Redemption songs for all
Reggae legend Bob Marley sang of women, poverty and liberation; nearly 40 years after his death his message is as relevant as ever
Bob Marley was a cultural force like no other. The reggae pioneer, champion of pan-Africanism and voice of the downtrodden, is the most recognised face in music. The BBC voted One Love as the song of the 20th century and TIME magazine named Exodus as the album of the century. This year is the 75th anniversary of his birth and in these times his voice is more relevant than ever.
Marley played the flute. Close friend Neville Garrick said it was his ● favourite instrument. He loved it because when he played it, it cleared his lungs and he loved the sound it made. “Those of us who were close to him would always ask him: ‘Why don’t you play the flute on your songs?’ His answer was always, ‘Bwoy, me nuh tink me good enough.’ ”
● Reggae artist and former band member Bunny Wailer said that to cure stage fright in their earlier days, the young Marley used to take him and fellow reggae artist Peter Tosh to a local Kingston graveyard at 2am to practise their vocals and harmonies, because “Bob felt that if you could sing there you’d never be nervous singing anywhere else”.
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Marley was baptised into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church shortly before his death and his funeral used both Ethiopian Orthodox elements and Rastafari tradition. “Bob’s whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica,” his widow Rita Marley told The Guardian in 2005. “Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place.”
● Marley’s father was a white officer, a captain in the British administration that ruled the Caribbean island in 1945. Capt Norval Marley promised to marry 17year-old Cedella Booker when she became pregnant. He kept his word, but deserted mother and child the day after they tied the knot.
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In the early 1950s Cedella moved to the capital, Kingston, where she and her son settled in Trench Town, a shantytown of cramped shacks built with corrugated iron or tar-paper. Street gangs such as the Rude Boys ruled and death was a knifepoint away. A tough boyhood shaped Marley’s musical authenticity. “Bob Marley made hell tuneful, like nobody before or since,” wrote Mikal Gilmore of Rolling Stone magazine.
● In the beginning no Jamaican radio station would play reggae, regarding it as substandard and subversive. The authorities were appalled at the reputation their country was getting for ganja and dreadlocks.
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The legendary relationship between Marley and Island Records producer Chris Blackwell nearly didn’t happen. Blackwell had been advised against the Wailers; they had a reputation for a bad attitude. Even musician Lee Perry had described them as “so stink, so rude”. Blackwell tried to persuade Marley to buy James Bond author Ian Fleming’s house when it was up for sale but the musician said it was too ostentatious for his tastes.
● Marley said “sleep is an escape for fools”, and his energy was superhuman. He spent most of his performing years in a communal house on Hope Road in Kingston, where everybody would try to get up in the morning before him, but noone ever did. Some would attempt to outlast him the night before, but that never worked, either.
“It was uncanny; Bob was always the last to take to his little mattress in his upstairs bedroom (bare except for a portrait of Haile Selassie hanging on the wall) and the first to awake,” wrote biographer Timothy White. “If everybody passed out around 3am, Bob was asleep at 3.15; if one of the dreads lasted until first light, Bob did too. If Bob had to miss his sleep entirely to maintain the upper hand, he did and seemed none the worse for wear.”
Without fail the brethren would be ready at sunrise for a jog. Marley was a soccer fanatic and organised a game every afternoon.
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Like all devout Rastafarians, Marley didn’t drink. According to White, the ingredients for his favourite juice were carrots, soursop (a fruit also known as custard apple) and Irish moss, a type of seaweed used for making a sweet, gelatinous concoction believed to be an aphrodisiac.
● On December 3 1976 Marley, Rita and other members of the group were taking a break from rehearsals when at 8.30pm two small white cars pulled into the driveway and several men with rifles launched an attack on the house. Some of them surrounded the property. Three gunmen rushed into the house, spraying the place with bullets. Marley and the musicians had dived for cover. Marley was hit in the arm and chest. His manager, Don Taylor, was hit in the groin. Rita suffered a wound to the head. Two days later an uncowed Marley performed at a concert in Kingston.
Neither the true motive behind the attack nor the perpetrators have ever been found. Most fingers point to the labyrinth of violent politics in Jamaica at the time.
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Marley dated Pascaline Bongo, the daughter of Gabonese tyrant Omar Bongo, notorious for corruption and political repression. He agreed to play a birthday concert for the strongman in 1980. According to the documentary
Marley, the reggae entourage only learnt about Bongo’s repressive rule when they arrived in the Central African country (awkward pillow talk with the girlfriend, no doubt). He decided to go ahead with the concert anyway because they’d come a long way. Pascaline played an important role in introducing him to Africa and visited him in Germany before he died.
● On April 17 1980 the first official words of the new nation of Zimbabwe were, “Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Marley and The Wailers!” as the reggae great took to the stage to celebrate the country’s independence at Rufaro Stadium in Harare.
Ironically, president Robert Mugabe had been strongly opposed to the Rasta presence at the concert, saying: “The men want to sing and don’t go to colleges. Some are dreadlocked.” However, this was the music that had been played in the guerrilla camps in Mozambique so he was forced to relent.
Marley was so eager to play at the independence concert that he paid for his entourage and 21t of sound equipment to be flown by chartered Boeing 707 from London.
The next day 100,000 fans rocked up when Marley played a second concert for the ordinary people.
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In May 1977, while on tour in Paris, Marley injured the big toe on his right foot for the second time. A few months later, when he was limping painfully, he saw a doctor in London who said the damage had turned so bad that the toe could turn cancerous and should be amputated.
Marley thought the doctors were lying. “Rasta no abide amputation,” he told them. By the time of his last tour Marley was riddled with cancer, and after performing in Pittsburgh, US, he collapsed.
● Marley sought treatment at a Swiss clinic while trying to keep his ailing health a secret from his fans. Press agent Howard Bloom, one of the most influential in the music business, said: “Every morning Bob came down from his room, looked at the newspapers around the world and checked to see if anyone was writing about his illness. If not, he would spend the day playing football outdoors.”
Conversely, if there was any mention of his cancer, “Bob stayed in his room, sitting in the dark. My job was to get Bob to take each day as a new day.”
After eight months of this, Bloom got a call saying Marley no longer needed him.
“It was one of the worst experiences of my life. It meant that Bob had given up on living. The light inside him went out and he died two weeks later.” Marley died on May 11 1981 at the age of 36.
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Sources: Rolling Stone, Washington Post, Esquire, Vanity Fair, BBC, The Guardian
“Bob’s whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica,” his widow Rita Marley told The Guardian in 2005. “Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place”