Senor Nice

  We arrived at Treasure Beach, a string of loosely linked fishing settlements and the site of Jake’s Hotel, a ramshackle assembly of wooden cottages, concrete villas, bars, small pools and beach. I had read in the hotel brochure that Jake’s is to Treasure Beach as the university is to the city of Oxford, a focus of culture and clowning, but at 10.30 p.m. Jake’s was disappointingly dead. The driver took me to my cottage, the only light for miles. There was no wardrobe, no hot water, no telephone. There was, however, a fully stocked fridge, a wooden writing table, an L-shaped stone bench, a large double bed under a rainbow-coloured mosquito net, and a CD player.

  I walked out to the veranda, sat in one of the huge armchairs, gazed through almost pitch blackness at outlines of palm trees and shacks, listened to the frothy pounding waves, and sorely wished I’d had the balls to smuggle in enough dope for a smoke. Perhaps it is foolish to take coals to Newcastle, but a Welsh miner can only blame himself for freezing to death if he doesn’t. I raided the fridge and read the service directory and the covers of the dozen or so CDs. The music collection was first class. This was no surprise; the hotel is owned by Jason Henzell, son of Perry Henzell, the writer of the first great Jamaican film, The Harder They Come, and part of the Island Resorts chain owned by Chris Blackwell, founder of Island records. The hotel is also a personal favourite of Robbie Williams, who according to the hotel brochure wrote his massive hit ‘Angels’ during one of his stays.

  Over a hundred recordings a week are released in Jamaica, a greater output per head than any other country. Jamaican musical rhythm and dance movements derive originally from West Africa, and the songs, including hymns, developed at sugar cane and banana plantations. When slavery was abolished, syncopated rhythm, gyrating hips, bodies dipping forward and bawdy lyrics became the hallmarks of Jamaican muisc and dance. During the early 1900s, calypso, whose greatest star was Jamaican Harry Belafonte, combined with tango and samba to produce mento, a purely Jamaican sound. American rhythm and blues then melded with calypso to produce another uniquely Jamaican rhythm, soca, and with mento to originate the far more popular ska, referred to in the UK as bluebeat. ‘My Boy Lollipop’, sung by Jamaican Millie Small, arranged by Ernest Ranglin and produced by Chris Blackwell, went to the top of the UK charts in 1964.

  Sound systems on wheels began in the 1950s and spawned the cult of the DJs, known then as toasters. During the 1960s, the ska beat slowed down and a dominant bass line emerged to produce rocksteady, a sound pioneered by Leroy Sibbles and the Heptones and brought to international fame by Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff.

  Rastafarian influence resulted in song lyrics expressing black pride and protest. The Jamaican establishment saw this as subversive and the new music was banned from radio stations. However it could still be heard in rum bars and on juke boxes. Reggae emerged, the name derived from rex, the music of Kingston’s lion kings. Then came the Jamaican equivalent to the Beatles, the Wailers, a vocal trio comprising Neville ‘Bunny’ Livingston, Peter ‘Tosh’ MacIntosh and Robert Nesta Marley. At first they dressed as gangsters, or rude boys, wearing sharp suits and shades, but then found their true style with producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. To the world, Bob Marley is reggae, but the word was first used by Toots Hibbert, a direct descendant of an anti-slavery activist, in ‘Do the Reggay’ in 1968. Chris Blackwell’s Island Records produced a series of Wailers albums, introducing reggae to a worldwide audience and making Bob Marley the Third World’s first superstar. B-sides of popular discs were released with the vocals removed, leaving the heavy bass and drum tracks for toasters to add further instrumentation and their own lyrics, giving birth to the culture of dub poetry.

  One of ganja’s many marvellous properties is to heighten one’s appreciation of tonal resonance and change one’s perception of time. This encouraged reggae record producers such as Lee Perry and King Tubby to twiddle their knobs, reverberate, echo, cut up the vocal track, and add snatches of dogs barking, roosters crowing and gunshots. The title track on Peter Tosh’s first solo LP Legalise It includes a litany of ganja’s medicinal uses and a list of those who use it: doctors, nurses, judges and lawyers as well as singers and musicians. The song has become the anthem of pot smokers everywhere.

