Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright (13 page)

When we get back to the hotel, who do we run into in the lobby but Chris Blackwell himself. He has been in England over the weekend, and is just returning. Wooly is very agitated about Harry’s complaint, and tells Blackwell the story. Chris is not perturbed at all. “It’s a very simple problem, really. Harry J. has a big ego and so does Danny Holloway.” He smiles. “And between the two of them, the Heptones haven’t got a chance.”

Two hours later. I’ve checked out of the Sheraton, and am in a cab on my way to the airport. I ask the driver to go by way of the Gun Court, an island attraction I’d heard about and wanted to see before I ever got here, a legend that preceded my tourism. The Gun Court was set up by the Manley regime as a way of dealing with all the berserk pistoleros and violent political agitators. What it means is that anybody caught by the police with even a bullet, even a shell casing, or any type of explosives in his possession, is whisked before a tribunal which asks him why he has these illegal and dangerous items. If he doesn’t have the right answer, he is thrown in the stockade behind the Gun Court for life. Sic. 99.9% of Jamaicans who appear before the Gun Court have the wrong answer. And now here it is: high fences with enormous rolls of barbed wire at the top, guard towers, a yard where you can see young blacks milling around. The front of the place painted a garish red. It looks like a concentration camp, and that’s what it is. I ask the cab driver what he thinks of it.

“I don’ mind Gun Court so much,” he says. “Other things bother me much more. On this island there is little real freedom, and now Manley is dealing with the Cubans, and we fear Jamaica will become like Cuba, where there is no freedom. No freedom under Communism, and al-ready I don’t feel free here anymore.” He pointed to a pile of giant rocks left at some roadside excavation site. “You see those rocks, that’s how we feel in Jamaica, like being crushed down by all those, underneath them. Manley is a dictator, of course. Under him today, the people are unhappy, and sometimes driving in the cab I don’t say what I think if the rider asks me a question about politics, because I don’t know who he is. He might go and tell the police, and I might not be here later. The Ras-tas are something else—they don’ matter at all. I want to always live in Jamaica, but now I am not so sure. All I want now is my freedom.”

F
or a brief time, Marley became the major star of the developing world, especially after the original Wailers broke up. The loss of Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer could have been devastating, but Mar-ley proved to be very resilient.

He reorganized the band into Bob Marley and the Wailers. In place of the sweet and sour harmonies that characterized the Wailers as a trio (their voices were far too idiosyncratic to ever really “blend” in the traditional vocal group manner, and it was one of their greatest strengths) he brought on his wife Rita and two of the most talented vocalists in Jamaica, Judy Mowatt and Marcia Grif-fiths. (On an ironic note, Griffiths and Bunny Wailer would later have a hit with a song that gets played at every wedding and bar mitzvah in the western world, the “Electric Boogie,” aka the “Electric Slide.”)

As Bob Marley and the Wailers, Bob continued to write and record songs of protest and earned the respect of conscious thinkers throughout the world. Then they recorded
Kaya
, an album predominantly composed of love songs. This only expanded his audience.

This interview was conducted on Monday, October 29, 1979, after Bob
Marley and the Wailers’ triumphant four-night SRO stand at the legendary
Apollo Theater. Young journalist Tom Terrell sat with Bob Marley for a
Washington DC Newspaper that has since folded.
MCY.com
made this exclusive
interview available for the first time in over 20 years.

TOM TERRELL:
During the early Sixties, what were you into?

MARLEY:
School and trade. Welding . . . I went to private school down the road (laughs). You know I was kinda musical. We stand ’pon a street corner at night and sing and beat pan. We had on Spanish Town Road and Ebeneezar Lane . . . a club named Operation Friendship where a man bring a guitar. That’s how I get my first guitar—see? This is where it start from. I’m not a good guitarist in one sense; but musically that’s how the music start. I got more interested in the singing part, y’know.

TERRELL:
American R&B was, and is, popular in Jamaica. Did it have any influences on your vocal style?

