The first big international hit was Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop (1964), which you can hear at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSM9N... I found that his glowing description of Tom Waits, whom I’ve never had a taste for, (combined with a friends recent accolades shared on Facebook) has convinced me to give ol’ Tom a second chance.

GROSS: You were close with Bob Marley until he died of cancer in the early '80s. And he had written a song toward the end called "Redemption Song" that he played for you. And you convinced him to just do it solo, just voice and his guitar. Why did you want him to record it that way? GROSS: So you got your start in music scouting records for jukeboxes, and at one time you were responsible for 63 jukeboxes in Jamaica. And for people who are too young to remember jukeboxes, you'd put in a coin or two and choose the record you wanted to hear, and the record would play. What was the importance of jukeboxes in Jamaica at the time you were filling the jukeboxes? Island Records would eventually occupy an illustrious and lucrative space between an independent and a major label, signing Bob Marley, Grace Jones, Cat Stevens, U2, Roxy Music and Tom Waits, to mention just a tiny few. He had just as strong a feeling about U2, though their music didn’t speak to him personally. “I’m more bass and drums oriented and they were more high-frequency,” he said. “But I knew they would make it. All of them are really smart. And they were blessed with having a really good manager. A lot of people who manage bands are not really competent to do anything. But their manager was serious.”

OVERALL IMPRESSION: Fascinating. So many musicians and bands! Some familiar, if only by name; and some not. Chris’s descriptions of the people, the music, and the moods had me spellbound. The Jamaican-born former model Grace Jones, whom he met in New York, is another of his favourites. He built the world-renowned Compass Studios in the Bahamas in the early 80s and this became where Jones recorded her excellent Warm Leatherette album and a couple of follow-ups with the super session band featuring the rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. GROSS: So "Joshua Tree" was a huge success. U2 was a huge success. But the success kind of led to some financial problem indirectly for Island Records because you had taken some money and invested it in your film company, and then you ended up owing U2 an enormous amount of money in royalties 'cause their music was doing so well. So it's like an example in the music industry or in the entertainment industry how success can sometimes cause problems (laughter) for the label. So how did you end up working that out? 'Cause you didn't have the money to pay the royalties. If you want to know about Bob there are many better tomes, not least Marlon James' History of Seven Killings . BOB MARLEY (MUSICAL ARTIST): (Singing) Get up, stand up. Stand up for your right. Get up, stand up. Stand up for your right. Get up, stand up.

But if you were there, you will enjoy getting an inside peek at the creation and workings of Island. And remember when a gig at the label was your heart’s desire. Just to be closer to the music.So we've been talking mostly about the Jamaican music that you produced. But after moving to England, you produced a lot of British performers, and one of the groups you produced was U2. And you were unimpressed with them the first time you heard them on record - on a tape, and then you heard them in person and signed them. What made you so enthusiastic after being not so much? When this was suggested with Bill Nighy reading it was a no brainer, yet he was languid leaning to bored and his pronunciation made me think he had never been to Scotland far less Jamaica.

Yet then there’s the reference to buying property whenever he had a win. Well, how much money did Chris take out of Island? WHO KNOWS! GROSS: Oh, and you describe it - that it was, like, very competitive because each person who had a sound system wanted to have great music that no one else had. So you'd scout records, including in the U.S., and then scrape off the label so that no one could figure out what it was so that they couldn't find it.

But this was a different Chris, a svengali, like Clive, and he realized that was a fool’s errand, better to focus on the music than the image, because the hit singles business was always an uphill climb. SELECTED: Don learned that Bill Nighy had narrated an Edgar Allan Poe book (The Dupin Mysteries) which I couldn’t find on the library’s Libby app for audiobooks. If it wasn’t on Libby, then we’d need to use one of our Audible Credits for it, so Don got the inspiration that, just because Bill is a fantastic actor, doesn’t mean he’s a fantastic narrator, so perhaps we should listen to something else he’s narrated that Libby DOES have. This was one of the results from my Bill Nighy search. 😊 GROSS: Well, let's hear the version that you produced with Wayne Perkins on guitar. And this is Bob Marley and the Wailers, "Concrete Jungle." Predictably, given my age and musical tastes, this was a great read. I particularly enjoyed the first part, as it related the early years of Island Records, the time when I was most switched on to popular music. I can remember singing along to ‘My Boy Lollipop’ in an Irish cinema - probably one of the last to put the lyrics up on a screen and encourage the audience to join in. I can remember dancing madly to Free’s ‘All Right Now’ in 1970. Traffic, Stevie Winwood, Procul Harum, the Spencer Davis Group....the list goes on. And then Bob Marley and the Wailers.... GROSS: Well, I will tell you before we hear this record that I used to do, I think, a not half-bad Millie Small impression.