Vernon Reid

rock musician; guitarist

Personal Information

Born Vernon Reid on August 22, 1958, in London, England; moved to Brooklyn, NY, at age two; divorced.
Memberships: Formed Healing Hands Percussion Circle to aid Victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone, 2000.

Career

Joined experimental rock group Decoding Society, 1982; formed band Living Colour, 1983; formed Black Rock Coalition with music critic Greg Tate, 1985. Living Colour signed with Epic Records, 1987; group recorded for Epic Records, 1988-93; Living Colour dissolved by 1995; solo album, Mistaken Identity, 1996; toured with My Science Project; formed band Guitar Oblique.

Life's Work

Guitarist Vernon Reid is best known as the founder of the groundbreaking African-American rock group Living Colour. But to recognize Reid solely for his Grammy Award-winning work as a rock musician would be to miss a rich and varied body of work which has extended into virtually every musical genre. Reid has played with artists ranging in style from Mariah Carey to Public Enemy, and from Mick Jagger to jazz guitarist Bill Frisell. He has undertaken a wide range of musical journeys, including the production of James Blood Ulmer's blues album at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, reuniting with Living Colour for a series of shows, and touring with former Cream front man Jack Bruce.

Reid's eclectic musical vision was fostered at a young age. Born in London, England, in 1958, Reid's family moved to Brooklyn, New York, when he was two. He grew up listening to rock and roll, soul, and even calypso music, an influence from his West Indian parents. As a young man Reid's tastes gravitated toward the guitar heroes of the day--Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and especially Carlos Santana, who incorporated his own Latin heritage into conventional rock music. At the age of 15, Reid took up the guitar and soon gravitated toward jazz music under the tutelage of free form guitarists Ten Dunbar and Rodney Jones.

Reid's first band of note was drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson's experimental jazz-rock group Decoding Society. Throughout the 1980s Reid recorded four albums with Decoding Society and built a reputation for himself as a lightning-fast yet versatile guitarist. This notoriety in the New York music world led to his appearances on the albums of Defunkt, Bill Frisell, Jim Zorn, Mick Jagger, and Public Enemy, during the period from 1985 to 1987. But it was one of Reid's side projects that would make him a real star in the music world.

In 1983 Reid formed his own band called Living Colour. The group started out as a hard rock power trio but changed and evolved through the years. By the time of Reid's collaboration with The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger three years later, Living Colour had become a four-man unit and was regularly gigging at the New York rock club CBGBs. Though the group enjoyed some success in New York City, Living Colour had yet to record any original material. Jagger heard the group at the club and agreed to produce a demo for the band to send out to the big record companies. Jagger produced "Glamour Boys" and "Which Way to America" and sent the songs, along with the rest of what would become the group's first album, Vivid, to Epic Records.

Reid and his band-mates went on tour for 18 months to publicize and support the unreleased material. The all-African-American lineup of hard rockers created a buzz wherever they played. As a result of the tour and the accompanying publicity surrounding the group, Epic Records signed the band, and Living Colour burst onto the scene of mainstream rock radio, an arena totally dominated by white artists. Suddenly there was a black heavy metal band whose music included elements of jazz, rap, funk, and calypso stylings. The public's receptivity to these new musical blends was evidenced by the popularity of the record. One year after its release, Vivid went platinum and the single "Cult of Personality" broke into the Top Ten. But a hit record was not enough for Reid. He and Village Voice writer Greg Tate formed the Black Rock Coalition (BRC) in the mid-1980s to help other African-American rock musicians. Reid wanted to use his stardom to help others. He told Rolling Stone in 1989: "It's not about 'Now we got through the door, close the door behind us.' What I hope our success is doing is encouraging other black rock bands to stick with it, because this is the result of six years of hard work. Other bands have told me our success is giving them the feeling that it's possible."

After the success of Vivid, Living Colour produced three more albums: Time's Up in 1990, Biscuits in 1991, and Stain in 1993. After the last album was finished, Reid found his professional and personal life changing. His first marriage fell apart and he decided to break up Living Colour. The group's five-year stint as a band had yielded two Grammy Awards, two MTV Music Video Awards, and two International Rock Awards, along with over four million records sold. As a result of Reid's success with Living Colour he could live comfortably, but his band had dissolved, and that, along with his divorce, had taken away many of the trappings of his success.

Reid's next project was a 1996 solo album called Mistaken Identity. Reid told Guitar Player about the fresh start: "Near the end of Living Colour there just wasn't any joy--there was a lack of humility on all our parts. On this project everybody was a close friend that I had a lot of respect for, and most importantly had a sense of humor. I just let myself have fun." Reid's new project left his rock background behind and combined elements of hip hop and jazz while leaning heavily on cutting-edge technology. Soon after the release of Mistaken Identity Reid was nominated for another Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental, for a song he wrote called "Every Now and Then," which appeared on a Carlos Santana box-set. Reid spread his musical wings even farther, touring with one of his bands called My Science Project and producing an album in Bamako, Mali, for African singer Salif Keita.

