RICHIE STEPHENS REMEMBERS GARNET SILK…30 YEARS LATER!

By Howard Campbell—

For a time during the early 1990s, Richie Stephens and Garnet Silk were neighbors in the hills of St. Andrew Parish, Jamaica. They saw each other regularly and would have the occasional chat.

With their careers on a high, Silk thought they should do a collaboration. Stephens agreed, and was confident he had the perfect song for them.

Fight Back, a song he wrote, was recorded at producer Danny Browne’s studio in 1994 and became an instant hit. Stephens and Silk performed the song at Mirage nightclub in Kingston on December 6 that year, three days before Silk died at age 28.

 

December 9 marked the 30th year since he and his mother Etiga Gray perished in a fire at her home in Manchester, a rural parish in central Jamaica where Garnet Silk was born. He was the biggest name in Jamaican music at the time, reeling off conscious anthems like Kingly Character, Moma Africa, Lion Heart and Zion In A Vision.

Fight Back added to his lofty reputation.

As Stephens recalled: “That song was recorded by myself, it’s a song that I wrote and I was getting ready to release it on the Top Ranking label. I was a neighbor to Garnet Silk, he used to live up the road from me so he would pass every day and sometimes he would stop and we hold a reasoning. One day, him sey to mi, ‘Richie, wi nuh sing nuh song yet yuh nuh bredda’. And I said, ‘that’s true, that’s true’.” 

He played Silk the tape with Fight Back, and remembers him being excited by the track. Shortly after, they headed to Browne’s Main Street Records where they cut Silk’s vocals.

Stephens recalled everyone at the recording session was sure the song would be a hit. They were right, as it made playlists of radio stations in Jamaica and the United States, particularly in the tri-state area.

Chart Compiler Clinton Lindsay was one of the Disc Jockeys who played the song on New York’s WNWK fm, an influential platform in that region’s large West Indian community.

According to Lindsay, “the WNWK Top 20 Chart of  December 7, 1994, shows that “Fight Back” was at #12, on its way down the chart. It entered on October 20^th. However, by March 8, 1995, it climbed its way up to #1 for two weeks, giving Silk his only chart topper at WNWK.

Stephens, who was signed to Motown Records in the mid-1990s, remembers Garnet Silk as “a very talented and humble person.” Fight Back is still a popular part of his live show.