On his return to Jamaica in late 1975, Bob was resoundingly welcomed in spite of the ideological and political passions raging throughout the island. His musical achievements and his remarkable lyrics had struck a responsive chord with Jamaicans. He was on his way to becoming a living legend.
He settled into a routine as normal as possible for Bob Marley. He began to feel more personally connected to his residence at 56 Hope Road now that he owned it outright. It was not easy for the world to understand Bob’s laid-back attitude, his unpretentious and open Jamaican lifestyle. Megastars from the UK and USA were frequently baffled by the way he lived.
On a normal day, Bob would wake early, usually before anyone else, no matter what the night before had entailed, and almost always begin rehearsing immediately—alone. He would stop for breakfast, prepared by his personal hired cook, Gillie. Bob had few preferences for his food, so long as it was ital (cooked without salt), and did not include pork or any other meat, as he was virtually a vegetarian. He ate meat only rarely, a regimen that served him well when he was placed on a rigid diet after the discovery of his cancer.
Religiously starting his day with a mug of porridge, usually cornmeal, he would sip it while reading the Bible, another daily practice. His Bible was always kept nearby during his rehearsals.
As the day wore on, the entourage of visitors would descend, ranging from members of the band to musical associates such as Tommy Cowan or business people like Colin Leslie and Diane Jobson.
Diane was a fairly typical example of an upper-class woman completely under his control. She was a real uptown girl, whom Bob had taken and bred into the Rasta faith in the early seventies and, after he got bored with her, gave the day-to-day task of being his lawyer. She must have resented my arrival on the scene and my relationship with Bob, over whose accounts and transactions I had assumed total control.
I now knew so much about his business that the bank would often call for my okay of his checks. My entry into his affairs caused enmity and bitter blood among those who had preceded me in Bob’s life. No doubt, this resentment sparked the swirling rumors and stories, which still linger in the minds of many, that I was cheating Bob. The stories were nonsense, of course, and exactly the kind of envious tales any successful manager can expect.
Arriving around ten in the morning, a stream of hangers-on would descend on the house, usually with open and outstretched hands that never seemed satisfied. The throng would set off an endless round of cooking, eating, and smoking of weed lasting until three or four in the afternoon when all would leave to play soccer on the front lawn of Hope Road or at a nearby playing field.
From far and wide the people came. Some were adherents of the Rasta religion, some ghetto strongmen, some political enforcers or plain hustlers. Bob had become such a soft touch that he was like Santa Claus reincarnated for the hordes of seekers. Bob ignored every attempt I made to put a stop to this begging until suddenly one day he realized that he had given away one million dollars in two months. He quickly came to his senses and began walking around with his trousers’ pockets turned out, a signal that the giveaway was ended.
Shortly after this change of heart, he told me that he wanted to expand the Tuff Gong Group of Companies to include a recording and record manufacturing company. To this end, I registered Tuff Gong Distributors (Jamaica), and Tuff Gong Recording (Jamaica), pleased that Bob seemed to have decided that instead of giving money away, he would provide work for those who wanted it.
In an era when there were no videos, satellite dishes or CDs, Bob was, without a doubt, unique in his approach to life, to music, and in his behavior after he became a star.
One of his most precious moments, he always told me, occurred in 1975 as we were flying by private plane into Philadelphia for our concert, arriving at the same time as the Pope. On hearing that the Pope’s plane was held up by the tower to allow us to land, Bob turned to me and, with seriousness, said, “Don Taylor, you see who is God pickney, see how them hold up the man for I.”
Babylon system is the vampire
Sucking the blood of the sufferers. . .
(“Babylon System”)
Although Bob lived close to the edge, smoking weed was the only illegal act I had ever known him to do. But smoking the weed being part of his religion, he did it openly before the highest representatives of law and order, even before prime ministers and church leaders, without any charges ever being brought against him in Jamaica. He was probably one of the few entertainers who had the provision and supply of marijuana written into his contracts. Indeed his “normal” use of marijuana, especially in the context of his clean, clear, and honest political beliefs, probably explained why his ganja smoking was so widely accepted. Eventually even I, unknown to him, tried to keep him supplied with weed. I remember an occasion when, on the Japan tour, J smuggled weed through customs in my boots. Not for nothing was Bob “Tuff Gong,” which was ghetto speak for “Tough Shit.”
