"Lee 'Scratch' Perry - Encounters with The Upsetter
A life between fire, smoke and the magic of dub - my encounters with Lee "Scratch" Perry. Text Pit Buehler, 2025, Pictures Pit Buehler, 2012-2021
The first time our paths crossed was by chance in the alleyways of Einsiedeln, a small village in Switzerland. It was in 2010 and he was a bizarre figure, a colorful bird: he was pulling a cart full of CDs, figurines, hats, lion flags, Rasta colors and other accessories behind him - everything was rattling around. No one was surprised. In Einsiedeln, Lee "Scratch" Perry had long been a town original. I watched him with fascination, unaware that years later I would experience him with a completely different intensity.
A few months later, a friend told me about the legend of Lee "Scratch" Perry, so I wrote him a message to see if he would be interested in working with me. I didn't hear anything for a long time until his wife Mireille finally got in touch. She invited me to her house. As soon as I entered, it was clear to me that there was no everyday life or routine here, but a mixture of creative workshop, stage, music laboratory, living room and sweet smell.
Lee didn't keep me waiting long. A small, likeable man, dressed like a bird of paradise, with a homemade baseball cap full of symbols and artifacts on his head. He was bubbling over with ideas, full of energy - sometimes ingenious, sometimes crazy, sometimes just a host. Charming and friendly, and the next moment eccentric and unpredictable. A grotesque, almost childish gesture could be just as much a part of his cosmos as a sudden radicalism: unrestrained, illogical and for that very reason consistent.
We sat together in Lee's conservatory, a huge indoor greenhouse full of exotic plants and atmospheric accessories. While he poured me a glass of red wine, he rolled a joint with relish and blew the smoke towards me. That's when the first pictures were taken - pictures that were later shown at exhibitions and won international awards. It's a good thing that no one stopped me on the way home, because the sweet fog of his hospitality would certainly have raised questions.
I brought props with me for our photo shoots - a statue of Jesus, for example, which fitted in wonderfully with his collection of bizarre objects. In the end, it had disappeared, mysteriously absorbed into his universe. Another experience was the session with a candle: a fantastic idea, aesthetically overwhelming. But only a few days later, Mireille contacted him: Lee had set fire to his studio with it. This time it wasn't intentional, but the scene was reminiscent of earlier episodes. He had already burnt down the legendary Black Ark Studio in Kingston, where he produced Bob Marley and countless others, with his own hands. For him, this was not an act of destruction, but of purification: bad vibes could only be driven out by fire.
He transformed himself at every shoot. He staged himself, changing subjects and gestures so quickly that I could only capture a fraction of it. It was performance art in its purest form - fleeting, exuberant. It was in these moments that he seemed most alive.
And so, over the years, very different recordings were made. Lee was open to everything, had his own ideas and staged himself tirelessly. Often everything seemed clear to him, even if I sometimes didn't understand what his crazy and sometimes bizarre accessories and symbols were all about and what he wanted to express with them.
Lee "Scratch" Perry used a variety of symbols in his art and music, inspired by his Rastafarian religion, his love of nature and his interest in mysticism and cosmology. Haile Selassie, the Black Madonna, animals and nature creatures appeared again and again - signs of his spiritual convictions and his search for a counter-world to "Babylon". For Perry, Haile Selassie, whom he welcomed to Jamaica in 1966, was not just an emperor, but a divine incarnation.
But despite all his creativity, he was also curious about my input. He was happy to hear my suggestions and even got excited when I threw colored powder at him during a shoot. His two sons assisted me - and Lee insisted that they had to pose and be staged from time to time.
I also experienced him at concerts. His voice had become brittle over the years, no longer as powerful, but he sang with joy and authenticity. Nothing about it seemed artificial. He was present, an original, completely himself.
A small world existed around him that brought everyday life back into the picture: filmmaker, an assistant, the housekeeper, his wife Mireille - talkative, spirited, charismatic and, since the late 1980s, his partner and manager. The Zurich woman, whom he once met at a concert and married at the Krishna Temple in Zurich in the early 1990s, was previously a dominatrix and reggae record saleswoman - and became Perry's manager, support and co-creator of his later life. They have two children together, plus four more from previous relationships. A perfectly normal family - and yet at the same time the epicenter of an artist who oscillated incessantly between genius and madness.
When the news of Lee's death reached me, I was left with pictures that were used for magazines and PR, a few signed prints, a book project. For me, however, what remains are memories of encounters with a person who was everything at the same time: friendly, chaotic and precise, host and prophet, child and genius - a free spirit, a source of inspiration. An artist whose personality influenced musicians such as Adrian Sherwood, the Beastie Boys and The Orb - and who created songs with Bob Marley and the Wailers in his Black Ark Studio that made Marley an international star.
With him disappeared one of the last voices of the generation that brought reggae and dub from the Caribbean to the world. But The Upsetter remained until the end what his name promised: a troublemaker who overturned everything that existed, and at the same time an alchemist who loved fire in order to create new music, new images and new myths from the ashes.
He died in Jamaica in August 2021 at the age of 85. The world will sorely miss him because he reminded us that art only comes to life when it breaks the rules.
