Original subtitles

(Low reverberating note)

(Don Letts) Punk rock is the spirit that can inform whatever you do.

(♪ "God Save the Queen", The Clash)

It's about how you do what you do.

Being prepared to turn left when everyone else is going right.

(9 "White Man", The Clash)

Not taking anything at face value.

Punk rock gives you the license to be all you can be.

(I "Beaming", Roots Radics')

It's about turning problems into assets.

And as a first generation British born black,

that's something I know a lot about.

(♪ "London Calling", The Clash)

♪ London calling to the faraway towns

♪ Now war is declared and battle come down

♪ London calling to the underworld

♪ Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls

♪ London calling, now don't look to us

♪ Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust

♪ London calling, see we ain't got no swing

♪ Except for the ring of the truncheon thing

♪ The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in

♪ Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin

♪ Engines stop running, but I have no fear

♪ 'Cause London is drowning I live by the river

♪ London calling to the imitation zone

♪ Forget it, brother, you can go it alone

♪ London calling to the zombies of death

♪ Quit holding out and draw another breath

♪ The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in

♪ Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin

♪ A nuclear era, but I have no fear

♪ 'Cause London is drowning I, I live by the river

♪ London calling

♪ I never felt so much alike, alike, alike, alike... ♪

I grew up in a two up, two down in Brixton.

Brixton was kind of cool back then. We had an attitude. We had a look.

(8 "Lord Deliver Us", Alton Ellis)

(Don Letts) Brixton in the early "70s was like little Jamaica.

You're walking down Railton Road,

which is the main drag through the area

and there's Rasta brethren on the street, there's people selling...

The record shop where you go every Friday night

with your hard-earned money or your dole money

and try and buy the latest releases.

And it was just a tremendous sense of community, no racial tension.

None of that. Left to our own devices,

this kind of multicultural combination of misfits kind of got on.

(Desmond Coy) And I mean, racism, it was there.

You see the thing on the walls, you know, "wogs go home"

or what's the other one? The National Front stuff. NF things.

We knew it was there, but we didn't really check it.

It certainly didn't affect me.

(Don Letts) When you went down the dole office,

there wasn't one queue for black people and one queue for white people.

We were all in the same boat together.

I got to say that I got the reputation of being a freak in Brixton.

(Desmond Coy) Because he'd be wearing eye shadow

and fucking earrings all over the place.

And my friends would see him and say,

"Desmond, what's wrong with Don? What's wrong your brother?

"How come he's wearing makeup and fucking dressing like that?"

He was just weird, but he was into that Bowie shit, you know?

So what can you say?

Very soon, I started to wander over to the King's Road, Chelsea.

(♪ "You've Got a Woman", Lion)

(Don Letts) In the early '70s, that was the most counterculture,

happening place you could go.

So I'm looking for more inspiration, information, whatever you want to call it,

and eventually ended up working in a place called The Jean Machine.

(Disco music)

That was blinding because this is where all the freaks were -

dykes, the gay crew and people that were in between...

It was all about hedonism.

(♪ "My Girl Is a Soul Girl", Lon Rogers & The Soul Blenders)

(Don Letts) The club scene was a big part of it. Soul started to come into the mix.

Soul was big. Everyone was listening to soul.

The hip crowd was listening to soul

and the white working-class kids were also listening to soul.

And I'm going to lots of gigs now.

I'm seeing Stevie Wonder, Barry White.

I'm seeing The Stylistics.

I remember seeing Marvin Gaye one time.

(♪ "What's Going On", Marvin Gaye)

I'm in the audience and he's doing his thing and I'm thinking, "Okay, Marvin,

"you're there doing your thing, and that's great, but what am I?"

♪ Mother, mother...

(Don Letts) "Where do I fit in the scheme of things?

"How do I empower myself?"

I remember consciously thinking about that,

not knowing quite how to put it into action.

(Sustained guitar strums)

(Desmond Coy) Don was about three years younger than me, I guess.

But Don was like... let me see now... he was like... He was fat.

A fat motherfucker, and he was a pain in the neck.

He thought he knew it all. You know, that kind of shit.

He'd kind of sharpened up. He lost a lot of weight.

Once he lost weight, he was different.

From that fat motherfucker, he's now a young guy

and he's working in the King's Road and he was happening.

And he was a good dancer. As a good dancer, you pull girls.

(Don Letts) So in between clubbing in the night-time, seeing lots of girls,

and seeing even more selling jeans in the shop in the daytime,

I was having a pretty good time in the kind of early '70s.

So I quit The Jean Machine because they had branches all over the place

and they wanted to move me somewhere like Richmond,

which definitely wasn't so hip. So I quit The Jean Machine

and again found myself wandering up and down the King's Road, Chelsea,

and I stumbled into this place called Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die.

Or it could have been Let it Rock

because Malcolm and Vivienne were always changing the names around.

I walked into this kind of Aladdin's cave of counterculture.

There was a bit of rubber and leather gear.

There was some Teddy Boy stuff.

But it was very intimidating. It wasn't kind of user friendly.

I mean, no one ran up and said, "Can I help you, sir?"

But it was something about this place and I quickly struck up a conversation

with both Vivienne and Malcolm.

Soon after I struck up this friendship with them, Malcolm went to the States

to manage the New York Dolls.

I spent quite a few months with Vivienne.

One evening she took me to see Lou Reed.

I'm wearing like an electric blue zoot suit

and she's wearing a translucent rubber catsuit.

Got a great education from those two. It was very fortuitous meeting Malcolm

'cause it was Malcolm that really showed me

that these subcultures that I was so enamored with...

...they didn't happen in isolation.

They had kind of a tradition and a heritage.

What I gleaned from that was that if I had an idea and I was brave enough

that maybe I could be part of this thing too.

(Desmond Coy) It was that period when he started doing his locks.

He started to grow his locks because he had a big afro then.

Hanging out with Viv and Malcolm was cool but I needed to make some money.

Viv actually offered me a job at one time,

but I really couldn't see me in rubber tights and high heels.

It wasn't for me. It was a step too far.

And eventually I got a job managing a store called Acme Attractions.

(I "Take a Ride Version", Dub Specialist)

Upstairs it was kind of fuddy duddy, genuine old antiques.

And then there was me on this one stall with my kind of demob suits,

'60s clothing and a jukebox that was pumping hardcore dub reggae,

which pissed all the old fogeys off, really drove them up the wall.

So eventually they gave us a space in the basement to get rid of us.

And that's when Acme Attractions really came into its own.

(Norman Jay) Acme Attractions was a legendary clothes shop

in the King's Road in the '70s.

It was the cutting edge of London street wear at the time.

I can remember seeing Don, because he was strikingly good-looking,

proper lady killer, you know.

And I guess at the time, I was quite envious of him.

Even though we didn't know him, in those days if you saw

a non-white face working in those shops, there had to be something about them.

There weren't many black people around who were crossing over

all the roads that there were to cross, you know?

(Don Letts) People would come down there for three things -

the clothes we were selling, the music we were playing

or to meet Jeanette, who was then my girlfriend.

We'd met during the soul scene a few years previous.

I'd taken a shine to her and asked her to come and work with me in the shop.

(Jeannette Lee) Don was very charismatic, charming, arrogant,

very smart, funny, quite cocky.

There was definitely an attraction.

I started seeing him immediately.

