Did you Know? Issue 3

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1960’s: Rita’s first stage appearance
Lindsey Herbert: Rita Marley began her musical career in high school when she started a ska band with her cousin called the Soulettes, yet she had been singing since she was a child. “From five years old. Me first stage appearance was de Lannaman’s Children Hour talent show at de Carib Theater. Me was so small me sang standin’ on box so dem could see me!”

60’s: Bristol
Dj Derek: “We had a Jamaican club called The Bamboo Club in Bristol in the 60s. And I used to go down there and see all the people like Desmond Dekker and Marley before he was famous, Toots, all those guys, now I end up supporting them, as a DJ when they come to Bristol. It’s like a huge extended family.”

1968: Lee Ivory
In 1968, Lee Ivory traveled to Jamaica to consult with longtime client and friend Johnny Nash on his ‘discovery’ of a ‘new’ music form. This was Ivory’s first introduction to Reggae. It was during this time that he met Bob Marley, became a friend and admirer of Peter Tosh, and was further enlightened towards the importance of Marcus Garvey and Rastafari.

1971: Junior Delgado
His first break came when he made his first record with Lee “Scratch” Perry. Junior was singing with a group called Time Unlimited and their first recordings for Scratch were made in 1971 or ’72. “Well, the first producer I worked with was Upsetter, Lee Perry, Scratch. That was like magical, because that was when I was very, very young, you know. I was 17. Scratch, he was a man I could remember. Bob Marley was there, Peter Tosh – but they were like big men – and Family Man (Aston Barrett), and Carlie (Carlton Barrett), and Reggie – a lot of people don’t know that Reggie used to play in the Wailers, too. He was a guitarist. And they were there.

1971: Sweden
John Rabbit: “Bob Marley taught me how to play Reggae music on the organ. He actually sat down with me at a Hammond in Stockholm and showed me how to hit the keyboard in the rhythm that you are supposed to play it in. He didn’t make any sense of the notation or anything, he just played the rhythm and he said “Do that” and then he picked up his guitar and played the guitar rhythm and then said to me, “Play what I just showed you but play it with the notes” and we both played it until it was right and he said, “That is it! That is how you do it!” He would play and I would play and he would tell me when I got it right which was a nice little lesson from “The Man.” I mean, at that time he wasn’t Bob Marley like you know him, he was jut this little Jamaican bloke who wrote a lot of songs for Johnny Nash so none of the ego or stigma was there. He was always strong willed but that was just him. None of the stardom type of ego, he didn’t have any of that when I knew him. He was just another one of the guys…. We came to England together and we worked together a bit. Johnny Nash and us cut a record with Bob for CBS called “REGGAE ON BROADWAY” which they didn’t end up going with. It was Johnny Nash’s version of what Bob should sound like but it wasn’t what Bob wanted and it wasn’t what Chris Blackwell liked either so that record didn’t’ really happen and after that he (Marley) went with Chris Blackwell and they became the WAILERS and then we did “CATCH A FIRE” and it was like the way that Bob wanted it if you know what I mean. In other words, “REGGAE ON BROADWAY” sounded like a Johnny Nash produced track for Johnny to sing on but it was Bob singing it and then Johnny also did a version of it and it is the same music. (interview by D. Lee)

1972: Natty Wailer
Natty Wailer, musician: “I Met Bob Marley and the Wailers through Familyman the Bass player of the Wailers in 1972, a couple of months after I graduated from High School. That same year I began to be a rehearsal keyboard player and there after I became a studio musician for the Wailers. I went on my first tour with Bob to Trinidad and Tobago, which followed many albums and tours the world over. When Bob passed on in 1981, I seemed to have lost vision, faith and hope and went on to do other things. But I did not lose the love for the music and regained my focus by rejoining the Wailers in 1999.”

1973: Burnin’ album
Tony Platt: “When I came to do the Bob Marley recordings for Burnin’ I was a little concerned, because that was the first time I’d worked solely with Jamaican artists. I’d mixed the Catch A Fire album, but that was recording little bits to add to the track that had come over from Jamaica. The main thing that I was concerned about was the bass sound that they got which was just so amazingly elastic, so I had a chat with Bunny Wailer about it. He said when they set up in Jamaica they had all the amps pointing at the drums with the drums in the middle. Doing that, the bass just goes over everything and it was one of those times when I realised that ambience and leakage can be your friend if you work with it.”

1973: First Tour
Promoter Scott Piering spent the early part of his career working in San Francisco where, among other things, he was responsible for booking Bob Marley’s first ever US tour.

