Interview with Roger Steffens

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IVAN: Do you know the title of Bob’s unreleased songs that Ziggy Marley and Universal music are going to publish?
ROGER: NO, BUT I suspect that they are based on the so-called bedroom tape that I found at Bob’s mother’s house in 1988. There are also several more songs, many from the late ’60s, that have begun to surface.

IVAN: Which was the last song that Bob composed?
ROGER: VERY HARD to say, perhaps “Leah and Rachel.” He was working on “All on Board” and “Good Times” during his last rehearsal in Miami on 14 September 1980. The Melody Makers used some of the latter ten years later on one of their albums. In 1972, Bob performed with the Bandwagon supporting the PNP.

IVAN: Can you say something more about that period, about that event?
ROGER:It was mainly in the end of 1971 that Bob, Judy Mowatt, Clancy Eccles and many others toured Jamaica. Bunny denies vehemently that they were supporting Manley’s candidacy, though. He says the only reason they did these dates was because they were paid more than they had ever made before – JA $150 a night. I find this rather ingenuous – they were definitely more aligned with Manley’s socialist PNP movement than the right wing JLP of Edward Seaga. But within a year or two of Manley’s taking office, they were so turned off on all politicians, and the danger of being alligned with any party, that they wanted nothing whatsoever to do with any of them.

IVAN: When will you publish your book about Wailers discography?
ROGER: IT IS basically finished now, and we’re trying to find the right publisher. We’ve got one house in Jamaica that’s interested, but they’ve offered us almost nothing for the combined 53 years of research that Leroy Jodie Pierson and I have invested in this project. It’ll rewrite the book, that’s for sure, and let you know who played on virtually every track, plus the dates of the sesssions beginning with “Judge Not” and continuing to a couple of weeks ago for everything that Bunny, Bob and Peter have ever done.

IVAN: Which was the strangest anecdote, the most particular story regarding Bob Marley?
ROGER: One story Bunny told us strikes me as particularly instructive about his character – and perhaps his later health. When Bob and Bunny moved back to Nine Mile in 1967, they practiced cultivation. One day Bob, farming barefoot as usual, stepped back on a razor sharp hoe (adze) that had been left upturned. He nearly sliced his right foot in two. But instead of going home and recuperating, he just dug deep, deep into the earth, until he got to the darkest soil and packed it around his foot. He ripped off his shirt and tied it around the foot, and continued working that day and all the rest. He was a leader who lead by example, and he didn’t want to appear week in front of his closest friends.

IVAN: Do you know when Bob sang the chorus “woyoe-woyoyoyo” on Get Up Stand Up for the first time?
ROGER: Several people point to the Roxy ’76 concert, but I think it’s sometime in ’75. I’d have to listen back to the live tapes from that year, though.

IVAN: Do you know Where Bob usually bought his clothes? At which shop?
ROGER: No idea. Most of his stuff was blue jeans that you could find anywhere.

IVAN: Did he usually have bodyguards with him when he was out in public?
ROGER: Not really. He had lots of friends around him. When he went to Ethiopia he had a bodyguard named Lips with him. Lips was later murdered in the ghetto violence.

IVAN: Did you never eat with him?
ROGER: Sure. I spent two weeks on the road with him in November 1979. He had Gilly Gilbert traveling with him then as his personal cook. There was always fish tea and Irish Moss cooking.

IVAN: when did you see Bob for the last time? did you go to Baviera to meet him? Were you present at his funeral?
ROGER: No to the funeral and Bavaria. I last saw him at the end of November in Los Angeles, the night of his Roxy performance, a benefit for the Sugar Ray Robinson Foundation. I sat alone in the Roxy that afternoon with him for nearly three hours while he played all the instruments himself and Fams, his band leader, set the sound levels. The first hour, he kept singing something I’d never heard before, a song about “redemption.” I was mesmerized.

IVAN: did you ever see Bob when he was backstage? How was he before a performance?
ROGER: Calm. He usually liked to kick a soccer ball around if the dressing room was big enough, as at UCLA and at the San Diego Sports Arena. Once, in Santa Cruz in 1978, before a night of two full shows, I saw him smoking prodigious amounts of herb, and not being talkative at all. Bob was a watcher more than a talker. He liked to observe everything going on around him, and then turn it into music.

IVAN: do you know where is or who has his guitar (the classic Gibson)?
ROGER: Probably with one of his sons, maybe Rohan.

IVAN: Have you ever wished that you could go back in time to try to prevent the death of Bob?
ROGER: Don’t know how I’d do that. Melanoma is a very difficult disease, and the cure rate is low. Man’s fate is sealed. He knew he wouldn’t be here with us long, and told a couple of young men in 1969 that he was going to die at the age of 36. I’ve talked with them both – Ibis Pitts and Dion Wilson – and they both have confirmed this story to me.

IVAN: What is your favorite memory that you have of and/or with Bob?
ROGER: That afternoon at the Roxy, and of the two evenings that same week where I arranged for him to see the work print of “Smile Jamaica” and the suppressed documentary about the assassination attempt; and the work print of “Heartland Reggae” with the One Love Peace Concert footage. Afterwards, we asked Bob what he felt standing there between Seaga and Manley, two men in whose names so many thousands of Jamaicans have been killed. “I man no politician,” he explained, “But if I man a politician only one t’ing for me to do – kill them both.”

IVAN: It has been rumored, that after one of Bob’s concerts he became angry with Junior because he was speaking into the mike too much during the concert. Is this true? If so, can you tell me any details regarding what really happened?
ROGER: Don’t know anything about that, but it could certainly have happened. In “Heartland Reggae” you hear Bob, just as he’s asking Manley and Seaga to come on stage, going “Watch, watch, watch, watch, watch what you’re doin’,” This is to Junior who has just hit a wrong note. He’s being chastised in front of 40,000 of Marley’s homies.

IVAN: What was Bob like when he was confronted or surrounded by fans?
ROGER: Loving, generous, humble.

IVAN: What do you think about our magazine?
ROGER: It’s a tremendous effort and very valuable, especially for people who don’t speak English, in keeping alive the memory of the 20th Century’s greatest musician.