I'd never had a proper boyfriend before. He was my first boyfriend.

Acme became like a meeting place for all the misfits, peacocks and rude boys

because we were blasting out reggae,

which attracted a really unusual crowd.

It really was more like a social club.

John Lydon would come in. Sid would come in.

Bob Marley came. Don got quite friendly with him.

Rod Stewart, Debbie Harry, Hall & Oates, you know, just endless.

And then after about six weeks of seeing each other

every single day and every single night,

he sprang it on me.

He was married and that his wife was away in America for two months.

And she was coming back the very next day.

I was in my early teens when I married Marilyn. We shouldn't have done it.

We were far too young and I was far too volatile.

Didn't know where the hell I was going.

That whole scene that was going on on the King's Road, Chelsea

was against a backdrop of social crisis in the mid '70s.

We're talking about mass unemployment, three day weeks, strikes.

The bin men aren't collecting the rubbish. It was absolute turmoil.

We were feeling the pressure on the streets,

specifically under 'Sus law', which just gave policemen permission

to pull up anybody they want to if they looked suspicious.

And of course, everybody black looked suspicious.

So you're getting hassled all the fucking time.

(Quiet dramatic music)

It got to the point where I'd be driving my car

and if I saw a cop tailing me from behind,

I'd stop before they pulled me up and I'd be like,

"Officer, please, you're making me nervous.

"I can't drive. Do you want something or not?"

And I hit them with my best English, which would always freak 'em out.

Another tactic I used is when they stop me on the street,

I'd have hands spread-eagled, like in the American cop films.

Sometimes it got a bit more extreme

where they'd pull me up and I'd jump out of my car

and jump on the bonnet or the roof of my car,

start taking my clothes off, you know, screaming,

"Why are you crucifying me again?",

to get an audience to take control of the situation.

Having said that, if you got stopped by cops on your own at night,

forget about it. It was "Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir."

Don was very erm... take no shit... from nobody.

Whoever it is, police, whatever, and nothing will stop him.

He's as good as the next man.

Back in those days if...

A black man with a car meant he was a drug dealer,

meant he was a pimp, meant that he was the villain.

Black guy had a car, pull him over.

He must have stolen it.

(Jazzie B) So, the landscape, racially, I guess there was a lot of ignorance.

And for us, being the generation born and raised here,

it wasn't about trying to fit in and be part of it, you know.

For none of us, it weren't that. We had a different fight.

That was the thing about the racial climate in Britain.

It was pretty on fire when it came to dealing with the authorities

like the police and stuff like that.

And I guess that would really manifest itself

in the first riots in Notting Hill.

That day, the riot in Notting Hill Carnival,

oh man, I've never been so frightened in my life.

Police was just running through the crowd and hitting people.

I didn't know what happened. People just started rioting.

(Don Letts) That riot actually started around the arrest of a pickpocket

or the attempted arrest of a pickpocket,

and the cops jumped in somewhat heavy handedly.

But it wasn't really about the pickpocket.

It was about the bullshit that we'd had to put up with the whole rest of the year.

This tension was bubbling. It was like a pressure cooker that had to go off.

The truth is, we were looking for any excuse to let it out, man.

(Slow-paced bass heavy guitar music)

And it might sound like a weird thing to say, but it was a beautiful day.

My father, St Leger Letts -

named after a horse race, can you believe it?

And my mother, Valerie Letts, came over on the Queen Mary in 1955.

My father found work driving a bus and my mother, she was a seamstress.

I was born a year later, 1956, in the Royal Borough of Kensington.

It was six of us altogether.

My mother and father,

me and Norman,

Desmond, who is a child from her side,

and Derek, a child from my father's side.

That was the thing about my parents' generation.

It was all about the kids. I mean, their lives stopped at like 20, 21 -

partying, having a good time - forget about it.

All they lived for was making sure their kids were well-dressed,

well-fed and well-educated.

The first school I went to was Christchurch Primary School.

You know, I remember bonding with this guy, who was it...? Jeffrey Love.

He was my best mate. You know, we were going to be friends for life.

We even did the blood brothers thing. Innocent kids, innocent times.

The whole racial thing didn't come into it. It's like it didn't exist.

Even when there was trouble,

they didn't revert to colour-coded insults.

That changed dramatically when I went to my secondary school,

Archbishop Tenison's by the Oval.

(Lighter clicking)

In 1968, Enoch Powell,

he made something called "The Rivers of Blood" speech.

In 15 or 20 years' time,

the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.

Before that speech, me and my friends were all getting on in the playground.

The minute he dropped that statement, the whole landscape changed.

Politics came into play.

All of a sudden, I wasn't their mate Lettsy. I was "you black bastard."

And life was never the same after that. I've been called everything

from the obvious 'black bastard', 'golliwog', 'nigger',

'brillo bonce', 'kitty kat eater' and so on and so forth.

And this was relentless.

The saving grace for me was that

by this time the whole civil rights thing was going on in America.

1968 we're talking about.

I mean, the world was bloody exploding all over the place.

And that James Brown song "Say It Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud."..

♪ Say It Loud

♪ I'm Black and I'm Proud... I

...really empowered me and made me realise

that I wasn't the poor relation, that I had something to bring to the party.

They'd call me a 'black bastard' and I'd go, "Yeah, that's right. Now what?"

So, on one hand, you got Enoch Powell "Rivers of Blood."

On the other hand, you've got James Brown.

"Say It Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud." And that's what I went with.

♪ Say it loud

♪ I'm black and I'm proud

♪ One more time... Say it loud

♪ I'm black and I'm proud... ♪

And then one day I'm in the playground and a rumor goes around

there's some band playing in this place called the Young Vic in Waterloo.

(Slow-paced guitar with drums)

Turns out it's The Who doing what's called a full production rehearsal.

I'm 10 feet from the stage.

I can see the whites of Keith Moon's eyes.

Townsend's doing his windmills and my mind was blown.

I didn't know what was going on in front of me,

but I knew I wanted to be part of this.

Next day, I'm rebelling.

Rock and roll really ruined my school life.

There was nothing going to dissuade me from this new world that I'd seen,

this new universe, new possibilities.

(Guitar music continues)

I remember one day I'm being ignored in the classroom

and I wanted some attention. So I set fire to the desk.

- (Flame roars) - (Guitar music continues)

That burning of the desk was like some kind of rock and roll rebirth.

Because it definitely lit the way for a new Don Letts.

(Guitar music fades)

As I'm coming out of my formative years and becoming a teenager,

the whole rock and roll thing started to cause obvious problems with my parents.

They'd sent me to grammar school and expected all this great stuff for me.

But here I was sort of going down a different road.

And we were obviously going to rub heads.

So at 16, I left home, went to live with my brother, Desmond.

(Droning electric guitar)

So it was during my time at Acme Attractions

that the whole punk thing really kicks off

with the advent of The Pistols, it has to be said.

I was a bit jaded to it all at first

because it was stealing the attentions of my girlfriend, Jeanette.

Before the whole punk thing, I was the cock on the block.

And all of a sudden there's these white guys stealing her attention.

Then she took me to see The Clash.

(9 "White Riot", The Clash)

And it was at that moment that I got it.

I White riot, I wanna riot

♪ White riot... ♪

And then very quickly, I struck up serious friendships

with people like Strummer and John Lydon.

