Reggae Pioneer Wrote ‘Chase the Devil,’ ‘Wet Dream’

Max Romeo, the reggae legend who broke through with a pioneering rude boy classic and soundtracked the political turmoil of 1970s Jamaica, died last Friday, April 11, The Guardian reports. He was 80.

Romeo died in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica after suffering heart complications. His death was confirmed by his lawyer, Errol Michael Henry, who said, “To hear of his passing is quite shocking. He was a perfect gentleman, and a gentle soul. He had great love for his family, and he was a legend in his own right. You couldn’t meet a nicer person — which makes the loss more difficult.”

Romeo secured his first international hit in 1968 with “Wet Dream,” a not-exactly-subtle song that helped define the “rude reggae” subgenere and cracked the Top 10 in the U.K. despite being banned on the BBC for its lyrical content. But during the Seventies — as Jamaica endured serious upheaval and violence — Romeo’s music took a decisive turn towards the political and spiritual. 

He still remains best known for his classic 1976 album, War Ina Babylon, which he made with Lee “Scratch” Perry and the latter’s backing band, the Upsetters. The LP featured a plethora of classics, including the title track and “Chase the Devil,” which would be sampled numerous times in subsequent decades. 

Speaking with the BBC in 2011, Romeo discussed the song’s simple, yet potent message. Describing the Devil less as a Biblical creature, but the “negative within your psyche, just like God is the positive within your psyche,” Romeo said “chasing the devil” simply meant “chasing the negative out of your mind and let it become controlled by positive.” 

He added: “You toughen up your spirit and get Satan out of your mind — send him to outer space, let him go and find another race, and let him take his guns and his bombs, and all these things that are made to destroy along with him. And let’s have one world, one people, peaceful and tranquil. I mean, it sounds stupid, and it’s far-fetched, but it’s just a dream.” 

Born Maxwell Livingston Smith in Northern Jamaica, Romeo left home at the age of 14 and was working on a sugar plantation when he won a local talent competition that allowed him to travel to Kingston and embark on a music career. Success came quickly with his first band, the Emotions, which notched a hit in 1966 with “(Buy You) a Rainbow,” produced by Ken Lack. 

Within a few years, Romeo was eager to launch his solo career. After his initial efforts fell short, it was through a minor fluke that he came to record “Wet Dream”: Romeo had penned lyrics to accompany a Derrick Morgan rhythm track called “Hold You Jack,” but when Morgan — and several other vocalists — bailed on the session, Romeo was finally enlisted to cut the track. 

“Wet Dream” was an instant hit in Jamaica and soon gained traction in the U.K. despite significant lack of radio play. Romeo famously tried to claim the song was about a leaky roof, but the lyrics spoke for themselves: “Every night me go to sleep, me have wet dreams/Lie down girl let me push it up, push it up, lie down.”

Romeo tried to replicate the success of “Wet Dream” with several lascivious follow-ups (“Belly Woman,” “Mini-Skirt Vision,” “Wine Her Goosie”), but he soon pivoted to a roots reggae sound with more politically charged lyrics. At the time, Jamaica’s left-leaning PNP party was mounting a challenge against the conservative JLP, which had ruled the country in the decade since its independence. Romeo was a staunch PNP supporter and allowed his rendition of “Let the Power Fall on I” to serve as a campaign theme song for Michael Manley, who was elected prime minister in 1972. 

Romeo went in a more spiritual direction for his 1975 album, Revelation Time, but continued economic issues, protest movements, violence, and another round of impending elections made politics unavoidable as he prepped his 1976 masterpiece, War Ina Babylon.

In a 2021 interview with Rolling Stone, Romeo recalled the sessions for the album at Perry’s Black Ark studio: “It was a great experience. I spent two weeks in the studio without going home,” he said. “Lee, he worked night and day. He rarely sleeps during a production. It was a crazy scene, but good music always comes out of a crazy mind.” (Romeo and Perry had a falling out not long after the album was released, but they reconciled years later.)

In the following years, Romeo left Jamaica, briefly relocating to New York City where he co-wrote and starred in the 1978 Broadway musical Reggae and provided backing vocals on the Rolling Stones’ “Dancing” off Emotional Rescue. Keith Richards later co-produced Romeo’s 1981 album, Holding Out My Love to You. 

Over the next few decades, Romeo continued to tour and record new music, while some of his classic songs continued to find new listeners, especially through sampling. “Chase the Devil,” in particular, would be flipped numerous times over the years, most notably by the Prodigy on their 1992 song “Out of Space” and Kanye West on Jay-Z’s “Lucifer.” 

And though it became his most enduring song, Romeo, by his own admission, was skeptical about “Chase the Devil.” As he told Rolling Stone, he went to Perry after finishing War Ina Babylon and told him, “The whole album is brilliant, beautiful, but one track is stupid to me.” Romeo said Perry told him to “go home and get some rest, because I was trying to cut the best track on the bloody album.”

He added: “I just went by what he said. I said, ‘Okay, if you feel that way about it.’ And it turned it to be true; it was the most successful track on the album. They’re all good tracks, but that one is the leader track.”