A son’s view of the real Bob Marley

Ziggy Marley wants to set the record straight on his legendary father, said Chris Harvey in The Telegraph (U.K.). Reggae superstar Bob Marley, who died of cancer in 1981 at age 36, looms large in the public imagination as a symbol of peace and love. But as the product of Trench Town, a hardscrabble neighborhood in the Jamaican capital of Kingston, Marley had plenty of hard edges. “He was a street guy,” says Ziggy, 55. “Plenty of people love my father, but my father was... him rough, he had violent tendencies, you don’t f--- around with him.” Ziggy says his father struggled with his parentage—his father was a white plantation overseer who deserted Marley’s black mother—something that caused him pain as he embraced Afrocentrism and campaigned against white minority rule in South Africa. “It must have tore him apart that that was a part of his heritage. I think Bob wanted to be more Black than he was.” Many associate Marley with the song “One Love,” with its cheery call to “get together and feel alright.” But fewer know 1976’s “War,” in which Marley advocates for resistance “until the philosophy which hold one race superior” is annihilated completely. “Bob had many sides,” says Ziggy. “And I think the peace side is much more easily marketed than his revolutionary side.”