I mean, if it wasn't for Jeanette, I might have missed the punk thing.

I hadn't told her this but I was a total Beatle fanatic.

I have the second largest collection of Beatles memorabilia in the UK.

And then punk rock explodes.

Two days later, I swapped the whole lot

for a fuck off American car.

One like in "Starsky and Hutch."

We're talking with the big wheels, decals and everything.

Punk rock was like an extreme thing.

It was like out with the old, in with the new.

It was like a purge, a purge of all that had gone before.

(8 "Slogan On The Wall", The Viceroys)

By the mid '70s,

the popular music of the time was all this, you know,

overextended prog rock stuff

that seemed a million miles from the vibe on the street.

They're singing about Hotel California.

We didn't know where California was

much less being able to afford a fucking hotel.

Luckily for me, I had the soundtrack to ease my pain

and I had the reggae. My white mates were not so lucky.

So they set about creating their own soundtrack and that would be punk rock.

And you began to see the kind of bubbling of this

at the end of '75, '76 and it fully exploded in 1977...

- (Droning electric guitar) - ...with the opening of The Roxy,

this new place that was started by Andrew Czezowski.

Andrew Czezowski who was Acme Attraction's accountant.

And because of the reaction I got to the music I was playing in the shop

he asked me to DJ there. I'd never DJ'd in my life.

I had no aspirations of becoming a DJ but I thought, I'll have a go.

Now, this is so early in the punk rock scene,

There ain't no punk records to play. No UK ones anyway.

So what am I going to do? I play what I like. I'm playing hardcore dub reggae.

(♪ "Upsetting Dub", Lee Scratch Perry)

So Andrew offers me the job at The Roxy and he says, "Oh, I'm looking for staff."

And I go back to Forest Hill, where I'm living with my Rasta brethren.

(I "Dreadheights", Fatman Riddim Section)

I'm like, "Do you want to work for these punks down the West End?"

They were like, "Get the fuck out of here." Not interested at all.

I said, "Well, just come and have a look."

So the Roxy Club is like this punk club... everybody knows about, right? Yeah.

And Don was going to be the DJ

because by now he was living in Forest Hill with Leo and J.R.

and a bunch of other guys, had a little posse up there.

There's four of us. Four black guys living in Forest Hill,

an old couple living downstairs and the landlord wanting us to make noise

(laughs) to get the old couple out,

which we tried, but they didn't move in the long run.

(Desmond Coy) Don said one day, look, he's got a gig as a DJ at this club

and he wanted us to come down, we could work behind the bar

and get a little job here and there.

(I "New Rose", The Damned)

When we decided to go to The Roxy and we see all these punks

and guys wearing pins through their nose

and swastika shit and bondage things... They were really freaky.

Jamaican boys, we're not used to this thing. This is weird.

At first, we were frightened.

These were weirdos, these kids.

But somewhere along the line, man, I mean, you know, we got on.

They come down to the club and they see two things.

They see the girls and they see an untapped herb market.

Two days later, all my Rasta brethren were working at the club.

(Desmond Coy) I was the dealer there.

So that was my job, that was my little earner.

Sid Vicious and guys like that would come up and ask for

two Special Brew and a spliff.

We had to keep this quiet

because Andrew would go nuts if he knew we were selling ganja.

We were probably making more money than him at the bar.

(Don Letts) I'll never forget seeing Shane MacGowan drunkenly say,

"Give me two beers and one spliff."

Then after a moment's thought he said, "No, give me one beer and two spliffs."

Perfect example of cultural exchange.

(Jeannette Lee) We were there pretty much every single night that it existed.

And one day he just announced, "I think I'm going to get a camera."

And from that moment he was filming practically every band that played there.

(Desmond Coy) He probably saw it before I did, before Leo and us.

Don saw it. He was ahead. He saw the young guys coming up.

We saw what they were into, their attitude

and what they were trying to say, you know.

These guys were breaking barriers and doing their own thing.

He probably could see the energy, these fucking young kids

who had nothing, you know, just bored out of their heads,

wanting to do something and get some excitement back.

He just picked up on that and went with it, just got it and ran with it.

Now, he was involved in this new movement that was happening.

When we were growing up in Brixton, there were no black people on TV,

there was no black anybody, so...

...for him to pick up a camera and make videos, we were in awe.

(Leo Williams) He's not one to sit around and wait for anything. He's out there.

He's trying to see what he can do. What he can... make himself better.

I think if you come from a black family, you have to have some kind of drive.

No one ain't gonna help you. Don has got that drive.

And, erm, getting a camera, he found his forte.

(Quiet atmospheric guitar music)

Don's an artist. Don needs a method of expression.

He's not just being a groover, looking good, playing great records.

He becomes who he is. He becomes Don Letts at that point.

We wouldn't know about him if he hadn't picked up that camera.

(5 "Captain Scarlet", Siouxsie and the Banshees)

(Leo Williams) It was eye-opening

to see these kids brave enough to do what they want

and making their own kind of music and dressing how they want.

♪ Captain Scarlet, Captain Scarlet... ♪

These guys want to do something and they're doing it.

They're not asking if they can do it. They're just doing it.

And you can do what you want if you want to.

With the right attitude you can do what you want.

(Leo Williams) Our background and where we were coming from, our culture,

we were suppressed because you'd get in so much trouble.

It like, put you off. You'd kind of been denied things

because you don't want to be in trouble.

These guys are doing it and they're showing you can do things.

You just got to do it. Believe in yourself and do it.

Don't worry, just do it.

After we finished playing and working at The Roxy,

a lot of these guys would get in their cars and follow us back to Forest Hill.

("I Am What I Am", Jackie Opel)

(John Lydon) Don's place in Forest Hill was great fun.

We'd go there after The Roxy sometimes,

driving Don's little car, all squashed in,

and go back and pretend we were big time marijuana smokers.

We went back to Don's house to hang out and stuff, lots of people did.

Don was really cheeky.

And so he would always say like the funny thing.

You could tell immediately how brave he was,

not only because of how he looked. He would stand up for himself.

Those people that ended up with us back at Forest Hill after The Roxy

were a very different crowd of people

and they wouldn't normally be socializing together.

And that Forest Hill scene

made it easier for people to actually be friends with each other

and communicate instead of be in tribes.

One of the things that drove punk rock at this fast and furious pace

was this sense of competition.

There was The Clash camp, The Pistols camp, Slits, Banshees,

and never the twain shall meet kind of thing,

except when they went on tour.

But I quite happily bounced between all of them.

I was never this kind of choosing sides kind of guy.

One day in the "New Musical Express", I read,

"Don Letts is making a punk rock movie."

I mean, shit, that's not a bad idea, I'll call it a movie.

No, I fell. Look.

(Jeannette Lee) We had these little Super 8 cartridges.

We'd get them developed and bring them back to Forest Hill

and string them out across the room

and hold them up and look at them and edit it with Sellotape.

The bands were already there, the scene was set.

It was just a case of capturing it and splicing it all together.

The thing about Don was that

he was always on a mission to achieve something.

He was always going to make something happen.

(♪ "Gonna Take Over Now", Freddie McGregor)

And that was the vehicle.

In June-July '77, Bob is living here after having been shot.

He's living on the King's Road.

He sees all these nasty, stinky, dirty, punky people.

Then Don goes round to see him, possibly to bring him some herb.

