What really made me leave was the Jacksons were doing a gig with Bob at the Stadium, and I asked my bandleader, who was Jackie Jackson who played on all those Toots records, if I can go and do it. And I’ll get Robbie Lyn to sit in, who plays with Robbie and Sly. And he said, “Sure, if you can get Robbie in.” I asked Robbie; Robbie said he would sit in. It was a weekend. And when I went back Monday, Jackie says, “Don’t come back. Go stay with the dirty Rastas.” And I said, “Well, jeez, I mean—well, maybe I’ll do just that!” He lived to eat those words, because he came back a couple of years after that, when he wasn’t doing much touring, and wanted to buy Family Man’s bass amp. So he was asking me to ask Family, and I said, “No, why don’t you ask him yourself?” I just had to see that, you know?
Bob wanted two keyboardists in the group because on the records there is more than one keyboard part. In early Island days they had Touter Harvey, Wya Lindo and Winston Wright. And myself. And the thing is we wanted to try and get back the same record sound. And that first tour I was playing everything—organ, clavinet and piano. Marcia was pregnant, so with Rita and Judy, Al and I just made it the I-Fours!
ROGER STEFFENS: The tour wasn’t easy on the musicians.
TYRONE DOWNIE: Al Anderson and I had left after the ’75 tour because I couldn’t stand it. Al was in America, and he wasn’t used to it either, being from a kind of middle-class family background. He was really fascinated. He wanted to be involved in the challenge and the adventure, but when you’re not used to dealing in a certain way and people come on to you aggressive all the time, sometime you get turned off, and you don’t want to be there. And that’s how we felt after that first tour. The music was good. Bob Marley was great. But if you gonna play with people, at least you want to feel comfortable. So we did this interview in Black Music magazine in England. Carl Gayle was the journalist and the writer for reggae. And he interviewed us on a train on the way from somewhere back to London. And we just both spoke out. So when we realized that we actually expressed ourselves and said what we really felt, we both asked each other [whether we should stay with the group].
ROGER STEFFENS: Al ended up leaving for a couple of years. Following that successful summer 1975 tour, Bob returned to Jamaica for one final performance with his former partners, and Tyrone came aboard for it.
GAYLE McGARRITY: I saw a wonderful show at the National Stadium when Stevie Wonder came to Jamaica, on October 4, ’75. That was the last show that the Wailers, all three of them, did together. And the I Three were part of that show, too, so it was truly unique. That was wonderful. In fact, I went home with Bob after that. I remember feeling like a real queen, because he was like, “Wha’ppen Gayle, ya’ave a ride?” And I was like, “Oh no, I can get a ride.” He was jealous, and he was like, “I’ll give you a ride.” And he came to the house, which was my maternal grandparents’ house called the Moorings on Seymour Avenue, not at all far from Bob’s residence and studio at 56 Hope Road. That was when he said to me that he wanted to buy the house and we sat up and talked till really late that night.
ROGER STEFFENS: One of the topics of discussion was the shameful treatment of Bob by his father’s family.
GAYLE McGARRITY: I don’t remember through whom it was, but I met this guy who looked so much like Bob. And then somebody said his father was Bob’s father. Then his wife said how when they went to Spain on vacation once, when they registered and they signed the name “Marley,” the guy came out and said, “Wait a minute, you’re from Jamaica and your last name is Marley, are you related to Bob Marley?” And her husband said, “Yeah, he was my half-brother.” And they let them stay at the hotel in Spain for ten days without paying for one thing. And I thought that was disgusting because they had treated Bob like shit, you know what I mean? And now that he’s dead, they’re getting over on his name. Again, I thought that was an example of Jamaican obscenity. But they did it. I would have insisted on paying just out of conscience, but they didn’t have any. Certainly I know that Bob went to his uncle after his father died, trying to get money to do a record, and they threw him out of the office and that after—this is what the sister-in-law told me—she said that she can’t believe white Jamaicans sometimes. She said that he threw him out of the office and then right after he threw him out he said, “Boy, that’s definitely my brother’s son. Did you see those cheekbones?” They’re really full of shit.
