by bunny matthews:
Reggae and Rastafarianism permeated Bunny’s consciousness during the 1970s. He worshipped the genre’s charismatic prophet, Bob Marley. But never in his wildest, ganja-tinged musings could he ever have anticipated the bizarre series of events surrounding his encounter with the Rasta icon on a trip to Jamaica in December 1976.
“Different world in those days. The things you could get as a journalist…” Bunny sighs nostalgically, when asked to recite the particulars.
He’d been honing his chops at
Figaro, writing fairly extensively about reggae, when an intriguing piece of information came his way: a local deejay on WNOE, Michael Kopacz, was going to Jamaica on a junket sponsored by the Jamaican government. Through Kopacz, Bunny got in touch with the Jamaican Tourist Board. Turned out they were indeed very interested in hosting reggae-loving journalists and radio personalities. Tourism was hurting because of violent political strife, and the agency in charge of promoting the island as a destination was desperate for good PR. Bunny would be welcome to join Kopacz for the trip, all expenses paid. “I was really excited about it,” says Bunny.
As it turned out, Kopacz was more interested in a free tropical vacation than intrepid immersion into Rastafarianism. This became increasingly clear after he unexpectedly showed up at the airport with his girlfriend—“a stowaway,” says Bunny.
Dermot Hussey, a renowned Jamaican deejay, met them at the airport in Kingston. They couldn’t have asked for a more knowledgable, gracious guide. That first afternoon, he drove them to Bob Marley’s house. Bunny could hardly believe his eyes. There was the man himself, playing soccer in the front yard.
“Dermot said, ‘I’ve known Bob Marley since I was a kid, and it’s not really on your itinerary but I’m going to take you over here tomorrow morning to meet him.’ And I was like, ‘I cannot believe this. I’m going to meet Jesus now.’ ”
As would soon become apparent, the atmosphere in Kingston at the time was rife with hostility and paranoia. Bunny remembers “kids that would be like 13 years old holding machine guns on the street, looking at you real warily.” In fact, he adds, “any Americans in Kingston at that time were considered probably to be CIA agents, because there was no reason for any tourist to be in Kingston.” The hotel where they were staying was practically deserted.
To Bunny, the dreadlocked Rastas who lived at Marley’s house seemed anything but hospitable. They were sitting on the back steps of the house, reading from the Bible, when Hussey stopped by the next day with his American visitors in tow. “They’d read passages real loud,” says Bunny, “then slam their hands down real hard. And you’d be like, Whoa…”
Marley came out to the backyard, and the meeting started off promisingly. Bunny showed him a journal in which he’d been drawing pictures of Jamaicans and Rastafarians. He’d also pasted a photo Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, believed by Rastafarians to be the black Messiah, into the book. “I was trying to show him that I understood what Rastafarianism was, and I wasn’t such a stupid American, you know. Trying to show him I was cool. He liked my drawings.”
Kopacz said to Marley, “Let me take your picture.” Not uttering a word, Marley gave him a cold stare. Kopacz quickly dropped the idea, and Bunny and Marley continued talking. Interjecting again, Kopacz said he was in the radio business and suggested that on a small island like Jamaica, one could exert influence and make a lot of money by buying a radio station. Marley wasn’t at all receptive to the pitch. According to Bunny, he looked at Kopacz as if to say, “You do not understand what I’m all about.”
Kopacz had a cassette recorder in his shirt pocket. When he reached in and flipped it onto record, says Bunny, Marley “looks at him with the most intense stare I’ve ever seen in my life, and said: ‘First you try to steal my picture. Now you try to steal my words.’
“And immediately, all of the Rastas on the steps are surrounding us, and they had machetes in their hands. They call ’em cutlasses, and they were going to kill us. Michael is on the ground in the dirt writhing around going, ‘Stop! Stop! Leave me alone! Stop! Stop!’ And it was as if Bob Marley’s intense stare was keeping Michael down on the ground.
“I don’t really believe in all this mumbo jumbo,” Bunny continues, “but he made Michael faint, basically. It was such a tense situation.”
Hussey intervened, dragging Kopacz to the car. He was furious. Bunny felt terrible.
That night, on a nationally broadcast radio program, Hussey made Kopacz publicly apologize to Marley for the incident. “When we were on the radio,” Bunny says, “somebody went into his hotel room and stole his camera and his tape recorder. Made me think: Bob Marley does control this island. He’s got friends and contacts everywhere.”
As it turned out, Hussey had fantastic news for Bunny: Marley had invited him—and only him—back for dinner on Friday night.
The rest of the week, Bunny was in heaven—attending recording sessions and getting to know famous musicians like Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh. On Friday night, he found himself cooling his heels in the lobby of his hotel, waiting on a taxicab to take him to Marley’s house. Then all of a sudden, a Jamaican woman ran into the hotel screaming and crying: “They shot Bob! They shot Bob!”
Copyright?: BOBMARLEYMAGAZINE FORUM http://www.bobmarleymagazine.com/forum_bmwm/showthread.php?t=62715
Copyright?: BOBMARLEYMAGAZINE FORUM http://www.bobmarleymagazine.com/forum_bmwm/showthread.php?t=62715
Good thing Bunny was running late. Otherwise, he’d have been with Marley in his backyard when two carloads of gunmen drove up with machine guns blazing. He later found out that the gangsters were upset over Alan “Skilly” Cole, a famous Jamaican soccer player who was among the Rasta brethren living at Marley’s house. Cole had gotten himself mixed up in fixing horse races in Hialeah, Florida—a caper that supposedly cost the gangsters a lot of money.
Marley, who seldom performed in public in his hometown, had been scheduled to headline a free concert on Sunday, in a park in Kingston. He’d agreed to play the gig as a call to “unity,” to bring people together and help heal political rivalries tearing at the country. Bunny was supposed to fly out before the show; but when he found out Marley would appear in spite of having been shot, he contacted the tourist board and obtained permission to stay a couple more days.
Meanwhile, a film crew showed up at the hotel. They were working on a documentary about Marley, and had been sent by his label, Island Records. Bunny and the film’s director, a guy named Carl, rode together in cab to the concert, which was shaping up to be a fiasco. The P.A. system hadn’t arrived, and musicians from other bands were arguing about who was going to play. Many hours later, Marley finally appeared. He performed in the same bloody denim shirt he’d been wearing on the night of the shooting. Bunny was about five feet away from him, taking pictures. He was the only still photographer on the rinky-dink stage.
About a week later, Carl called from New York to ask Bunny if he could use his photos for the opening credits of the film. Naďvely, Bunny sent off the originals without making copies, never to lay eyes on them again. Later he found out that Carl was the son of William Colby, former director of the CIA. Bunny shuddered at the thought of what might have happened the night of the concert if the locals—who were already on edge because the Gandhi of Jamaica had been shot just a couple of days earlier—had found out that Carl’s father was CIA.
taken fromm bunnymatthews.com
TOTW/F/M Award(s): 2
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