Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright (28 page)

I
T was April 1980, the end of a hard week, around 4 pm, on a Friday afternoon. Mick Carter was in his office, thinking about maybe leaving early for the weekend. Then the phone rang.

Bob Marley was calling from the Tuff Gong International offices in Kingston. Could Mick organize a crew and all the necessary equipment and fly to Salisbury in Rhodesia over the weekend? On Tuesday, 18 April, the country was changing its name to Zimbabwe, and the city would be renamed Harare.

Bob had two officials from Zimbabwe’s government in his office with him, and they had asked him to perform at the independence ceremonies. Cost was to be no barrier: Bob, whose tune “Zimbabwe” had proved inspirational to the ZANLA freedom fighters, was paying for it all out of his pocket. He would be playing amidst the ruins of Great Zimbabwe.

At the Islands Record offices in West London, Denise Mills received a similar call: “Bob said he was flying into London over the weekend and wanted to continue straight on to Africa. Could we arrange it?”

Within two hours, Carter had booked his crew and PA equipment. More importantly, he had also chartered a 707 waiting on the tarmac at Gatwick airport.

The next day the plane took off at Gatwick, carrying the agent, the lighting, the soundmen and the sound equipment.

The advance party for this Bob Marley expedition to Africa caused much bewilderment when it arrived at Salisbury airport, as it was then still known.

“The import people hadn’t a clue what to do, how to deal with us,” Carter said.

“What got us and everyone through was a huge bag of Bob Marley T-shirts that I had sensibly persuaded Island to give me before I left. These were liberally dispensed all around. And it also helped enormously that I was wearing an Exodus tour jacket, which was my passport to everything.”

The only contact Carter had been given was an address in Harare—Job’s Nite Spot, a club run by one Job Kadengu, a secondhand car dealer who worked for Zanu PF, who had somehow become the promoter.

Kadengu passed Carter to a certain Edgar Tekere, the minister for planning and development. At 3:30 am, on Sunday morning, Carter was driven in a taxi to Tekere’s bungalow to wake him up and receive instructions.

A bleary-eyed Tekere directed Carter to the Rufaro Stadium on the edge of Harare where the independence ceremony was to be held. When he and his crew arrived there, a team of night watchmen loomed out of the darkness, trying to chase them off.

Within hours, Carter had secured the services of a squad of soldiers and a scaffolding company to build the stage.

“But the wood we were given was green and came from a damp warehouse. As the sun came and dried it, the planks turned rotten. We laid down tarpaulin, but we kept having to make chalk-marks where the holes were. I saw two wooden gates, and had them taken down and they became the PA stage.”

But there was still no electrical power and there seemed little hope of the promised generator arriving to provide it.

“However,” Carter remembers, “we found a cable running underneath the pitch. It provided electricity to a nearby village (township). So this guy jumped in and cut it for us to tap into it and as he did so, you could see the lights go out in the village.”

There were no hotels booked for the Marley party. Everywhere was full, booked up weeks before, to accommodate visiting dignitaries who were coming from all over the world for the independence ceremony. Although he temporarily managed to secure a hotel room, Carter was kicked out of it at gunpoint by several soldiers.

Bob and the Wailers were taken to a guest-house 20 miles out of town; even so, there were not enough rooms for the group and Bob shared his room with Neville Garrick, Family Man, Gillie and Dennis Thomson, the engineer.

Bob took a commercial flight to Nairobi. As he waited in the transit lounge for his plane, he received an unexpected message from a royal equerry: Prince Charles was waiting in the VIP suite; would Bob care to come and join him and pay his respects?

If Prince Charles wanted to meet him, he should come out there and check him with all the people. Needless to say, Bob’s invitation was not accepted.

Some time later, as Bob and the Wailers sat by the window of the departure lounge, they saw the royal party crossing the tarmac in the direction of the royal jet. When Prince Charles had walked only a few yards, however, he turned and looked up at the window where Bob was sitting. Looking directly into Bob Marley’s eyes, Prince Charles smiled broadly. Then he continued on his way.

Bob and his party flew into Harare in the early evening of Sunday, 16 April.

With him were Denise Mills, Robert Partridge, and Phil Cooper, respectively the heads of press and international affairs at Island Records in London.

“The most amazing thing,” Denise remembers, “was the arrival at the airport.

“Joshua Nkomo, who was minister of home affairs in Robert Mu-gabe’s new government, and various cabinet officials had to line up and shake our hands. I couldn’t believe it: there were about 26 of us and I’m sure none of the people had a clue who we were.

