These amazing black and white photographs were taken by photographer Leni Sinclair on June 14, 1975 at the Detroit Showcase Theater. Bob Marley and the Wailers were in Detroit to play a show in support of the Natty Dread album.
Please visit Leni Sinclair’s website at www.lenisinclair.com.
Today I share with you an interview from Bob’s last tour of the United States in September 1980. He appeared on “Like It Is” with Gil Noble. Gil Noble is an American television reporter and interviewer. He was the producer and host of New York City television station WABC-TV‘s weekly, “Like It Is”. The program focused primarily on issues concerning African Americans and those within the African Diaspora.
Bob Marley and the Wailers were in NYC to play Madison Square Garden with The Commodores on September 19th and 20th, 1980. Bob participated in many interviews during his stay in NYC, most of which have been shared on this blog.
Much like the UCLA 1979 interview, this is one of the most in-depth and detailed interviews that Marley participated in, lasting a little under 30 minutes.
The video footage of the interview has been shared in bits and pieces on the web. I have included it here in its entirety. This has seen a significant upgrade since it first started circulating. Enjoy!
Bob Marley on “Like It Is” with Gil Noble
Today I share with you a profile and interview conducted by Mike Stand for Smash Hits in August 1980. The interview occurs just one month prior to The Wailers’ two-night billing with The Commodores at Madison Square Garden in New York City. As many of you know, it is reported that The Wailers draw a larger crowd as an opening act than do The Commodores as the headliner. An audio recording and review of one of the shows can be found here. During his stop in New York City, Marley collapses while jogging in Central Park, and is subsequently diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
I will continue to share rare interviews and press clippings throughout Bob’s birthday week. Check back tomorrow for another gem! Enjoy!
London
© Jill Furmanovsky
IF THE first time you heard Bob Marley and the Wailers was when ‘Could You Be Loved’ came skanking out of the radio, you probably thought something undramatic like, “That’s nice”. And probably quite appropriate too in those relaxed circumstances.
But when I got the chance to do a short interview with Marley recently I can tell you that my knees were knocking and my one prayer to the journalistic gods was “Please don’t let me make a fool of myself.” Because Bob Marley means a lot — in fact I’d venture to suggest that worldwide he’s the most important artist working in any aspect of rock.
I’m sure there are a couple of dozen groups who’ve sold more records in the last few years, but that’s not the point. It’s not even of the greatest significance that he is the major influence behind the white reggae of The Police, Elvis Costello, The Clash and Joe Jackson.
The really impressive thing about Bob Marley is the status he has achieved in the black nations of the Third World as champion of social and political change. He’s acquired this through a succession of songs, summed up in one line from the Natty Dread album: “Them belly full but we hungry.”
Just how deeply he’d touched people was proved when he was invited to play at the Zimbabwe independence celebrations this year. When I asked Marley about it he smiled and sort of glowed with quiet pride but said very little, as if the occasion had been a private one, although the concert and ceremonials were conducted in front of tens of thousands in a football stadium.
He did mention one jarring note though. Before the historic midnight, a disturbance among the crowds jostling to get in was answered by the police firing tear gas. But Marley wasn’t going to let a minor upset spoil the honour and happiness he felt.
“It was an experience for I an’ I y’know, strong feh watch the t’ing workin’ out,” he said in his calm, quiet sing-song manner. “And we feel good feh taste little tear gas in Zimbabwe, get a little o’ th’oppression there.”
Marley is no tourist talking about “oppression” from a safe distance. He grew up in poverty in Jamaica and even when he became an international ‘star’, he stayed so close to the front line that in December 1976, gunmen in Kingston attempted to kill him two days before a Wailers concert which was being organised by supporters of Prime Minister Michael Manley. Marley was wounded, but he played the gig.
It’s no wonder he’s become a hero and an inspiring figurehead. But when I suggested this to him, he waved the idea aside as if it was far too pompous to have anything to do with him:
“No, music is the one that is the hero. We help the music. It is the univershal language and we carry a certain message. But Jamaican people not look on you as ‘star’. Them have love an’ respec’ an’ t’ing. To tell you the trut’ I am not enormous person, me just a man o’ the ghetto.”
