The political and social unrest, however, did not affect Bob’s family affairs. Every day Bob had his kids picked up after school and driven to Hope Road. Stevie, Ziggy and Cedella would arrive around two and stay until six or seven o’clock, spending time with their father and watching him play soccer. After the game, he would bundle them off in the VW van to be driven to his house in Bull Bay. With the children gone, he would sit around till eight or nine before venturing out into the Kingston nightlife, very often to Dizzi Disco.
One of the pioneer disco clubs in Kingston, Dizzi was a small club in a cul de sac only two miles from 56 Hope Road. Its entrance was via a short, steep, narrow staircase. It boasted continuously blinking lights against mirrored walls, and featured an intimate dance floor hidden behind beaded curtains. Later I would learn that for Bob, Dizzi’s real attraction was Cindy Breakspeare, who worked at the club but was initially cool to Bob’s attempts to woo her. The next day, Skill Cole, Bob’s constant companion on the excursions, would often render a detailed account of the previous night’s courtship.
For my part, I was learning more and more about Bob Marley and beginning to grasp the political and personal context in which he lived. I learned, for example, that Rita Marley and Bob were married in name only. Bob would commonly, during the early period of his career, identify Rita as his sister if questioned by the media. In private, he often reminded Rita that he did not want her using his name. T once witnessed an argument between them on this very subject, during which he reminded her that they were not married under normal circumstances.
He asked, “Rita why you don’t stop using my name?” She answered, “But I am married to you,” to which he replied, “Rita, how you going on like you don’t know how the marriage business go, that my mother was sending for me to come to America and because you have the children, I decided to marry you so that you could get a green card.” Often he would add sharply, “Blood claat Rita, don’t yuh know dat?”
During one of these family arguments Bob told me that Rita could sign his signature better than he could. I thought this revelation strange but took it as a warning.
One day some money was missing from a Jamaica Citizens Bank account at King Street that Bob maintained jointly with Skill Cole. Thinking that Skill had withdrawn the sum, Bob and I went to the bank and examined the check, which bore what appeared to be his signature. It was then that he blurted out, “Blood claat, Don Taylor, Rita can sign mi name betta dan me!”
Rita was actually treated just like one of the workers. She was paid a salary separate from the household allowance she got to support her and the children. From Bob, Rita received no special treatment. On tour, she was paid like everybody else; at home, she merely hovered in the background.
Rita was raised by a short black woman—barely five feet tall—called Auntie, whom Bob feared. Auntie had a no-nonsense face and a probing way of looking at you that bored deep into your mind.
One time, on a trip to England, Rita was accompanied by Auntie. We were all comfortably ensconced in first class when the stewardess came by with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Auntie disdained to eat the tidbits, asking me scornfully, “A what dat foolishness dem a serve?” Instead, she began nibbling on doctor fish she had brought aboard in a shut pan. In a blink, the first-class cabin was reeking with the stench of fish, resulting in the abrupt exit of some passengers. No amount of air freshener could get rid of that smell.
According to Bob, Auntie was an obeah woman, a practitioner of this ancient Jamaican religion which, though illegal, still had many followers among the population. Through the years, Auntie continued to live with Rita and have little to do with Bob, although she cared for the children they had together. Bob would often say that he could not make a clean break from Rita because he had been obeahed by Auntie.
In spite the estrangement between Rita and Bob, I soon discovered that a special bond existed between them and learned to stay out of their relationship. On tour, I quickly learned that although they stayed apart in their separate worlds during the day, Bob would often send for Rita as soon as everybody had gone to sleep. Because I had access to Bob’s room at all times, I myself regularly observed their nocturnal meetings, which cemented me in my decision to keep out of their private affairs. Never, during Bob’s lifetime, did I ever get between them.
Between the first and second tour, Rita got pregnant with Stephanie. Bob never believed the child was his and accused Rita of seeing this other guy. Nevertheless, Rita went ahead and gave the child Bob’s surname.
