BUNNY WAILER
In the beginning, there was but one concept,
and that’s the concept of I.
Then arose Apollyon, the devil (Satan! Satan!),
claiming that it’s you and I.
And from that day on there was trouble in the world,
and the world goin’ astray.
—Bunny Wailer, from the song “Amagideon”
Bunny Wailer is one of the deepest and most mystical people I have ever encountered on this Earth. With Jah B, everything is not how it seems. He is connected to the ancient wisdoms that have brought into focus right and wrong, good and bad, yin and yang, and the polarity of the human experience. His never-ending quest to make peace with these diverse emotional realms have caused him to be misunderstood and he has also made some decisions that have not been looked favorably upon by everyone. With someone as complex as Bunny, it is not easy to make blanket statements—often, the black-and-white fades into gray, and reality is something that can only be understood and defended by the man himself.
In the thirty-plus years that Bunny and I have known each other, I’ve been privileged to have been taken into his confidence and I have learned to accept him for who he is. With his faults and with his goodness and his remarkable ability to perceive things in a way that very few mere mortals are capable of. Yes, he is a living legend. An original Wailer. And his first solo LP, Blackheart Man, could be regarded as the best reggae album ever made (including those by Bob Marley) and clearly defines the tenets of Rastafari. If you have never heard it, I suggest you go out and buy a copy today so you can really know what I and I am talking about. Bunny is immortal and his genesis is deep in the unknown places where life itself began.
I first met Bunny in the early 1980s. RAS Records had been distributing some of his records from Sonic Sounds in Jamaica. After releasing three albums with Island Records (including the aforementioned Blackheart Man), Bunny had decided to go into business for himself. That is how he has always been: wanting to control every aspect of his business, from the recording to the manufacturing to the distribution. During one of my trips to Jamaica, Neville Lee from Sonic told me to go check Bunny at his father’s house, which was just down the road. I remember that day well. Bunny was there drinking a fruit juice concoction he had just made and looked me over and asked how it was that I had come to find him. We talked for a while and I explained to him that RAS was involved in distributing records and that people badly wanted to buy his music in the US, but it was very hard to find.
We made arrangements for me to start buying his records directly from his Solomonic label, and I would always return to the States with loads of Bunny Wailer vinyl. Albums, 12" singles, and 7" singles. I made a point to pay him quickly to help keep his thing going in Jamaica. RAS soon became the largest distributor of the Solomonic label in the United States and Bunny’s Rock ’n’ Groove release was such a big hit that we were buying five hundred copies at a time.
Meanwhile, Jah B had retreated way into the mountains in the parish of Portland to live an ital life, and although he would occasionally come into Kingston he was deeply connected to the natural and spiritual vibes that emanated from that rural environment. He had not performed a show for eight years and the mystery and mystical aura which surrounded him became legendary.
When he announced in 1982 that he would do his first public show in years at the National Stadium in Kingston, I decided this was something I could not miss, and made arrangements to travel to Jamaica. The show was called Youth Consciousness, and it was Bunny’s intention to create an uplifting and irie vibe for all who came. To this day it is the best reggae show, including all those Sunsplashes and Reggae on the Rivers, that I have ever witnessed. Youth Consciousness featured Peter Tosh, Gregory Isaacs, Marcia Griffiths, Judy Mowatt, Jimmy Cliff, and of course Bunny Wailer.
I had stopped in Negril on the way there and picked up some of the good Westmoreland draw, and when I saw Peter Tosh backstage I gave him a big bud. He said, “Bwoy, Doctor Dread, anywhere I buck you up in the whole of the world you always bring me the best weed.” And coming from the Bush Doctor, that was a pretty damn good endorsement.
