When Living Colour released its sophomore album Time’s Up in 1990, the band had plenty of current events to weigh in on. Earth Day was 20 years old, Nelson Mandela was getting released from prison as apartheid was being dismantled in South Africa, and the Gulf War broke out. A solid blend of the personal and political, the quartet’s collection of songs focuses on myriad topics, including environmental catastrophes (the title track), racism (Pride), and heartbreak (Love Rears Its Ugly Head) that are as relevant 35 years later as they were back then. It’s a fact that founding member Vernon Reid readily acknowledges.
“Think about all the philosophical arguments we’re dealing with and trying to figure out what is knowable?” he said. “Social media has become such a factor, there are situations where older leaders are hanging onto power by any means necessary and are preventing any conversations, no matter where you are with this stuff. These are things in the context where we’re trying to figure out what we’re trying to say, what we are talking about, and how those things don’t have to be overwrought. The other part I think about is what feels like a song? What feels like something to sing about? That’s the great challenge. Part of what’s crazy about the band Living Colour is that much of what we said many years ago is still frighteningly relevant.”
A conversation with Vernon Reid reveals a complex and deep worldview. Unlike his band’s music, which is a complex smorgasbord of genres rooted in hard rock, containing nuances of funk, hip hop, jazz, fusion, and soul, Reid’s conversational flow runs far and wide.
An avowed sci-fi fan, the Brooklyn native can go from extolling the virtues of Sly and the Family Stone and the impact The Twilight Zone and its creator had on him:
“Rod Serling was one of the first White men, except Walter Cronkite, who I believed. He was the first person to say that everything you see is not what you think it is.”
Reid can also pivot to personal enlightenment. James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, and talented-yet-obscure multi-instrumentalist Arthur Rhames, who died of AIDS at the age of 32, provided him at a time of rampant homophobia during the ‘80s. Ask Reid about Living Colour’s anthemic Cult of Personality and its commentary on the current political climate and not surprisingly, he has plenty to say.
“One of the things about Cult of Personality is that I was stunned to realize how popular ‘Cult’ was amongst conservatives,” Reid admitted. “They took the whole thing, reinterpreted it, and heard it in a completely different way. One of the things about art is that you’re always saying something different than what you think, which I’ve come to accept. Cult of Personality applies to Obama as well as to Trump. The kind of larger-than-lifeness of that dude—that’s the thing about Cult of Personality. Like Mussolini or Gandhi—that’s the commonality and the commonality is the place to work from.”
Coming off a co-headlining tour with Extreme last year, Living Colour is focusing its current tour on the 35th anniversary of their second studio album. Fans can also expect some newer material slated to appear on a yet-unnamed project set to drop sometime in 2026.
“We’re going to be playing a bunch of material from Time’s Up,” Reid explained. “We started writing for our next record and developed a set that was an omnibus of our work. Much of it is from the first three records, and a few smatterings from other records. We’re probably going to do something like that, with a little more emphasis on [our sophomore outing] because it’s the 35th anniversary.”
Reid’s musical journey began with watching The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show with his parents. While AM radio provided pop manna like Please Please Me, along with singles by James Brown, Dionne Warwick, a plethora of Motown artists, and the aforementioned Sly Stone, it was Santana’s Black Magic Woman that inspired him to pick up a guitar.
“Santana was the first time I identified the guitar as a voice in a way that I hadn’t before,” he recalled.
An alum of Brooklyn Technical High School, Reid’s tastes were further shaped by an after school jazz program run by saxophonist Dr. Gene Ghee.
“He did this thing where he had a record player and played Julie Andrews singing My Favorite Things and then Coltrane playing My Favorite Things,” Reid said. “That was a shock to the system. During a Catholic school class trip, we saw The Sound of Music with a thousand kids in the audience. That song was my favorite, so to hear Coltrane playing it again a couple of years later, after my tween years, that was my first real exposure to jazz. The idea of that kind of transformation was both fascinating and frightening.”
That unorthodoxy is at the heart of what Living Colour has been doing since forming in 1984. According to Reid, expect more on the new album.
“We’re entering the time of the Great Weird, and weirdness is my wheelhouse. What we see happening is that a consciousness and awareness are going on, and we’ll see where it ends up with this next record.”
Living Colour will appear on May 15 at The Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts, 71 E. Main St., Patchogue. For more information, visit www.patchoguetheatre.com or call 631-207-1313.
