Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright (14 page)

It is the final concert of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ European tour at the Rainbow Theater in London. His American tour begins next Thursday at New York City’s Paladium. After six albums in the last five years, Bob Marley has emerged as Jamaica’s chief cultural hero, its Cassandra, singing wonderfully well of doom and desolation. Despite the growing popularity of reggae (pronounced REGgay) music, it is most odd that this Caribbean wild man, with his dreadlocks, his ganja-inspired revelations, has attracted such a hysterical following. A gospel of death to the “downpressors” does not seem in keeping with these tame times.

But here he is in front of an overcrowded house, half of them black, half of them white, singing of burning and looting, of revolution, of lightning, thunder, brimstone and fire, On the stage behind Marley is a lurid backdrop, complete with huts, fires and telegraph poles— meant to resemble Trenchtown, the squalid Kingston ghetto where he was raised. To the right of the stage is the flag of Ethiopia and a banner depicting the Conquering Lion of Judah. At Marley’s previous London concert, there were numerous stabbings and tonight the police and vigilant groups of black security men prowl through the theater. It is a young audience and the kids have taken to turning up at Marley’s concerts in natty urban-guerrilla gear. Boots, berets and clenched-fist salutes are popular. The theater is thick with the sharp aroma of burning marijuana.

Marley breaks into “War,” a speech of Haile Selassie’s he set to music. It is like an invocation. “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war. Me say war,” he chants. Behind Marley the five Wailers strike up and, to the side, the I-Threes, the female back-up singers (including Rita, Marley’s common-law wife) in tribal dress, turbans and beaded necklaces pick up the harmonies. Marley tends to act out his songs with exaggerated rage and anguish, throwing his head into his hands, crying or strutting up and down the stage as he sings. “Until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes, there will be war, everywhere war,” he sings and all these clean and fresh-faced kids who wouldn’t know the difference between an Ingram M10 and a machete scream and throw their fists in the air.

In a contemporary rock world devoid of the revolutionary caterwauls of the ’60s, Marley and his rebel music have inspired a genuine cult. Although his albums sell well in America (the recently released “Exodus” is currently a candidate for No. 1), Marley’s significance goes far beyond his commercial success. His popularity in the Caribbean, in West Africa (where such pop stars as the Nigerian dissident Fela have long emulated him) and in the large black communities in England and on the Continent is attributable to his fervent jeremiads against the system, “the hypocrites of Babylon” as he calls them, and his music is flavored with tribute to the God of his Rastafarian beliefs. It has taken Bob Marley nearly 15 years of failure and false starts, but he has become the third world’s first real superstar.

Strictly speaking, Bob Marley does not live anywhere, at least for long. Occasionally, he may be found in London or at his mother’s home in Wilmington, Del., or while on tour in one or another of the European capitals. He is always difficult to find and he is fond of saying, “Me jus’ possin’ tat.” When he is in Jamaica, which he rarely is anymore, he can usually be found at his rambling house on Hope Road in Kingston.

The large yellow wooden house, with rust-red shutters and a green tin roof (the colors of the Ethiopian flag) is set back from the road behind white pillars and a white fence in two acres of lightly forested land. It is an old house in which I, coincidentally, lived briefly some 10 years ago. Except for recent renovations and the ragtag group of Rastas smoking herb in the back yard, comparatively little has changed.

I had had two appointments to see Marley but he had been asleep or around the corner on both occasions, which is not surprising in a country where the cocks are said to crow at noon, where punctuality is considered rude and the national saying seems to be “Soon come, soon come.”

We are talking in the back yard under the large poinciana tree. Doctor birds squawk overhead and a large buzzard bisects the sky. Outside the gate, speeding cars and a scruffy herd of goats pass down Hope Road. Marley’s silver BMW is parked in the yard and Marleypretends to believe he purchased it because he thought BMW stood for Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Off-stage, Marley is quiet and curiously withdrawn. He has a nice smile and laughs a lot. A short fellow with a wispy goatee, he wears a red and white striped tam, which covers most of his 14-inch-long dreadlocks. He chain-smokes the herb, or spliffs as they are called, smoking about a pound a week. He has the glazed eyes of a man who likes to dream.

