The biggest memory I have of Bob Marley on my neck is feeling his heavy breathing, which entrecortaba the effort. It was the day I played football against Bob Marley. Match between promoters and journalists Gay Mercader against most of the people on the tour of the king of reggae.
To tell the truth I do not remember how was the party. I remember that we win. Bob Marley scored two goals. But the Jamaican was not exactly Ronaldinho. It was a very technical player. What he did best?. Run and run, like a man possessed. It seemed impossible with the "petas" he was getting into.
Marley did not talk much. You had to get the word reluctantly, but when he spoke he did so as a political leader. His amazing facility to say great things with a simplicity bordering on genius. For example, used to say that his heart was like water, but also could become a stone. Always makeup sentences with vocabulary about nature.
It was very nice. But supplanting its arid character with jokes that were sometimes surprising. For example, Juan Carlos Casado, who was the A & R for Island before becoming director of Virgin in Spain, had given him a Mexican hat, no one knew where he had taken.
In fact, Juan Carlos Casado was the architect of that we could know the music of Marley. He had insisted over and Gay Mercader had convinced to act to bring to Spain. Gay Mercader had also become a fan of Marley. So much so strenuous that only listened to his albums.
So that night at the bullring in Ibiza, I could get on the bus and know Bob Marley and treat him as a friend, without even having to go as a journalist.
I remember it was a date or after my birthday and I congratulated Marley tune with a strange birthday. That night in the Plaza de Toros de Ibiza not many people to see it. But that night, between my particular melody and magic of Marley on stage, I was convinced we were facing one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.
Of jokes and laughter that night on his bus, I always remember that Bob was telling Carlos Juan:
Surely they will not escape the bulls, huh?.
And he laughed nonstop smoking.
A couple of years later in Barcelona, Marley returned to Juan Carlos spend the same joke, because again appeared in the bullring in Monumetal and was the day we played football in the morning. It was a June 30th year 80. You did not see him again, because the lung cancer had already taken over from Bob.
Macabre, my dear Juan Carlos died years later also the same, the bloody lung cancer. They are always together in my memory.
Affinity and friendship with Nacho School've kept in touch with the Marley family. Above all, with Rita Marley, who was born in Cuba of Cuban mother, but it is useless to speak Castilian, because never spoke. Girl left Cuba. And, yeah, yeah, actually called Sarita.
Nacho and I convinced her to sing a new song, which we had added the words of Bob. In July 2004 in London recorded the voice of Rita and loved the song. The letter was Nacho and he said that "in heaven would be found."
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Rita is an amazing woman. It is possible that people will relate only to the business of Marley Foundation, but the truth is that still looks like a woman in love with the memory of Bob.
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Rita told me that although she hated the family of his father, Captain Marley English, could not prevent their genes from Liverpool and why he liked football so much. He assured me that, despite all the legends about his tomb and its final location, Bob is buried at Nine Miles, in Santa Ana and in the coffin supposed to still be the guitar and put the Bible next to his body.
A Rita crazy about seafood. Night at the London restaurant Menzies, between crustacean and shellfish, told me one of the best kept secrets on the sexuality of Bob. Rita assured me that Bob loved drinks "perverted" as called. And that she "invented" the best aphrodisiac Bob.
An aphrodisiac made from cooking liquid a little breadfruit, so common in Jamaica. Then mix it with condensed milk and a good stout Guinness filling. For Bob was the bomb.
Rita does not know exactly the children he had Bob and I explained with a grimace of sadness:
Bob liked women too. But still not the worst of what I have to endure. Now I have thirty-eight grandchildren. Things look differently. Many people have blamed Bob macho, womanizing. It has made me mourn many times. I was humiliated, but he was my man, love of my life and I have at heart. The other women were not as important to him. And for me, somehow he had with other children are also my children, as in the case of Julian, Damian, Rohan and even Marlon. In these things there is "blood", no lawyers. We are the Marley family. And Bob looks at us all, but you do not know what stand clowns, sick, liars always come with a story. That if they are authentic Bob mothers of children that if they are reincarnations of himself, that if they are children of the hereafter. It is very difficult to live in Jamaica with this feeling.
Rita explained that officially, Bob only had eleven children and three of them with her. The rest is speculation and legal problems which prevent Hollywood can make a movie about Bob's life, despite attempts by the Warner radiant.
I answer that Bob never supposed it could become the greatest leader of the Third World and the icon that most shirts sold on this globe, well above the Che Guevara himself. In the background was a primary person as their own songs. He lived for his music, aphrodisiacs, their football, their "kaya", his "bargain", and their wives, while still imposing a time to demand peace and human rights. Even beyond its impossible and stupid religion "Rastafarian" I had a dictator like the Negus as a god. The popular demands were always very close to his "heart of water."