Bunny Wailer
Reclusive songwriter who helped to popularise reggae with his childhood friend Bob Marley, writes Barry Egan
IN September 1967, Bunny Wailer was released from Richmond Prison Farm in St Mary, Jamaica, after serving a 14-month sentence on “a false ganja charge”.
He claimed he was jailed “for healing the nation”, citing the use of marijuana “as our sacramental symbol of worship” in Rastafarianism, the religion of Jamaica. Years later, he said: “Babylon made an error by sending Bunny Wailer to prison because they strengthened Bunny Wailer.” That spirit of noble defiance stayed with him all his life.
Born Neville O’Riley Livingston in Kingston on April 10, 1947, he grew up in the village of Nine Mile in St Ann Parish. His father, Thaddeus, ran a grocery shop, but was also a preacher with his own church. It was here that Bunny was introduced to music at the age of four.
“I used to play the drums in the church to make sure the spirit came in,” he said.
At Stepney Primary and Junior High School, he met Bob Marley. In 1955, after the death of Marley’s father from a heart attack, 10-year-old Bob and his mother Cedella moved in with Wailer and his father in Trench Town. Marley and Wailer were brought up as stepbrothers. Cedella and Thaddeus also had a daughter, Claudette Pearl.
In 1963, Marley and Wailer formed a vocal group with their pal, Peter Tosh, called The Wailing Wailers — “because we started out crying”, said Bunny.
In February 1964, the band released Simmer Down, which went to No 1 in Jamaica and called for an end to gun violence in Kingston. In 1965, they released their debut album, The Wailing Wailers.
A year later, when Marley married Rita Anderson and moved for a time to America, where his mother lived and Wailer found himself in jail, the band was put on hold. In 1970, they released their second album, Soul Rebels.
In 1972, the band signed to a major label in England, Island Records. In April 1973, they released the album that broke them internationally, Catch a Fire. By the end of that year, the album, including Get Up, Stand Up and I Shot the Sheriff, was hailed as a masterpiece, and reggae exploded all over the world thanks to these three dreadlocked mystics.
It was the last album to feature Wailer, who left with Tosh, disillusioned at how Island Records was marketing the band as Bob Marley and the Wailers.
He lived in a cabin by the sea in Jamaica, where he fished and wrote songs. He said he left because he believed the lifestyle and the commercial aspects were contrary to his beliefs.
“People get taken away in getting themselves to be a star and that is a different thing from getting yourself to be a good writer, musician,” he said.
In 1976, he released his debut solo album, Blackheart Man, on his own label, Solomonic. By now living as a recluse, he released the album Protest in 1977 and Rock ’N Groove in 1981. He went on to win the Grammy for Best Reggae Album three times: in 1991 for Time Will Tell: A Tribute to Bob Marley; in 1995 for Crucial! Roots Classics; and in 1997 for Hall of Fame: A Tribute to Bob Marley’s 50th Anniversary. He was also awarded Jamaica’s Order of Merit in 2017.
“Bob, Peter and myself were totally responsible for the Wailers sound, and what the Wailers brought to the world and left as a legacy,” he said in 2016.
Last Tuesday, the last surviving original member of the Wailers died at Medical Associates Hospital in Kingston. He was 73 and had been hospitalised since last summer following a stroke.
He is survived by 10 children. His partner of 50 years, Jean Watt, who suffered from dementia, has been missing since last May.