“When we went to tea at the palace with these drunken soldiers and the president, it was so English and colonial: cucumber sandwiches and lemonade—all considered a bit off by the Wailers.

“However, Bob sang ‘No Woman No Cry’ at the piano for the president’s family.”

What no one had thought to inform Bob and his team was the precise nature of the first show they would be playing: it was scheduled for the slot immediately following the ceremony in which Zimbabwe would receive its independence and was to be performed in front of only the assembled dignitaries and the media as well as the party faithful, the international luminaries included Britain’s Prince Charles and India’s Indira Gandhi.

Such a scheduling implied that the events would have an exact order. But instead, Carter said: “It was complete anarchy. Bob went on immediately after the flag-raising ceremony. We had arrived at 8:30 in the evening, and were leisurely getting ready. We hadn’t realized just how suddenly they expected us on stage. When they announced us, we weren’t ready at all.”

In fact, the first official words uttered in Zimbabwe, following the raising of the new flag, were: “Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Marley and the Wailers.”

Twenty minutes later, Bob and The Wailers started their set. As soon as the first notes rang out, pandemonium broke loose in the enormous crowd gathered by the entrance to the sports stadium: the gates shook and began to break apart as the crush increased, the citi- zens of Harare, both excited and angry at being excluded from seeing these inspirational musicians.

As clouds of teargas drifted almost immediately into the stadium itself, the audience on the pitch fell on their feet in an attempt to protect themselves. The group members tasted their first whiffs of the gas and left the stage. “All of a sudden,” said Judy Mowatt, “you smell this thing taking over your whole body, going in your throat until you want to choke, burning your eyes. I looked at Rita (Marley) and Marcia and they were feeling the same thing.”

“I feel my eyes and nose,” remembered Family Man, “and think, from when I was born, I have to come all the way to Africa to experience teargas.”

Bob, however, seemed to have moved to a transcendent state. His eyes were shut, and for a while the gas didn’t seem to have an effect at all. Then he opened his eyes and left the stage.

Backstage, the group had taken refuge in a truck. Outside they could see small children fainting and women collapsing. It looked like death personified to Mowatt, who briefly wondered whether they had been brought to Zimbabwe to meet their ends.

She persuaded someone to drive her and the other I-Threes back to the hotel, only to discover on the television that the show had resumed. After about half an hour Bob and the Wailers had gone back on stage. They ended their set with “Zimbabwe,” a song Bob had worked on during his pilgrimage to Ethiopia late in 1978, and which became arguably his most important single composition.

Bob was just coming offstage as Mowatt and her fellow women singers returned to the stadium. “Hah,” he looked at them with a half-grin, “now I know who the real revolutionaries are.”

It was decided that the group would play another concert the following day, to give the ordinary people of Zimbabwe an opportunity to see Bob Marley.

Over 100,000 people—an audience that was almost entirely black—watched this show by Bob Marley and the Wailers. The group performed for an hour and a half, the musicians fired up to a point of ecstasy. But Bob, who uncharacteristically hadn’t bothered to turn up for the sound check, was strangely lackluster in his performance; a mood of disillusionment had set in around him following the tear-gassing the previous day.

After the day’s performance, the Bob Marley team was invited to spend the evening at the home of Tekere. This was not the most relaxed of social occasions.

As the henchmen strutted around with their Kalashnikovs, Mills was informed by Tekere that he wanted Bob to stay in Zimbabwe and tour the country. “Bob told me to say he wasn’t going to, but the guy didn’t want to hear me.”

While Bob remained in the house, Rob Partridge and Phil Cooper sat out in the garden. “I could hear,” said Cooper, head of international affairs, “Tekere saying to Bob, ‘I want this man Cooper. He’s been going around putting your image everywhere. He’s trying to portray you as a bigger man than our President.’ I could hear all this. “Then Bob came out and said to us, in hushed, perfect Queen’s English; ‘I think it’s a good idea for you to leave.’

“Partridge and I went and packed, and took the first international flight out, which was to Nairobi. About five months later Tekere was arrested and put in jail; he had been involved in the murder of some white settler.”

The next day Carter found himself being cajoled in the way Mills had been.

“Job Kadengu told me that there was a show in Bulawayo we had to do. But I was signing for trucks on behalf of the minister of development, Tekere, in other words. So we drove out to the airport with all the gear, loaded up the plane we’d chartered and left the country.”

