When I was 16, my passion was painting. I got that from my father and it was good currency in school. Because if you could draw, you could barter with the other kids who weren’t so good at drawing but were good at other subjects and get them to do your homework. So that worked out pretty well.
This was at the pre-beginning of the skinhead movement, which was pretty much an offshoot of the mod movement. So it was pro-black music. I went to Effra School off the Railton Road and lots of my friends were the sons and daughters of the Windrush generation. We’d listen to people like Prince Buster, but I didn’t know most of the names, I just heard the music. We’d hear rocksteady, and when my dad was living with us he listened to French singers like Jacques Brel. My part of Brixton was a journey through different
