Following the release of “Angels” and its subsequent vocal and instrumental dub versions, the next chapter from the forthcoming Scratch Is Alive album arrives September 22nd with:

“THIS IS LEE ‘SCRATCH’ PERRY AND JOHN SAXON”

Produced by Steve Marshall, aka John Saxon, the new single reaches back into the long creative partnership and friendship between Marshall and the legendary Lee “Scratch” Perry. The name John Saxon was given to Marshall by Scratch in the early 2000s, but it makes its first appearance on record in “This Is Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and John Saxon.”

Musically, the track also reaches into their shared history. Its rhythm is built from “One God Rain,” a track featured on their 2007 album The End Of An American Dream — one of the three albums Marshall produced with Perry and a Grammy-nominated project. But at its heart, the new single is about friendship.

Marshall explains:

“John Saxon is the name Lee gave me way back in the early 2000s, but the first time it appears is in the track ‘This Is Lee “Scratch” Perry and John Saxon’.”

In typical Scratch fashion, Perry uses a colorful cast of characters to describe their relationship, referring to the pair as Batman and Robin, Superman and Peter Pan.Scratch identified particularly with Peter Pan, a connection that took on deeper meaning for Marshall when he pointed out that, in J.M. Barrie’s story, Peter loses his shadow before eventually finding it again. For Marshall, the symbolism reflected Perry’s own journey.

“From the 2000s onwards, Lee himself went through a resurrection.”

That sense of rediscovery lies at the heart of Scratch Is Alive,  an album bringing previously unheard recordings and new interpretations from Perry and Marshall’s years of collaboration into the present.

“This Is Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and John Saxon” offers another glimpse into that world: playful, deeply personal, and unmistakably Scratch, while revealing the friendship behind the music.