The child, oddly enough, was born with six fingers, and when Bob asked Rita about this peculiarity, she said the trait was inherited from her father, Papa Roy Anderson. Later, Bob met Anderson on the third world tour (Rita had missed the second tour due to pregnancy) at a performance at Stockholm’s Tivoli Gardens. Then living in Stockholm, Anderson came backstage to meet Bob, who noticed that his hands were normal. Bob did not ask Rita for an explanation. Instead, he reacted with fiery passion, walking up to her and screaming, “How yu so blood claat lie gal? Yu want a blood claat kick.”
After this incident, Bob firmly believed that the child was another man’s, and one day he went to Bull Bay to confront the suspected father. After some quick and heated exchanges, with anger blazing and passions boiling, the man stopped Bob dead in his tracks by saying, “Man, I man didn’t know she was your wife, ‘cause every time I read something, and the I a talk ‘bout her, the I seh she is ‘im sister.’“ The remark suddenly broke the tension between them, and Bob started grinning at his own words, which had come back to haunt him. It was an episode typical of the confusing signals coming from the relationship between Bob and Rita.
Bob’s loyalty to Rita, without doubt, was based completely on the fact that she had borne him children. I remember when we were in Germany and one of Bob’s baby-mothers, who lived there, came to visit him at the Presidential Suite of the Hamburg Hilton. Obviously irked by the presence of the woman, whose child, Karen, lived in Jamaica, Rita started hassling him about money he was spending on their support. One particular day, the pressure got to be more than Bob could take; he beat Rita mercilessly in the suite, wrecking the room in the process and costing us some large repair bills. We got away lightly only because we were regular guests who usually did not cause trouble.
After settling the bill for damages to the room and boarding the bus, Bob did not take his usual seat in the back. Usually he was the first person on the bus and would sit in the back and meditate. This time, however, he sat in the front with me and told me that he wanted Rita off the tour and sent home right away because she was distracting his concentration. I had never seen him in this mood before; nor did I ever see it again.
The situation was tense enough to require a tactful approach.
I said, “Bob! What is it yu want? Yu want a divorce from Rita? If yu want a divorce, I can handle it, I can get yu a lawyer. But if yu gonna divorce Rita, yu got to cut it off clear! Yu can’t be tiptoeing in and out of her room at night when everybody is asleep and gone to bed! Yu got to stop that.” Bob flashed his special grin, looked at me, and did an about-face. He replied, “But yu know she is not a bad girl, ‘cause I remember the days when she use fi carry mi records on her shoulder, and her shoulder use fi cut from the box of records which she use fl walk wit’ through the hot Kingston sun and dirt.”
I told him that it looked bad for him to be beating up Rita in front of everyone on the tour. He must have taken my words to heart because, after that conversation he made every effort to control his temper with Rita, and there was never a recurrence of that ugly incident.
I took a cue from that experience and from then on ensured that Rita and the girls occupied a different floor from Bob at different ends of the hotel and either had their own cook or the facilities to cook for themselves. I took the additional precaution of making sure that I was the only person with access to Bob’s room.
Out of that brawl also came an agreement for Bob to call Rita, after everyone had settled down for the night, if he needed her. Sometimes they would sit and eat together quietly; sometimes she would come to his room and keep him company. Often she would wash and grease his locks.
It is not commonly understood how important this ritual is to Rastafarians, how they patiently spend hours maintaining the cleanliness of their long hair. Rita would comb Bob’s locks late into the night, sometimes even into the early morning hours. To see them lighting up their spliffs during this combing ritual was a beautiful sight, and one I will never forget.
The shifting, unsettled relationship between Bob and Rita sometimes made my life difficult, as did Rita’s occasional check-signing. Bob and I had already had a few run-ins with her over this dubious behavior. On one occasion she signed Bob’s name to a check for $6,000 from Cayman Music and cashed it.
Bob again warned me, “Yu have to watch Rita Marley, you know, because she can sign my name even better than I can.”
In London on our first tour, I got another sample of Rita’s dishonesty.
As a token of his appreciation, Bob had decided to divide among everybody on the tour some money he had made on a publishing deal. It was the kind of generous gesture he would make from time to time.
After we had all been paid, Rita and Judy called to say that their share, which they claimed to have put under a mattress, had been stolen by the maid. Bob and I were in the middle of grilling the maid when we grasped that we were victims of another Rita Marley scam. To get a double share of the money, she was even prepared to blame someone innocent. I did not then, and do not now, sit in judgment of Rita. At Bob’s hands, she clearly suffered regular mistreatment—including both verbal and physical abuse.
