WeeklySA_AdminTIMELESS: A celebration of one of the most influential musicians of his time, the pocket book retraces the reggae idol’s days as a leading member of legendary band The Wailers to becoming a world-phenomenon who sold 145 million records in his lifetime…
By Jacob Mawela
Around 8,30 on the evening of December 3 1976, seven masked vigilantes armed with rifles barged into reggae musician Bob Marley’s residence at 56 Hope Road, Kingston, Jamaica, and proceeded to fire 83 bullets on the occupants – two days before the megastar was to perform at the Smile Jamaica Concert organised in aid of efforts to quell recent political violence on the Caribbean island.
During the raid, the gunmen shot Marley in the chest and arm, his wife, Rita, in the head in her car on the driveway, his manager, Don Taylor, in the legs and torso and band member Louis Griffiths on the torso.
Miraculously, there were no fatalities from a sudden attack which left the troubadour’s house riddled with bullet marks. The aftermath of the attack gave rise to speculation and conspiracy theories which alleged CIA involvement in it – given credence by Taylor who was to claim that one of the shooters, who would be tried and executed, confessed that the attack was orchestrated by the CIA in exchange for cocaine and guns.
In his version of the motive behind the attack, Marley – who remained neutral in the cauldron of Jamaica’s prevailing political situation at the time – informed the concert organiser Trevor Philips that the leader of the Jamaican Labour Party, Edward Seaga, was alleged to have ordered his bodyguard, Lester ‘Jim Brown’ Coke, the father of convicted Jamaican drug lord ‘Dudus’ Coke, to be present during the shooting.
Nancy Burke, a neighbour and friend of Marley’s, recalled hearing the Wailers percussionist, Alvin Patterson, say: “Is Seaga men! Dem com fi kill Bob!”
At the time, Marley had been perceived by many to be tacitly supporting Seaga’s opponent, Prime Minister Michael Manley.
Despite the shooting, an injured Marley would go on to perform as scheduled – albeit backed up by a band named Zap Pow, since members of The Wailers were still missing or in hiding – before a crowd of 80 000 at the free concert at National Heroes Park in Kingston on December 5.
Now, in the month in which International Bob Marley Day (February 6 – his birthday which was declared a national holiday for all Jamaicans in 1990) falls, a pocketbook has been issued pending a month and year the Jamaican reggae icon could have turned 80 – as a reminder of his enduring legacy. Featuring pages whose perusal readers stand to discover curious fact files, biographical anecdotes and wisecracks, the compact tome is an insightful introduction and précis for both the uninitiated and au fait with the prolific hitmaker.
Below follow tidbits regarding the one-and-only reggae Rasta man. A segment painting the scope of Marley’s global appeal mentions more than 600 artists – from Eric Clapton to Sinéad O’Connor – as having covered his songs in official recordings to date, with more than 50 having officially covered his anthem “No Woman, No Cry”.
Such universal influence even straddled epochs with, for instance, Playboy magazine asserting during a 1976 interview, that “Bob Marley & The Wailers have emerged as the finest rock-‘n’-roll band of the Seventies . . . and that includes the Beatles, Otis Redding, the Stones, all of them”,
Later the Guardian reported that Bob Marley & The Wailers’ music was streamed 27 times more during the global Covid-19 crisis of 2020–21 – proof that, in times of great uncertainty, Bob’s brand of reggae offered more than just a sense of hope.
An impressive fact file has Marley as having written and recorded more than 165 songs across 13 studio albums, which included 1977’s blockbuster Exodus (recorded in response to the attempted assassination of 1976, and named in December 1999 by Time magazine as the “20th century’s most important album”), 1984’s Legend (the biggest-selling reggae album of all time, as well as one of the biggest- selling albums ever, and which as of February 22 2024 has amassed five billion-plus streams on Spotify) over a nearly 20-year musical career, which stretched from 1962 to 1983!
Notably, Bob Marley & The Wailers are estimated to have sold more than 145 million records worldwide, with more than 75 million records of Marley bought after his death, making the group the most successful reggae band of all time and the megastar one of the best-selling music artists of all time, respectively!
In 2018, his timeless music catalogue was sold for over $50 million (nearly R915 million). Additionally, his songs have accounted for over 4 billion Spotify streams. In 2024, Marley’s family estate was valued at more than $200 million (R3,7 billion).
A Pan-Africanist, Marley believed in the unity of African people worldwide, and was inspired by Marcus Garvey, with songs such as “Zimbabwe”, “Exodus”, “Survival”, “Blackman Redemption”, and “Redemption Song” containing anti-imperialist and Pan-Africanist themes.
Interviewed on African independence in September 1980, he declared, “Every man has the right to decide his own destiny, but if Africa not free, none of us are free,” further opining on the subject of Africa’s struggle that, “Reggae is a vehicle to carry the message of freedom and peace”.
His appearance at the Amandla Festival in Boston, USA, in July 1979, demonstrated his strong opposition to South Africa’s apartheid system – which he had previously expressed through his song “War” in 1976.
And Marley’s empathy for the continent even extended to believing, as a follower of the Rastafari, that the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, was a living god whose purpose on Earth was to unite and free the oppressed peoples of Africa.
As if to corroborate the much feted artist’s activism, Rolling Stone magazine’s Mikal Gilmore would observe: “Marley wasn’t singing about how peace could come easily to the World but rather how hell on Earth comes easily to too many. He had lived with the wretched, he had seen the downpressers and those whom they pressed down.”
Aside from music, football played a major role throughout the life of the father of 11 children, with him once telling a journalist, “If you want to get to know me, you’ll have to play football against me and the Wailers.”
Although reputed to be anti-possession, he justified owning a BMW by linking the brand’s name as an abbreviation of his own band’s identity, as he declared: “It seemed like the car we are supposed to have.”
Said to have uttered the final words, “Money can’t buy life,” to his son, Stephen, before he died, the singer left no will to his estate. Born to a teenage mother and a White British Navy captain father at a village named Nine Mile in the Jamaican countryside on February 6 1945, Robert Nesta Marley went by the moniker Tuff Gong (a term for someone tough and courageous). It was earned from his fearless street-fighter reputation around his destitute neighbourhood, Trench Town – where his mother had moved them, aged 12.
Considered one of the pioneers of reggae and a global symbol of Jamaican music, culture and identity, Marley began his career in 1963 with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, together with whom they’d release a debut studio album titled The Wailing Wailers in 1965, which included the single “One Love”, which became popular worldwide and established the group as a rising phenomenon in the genre.
The Wailers would later change their name to Bob Marley & The Wailers, but disbanded in 1974, with Marley carrying on under the band’s name.
In 1975, he would realise his international breakthrough with the hit “No Woman, No Cry”, followed, in 1976, by his breakthrough album Rastaman Vibration in the United States.
After the assassination attempt on him, Marley relocated to England at the end of 1976 – where he’d spend two years in self-imposed exile.
In 1977, Marley was diagnosed with a type of cancer from which he would succumb – aged 36 – on May 11 1981. In 1978, Marley returned to Jamaica and performed at another concert organised to calm warring political factions titled, “One Love Peace” Concert which culminated, at his request, in Prime Minister Manley shaking hands on stage with political rival Seaga.
On May 21, 1981, Seaga, now Jamaica’s Prime Minister, delivered the eulogy at Marley’s state funeral which partly read thus: “Bob Marley was never seen. Such a man cannot be erased from the mind. He is part of the collective consciousness of the nation.”
* The Pocket Bob Marley is published by Gemini Books and distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball Publishers. Available at leading bookstores countrywide, it retails for R195
