We set up a studio in my home in Connecticut, and I break some ribs in my library. A recipe for bangers and mash. A hungover safari in Africa. Jagger’s knighthood; we work and write together again. Paul McCartney comes down the beach. I fall from a branch and hit my head. A brain operation in New Zealand. Pirates of the Caribbean, my father’s ashes, and Doris’s last review. Twenty-odd years after I began playing with local Rastafarian musicians, I went back to Jamaica with Patti for Thanksgiving 1995. I’d invited Rob Fraboni and his wife to come and stay with us—Rob had originally met this crew in 1973, when I first knew them. Fraboni’s holiday was canceled on day one because it turned out that at this moment all the surviving members were present and available, which was rare; there had been a lot of casualties and ups and downs and busts, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to record them. Fraboni somehow had bits of recording equipment available courtesy of the Jamaican minister of culture and promptly offered to record the setup.