That night I was completely transfixed by Bunny’s performance. He had three bands backing him: He started with the Skatalites and did most of his early tracks from the Wailers part of his career. He then shifted into a more rockers-style mode with a band backed by Sly & Robbie. Sly had once shared with me his real secret of making hit music: “Doctor Dread, it is all about the groove. We just make a groove and then the rest just happens.” It is one of the most simple yet profound statements anyone ever made to me about music in all my days. And coming from Sly, I knew it was for real.
As daylight began to break, Bunny was launching into “See the morning sun, ah, ah, ah, on the hillside . . .” The Roots Radics came on next and Bunny got into the Rock ’n’ Groove part of the show. The whole thing was spectacular. Eight years without a show and then this tour de force that just blew me away. Bunny was onstage for close to four hours.
He followed this up with a show at Madison Garden in New York City. Bunny always went for broke, and taking on the Garden was something only Bob Marley had ever done in the reggae genre. It sold out! Backstage that night, Bunny might have acknowledged my presence but remained totally unapproachable and intimidating. He cut a daunting figure, usually surrounded by his closest brethren, and even getting an interview was a rare occurrence. After all, he was the Don Dada, Jah B, Bunny Wailer.
* * *
Bunny soon signed to Shanachie Records in New Jersey and they began to release most of his product in the States. We still bought a few 7" and 12" singles from Solomonic in Jamaica, but RAS was now principally distributing the Shanachie Bunny Wailer music. Yet Bunny was not happy with how things were going with his publishing over at EMI, and we talked about Tafari Music becoming his publishing administrator. This was over twenty years ago, and Tafari remains his representative on a worldwide basis for his complete catalog. This has been the cornerstone of my relationship with Bunny, and it is remarkable that it has stayed intact all these years. But it was not just handed over to us. We had to prove to Bunny that we were worthy, so he always got all the facts and figures exactly as they had come to me. And as this trust began to grow, it gradually became more than just a business arrangement. We were there to help him in a time of need, and Bunny recognized that it was from the heart and not just from the wallet. At least I hope so.
Sometimes I wonder if Doctor Dread was merely thought of as the goose that laid the golden egg—and of course you would not want to kill off or harm an animal of that nature. Because of my relaxed and worry-free manner, many people in Jamaica felt I had lots of money. They mostly all respected me, but I never left Jamaica with a dime in my pocket. Bunny would call and say he was looking for a carrot. Or he was as broke as a church mouse. And although many times it sounded desperate, it never felt threatening. And if I was straight with him and told him I could not help him, he was cool about it and still gave thanks. If we made a big score with one of his songs, we would let him know about it right away and usually advance him the money before we even received it ourselves. Lots of money flowed through my hands into Bunny’s, as his publishing was a constant stream of revenue.
The spring which fed the stream was of course his remarkable repertoire of songs, especially “Electric Boogie,” which he wrote for Marcia Griffiths and was used in so many commercials and movies that it became one of our top-grossing releases. Bunny and I began to spend a lot more time together in Jamaica and would have long reasonings about life that may have started with cursing and bloodclatting about something but usually ended with hearty laughing and good vibes.
At one point he had separated from his tour manager Bo Edwards and he came to my hotel in Kingston and told me of the circumstances, so we talked about me working with him in a managerial capacity. He also told me of the enormous burden he felt in being the only surviving Wailer, and that many people had wanted Bob and Peter dead, and it might be the same for him. I did not realize it then, but he felt responsible for protecting the Wailers’ name.
Years later he would reveal to me the fullness of what this meant. He would tell me of how he and Bob, at five and six years old, would ride on donkeys in the hills of St. Ann at Nine Miles and round up the cows each evening. How he and Bob grew up as brothers, and how his dad had had a child with Bob’s mother. About their time in Trenchtown together, and how Peter Tosh was recruited to form the mighty trio that became known as the Wailers. And how these very same Wailers had gone through the learning process under Coxsone Dodd at Studio One and later with Lee “Scratch” Perry to eventually form their own record label, Tuff Gong. The Power of this Trinity was strong and Bunny always referred to Bob and Peter as his brothers.