ROGER STEFFENS: Now that Bob had an international audience, he was keenly aware that he had to learn more technically so he could gain full control over his material.
DERMOT HUSSEY: He came to my house and had dinner with Cindy Breakspeare because he said one time, “Look, I want somewhere fe go, a dating this daughter here.” So I said, “All right, come up and have dinner.” It was a fabulous night. He was cool and enjoyed himself. Cindy was this beauty. Bob was very easy, very easy. He would talk a lot about music. I remember he was very concerned about getting the music to an international level. I remember once he was saying, “Why does a Jamaican record sound so different to one that’s released in America?” In fact, that whole roots rock reggae was him making a decided attempt to raise the level. “Play I on the R & B.” He was very concerned about that and he used to talk a lot about that. He used to talk about Africa, he used to talk about Ethiopia. He used to talk about eventually going there, he wanted to open a studio there. And he used to talk about Rasta. In fact, he said, “Dermot, why you don’t locks?” So he did proselytize, yeah, a little bit! “If you just locksed.” I and I used to just laugh.
ROGER STEFFENS: With momentum building, it was time for Bob to create an album that would help him crack the black American audience. The result, Rastaman Vibration, would become the biggest hit of his lifetime, and his only top ten record. But others were about to try to capitalize on his fame in nefarious ways, with lethal results.
CHAPTER 19
Rastaman Vibration and the Fatal Reissue
R
OGER STEFFENS: Dennis Thompson joined the Wailers touring company in 1976, as Bob recruited new members to replace Al Anderson and enlisted an accomplished engineer.
DENNIS THOMPSON: Bob told me he always wanted me to be his engineer. At Randy’s Studio everyone talk about going on tour, but nobody ever go anywhere. Bob said, we’re going on tour, why don’t I come. I said, “OK, come and get me when you’re ready,” never expecting a call. But it happen in such a funny way.
At the end of 1975 I was in the Virgin Islands and I was watching the Manhattan Transfer TV show and here comes this big announcement, “The Trench Town experience, blah, blah, blah,” about Marley and the Wailers. I said [to Bunny Wailer], “Jah B, Bob Marley is on TV, nice man.” But I said it don’t sound right. Congas playing and his hands moving and you don’t hear nothing, and drum sound funny because you got one mic sitting in the middle. I said it was a cheap little way of doing it. A guy said to me, “You see a problem, go and fix it.” I said, “I’m going home in the morning.” I went home January 1, 1976, and I ran into Allan, Family Man and Carly January 3rd. That was that. From the beginning of 1976, I was Bob’s engineer.
DON TAYLOR: What happened when I got Bob, he had learned from Scratch, his greatest influence in laying that heavy rhythm track was Scratch. He learned from Johnny, he learned from everybody he came up with. At that time he was still in the developing stage, he learned enough to lay the tracks. After he laid the tracks, he was basically lost. This is where Chris Blackwell again used him. In addition to having the 6 percent contract for his first couple of albums before I came in, because Chris know that he couldn’t mix the tracks, Chris put into the contract that he would mix the tracks as the executive producer, and get 2 percent back. So Bob made four! When I came in I saw that all Bob needed was the experience. So on the first album we did, Rastaman Vibration, I brought him up to Miami. King Sporty gave us a white guy for engineer.
DANNY SIMS: Alex Sadkin! Me and Bob Marley with King Sporty discovered Alex Sadkin working as an engineer at Criteria Stu
dios. That’s where Bob started to learn how to mix. Bob would never work without Alex.
SEGREE WESLEY: Among the songs from that period that I really admire is “We’re Gonna Dig Them Crazy Bumpkins Out Of Town” [“Crazy Baldhead”]. ’Cause there was a meaning to it. When I went to Jamaica Rita told me, she says Segree, wasn’t it true they used to rehearse up on the Hope Road? Said that the neighbors even called police down on them. And they just kick a soccer ball outside. And of course, they see these bunch of longhairs and these people not used to that. So they call the police. So Bob went in the toilet on the toilet seat and that’s where he penned that music. We gonna dig them crazy bumpkins out of town, I and I build a castle. So you have to hold down on the noise because the people, they knew who the Wailers were, but the people were complaining. And Bob wrote about that situation. You see, the thing about him, he writes just about everything that he has been through. I mean, it’s reality more so than fiction. Most of it, in regards to who may say they actually penned this, Bob had to have an input in it because it always reflected what he has been through.