MARLEY:
Yes. Chuck Jackson, Ben E. King, Wilson Pickett . . . I go back some days and mention “Jim Dandy To The Rescue”—you know them guy there? You know Little Richard? Little Anthony . . . the next one named the Drifters, the Platters. A brother sing a tune say “Don’t break your promise.” Johnny Ace, too.

TERRELL:
Joe Higgs was said to have taken you under his wing. Who was he to you?

MARLEY:
Joe Higgs was a teacher, y’know. Joe Higgs the man who teach—Bunny, Peter and I; Junior, Cherry and Beverly. Six in all.

TERRELL:
On the cover of an early album, you and the other Wailers are dressed in suits, sunglasses . . .

MARLEY:
During that time now we were working with a record company, see? And when you work for people you have to make up yourself. But we are rebels, we rebellious—them the singing we do. You see we never really know anything that much about Rasta. The words them a come out but still no know really what goin’ on. We just know that something a come out. That the people a say something and it mean something ’bout where we is we never know that reason yet, seen? ’Till them we start to get ourselves independent so start doing what we want do.

TERRELL:
Two people that figure prominently in the development of Wailers’ music are Lee Perry and Chris Blackwell. What were their roles in shaping your career?

MARLEY:
Yeah, Lee Perry. Lee Perry used to work same place. When we leave, him leave too. Him do one business, we do a next one ’til we link up again and do same work. Chris Blackwell come in the music when the music really need someone to get some exposure. Through him now was the one that knew about it more as one in Jamaica can a get. You know Millie Small?

TERRELL:
She sang “My Boy Lollipop”?

MARLEY:
Good, good. From them time there. It Jimmy Cliff even to the end of
The Harder They Come
, that’s when Jimmy Cliff left Island. So him was the man—’cause nobody never know. People used to curse the music because the studio never that up to date like them studio a clear, y’know. Ha’ plenty this and that ’pon that, tracks them.

TERRELL:
Originally, the Wailers were a vocal group. When did the band take shape?

MARLEY:
’Round 1970, now. Family Man (AKA Aston Barrett; bass) and them was upset at an Island thing and link up with Lee Perry them and thing. In 1968 we start come together y’know. Tyrone (Downie; keyboards) used to go to school . . . used to come record shop when him leave school. We tell him (laughs), “Go home.” Now him big, a long time up there.

TERRELL:
Bunny and Peter branched out in their own directions. Any comments on the musical paths they’ve taken?

MARLEY:
Well, whatever a man do that pleases him, that is for him right, y’know? This is what our blessing . . . This is how it deal with them.

TERRELL:
Are all your songs your sole inspiration or do you co-write with the band?

MARLEY:
Well, to me anybody can help me write a song. If not the melody a go and you can almost hear the words them too. Say you hear the words and a man help you put them together. So it happen that way with me plenty times. ’Cause you might hear me. I try say something but you hear what me supposed to say, you know what I mean? Most of my tunes I was writing with my brethren, man. Them all got tell me what to say.

TERRELL:
What are you saying to American audiences in your music, and do you think it will translate well to them?

MARLEY:
My message is Rastafari, God Almighty, man. The same message to the people. I don’t find a man can’t understand y’know. What I find out [is] that America is more control. The people is under every control here. Everything is organized. If you come here to do a concert, you have to go through the organization; so it’s really organized. You ask why go to Harlem and play reggae music, and the people have a certain amount of pressure ’pon them. So you know them can’t even get to listen. The more them hear it, this is a truth here—must come true, dread.

TERRELL:
So they can’t stop reggae—

MARLEY:
They can’t stop it; ’cause if they stop it I wouldn’t start because there would be no need for me start; be in vain. Me do it because of a cause and until it happen before I feel pleased because that the only thing make feel pleased . . . people them come together in a unity and defend the right. Cause all of them defend capitalism; so what if them conscious them a deal with it. So if the government was Rasta, all of them woulda been Rasta, seen?