Then Chris Blackwell entered the picture and Bob, Peter, and Bunny were signed to Island Records. But after some touring in America and England, Bunny dropped out. The pay and the conditions did not suit his temperament, and his mistrust of Chris Blackwell also factored into this decision. The first Wailers album on Island, Catch a Fire, had been met with great fanfare worldwide, followed by Burnin’. But after Bunny left the group, Chris began to change things up. He began to call the backing band the Wailers, and reissued both of these albums as “Bob Marley and the Wailers.” How could this be? Bob, Peter, and Bunny had been the Wailers. How could someone just come and steal your name? All subsequent albums and all mention of Bob Marley was always referred to as Bob Marley and the Wailers. Even today there are multiple groups that tour as the Wailers, and some just have one member of the original band that backed Bob, Peter, and Bunny.
Bunny took this slight personally, and he brought the pain inside of himself, which explains in part his reclusiveness and mistrust of others. He had been turned off by the vulgarities of the music business, with its ruthless profit-driven impulse, and instead found sanctuary in his personal life, through a closer connection to Rastafari and a pure and holistic lifestyle. After the passing of Bob and then Peter, it was just Bunny left to defend the truth. Bunny trusted me and knew I was capable when it came to business and negotiating on his behalf. If there’s one thing I can credit for my long success in the music business, it’s the fact that I’m able to understand the sentiments, eccentricities, and the creative side of the artists while still being able to handle art as a business; it’s a fine line to walk.
Bunny ended up sharing all sorts of anecdotes from his rich life. Of how, when he had completed Blackheart Man, Chris Blackwell could not live without the LP. How their negotiations became very heated, as Bunny held firm while Chris wanted it for the least he could pay. Chris had his lawyer come in from England and Bunny gave him some weed to smoke and the lawyer got so blitzed he ended up on the floor unable to communicate. (Jah B could come up with some good weed; when High Times magazine visited Jamaica to do a feature on Jamaican herb they ended up concluding that Bunny Wailer had the best product in all of the country.) The lawyer was flat out, and when Bunny finally agreed to sign the contract he made the lawyer add the clause that once Chris Blackwell dies, all rights would revert back to Bunny Wailer. When relating all of this to me, Bunny chuckled and said, “Now I can get back the rights anytime I want.” He even told me that Chris had once transformed himself into a bat to beat him in a race up some stairs at a hotel in Ocho Rios; their adversarial relationship remains in full force to this day. The last time I saw Chris Blackwell was at a book signing in Washington, DC. Despite his outward charm, charisma, and powers of persuasion, his wax exterior is beginning to melt away, revealing the soulless apparition that fills his being.
Of course, my time touring with Bunny had its ups and downs. It is true that Jah B really loved to be in Jamaica, and if not for the good money his rare overseas performances earned for him, he would probably prefer to just chill inna yard. He had a reputation for not showing up for shows, as for Bunny it was all about vibes. Or signs that told him this or that. If a bird fell off a wire dead the day before he was to leave Jamaica for a show, this was enough of a sign for him to not get on the plane. Some people said he was afraid of the iron bird, but on the many occasions I have flown with him I’ve never detected this type of phobia. He knew he was in Jah’s hands and endured his time from takeoff to landing without too much consternation.
At first I set up some mini-tours of just three dates because I did not want to lay too much on Bunny in one go-around. His performance fee was very high, and he required the promoters to pay for airfares, hotels, and even securing visas. I also knew I had to be out there with him, since the slightest wrong move on anyone’s part could turn Bunny off to the whole thing and he would just shut down. “The World According to Bunny Wailer.” If it made sense to him, then why shouldn’t it make sense to everyone else?
