Damian ‘Jr Gong’ Marley is part of a new band which includes Rolling Stones heavyweight Mick Jagger.
The news of the new band, called Super Heavy, is all over the Internet, with Rolling Stone Magazine pointing to the significance of the event, saying, “For the first time since the Rolling Stones formed nearly 50 years ago, Mick Jagger is part of a new band.” Super Heavy also includes Dave Stewart, Joss Stone, and Indian film composer A.R. Rahman.
Though the story has just broken, the band has, in fact, been recording for 18 months. Their debut LP is to be released this month. “It’s different from anything else I’ve ever been involved in,” Jagger is quoted as telling Rolling Stone Magazine.
“The music is very wide-ranging – from reggae to ballads to Indian songs in Urdum,” he said.
The article on Rolling Stone Magazine even pointed out that Dave Stewart started the initiative when he called Jagger from his home in Jamaica.
“I live in Lime Hall right above St Ann’s Bay,” says Stewart. “It’s kind of the jungle, and sometimes I’d hear three sound systems all playing different things. I always love that, along with Indian orchestras. I said to Mick, ‘How could we make a fusion?’ We were talking about an experiment, and then we started talking about voices. It was all born from that conversation.”
Musical fusion
Jagger is said to have loved the idea and the two finally settled on Stone, A.R. Rahman and Marley – whose rhythm section helped flesh out the band.
“We wanted a convergence of different musical styles,” Jagger told Rolling Stone Magazine.
“We were always overlapping styles, but they were nevertheless separate.”
The band started from scratch, without any music in a Los Angeles studio, according to Rolling Stone. “We didn’t know what the hell we were doing,” says Stewart. “We were just jamming and making a noise. It was like when a band first starts up in your garage. Sometimes Damian would kick it off and then Joss would sing something on top of it. We might have a 22-minute jam, and it would become a six-minute song.”
“One of the beauties is that, just speaking as a vocalist, I did other things,” Jagger says. “I played guitar and harmonica, but there’s four vocalists on the album. Not everything was reliant on me.” The band’s name came from some improvised vocals by Marley. “He was just singing ‘Heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, super heavy’,” says Stewart. “We thought that sounded good and it sort of stuck with us.”
Jagger is confident that Stones fans will embrace the group. “It is a different kind of record than what people would expect,” he says. “It’s not all weird and strange though. I think Stones fans will think it’s a bit odd, but they’ll find most of it accessible. They’ve heard me play harmonica before and a lot of it is pretty high energy.”
As of now, there are no plans to bring Super Heavy on the road. “We’re experimenting at the moment and just taking it day by day,” says Stewart. “I think if we’re rehearsing and it sounds great and people love the idea, then nobody would rule out the possibility of it.”