  In Jamaica but dopeless, I listened to a selection of the CDs, thoroughly enjoying my auditory history lesson and reading the biographies of the artists. For the first time I learned that Bob Marley was of mixed race. Feeling slightly ashamed of my ignorance, I read on. According to Jamaica’s Daily Post, Marley’s mother was a Jamaican woman named Ciddy Brooker who married Captain Marley, a British army officer and British West Indian Regiment quartermaster, whose brief was to assist in the colonisation and cultivation of the island. The marriage was a scandal and Marley’s family disinherited him. He resigned his commission and took a job in Kingston. Captain Marley’s first name was Norval, and he was born in Prestatyn, North Wales. I found it hard to believe what I was reading. Accepting that Elvis was Welsh had been hard enough. I longed to go back to the Royal Oak and catch out Eddie Evans with that snippet of information.

  Deeply regretting that I would probably have to leave Jamaica before witnessing a live concert, I fell asleep.

  The dawn chorus catapulted me out of bed, but Jake’s was still dead. Looking for a telephone outside the hotel, I passed the closed International Communication Centre. Due to either sharp business practice or rural frustration, vandals had disabled all the phone boxes within striking distance. I asked my driver of last night, who was half asleep in his car.

  ‘Cable and Wickedness, mon. Cable and Wickedness. Yo try Jimmy’s Seafood place. Im af phone.’

  I walked past bars and other flimsy attractions that seemed to serve merely as excuses to design, commission and erect signs. The businesses may go bust in weeks, but the signs live on for years. I came to Jimmy’s Seafood. The outside was plastered with notices proclaiming ‘Conch puts you in high gear,’ ‘You get blood from lobsters,’ ‘God is the highest,’ ‘When the Devils Says No, God says Yes,’ and ‘Live by the clock, die by the clock.’ It was closed.

  Nearby, a bar called Sue’s Little Pleasure had just opened. I walked into a shed twelve foot square with bamboo walls, a pitched zinc roof, concrete floor, solid wooden bar, one framed photograph of Haile Selassie and several unframed photographs and paintings of Welshman Bob Marley. A few awkward stools of different heights stood at the bar; another stool lay on the floor. Several pairs of women’s shoes lay for sale on the bar, which also carried a deafening ghetto blaster, badly tuned in to a local radio station. Two crates of Red Stripe and a shelf of rum bottles stood precariously behind the bar. Dozens of small identical bottles of nail varnish sat on another shelf. Behind the bar was sexy Dorothy, who served me a Red Stripe, giggled and disappeared. I took the can to the telephone and called Leroy, who just told me, yet again, to be careful. I sat at one of the outside tables. My driver joined me. We idly watched seven dogs taking turns to penetrate a bitch.

  ‘Yo wa some weed, mon?

  I nodded vigorously

  ‘Mek wi go dong a mi bredren farm?’

  I nodded even more vigorously.

  We drove up into the mountains until we came to a small wooden hut guarded by a heavily armed but amiable local named Shortcut, who smiled, shook my hand and led me to a clearing containing several dozen marijuana plants. Shortcut stoked up a chalice, sucked strongly, puffed out dense clouds of bluish-white smoke, and invited me to do the same. I did my best, sat on the grass, leaned against the wooden hut, and drifted off. The talk of ‘mi bredren farm’ set me wondering how well the Mr Nice Seedbank plantations were doing in Switzerland.

  An unexpected and extraordinary outcome of the success of Mr Nice was my acquiring the status of an expert in the cultivation and identification of various strains of marijuana. My rich experience of dealing with the finished product is fully documented, but apart from one abortive effort in the early 1970s I have never tried to grow the cannabis plant and cannot distinguish one
strain from another. I hate gardening and do not have much sense of smell or taste; I can merely distinguish marijuana that has a high concentration of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, cannabis’s main psychoactive ingredient) from one that has a low one by how stoned I get smoking it.

  My apparent expertise was largely due to a brainwave from Justin Rees of Visual Entertainment, who had produced Howard Marks – A Video Diary. Much of the content of the diary was offstage footage of the shows I did for the 1998 Edinburgh Festival, coupled with scenes of me getting stoned in various London clubs. By October 1998, the project was almost in the can. Then Justin called me.

  ‘Howard, I’ve just had another idea.’

  ‘Great! Your ideas have been first class so far, especially hooking me up with Fatboy Slim at The End last year. I’ll never forget that night.’