*
THE PLAIN MAN OF THE GHETTO has been recording for 19 years now, and it’s worth telling his story briefly. He was born in 1945, son of an English army captain and a Jamaican woman, and by his early teens he had become involved with the dynamic music scene in what Toots and the Maytals christened “funky Kingston”.
There is some disagreement about when Marley cut his first disc, but the earliest offering I’ve seen was single called ‘Judge Not’ from 1961 which is described as ‘lightweight pop’. The big step forward came three years later with the formation of the Wailing Wailers, then purely a vocal group, including legendary Marley sidekicks Peter McIntosh (later ‘Tosh’) and Bunny Livingston (later ‘Wailer’).
Marley’s initial Jamaican hit ‘Simmer Down’ was a ska number (covered this month by London band Mobster). He also came up with ‘Rude Boy’, which is reckoned to be the first song about the snappy-dressing gangsters of Kingston’s shanty town. Despite all the sunny romance the name conjures up, it remains a violent city (over 200 deaths by shooting in the first six months of this year).
The Wailing Wailers didn’t sell enough records to feed five mouths and so they split up. Marley then spent a while in America with his mother before returning to join up with Tosh and Wailer again in a short-lived attempt to go independent with their own Wailing Souls label.
Its collapse led to a confused phase for Marley which had one positive result: in 1967 he began working with Texan soul singer Johnny Nash. Nash came to record in Kingston and later had a series of reggae field singles in the British charts culminating four years later with ‘Stir It Up’ which was written by Marley.
Marley and Bunny Wailer touched bottom with jail sentences for possession of marijuana, then in ’69 emerged into one of their classic periods. Recorded by the most famous reggae producer of them all, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, they came up with two LPs and the singles ‘Duppy Conqueror’ and ‘Small Axe’. (You can find later versions on their Island album Burning’).
It was at this stage that their Rastafarian religion became the core of their music. I couldn’t pretend to make informed comment on it, but its visible signs are the long, tightly-wound dreadlocks (like Marley’s), often piled up into a red, green and orange wool tammy.
Their beliefs relate to Christianity while including a faith in the late Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia as the Christ reborn. One of its major practices is smoking marijuana (‘ganja’ or ‘kaya’, the title of Marley’s 1978 LP), which they see as having a mystical healing power.
Of late The Wailers have been trying to express their Rasta goodwill in action by investing some of the group’s profits in community and youth projects, such as farms owned by Jamaican people rather than vast, foreign (particularly British) companies.
“It won’t solve all problems, but is a beginning,” said Marley. “Is something the government shoulda done, but them don’t do it and them won’t do it.”
So their religion has its political side. However, when I asked him about this, Marley was keen to stress its spiritual strength: “Politics — it dirty, y’know. A politician never know you till you ol’ enough to vote.”
*
DESPITE THE HOSTILITY THEIR FAITH attracted from some of their fellow countrymen, the group’s career was on the upward curve which is still pointing skywards. They launched their own label, Tuff Gong, in 1970, successfully this time, and enlisted the Barrett brothers, reputedly the hardest rhythm section on the island.
Speaking of which, their breakthrough to recognition outside the Caribbean followed when they singed to the British label, Island, who promoted them through the albums Catch A Fire and Burnin’ (including ‘I Shot The Sheriff’ which Eric Clapton made into a hit single).
In 1975 the Wailers went through their last great upheaval with the departure of Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, who both went solo. Then the key album Natty Dread was released.
Marley, one of those small men who somehow look huge on stage, followed up with two stunning concerts at the Lyceum in London and triumphantly burst through the supposed barrier between British and West Indian musical tastes. Pop was never the same again.
Marley says quite frankly that he couldn’t live in this country because he feels so strongly drawn to his African roots and “I like to be able to just walk upon the concrete and be a dread,” but he loves the music scene here. With a chuckle he acknowledged, “It rockin’ in Englan’. Englan’ is the place, man. And Natty Dread was a special album for us, the feelin’ of it. Sayin’ children get your culture, won’t win no battle if you just sit there.”
Those Lyceum concerts were recorded for an excellent Live! album which produced the group’s first UK hit single, the tender love song ‘No Woman, No Cry’. With their ideals and seductive dance rhythms, The Wailers captured minds and souls everywhere.
