Bob Marley
Bob Marley (Robert Nesta Marley) was born on 6
February 1945 in Nine Miles in
the parish of St. Ann, Jamaica. His father
(Norval Sinclair Marley) was a
English marine-officer and his mother
(Cedella 'Ciddy' Malcom)was a native
Jamaican who lived in Rhoden Hall.
After Bob was born, his father left his
mother. When Bob was five, his father
took him to Kingston. Oneyear later Bob
saw his mother again. A couple of
years later Bob and his mother moved to Trench
Town (West-Kingston)
because his mother was looking for a job. Bob Marley loved
the fast life in
the big city, as well as the music of Fats Domino, Ray Charles
he heard. Not
much later Bob got his nickname Tuff Gong. Meanwhile Jamaican
musicians were
working on their own style of music. They invented ska and this
music became
very popular in Jamaica. At age 16 Bob wanted to record an album.
Like
other Jamaican kids he saw the music as an escape of the though
reality.
Jimmy Cliff, a local musician (only 14 years old), had already
made a few (hit)
singles and introduced Bob to producer Leslie Kong. Bob made
his first single
Judge Not in 1961, but this record and the next one One
More Cup Of Coffee
(1962) didn't do well. Bob left Kong after he didn't
received a paycheck of
Lesly Kong. In 1964 Peter (McIn)Tosh, Bunny
Livingstone (alias Bunny Wailer),
Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso,
Cherry, Constantine 'Dream Vision' Walker
and Bob Marley formed the band The
Wailers. Cherry and Junior left the band
after a few recording sessions. By
the recording of their songs they used ska
musicians of Coxsone Dodd's Studio
One. Bob Marley acted as the leader of the
band and he wrote most of the
material. The Wailers became very popular in 1965:
they played full houses.
On the Coxsone-label they recorded several hits: Simmer
Down, It Hurts To
Be Alone, Rule Them Rudie. It was 10 February 1966 when Bob
Marley
married Rita Anderson. The day after, Bob went to the United States to
visit
his mother and her new husband. During Bob's stay in the States,
Beverly
Kelso left The Wailers and Rita and her cousin Dream joined the
band. The
Wailers changed their music from ska to rocksteady. The next
year (the same year
Bob's first child, Cedella, was born) the band left
Coxsone and set up their own
record label Wail 'N Soul 'M Record, also known
as Wailing Souls, Wail 'M Soul
'M. Their first single from this label was
Bend Down Low/Mellow Mood. At the end
of that year, that same label was put
an end to. In 1968 Bob's first son, David
(better known as Ziggy) was born.
That same year Bob met Jonny Nash. The Wailers
recorded songs for the record
company JAD Records. In 1970 The Upsetters joined
The Wailers: Aston
'Family Man' Barret played bass and his brother Carlton
played the drums. The
band set up a new label Tuff Gong and the first single on
that label was Run
For Cover. It went uphill with the band and their own label.
They made
hit after hit. In December 1971 Bob went to Chris Blackwell of
Island
Records and he asked Chris if the band could get a record deal.
Chris gave them
8,000 pounds (in advance) to make an album. It was a
revolutionary move: for the
first time a reggae band had access to the best
recording facilities and they
were treated in much the same way as, say, a
rock group. Before The Wailers
signed to Island it was considered that reggae
sold only singles and cheap
compilation albums. This way The Wailers made the
first reggae-album Catch A
Fire. The band makes successful tours through
the U.K. and the States. The
follow-up album at Island was Burnin' and it
included some of the band's older
songs together with tracks like Get Up
Stand Up and I Shot The Sheriff. The
Wailers and Bob Marley became more
popular after Eric Clapton recorded I Shot
The Sheriff. His version hit
number one in the U.S. Singles Chart. With the
release of Natty Dread the
band lined up as Bob Marley & The Wailers. In the
summer of 1975 the band
were touring through Europe. Among the concerts were two
shows at the Lyceum
Ballroom in London. These two concerts are remembered as
highlights of the
decade. The shows were recorded on Live and it made the
charts. The, on this
album appearing, live-version of No Woman No Cry became a
very big hit in the
whole world. By that time Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingstone
had officially
left the band to pursue their own solo careers. Lead-guitar
player Al
Anderson and keyboard player Bernard 'Touter' Harvey joined the band;
these
two guys were succeeded by Junior Marvin (1977) and Tyrone Downie. In
the
year 1976 the reggae-mania boomed in the States. Rolling Stone Magazine
named
Bob Marley & The Wailers 'Band of the year' in their February
issue.