  ‘This is different, Howard. If we can sort it, would you be prepared to be filmed walking through marijuana plantations, explaining to viewers the differences in the plant strains and techniques involved in their cultivation?’

  ‘I’m up for it in principle; I still smoke it like there’s no tomorrow. But my knowledge of horticulture is close to zero.’

  ‘I don’t think that matters, Howard.’

  ‘Where are these plantations?’

  ‘We’ve already talked to people in Holland, Switzerland and Morocco.’

  ‘Morocco! I would love to go there; they make hashish, something I do know a bit about. And I’ve never run foul of the Moroccan authorities. But Holland and Switzerland might be difficult. I’ve had problems with them in the past. They might not be keen on me publicly stomping through fields of weed.’

  ‘I’m sure Holland will be OK, Howard. Don’t forget all those coffee shops and cannabis cups.’

  In the early 1970s Holland decriminalised marijuana consumption and allowed licensed establishments to sell it. Growing marijuana was also permitted, attracting some of the world’s finest ganja botanists. Smokers from all over the world swarmed there. In those days, unlike now, smokers smuggled and smugglers smoked, so it didn’t take long for Amsterdam to become America, Australia and Europe’s favoured location for both wholesale dope dealers to ply their trade and for smugglers to plan their next scams. I jumped on the bandwagon, but in November 1973 was arrested with a joint’s worth of hashish (legally bought from a coffee shop) and kept in solitary confinement for a few days by the Dutch police, who then put me on a jet which delivered me into the arms of Her Majesty’s Customs & Excise at Heathrow Airport. They promptly charged me with exporting to the United States of America several hundred kilos of hashish hidden in the equipment of rock bands. I skipped bail and went on the run for several years, keeping well clear of Holland. I had a low opinion of the Dutch authorities – they weren’t tolerant; they just didn’t care. It was no coincidence that double Dutch, Dutch auction, Dutch treat, Dutch bargain, Dutch anchor, Dutch uncle, Dutch captain, Dutch courage, and Dutch cap all carry some meaning of deceit, hypocrisy, or duplicity. Many of my old dealing mates felt differently and kept going back there. They had their phones tapped and were ruthlessly extradited to America. The set-up was obvious to me: Holland was America’s hooker, enticing dealers inside through a posture of drug acceptance to spend the rest of their lives in American penitentiaries.

  During my fugitive period, 1974–80, the American marijuana magazine High Times dramatically increased its circulation. I was convinced it was a United States Drug Enforcement Administration publication. All the British smokers I knew had failed miserably at getting out a well-produced UK dope magazine. They’d not succeeded for two good reasons: they had no money and they were very stoned. So how did the Yanks manage to do it? Something fishy was going on, I thought. It had to be the DEA. If anyone signed up to a subscription for High Times or replied to advertisements for bongs and skins, law enforcement would have them tabbed for life.

  Once Reagan got into power, however, High Times appeared to become sincerely dedicated to serving the needs of the dope-smoking community. It developed a seriously anti-authoritarian attitude but continued to preserve its characteristically American naivety about foreign events. This was typified by its coverage of my 1981 Old Bailey trial, in which I was cleared of importing into Scotland fifteen tons of Colombian marijuana. The evidence against me was formidable: officers from HM Customs & Excise found in my pocket keys that opened doors behind which the same officers had just discovered several tons of the same Colombian marijuana. In my Knightsbridge flat, under my bed, they found £30,000 in used notes, and in my desk there were accounts for the entire operation in my own handwriting. Marty Langford and others had pleaded guilty to working for me. My defence depended on the truth of my claim that I was at the time working for the Mexican secret service to infiltrate Colombian terrorist groups. Although I was acquitted by the jury’s majority verdict, I very much doubted if anyone in the courtroom, including the jury, believed my story. The only exception was High Times, which in its April 1982 issue carried a report of the nine-week trial and firmly concluded I was an undercover agent working for a number of countries’ secret services. It warned dealers to stay away from me for their own safety.