Don is wearing bondage trousers

(laughs) and Bob gives him a finger wagging rap about this.

But Don stands his ground and explains, you know,

that actually punks are just the same as the dreads.

They're just oppressed and being shat on as well.

So Bob comes and gets some...

Some ray of light is flashed down on him.

In a way, you kind of feel that Bob Marley to Don

was the person that Don would like to be.

He was the ultimate.

You know, he was Jamaican, but also from complex mixed parentage.

He's a fully integrated human and smokes vast amounts of weed.

(Daddy G) Back in the punk days, '77, where a lot of my friends just come back

and tell me about this crazy dread that was knocking around

with The Slits and The Clash and people like that.

He was always... had this thing in his hand,

recording everything, you know.

And I was quite jealous, actually,

because he was hanging out with the real top punk bands

and all the people we worshipped.

He's a source of inspiration.

Whether he opened his mouth or not, just by looking at him

you could understand the man was coming from a different angle.

Don was the rebel dread, stirring things up.

And to be honest, I wanted to be Don Letts.

Eventually, John Krivine and Steph Raynor,

they decided to close Acme and open something called Boy,

which was up on the main drag of King's Road

because punk was beginning to grab the tabloid headlines now.

So they jumped on the tabloid punk bandwagon.

Me and Jeannette opened the shop,

and after a few weeks I really couldn't hold my head up and I quit...

...to attempt to manage The Slits.

I sort of took some of Steph and John's money,

gave it to them to go on the White Riot tour with The Clash and The Buzzcocks.

(Gentle atmospheric music)

By the time we hit 'Boy', Jeannette had just plain outgrown me.

And while I was on the White Riot tour, Jeanette went off into the world

and ended up actually working with John Lydon when he started Public Image.

I had to... I had to dump him.

I just wanted to spread my wings and experience things.

I wanted to go off and do things, check things out on my own.

He wasn't good. He wasn't good. He was upset about it.

(Don Letts) The White Riot tour, it was fast and furious,

as was the whole of punk rock.

(♪ "Why Can't I", Cedric Im Brooks)

And on that tour you did see a bit of violence

because this negative idea that had been perpetrated by the tabloids

had filtered out into the suburbs.

One of the reasons that the punk rock thing exploded so quickly

and got misinterpreted so quickly was the whole Bill Grundy fiasco

when The Pistols appeared on that TV show and John swore.

Shit.

Was it really? Good heavens!

All of a sudden everybody around the UK knew about this phenomena

through this popular afternoon TV show.

- You dirty fucker... - What!?

- What a fucking rotter... - Well, that's it for tonight...

(TV static)

(9 "White Riot", The Clash)

(Don Letts) God bless The Pistols, They kick started everything.

But it was only one album.

Without The Pistols, there'd probably be no Clash,

but it was left to The Clash to take that ball and run with it

and give punk meaning.

(♪ "Rasta is Calling", The Nightingales)

(Paul Simonon) That tour was when I first met Don properly, and his friend Leo.

The thing is the Jamaican community and how they had to pull together

to protect themselves and also to get on

was a good template for the punk movement

because it was a question of, well, we're outsiders.

We need to pull together and get our own thing together

because they've got their thing to go with it. Let's do ours.

(Don Letts) It was on the White Riot tour

that I really formed my bond with The Clash,

particularly Paul Simonon. He had a similar background to myself.

He was working class and had also grown up in Brixton,

but most importantly, he was a skinhead.

And we're talking about the fashion version,

as I said before, not the fascist version.

So we were brought together

by a mutual love of Jamaican music and style.

(Mick Jones) Reggae music...

They talked about what was going on and how it affected them.

People weren't quite sure of us at the start

because we didn't really know what this thing was that was starting.

It was really against everything that was going on at the time.

Both were outside the norm, you know.

(Vivien Goldman) In managing The Slits, Don was being quite brave.

It was just so rare

to have this lively, uncensored,

uncut way of approaching the world. It scared a lot of guys.

That's where Don was an unusual man because he dug 'em

and they accepted him, which they wouldn't have just everybody.

He was sensitive enough and had enough vision for them to respect him.

(Paul Simonon) In the beginning of the whole punk thing,

there was sort of quite a small community, you could say,

and Paloma, he was a good friend of Joe Strummer's

and Viv with Mick... Albertine.

And so it was sort of like a little community.

I think it was just the situation of, look, we're all in the same boat.

So, you know, God help us all. Let's just get on with it.

And that's what went across, whether you were male or female.

It was sort of like, let's all play music, whatever your sex, you know.

- (Film projector clicking) - (Siren)

(9 "White Riot", The Clash)

(Mick Jones) "The Punk Rock Movie" was so real.

Just so very good that he did that

because otherwise it would have been made up.

So you can see it for real... or bits of it, anyway.

"The Punk Rock Movie", I was going to say put me on the movie map,

but that's bullshit, really. It just put me on some kind of map

that people knew who I was.

(Low reverberating bass note on guitar)

(Don Letts) It kind of opened doors for me,

and I quickly realised I should kind of use that momentum

to try and get to wherever I wanted to go.

I didn't really know where that was, but I knew I wanted to be involved in film.

By end of 1977, The Pistols had imploded,

and John was looking to escape the media madness

and went to Jamaica with Richard Branson

to start a record label called Front Line.

But don't forget, The Pistols had broken up a few weeks before in a big way

and everyone's focused on this dude to see what he's going to do next.

Me being black and his mate, he invited me along.

(John Lydon) I got the opportunity to go to Jamaica and I thought,

"Who am I going to bring there with me?

"I'm not going alone. "I'm going to bring some special friends

"that really want to achieve something in this world."

Don wanted to film.

He had Jamaican roots, he'd never been there.

Give him the opportunity and let him struggle there on his own

and see what he can come up with.

(Don Letts) I'd never been to Jamaica in my life.

The closest I'd been to Jamaica was seeing "The Harder They Come"

in my local cinema in Brixton.

(♪ "Wide World", Alton Ellis)

Seeing "The Harder They Come" was the first thing

that made me really understand the power of cinema.

You got to understand that for a long time

we knew what we were supposed to sound like

but we never had any visual interpretation of our culture.

We'd grown up in the UK. We didn't know what Jamaica looked like.

Two things changed that: the advent of Bob Marley

and "The Harder They Come."

You want me to go and work for $10 a week for the rest of my life?

I'd rather die.

(Don Letts) Seeing "The Harder They Come" made me think,

maybe I'd like to express myself in a visual way.

Didn't I tell you I was going to be famous one day.

(Don Letts) But at that time, the idea of a black man

being a film director or a filmmaker...

...ridiculous.

(Don Letts) So I forgot about that.

(I "Roots Natty", The Gladiators)

24 hours later, a plastic bag with some underpants and a few bits of clothing,

I was in JA, Jamaica, first time in my life.

(Chris Salewicz) That was the first time he'd been to Jamaica

and it was kind of quite profound for him.

You could see from his facial expressions he was going through some stuff.

He knows Jamaica, but he knows a sort of mythical Jamaica really.

There's a lot of romance created around, you know, 'ghetto gunmen'.

The truth is that there isn't any real romance about that.

It's pretty horrible, actually.

He was out every day going downtown, filming, you know, in the ghetto areas.

He was really surprised at the extent of the poverty, the violence.

