Bob Marley: 4. Legend

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. This episode contains adult themes and references to drugs.

I think he means so much to people, way beyond the music, doesn't he? As to Oh yes. More than being a star. Being a star is is not all, you know, because after a while the star either falls out or fades out. It's November nineteen eighty. At the BBC, Rita Marley is in the hot seat. So you have to first try to save yourself as a person. 'Cause you ha you represents yourself. So if you don't try to save yourself

It don't mean anything to not even the fans that that that cheers you out there. When you're not there, that's it. Rita had married Bob Marley in nineteen sixty six. Fourteen years later, the idea of him not being there must have felt unthinkable. It's a reality that she's gonna have to face very soon. But it's not one that she's ready to share. What is the truth about uh uh where Bob is and uh how well he is at the moment? Well he's in Shashamani in Ethiopia.

Resting as far as I I know. You know, and I've spoken to him two days ago and he's fine. Same Bob and you know He's just recuperating from tension and stress, pressure. When he's not on the road, he's in the studio. When he's not in the studio he's there uh tending to needs of people, listening and taking problems and you know. He never stops. And it's only natural for him to take a break. Six months after this interview takes place, the world will lose Bob Marley.

But his final years are some of his most interesting. He'll travel the world, take bold new stands, and claim his place among the 20th century's most important icons, musical or otherwise. I'm Trevor Elson and this is Ares, Bob Marley. Episode 4, Legend. Playing football with him in Battersea Park, that's the time when I really got to to know him.

During the time he spent in London in the late 70s, musician and entrepreneur Levi Root spent many a Sunday with Bob Marley. If Rustaferianism was his highest calling, and music was his mission. Football was a thing he loved entirely for itself. think of Bob as uh first of all a player like a Maradona. Um'cause he was very short Mar Marley was. I think a lot of people because of the dread and the the massive hair and everything, people think of him as a as a big fellow.

He had this low sense of gravity when he was moving along on on on the pitch. Off the pitch, Bob was a quiet man. It's that peaceful aura that sticks to his image today. But with a ball at his feet. He was back on the streets of Kingston, every inch the tough gong. Like a general on the field that was always calling for the ball. So he was always shouting and screaming to get the ball so he could run at defense. And I was playing in defense, uh, you know, I was a centre back.

You know, my heroes in those days was people like Ron Chopper Harris and players that were, you know chop the legs off the striker and hoof the ball into Rose Ed. He would be coming at me, you know, like uh like a train. I used to think that, you know, that's the king of reggae here. You can't play like Ron Chopper Harris in the king of reggae.

When you're a striker, you're gonna pick up a few injuries. And when Bob discovered a wound on the nail of his big toe after a game in 1977, he put it down to one of those. But injuries heal. This didn't. Bob was diagnosed with acryl melanoma, a rare form of skin cancer that disproportionately affects people of colour. It wasn't common knowledge to the best of my memory. Um I was aware

I think there are only a handful of people aware right at that particular time. Tim Clark, then the managing director of Island Records, was one of the few who were in the know. Well as you can imagine, it it was just he's too young. He's uh how can this happen? I think everybody thought, well, with chemo and so on, maybe this can be fixed. The first doctor he saw recommended amputation. Bob refused.

He believed that he could fight the cancer through alternative methods. He was so much into herbal medicine and her herbal cure. That um he was very stubborn. And I think um he wanted stick to his belief. Loxley Gitchy, a founding member of the original British reggae band, the Simmerens, knew Bob when he first visited London in the early seventies.

They believe in his his own way of curing, so it stood firm. In the years that followed, Bob's global celebrity would balloon. Exodus and Kia, the LP's released after his self-imposed exile to London. Featured a lot of the sweet, happy songs he's best remembered for today. But the follow-up to those albums, 1979 Survival, had more in common with the records he'd released earlier in the decade. As we know, Bob might have objected.

