Lee "Scratch" Perry Discusses Secret Laboratory Studio Fire in New Interview

Photo via Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Facebook

Earlier this month, Lee “Scratch” Perry‘s famous Swiss studio, the Secret Laboratory (aka Blue Ark), was destroyed in a fire. Now, he’s opened up about the blaze in an interview with reggae historian David Katz, for Red Bull Music Academy. 

Perry described the fire as his “second judgement,” the first being the blaze that destroyed his legendary Jamaican studio Black Ark in the early 1980s. Describing the night of the fire, Perry said, “I was doing a song and then another song come into my mind, so I go down to the studio again. I go to bed at about six o’clock in the morning, and when I come up from downstairs I forget to blow out the candle – it was on top of a Bible. Sometimes, [Perry's wife] Mireille always come and say, ‘Look, the candle,’ and me never remember fi go look because I go to bed too late.”

According to Mireille, “He didn’t even have a pair of shoes to wear. From the fire and the water, everything was like an earthquake.”

Ahead of his forthcoming tour’s opening night in Dublin, Ireland, Perry is recuperating in Jamaica. “What happened did happen, and nothing can happen unless God make it happen,” he said. “So that’s why I’m in Jamaica, to find out from God why it happened.”

Read the full interview at Red Bull Music Academy.

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