It was dangerous. This was in the middle of the civil war there, you know.

So it was very tricky for him.

Children of Jamaican... or parents... or from any other country, actually,

it's their parents' country,

and they tend to have a strange relationship with it.

They're not sure about it - whether to embrace or reject it completely.

I think some of that was going on with Don.

(♪ "Natty Rebel", U Roy)

(Don Letts) Richard had booked the first floor of the hotel...

...and the jungle drums went out,

"Rich white man in the area signing up reggae artists."

Over the next two weeks, there was an exodus to the hotel

of artists trying to get a deal with Richard.

All of a sudden, I'm sitting around the hotel pool

and there's I-Roy, U-Roy, Big Youth, The Gladiators, Lee "Scratch" Perry.

Probably the most amazing trip of my life

being surrounded by all my heroes over the space of two weeks.

All these names that I'd previously seen on record labels

and I thought were legendary artists.

I come to Jamaica and I see the reality of their existence.

You'd think these guys had been living large 'cause they'd made records,

but au contraire, mon ami. I mean, it was tough.

These guys were all hustling and desperate to get a deal

and impress John 'cause John was the taste master.

It made me realise that there's no real justice in the music business, man.

The real pioneers never get to collect.

It's the people that water down their ideas that make the money.

I had the idea of checking out my roots in Jamaica

and going to visit my grandparents who I didn't know.

I remember, funnily enough, we went in this bloody white Cadillac

that was available to the clientele at the hotel.

I actually found where my grandmother lived.

I remember knocking on the door

and my grandparents looking at me like we were fucking aliens.

I just went, "Hi, I'm your grandson from England... and I'll come back later."

Never went back. It was too much of a trip.

I mean, talk about a culture clash.

I was so disconnected from their reality.

- (Waves crashing) - And...

...I didn't really have the time or the inclination, I have to say,

to kind of try and make them understand.

And I just went about my business.

(John Lydon) Taking Don to Jamaica opened his eyes.

It opened my eyes too, I've got to say.

I selfishly used his eyes to see Jamaica from his family's point of view.

We had the most fantastic time.

(Don Letts) John Lydon? The brother's deep.

I mean, the whole punk thing that was never going to work for him.

He was too intelligent for that

and that's why he had to break free from the Pistols.

There was a lot of time when John was in Jamaica

and he'd be quiet and staring off into the distance and all that stuff.

It was only later on that I realised

that he was kind of thinking about what he was going to do next

and that would manifest itself with the creation of Public Image.

You've got to understand

that the people that made the music are all pulling in different directions.

Partially drug informed.

Some were going up, some were going down. some were going sideways.

But somehow John managed to pull all this shit together

and come up with something that was truly refreshing.

(♪ "Public Image", Public Image Limited)

♪ Hello, hello, hello, hello

♪ Hello, hello... ♪

(Don Letts) So when John gets the opportunity

to make his first music video,

he turned around and asked me to have a go.

It was weird because at that time you couldn't have stuff broadcast on TV

unless you were a member of the film union.

♪ You never listen to word that I said

♪ You only seen me For the clothes that I wear...

So we had to have a ghost director.

I sat in a chair and sort of told him what to do.

I mean, to be honest with you, I was totally out of my depth.

Before that, I was Don Letts with my Super 8 camera.

Now I'm surrounded by a union crew and I'm having to tell them what to do.

It just was really fabulous.

You know, he'd put him into a new position

and shortly after that he does the "London Calling" video, of course.

(♪ "London Calling", The Clash)

That was Don's first video with us.

We'd done a couple of videos before

and then we found that we could get what we wanted.

And that was a major thing, you know.

♪ London calling to the faraway towns

♪ Now war is declared and battle come down... ♪

We met by Battersea late at night.

He had lights rigged up and we just started filming.

(Mick Jones) I remembered it rained during most of the filming of the video.

And one of our guys afterwards threw the monitors into the Thames.

(Don Letts) I fucking can't even swim.

So I didn't know the Thames had a current. I didn't know there was a tide.

I put a camera on the boat. By the time we worked everything out,

it's fucking night-time and it's pissing down with rain.

Turns out, best of luck I ever had.

(Mick Jones) After we did the "London Calling" video,

we did "The Call Up", "The Bank Robber" and "Rock the Casbah."

(I "Rock the Casbah", The Clash)

♪ Now the King told the boogie man You have to let that raga drop... ♪

(Paul Simonon) The creative side developed

where, like, "Rock the Casbah", there was an idea

of having an Arab team play football against an Israeli team,

showing them getting on, so to speak.

But the record company were a bit shocked by that idea.

Don had brought an idea to simplify what the record company were terrified of.

♪ Sharif don't like it

♪ Rockin' the Casbah Rock the Casbah... I

(Don Letts) "Rock the Casbah" was a big deal.

Man, that was a massive hit on MTV and probably one of my favourite videos.

♪ Sharif don't like it

♪ Rockin' the Casbah Rock the Casbah... I

As is "Radio Clash" that really utilised images

from when they were doing the whole Bonds scenario,

when they played those twenty-three dates back to back.

(♪ "This is Radio Clash", The Clash)

Our manager went out and did big posters up in the Bronx.

You wouldn't really expect that because we were in Times Square.

(Paul Simonon) We were booked there to do seven shows.

We'd done seven shows in Japan, seven shows in London, seven in Paris.

We were going to do the same in New York.

But because we were taking over the whole week,

we were taking a lot of business away from the other clubs.

So they sent the fire chief down

and announced that we had too many people in the building.

And Don was sort of around filming a lot of this chaos.

Some stupid shithead fucking sold too many tickets.

(Don Letts) They really took New York, man.

There were riots in Times Square.

Scorsese's turning up, De Niro's turning up.

(American Reporter) For all of you who wanted to see The Clash

at Bonds tonight, they were about to appear about...

...ooh, about 40 minutes from now and...

We're anxious to play. You know, you get pretty wound up

when you're going to do a show.

We were willing to do two shows on Saturday...

That's double wound up. We want to play, you know.

So, we're just pleased to be able to get on stage.

(♪ "This is Radio Clash", The Clash)

(Mick Jones) When we went to New York in the '80s

and we did a residency at Bonds,

we fell in with a lot of the graffiti artists.

It was just that moment when hip-hop and rap was just starting.

(I "The Magnificent Seven", The Clash)

(Don Letts) The first time I went to New York was with The Slits

when they played at a club called Hurrah's.

It was winter, didn't really get into the vibe.

When I really got to know New York was with The Clash.

And at that time, the whole hip-hop thing was emerging.

(Paul Simonon) New York was an interesting place

because you'd see kids on the street, rapping.

I suppose it was the birth of hip-hop, that we were witnessing.

(Don Letts) A cultural melting pot that felt very similar

to what was going on in the late '70s in London,

but now it was about hip-hop than punk rock.

It was a really great time. It was an exciting time.

It was a time of change.

(Don) When we hit New York in the early '80s,

I was going to say it was coming out of a recession.

It was actually in the recession, 'cause it was kind of fucked up.

There were what they call shooting galleries, where you get your drugs.

It was there that a lot of graffiti artists had taken out spaces 'cause of low rent.

♪ So cheap and real phony

♪ Hong Kong dollars, Indian cents, English pounds and Eskimo pence... ♪

I became friends with people like Fab 5 Freddy and Futura

and Dondi and Haze and Zephyr, all the emerging graffiti writers.