  In 1987 High Times staff went to Holland to write about marijuana botanists living in Amsterdam. While working on the story, they had the idea of holding competitions related to cannabis. The first few annual contests were for seed companies. Each year the winner was the Seed Bank, the creation of Neville Schoenmaker, an astute Australian botanist who almost single-handedly was responsible for the worldwide spread of home-grown mind-blowing skunk, a powerful hybrid comprising the best qualities of the two main cannabis varieties, sativa – from Thailand, South America and Africa – and indica – from the Middle East.

  Then the DEA’s Operation Green Merchant busted exporters of seeds to America, regardless of how legally they were operating, and Neville Schoenmaker became a fugitive from American injustice. The Seed Bank was incorporated into Sensi Seed Club, resulting in Sensi Seed Bank, run by my old friend Ben Dronkers, who also set up the Cannabis Museum, Cannabis Castle and a bunch of coffee shops. During the late 1980s and early ’90s, the High Times Cannabis Cup opened up more to the public. Further competitions, for example for best hash, best coffeeshop, best bioweed, best bong and so on, were set up, as were industrial and culinary hemp exhibitions, coffee shop crawls, tours of the Cannabis Castle and Cannabis Museum, and parties with marijuana-influenced music held at Amsterdam’s Milky Way. Bob Marley’s widow Rita made a surprise trip from Jamaica to join the festivities. Along with Glastonbury, the High Times Cannabis Cup had arrived in the social calendar of the hip and cool.

  If Holland had allowed all that to happen, surely it wouldn’t mind some pictures of me surrounded by dope plants? But I thought I would call a Dutch lawyer first. A couple of weeks and a few hundred pounds later the lawyer discovered that in 1973 I had been charged with exporting hashish from Holland to America. Not only that: in 1975 I had been tried and convicted for the offence in my absence – a strange idea of a fair trial – and sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment.

  Normally one can be tried only once for any specific criminal act, the principle of double jeopardy. I had now been sentenced three times for smuggling precisely the same load of hashish – by a British court for conspiring in the UK, by a Dutch court for exporting the hashish, and by an American court for importing it. It struck me as a bit unfair. There was, however, some good news: the Dutch judgement was such a long time ago their statute of limitations could be invoked. Unlike those of the United Kingdom, the laws of most European countries and even America incorporate statutes of limitation. Depending on the severity of the offence, judgement can no longer be enforced after a certain time has elapsed. In my case, the limit was fifteen years. As far as the Dutch authorities were concerned I had been at liberty to enter Holland since 1990. I told Justin the good news. Two days later, accompanied by a camera crew, we passed unhindered through Schipol Airport, well in time
for the 1998 High Times Cannabis Cup.

  For my old times’ sake, Justin and I checked into the Okura Hotel, where I was staying when first arrested in 1973 and whose hotel records had helped me prove I was an MI6 agent at the time. I walked across the road to the police station in Cornelis Troostplein. Next to it was the Pax Party House, location of the competition. The place was crammed with a cosmopolitan collection of people keen to discover just how much THC the human body could consume and still function on a basic level. Every imaginable hemp product was on display, as was every conceivable accessory, at various noisy and colourful stalls. It was, however, hard to find a decent spliff. I started getting annoyed. Of course it’s utterly ridiculous and frighteningly sinister that any society should sacrifice the therapeutic, medicinal and fibrous benefits available from plants because of some mad American-fuelled prohibitionism, but it’s equally important to note that 99 per cent of those who buy cannabis are healthy and simply want to smoke (rather than wear) marijuana to get stoned. One of the more impressive stalls belonged to the Sensi Seed Bank. Sitting behind the table was Ben Dronkers.

  ‘Howard, I haven’t seen you for centuries. Welcome back to Amsterdam, my friend. It’s so good to see you. Try some of this.’

  Ben handed me a pungent spliff. I took a big drag and immediately started to spin.

  ‘What the fuck is this, Ben?’

  ‘The best skunk on the planet, in my humble opinion.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘It has no name yet, just a number, G13, with a very interesting history – one that will greatly amuse you, I am sure. Several years ago the DEA started growing cannabis themselves to know what they were fighting against. Obviously, as the American government, they had all the technology, botanical expertise and money they needed, and they succeeded in growing fantastic marijuana. One strain was so strong that even the DEA could not keep it a secret. A woman friend of mine was dating a DEA agent at the time. She managed to get a cutting and smuggle it back to me here, where through careful breeding I have kept its magic alive. I’m going to put the seed on the market this year.’