Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley
(February 6, 1945 – May 11, 1981) was a Jamaican
singer-songwriter and musician. He was the lead singer,
songwriter and guitarist for the
ska,
rocksteady and
reggae bands
The Wailers (1964–1974)
and
Bob Marley & The
Wailers (1974–1981). Marley remains the most widely known and
revered performer of reggae music, and is credited for helping
spread both
Jamaican music and the
Rastafari movement to a worldwide
audience.
Marley's best known hits include "
I
Shot the Sheriff", "
No Woman, No
Cry", "
Could You Be Loved",
"
Stir It Up", "
Jamming", "
Redemption Song", "
One Love" and, together with The
Wailers, "
Three Little Birds", as
well as the posthumous releases "
Buffalo Soldier" and "
Iron Lion Zion". The compilation album,
Legend
(1984), released three years after his death, is reggae's
best-selling album, being 10 times
Platinum (
Diamond) in the U.S.,
and selling 20 million copies worldwide.
Early life and career
Bob Marley
was born in the small village of Nine Mile
in Saint Ann Parish
, Jamaica as Nesta Robert Marley. A Jamaican
passport official would later swap his first and middle names. His
father, Norval Sinclair Marley, was a Jamaican of English descent,
whose family came from
Essex, England. Norval
was a captain in the
Royal Marines, as
well as a plantation overseer, when he married
Cedella Booker, an
Afro-Jamaican then 18 years old. Norval
provided financial support for his wife and child, but seldom saw
them, as he was often away on trips. In 1955, when Marley was 10
years old, his father died of a heart attack at age 60. Marley
suffered racial prejudice as a youth because of his mixed racial
origins, and faced questions about his own racial identity
throughout his life. He once reflected:
Although Marley recognized his mixed ancestry, throughout his life
and because of his beliefs, he self-identified as a black African.
In songs such as "Babylon System", and "Blackman Redemption",
Marley sings about the struggles of blacks and Africans against
oppression from the West or "Babylon". Marley became friends with
Neville "Bunny" Livingston (later known as
Bunny Wailer), with whom he started to play
music. He left school at the age of 14 to make music with
Joe Higgs, a local singer and devout
Rastafari. It was at a
jam session with Higgs and Livingston that
Marley met Peter McIntosh (later known as
Peter Tosh), who had similar musical ambitions.
In 1962, Marley recorded his first two singles, "
Judge Not" and "One Cup of Coffee", with local
music producer
Leslie Kong. These songs,
released on the
Beverley's label under
the pseudonym of Bobby Martell, attracted little attention. The
songs were later re-released on the box set,
Songs of Freedom, a posthumous
collection of Marley's work.
Musical career
The Wailers
In 1963, Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh,
Junior Braithwaite,
Beverley Kelso, and
Cherry Smith formed a ska and rocksteady group,
calling themselves "The Teenagers". They later changed their name
to "The Wailing Rudeboys", then to "The Wailing Wailers", at which
point they were discovered by record producer
Coxsone Dodd, and finally to "
The Wailers". By 1966, Braithwaite,
Kelso, and Smith had left The Wailers, leaving the core trio of Bob
Marley, Bunny Wailer, and Peter Tosh.
In 1966, Marley
married Rita Anderson, and moved near
his mother's residence in Wilmington, Delaware
in the United States for a short time, during which
he worked as a DuPont lab assistant and on
the assembly line at a Chrysler plant,
under the alias Donald Marley.
Upon returning to Jamaica, Marley became a member of the Rastafari
movement, and started to wear his trademark
dreadlocks (
see the religion section for more on
Marley's religious views). After a conflict with Dodd, Marley
and his band teamed up with
Lee "Scratch" Perry
and his studio band,
The Upsetters.
Although the alliance lasted less than a year, they recorded what
many consider The Wailers' finest work. Marley and Perry split
after a dispute regarding the assignment of recording rights, but
they would remain friends and work together again.Between 1968 and
1972, Bob and Rita Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer re-cut some
old tracks with
JAD Records in Kingston
and London in an attempt to commercialize The Wailers' sound. Bunny
later asserted that these songs "should never be released on an
album … they were just demos for record companies to listen to."
Also in
1968, Bob and Rita visited the Bronx
to see Johnny Nash's
songwriter Jimmy Norman. A three
day jam session with Norman and others, including Norman's
co-writer
Al Pyfrom, resulted in a
24-minute tape of Marley performing several of his own and
Norman-Pyfrom's compositions which is, according to Reggae
archivist
Roger Steffens, rare in
that was influenced by pop rather than reggae, as part of the
effort to break Marley into American charts. According to an
article in
The New York
Times, Marley experimented on the tape with different
sounds, adopting a doo-wop style on "Stay With Me" and "the slow
love song style of 1960's artists" on "Splish for My Splash". The
Wailers' first album,
Catch a
Fire, was released worldwide in 1973, and sold well. It
was followed a year later by
Burnin', which included the
songs "
Get Up, Stand Up" and
"
I Shot the Sheriff".