1973: Johnny Nash
While most artists feel that the natural step from a successful recording career is a part or full-time movie career (Barbara Streisand, Roger McGuinn, James Taylor, Elvis Presley, etc.), Nash has always stayed ahead of the game by maintaining both roles. He kicked off his movie career with the winning of the Silver Sail Award from Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival for his role in Take A Giant Step. Following up this achievement with a part in Key Witness, filmed in the early sixties, he didn’t return to the screen career until 1970. It was in Sweden that the setting for I Can See Clearly Now, the aforementioned return to acting for Nash, took place. It is a love story in which Nash plays the lead role opposite Christina Scholin. Scholin portrays a stewardess in the film. Nash an itinerant lover. Finished only six months ago, the movie and soundtrack, which he wrote and produced as well, are due in theatres around Easter-time. Returning from the set in Sweden, Nash went to London where he promptly resumed his recording career, which had been in a hiatus during the filming, by signing a contract with CBS Records. “Stir It Up”, a tune written and produced for him by Bob Marley in Jamaica, was Johnny’s first single release. Available only in Europe, it revealed a simple, shuffling beat and melody trademarked by Nash’s distinctive high pitched vocals. It was pure reggae…and Europe ate it up. Realizing that the time had come to start a full-fledged campaign to put himself across right this time, Nash formed a back-up band and took it out on the road with him on a tour of England. “I never had an entourage before”, he remarked “It’s nice. There’s a lot of people that travel with us. In total, about sixteen or seventeen people. There’s nine in the band, then comes our sound engineers, secretaries, travelers…it’s really small in terms of the productivity of it…our gang, that is.” (article by C. Crowe – April 26, 1973)

1973: Edmonton
In 1983 the pop singer Paul Young was inspired by Nicky Thomas rendition of ‘Love Of The Common People’ to record his version of the song. Like Nicky Thomas the singer had shared a billing with Bob Marley, which may have exposed him to this performer’s Jamaican classic. In a supporting role to Desmond Dekker, Nicky Thomas shared the same stage as Bob at the Sundown Club, Edmonton in 1973 while Young, as part of the band Q Tips supported the legend in 1980 at the Crystal Palace Bowl.

1973: Les Paul guitar
In late April 1973 Bob and Aston came into Top Gear music in Denmark Street, London, and bought a guitar each. Bob bought his Les Paul jnr and Aston bought a Gibson EB3 bass. A few weeks later Bob himself brought the jnr back, as it had fallen face first off a stand at rehearsal, and the pick up selector switch had smashed through the wood and was sitting in the switch cavity. He wanted to use the guitar right away, so he found a piece of cream plastic, cut a larger than normal size switch plate to accomodate the break, and fastened it with two screws. He came back in that afternoon and picked it up. The idea was to get it repaired properly, but he never did, and the rest is history

1974: Pete Waterman, producer
Pete drove the Jamaicans mad by turning up at all the recording studios to meet reggae artists and producers. His unique position as a white guy in an R’n'B world gained him access to places that no other A & R guys had ever been and he became totally immersed in the reggae of Jamaica meeting Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, the legendary Lee Perry and Gladstone Anderson. While he was there he made his own reggae record for eighty American dollars. Little did he know that this was a milestone because he had crossed the border and without even realising it had become a record producer.

1977: Guitar Teacher
Bigga (Anthony Robinson) is one of the few musicians taught guitar by Bob Marley: “Whenever the word reggae comes up, I immediately think of Bob Marley. In Jamaica, one sees pictures of the legend everywhere; his memory is the epitome of reggae music.” Bigga was born in Montego Bay and moved to Miami when he was 18. It was at that time that he met Bob Marley and eventually become one of the few who actually studied guitar with Marley. “I have been creating music since 1977, when I met Bob Marley in Miami,” Bigga once said. He then started working with Al Anderson and Tyrone Downie, both alumni of the Wailers, Marley’s old band.

1977: London
David Katz: I heard you played in a band called The Undivided in the ’70s, backing Gene Rondo. Rico Rodriguez: Yes, it was a group of Jamaican musicians, in North London. They got a deal with EMI to do an album. I used to really play with that band, and sometimes when the Wailers were in town, in the ’70s, we used to play at Carnival. I remember one particular incident. We were playing at the corner of Lancaster Road and All Saints Road, and we were playing some Don Drummond music. We looked across the road…I had just finished my solo, and the rhythm was still bubbling, the saxophone player was playing. The Wailers were standing up across there. I touch my friend and I say, ‘Boy, the man them like the music across there,’ because everyone was looking at us intently. Bob Marley and Carlton Barrett and Family Man and everyone was really there with us, they didn’t leave until we take a break. But I used to play with them, and we used to back Roy Shirley too. We used to do quite a few shows, but I wouldn’t say I was a member of the band. I can never remember that I was ever a member of a band.