For 15 years Marley has been singing of a benighted people caught up in the octopal tentacles of an inept and often corrupt government. Songs such as “Concrete Jungle,” “Rebel Music,” “Burnin’ and Lootin’,” “Them Belly Full” and “I Shot the Sheriff” articulate the plight of the Jamaican ghettos—urging change and preaching revolution should change not come.

The songs are filled with such lines as “A hungry mob is an angry mob,” “Cold ground was my bed last night, rockstone was my pillow too,” “It takes a revolution to make a solution,” “If you are the big tree, we are the small ax sharpened to cut you down” and “Rise up all you fallen fighters, rise up and make your stand again.” Marley, of course, refers specifically to Jamaica but the analogies to much of the rest of the world are exact and obvious.

After 15 years of independence, the Jamaican Government is broke. Prime Minister Michael Manley was swept into power in 1972 and again in 1976 and promised the usual new dawns. In 1972, a reggae song called “Better Must Come” became his campaign slogan, and it was a hit in the island. But better has not yet come.

Because of widespread urban terrorism, a state of emergency was Invoked in June of last year; it was lifted just two months ago. During 1976 there were some 200 politically motivated killings. Unemployment in Jamaica is currently running at 24 percent. The Government has recently passed import restrictions on a wide variety of manufac- tured goods. Manley wishes to turn Jamaica into a republic of democratic socialism within the British Commonwealth. Tourism is down by 35 percent from last year and many hotels have closed. Since 1972, some 245 million Jamaican dollars have been spirited out of the country. Some 40,000 Jamaicans have left, mostly the middle classes, who fear new outbreaks of violence, socialism, or both. There are, for example, only 95 dentists left in the island, or one for every 22,000 people. Given Michael Manley’s recent alliances with Fidel Castro, many of his countrymen have taken to calling him “Miguelito.”

The Rastafarians like to say that bauxite and tourism are down and ganja and reggae are up and they are not far wrong. Since Manley has been in power, Marley has been singing that the system was down-pressing the people, that capitalism was a plague and that Babylon would burn. Last year, Island Records (Marley’s label) attempted to persuade the Jamaican Government to sanction reggae as the country’s national music in much the way that bossa nova has become the national music of Brazil. They were turned down. How can you have a national music that does little more than snipe at the nation? “Look round you,” said Marley in his low, lilting Jamaican patois, “dere’s a war goin’ on. Da system we live in is wrong. Right now, the devil him have plenty influence. De devil him struttin’ everywhere.”

“De Government is tramplin’ over de people’s sweat and tears. Comin’ down hard, hard. We’re oppressed, so we sing oppressed songs and sometime people find themselves guilty. And dey can’t stand do terrible weight of it. But Babylon don’ want peace, Babylon want power, Babylon want to keep the people down. We mus’ fight against the darkness. It is better to die fightin’ for your freedom den to be a prisoner all do days of your life. It is better dat righteousness cover do earth like water cover de sea.”

Marley laughs and picks his teeth with a chew stick. “We’re not talkin’ bout burnin’ and lootin’ for material goods. We want to burn capitalistic illusions. Anyway, Jamaica jus’ run outta politics today. Me no deal with politics. Me sing and deal with de trot’ de best I can. Me sing de song and hope de people catch de tune and mark do words. People have plenty misunderstanding, mon. No ting is important dat much. Love life and live it, dat’s all.”

Bob Marley was born on Feb. 6, 1945, in the village of Rhoden Hall in the parish of St. Ann on the northern side of Jamaica. Marley prefers to say he was born in Babylon. His father, a white British Army captain, came to Jamaica during the war and married Marley’s mother—a black woman from the interior. Marley has two brothers and a sister. He does not remember his father at all. “Don’ remember me father, only hear of his death,” he says. “Don’ know what he died of, no, no, not really. He jus’ die, mon.”

In St. Ann’s, the family farmed—coffee, bananas and yams—and Marley became proficient at milking goats and raising food. When he was 9, his mother moved the family to Kingston—Waltham Park and thence to Trenchtown—ghettos not unlike those of Bombay or the South Bronx. Despite new Government building, Trenchtown remains a hideous place—row upon row of stucco buildings and shanties built of tarpaper, corrugated tin and chicken wire.

Marley remained at school until he was 16 and then found work as an electrical welder. The times were difficult. The family had little money. They lived in a two-room shack on Second Street and Mar-ley’s mother ran a cookshop and did housework on the side.