(Jeannette Lee) So we transferred the energy from London,

punk had kind of transferred for us, to New York.

I did have another boyfriend in New York who was Futura 2000.

He did a rap on one of The Clash tunes

and he became a big part of the scene for a while.

(Don) It was about identity, trying to find meaning,

trying to work out who you are, where you fit in the process.

The Bonds - I was going to say fiasco - the event, whatever you want to call it,

I mean, really put The Clash on a world stage.

And took them up to here.

And I think it kind of caught them off guard.

Joe always tried to keep it real. He never got taken and enamoured

with that whole cult of celebrity stuff. He was a very grounded person, Joe.

But Joe was human like the rest of us and kind of fucked up too.

If Joe had to make a horrible decision,

he'd often maneuver things

so other people would kind of carry out whatever he was thinking.

(I "Straight to Hell", The Clash)

I remember when they sacked Mick... and they got Paul to call me up

and say, "Well, look, Don, if you're hanging with Mick

"you can't really be friends with us."

And I knew that Paul didn't want to make that call.

I remember when I got that call, I was sitting in Los Angeles

watching the TV in a bar called Juke's,

and the video for "Rock the Casbah" came up, and I cried.

I fucking cried.

You can't push Don Letts into that position

of you have to decide this or that, rasta. You know, I can't do that.

(Paul) I suppose it did get a bit awkward

because Don had always worked with us regarding Clash stuff.

But The Clash had gone in a different direction

and Don was working with Mick.

So we decided that I would phone Don to explain

that we'd have to part our ways in terms of working.

Mick moved on with Don in creating BAD

and me and Joe wandered off into the sunset.

(Chuckles)

When Mick had been unceremoniously kicked out of his own band,

he fairly quickly got stuck back in.

And one night, I find myself in a nightclub with Mick,

Mick looks to his left and to his right and he's like,

"You know what? We look like a band."

And that was the beginning of my next eight years.

(§ "E=MC2", Big Audio Dynamite)

You got to understand, from seeing The Who back in '71

and wanting to be in this world,

now I was presented with the opportunity.

♪ Somebody I never met But in a way I know

♪ Didn't think that you could get so much from a picture show... ♪

Big Audio Dynamite's sound was a combination of what we were into.

We're talking about heavy Jamaican bass lines, New York beats...

Mick's rock and roll guitar

and me doing the sample and dialogue thing.

♪ (Speaking) You know, I don't think

♪ I'm going to let you stay in the film business... ♪

What was interesting about Big Audio Dynamite,

no one seemed to notice this at first,

they're this first act using movie samples from the soundtrack, the dialogue.

BAD really reflected us and our lives.

That kind of cross-fertilization is the thing that makes magic happen.

I loved all that because, you know, stick a black guy in there

stick a punk in there, stick a dread in there

and you mix it all together and what do you get?

You get something quite interesting, you know.

(Mick Jones) I wanted to do something more of that time.

I wanted to make music that reflected the music that we were hearing.

It was just difficult 'cause... considering where I'd come from.

It was a bit hard for me coming out of that.

I immediately wanted to get on and do something.

So, we did it all very fast and by '84 we were out there playing.

(Dreamy synth music)

Our first gig in New York

was at this place downtown.

Grace and her friend Jessica were there.

We went to the show and I met Don,

and Don used to wear at the time dark sunglasses.

And I just remember thinking that, you know,

"Who wears sunglasses at night in a nightclub?"

It started... Right from the start, we were kind of friends.

And then they came to New York to record "Upping Street"

and they were there for the whole summer.

(Don) Problem with that was Audrey, who I'd met the year before,

was about to have my first son.

Just as Jet's being born,

Mick asked me to join Big Audio Dynamite.

And I throw myself into that like I do with every project I do.

I was going to say our relationship suffered as a consequence of that,

but it wasn't as a consequence of that.

Our relationship suffered because I met Grace.

Grace is your archetypal New Yorker.

When I met her, she had peroxide blonde hair,

legs for days, easy on the eyes.

But what got us together was her character,

eager and open to ideas and kind of inspired me to be better.

I wanted to be a better person to earn her respect, earn her love.

And having that behind me drove me forward.

And it was a horrible overlap.

I was leading a double life for like eight years.

I can't actually remember, it was just a fucking big blur.

(Upbeat electronic music fades in)

We were really just experimenting with things

and seeing if we can put this stuff in and...

Don's contribution was so big.

Don wrote lots of lyrics for the songs.

(Greg Roberts) His contribution was not just musical.

I think it brought the cinematic element.

He brought something different Mick wouldn't have thought of,

and the combination of the two working together was brilliant.

(Leo Williams) He couldn't play, he didn't sing...

...but he can write.

- (Chuckles softly) - He can write.

I think he soaks up all that he's been through

and he can put it to paper.

And obviously he was feeling like he had to follow

someone like Joe Strummer.

I mean, come on, man, that was a special chemistry.

That was a Jagger and Richards, Lennon and McCartney,

Morrissey and Marr.

These things don't happen that often.

(Don) For the second album, Mick had the brilliant idea

we should record it in New York.

That was a real buzz 'cause while we were there,

I went to Times Square one day and I bumped into Joe Strummer.

One day, Don was walking down the street and he bumped into Joe

and he said, "Come to the studio. We're doing a record."

♪ (Quietly) Da-dum da-da da-dum da-da, Tequila!

(Humming tune)

And then he wouldn't leave.

Try and keep it steady.

He ended up co-producing the record

and that was so, so great. For me, especially.

(7 "V. Thirteen", Big Audio Dynamite) ♪ Sodom and Gomorrah,

♪ Let the DJ play... ♪

That was a good thing, because Joe and I, after The Clash,

we soon became friends again.

We just never got back together again as a group.

You have no time when you're young because you're just rushing.

If you thought it out, it might have been different, but no, you didn't.

♪ Like a paper cup, I fly around... ♪

And so that was good.

What happened over the next month or so

was that I had a front row seat watching these guys

I guess kind of creatively fall in love again.

(Melancholic guitar and synth music)

And we just sat back and watched this thing happen.

A lot of people could have been pissed off...

...by them getting back together in the middle of us making our album.

But I felt privileged to see that happen.

You know, you're talking about one of the greatest writing duos in history.

(Melancholy music fades out, upbeat music plays)

♪ If you don't know where I come from

♪ You better steer clear of my trail

♪ From the dark side... ♪

(Desmond Coy) They asked me to be their tour manager,

and to me, that was a big buzz.

And if it wasn't for Don and Big Audio Dynamite,

I wouldn't have had the opportunity

to be in places like Rome and Hollywood and New York.

That gave me an opportunity to travel and see the world.

(Paint spraying)

(Desmond Coy) Big Audio liked having people backstage.

And the fans loved to hang out with Don and Leo and them guys, making stuff.

So part of my job was to kind of like...

...after the gig, I'd probably find some fans and whatever

and give them a little sticker or something,

to come backstage and... hang.

OK, I'm ready for the show, Mick. I'm ready for a show.

He was mischievous Don, you know. He loved to play pranks and he was...

He's... a prankster. He's a joker.

It's an important part of his makeup, his sense of humour.

(Mick Jones) We were playing a great gig in Boston, early BAD,

and then the dressing room was... it was crowded afterwards.

