Bob Marley

• 1. Introduction

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  Bob Marley, the Jamaican singer, songwriter and guitarist born Robert Nesta Marley, was buried with a red Gibson Les Paul guitar in his casket. Beside it lay a Bible opened to Psalm 23 and a stalk of cannabis, placed there by his widow, Rita. The chapel stood near his birthplace, and the man laid inside it was only 36 years old. Within his lifetime he had carried the music of Jamaica far beyond the island, and estimates put his record sales above 75 million worldwide. How did a boy from rural Saint Ann Parish come to speak to rock audiences across the globe? What did it cost him to be so outspoken in a country split between warring political groups? And why do some writers argue that the smiling image of him sold around the world has flattened the real man?

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• 2. Trenchtown Voices

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  Norval Sinclair Marley was about 64 years old when his son was born on the 6th of February 1945. The birth took place at the farm of the boy's maternal grandfather in Nine Mile, in Saint Ann Parish. Norval was a white Jamaican of Welsh ancestry, born in Clarendon Parish. He liked to be called "Captain", although he had only ever been a private in the British Army. When he married, he was supervising the division of land into housing for war veterans. His bride, Cedella Malcolm, was an Afro-Jamaican who was 18 at the time. Some cousins claimed the Marley surname had Syrian-Jewish roots. The boy's biographer refuted this, and it remains speculative.

  Norval gave his wife and child little financial support and rarely saw them. He died when his son was 12. Some sources give the boy's birth name as Nesta Robert Marley. In that telling, a Jamaican passport official reversed the names because Nesta sounded like a girl's name.

  Omariah, the boy's maternal grandfather, was known as a Myal and became an early musical influence. At Stepney Primary and Junior High School in Nine Mile, Marley began making music with a childhood friend named Neville Livingston. The world would later know him as Bunny Wailer.

  At age 12, Marley left Nine Mile with his mother for the Trenchtown section of Kingston. There the two friends came to live in the same house. Marley's mother and Bunny's father, Thadeus Livingston, had a daughter together named Claudette Pearl. She was a younger sister to both boys. Their musical explorations deepened to include the new ska sound and the latest R&B from American radio stations whose broadcasts reached Jamaica.

  Joe Higgs, part of the successful vocal act Higgs and Wilson, lived nearby and encouraged them. Marley, Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh formed a vocal group, and none of them played an instrument yet. They cared more about harmony. Higgs helped them develop it and began teaching Marley guitar.

  Marley's mother later married Edward Booker, a civil servant from the United States. The marriage gave Marley two half-brothers, Richard and Anthony.

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• 3. Rise of the Wailers

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  In February 1962, Marley recorded four songs at Federal Studios for the local producer Leslie Kong. They were "Judge Not", "One Cup of Coffee", "Do You Still Love Me?" and "Terror". Three were released, and "One Cup of Coffee" appeared under the pseudonym Bobby Martell.

  By 1963, the group counted Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso and Cherry Smith, and it was called the Teenagers. The name changed to the Wailing Rudeboys, then to the Wailing Wailers, the name under which the producer Coxsone Dodd discovered them. Finally it became simply the Wailers. Their single "Simmer Down", on the Coxsone label, reached number 1 in Jamaica in February 1964. It sold an estimated 70,000 copies.

  Recording regularly for Studio One, the band worked beside established Jamaican musicians. They included the arranger Ernest Ranglin, the keyboardist Jackie Mittoo and the saxophonist Roland Alphonso. A debut studio album, The Wailing Wailers, followed in 1965. It carried the single "One Love", a reworking of "People Get Ready". By 1966, Braithwaite, Kelso and Smith had gone, leaving the core trio of Marley, Bunny Wailer and Tosh.

  On the 10th of February 1966, Marley married Rita Anderson in Kingston. He then moved for a short time to Wilmington, Delaware, near his mother's home. There he worked as a lab assistant at DuPont, and on the assembly line and as a forklift operator at a Chrysler plant in nearby Newark. At work he used the alias Donald Marley.

  Back in Jamaica, a financial disagreement with Dodd sent Marley and his band to Lee "Scratch" Perry and Perry's studio band, the Upsetters. The alliance lasted less than a year. Many people consider what they recorded to be the Wailers' finest work. A dispute over recording rights ended the partnership, though the two men kept working together.