During this period in Jamaica, I also got to know both the original Wailers as well as the shifting assortment of musicians who later played in that band.
I soon came to understand why the original Wailers, whose members were uniquely different personalities, had broken up. Peter Tosh was very negative about Chris Blackwell, especially after the Wailers’ disappointing earnings from the albums Bnrnhi and Catch a Fire. Bunny was an individualist. Once the adoration of the fans became centered not on the group as a whole but mainly on Bob, it was inevitable that a band consisting of such strong personalities should split-apart. With Peter’s deep radicalism and dislike of Blackwell coupled with Bunny’s strong individualism, the breakup of the Wailers was foreordained.
The Wailers may have left Bob, but Bob never felt that he had ever left the Wailers. He made it clear that he regarded Tuff Gong as still including its original three members: himself, Bunny and Peter. I recall the time when Diane Jobson wanted to take the names of Peter and Bunny off the company only to be told by Bob, “We are still Tuff Gong, it started with me, Peter and Bunny, and we no split.”
Bob fully shared Peter Tosh’s feeling about Chris Blackwell. But unlike Peter, Bob was always conscious of the need for timing—to pick the right moment to deal with any problem. It became clear to me that Bob intended to grapple with Blackwell only after he felt that the two of them stood on even ground. That moment came after the Natty Dread album. It was then that we renegotiated the original contract.
Bob’s relationship with members of the later Wailers lacked the depth of feeling he felt for the original cast. Indeed, it varied with his ability to relate to the individual musician’s talent and ideas. He said:
“If you play music, or listen to music and you don’t know why you’re playing or listening except for money and pleasure, you can be in serious trouble. Reggae say something if it mean something to the people who make it and the people who listen to it.” (June 1975)
The members of the later Wailers was a mixed crew.
There was Willie Lindo, who flitted in and out of the group, and one time even left to tour with Taj Mahal, which really pissed off Bob.
There was Tyrone Downie, whom Bob liked, and who brought him music gathered from all over the globe. Bob felt a great affinity with him and considered Tyrone “a young and progressive musician.” He compared Tyrone favorably to Family Man and Carlton, both of whom he felt were trapped in the “one drop” concept of reggae music.
I continually marveled at Bob’s uncanny ability to predict the trends and modes he needed to code into his music. I noted how careful he was about not trying to change anyone who was unwilling to change. Yet he was always sensitive to those band members who wished to expand their own musical horizons. For example, when Bob became interested in punk rock and wanted to “mesh” it with reggae to record “Punky Reggae Party,” he met stiff resistance from many in the band, especially from Family Man. Instead of fighting to change their minds, Bob simply went to London with Lee Perry and recorded “Punky Reggae Party” with Rico Rodriguez’s band. To everyone’s amazement, it became a smashing success, elevating Bob into the mass musical movement. Because Tyrone had strongly backed the experiment, Bob felt especially close to him afterwards. As Bob said about his musical taste:
“Soul, jazz, reggae, calypso, blues—I like plenty good music. Jazz, that’s a complete music. Music with feeling . . . don’t like music or anything that deals with the wrong things of life, because I only want to deal with the truth.” (June 1976)
Few band members felt so impartial about their music. In fact, Family Man used to say that he would play no music but “rockers.” Carlton, for his part, said very little but invariably tried to do whatever Bob wanted. And what Bob wanted was made clear in his view of reggae music:
“You get to appreciate [recognize] the foolish ones, the guys play reggae skanop, skanop, skanop. Not my type of reggae that. My reggae unncha cha, unncha cha, unncha cha, more rootsie.” (June 1976)
Al Anderson played for the later Wailers as a hired musician, toured with us in 1975, was almost always available when Bob needed him, but kept demanding more and more money than Bob was willing to pay. Al, who was an American, and Bob eventually failed to see eye to eye on certain issues. His monetary demands finally forced us to bring in Donald Kinsey, who remained with us through 1976, until the time Bob and I were shot in the attempted assassination. In fact, Donald was rehearsing at the time of the shooting.
Al’s demands for money were completely unjustified because, to protect his rights to his music, Bob always overpaid his musicians. Everyone who played for Bob earned top dollar.
The story of how Donald was hired as a replacement for Al Anderson demonstrates the shrewd and calculating business side of Bob Marley.