To the term, but this record was his most political in years. I mean, when we say political, I mean And you know, there's politics with a big P and there's politics with a small P and there's that kind of politics which is you might call kind of social reportage, I suppose, you know, explaining how things are. Pauline Black, lead singer of The Selector. And and that's what he's doing. And he manages to rise above everybody else. And not only has people in Jamaica listening.

Uh he has people worldwide listening. And I think that was the extraordinary thing about Bob Marley. The world was One track in particular became an unofficial anthem for a people with a long history of oppression. Rhodesia in Southeast Africa was a British colony. For years, it had been caught up in a bloody war between the ruling white minority and black nationalists. In nineteen eighty, Robert Mugabe was elected by a landslide as the leader of a newly independent nation, Zimbabwe.

Obviously, 40-odd years on, we know that Mugabe went on to lead one of the continent's most brutal dictatorships. But at that time, he was welcomed by many as a liberating hero. And since the beginning of the conflict, Jamaican rusters, like Bob Marley, has stood in solidarity with black Zimbabweans. Reggae musician and academic Michael Reilly.

When we was talking about Drenchtown and one of the challenges was the government itself coming down really heavy on Rastas, it was because they were saying they are Africans. We are Africans and we ought to be looking at the history of Africans. We ought to be looking at the oppressor in that they're referring to the whole colonial system.

the history of slavery and we should be challenging that. And that meant challenging the government as well, who was still hand in glove with the colonial system.

Peter Tosh, always the most militant of the whalers, had even been arrested for protesting against the Rhodesian regime. His daughter, Niambi Macintosh explained. My father, you know, wanted in a in a day and age when everything black was viewed as negative, everything African was viewed as negative. to make such a strong stance as, you know, this is something positive and something that we celebrate.

One warm spring evening in 1980, Bob was sat with Tommy Cowan, the marketing manager of Tuff Gong Records, at his home in Kingston. In the afterglow of survival, he was in Jamaica recording its successor, Uprising. Two Zimbabweans arrived on the scene. They came with a message.

Speaking to the BBC in nineteen eighty-three, Tommy remembered what they said. Zimbabwe had gotten our independence and they had come to Jamaica to see Mali because they would be honored if Mali came and played for their independence. They said um when we were losing the war, it was your music that won it. They said for your prime minister and members of government, we send them a letter of invitation. For you, Mali, we come personal.

On the 17th of April 1980, Bob and the Whalers arrived at Rufaro Stadium in Harari, Zimbabwe's capital. I imagine uh you felt it wa it was an honor to be asked to do that gig, but it was it was one of the events and one of the most amazing events you could be asked to really. Yeah, well it's that as people really listen. You know? The people in Zimbabwe. I mean Zimbabwe opened up the eye for Africa really. No that

Rastafara is the road to Africa, you know, so it can make Africa become Africa more and more. King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, watched as the Union flag was lowered and Zimbabwe's new banner was raised. Robert Mugabe delivered a speech promising an era of peace and reconciliation. And then Bob Marley took to the stage. Inside the stadium sat 40,000 invited guests, including world leaders and foreign dignitaries, but Bob's reputation had preceded him.

Just outside the stadium, a huge crowd had gathered, desperate to be part of this moment, to commune with a musician who represented so much more than music. As the melodies wafted over the walls, the authorities cracked down on the people outside, and something wafted back. What did you feel about that? Suddenly finding um, you know, you're in the middle of a real celebration, possibly the greatest celebration a country could ever have. And uh

Suddenly you find that yet again there's a bit of trouble like that, some tear gas flying around and so on. So, you know. Nice, nice still. Nice me p really feel good for tears lick like the tear gas in Zimbabwe, you know. There was a the good feeling about it. Got little pressure in there. Yeah. The good vibe started at midnight, man. Obviously, it took more than a little tear gas to put the wind up, Bob Marley.