TERRELL:
Speaking of government, what do you have to say about the political situation in Jamaica?

MARLEY:
I don’t really feel pleased. Because I and I Rasta. If I tell you say, “I feel pleased,” it would be a lie. I and I Rasta. When we are deal with Rasta, we are deal with Rasta, y’know? We not deal with Rasta half enough. Like say we want a different ideology, a different philosophy. When we say we are Rasta we mean we seriously deal with Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie, seen? So if you live in a country and the country are run by foreigners—we have a country run by foreign ideas—then the country is a foreign country! What happened to Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie? We are people, we are Black people who want our own. Which is the beginning; our people seeing them run rights again ’pon earth.

TERRELL:
Then you’re not too happy with [then-current JA Prime Minister] Manley?

MARLEY:
That’s Ras politics as concerned where I have to say. I don’t care what the many want to say. I Rasta, seen? I don’t see where a man can do for Rastaman when him is not Rasta. ’Cause only Rasta can help Rasta. Special in a situation where it about government of countries. Government of country and a Rastaman not g’wan help Rasta ’cause Rasta not agree a what he deal with. So it contrary to what him a deal with.

TERRELL:
In this country, many musicians become successful then isolate themselves from their beginnings. But you haven’t. Why?

MARLEY:
Can’t isolate, man. Where we come from, man there no deal with isolation. We right there with the people, seen? For there is nothing to me more than to see it. I do not see it yet. When I was small I think it used to happen, but when I grow up and I get to understand—say when I pass through them people with suffering and I just a pass past think everybody in there have dinner and everything. I really grew up big now and started suffering then find plenty of these homes don’t have no dinner when evening come. When man have up steak in yard and feed him dog . . . Y’hear me? Until our people live again man, never satisfy.

TERRELL:
So your music is definitely oriented towards the Third World?

MARLEY:
When them say, “Third World” countries them appeal to say, “Until the philosophies which hold one race superior and another inferior is totally destroyed and abandoned . . . War.” I don’t think there’s 10% Third World, but who is the “First World”, who is the “Second World”, why is there a “Third World”? I can’t dig the “world” business with them.

TERRELL:
Returning to your music; has its development been a conscious effort?

MARLEY:
Yeah—conscious and deliberate.

TERRELL:
One last question—rock critics here have given your album
Survival
and tour lukewarm reviews. At the same time, more people are being turned on to your music. What do you say about that?

MARLEY:
That is good, man, that make me understand the people is listening. At the same time there is a lot of people who love it because when I play “Is It Love” and the people say, “Aaaayyy!”— when it start I know one writer can’t stop that. First thing I learned from the man I learned how to take the media. That’s the first thing God tell me. He look ’pon me and say, “Son, remember . . . them who say a lot of bad things, don’t check it bad, when them say a lot of good things don’t check it bad.” You just remember, say one man write it, he might have a few more people who look over it, but the natural people is out there. Some of them they go an’ read it, some of them never ever see that before. The people will make sure of what they know. Every man I see in Harlem them face are not strange. I see them already. Same people, our people.

Out of Jamaica comes a star singing hellfire, revolution and biblical beginnings.
To the “downpressed” of the third world, Bob Marley is a hero. Now
he takes on America.

S
o he comes jiggling out onto the stage, this wiry, spindle-shanked singer, this self-styled black prince of reggae, his clenched fist high above his head, his dreadlocks flopping round his ears. The crowd rises to its feet and begins to scream and the singer shouts, “Yes!” and the crowd shouts, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” And then, with slight menace in his voice, the singer says, “Jesu, light the fire to my salvation. Whom shall I fear? Jah. Ras Tafari.” And the crowd screams, “Jah, Jah, Ras Tafari” and begins to whistle and clap and the band begins to play and the singer slides into one of his early songs called “Lively Up Yourself.”