Al Anderson was making wild demands on Bob for royalties; in fact, he wanted the moon. Bob told him that he would send me to London, where Al was touring, to negotiate with him. Bob’s words to him were, “Listen man, everything yuh waan yuh will get, but I am going to sen’ Donald Taylor there, an’ yuh can work it out, an’ when Donald Taylor gets there, Donald Taylor will hook up a call, an’ I will work it out an’ clear it up.”
To me Bob said, “Listen, when yuh get to England an’ meet with Al, whatever yuh seh, yuh going to seh to me over the phone, an’ I am going to say yes; but listen for a knocking sound on the phone.” He picked up the phone and knocked on the mouthpiece. “When I knock twice, that means ‘no.’ Even when I say ‘yes.’ In the end you will advise Al dat yuh will get back to him.”
We never did get back to Al. And the ruse left him with the distinct impression that it was I, not Bob, who had refused to meet his demands.
The last addition to the later Wailers was Junior Marvin, who came on board after the free concert in 1976. He was only a hired musician yet has since had the gall to make claims against Bobs music and royalty earnings. I recall Bob once telling Junior, “A bring yuh to Jamaica, tek de earring out a yuh ear, gi yuh a house an a woman. What more yuh waan?” Bob saw Junior as a musician who, though not his equal in talent, was nevertheless always trying to upstage him.
In actuality, none of the musicians in the band ever knew exactly how much they would be paid. Bob would just say, “Dis man get dat, and dat man get dat.” But everyone was, in every instance, overpaid.
And the musicians knew it. In all my time with Bob Marley, I never heard Carly or Family Man ask for more money. But Al and Junior Marvin, who were considered outsiders, did.
Sometimes Bob would tell them that he was trying to protect them against themselves because they spent their money so fast. Al, and later on Junior, took this attitude to mean that more money was available but being deliberately withheld, causing a conflict. Neither one, however, had the guts to openly say anything on the subject matter to Bob. Instead, they all took out their bitterness on me.
Bob was a sensitive and funny man who always gave people the opportunity to speak and listened to what they had to say before trying to assess them. His closest friend was undoubtedly Allan “Skill” Cole, who has always been known for being thrifty. One day, shortly after he had won a large sum of money at the races, Skill asked Bob to lend him $10,000. I can still see Bob’s friendly reaction and hear the affection in his voice when he said, “Rass claat, Skill, yuh mean yuh just win so much money and rather than use that yuh want borrow from me!”
It took me the first year—specifically the combination of the first tour along with the time spent in Jamaica—to really grasp how Bob functioned. I learned that he was the only man who could speak for the Wailers, that he never said a direct yes or no to any idea. Instead, he would say vaguely, “It sounds like it could work,” never anything more definite and committed such as, “It will definitely work.” If your plan then misfired, you were guilty and Bob blameless. I also found that Bob liked to have money but only for the freedom it gave him to be himself and to be free of debt, a cardinal wish of his life.
Our relationship grew closer and prospered over the years in spite of the fact that Bob trusted nobody and thought everybody dishonest.
Bob had one burning desire: to lead a revolutionary assault on the forces of Babylon by giving voice to the downtrodden and the oppressed through his music. He seemed to understand that the army arrayed in the struggle against Babylon must comprise united elements of the political culture and the Rastafarian religion.
It soon became clear to me that Bob Marley had become the leader and focus of a disenfranchised army of dissidents, toughs, gunmen and political enforcers of both political parties—JLP and PNR Leading the whole army was a general—Allan “Skill” Cole—with Bob as the chief of staff who financed the operations, kept dissidents in line, and plotted Babylon’s defeat.
Bob was obsessed with the challenge of welding into one unified organization the increasingly divided Rastafarian tribes and the warring political activists whose constant violent confrontations were growing in intensity and viciousness. Bob wanted to demonstrate to the people of Jamaica, and indeed the world, that opposing parties could live together in peace and mutual respect. “God never made no difference between black, white, blue, pink or green. People is people, yuh know. That is the message we tiy to spread.”
Once I asked him whether the politicians knew about him and his ambitions. He replied, “Yeah man. They nuh like me ‘cause I talk against de system. Some of dem seh, ‘Well Bob you’re nice.’ They are looking for me like aluminum, Jamaica’s main export, y’know, so I can bring back some money in. I’m not interested in that, I’m interested in what’s happening to the people. I mean I really like to walk down the street, and everyone smile at me, instead of suffer. Guys suffer so much, they don’t have time to smile. The politicians cause it.”