Well, you know, I figure it was like 5 minutes before 12 o'clock or something like that, you know. And they must have fired about 20, Kenan. You know what I mean? And then I jump in flyover. I mean. It's hard to imagine most artists sticking around after something like that. But the day after the ceremony, Bob returned to the stadium to play for another hundred thousand people.

For a man living with a terminal illness, whether he believed that or not, this level of commitment to his craft and to his fans was almost superhuman. And 1980 didn't let up. Where do you place um uprising? and uh your development. I mean nineteen years now you've been recording fairly long time Well Uprising, you know, Uprising comes like the first album. It's like the first album. Yeah to me. Really? Yeah, it's the the first

We really record an album, you know, our one like a vicinity, you know. Mm. We don't go outside a any other studio, you know. It'd become the first album. So you feel it it's a kind of going back? We know it's forward because you know it's a first. Is a first from no. There were a few firsts on the uprising LP. Talking to the BBC in 2022, DJ David Rodigan told us how he managed to get his hands on one of them before anyone else.

It was a Friday afternoon. I was climbing the stairs at Island Records and I couldn't believe who was walking down the stairs. It was Bob Marley, with family man Barrett from the Wailers. And I stood and I was spellbound. I thought, what do I do? I'll jump protocol. Excuse me, uh would you mind uh Mr Marley, Bob what you know? Um my name's David Broderigan, I have a reggae show every Saturday night. Would you please be my guest tomorrow night? Please, please.

And he said, Yeah, sure, okay. And then he said to me, Would you like me to play a new song I've just finished working on here at the studio? I said, what? Of course I would. So we go back up the stairs into the listening room at Ainland Records. He takes a cassette out, puts it in, presses play. I'm hearing this song, and I'm thinking, no one will believe. With its undeniable groove, spoke to Bob's desire to crack the black American audience that empowered the rise of disco in the 70s.

And there's another song on Uprising that simply stands alone. It's just you and uh acoustic guitar. Um what uh what led you into that that very quiet thing which which is rare for you? We always have acoustic music and things that go on, you know. But this song, you know, the man said,

Do it to the Acoustic Alone. This song was, if anything, the polar opposite of Could you be Love's Disco Pulse. For the first time, his audience heard Bob as he might have sounded in those very early years in Trenchtown. One man, one guitar, one message. For footballer and pundit Ian Wright, that makes it hit all the harder. This one's deep because I remember when Alex Ailey's roots came out.

It was really quite hard in our school for a while because the slavery thing and not really knowing about slavery until you watch Roots. Then you start to find out what went on and next few days at school it turned into anger and it was real nightmare. And I remember this song was one that I listened to a lot in and around that time. Just it just talks about those things. It's a powerful The Uprising Tour began in May nineteen eighty, just over a month after Bob's experience in Zimbabwe.

It was set to be Bob's most ambitious yet. The tiny shows he'd played on his first tours were, by now, a distant memory. This time, he was out to break records. On that tour, Mali I think, broke all the gate receipts of Europe at that time. We had in Milan over 100,000 people and um there was a sold out audience right across Europe. Tough gong marketing manager Tommy Cowan remembered the immense scale of the thing.

That was thought up after the tour. No longer Marley could play indoors, he would After drawing record crowds in Europe and saying goodbye to the UK with a sold-out show in Crystal Palace, he crossed the Atlantic.

But this would be Bob Marley's final tour. He discovered he was ill at the same time when he he himself knew. This was on the American tour. First one was at the Madison Square Garden and we were now on our way to Pittsburgh. Marcia Griffiths, singer and one third of the whalers backing vocalist, the Eye Freeze. When we reached there he was missing. When we call back to find out, we hear that he had gotten a stroke in the park. And he went to get some tests and they were very negative.

So this was whenever one knew that he was really sick. And the following night he did perform just the same. And that was the last show that he ever did in Pittsburgh. How did he cope with the knowledge that he had cancer? Well I can tell you that he was very positive. With all what was going on, he just had a strong belief. He never did thought about anything like that. On the eleventh of may nineteen eighty one, death was all anyone could think about.