  In 1969, Jamaican popular music slowed further into a steady, ticking rhythm first heard on the Maytals song "Do the Reggay". Marley approached Leslie Kong, regarded as one of the major developers of the reggae sound. Kong paired the Wailers with his studio band, Beverley's All-Stars. Its players included the bassists Lloyd Parks and Jackie Jackson and the drummer Paul Douglas. The keyboardists were Gladstone Anderson and Winston Wright, and the guitarists were Rad Bryan, Lynn Taitt and Hux Brown.

  Writer David Moskowitz described the results this way: "Gone are the ska trumpets and saxophones of the earlier songs, with instrumental breaks now being played by the electric guitar." The sessions were released as The Best of The Wailers, with tracks such as "Soul Shakedown Party", "Stop That Train" and "Caution".

  Meanwhile, between 1968 and 1972, Bob and Rita, Tosh and Bunny Wailer re-cut old tracks with JAD Records in Kingston and London. They hoped to make the Wailers' sound more commercial. Bunny later insisted those songs "should never be released on an album... they were just demos for record companies to listen to".

  In 1968, Bob and Rita visited the songwriter Jimmy Norman at his Bronx apartment. Norman had written the extended lyrics for "Time Is on My Side" and had also written for Johnny Nash and Jimi Hendrix. A three-day jam session with Norman, his co-writer Al Pyfrom and others produced a 24-minute tape. On it Marley performed several of his own songs and several Norman-Pyfrom compositions.

  Reggae archivist Roger Steffens calls the tape rare because pop, rather than reggae, shaped it. It was part of an effort to break Marley into the American charts. An article in The New York Times described a doo-wop style on "Stay With Me". It heard the slow love song style of 1960s artists on "Splish for My Splash".

  During 1972, Marley lived at Ridgmount Gardens in Bloomsbury, London.

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• 4. The Island Bargain

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  An advance of £4,000 to record an album, worth roughly £26,000 in today's money, was the offer that came out of a meeting about something else. In 1972, Marley signed with CBS Records in London and toured the United Kingdom with the soul singer Johnny Nash. The Wailers then asked their road manager, Brent Clarke, to introduce them to Chris Blackwell. Blackwell's Island Records had licensed some of their Coxsone releases. The Wailers wanted to discuss royalties.

  Blackwell had a gap to fill. Jimmy Cliff, Island's top reggae star, had recently left the label. In Marley, Blackwell saw the elements needed to win the rock audience. He later said: "I was dealing with rock music, which was really rebel music. I felt that would really be the way to break Jamaican music. But you needed someone who could be that image. When Bob walked in, he really was that image."

  The Wailers returned to Jamaica and recorded at Harry J's in Kingston. The sessions used an eight-track machine. For the first time, a reggae band had a state-of-the-art studio and the same care given to its rock and roll peers. Blackwell wanted "more of a drifting, hypnotic-type feel than a reggae rhythm" and restructured Marley's mixes and arrangements. Marley travelled to London to supervise Blackwell's overdubbing at Island Studios. The work softened the bass-heavy sound of Jamaican music, and two tracks were dropped.

  Catch a Fire reached shops worldwide in April 1973. It was packaged like a rock record, with a lift-top cover modelled on a Zippo lighter. It initially sold 14,000 units and drew a positive critical reception. Many Jamaicans were not keen on its new sound.

  Burnin' followed later in 1973 and included "I Shot the Sheriff". Eric Clapton's guitarist, George Terry, gave Clapton the album in the hope he would enjoy it. Clapton was impressed and recorded a cover. It became his first American hit since "Layla" two years earlier and reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on the 14th of September 1974. The Trenchtown style of Burnin' found fans among both reggae and rock listeners.

  The Wailers disbanded in 1974, and each of the three main members pursued a solo career. During this period Blackwell gave Marley his Kingston residence and company headquarters at 56 Hope Road, then known as Island House. It housed Tuff Gong Studios and became Marley's office as well as his home.

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• 5. Gunmen and Exile

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  Carlton and Aston "Family Man" Barrett, on drums and bass, anchored the new band that Marley assembled after the split. Junior Marvin and Al Anderson played lead guitar, Tyrone Downie and Earl "Wya" Lindo played keyboards, and Alvin "Seeco" Patterson handled percussion. Judy Mowatt, Marcia Griffiths and Rita Marley formed the backing trio called the I Threes. Marley kept the name Bob Marley and the Wailers.

  The album Natty Dread, from 1974, received positive reviews. In 1975, a live version of "No Woman, No Cry", from the album Live!, gave Marley his first hit outside Jamaica. Rastaman Vibration followed in 1976. It was his breakthrough album in the United States and reached the Top 50 of the Billboard Soul Charts.