- It was so crowded. - (Murmur of crowd)

Don and I went into the cupboard because we wanted to talk,

and we were in there talking.

And then the janitor came in and got his mop and bucket.

(Murmur of crowd)

(Laughter in the background)

Yo... what's up.

(Mike D) Bosco is my main homie, man.

(Laughter)

You know what? No, no.

Joshy... uh, this is...

(Don Letts) On one night in Irving Plaza, we had Pete Frampton in the audience,

Dave Stewart, Jimmy Cliff and David Bowie.

That was a buzz for the little black kid from Brixton, I can tell you.

(Loud footsteps)

From that moment on, from the time we were doing "Upping Street",

that's when Grace becomes part of my life.

(Melancholic instrumental)

Not officially.

(Grace Letts) We kind of couldn't separate.

We tried a few times, quite a few times, actually,

and it was just... something that was just inside. It was just what it was.

(Don Letts) I was trying to fight the inevitable.

I was trying to do the right thing. I didn't want to leave my kids.

But in so doing, I did the wrong thing.

What I should've done was put my hand up and go,

"Look, I'm sorry. I've fallen in love with somebody else."

I mean, easier said than done.

(I "Medicine Show", Big Audio Dynamite)

Undoubtedly, when we first went out,

people were expecting us to play Clash tunes and blah blah blah,

but we were doing so well with this new sound.

It sounded really different.

No one had kind of done that mix before

and had hits with the sample and dialogue.

We were having commercial success

with a new way of approaching music writing.

♪ Covered wagon, Medicine Show...

When I first held our debut album, "This is Big Audio Dynamite",

it felt like I'd arrived.

J... we got the juice...

(Don Letts) I got my ticket, da da da.

For this child that had grown up so enamoured with music

and part of the vinyl generation and having this analogue attitude,

I finally get to chip in my five cents, man.

And I started to find my feet and became a lot more confident

'cause from then on, it was a fairly cool run for about eight years.

♪ ...and the high plains too

♪ Never stopped long Just passing through... ♪

(Don Letts) I ain't going to lie, there was some kind of...

(TV static)

...behind the scenes business shenanigans going on

that were beginning to grate with me, but there was something else going on.

I realised I was starting to write these lyrics

that were very personal to me and I didn't think it was fair

to ask Mick to sing those songs.

(Moody electric guitar instrumental)

(Don Letts) Between that and the normal things

that make great bands implode, I was off.

And I started a group called Screaming Targets.

(♪ "Who Killed King Tubby", Screaming Targets)

I wanted to know what I could do without Mick.

Same way probably Mick wanted to know what he could do without Joe.

The problem is Mick's a musician and I'm not.

(Laughs)

Having said that, I ain't ashamed of Screaming Target.

Should have got a vocalist, only mistake.

Ugh, yeah, fucking ego, man. Get you every time.

Call it synchronicity or some weird shit,

but I get fed up with Screaming Target, I get a phone call.

"Do I want to come and film second unit covering the independence of Namibia?"

(Upbeat music)

(TV) Liberations.

(Don Letts) The idea was to go round the country and interview people

and cover the effect of Namibia's independence. That was a buzz.

First time I'm going back to the land of my forefathers.

I mean, first off, I'd never been in any environment

where everybody was black.

The other shock was I'm there with, like, a white film crew,

must have had about six people under me.

I don't know what you're saying about me. It's my hair... mine.

And the Africans, kind of, "OK, you are white people.

"We've seen you. We know what you are."

Don't be taking it off me. Don't take it off me.

With me, they were totally freaked.

And they couldn't figure me out.

- I'm home. I'm home. - (Woman) Aw!

(Don Letts) That was a major eye opener.

I think what really freaked me out was how alien my roots were to me.

(Rhythmic clapping)

You felt like through the reggae and your education

and all the rest of it, you had some connection.

But no, man. I realised I was the lost tribe.

I actually went out to the Namibian desert.

It's a vast place - you'd be driving in your jeep

and you'd see these people coming towards you.

You can see behind them and there's nothing for miles in the distance.

You've just come from the same thing.

These people are just walking through the desert.

We were in the Namibian desert for three or four days,

and we actually got lost.

At one point, I thought I was going to die.

I mean, we ran out of gas, we'd broken down

and, uh, we were rescued by some German safari people.

Never been so glad to see white people in my fucking life.

I think what I took from that African experience

was the fact that, for better or worse,

I was this kind of unique black and British thing,

and to pretend that I was anything else was ridiculous.

You've got to understand, from the time I did my first video,

Public Image's debut, I kept that going on for quite a while

and sort of squeezed one in whenever I could.

(I "Back on the Chain Gang", The Pretenders)

I did nearly 400 music videos for various bands.

You know, I don't think I stopped till around the mid-90s.

I did videos for Elvis Costello.

I did Chrissie's video "Back on the Chain Gang".

♪ Oh, back on the chain gang... ♪

(Don Letts) The Pogues, "Summer in Siam", S Express.

Baaba Maal, Maxi Priest, Shabba Ranks,

Jimmy Cliff, The Gap Band,

Linton Kwesi Johnson,

Black Uhuru,

Sly and Robbie, did Eddie Grant in Jamaica,

took Shaun Ryder's group Black Grape there.

I shot the first video with Ice T init.

Got to make a couple of videos for Bob Marley.

♪ I don't wanna wait in vain For your love... ♪

Then one day, there was a week when nothing on the slate appealed to me.

And... a track came in by this band called Ratt.

(5 "Round and Round", Ratt)

"Round and Round", it was called.

And we put it out there on tour supporting Motley Crue.

This fucking video is a smash,

and in the middle of the tour, they had to switch the headlines

and Ratt became the headline group.

That's probably in the States, my most famous video.

♪ You make the night, I always cross the line

♪ Tightened our belts... ♪

(& "Pass the Dutchie", Musical Youth) ♪ This generation rules the nation

(Don Letts) I guess some of my proudest video moments

would be things like Musical Youth, "Pass the Dutchie".

That was number one in 18 countries around the world.

It was actually the first black video on MTV.

But they didn't count it - the brother's like this big and had a Birmingham accent.

♪ Pass the Dutchie 'pon the left hand side

♪ Pass the Dutchie 'pon the left hand side

♪ It a go bun (give me the music Make me jump and prance) ♪

(Don Letts) In the '80s, I'd kind of made a name for myself

as a video director, and I get a phone call from MTV,

"You're the guy that makes The Clash videos,

"we'd like you to come in and do an interview."

Great... I'll do an interview.

I go to their office in Midtown New York somewhere.

This is the early '80s.

I walk into the office. Everyone's looking at me kind of fucking weird.

I'm like, "What the fuck?!" Like... (sniffs). I smell all right.

And then this guy sheepishly comes up to me

and takes me into this office,

and he sits me down, hangs his head and says,

"This is really embarrassing.

"Donnelly can't do an interview with you."

I'm like, "How come?"

He's like, "We didn't know you were black."

(Dennis Bovell) There were no black artists on MTV.

So putting them right in front of Parliament

was a message to the then government, kind of knocking on the door, as it were.

He took them to the living rooms of Britain.

Don was the spearhead of making videos in England for black groups.

One - he's intelligent.

Two - he's very brave.