All business details were reviewed with Jah B before he felt free to just perform. His reputation for doing shows of over three hours was sometimes a problem, as certain promoters had curfews and getting him off the stage could be a nightmare. Remember, it’s all about the vibes. And if Bunny is feeling the vibes he can go on and on and on. He is the Energizer Bunny. And on tour he would smoke his weed out of a big carrot. Cut off the bottom and carve out a pipe and use the tube from a pen as the stem. Whenever I told the promoter to have a big fat carrot for us when we landed, they didn’t know whether to take me seriously, but I told them to just make sure. Getting him off the stage was the problem, and there were numerous occasions when I was standing on the side of the stage with an increasingly anxious promoter trying to signal him or the trumpet player Barry to let Bunny know his time was up. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.
One time at a big festival in Long Beach, California, Bunny ran past curfew. The bass player had fallen asleep at the hotel and did not make it to the gig on time and we were very late getting onstage. Bunny was determined to play his full set and refused to cut it short. It cost us a few thousand dollars in fines and put a strain on my relationship with the promoter. But not even the great Doctor Dread tells Bunny what to do.
The same thing had happened at Reggae on the River with my good friends Carol Bruno and Carl T and myself trying to flag down Bunny to come off stage. He had walked the grounds of Reggae on the River with me earlier that day and declared, “This is how reggae should be presented.” There were people camping along a big river with redwoods all around and reggae going for three nights. It was also in the heart of Humboldt County where the best sinse in America was being grown. Carol Bruno and her partner PB did an amazing job staging this festival for over twenty years and it became an annual pilgrimage for me. Bunny was in the vibe that night and he was the closing act. It was like he was performing Holy Communion onstage and the audience was all receiving the sacraments he was handing out. I witnessed this from the audience and was transfixed by the sheer power Bunny was capable of bringing forth. But getting him off that stage proved impossible, and eventually Carol had to pull the plug and call it a night.
We had numerous other one- or two-week tours, and both the band and Bunny were pleased with how things were going. Doctor Dread was now regarded as a person who promoters could count on to make sure that Bunny would show up for his gigs, and the offers rolled in. I would negotiate the fees based on parameters that Bunny and I had established. And Bunny was very generous with me, always paying me what I had asked for. I took care of all aspects of the tour including getting visas, booking and paying for airfares, arranging transportation, paying the musicians their salaries and per diems, dealing with the promoters regarding hospitality and settlement, and just making sure everyone was feeling good about being on the road. At one point I earned the ultimate compliment from the band when they told me that they did not consider me a white man. I used to joke with some RAS artists and ask them why they treated me like a white man, and they would always laugh.
We did a three-week run with Ziggy and Stephen Marley consisting of seventeen shows in twenty-one days. I believe it was the most strenuous tour of Jah B’s entire career. The vibes were GREAT. Ziggy and Steve referred to Jah B as “Uncle Bunny,” and they all joined up on stage at the conclusion of each show to perform “Get Up, Stand Up” together. Bunny’s band, the Solomonic Reggaestra, were enthusiastic about this long run with its first-class everything, and we really were one big happy family traveling from one side of the country to the other.
The tour culminated in Washington, DC, and I booked everyone’s flights so they could have an extra day off to celebrate at my house in Maryland. Jah B is a master chef, and he was going to cook up an ital feast. Ziggy and his band moved on to another gig but Steve and Bunny and their band members enjoyed a party none of us can ever forget. Jah B always cooked for everyone on tour, and often the musicians would parade to his room to get a good taste of his cornmeal porridge or other soups and fish.
Bunny cooked his ass off that day. Fish tea. Turned cornmeal with fish. Escoveitch fish. The kitchen was blazing and everyone celebrated a tour that had gone smooth and without problems. I had invited some close friends and the Rastafari Elders of Washington also blessed us with their presence. Steve Marley’s tour bus was parked in front of my house, and while many Rastas sat around my yard and reasoned and clouds of marijuana smoke drifted through the air, I wondered what my neighbors might be thinking. But I was too busy cooking up jerk chicken and jerk red snapper. I had been bragging to the band about how my jerk chicken was as good as anything they could get in Jamaica, so I was working the grill hard that day too.
