‘Is this all sounding a bit deep?’ asks Don Letts. ‘We’re supposed to be talking about f***ing jeans here, aren’t we?’ Letts is quite right. The ostensible reason the legendary DJ/ film-maker is sitting in front of me today is to discuss his involvement in the 150th anniversary of Levi’s 501s (more on which in a moment). But the thing about talking to Don Letts is that Don Letts has a lot to say on a lot of topics — all of it funny, fascinating and profound. This is, after all, a man who was at the forefront of 1970s punk, reggae, film and fashion. A London icon whose relevance has only grown with the passing decades; a man who has holidayed with Johnny Rotten, given style tips to Bob Marley (more on that in a moment, too) and worked with everyone from The Clash to Massive Attack. As such, a simple chat about ‘f***ing jeans’ can get very deep very fast.
Within minutes of our interview starting, we’ve segued into Letts’ memories of his south London childhood and how he’s seen the capital change in his 67 years. ‘London now... It scares the shit out of me,’ he says, with a shake of his head. ‘Because if you ain’t got money, it’ll f***ing kill you, man. All I see is glass and chrome and I don’t know who they’re making this shit for. It’s becoming this economically walled city, and if you haven’t got a reasonable bank account, you can’t come to the party. People are being pushed to the outskirts and I’m wondering: where’s it going to end? I’m an “all of us or none of us” kind of guy, so it’s frightening.’