His dream of uniting opposing Jamaican factions motivated him to take ardent political opponents into his day-to-day life and, later, on the tours. In a practical way, he wished to show them that it was possible, in his presence, to live, eat and sleep with the enemy without antagonisms and suspicions. Consequently, we almost always had in residence two important generals of the street and political ghettos, Claudie Massop and Tony Welch. To Bob, their presence represented the hope of unification in this most bitterly divided time.
Claudie Massop was a noted front-line organizer for Eddie Seaga, leader of the then opposition Jamaica Labor Party. Athletically built and some six feet tall, with sharp appealing looks and a winning smile, Massop was a supremely tough enforcer, but with an endearing underlying soft, gentle side.
Tony Welch, on the other hand, was a leading fixer for the PNP. Five foot seven, slim and brown-skinned, he had been introduced to Bob by Tony Spaulding, for whom he was an equally efficient enforcer. Representing the bitterly opposed sides, these two political operatives presented a constant challenge to Bob’s hopes and desires. Through them Bob glimpsed a way to cope with Babylon, the common enemy.
Bob gave them virtually anything they wanted. On one trip to Miami, for example, Bob bought Tony a BMW. Tony was supposed to pay him back, but as far as I recall, never did.
To a sociologist, I suppose Bob would seem a man trying to use his money and power to mobilize the masses into a revolution—whether mental or physical. Maintaining ties with both political factions in Jamaica was also Bob’s way of playing it safe in the volatile political atmosphere of 1970s Jamaica.
Bob also attempted social unification of the Rasta religion, whose members always played a significant role in his life, and he took seriously the continued war being waged against them by Babylon. Around this time, some eight Rastas had their locks forcibly shorn in Kingston, increasing tensions and leading to the formation of “Jah Rastafari Holy Theocratic Government.” Out of this movement, with Bob’s help, came a thir-teen-member delegation that called for a series of meetings with Prime Minister Manley to improve relationships between what they called, “yovernments.”
These events impressed upon Bob that a greater effort was needed to heal the social wounds and close the gaping economic gap in Jamaica.
After Bob intervened, the Rastas settled in Bull Bay, not far from the small government-built house that was his other residence. This house, which Bob had settled in after moving from Trench Town, is in itself an interesting story.
Bob had gotten the house through Tony Spaulding, the MP for Trench Town, who was so close to him that Bob could later speak of various favors he had received from politicians. (Their closeness also made me understand those underground stories once in circulation about the political strong-arm payola that had gotten Bob’s music played on the radio during the early years.) Until his move to Bull Bay with Skill Cole and Marcia Griffiths, Bob had never owned a house. Afterwards, he would spend his time between Trench Town, Bull Bay, and 56 Hope Road.
Bob soon formed a solid relationship with the Rastas he had helped move to Bull Bay. They, in turn, influenced the Rastaman Vibration album that proclaimed his adoption of the Twelve Tribes beliefs—that he was of the tribe of Joseph, his color was white, and his blessing would come from Genesis 49:22-24, and Deuteronomy 33:16: “Joseph was a fruitful bough.”
But all was not sweetness and piety in that album. In it, too, were wrenching lyrics reflecting the bitter reality of the ghetto.
Woman hold her head and cry
’Cause her son had been shot down
On the street and died
(“Johnn/Was”)
And, most powerful of all, lyrics that echoed the political warning of the ranking reggae Rastamen:
That until there are no longer
First class and second class
Citizens of any nation
Everywhere is war
(“War”)
These words, if anything, farther inflamed the developing political culture, as the tension in the ghetto heightened and the ideological war of the seventies intensified.
For the political reality of life in the Jamaican ghetto was rapidly changing, and for the worse. Added to the inflammatory mix was the influence of the global ideological cold war, introducing a new dimension in Jamaica’s politics. Manley and the PNP being in power, the JLP stronghold of Eddie Seaga—Tivoli—came under mounting police pressure. Political tribalism increased sharply; “War” was indeed breaking out in the ghetto. With Manley perceived by the outside world as a new communist threat in a Caribbean already thought to be under the menace of Cuba, the international community began to take a morbid interest in Jamaican politics. We prepared for the Rastaman Vibration tour with random violence raging throughout Kingston, exerting much pressure on Bob, who felt close to the two main party enforcers and generals of the streets.