* * *
Word got out about how well that tour went and how Bunny was able to sustain three weeks on the road. He was contacted by Michel from Media Sept in France, who was one of the principal people responsible for bringing reggae artists to Europe. He was organizing a tour with Capleton and Third World and wanted to add Bunny Wailer to the bill. Like many other promoters before him, he went to Jamaica and made direct contact with Bunny. This had become standard procedure: people would negotiate directly with Bunny, and when things broke down they would call me. In a way it was amusing because I rarely found Bunny to be a difficult person to deal with. Like the time GQ magazine called frantically at the last minute wanting to set up a photo shoot; they were freaking out, and couldn’t understand why Bunny wasn’t cooperating or letting them take his picture. I was offended and irritated: why would they call me after the shit hit the fan? So I can clean it all up? They had known about this article for months but didn’t bother to reach out earlier. So I said to them, “Sorry, I’m not going to help you—you need to figure this one out on your own.”
Needless to say, Bunny never took the photo. But this kind of thing happened all the time. Though I never liked to call myself his manager, this is the de facto position I developed over the years. I knew Bunny well enough to be able to present situations to him so he would be comfortable with what he was putting himself into. And the fact is, in our celebrity-obsessed, money-driven culture, Bunny is often the least unreasonable person in the room—as in the case of GQ.
Anyway, Michel from Europe became so frustrated that even though he did not initially want to include me in the scenario, he eventually realized that I was the one who could help get Bunny on his tour. We soon got everything sorted out and I let Bunny know all was cool.
But first we had to complete a short tour of California and Hawaii with Steel Pulse. Moss Jacobs was the promoter and he could not figure out a way to fill Bunny’s time for four days between the California part and Hawaii, and was considering just having Bunny do the California leg. I suggested that we could just cover our own expenses for the four nights off in San Francisco. Bunny never cared about fancy hotels as his ghetto vibe and upbringing made him understand that a clean bed and clean bathroom were all that was necessary to get you through the night. Bob Marley had sung, “Cold ground was my bed last night and rock was my pillow too . . .” So fancy hotels were not required when we traveled, and I sometimes used this as leverage to get the promoters to pay us more money for the shows.
Those four days off in San Francisco were very enjoyable. Bunny rarely left his hotel room. He would cook and smoke weed and get visits from close brethren sometimes, but generally he kept to himself. He told me in all his years of touring he never brought a woman back to his hotel room. Jah B was in his own space, even if surrounded by others. A friend of a friend had brought down a huge bag of some serious weed from the mountains of Northern California and I remember Carl T walking out of the bathroom of Bunny’s room and hitting the floor. This was some powerful smoke, and even Bunny commented on its super strength. I took a bunch of the band members on the streetcars down to Fisherman’s Wharf and bought them all some delicious soup. It made me feel good to see them enjoying the world outside of Jamaica, and since I was not someone who liked being holed up in my hotel room I would often venture out with band members and try and give them an idea of what a foreign country was like. To broaden their horizons while I was doing the same thing for myself.
When we got to Hawaii I received an itinerary for the European tour. I had been asking for a while and it finally got to us. I noticed there was a two-day trip to Israel, and Michel was also suggesting we do a date in Réunion Island off the coast of East Africa at the end of the tour. We were getting paid by the week and it seemed a little over the top to ask us to break out of Europe for these other shows. I explained to Bunny that Michel was trying to get us to go to Israel right in the middle of the tour. Bunny asked if Israel was part of Europe, and when I told him it was not, he was adamant about not going there. Bunny said that we would not be treated like “human cargo”; that he had negotiated with Michel for a tour of Europe, and that it was to Europe and Europe alone he would tour. I related this information to Michel and he was not pleased. He said all the other artists on the tour had agreed to go to Israel.
