Bob Marley: 1945-1981

Marley and the others supplied the religious fervor, but following their juvenile rock-steady meanderings, it was Lee Perry who redirected the group musically and vocally. Marley wrote some of his finest songs ("Duppy Conqueror," "Small Axe" and "Brain Washing") with Perry, and while Perry's substandard recording facilities held them back technically, he pushed Bob to eschew his lazy singing style. Marley's approach suddenly became urgent, plaintive, unencumbered by the silly vocal gymnastics that sometimes marred the Wailers' ska and rock-steady singles.

Perry advised the group to minimize its hackneyed falsetto harmonies and work on unobtrusive backing vocals that would serve as a cushion for sharp, assertive leads. Peter Tosh had an errant baritone he'd long tried to contain, and both Marley's and Bunny Wailer's tenors were fluid but untempered and sloppy. It didn't matter, Perry told them, be genuine and go for the gut. And Perry wasn't obsessed with horns, as were so many other Jamaican producers; he preferred a hard rhythm guitar that was "cuffed" in sharp counterpoint to the bass, which he allowed to belly to the foreground. The tempo was thud-heavy, volatile and as insistent as a nagging child.

"This is how reggae should sound!" Perry carped.

Jealousy and internal power plays ultimately plagued the Wailers, and Peter and Bunny departed in 1973 after the follow-up LP, Burnin', to pursue solo careers. "Jamaica is a place where you easily build up competition in your mind," Marley said of the break-up. "People here feel like they must fight against me and I must fight against you. Sometimes a guy feels he should do that because he might never have no schoolin' and I went to school, so he feel he must sing some song to wipe me off the marker or I should do the same. Jealousy. Suspicion. Anger. Poverty. Competition. We should just get together and create music, but there's too much poverty fuckin' it up. People don't get time to expand their intelligence. Sometimes I think the most intelligent people are the poorest — they just want to eat.

"God created the earth for us, but people wonder, 'Who owns the tree, who owns the ladder, who owns the ganja pipe'" He shook his dreadlocks in disgust.

"When the thieves took up with reggae music, mon, they have it made! It easy in Jamaica for any guy who have a few dollars to rent a studio, go in, get a recording, ask the engineer to mix it. The hustlers move in as soon as he's gone into the street; the record goes into stores and Jojo knows nothing about what happened! Jamaicans go slow, everything is 'soon come,' but if there's one thing Jamaicans rush about, it's making a recordin'!"

When he finished, Bob sat quietly for a moment then burst out laughing. "Ahh, nothin' is important that much, eh?" he said with a bobbing nod and a shrug.

On December 5th, 1976, two compact cars stormed into Marley's Hope Road compound in Kingston, where the Wailers and the Zap-Pow horns were rehearsing for the upcoming Smile Jamaica concert that was being sponsored by the group and the Jamaican Cultural Ministry. Wielding automatic rifles, at least seven gunmen peppered his home with bullets. Marley's wife was shot as she tried to escape in a car with some of her children and a reporter from the Jamaican Daily News; a bullet lodged itself between her scalp and skull but did not penetrate the bone.

Meanwhile, Marley's manager at the time, Don Taylor, was lying in his own blood at the front of the house. Five bullets had torn into his lower torso, and another punctured Marley's breast near his armpit and then passed through his biceps. Taylor was critically wounded and faced permanent paralysis in his legs, but he recovered fully; Marley was treated at a hospital, released and went on to perform at the music festival. The gunmen were never found, and a motive was never established, although it was presumably political. Jamaica was then undergoing a wave of violence over the future of its Democratic Socialist government, and Marley was seen as being sympathetic to Prime Minister Michael Manley's controversial regime.

"When I decided to do this concert two and a half months ago, there were no politics," Marley told a crowd estimated at 80,000. "I just wanted to play for the love of the people."

At the close of his performance, Bob opened his shirt and rolled up his sleeves to show his wounds. The last thing the audience saw before the reigning king of reggae disappeared into the hills was this spindly man mimicking the two-pistoled, showdown stance of a frontier gunslinger, his head thrown back in triumphant laughter.

Marley's homeland is a one-time slave depot caught between white colonialism and African pride. As the warring native factions in its present independent government deliberate about what is best for their country, they never lose sight of the fact that, until 1962, a Jamaican's opinion was far less important than that of an Englishman. Marley symbolized a bold, hopeful bridge spanning the cultural chasms of Jamaica, and the third world was galvanized by his denunciation of colonialism and his vivid depictions of ghetto strife, while white listeners were drawn by his passion, his conciliatory codas and the childlike affection in his lulling ballads. Ironically, aspects of Jamaica's racial tensions were reflected in the Marley family tree.