That Bob was not a one-woman man was common knowledge. He had converted many highly educated “uptown” women to the ghetto lifestyle, making them into his maids-in-waiting. His converts included lawyers, actresses, oilfield heiresses and top female entertainers, many of whom willingly put their careers on hold to be with Bob. Heading the list was the former Miss World, Cindy Breakspeare.
I had met Cindy years before, when, as manager of Little Anthony and the Imperials, I had brought the group to Jamaica. Cindy was a clerk at our hotel, the Sheraton Kingston, and I recall her having a relationship with Harold Jenkins, a member of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, who were with our tour. She had dated Harold in Jamaica and visited him afterwards in Miami while she stayed at Lucien Chen’s apartment with her mother. That Harold was just an employee of the Blue Notes and unlikely to be a high flier became a disappointment to Cindy, and the relationship soon fizzled out.
When Bob bought the Hope Road property, in one of life’s coincidences, Cindy became his tenant. Before the purchase, both Bob and Cindy had been tenants of Chris Blackwell, each occupying different sides of the house. Bob had made many passes at Cindy, but as far as I know, got nowhere until he became famous and the owner of 56 Hope Road.
With Bob her new landlord, I collected rent from Cindy for the first few months—a minuscule sum of some four hundred dollars. One day, when I went to collect the monthly rent, Cindy told me that she had already paid Bob. I should have deduced then that something was developing between them, but I missed the signs. Nor did I ask Bob about the rent payment, probably because the amount of money was so small. But it was then that I began suspecting that a relationship was unfolding between them.
I also remembered the stories Skill used to tell about the visits he and Bob made to Cindy at Dizzi Disco where she worked. Bob had been sending signals to her even when Cindy was still Chris Blackwell’s tenant. But his efforts bore fruit only after Bob had bought the Hope Road house from Blackwell.
A serious relationship was developing between them—that was made clear to me one night when I called Bob as I was about to take my second wife, Apryl, to the movies. Bob asked me to come and pick him up and, uncharacteristically, brought Cindy with him (Bob did not take women to movies). Nevertheless, I was still taken aback when Cindy entered the Miss World contest, and Bob asked me to pay her way to London and arrange the details of her trip.
At that time in Jamaica, the socialist Manley regime abhorred the once government-endorsed beauty contests. Black-power consciousness being the order of the day, Manley s government had come out against beauty contests, feeling that this was no time for the marketing of female flesh. Cindy’s entry in the Miss World contest and Bob’s support of her could easily have proven embarrassing to him, as his fans expected him to be in tune with the trends of the time.
For its part, the government gave neither sympathy nor support to any beauty contest entrant from Jamaica, and the private sector, fearful of bucking the official position, also fell in line, reducing the level of funding for Jamaica’s participation in the Miss World finals. Only the governor general, Sir Florizel Glasspole, seemed enthusiastic about the beauties. This opposition meant that Cindy, as Miss Jamaica, had little or no support—monetary or otherwise.
Acting on Bob’s instructions, I transferred thousands of pounds for Cindy’s expenses and arranged for the money to be disbursed through our public-relations agency. (Later, this transaction would lead to rumors that Cindy had bought the crown.)
Such a burst of generosity was not usual for Bob, but I still did not take his relationship with Cindy seriously. He was already, at the time, openly going about with two other friends of Cindy’s, Virginia Burke and her sister, Nancy. In fact, I was told that Bob—typically—was sleeping with both of them as well as with Cindy.
In helping Bob with his personal life I only did what he asked. Later, I never discussed with him his feelings about Cindy’s pregnancy or the birth of their son, Damien. All I knew what that Bob loved to have children. Indeed, he loved all children. One of his habits on tour was to make impromptu stops, get out of the car and mix with the people, especially the children. He once said, “Children are wonderful. It don’t take plenty y’know. Just a nice girl who don’t take birth control. Sexual intercourse is a lovely thing.”
Bob cared for Cindy—that was obvious. I remember when we were working on the Kaya album and staying at I Harrington Gardens in London, Cindy came to stay with Bob. On one particular night while Cindy and Bob were cooling out in his room, some ladies dropped by to visit him, and he told me to have them wait in my room on the first floor. Fifteen minutes later, Bob came down to meet his female fans, leaving Cindy alone in his apartment. Soon Cindy came looking for him and caught him sitting close to one of the women. Irritated, she snapped that if he was going to behave that way, she was leaving, and turned on her heels and walked away. (This incident took place after Bob’s alleged affairs with Nancy Burke and her sister.) Bob shouted at me to go and bring her back, but I was too slow to react. He jumped up and went after her himself—the first time I had ever seen Bob actually pursue a woman.
I watched as he persuaded her to return upstairs to his apartment. A few hours later, I went to check on him, and finding Cindy there, said offhandedly to her, “Boy, Bob must really love you to chase after you so,” which irritated her. That was when it dawned on me just how much Bob really loved Cindy.