But Bunny was not the other artists. If Michel had insisted that Bunny make this trip, then Bunny would have just canceled the tour. Bunny also refused to travel to Italy since he still harbored resentment over Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia during World War II, and he wouldn’t fly through London because of England’s participation in the Iraq War. Even I thought he was being unreasonable, but we were dealing with the World According to Bunny.
We booked Bunny and his brethren Patrick to fly through Miami and then on to Paris. The rest of the band had come through London and arrived in Paris the day before the first show. Bunny somehow missed his flight and the promoter and I went into panic mode waiting for their arrival at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. I had received no communication from Bunny and although I kept assuring the promoter he would come, deep down inside I grew increasingly nervous. They ended up being routed through London (the same place Bunny said he wouldn’t fly through) to Paris to begin the tour, and I greeted them at the airport. Bunny’s close childhood friend and photographer Patrick Blackwood smiled upon seeing me, and said to Bunny, “I told you Doc would be here waiting for us.” And as we sped down the motorway making sure we could get Bunny to the venue on time to perform his first show of the tour, it was pure excitement and discussion about the travel ordeal they had just endured. Again, I gave thanks to Jah that Bunny had arrived safely and that the tour could now commence.
Jah B was performing well and we were all having a great tour. Often Patrick and I would roam the towns as I wanted to make the most of my time in Europe and liked to get to know the places I was visiting. In Marseille, after tucking in the band at our hotel for the night, I ventured down to the port and found a nice café where I ordered a bowl of bouillabaisse that changed my life.
This was two major tours in a row for Bunny, and it was frankly one of the most enjoyable trips I had ever been on. Jah B and I got very close during our late-night tour bus reasonings—I even took the rap for the band when our bus was pulled over in France and searched by drug-sniffing dogs, which somehow managed to find our well-hidden stash. It was like receiving a traffic ticket with a small fine, but they did keep the weed and warned me if I was busted again in France the charges would be more severe. In any case, even though I had recently been let go from my job at Sanctuary, I was making good money on the road with Bunny and digging the European lifestyle.
* * *
After these two tours we did several more small shows and a few one-off performances. Bunny was showing up and performing well and all was good. But he was still setting things up on his own. He had arranged a tour of Australia through Dave Betteridge in London, who was coordinating directly with the promoter in Australia. Betteridge had been an important booking agent for reggae acts back in the day, and may even have set up some Bob Marley dates at one time. But he had once booked a tour with Israel Vibration after they signed to RAS and was fucking around with our money. That is one thing I will not tolerate. Don’t fuck around with my money. If you owe me fifty bucks, just pay me. Don’t give me some lame-ass excuse as to why this or why that. Just pay me the fucking money. I came down hard over the phone to Dave in England and he actually started crying! So when Bunny told me he was working with Dave Betteridge and was running into problems, I was not surprised.
Again I was called in to try and straighten out the situation, and I talked directly with the promoter in Australia and attempted to structure a compensation element for Betteridge. But things could not get worked out and Bunny ended up cancelling the entire tour. I returned the advance Bunny had received for the tour with money he was owed by my publishing company, and that was that.
But then things went from bad to worse. We had been contacted by Byron Malcolm in Miami to do a string of dates in Brazil. Bunny had never been there, though I knew the Brazilian people would adore him and we could develop this market for him. I had been there on a few occasions with Israel Vibration and loved the country and its people and its culture. And Brazil loved reggae.
Byron had arranged with the top promoter in Brazil to do five shows. He was the same promoter who had brought the Rolling Stones there. I knew we were in good hands, as Byron had worked with Inner Circle for many years and the promoter in Brazil was top notch. We agreed to a fee and the contract stipulated that we would be paid 100 percent of it before anyone left Jamaica. This way there was no risk to us. But we never received the final payment in time and the tour was canceled. We made arrangements with the promoter to reschedule the tour with an additional charge for them not sticking to the terms of the original contract.