Eric Clapton made a hit cover of "I Shot the
Sheriff" in 1974, raising Marley's international profile. The
Wailers broke up in 1974 with each of the three main members going
on to pursue solo careers. The reason for the breakup is shrouded
in conjecture; some believe that there were disagreements amongst
Bunny, Peter, and Bob concerning performances, while others claim
that Bunny and Peter simply preferred solo work.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Despite the breakup, Marley continued recording as "Bob Marley
& The Wailers". His new
backing
band included brothers
Carlton
and
Aston "Family Man" Barrett on
drums and bass respectively,
Junior
Marvin and
Al Anderson
on lead guitar,
Tyrone Downie and
Earl "Wya" Lindo on keyboards, and
Alvin "Seeco" Patterson on
percussion. The "
I Threes", consisting of
Judy Mowatt,
Marcia Griffiths, and Marley's wife, Rita,
provided backing vocals. In 1975, Marley had his international
breakthrough with his first hit outside Jamaica, "
No Woman, No Cry", from the
Natty Dread album. This was followed by his
breakthrough album in the United States,
Rastaman Vibration (1976), which
spent four weeks on the
Billboard Hot 100. In December
1976, two days before "
Smile
Jamaica", a free concert organized by the Jamaican Prime
Minister
Michael Manley in an attempt
to ease tension between two warring political groups, Marley, his
wife, and manager Don Taylor were wounded in an assault by unknown
gunmen inside Marley's home. Taylor and Marley's wife sustained
serious injuries, but later made full recoveries. Bob Marley
received minor wounds in the chest and arm. The shooting was
thought to have been politically motivated, as many felt the
concert was really a support rally for Manley. Nonetheless, the
concert proceeded, and an injured Marley performed as scheduled,
two days after the attempt. When asked why, Marley responded, "the
people who are trying to make this world worse aren’t taking a day
off. How can I?" The members of the group Zap Pow, which had no
radical religious or political beliefs, played as Bob Marley's
backup band before a festival crowd of 80,000 while members of The
Wailers were still missing or in hiding.
Marley left Jamaica at the end of 1976 for England, where he spent
two years in self imposed exile. Whilst there he recorded his
Exodus and
Kaya albums.
Exodus
stayed on the British album charts for 56 consecutive weeks. It
included four UK hit singles: "Exodus", "Waiting in Vain",
"Jamming", and "
One Love"
(a rendition of
Curtis Mayfield's
hit, "
People Get Ready").
During his time in London, he was arrested and received a
conviction for
possession of a small
quantity of
cannabis . In 1978,
Marley returned to Jamaica and performed at another political
concert, the
One Love Peace
Concert, again in an effort to calm warring parties. Near the
end of the performance, by Marley's request, Michael Manley (leader
of then ruling
People's National
Party) and his political rival
Edward
Seaga (leader of the opposing
Jamaica Labour Party), joined each
other on stage and shook hands.
Under the name Bob Marley and the Wailers eleven albums were
released, four live albums and seven studio albums. The releases
included
Babylon by Bus, a
double live album with 13 tracks, was released in 1978 to critical
acclaim. This album, and specifically the final track "Jammin'"
with the audience in a frenzy, captured the intensity of Marley's
live performances.
Survival, a defiant and politically
charged album, was released in 1979. Tracks such as "Zimbabwe",
"
Africa Unite", "Wake Up and Live", and
"Survival" reflected Marley's support for the struggles of
Africans. His appearance at the
Amandla
Festival in Boston in July 1979 showed his strong opposition to
South African
apartheid, which he already
had shown in his song "
War" in
1976.
In
early 1980, he was invited to perform at the April 17 celebration
of Zimbabwe
's
Independence Day. Uprising (1980) was Bob Marley's final
studio album, and is one of his most religious productions,
including "Redemption Song" and "Forever Loving Jah".
Confrontation, released
posthumously in 1983, contained unreleased material recorded during
Marley's lifetime, including the hit "
Buffalo Soldier" and new mixes of
singles previously only available in Jamaica.
Later years
Illness
In July 1977, Marley was found to have
acral lentiginous melanoma, a
form of
malignant melanoma, in a
wound reportedly picked up in a friendly
football match After the album Uprising
was released in May 1980 the band completed a major tour of Europe,
where they played their biggest ever concert, to a hundred thousand
people in Milan.
After the tour Marley went to America, where
he performed two shows at Madison Square Garden
as part of the Uprising
Tour. Shortly afterwards his health deteriorated and he
became very ill, the cancer had spread throughout his body. The
rest of the tour was cancelled and Marley sought treatment at the
Bavarian clinic of
Josef Issels, where
he received a
controversial type of
cancer therapy partly based on avoidance of certain foods,
drinks and other substances. After fighting the cancer without
success for eight months he boarded a plane for his home in
Jamaica.
Death and posthumous reputation
While flying home from Germany to Jamaica for his final days,
Marley became ill, and landed in Miami for immediate medical
attention. He died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami on the
morning of May 11, 1981, at the age of 36. The spread of
melanoma to his lungs and brain caused his death.
