The Bloom of Light – Kingston, Jamaica
When that judge sentenced me to hard labour, my stomach dropped, and I shat myself. But it didn’t take long before I found a way into the band.

My neighbour inside, Aljoe, was doing life for a double murder. He’d gone down at seventeen, and by the time I met him he was forty-eight. Decades behind bars, but he could still tear a guitar to pieces.

We got wheeled out like circus acts whenever visiting dignitaries came through. I ended up as the band secretary. Every day for an hour, the musically minded prisoners would show up at the band room, desperate to audition. My job was to get them on stage — and even harder, to drag them back off again.

The core of the band weren’t budging. Every single one of them was serving life for murder, and none of them were giving up their spot for anybody.

Plenty of them couldn’t read or write. Not because they were thick, but because nobody had ever taught them. Growing up in the ghettos of Kingston, school was a luxury no one could afford. But what they lacked in letters, they made up for in instinct. They could read people in seconds flat — and if you upset the wrong man, you might not see tomorrow.

I played countless gigs with that band. Sometimes big reggae stars came in for special occasions, and we backed them. Once, the whole thing was even televised inside the prison.

Me? I stood out, the only white man in the group. Not because I had talent, but because I was a curiosity. Eyes followed me everywhere. But I held my place.

And I walked away with memories I’ll never forget. After that gaff, I swore to myself — whatever came next, it could only be good. And I wasn’t wrong.

For the full story of my time inside, the band, and the madness that followed, check out my book Nightmare in Jamaica.

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