Levi Roots remembers. I remember I was having a little walk down the front line in Brixton on Relton Road as you did back then to go and buy your little Weed to have a smoke to do what Marley had said to escape from reality. And I was coming down the front line and I remember seeing my friend, his name was Natali, Brian, his real name was. And I saw Brian in tears. and Brian collapsed on my shoulder in tears and he's telling me that the gong is dead and I couldn't remember

That Bob was called the Gong. So I was trying to say to to Brian, you know, who the hell is the gong? You know, he keeps saying the gong is dead and he was absolutely flossed in tears. And it wasn't until after a while that it really got to me that Bob Marley was the tough gong. And that was his nickname. And then it really hit me. And I started to cry.

And I'll never forget this moment of these two grown men, um, you know, in the middle of the night, perhaps about midnight, uh and crying for each other. Well today the world of reggae has begun to mourn the death of its greatest star, Bob Marley. He died yesterday of cancer in a Miami hospital. His final months were spent in clinics in Germany and America. In the last months of his life, Bob was surrounded by friends and family, people whose lives he'd changed forever.

Like his friend and former bandmate Lee Jaffe. You'd been so vibrant and so full of life and He was so important in my life, and to see him physically deteriorating was really, really painful and sad. Bob Marley was buried where it all began. Back in the village of Nine Miles. They built a chapel just for him. He's resting there now. A guitar in one hand and a Bible in the other.

He wasn't a man of material. He's a he's more l a spiritual man and he he had a work to do and he has done it very well. Today his wife Rita Marley is a custodian of his legacy. A juice he shared with his twelve children. When people pass on, you sort of miss or loss what they were really, you know, sharing or giving. So

His spirit is even more dominant to us, the family. We share a spiritual life with him, which is natural, it's just that we can't see him. But we are sure that he lives. And in a way, he does.

Because death is not the end of Bob Marley's story. In 1982, Peter Tosh and Bunny Whaler reunited to play a festival in Jamaica. An incident took place that It's incredible. After the show was finished, we went home. Everything was nice and great. It's like the next day, a couple of days later we heard that Bob's spirit passed through and his little daughter saw him personally and what the spirit said to him, How was the show? He could not make it.

In the world of the living, Bob's music was about to find new life. By the time of his death, Bob had a global following. But as Chris Blackwell explained to the BBC, in two thousand and seven, that didn't necessarily translate into cold hard numbers. Because a lot of parts of the world where he's very popular, people don't have the money to buy the records, so the records have been sort of traded.

one would call it bootlegging in a sense, uh on cassettes, etc. For example, throughout Africa, he's just absolutely enormous, but it doesn't reflect in the actual technical record sales. Before he died he'd sold sixty million albums, which was good, you know. U B forty's Ali Campbell. But U B forty sold seventy million, you know what I mean? Uh since his death he sold another hundred million on top of that, probably more than that now, you know.

A good number of those sales come from one incredible act of marketing savvy. I'm a big fan of Bob Marley and obviously looked at the various sales figures as you do joining a new company. And I was a bit amazed to find that uh, despite uh my interest in him, he was really a just a cult figure in terms of sales. That's Dave Robinson. When he joined Ireland Records in 1983, Chris Blackwell asked him to put together Bob Marley's greatest hit.

I mean the the name legend came up very quickly. Everyone in the groups and they were broad from about eighteen to about forty five. Said he's a legend. It was Dave who settled on the track list for Legend, the biggest selling reggae album of all time. To be fair, he did have a little bit of help. My wife, Rosemary, she was uh hugely pregnant with our second son, Jack. And we would listen a couple of times a week.

to the ideas I had trekwise. Jack, meanwhile, was getting to the point of arriving, and he would kick her a lot at that time, as in neutro children do. But I found after about three months of doing because I changed the track listing, I just tried one different track here, one different track there. Eventually Baby Jack kicked Rosemary so much that they figured he must have gotten it right. So in actual fact Jack Robinson is responsible for the track listing of Legends.