His final words to his son
Ziggy were
"Money can't buy life."Marley received a
state funeral in Jamaica on May 21, 1981,
which combined elements of
Ethiopian Orthodoxy and
Rastafari tradition. He was buried in a chapel near his birthplace
with his
Fender Stratocaster. A
month before his death, he had also been awarded the
Jamaican Order of Merit.
In 1994
Marley was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
, and in 1999 Time magazine chose Bob Marley &
The Wailers' Exodus as
the greatest album of the 20th century. In 2001, he was
posthumously awarded the
Grammy Lifetime Achievement
Award, and a feature-length documentary about his life,
Rebel Music, won various awards at the
Grammy. With contributions from Rita, The
Wailers, and Marley's lovers and children, it also tells much of
the story in his own words. In 2006, the State of New York renamed
a portion of Church Avenue from Remsen Avenue to East 98th Street
in the
East Flatbush section
of Brooklyn "Bob Marley Boulevard".
Religion
Bob Marley was a member of the
Rastafari
movement, whose culture was a key element in the development of
reggae. Bob Marley became a leading proponent of the Rastafari,
taking their music out of the socially deprived areas of Jamaica
and onto the international music scene. According to his
biographers, he affiliated with the
Twelve Tribes Mansion. He was in the
denomination known as "Tribe of Joseph", because he was born in
February (each of the twelve sects being composed of members born
in a distinct month). He signified this in his album liner notes,
quoting the portion from
Genesis that includes Jacob's blessing
to his son Joseph. Marley was baptized by the Archbishop of the
Ethiopian
Orthodox Christian
Church in Kingston, Jamaica, on November 4, 1980.
Wife and children
Bob Marley had a number of children: three with his wife Rita, two
adopted from Rita's previous relationships, and the remaining seven
with separate women. His children are, in order of birth:
- Imani Carole, born May 22, 1963 to Cheryl Murray
- Sharon, born November 23, 1964, to
Rita in previous relationship
- Cedella born August 23, 1967, to
Rita
- David "Ziggy", born October 17,
1968, to Rita
- Stephen, born April
20, 1972, to Rita
- Robert "Robbie", born May 16, 1972, to Pat Williams
- Rohan, born May 19, 1972, to Janet
Hunt
- Karen, born 1973 to Janet Bowen
- Stephanie, born August 17, 1974; according to Cedella Booker she was the daughter of Rita
and a man called Ital with whom Rita had an affair; nonetheless she
was acknowledged as Bob's daughter
- Julian, born June 4, 1975, to Lucy
Pounder
- Ky-Mani, born February 26, 1976,
to Anita Belnavis
- Damian, born July 21, 1978, to
Cindy Breakspeare
- Makeda, born May 30, 1981, to Yvette Crichton
Discography
Tours
- Apr–Jul 1973: Catch a Fire
Tour (England, USA)
- Oct–Nov 1973: Burnin'
Tour (USA, England)
- Jun–Jul 1975: Natty Dread
Tour (USA, Canada, England)
- Apr–Jul 1976: Rastaman Vibration Tour
(USA, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, France, England,
Wales)
- May–Jun 1977: Exodus
Tour (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden,
Denmark, England)
- May–Aug 1978: Kaya
Tour (USA, Canada, England, France, Spain, Sweden,
Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium)
- Apr–May 1979: Babylon by
Bus Tour (Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii)
- Oct 1979–Jan 1980: Survival
Tour (USA, Canada, Trinidad/Tobago, Bahamas,
Gabon)
- May–Sep 1980: Uprising
Tour (Switzerland, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden,
Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Ireland, England,
Scotland, Wales, USA)
Awards and honours
Film adaptation(s)
In February 2008, director
Martin
Scorsese announced his intention to produce a documentary movie
on Marley. The film is set to be released on February 6,
2010, on what would have been Marley's 65th
birthday. Recently, however, Scorsese dropped out due to scheduling
problems. He is being replaced by
Jonathan Demme.
In March 2008,
The Weinstein
Company announced its plans to produce a
biopic of Bob Marley, based on the book
No Woman
No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley by
Rita
Marley.
Rudy Langlais will produce
the script by
Lizzie
Borden and Rita Marley will executive producer.
Sound samples
See also
Notes
- Walker, Jeff (1980) on the cover of Zap Pow's LP Reggae
Rules. Los Angeles: Rhino Records.
Further reading
- Farley, Christopher
(2007). Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley, Amistad
Press ISBN 0060539925
- Goldman, Vivien (2006). The
Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the
Wailers' Album of the Century, Aurum Press ISBN
1845132106
- Henke, James (2006). Marley Legend: An Illustrated Life of
Bob Marley, Simon & Schuster Ltd ISBN 0743285514
- Marley, Rita; Jones, Hettie (2004)
No Woman No Cry: My Life with Bob Marley Hyperion Books
ISBN 0786887559
- Masouri, John (2007) Wailing
Blues: The Story of Bob Marley's "Wailers" Wise Publications
ISBN 1846096898
- White, Timothy (2006). Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob
Marley Owl Books ISBN 0805080864
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