Marley had picked up a little music while still in school. “During school break, de teacher she say, ‘Who can talk, talk, who can make anything, make, who can sing, sing.’ And me sing.” The music was everywhere, blaring into the streets from radios and jukeboxes and from the countless little record shacks—American soul music, Otis Redding, the Drifters, James Brown, calypso, steel band, meringue, Curtis Mayfield, Nat (King) Cole, Fats Domino, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley and the Jamaican big-band sounds such as Byron Lee and the Skatallites. “Dere was plenty music, plenty music,” Marley recalls, “all comin’ like a spirit strong, strong into me.”

Alvin (Seeco) Patterson, the Wailers’ percussion man, met Mar-ley in Trenchtown in 1963. Marley was 17. They used to sit outside time neighborhood kitchens in the evenings and sing. None of them played an instrument. “That year,” said Seeco, “Bob win some talent contest and me know right away he would be a de-angerous showman. He learn plenty quick. Anything you do, rude or no rude, Bob him write a song ’bout it. All de talent in Jamaica was in Trenchtown den and it was a nice place to live. No riot. No violence. People, dey get along. Politricks change dat later.” Seeco always calls it politricks.

Marley soon gave up welding and with Rita opened up a record shop, called Wailin’ Soul, in a little shack about the size of two bathrooms. There was a speaker outside on the step blasting the current ska, which was a kind blend of syncopated Caribbean music, bebop and American soul, into the crowded streets. The shop never made any money, but it gave Marley a chance to play in public singles of his own that he had begun to record.

The Wailers began as a vocal group, picking up instruments when they learned to play and when they could afford to buy them. He called his group the Wailers, as in those who are oppressed, and in 1963 Robert Marley and the Wailers recorded their first song. It was-called “Judge Not” and Marley was paid $50. It was not a success.

Throughout the ’60s, Jamaican music was undergoing enormous change. The influences were extremely varied, ranging from calypso to the theme song of the movie “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” which went to No. 1 in Jamaica in 1967. In the early and mid-’60s, ska was followed by rock steady, a laid-back form of ska with less improvisation and more calypso.

The derivations of reggae are rather more obscure. Toots Hibbert, the lead singer of Toots and the Maytals, is generally credited with coining the word in 1966 with his song “Do the Reggay.” But the word had been in the streets for years. During the mid-’60s I remember certain Jamaican girls were occasionally called “streggai”—meaning they were slatterns. “Me used to hear people say you can’t use dat word or you go to jail,” said Marley. “Used to say dat ’bout a low lady. If she hear you say it she don’t feel too good ’bout it. Not a bad word, but if the lady hear, the Lord don’ like it.” Whatever its derivations, reggae—with its syncopated rhythms, Caribbean lilt, American black soul, biblical chantings and ganja-high detachment—had evolved into the Jamaican sound by the early 70’s and was being heard outside the island for the first time.

Prior to 1972, Marley and the Wailers released four albums in Jamaica. They were the island’s biggest reggae stars and yet Marley made little more than $200 for his efforts. In those days, Jamaican artists were constantly ripped off by their producers and tales of the plunder are commonplace. “In de beginnin’ every people rob and cheat you,” said Marley. “Dem was some bad pirates, too, comin’ down like Dracula on reggae. On payment was mean and me know plenty artists driven mad by Babylon.”

In 1972, Marley signed with Chris Blackwell of Island Records and, at last, had international distribution. Blackwell, a wealthy white Jamaican who started Island in 1962, knew what he was doing. “Blackwell is as good with money as some men are good with dogs. Blackwell would make money in a lazaretto.” The first albums Island released in America—“Catch a Fire,” “Burnin’,” “Natty Dread” and “Rastaman Vibrations”—did not do as well as expected, but reggae was becoming fashionable. By 1975, Taj Mahal, Barbara Streisand, and Johnny Nash had all recorded Marley songs. Nash had two American hits with “Guava Jelly” and “Stir It Up,” and in 1976 Eric Clapton recorded “I Shot the Sheriff,” which promptly went to No.1 on the charts. Reggae was on its way. And with it came the popularizing of the Rastafarian faith, of which Bob Marley was to become the most famous disciple.