Interview with Esther Cohen

ivan

– 17/03/2005Posted in: Magazine Interviews

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We all know that Bob Marley was really a good man: when he was in a good mood he was the nicest person to be around. But sometimes he could wear his “screwface”. Neville Garrick once said: “Him only shield him could wear was him noted screwface: the screwface alone would turn people away”. In these interviews, two women talk about Bob’s rude attitude: Esther Cohen and Karen Baxter.

Esther Cohen is Executive Director of Bread and Roses. She’s been a book publisher, Lyrics curator, fiction writer, and teacher. At Bread and Roses, she uses all of these. Ms. Cohen, 55 worked for many years with the late Moe Foner, one of the city’s best-known labor advocates who founded the cultural wing of the union, known as Bread and Roses, believes that art and culture should be an integral part of working class life. She has skipped from cause to cause in her own life, at one point doing publicity for Bob Marley.

“I worked for Don Taylor Artist Management years ago. I wrote press releases for Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Wynston Rodney (Burning Spear) and Prince. I met everyone then, in that small office on West 56th Street, and spent a lot of time writing, listening to music, hanging out the way musicians (and others who love music) do. I did get a chance to talk to Marley, and had very mixed feelings about him at the time. He was an incredibly charismatic guy: women by the carloads lined up for him, everywhere he went, every time he performed. But I felt then (and probably would today) that he was the kind of man who was much more interested in himself (his talent, his skill, his perceptions, his fame) than other people: in what he had to say, more than in what he had to listen. I loved his music, and still do. I loved the way he was able to generate excitement, and energy. And the way he lived in a cloud of his own making. Great artists like Marley should be judged through their art and by their art. Daily life is something else altogether.”

This “feeling” on Marley is confirmed by another female manager who worked with Bob in the 70’s, Karen Baxter: “Everytime I was with Bob, he wasn´t very friendly” Karen says “there were always lots of people around. I was in his company for business, something about an upcoming tour or a current tour or something needed to be done with the record lable”. On september 1975 in association with Don Taylor, Karen produced a special concert of the original Wailers and the Motown star Stevie Wonder at National Stadium in Kingston. “The Dream Concert was a wild affair trying to put it together” recalls Karen “Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes one of the opening acts (as was Third World) were given a deposit and never showed – took the money and ran. Third World was wonderful! I remember the people in the stadium being electrified with positive vibrations, even before Marley or Stevie Wonder performed. The police guards who ringed the foot of the stage facing the crowd, backs to the stage, forgot their duties and turned around when Marley and Stevie Wonder performed”