He's not afraid to knock on the door of someone like Chris Blackwell

and say, "Look, I've got an idea. Fly me to Jamaica.

"And when I come back, you're going to have

"the most amazing film you've ever seen."

(♪ "Dancehall Queen", Beenie Man)

(Don Letts) "Dancehall Queen."

A homage really to "The Harder They Come",

which is about this larger than life, macho Jamaican male character.

And it struck me that it was really the women

that were keeping Jamaica together.

You can't stay here, so you know. This plot reserved.

I no move, sister.

Move for me now.

(Don Letts) All the guys still wanted to be like, Jimmy Cliff...

What you think I do? Eh?

Me try keep you move.

You no hear what me say? Me say, I no move.

He's great because the topics he chooses to work with

are culturally very important, um to...

...shaping opinions and forming perceptions,

especially, you know, of black British.

He makes these films and documentaries from the platform of personal experience

and he's able to bring all of that personal lifestyle experience to the screen.

(Droning electric guitar)

(Grantley Marshall) When he talks about something in documentaries,

he talks about it from a personal point of view,

like you're looking out of his eyes.

It's always about a black kid growing up in this society

with all these different things going on.

So there's some sort of relation to what he's about

or how he felt within that situation.

(Andi Oliver) When you look at Don's body of work,

things like Gil Scott-Heron. Sun Ra,

the Clash documentary, all of that stuff, there's a link.

All of those people, their creative and cultural output is about freedom

and it's about a kind of fire in the belly.

And that's really key and really important because if you're actually changing

the world around you or crossing boundaries,

what you need to be doing is following your creative path

and just pushing yourself down the road that you want to be down.

(Don Letts) I do something I feel needs to justify the space it occupies.

Made films about things that mean something, man,

they deserve that space,

and they can actually help to move things forward.

I'm always trying to make a film about myself through these people.

I've always gravitated to artists that aren't defined by their colour.

I believe that these people are doing something

that's worth passing on because they're part of me,

and it's about passing on this energy.

(Fading cacophony of sounds)

It either speaks to me or doesn't.

(Phone vibrating)

One second, started to shoot edit, phones buzzing.

Oh, I got to take it, it's my daughter. Hello. Hello.

- (Muffled voice) Hello, Dad? - Yeah, hello. Go on.

(Liberty) Hi. We're just down Oxford Street,

having a sit down 'cause it's hot.

OK, baby. And then what are you doing after Oxford Street?

(Muffled speech on phone)

OK, baby, hang out for...

If it's a nice day, hang out down there. It's safer than other places. All right?

- (Liberty) All right. - All right. Speak to you later. Bye.

- Sorry, guys. Bye. - (Liberty) OK, bye.

- Where was I? - (Calming synth instrumental)

After, um, I got busted and Audrey kicked me out,

it was inevitable that me and Grace would get together.

And eventually, we got married.

(Grace Letts) Don and I got married November 20th, 1997.

It was almost like destiny, like we were supposed to be together,

even through all these kind of, uh, you know, ups and downs.

From quite early on, I always knew that it's going to be forever.

It was just something I just knew.

And inevitably, a few years later, we had our first child, Honor.

We had another child, Liberty.

So, I had Grace, Liberty and Honor.

I had two beautiful kids with Audrey, Amber and Jet.

And despite their father being somewhat of a dick

when they were growing up, they've turned out as really great adults.

And there was a very, very frosty period with Jet

when I left his mother and met Grace,

and he didn't speak to me for, like, four or five years.

But time heals a lot of shit, obviously.

And now we've got a great relationship.

In fact, he's just had a son himself, so I'm a grandfather.

I've actually got two other grandchildren.

Both girls.

(Grace Letts) To see Don with kids is a really sweet thing.

That's the softer side of him.

It kind of melts the heart.

(Don Letts) Everything I am comes from music.

(Sparse electric guitar instrumental)

It was music that got me to the Roxy.

It was music that got me to Jamaica.

It was music that got me into being a filmmaker.

Music is the elixir of life.

(I "Baby Face", Sound Dimension)

(Don Letts) It's a great way to kind of communicate to people through culture.

Music has that potential to change people's life,

to inform and inspire.

I've learn t more from music than anything else to this very day.

My love of music, art, film and that, it's a very personal thing.

I don't give a fuck if you like it.

I'm not on some life mission to educate the people.

I'm trying to educate myself.

♪ Sock it to me, baby (5 "Do It To Me Baby", Derrick Morgan)

(Don on radio) Wake the town and tell the people. I'm Don Letts,

and for the next two hours, I'm your guy for a musical ride on BBC 6 Music.

(Don Letts) I've spent my whole life...

...charging forwards.

I've always hoped I'd be so busy that I wouldn't have time to look back.

(♪ "All Things Must Pass", George Harrison)

(Don Letts) Most people come and go,

and no one even knows they fucking existed.

I guess I don't want to be one of those people.

You just work toward something that's slightly better than when you arrived.

It's like you have this vision of yourself and who you might be.

And you try your hardest to become it. And Don certainly has become it.

I would say there's a lot of larger than life characters in Don's life,

but that's because that's effectively what he is.

He's a person of conviction.

He had something to say. Wasn't shy in saying it.

His heart's always in the right place.

He's honest to goodness, what you see is what you get.

That's his voice.

He was trying to always make people feel inclusive to his thing.

It's not just our thing. This is your thing too.

We're not here to take something. We're here to give.

(Don Letts) I know what it's like

to be allowed to break down racial stereotypes,

to break down perceptions of who you are, what you are and what you represent.

It works in two ways, I think.

It either motivates you, or it can crush you.

(Andi Oliver) But he's still making films, he's deejaying, he's doing radio shows,

still innovating, using culture to change the world around him,

and that is power.

That's fire. And that's essential.

(Don Letts) My parents' generation were like work fodder

as far as England was concerned.

They gave their hearts and soul to help rebuild this country.

And, uh, yeah, it's not appreciated.

(♪ "All Things Must Pass", George Harrison fades out)

It never is, is it?

Punk rock's a living thing.

It's something to look forward to, not something to look back on.

(Chanting)

(Don Letts) It's the birthright of all young people, of everybody.

(Chanting)

(Don Letts) And this spirit and attitude is not just about music.

- It's not even just about art. - Black Lives Matter!

(Don Letts) You get punk rock about anything you do.

(Chanting)

(Don Letts) And it wasn't something designed to look back on.

(Crowd singing) ♪ This land is your land...

- (Don Letts) You can take it forward. - (TV static)

(Quiet melancholic instrumental)

(Don Letts) Maybe they'll realise the best you can do is to work towards

things you probably won't see happen.

Let them take the board and take it to the next base.

Have a good time.

Look good.

And try your very best not to be a cunt.

(&' "ll Fought The Law", The Clash)

♪ Breakin' rocks in the hot sun

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I needed money 'cause I had none

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the war and the law won

♪ I left my baby and it feels so bad

♪ Guess my race is run

♪ She's the best girl that I ever had

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the...

♪ Robbin' people with a six-gun

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I lost my girl and I lost my fun

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I left my baby and it feels so bad

♪ Guess my race is run

♪ She's the best girl that I ever had

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the...

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the...J

(&' "ll Fought the Law," The Clash ends)

(Melancholic instrumental plays)

(Melancholic instrumental fades)

Subtitles by Day for Night