1977: London
Benjamin Zephaniah: “When I was just a kid, a struggling unknown poet ranting on the streets of Birmingham, he was the only singer who ever replied to any of my letters. I actually got advice from brother Bob: he told me to “keep it up”, to “stay militant”, and he said that one day people would read my poems. It’s impossible to say exactly how much that meant to teenaged me. Bob Marley was my hero, and then he became my penpal. Very heaven”

1978: PETE KING, STEEL PULSE’S FORMER MANAGER
A sum of £5,000 to Don Taylor, Marley’s Manager, clinched the tour with Bob Marley in June of ’78. I met Marley for the first time, I was introduced to him and he kept repeating, ‘Steel Pulse, Steel Pulse, Steel Pulse, Steel Pulse,’ as he shook my hand. It came back to me that he was pissed off that Steel Pulse were supporting him, I think he would’ve preferred someone a little meeker and milder as support. As it was, it turned out really well. Those shows are the most singlularly memorable time of my involvement in music. I will always hang onto those memories. Of the Marley gigs, Stafford was a horrible place, dreadful, a large cattle hall and not a great gig to start with. It was also where two rastafarian tennis players sponsored by Island were busted for drugs. I recall Paris and Holland and the others, but I’m sure we also did a gig at Hammersmith Odeon as well. We’d already been to Europe in our own right, it was a fertile territory for us.

1978: Steel Pulse
Steve Grizzly: “…We were fresh, nervous, it wasn’t perfect but no other album sounded anything like Handsworth Revolution, thanks to Karl Pitterson.” There was another boost for Pulse during the recording of the album. “We met Bob Marley at the Island studios for the first time. We’d just come out of the basement, the fall-out shelter we called it. We were relaxing upstairs, playing pool and listening to the tapes we’d just recorded. He walked out of the offices section and came over and said hello guys, I like what you’re doing. We just stood there shaking, with our mouths open. Bob had an aura about him, you had to love him, we all did. Toots Hibberd was also in the studios during the recording sessions.” …Steel Pulse became flavour of the month in the music press, they appeared on television shows, released two more singles, Prodigal Son and Prediction and more importantly to the band, supported Bob Marley & The Wailers on their European tour with dates in England, France, Holland and Belgium. For Grizzly and his fellow band members this was a defining moment in their lives. “Playing with Bob Marley & the Wailers was just amazing. There was nothing on earth that sounded or played like The Wailers – not now, not ever. Both bands really became tight on that tour, we got to know each other very well. We learnt how to play from watching them, we learnt how they played each of their tracks. We watched every show from the side. They were the kings of reggae. I was in love with Carlton Barrett as I was still learning reggae at that time. I didn’t want to copy him, just wanted to learn how he played. Each of us was learning from a Wailer.”

february 1979: Prince
It’s documented in the DMSR book, basically, Bob Marley met Prince before he died during Prince’s Dirty Mind period (where he he was going through the bikini briefs and legwarmers stage). Bob was convinced of meeting Prince through his management because he was told that Prince was a genius, boy wonder, etc, etc. But when he saw Prince in his undies, it didn’t go down too good with Bob’s Jamaican homophobic upbringing, thought Prince was a “Butty Boy”, so the story goes

1979: Serge Gainsbourg
In 1979 Serge Gainsbourg recorded a reggae version of “La Marseillaise”, “Aux Armes et cetera”, with the impeccable rhythm duo of Sly & Robbie and famed reggae vocal trio the I-Threes (featuring Rita Marley, Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt). Bob Marley was furious when he discovered Serge paid Rita Marley more than him for a session!

1980: Lionel Richie
During a recent trip to Miami, Lionel Richie met with Lenny Kravitz. The retro-rock aficionado told Richie a telling story about his first, formative live music experience. “(Kravitz) said, ‘The first concert my father ever took me to was the Commodores at Madison Square Garden, opening up for Bob Marley,”‘ Richie recalled “It was Bob Marley’s last concert in America, so I told him the end of the story. I told him who was backstage. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards …”

1980: Another one bites the dust
Chris Taylor (Queen band assistant): “Deaky and myself were the only two reggae lovers in the outfit, and Bob Marley turned up to see our show at Madison Square Gardens. Strange choice of show for Bob, but he loved “Another one bites the dust”, and he happened to be in New York on a stopover on his way to Germany for laser treatment. Show time and our intro tape was playing, and someone told John Deacon that Bob was in the audience, so he cranked his bass up and played “Lively up yourself” over the tape. This was very possibly the last time Marley ever heard this played as he died shortly after. I didn’t get to meet him, but I did get to meet Tyrone Downie, Bobs keyboard player in the Wailers, and Tyrone and myself got up to all sorts of mischief that night”.

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