B
ob Marley had 11 children (that he acknowledged). He performed and recorded with his wife, Rita, and she also had a solo career before they met, during their marriage, and after Bob passed on. Needless to say, their children are also extremely talented. Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers—featuring Ziggy’s older sisters Cedella and Sharon and his brother Stephen—have made inroads into the mainstream that eluded their father (several pop hits, the theme song to a TV show). Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley, Stephen Marley, and several other of his children also have developed fairly substantial recording careers.

But there are other routes to creativity. In addition to singing, Cedella has made her bones in fashion design with a line called Tuff Gong clothing.

Beyond that, one of the underplayed points about Bob Marley the man was that he was an accomplished athlete. In his youth, he might have dreamed of becoming a world-class soccer player instead of a world-class musician, and he was a committed, often daily player throughout his life. But at a shade over 5-foot-4, professional sports were not in his future.

However, his son Rohan became a football star in college, helping to lead the University of Miami Hurricanes to a college champi-onship in 1991. Despite his size (5'7''), he played briefly for the Ottawa Rough Riders in the Canadian Football League. Rohan also had the good taste to sire several children with multiple Grammy–winner Lauryn Hill.

W
elcome to Jamaica North.

Bob Marley himself could not have predicted the new popularity of reggae, nor its move into big business, with Miami as its base. Long after his death, members of his family and other South Florida artists are leading reggae into the mainstream.

The last few years have seen a flurry of activity, as local bands have evolved their music with new multi-genre sounds and taken greater commercial control of their product.

While such bands are cutting Grammy-winning albums, they also are producing songs for soundtracks, leasing others for commercials and even getting into the restaurant biz.

Reggae’s close association with Miami dates back to 1977, when Marley purchased a home here. Since then, practically the whole Marley clan has come to be based in South Florida, and in the 1990s several dozen more top reggae artists have relocated to Jamaica.

Last year, Bob’s brother Richard Marley Booker, and Bob’s sons Ziggy, Stephen, Rohan, Robbie, Julian and Damian formed the promotion company Marley Boys Inc., with the idea of taking reggae mainstream. Hence Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers—the most successful of the second-generation Marley bands—are featured in television ads for Cover Girl cosmetics.

From Miami, Booker heads up Nine Miles Inc., overseeing the Visitors Center in Jamaica, where tourists go to make pilgrimages to Bob’s birthplace. Booker also is exec producer of Miami’s Bob Marley Caribbean Festival each February.

The Marleys will swim further into the mainstream in late 1998 when they open the flagship of a planned chain of reggae cafes, similar to House of Blues, at Universal Studios in Orlando. More film and music deals are in the works.

After the Marleys, one of the earliest major bands to migrate to Miami was easy-listening reggae outfit Inner Circle. Two years ago, this self-managed outfit built a large, Mediterranean-style recording studio in North Miami, which also hosts IC’s in-house label, SoundB-woy Entertainment.

Miami’s indigenous reggae label, Shang Records in South Beach, is helmed by Clifton “Specialist” Dillon, who has his eye on the big prizes—film soundtracks, world tours, signing or creating big names in reggae.

Dillon has guided the recent career of Ky-mani Marley, snagging him spots on three soundtracks, “Money Talks,” “Senseless,” and “Movin on Up.” He also has Patra and Shabba Ranks (both new Miami residents), plus M.K. Shine and Mad Cobra on the Shang roster.

S
OMETIME past midnight a heavily tinted black Mercedes pulls up to the gate of Circle House, the posh private North Miami recording facility owned by reggae veterans Inner Circle. The driver cracks the window and extends an arm to activate the intercom, his long dreads brushing across his dark skin as the gate swings open. This is Stephen Marley, second son to Robert Nesta and Rita Marley, who inherited from his father not only a harrowing wail but also his less-celebrated-but-no-less-keen sense for the business of music, making him a sought-after producer by both reggae and hip-hop artists. Beside Stephen sits little brother Damian, son of Bob and Cindy Breakspeare (Jamaica’s former Miss World); he has inherited his father’s nickname “Gong” (Jr. in his case) and his mother’s long limbs, light complexion, and gorgeous face. Together the two Marleys recently scored the family’s fourth Grammy, taking the reggae award for Halfway Tree, a star-studded multi-artist collaboration held together by Damian’s pretty pout and Stephen’s savvy production.

As a Melody Maker back in the day with big brother Ziggy and sisters Cedella and Sharon, Stephen also had a share in winning three Grammys in 1988, 1989, and 1997. Their father himself never won one, dying three years before that category was added to the awards in 1984. Indeed the Grammys’ recognition of reggae is owed in large part to Bob’s lifework; winning seems almost an extension of their birthright. But if so many things come naturally to the Marley brood, it is Stephen who has taken charge of putting nature to good use. His is rarely the picture on the record or the name on the marquee, but like his father’s spirit, he is always present, even when his influence is unseen: coordinating the long list of guest artists and beatmakers; divvying up duties on every track; conjuring the actual sound in the studio.