  On the 3rd of December 1976, two days before a free concert called "Smile Jamaica", unknown gunmen attacked Marley's home. Prime Minister Michael Manley had organised the concert to ease tension between two warring political groups. Marley, Rita and their manager, Don Taylor, were wounded. Taylor and Rita were seriously hurt but made full recoveries. Marley suffered minor wounds to the chest and arm.

  Many believed the attack was politically motivated, because many felt the concert was really a support rally for Manley. The concert went ahead. Marley performed as scheduled two days later, injured, before a festival crowd of 80,000. Members of the group Zap Pow played as his backup band, because members of the Wailers were still missing or in hiding.

  Marley left Jamaica at the end of 1976. He spent a month of "recovery and writing" at the site of Blackwell's Compass Point Studios in Nassau, in the Bahamas. He then arrived in England, where he spent two years in self-imposed exile. On four successive nights, from the 1st to the 4th of June 1977, the Wailers played the Rainbow Theatre in London. The highlights were recorded in the BBC documentary Bob Marley: Live at the Rainbow 1977.

  In England he recorded the albums Exodus and Kaya. In 1978 he filmed the video for "Is This Love" from Kaya at the Keskidee centre, a Black-led theatre and arts centre in London. The model Naomi Campbell was one of the children who performed in it. Exodus stayed on the British album charts for 56 consecutive weeks and produced four UK hit singles: "Exodus", "Waiting in Vain", "Jamming" and "One Love".

  While in London, Marley was arrested and convicted of possessing a small quantity of cannabis. The double live album Babylon by Bus, released in 1978 with 13 tracks, drew critical acclaim. Its final track, "Jamming", with the audience in a frenzy, captured the intensity of his live shows.

  Also in 1978, Marley returned to Jamaica for the One Love Peace Concert, another effort to calm the warring parties. Near the end, at Marley's request, Michael Manley, leader of the ruling People's National Party, joined his rival Edward Seaga, leader of the opposing Jamaica Labour Party. The two men shook hands on stage.

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• 6. Beliefs and Passions

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  "If you want to get to know me, you will have to play football against me and the Wailers," Marley told a journalist. He played in parking lots, in fields and even inside recording studios. As a boy he followed the Brazilian club Santos and its star Pelé. Later he supported the English club Tottenham Hotspur and the Argentine midfielder Ossie Ardiles, who played there for a decade from 1978. In the 1970s he made the Jamaican international footballer Allan "Skill" Cole his tour manager.

  Two of his cars were BMWs, a 1602 and then a 2500. He bought them for the name, because he said BMW stood for Bob Marley and the Wailers.

  Marley was raised Catholic. Away from his mother's influence in the 1960s, he became interested in Rastafari beliefs. After returning to Jamaica he formally converted and began to grow dreadlocks. He felt that Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia was an incarnation of God, or "Jah". He took the movement's music out of the socially deprived areas of Jamaica and onto the international stage.

  Cannabis, or "ganja", is believed by Rastafarians to aid meditation. Marley began using it in 1966, when he converted from Catholicism. He was arrested in 1968 after being caught with it, but he kept using it in line with his faith. He explained: "When you smoke herb, herb reveal yourself to you. All the wickedness you do, the herb reveal itself to yourself, your conscience, show up yourself clear, because herb make you meditate. Is only a natural thing and it grow like a tree."

  Marcus Garvey inspired Marley deeply, and Marley's pan-Africanism grew from his Rastafari faith. He believed in the unity of African people worldwide. He held that the independence of African countries from European domination was a victory for the whole African diaspora. "Redemption Song" draws on a 1937 speech Garvey gave in Nova Scotia. "Zimbabwe", "Exodus", "Survival" and "Blackman Redemption" carry similar themes.

  In "Africa Unite", he sang of a wish for all peoples of the African diaspora to come together and fight against "Babylon". In "Zimbabwe", he marked the liberation of the whole continent. Both songs appeared on Survival, a defiant, politically charged album released in 1979, which also included "Wake Up and Live". His song "War", from 1976, had already shown his opposition to South African apartheid. In July 1979 he appeared at the Amandla Festival in Boston, and in early 1980 he was invited to perform at Zimbabwe's Independence Day celebration on the 17th of April.

  The official Bob Marley website acknowledges 11 children. They include Sharon, born to Rita before the marriage and adopted by Marley, and David "Ziggy", born on the 17th of October 1968.

