Myrie on Myrie

As a proud mother and grandmother it is hardly surprising that the teaching department has always followed with interest the highs and lows of our very own Lorraine Myrie’s children and grandchildren. Recently she went to London to attend the launch of her son’s new book, we couldn’t let this event go unrecognised so here is her proud biography of her talented son.

The date was 19th July 1984 – a special day because it was Russell’s 6th birthday and his last day as an infant in Ilsham School.

On the last day of term the pupils were allowed to wear non-uniform and take a toy or game to school. Russell went to school wearing one of his presents – a Liverpool football strip. The headmaster asked the children what they wanted to be in the future and Russell said “I’m going to play football for Liverpool and write books”.

He went through juniors, sat the 11+ exam and started at Westlands Secondary, where he won prizes for writing and was one of the founder members of the new school magazine. At this time he became interested in hip-hop and rap music. Down came the Michael Jackson posters and up went posters of Wu-Tang Clan, Space Cowboy and his cousin Mark Myrie whose stage name was Buju Banton.

Russell also started music lessons, playing drums – he went on eventually to Grade 8 at the Royal School of Music and for a time flirted with the idea of being a musician. He played in Torbay and Devon Youth Orchestras.

Russell started writing political lyrics; his sister Allison was in the musical collective ‘Soul to Soul’, and singing and writing reggae with the group ‘People to People’; another sister, Suzanne, had just started to learn the piano; we bought a second-hand organ. It was a few noisy years!

Amid all of this I insisted on homework being done, and checked school-work. Russell went on to get eight GCSEs, and three A-Levels and, after narrowly missing out on a place at Oxford University, went to Brunel, graduated with a degree in English and History. At Brunel, Russell kept writing and became more interested in hip-hop. He played drums in pubs and clubs but because he earned more beer than cash, he started doing session work in recording studies. He met Pete Doherty whose sister and Carl Marat were two of his room-mates.

After leaving university Russell worked at a wine import and export company in London. However, he never stopped writing and submitting articles for publication, and receiving rejection slips or being ignored, a situation which went on for 27 months. Although he came very close to giving up his dream of becoming a writer he found the strength to keep on until ‘Touch’ magazine accepted one of his articles – unpaid. The thrill of being published spurred him on to try even harder.

He then made a major decision to give up his job and work full-time at Touch magazine – a small outfit which was featured on the TV programme Paddington Green. He was sent to America to interview Dr Dre, one of hip-hop’s pioneers. While there he was employed by a music magazine to write about the growth of hip-hop in the UK. Touch merged with a magazine in Aldgate where Russell learned about editing and producing; this project went bankrupt but the experience he gained there proved invaluable because he was head-hunted by ‘The Voice’ – a twice weekly paper in London.

He introduced an arts magazine supplement to the Friday issue of ‘The Voice’ and was promoted to Arts Editor. He branched out into book and music reviews and divided his time between the USA and UK.

He started writing sleeve notes for CDs, and interviewing well-known people for his newspaper. To name drop he has interviewed Will Smith, Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey, Richard Pryor and the Nobel Prize writer Derek Walcott, to name but a few.

He was asked to tour in the USA with Puff Daddy and write about it; he went on tour with Jamaica with Missy Elliot. In 2002, he met Carlton Ridenaur, aka Chuck D of Public Enemy. He liked Russell’s work, gave him many interviews and introduced him to influential people. The hip-hop group Public Enemy decided to publish a biography of the group and Russell was the only writer Chuck D trusted.

After touring with them during 2006 and writing, rewriting, sending manuscripts to lawyers both sides of the Atlantic (and proof-reading by his mother) the book ‘Don’t Rhyme For The Sake of Riddlin: The Story Of Public Enemy’ was publicly launched on 9th October 2008 at the South Bank in London. [LM]