrew from heart complications. He was 80. Since then, there has been an outpouring of love from the entertainment fraternity. In a release sent on Friday, Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, Olivia Grange, called Max Romeo “one of the pioneers of Jamaican music.”

As tributes continue to pour in, many are reflecting on the legacy he leaves behind. Back in 2007, when asked by The Gleaner how he would like to be remembered, Max Romeo simply said:

“As the saddest man who makes the world happy.”

J.T. Davy is a member of Tenement Yaad Media, where she writes and co-produces their popular historical podcast, ‘Lest We Forget’. Send feedback to jordpilot@hotmail.com and entertainment@gleanerjm.com.