On the heels of this political upheaval came the horse-race doping affair—the “Caymanas” scam—which involved Skill Cole.
Horse racing, always an exciting part of Jamaican life, had become exposed to political corruption, as party enforcers and thugs began to manipulate the outcome of particular races by bribing groom, jockey and trainer, and by doping both horse and rider. Earnings from the racing industry were being used to finance political activity, control of the track on race days being usually under the generalship of the party currently in power. In this context, Skill became involved in a doping episode.
But the horses, for whatever reason, failed to provide the expected results. Many people in the scam did not get paid what they considered their share and, because of the involvement of Skill and his known closeness to Bob, mistakenly linked Bob to the scam. In fact, it was common knowledge that these events were mainly engineered by political ghetto leaders such as Claudie and Tony. However, because of his closeness to Cole, Bob felt obliged to help anyway he could.
Doping problem or no, we had to head for Miami and the National Organization of Record Merchants (NORM) convention, an important occasion for promoting the upcoming album. We left with the doping scandal still raging. After the NORM convention, Bob would work some more on the Rastaman Vibration album at the Criteria Recording Studio.
To make this work possible, I had to round up a crew of engineers quickly. I contacted King Sporty, whom I greatly respected and who, when Neville Garrick was jailed in the summer of 1975 for trying to smuggle ganja into Miami on his first trip with the Wailers, had helped bail him out. Sporty, in turn, found Alex Sadkin for us, which was a lucky stroke. Bob developed a great professional respect for Alex, who did a remarkable job on the album, Rastaman Vibration, and was later hired by Chris Blackwell. Unhappily, not long after being hired, Alex died in a car crash, leaving both me and Bob with a sense of foreboding.
Rastaman Vibration hit the charts as soon as it was released, adding to Bob’s success and his value as a musician.
Success or not, Bob had not abandoned his revolutionary plans. During the two weeks we spent in Miami, he got King Sporty to put him in touch with the Miami-based political dissidents who had fled Jamaica, one of whom was “Schoolboy” (Richard Morrison). It was on this trip, too, that money was funneled to certain individuals to buy what was referred to as “arms.”
One day Bob instructed me to give a $40,000 check to someone I knew only as Billy (who is now crippled). To avoid involving me personally, Bob had the check picked up by Yvette Morris for delivery with a letter whose contents none of us knew. Later, as I was going over the bank accounts, I realized that the check had been cashed by a well-known arms dealer.
We returned to Jamaica after completing the album to be once again confronted with the Skill Cole “Caymanas” problem, which had worsened during our absence.
Skill was in deep trouble. The aggrieved parties were so furious that they had kidnapped a jockey involved in the scam. Feelings that the payoff for the fixed double event in the Caymanas scam had been unfair set tempers afire. Since the original deal had been struck at Hope Road among the hangers-on, the unpaid gunmen and enforcers tried to extort repayment of the debt from Bob, who was being asked to shell out two thousand dollars per day. The first payment was extracted from him practically at gunpoint in the ghetto. Finally, Skill fled the island for the USA and ultimately Ethiopia.
To complicate matters, Bob began receiving visits from PNP bad men, who questioned his political allegiance to democratic socialism and Michael Manley. Their suspicion of Bob no doubt sprang from his practice of playing both ends against the middle and using the situation for his own purposes, based on his belief that only a united ghetto could defeat the forces of Babylon.
But the ghetto thugs did not understand this philosophy. They began to question Bob’s closeness to people like Claudie Massop, Seagas right-hand man. Bob and Skill were often seen hanging out with Massop and his crew at Dizzi Disco, Turntable, and other uptown clubs on Red Hills Road, or visiting the Caymanas Race Track. It was common knowledge that Skill had been part of the racing scam. The suspicion grew that Bob was playing it both ways, in case Manley lost to Seaga.
Given the jittery state of Jamaica’s politics in the seventies, we should have seen problems looming.
In the four weeks we had been in Miami, the political climate had become so overheated that on June 19, 1976, the governor general, Sir Florizel Glasspole, declared an island-wide state of emergency based on a charge by the PNP that Seaga and the JLP were plotting with the CIA to discredit the government.
The cauldron was overheating to boiling point, making nonpartisanship impossible. There could be no sitting on the political fence.
Bob, who had come from the PNP side of the ghetto, was now, like everyone else in Jamaica, expected to plainly choose a side.