Chris Blackwell will turn 88 this year on the island of Jamaica, his home since just after his birth. Educated in England, he returned in 1955 as an aide to Jamaica’s Governor. Seven years later, when he was 25, he appeared as a dancer in a scene in the first James Bond film, Dr. No. Bond was conceived on the island’s north coast at the home of Ian Fleming, who was so close to Blackwell’s mother, Blanche, that Fleming’s legal spouse Ann called her “Ian’s Jamaican wife.”
Fourteen years later, at the age of 39, Blackwell bought GoldenEye, Fleming’s villa on the outskirts of Oracabessa—after Bob Marley, who recorded for Blackwell’s Island Records, decided against buying the place. Blackwell never lived there, but kept it as Fleming left it, and used it for entertaining. At first, that was on a small scale (albeit with the world’s most famous musicians as his guests). But then, after buying more property around it, he opened a sprawling hotel he also called GoldenEye in 2010, one of the chain of resorts he called Island Outpost.
GoldenEye pays tribute to its former owner, Bond creator Ian Flemming, with vintage photos.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the release of another GoldenEye, the Bond/007 film that introduced Pierce Brosnan, the fifth actor to portray the British spy with a license to kill. Last week, Amazon’s MGM Studios announced it is taking creative control of the Bond movie franchise (at a reported cost of $1 billion) from the siblings Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, whose father Albert “Cubby” Broccoli co-owned film rights for the franchise since 1961. It’s assumed that Amazon—whose founder, Jeff Bezos, could be a Bond character without makeup or a name change—will shortly replace the last Bond, Daniel Craig, and reboot the series. So, it seems a good moment to check in with Blackwell.
Chris Blackwell at a Bob Marley show in 1980. Photo by Adrian Boot.
Speaking from GoldenEye, he recalled working as a location scout on Dr. No (“a very exciting thing in my life”), and afterward, visiting a fortune-teller who advised him to pursue music, not movies. But he always stayed in touch with Wilson and Broccoli, who he considers family. They announced the last Bond film, No Time to Die (which opens with Bond retired in Jamaica), at the Fleming villa in 2019. “I’m a huge admirer of Barbara and Michael,” Blackwell says. But asked where he thinks Bond will go next, he admits, “Ohmigosh, I don’t know!”
Snorkling through a coral sanctuary, one of the many activities available at Goldeneye.
Island Outpost has slimmed down since the 1990s, when it operated eleven hotels in the Bahamas, South Beach, and Utah, but it retains its core Jamaican properties: Strawberry Hill in the Blue Mountains, the Caves in Negril, and GoldenEye. And the last is still growing. Blackwell is now planning to build a recording studio on the property, a long-cherished dream. “The first recordings I did were in Jamaica. My life is coming full circle,” he says. “Fleming was such a creative being. I’ve always looked at GoldenEye as a platform for like-minded people.” His guiding principle is stewardship of the land. “Luxury is preservation, not over-development. Jamaica means everything to me.”