The following day when I saw Bob I took a “jive” and said, “Bob, I didn’t know yuh got it so bad that yuh told Cindy how much yuh love her and would do anything for her.” He replied, “Don Taylor, what would you do in an intimate situation if while you are on the upstroke a woman look you in the eye and ask if you love her?”
The only woman Bob loved, and the only one who had any kind of leverage over him—it became clear to me after that—was Cindy. But as Cindy’s power over him grew, so did Bob’s gradual withdrawal. He said to me once, “When you money done you ain’t got no friends” (he loved to hear Billie Holiday sing “God Bless the Child,” which contains this sentiment). “If the money done, you may not have a woman either.”
Reflecting on their relationship, I now believe that Cindy, beset by Bob’s involvement with many women as well as by his paper marriage to Rita, probably decided it was in her best interest to get pregnant. She probably felt, I have always thought, that pregnancy would give her situation stability and protect her in a crisis—whether financial or physical.
And Bob did help her, financially and otherwise. For instance, when Cindy came up with the idea for her company, Ital Craft, Bob instructed me to supply her with $100,000 start-up capital. When Cindy needed some beads for her business, Bob bought them in Australia while he was on tour, and Rita herself lugged them to Jamaica.
After Cindy became pregnant, I received a call from Bob while I was in Miami. He told me that some insurance guy named Chunky Lopez was migrating and selling his house in Cherry Gardens, one of the more exclusive residential areas in Kingston. He instructed me to buy the house for Cindy and the baby. I did as he instructed, paying the guy US$49,000 for the house, into which Cindy moved. She lived there until her marriage to Tom Tavares Finson.
All these events reaffirmed my earlier belief that Cindy cleverly timed her relationship with Bob for her own personal betterment. It was all very simple: Bob had become big; he could and would do anything for her.
On winning the Miss World beauty contest, she took the opportunity to publicly declare that Bob Marley was her man and that she wanted to hurry home to her Rasta. I still believe that her well-timed revelation was a deliberate strategy to prop up their affair, which had so far been secret, by announcing it to the world. In fact, the declaration created quite a stir among Bob’s crowd. Soon afterwards, Cindy became pregnant and thus ensured a steady supply of money from Bob.
Before Bob bought her the house in Cherry Gardens, Cindy had never lived in such grand style, her family having fallen on hard times when she was very young. Bob might well have told Cindy that he intended to marry her and that his marriage to Rita was only a convenience. But to my mind, Cindy’s tolerance of Bob’s continued intimate associations with her friends, spoke volumes about her real intentions.
Indeed, Cindy somewhat shocked me, perhaps because I had always naively thought that upper-class Jamaican women were raised to have morals. But when I found out that Cindy knew her friends were sleeping with Bob yet closed her eyes to his flings, I lost all respect for her. Virginia Burke, for instance, started seeing Allan Cole even though she knew that he was also going with Judy Mowatt.
But none of these goings-on in any way affected the closeness between Bob and Cindy, and their relationship continued just as intensely after their son, Damien, was born.
One consequence of this relationship was that the Rastas began accusing Bob of moving into uptown society, creating rumblings and discontent in the very quarters from which his music had sprung. For a while, these charges certainly panicked all of us business people. To the ghetto, Bob was beginning to look like a sellout, especially since he was a militant who sang and talked about black and Rasta unity. Indeed, the downtown people always interpreted his protest music as speaking especially for them. So with the talk that Bob was dating Cindy and moving into uptown society, the Rastas and other militant brethren began to question his association with these white girls, especially in Jamaica. Bob’s answer to the Rasta community was, “Wha’ happen to my brothers and sisters, yu no see me a carry Rasta uptown?” That reply silenced his critics. He was never questioned again.
What the ghetto people failed to appreciate was that Bob, like any other successful businessman, had groomed himself and was now moving in a social level where everyone looked out for his own best interest. He was continually mixing with kings and queens. He was dating princesses, being entertained by their fathers, and becoming exposed to what he regarded as a corrupt way of life.
As Bob moved up the social ladder, he was introduced to many of the upscale crowd’s bad habits, including cocaine. At the end of his career, around the time of his death, a scandal was raging about his alleged cocaine use. But I, who was constantly at his side, saw no evidence that Bob used cocaine. Ziggy told Rita and me that one day he saw his dad put a white powder up his nose and asked what it was. His father replied that the substance was crushed aspirin. But I, Don Taylor, never saw Bob use cocaine and would have hard time believing that he ever had. If Bob ever used cocaine, he had to be under someone’s influence.
Bob Marley was three distinct persons in one—that I learned from his relationship with Cindy.
The first was Bob Marley the revolutionary, the “Tuff Gong.”
The second was Robert Nesta Marley, an understanding, meek and kind human being who loved Cindy and his children and who would listen with understanding to anyone’s problems.
The third was Bob Marley, reggae superstar and musical genius par excellence.
This, then, was the complex picture of Bob Marley—public and private—that emerged as we approached the final days of 1976.