New terms and conditions were worked out and the tour was finally rescheduled. But two days before we were set to leave, Bunny announced he would not be going. There was another reggae tour going around Brazil at the same time as ours. It was a group that bassist Fully Fullwood had put together of Peter Tosh’s band members. And Junior Marvin, former lead guitarist of Bob Marley’s backing band, was touring as “the Wailers.” Our promoter did not want to compete with this tour so he was putting all the acts together and came up with a Wailers “tribute package” promoting the names Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, and Peter Tosh. Bunny was furious. He said neither Junior Marvin nor Fully Fullwood had the right to use the Marley or Tosh name, and that only the offspring of these former Wailers (his brothers) had the right to tour and make money off their names.
“Please, Bunny, I am begging you. I can assure you that once we are there we can straighten everything out and make things right. Too much work has gone into this and I know the promoter will have everything just right for us.”
I had never begged nobody for nothing, but this time I was begging. I could not face another canceled tour with Jah B. It almost felt like my credibility was on the line. But Bunny was adamant; he was not going.
One week later I got a job back in the seafood business and gave up the idea of booking shows for Bunny. I immediately returned the $7,500 I had kept for myself, though the balance of the $75,000 that had been advanced to Bunny had already been spent.
Bunny could go through money quicker than anyone I’ve ever known. But it was his money and it was none of my business how he wanted to spend it. I once told him that he must have read in the Bible that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the gates of Zion, and that this must have made a strong impression on him. After all, he had no bank account. He said, “Why would anyone ever keep money in a bank? Money is for spending. To make use of.” I could not argue, but it factored into the reason he was always broke.
Many of his big expenditures came from a place of wanting to help others, though they often turned out to be poor business decisions. He reopened Skateland in New Kingston so the youth of Jamaica could have good wholesome fun during a time when violence had become commonplace. He spent lots of money fixing up the place and was proud of it, but the community never supported it and it fell back into disrepair. He then opened a Rastafari school in an uptown area of Kingston and offered courses in African history, and would even come there each day and cook healthy food for the youth. He leased the land from descendants of the Marcus Garvey family, and paid for repairs after a hurricane caused severe damage to the property. But the landlord did not agree with the repairs and they quarreled over this and the school was closed. He also had a dream (some Jamaicans refer to this as a vision) that there was buried treasure on his land in Portland. Way up in the hills. There was an opening to a cave and he had visioned great amounts of buried treasure that pirates had hidden there. I arranged for a group of spelunkers to come in from California and Bunny treated them like gold, and they went down into this cave but there was nothing there. Jah B simply had to satisfy his curiosity.
* * *
RAS Records also became involved with Bunny’s record label when his agreements with Shanachie began to expire. My first release was from a group known as Psalms. These were Jah B’s backup singers and they always toured with us. I paid him a $15,000 advance for this CD even though I figured I would never make it back. It was my way of beginning work with Bunny to represent his Solomonic catalog and to show him that RAS could be a good partner. The CD never sold well but then Bunny approached me about releasing a fifty-track, two-CD set of Bob Marley songs to celebrate what would have been the fiftieth birthday of his late brother. Jah B had already done a few Bob Marley tribute CDs, and I wanted to support his celebration of Bob’s music, so I agreed to pay him the whopping sum of $75,000 as an advance. I sensed that my relationship with Bunny would always bring in money, though I also knew that going into the studio to work on such a massive project would be a costly endeavor.
I will admit that in some ways I am not a very astute businessman, and that I just do things based on vibes, and somehow Jah has always looked out over me. The musicians knew Doctor Dread had financed this recording, but Bunny remained in complete control of all aspects of his releases, from the production down to the record jacket.
My promotion department put out the word and we began publicizing the release. This double CD went on to earn a Grammy Award for Bunny and RAS, and I feel honored to have had the opportunity to begin work with Jah B on this kind of level. Although we had a number of recordings nominated for a Grammy, this was the only time we ever won. I knew that the love Bunny had for Bob went into this, and I could hear it in his vocals. On the business side, I learned even more about the importance of investing in artists and their careers: the more you invest in an artist, the more potential you’ll have to get a larger return—this is something I would keep in mind when signing new artists.
