Wailers return with music to make Bob Marley proud
Aston Barrett, whose father was the reggae star’s righthand man, leads the band onwards, says Garry Bushell
WHEN ASTON Barrett was four, he slipped one of his mother’s VHS tapes into the video player. “It was Bob Marley and the Wailers playing Santa Barbara in 1979,” he recalls. “My mum came in and pointed at the bass player. She said, ‘Look, that’s your dad’. I was amazed. That’s my dad?”
Aston’s father was Aston “Family Man” Barrett. His uncle, Carlton “Carly” Barrett, was Marley’s drummer. “They were the backbone and the heart of the Wailers,” Aston Jnr says proudly.
Aston Snr was also a major contributor to Jamaica’s maternity wards. Young Aston doesn’t know exactly how many siblings he has – he hasn’t met them all – but 40 is a good guess. What an episode of Long Lost Family that would make.
“Everybody on this earth has a mission and he was chosen to be fruitful,” says Aston. “To go forth and multiply... He wasn’t perfect but he tried his best and that little try made me what I am today” – that is, a hugely talented multi-instrumentalist and leader of the Wailers.
The reggae band are back with a new line-up, and an uplifting album featuring a host of guest stars including Shaggy and Emilio Estefan. But nearly 40 years after Bob Marley’s death, their message remains the same.
“It’s one love, one heart,” Aston, 29, tells me down the line from Miami. “Always the message of love, peace and unity.”
Marley formed the Wailers in 1963. Powered by Rastafarianism, good tunes and cannabis, they sold more than 20 million albums, notching up hits like Jammin’ and No Woman No Cry, and opening up most of the world to reggae. Arguably Bob’s greatest achievement was to make reggae appeal to rock fans.
Aren’t you daunted by that legacy, I ask? They’re huge shoes to step into.
“All my life I ran away from it,” says Aston. “I didn’t want to work with my father’s management, all of that negative energy. But he pushed it on me.”
That Wailers video changed Aston’s life. He learnt to play bass at four and joined his first band at seven. “One of my cousins was graduating and her band, all girls, were playing Wailers songs. I got up and said ‘You’re playing my father’s bass line wrong, that’s not how it goes’.”
The music teacher didn’t tick off this precocious heckler, instead he asked him to play the bass line. “I did and he said, ‘This kid can really play’ and all the girls were saying ‘Are you kidding me?’”
Aston was good enough to join their teenage band because he’d learnt his father’s feel. “It wasn’t just the notes, it was the way he played.”
By the time he was 14, Aston Snr realised his son was serious and vowed to teach him everything he knew. He started by showing him how to drum like Carlton, who was tragically gunned down in 1987, dying at just 36.
The Wailers had other drummers but none sounded like Carly. “He played differently, he had a different groove. It was all about the attitude.”
Aston also discovered he was his uncle’s doppelganger.
“I started doing martial arts as a teenager and everywhere I went people would say, ‘Oh my gosh, you look like Carlton...’, ‘Oh my gosh, you sound like Carlton...’, ‘Oh my gosh, you walk like Carlton...’ I never met him but I’m his double. That’s how you know DNA is real.” A karate brown belt, he says the martial arts training “kept me out of trouble and kept me thin. If not I’d be super-fat cos I love to eat.”
His mum Angela was hugely supportive too. “She encouraged me in every way. My sisters would say ‘You’re too loud and my mum would say ‘No, he’s in his bubble’.”
It was his father who pushed Aston, who emigrated with his family to Florida in 2001, into joining the Wailers.
“He saw something in me. When I graduated from high school my father took me on the road and when I was playing for
other bands he would call me back...” Aston Snr guilt-tripped him, saying “Man, I need you” and “If this stops I’m going to blame you because God gave you the gift.” Aston worked as a roadie but when a drummer didn’t get a visa, his father would have him sit in. “My dad used to pay me but one week the pay cheque was low. I asked him about it and he said, ‘Did you set up my bass amp? Did you set up my bass? Did you clean my bass...’ He was a supernice guy but very strict. That’s how my father was, he had to make sure the sound was right. He’d done the same for Bob Marley.”
ASTON OFFICIALLY joined the Wailers 11 years ago, after playing bass with Lauryn Hill and Julian Marley. “He never pushed music on me, I was pushing to learn. I knew how to play but not how to create. He told me, ‘You need to learn jazz’.”
Aston’s music teacher, Christopher Dorsey, said the same. “He pushed me to another level. Charlie Mingus became a big influence, I really like his choice of notes.”
Aston plays bass, drums and keyboards on the new Wailers album. It’s a revelation. Upbeat and confident, and powered by brass, it feels modern while still sounding like Marley’s band. Aston believes Bob would approve. “My father said he and Bob Marley always moved with the times.
Bob always tried to get the latest equipment. He told me to have an open mind.” Emilio Estefan approached Aston to work on the project. The first taster of the strange alliance was One World, One Prayer which features Bob’s daughter Cedella, her son Skip, Shaggy and Puerto Rican star Farruko.
“Emilio told us, ‘Reggae is coming back differently and reggae is respected in the Latin community’, so who better than the Wailers to capture the spirit? He wrote it and then we added the Barrett sound...”
The song also has guitar from Wailers veteran Donald Kinsey, who was with Bob in 1976 when gunmen tried to assassinate him. Aston Snr, who joined the Wailers in 1974 and led the band from 1981 at Bob’s request, retired three years ago after suffering multiple strokes; he plays on one song.
Producer Emilio brought in guests. “He has everyone’s number. He got Shaggy on the phone and he recorded his part in New York.”
He also brought in Farruko and suggested Aston contact Skip Marley. “His mum came too and it was magnificent working with them. Amazing!”
Singer Josh Barrett (a cousin) joined in 2015 and claims to have felt the spirit of the lost Wailers.
Aston is guided more by his father’s words.
“Dad said you have to be humble in life and keep moving forward. We need more love. That’s what we put through in the Wailers, one world, one prayer, one religion – as long as it’s peace-loving.”
● One World (Sony) is released on Friday
‘Dad said you have to be humble in life and keep moving forward. We need more love. That’s what we put through in the Wailers, one world, one prayer, one religion’