There was an advertising blitz on TV and radio, as well as a groundbreaking campaign at record stores. There were dispensers full of legend cassettes installed on shop counters which saw the release go off with a massive bang. The figures immediately showed that our efforts were going in the right direction. We surpassed Exodus.

fairly swiftly within a month or so. It went to number one and week by week we were keeping it there. Uh I think it for about eight weeks, the first couple of months, it was number one.

That was legend, and the rest is history. Today, Bob Marley's remembered as so much more than a musician. There was no one like him. There was no black performer, musician like him. Bob's friend, the photographer Dennis Morris. Bob Marley literally changed the world in many, many ways. And we as Westinians in England, we found a confidence that we never had. We had a leader.

a spokesperson. And so that changed us as well. And so that's what he did. He gave us as a people, black and white, confidence to step forward. It was a great African word. Griot. Benjamin Zephaniah. There's no English word for it. Some people try and say bard and um troubadour. It's a storyteller and a poet and a musician. And uh political agitator all mixed into one. His music and his message still captivates people of all ages. Stacey Solomon

I grew up with Bob Marley all the time and I just love it. I feel like everyone comes together and is singing along and just really happy for that one moment in I play it for the kids now and I just feel like yes, I get to influence them with a bit of like fun love. Family circle time. And that's happening all the time, all over the world. I've seen people holding up Bob Mali's photo in some strange places. You know, places like um might be Afghanistan, might be my Jerusalem.

Billy Ocean. I've seen um documentaries of far-fetched corners of the world and somebody's wearing a Bob Marley t-shirt. Bob Marley's always gonna go down as one of the great songwriters, one of the great performers of any time. John Legend. The songs will stay alive forever and I think part of our job as fellow musicians is to carry the tradition forward. More than forty years after his death, he's still reggae's mightiest ambassador.

Sutzinamato's drummer Paul Douglas. They're all great, Peter Tut and Bunny. They're all great. But there's something about Bob. When he opens his mouth, oh my goodness, this all And the music that he did so much to spread around the globe is still going straight. I would agree with the statement that there is no other person like Bob and Peter. That is a is a fair statement. But reggae continues to evolve. Peter Tosh's daughter. You will find huge music festivals that happen around the world.

There's something about reggae that really when you start to listen to the message, it is a message of one love. But one love is a love not only um Not only in like theory, but it's a love of self. It then becomes a love of the world around you, a love of people around you. Comedian Babatunde Alexhe. Even being a black bri who has Nigerian heritage, Bob has just been a inspiration.

To many, including myself. I d just love the fact that uh his children carry on his legacy. The legend of Bob Marley lives on. Right here, right now. I tell you the truth, you know, I am not that enormous person or a star, you know. This is a man of the ghetto.

On the final episode of Eras, Bob Marley, I'm sitting down with Bob's daughter Sadella Marley and his grandson Skip Marley for a chat about Bob's legacy and what's in store for the eras yet to come. Watch on iPlayer or listen on BBC Sound. You've been listening to Eras, Bob. For BBC Sounds and Radio Two with the collaboration of Ireland. It was presented by me, Trevor Nelson, written and produced by Joe French. The executive producers were Matt Everett and Graham Hodge.

For BBC Sounds, the commissioning executive was Will Wilkin and the Commissioning Producer was Hannah Clapham. Head of production was Rebecca Mills. Our production managers were Sara Garcia Anderson and Maxim Taylor. Production coordination and archive research was by Maxim Taylor. Our editor was Alex Bernard. Mixer Mastering was by Joel Cox and Rob Spate. This series of eras there's loads more to enjoy. For more music, archive and interviews from the Beatles.

Ding and Kylie Minogue search errors on BBC Sounds.