But Bunny’s obsessive need for money was always overwhelming him, and he could be relentless in his requests for more and more and more. Sometimes I would send him thousands of dollars, and by the next week he would be calling again. He had an uncanny sense of knowing when we had received money on his behalf. And his anger at the injustices that had been levied upon the Wailers, along with those he witnessed in everyday life in Jamaican society, created a struggle inside of his being which pitted good against evil, right against wrong. Just like in the lyrics to his song “Amagideon.” He knew of Satan and he knew of the Heavenly Father. We would have long talks about both of these forces, and these often-heated conversations would usually end in some laughing, and Jah B’s humility and love would resurface.
Later I did a small tour in California with Bunny, and he asked me to negotiate a few shows for him in Argentina and Spain. Both guarantees were significant and the promoters sent the money in advance. But Bunny canceled again and said an illness prevented him from appearing, though he would only tell me it had to do with some tooth pain. At this point I was more absorbed in my job in the seafood business (more on this later) and knew that I had to take care of my family, and that because of the frequency of canceled shows with Bunny I could no longer get involved with his bookings. He did ask me to negotiate his fee for Jazz Fest in New Orleans last year, and I just turned it over to the booking agent Paul LaMonica; if he wanted to work things out with Bunny, he could, but without my involvement. And all the other calls and e-mails I would get asking about Bunny performing, I’d just refer directly to him.
I heard of other canceled shows but I was becoming far removed and could not understand why people would continue to book Bunny and advance him money when he had not left Jamaica for over two years. I was concerned about his health issues, though he never went into depth about them with me. Do I think it was wrong to take money to do shows and then not return it? Yes, I do. But I also think Bunny could not help himself. I think he believed when he negotiated and took the money that his intentions were to go through with it and perform the show, but something would get in the way and he’d back out. It was that struggle going on inside of him. It is so complex and difficult to explain, but perhaps the lyrics from his songs express it best.
I have always accepted Jah B for who he is. And with that comes the right and the wrong. Only Jah is perfect, and Jah B, as with the rest of us, falls short of this perfection of His Holiness. Bunny Wailer has been both blessed and cursed by the Creator. But if he calls on me as a friend, I will of course be there for him as much as I can be. I don’t desert my friends, especially in times of need.
* * *
Bunny’s recent situation with Snoop Dogg (who Bunny renamed “Snoop Lion”) has again put him in a position where he is misunderstood and people are not able to see the full picture. He told Snoop that a dog is a lowly creature and that a lion is a king, and that if Snoop were to make a serious commitment to the Rastafari way of life, Bunny would christen him Snoop Lion. But just because you smoke a lot of weed and you dig reggae and you wear red, gold, and green does not make you a Rasta. And Snoop’s allegation that he is Bob Marley reincarnated seem a little far-fetched to me. Still, whatever business arrangements Jah B and Snoop discussed were between them. Some people think Bunny is trying to throw a wrench into Snoop’s conversion to Rastafari. Bunny has his side of the story and I guess you can believe whatever you want.
When he explained his half of the story, I made the mistake of saying to Bunny, “I know how you feel.” He replied tersely, “So you think you are Bunny Wailer?” I shouldn’t have been surprised by his reaction, since this is after all the man who wrote the song “Who Feels It Knows It” (later popularized by both Bob and Rita Marley)—how can anyone know how someone else actually feels, especially someone as complicated and with as interesting a life as Bunny Wailer?
It has been both an amazing privilege and an exercise in perseverance in having my life so intertwined with Bunny Wailer, and I give thanks for all the good and interesting times we have endured. I can only wish Jah B the very best and pray for his salvation. Jah guide and protect. Every time.