  Later in life, Marley converted to Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity. On the 4th of November 1980, Archbishop Abuna Yesehaq baptised him with the name Berhane Selassie. Rita and their children were present.

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• 7. The Last Tour

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  In July 1977, doctors found a lesion under the nail of Marley's right big toe. He had to see two doctors before a biopsy was done, and it confirmed acral lentiginous melanoma. Unlike most melanomas, this kind appears in places easy to miss, such as the soles of the feet or under toenails. It is the most common melanoma in people with dark skin, yet it was not mentioned in the most popular medical textbook of the time. An urban legend blames a football injury that year, but the lesion was already a symptom of existing cancer.

  Doctors advised amputating the toe. Marley refused, citing his religious beliefs, since amputation would have hindered his performing career. Instead, the nail and nail bed were removed, and a skin graft from his thigh covered the area. He kept touring and was scheduling a world tour for 1980.

  Uprising, released in May 1980, was his final studio album and the last released in his lifetime. It is one of his most religious works, with "Forever Loving Jah" among its songs. On the European leg of the tour, the band played its biggest concert to 100,000 people at San Siro stadium in Milan. Marley's final outdoor concert took place on the 6th of July 1980 at Dalymount Park in Dublin. In the United States, he played two shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

  On the 21st of September 1980, Marley collapsed while jogging in Central Park. At the hospital, doctors found that the cancer had spread to his brain, lungs and liver. Two days later he gave his last concert at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh. The only known photographs from that night appear in Kevin Macdonald's 2012 documentary film Marley.

  The rest of the tour was cancelled. Marley sought treatment at the clinic of Josef Issels in Rottach-Egern, Bavaria. Issels treatment is an alternative cancer therapy partly based on avoiding certain foods, fluids and other substances. After eight months with no effective result, Marley boarded a plane for Jamaica. During the flight his vital functions worsened, and the plane was diverted to Miami, Florida.

  He was taken to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, now the University of Miami Hospital. He died there shortly afterwards, on the 11th of May 1981, as the cancer spread to his lungs and brain. His last words to his son Ziggy were: "On your way up, take me up. On your way down, don't let me down. Money can't buy life."

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• 8. Legacy

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  On the 21st of May 1981, Jamaica gave Marley a state funeral that combined Ethiopian Orthodox elements with Rastafari tradition. Prime Minister Edward Seaga delivered the final eulogy. "His voice was an omnipresent cry in our electronic world," Seaga said. He added that Marley "was never seen" but "was an experience which left an indelible imprint with each encounter".

  The greatest hits album Legend appeared in 1984 and became the best-selling reggae album of all time. Three months before his death, in February 1981, Marley had received Jamaica's Order of Merit, an honour for people in the arts, literature or science. Rolling Stone named his band its "Band of the Year" for 1976. The United Nations gave him its Peace Medal of the Third World in June 1978.

  In March 1994, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1999, Time magazine named Exodus its "Album of the Century". In February 2001, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him 11th on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. It also ranked him 98th among the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.

  A statue stands next to the national stadium on Arthur Wint Drive in Kingston. In 2006, the New York City Department of Education co-named a stretch of Church Avenue in Brooklyn as "Bob Marley Boulevard". A statue was inaugurated in 2008 in Banatski Sokolac, Serbia. Members of the Hopi and Havasupai tribes revere his work, and India has Marley-themed restaurants, hotels and cultural festivals.

  That reach has a price, according to the author Dave Thompson. He wrote that Marley is among "the most popular and the most misunderstood figures in modern culture". Thompson mourned the loss of the ghetto kid who admired Che Guevara and the Black Panthers. In his view the merchandised smile had demeaned Marley "beyond recognition".

  Filmmakers have kept returning to the story. In February 2008, Martin Scorsese announced a documentary meant to open on what would have been Marley's 65th birthday. Scorsese dropped out over scheduling problems. Jonathan Demme replaced him and left over creative differences with the producer Steve Bing. Kevin Macdonald then took over, and Marley reached audiences on the 20th of April 2012.

  In October 2015, Marlon James won the Man Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings, a novel about the attempted assassination. The musical Get Up, Stand Up! premiered at London's Lyric Theatre in October 2021. The film Bob Marley: One Love, starring Kingsley Ben-Adir, opened in the United States on the 14th of February 2024.

  On the 25th of October 2025, the London Borough of Wandsworth and the Nubian Jak Community Trust installed a green plaque. It marks Marley's visits to the borough, where he and his band members spent time playing football in Battersea Park.

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