As Reid matured he branched out even more, forming a band called Guitar Oblique with guitarists Elliot Sharp and David Torn. A series of his photographs became the subject of an exhibition in New York City titled Fetishes, Moments, Mementos, and the eclectic artist also wrote a play.

But perhaps none of Reid's projects has been as dear to him as the Healing Hands Percussion Circle, which he formed in 2000. Reid saw a photograph of two victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone whose hands had been amputated by rebel forces as a form of intimidation. Reid told the New York Times about his motivation in forming the Healing Hands relief organization: "As a guitarist, the idea of the forcible taking of the hands is mind-numbingly horrific. The image was so striking, and what was happening was so beyond the pale, that I began to look into it." Reid brought together drummers for performances to raise money for the victims, and to bring to public consciousness the horrible conditions under which some civil war victims were living.

In addition to charity work, the development of his own projects, touring with rock legend Jack Bruce, and producing other artists' music--including a Sun Studios recording of James Blood Ulmer--Reid found time to reunite with his old band-mates. Living Colour got together again for a series of concerts in the spring of 2001. While many observers view his musical journey with awe, Reid takes it all in stride. He told the New York Times, "I was just a kid in Brooklyn, sitting on his bed with a guitar in my lap, and listening to Santana records or James Brown records or Mahavishnu records or Led Zeppelin records, and thinking, 'Wow!' And then, you know, I'm meeting Jimmy Page. It is not lost on me, the fantastic irony of it. Now, I basically want to just keep on going."

Awards

With Living Colour: two Grammy Awards, two MTV Music Awards, and two International Rock Awards, 1988-93; Grammy Nomination for Best Rock Instrumental, 1996.

Works

Selected discography

• With Living Colour
• Vivid, Epic, 1988.
• Time's Up, Epic, 1990.
• Biscuits, Epic, 1991.
• Stain, Epic, 1993.
• Other Recordings
• (With Bill Frisell) Smash and Scatterbrain, Minor Music, 1985.
• (With Mick Jagger) Primitive Cool, Colombia, 1987.
• (With Public Enemy) Yo! Bum Rush the Show, Def Jam Columbia, 1987.
• Mistaken Identity, 5050, 1996.

Further Reading

Periodicals

• Guitar Player, August, 1996.
• New York Times, September 23, 1998; December 20, 2000.
• Rolling Stone, March 23, 1989.

On-line

• Black Rock Coalition, www.blackrockcoalition.org

— Michael J. Watkins

• Active: '90s, 2000s
• Genres: Rock
• Instrumental Rock Instrument: Guitar
• Representative Albums: "Mistaken Identity," "Other True Self," "Known Unknown"

Biography

As the lead guitarist of Living Colour and a co-founder of the Black Rock Coalition, Vernon Reid has done a great deal to undermine stereotypical expectations of what music black artists ought to play; his rampant eclecticism encompasses everything from hard rock and punk to funk, R&B and avant-garde jazz, and his anarchic, lightning-fast solos have become something of a hallmark as well. Born in London, Reid and his family emigrated to Brooklyn while he was a child; he began playing guitar at age 15, initially studying jazz and progressing quickly. In 1980, he joined drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society, a cutting-edge jazz group with whom he appeared on six albums; over the course of the decade, Reid went on to work with a wide variety of experimental musicians -- Defunkt, Bill Frisell, John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, and Public Enemy, among others.

Around 1983, Reid formed the first version of what was to become Living Colour; in 1985, with journalist Greg Tate, he formed the Black Rock Coalition, an organization devoted to opening doors in the music business for black musicians who were not content being confined to the roles of soul crooner or rapper. Living Colour did not really begin to jell until their lineup stabilized in 1986, and when Mick Jagger saw the group perform at CBGB's and invited them to appear on his Primitive Cool album. Jagger went even further, producing two demo tracks and helping to convince Epic to sign the group. Living Colour debuted to massive critical acclaim in 1988 with Vivid; the group lasted through Time's Up (1990) and Stain (1993) before disbanding in 1995. Reid has continued to make periodic appearances on others' recordings, and in 1996, he issued his solo debut, Mistaken Identity. He resurfaced in 2002 as one half of Yohimbe Brothers, a duo also featuring DJ Logic. The two released the Front End Lifter album in September and subsequently toured the United States throughout October. They issued a followup in 2004 on Thirsty Ear entitled The Tao Of Yo.eid has remained active as both a session guitarist and as a producer, most notably on James Blood Ulmer's recordings since 2001 beginning with Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions in 2001 and continuing through 2003's No Escape From the Blues: The Electric Lady Sessions, 2004's Birthright and Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions in 2007. Also in 2007, Reid, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and drummer Grant Calvin Weston played a get-together for the closing of New York's Tonic performance space. The show went well enough for the trio form a band called the Free Form Funky Freqs; their drbut album, Urban Mythology: Volume One was released as part of Thirsty Ear's Blue Series in February of 2008. ~ Steve Huey and Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

Known Unknown Buy this CD

Mistaken Identity Buy this CD

Other True Self Buy this CD

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