*
WHILE THE CHART RATINGS ON five albums and numerous singles since Live! have never looked back, and despite him remaining the favourite in Jamaica, British critics have gradually come to accuse Marley of various forms of ‘sell-out’ because of his moves away from Jamaican strict roots reggae style.
I asked Marley how he felt about the occasional slaggings and he said with the gentlest of smiles: “We love them?” Me (taken aback): “And do you agree with them?”
Marley: “Sometime. It not always really true, but we understan’ why people say these t’ing. I figure is great help (chuckle). An’ yet music can’t stick to the same t’ing otherwise it become mechanical: music have to have fluent, music have to have some kinda adventure, enjoyment, it go and you come.”
I wondered where he placed the new album, Uprising, in his 19 years of recording.
“Uprising come like the first album,” he said, “the first from now. It recorded in our own vicinity, it going forward. We work at all our records with full energy an’… full self. So when we finish it we know wha’ we put on it, we respec’ it. We don’t record a song if we don’t love it.”
© Mike Stand, 1980
Many thanks to Marco Virgona of www.bobmarleymagazine.com for the photo credit.
The purpose of the blog is to add to the archive of legendary roots reggae artists by profiling shows, interviews, writings, appearances, and the like.
This week, we find Bob Marley and the Wailers on the North American leg of their 1980 tour. It is September 1980, and they are playing two shows with The Commodores at the famed Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York. Unfortunately, this is Bob’s last trip through New York, and the U.S. for that matter (although he does return to Miami, FL in April 1981 after leaving Dr. Issel’s clinic in Bavaria).
I have included a review of the show by Robert Palmer, which was published on September 23, 1980 in the New York Times. Ironically, September 23, 1980 is the same day that Marley plays his last show at The Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The review can be accessed here.
As the review explains, these shows are of note because Marley plays his music live to a predominantly African-American, mainstream funk and soul audience for the first time.
One of our readers recently shared his experience at this show:
“I was young, about 16, and went to the concert with friends. We went to see Marley but stayed for the whole show. It was a very mellow and relaxed vibe where we were sitting (pretty high up stage right). I remember just sitting back and listening when Marley was on, pure music. It changed to a more commercial feeling when the Commodores played. It was like the stage transformed from a mellow living room (Marley) to a glitzy stage set (Commodores in white suits) — strange transition. But I also really remember Kurtis Blow rapping at the beginning of the show — had never heard anything like that before.”
I have also included an audio recording of the show. Enjoy!
Bob Marley Backstage at Madison Square Garden, 1980
Photographer: Lindsay Donald
The included concert audio is a matrix soundboard/audience recording from the September 20, 1980 show. I have included a setlist along with the recording.
Setlist:
Natural Mystic
Positive Vibration
Burnin’ and Lootin’
Them Belly Full
The Heathen
Running Away / Crazy Baldheads
Zimbabwe
Zion Train
War / No More Trouble
I Shot The Sheriff
No Woman No Cry
Jammin’
Exodus
Encore:
Could You Be Loved
Interview by Professor Anita Waters
Interview and Acoustic Jam Session with Earl Chin of Rockers T.V.
September 18, 1980
One thing that this blog has been great for is relating archived interviews with Bob Marley to the fans of my website www.marleyarchives.com. These interviews are just sitting out there in cyberspace just waiting to be read. Little bits of knowledge and wisdom from the incomparable Robert Nesta Marley.
At the time of this interview in September 1980, Anita Waters was a graduate student in sociology at Columbia University in New York City. Bob Marley and the Wailers were in town playing several opening shows for The Commodores national tour. As you may know, it would be Marley’s last tour as his body was now wrecked by cancer.
In the interview Marley touches upon Tuff Gong, emerging artists, the Twelve Tribes of Israel, Zimbabwe, and his music. Enjoy!
http://webby.cc.denison.edu/~waters/marley.html
In addition to the interview referenced above, Marley reluctantly participated in an interview and acoustic jam session with Earl Chin of Rockers TV on September 2, 1980. I have included a link to the full interview and acoustic session (45 minute video) here:
Bob Marley Interview and Rare Acoustic Performance, Essex House 1980
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