Rastaman Vibration, cracked the American charts, but didn't do too
well in The
Netherlands. The album included a track called War of which
the lyrics were
taken from a speech by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. On
3 December 1976 a
tragedy happened. Six armed man shot at Bob Marley, his
wife, the Wailers
manager Don Taylor and Don Kinsey. Two days later Bob
performed at the Smile
Jamaica concert in Kingston, after which he flew
to the U.K. The Wailers
followed Bob and they recorded Exodus in 1977. With
this album Bob Marley's
international statusm of superstar was established.
In the U.K. Bob Marley had
an audience of prince royal Asfa Wossan
(grandchild of Emperor Haile Selassie)
at which Bob received a very important
ring: Jah Rasafari (owned by the
Ethiopian emperor). In May of the same
year Bob found out that he had cancer. A
toe had to be amputated, but Bob
refused because that would have been against
his believe of the Rastafari. On
20 July 1977 the remaining concerts of the
Exodus Tour were canceled. The
following year the band capitalized on their
chart success with the release
of Kaya, an album which hit number four in the UK
Chart the week of
release. The album showed Bob in a different mood: love songs
and homage’s to
the power of ganja (marijuana). The rastafari smoke ganja to
come closer to
Jah (God). In April 1978 Bob Marley returned to Jamaica to
perform on the One
Love Peace Concert in front of the Prime Minister Michael
Manley and
Leader of the Opposite Edward Seaga. Bob arranged a meeting on stage
between
the two rivals. Later that year Bob got the Piece Medal of the
Third
World from the United Nations. He also visited Africa (Kenya,
Ethiopia and
Zimbabwe) for the first time in his life. Bob Marley &
The Wailers continued
their popular status with Babylon By Bus (registration
of a concert in Paris)
and Survival. At the end of the seventies Bob Marley
& The Wailers were the
most important band on the road and they broke the
festival records on the
European continent. Their new Uprising album
entered every chart in Europe. The
band was even planning a new American
tour, with Stevie Wonder, for the winter
of 1980. Bob's health went downhill
but he had the doctor's approval to start
the American tour, which started in
Boston in September. During a concert in New
York Bob Marley almost
fainted. The next morning, on 21 September 1980, he went
jogging with Skilly
Cole in Central Park. Bob collapsed and was taken back to
the hotel. Several
days later it became clear that Bob had a brain tumor and he
had, according
to the doctors, not even a month to live. Rita Marley wanted the
tour to be
canceled, but Bob wanted to continue the tour. So he played a
marvelous show
in Pittsburgh. But Rita couldn't agree with Bob's decision to
continue and on
23 September the tour was canceled. Bob was transported from
Miami to the
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. There, the
doctor's
diagnosed cancer in the brain, lung and stomach. Bob was transported
back to
Miami, were he was baptized Berhane Selassie in the Ethiopian
Orthodox
Church (a Christian church) on 4 November 1980. Five days later,
in a last
attempt to save Bob's life, he flew to a controversial treatment
center in
Germany. In February 1981 Bob had his 36th anniversary in the
German clinic.
Three months later, on 11 May 1981, Bob died in a hospital
in Miami. Bob
Marley's funeral in Jamaica on 21 May 1981 could be
compared with one of a king.
Hundreds of thousands of people (including
the Prime Minister and the Leader of
the Opposition) visited the funeral to
celebrate the fact that Bob Marley was a
real 'Jah Rastafari' after all.
After the funeral Bob Marley's body was taken to
his birthplace were itrests
in a mausoleum. The mausoleum became a real place of
pilgrimage in the years
after. A month before Bob's death, he was awarded
Jamaica's Order Of
Merit, the nation's third highest honor, in recognition of
his outstanding
contribution to the country's culture. The prophet Gad insisted
(before
Marley's death) to become the owner of the ring Jah Rasafari. The
ring,
however, disappeard miraculously and nobody has seen the ring again.
Bob
Marley's mother says that the ring went back to the place of origin.
In Montego
Bay, Jamaica, a Bob Marley (Performance) Center had been set
up. For a couple of
years the Sunsplash Festival has been held here. In the
spring of 1983 the
Confrontation album had been released. It contained
unreleased songs, reshaped
songs and songs that had only been released in
Jamaica. The song Buffalo Soldier
became a posthumous hit. In 1984 Legend was
released. Thanks to the hit One
Love/People Get Ready this beautiful
album became a worldwide bestseller. Bob
Marley & The Wailers were
'back to live'. After Bob Marley's dead a special
concert took place in
Kingston to commemorate Bob Marley. Several artist, among
which Ziggy Marley
& The Melody Makers and the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra
performed and
raised money to establish a Bob Marley Entertainment Complex
in
Kingston.