During this time, Bob had accumulated more than thirty million US dollars, and any money that was distributed in his name passed through me. The thirty million was on deposit in three companies—Media Aides, Tuff Gong Records and Bob Marley Music. Allan Cole’s name, once on the account, had since been removed. I was the only person who could authorize payment of any kind. In many instances, the banks did not even know Bob. He died with my name still on the accounts.
One day he asked me to go with Rita to look at a house she wanted to buy.
The house, which I will never forget, was in St. Andrew and perched high up in Jacks Hill, two thousand feet above sea level, with a dazzling view of Kingston and the Caribbean. In Jacks Hill, which was a recent suburb, the new and old rich lived cheek-by-jowl. The trip was an eyeopener for me. I never imagined that Jamaicans built and lived in such palatial houses, my own life having kept me scrabbling among the dingy gambling clubs and the recording studios of the plains.
The contrast between the grime of Trench Town and the opulence of this hill was stunning. The house was spread out on two acres of land. It had five bedrooms, a swimming pool, and all the space imaginable for R&R (rest and recreation). Its bathroom faucets were gold plated.
Rita declared that she had found the house she wanted.
I told her I had to first consult Bob and suggested that she take him to look at it.
After the visit, I remember Bob saying to her, “Rita Marley, what’s wrong with you, how you like those kind of big life so—you don’t realize that the money I have is not my money—is God money! And if you take God money and spend it wrongly and abuse it, God will take it away from yu!”
Bob went on to tell her that he simply could not see himself living in that such a house. Instead, he chose a more moderate residence on Washington Drive in the plains of St. Andrew. Its community was prestigious but understated. Living nearby up the street was Prime Minister Michael Manley. The chosen house was divided into three units, one of which Rita occupied, and Mr. Tseyaye of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the other. This hint of a communal yard appealed to Bob’s natural instincts.
Though he liked having money, Bob never craved earthly possessions, an attitude that was made even clearer when he toured. That he began and ended every tour with one duffel bag was always a topic of conversation. The shopping sprees indulged in by other members of the touring party were not for Bob.
In contrast to Bob’s frugality, I recall querying a bill at a particular hotel in the early days that listed a large charge for “miniatures” and finding out that Rita and the I-Threes had emptied the courtesy bars in their suites. They innocently assumed that the contents of these bars were included in the cost of the room.
Bob always remembered where he came from. He never forgot his faith. Being true believers in the Rasta religion, he and Rita were dedicated to its teachings. But still, they made some slight exceptions from doctrine. For example, Rasta religion demands that children grow locks, but neither Bob nor Rita ever insisted on this observance. Perhaps he recognized that Rasta children still were not completely accepted in Jamaican schools and didn’t want to hobble the children with any outward orthodoxy that would hamper their acceptance.
Indeed, it was clear that Bob believed deeply in the advantages of education, for he sent his children to the best private schools (at the time it was Vaz Prep), to which, like all if not most uptowners, they were driven. This arrangement was in place even before he had made a lot of money.
Although Bob had other homes in Jamaica, he spent most of his time at Hope Road. Only rarely did he go to his house in Bull Bay or subsequently to Rita’s home on Washington Drive. During the daytime, he was mainly at Hope Road. At night he would either be at Cindy’s or at one of his other women.
In an interview given in 1975, he declared his opinion on marriage plainly. “Me never believe in marriage that much. Marriage is a trap to control me; woman is a coward. Man is strong.”
This opinion he never hid from Rita, and very often he told her bluntly that she could not walk in Cindy’s shoes. Yet when he was asked in 1977 if he would marry Cindy, he answered simply, “She’s one of my girlfriends.”
Yet though Bob never lived with Rita as man and wife, for some odd reason, it was at her house that he always kept his clothes, as I discovered once when I went to Jamaica to pick up his stuff—at Rita’s house. The deep relationship between them was partly grounded in Rita’s acceptance of the Rastafarian woman’s role and partly in her role as mother of his children.
For whatever else Bob Marley was, he was completely devoted to his children and would frequently remind me that it was because of them that he was working.