Tonight the brothers are groggy. They’ve just awakened after spending all of the night and most of the day before in the studio, laying tracks with family friend Lauryn Hill. Slowly, slowly they are getting ready to do the same thing all over again. Stephen pulls a black equipment case out of the Mercedes trunk and hauls it into the studio. Damian lights a spliff, then wanders around the Circle House patio. He is shy and standoffish, huddled into the hood of his sweatshirt, even though he is ostensibly the Grammy winner, the star. Only when Stephen bounds back onto the patio does the interview begin as big brother tells how it is decided who will record what, when.

“Nature,” says Stephen, sifting a handful of herb in his palm. “You have to understand we are blood. We don’t have to say, ‘Jr. Gong, six o’clock tomorrow.’ It’s our nature. We don’t force.”

“It was my time,” Jr. Gong pipes in from his slouch on the opposite couch.

“Julian is the next project,” announces Stephen, nodding his head toward yet another brother who has recently arrived. And for Damian and Stephen personally, what’s next? “For us personally,” repeats Stephen. “Our personal end is Julian’s record. Same thing.”

Bob Marley’s twelve children grew up together with a shared sense of mission and religious fervor passed on by their various mothers. “It’s plain,” says Stephen, after taking a long toke, “My father being an icon, women a vehicle for bringing forth the seed. Them do their duty.” So there was never any friction among the households? “Woman a woman,” sighs Stephen, “have jealousy, but never animosity. When you see the seed, you see Bob. Women respect that.”

Is there a lot of pressure in living life as Bob Marley’s seed? “We are Rasta,” says Stephen through a cloud of smoke. “It’s very clear what we have to do on earth. Jah send a soldier to deal with the music for the revolution.” Passionate now, he rises to his feet. “We have been chosen as an instrument, a tool, to bring people together. One aim, one destiny, one heart.” He pauses, then walks toward a table laden with freshly delivered pizza. “No pressure in that.”

A
piece of new, a piece of old, Cedella Marley has taken pieces seen before and combined them with contemporary urban style to create a medley of then and now. Her premier line, Catch A Fire, introduces patchwork denim and leather to help every woman express her frivolously casual side.

Reared in an era that is already enjoying a revival, Cedella took fashion cues from all that surrounded her growing up. “My aunt used to take one of my mom’s dresses and make two tiny ones for me and Sharon,” said Cedella. “She taught me how to sew and I’ve loved it ever since.” The Catch A Fire line pays homage to the legendary I-Threes and to her stylish father, the natty dresser Bob Marley, Cedella’s biggest fashion influence. Adopting the name of his first album as dub for pieces he influenced, Marley’s lyrics brand belt buckles and t-shirts, while his rude boy style leaves its mark throughout.

Giving rebirth to retired wear is what Cedella’s clothing is about. With a refreshing combination of vintage styles and today’s urban trends, the line offers something for every independent woman. Without a doubt, Catch A Fire shows the unique perspective of a creator loyal to the classic ’70s look but who integrates her personal vision into every creation. “I couldn’t find anything out there that I really liked for myself,” Cedella explains, “so I started making these clothes for myself and it just took off from there.” Customizing denim for her family and celebrities such as Lil’ Kim, Sarah Jessica Parker, Amanda Lewis, Destiny’s Child, and Eve, Cedella recently decided to share her passion and past with the general public.

Catch A Fire offers everything from jeans to jackets, belts to bags. Full-length dresses and wrap-around skins are seductive. Patterned patches of leather or studded accents personalize each piece, all with a weathered look of comfort. Leather flower pins are the perfect accessory. Asymmetrical tees add flair and a line of under-tanks and briefs are shyly sexy.

For the woman who is confident about her sexuality but wants to keep it relaxed and understated, Catch A Fire is now available at
themarleystore.com
and select stores throughout the country.

Cedella Marley’s life has always been rooted in music and culture. Growing up in the hills of Jamaica, and touring the world as a Melody Maker, Cedella has had the best of both worlds. A little bit country, and a little bit rock ’n’ roll. As the first child of the legendary Reggae singer Bob Marley, Cedella has witnessed history in the making and she has not for one moment stopped to let anything pass her by. She has taken her vast influences of people and places, culture and sounds, and put them all to work.