ROGER STEFFENS: Rastaman Vibration was set up to be a major release, with advertising and exotic promotional materials. A thick, burlap-covered box was sent to reviewers containing the record, a press book and a large burlap sack with Bob’s picture and the album’s title printed on it, created by the Wailers’ new art director, Neville Garrick.
NEVILLE GARRICK: I hooked up with Bob in 1974. It was a natural mystic! I was working for the Jamaica Daily News as the art director, and when Marley did the show with Marvin Gaye in Jamaica I took some photographs of that concert. I was thinking of doing some posters of Bob, because they were good. So I took them and I showed them to Bob and he liked them, so we decided to produce the posters together. That was our real first connection in me, really, working with Bob.
But before at the newspaper I’d taken my feature writer there to do a story on the Wailers which was on the cover of our Sunday magazine and five pages inside. And from then the relation started to grow. I eventually got frustrated working at the newspaper as an artist, so I went to Hope Road and I got together with Bob, saying, “Well, you’re a musician, and I’m an artist, and we feel the same way in terms of black people’s redemption, the cultural identity leading to Rastafari.” So sight and sound just combining from then, and it was a beautiful experience for me.
Neville Garrick, Bob Marley’s art director, at his studio in Kingston, Jamaica, August 1988.
Regretfully to say, Rastaman Vibration was my first album cover that I did for Bob and it was the one that was the most heavily promoted album out of any of Bob’s. I say regretfully because I think that the next one, Exodus, should have been promoted more than the other ones, instead of this one being the heaviest campaign Bob ever got in America. Basically I’m saying the promotional dollar that was spent on Rastaman Vibration, if it had increased with the albums to come, I mean, like whew! Bob would be further than where he is really in the ears of people.
I came out to California to do the finish of this album, while the band was still in Criteria Studios in Miami. And when I took back the first printed proof with the embossing, we were using it to clean the herbs. And with the grooves in it, the seeds would roll off, and the herb would stay right there. So, somebody in the studio say, “Hey, this jacket is great for cleaning herb.” And Chris Blackwell said, “Hey, put that on the album!” And that’s what I did. That’s how it got there. Simple like that.
ROGER STEFFENS: The 1976 tour introduced a new lineup to the Wailers band , absorbing two prodigiously talented lead guitarists into the fold. From Jamaica Bob invited the Soul Syndicate’s Earl “Chinna” Smith, known as Melchizedek the High Priest, to join Donald Kinsey from Gary, Indiana, a precocious bluesman. They would bring a much bigger sound for the larger venues that the group would now play.
NEVILLE GARRICK: I ended up onstage as a musician as well, in the daytime when I wasn’t running the lights. That was really due to Bob’s encouragement. Bob was a person like this: Bob strived for perfection within himself, and he wanted everyone around him to grow in the same way. He once said to me, “All you do is just draw and take picture and t’ing, mon. Learn to play some instrument, just get involved totally, then you will really be a part of the music, so you really interpret it because you now become the music.” So it started up with a few percussions, and Family Man and Carly really show me two things, some funde drums and play different little percussion sound and I added my own little spice to it. I played percussion on Exodus and Kaya, most of the others, a few licks here and there, but being the person who wrote all the credits for the album, I didn’t feel like crediting myself there, “Neville Garrick: percussionist,” because that wasn’t my portfolio. Or “Neville Garrick: background vocal,” although I did some. It was just a privilege for me.
ROGER STEFFENS: Garrick created radical changes in the way reggae was presented on stage. At the Reggae Archives in the summer of 1990, he revealed the technical secrets of his lighting effects and the reasons behind them.
NEVILLE GARRICK: I can tell you Rosco 822 was the red filter I used. People would use more like 819 because it’s orange. But I had the Rasta colors of red, gold and green to work with. I would say that, without no apology, I revolutionized the lighting business with green. I used 874 green, and when I started every light man said how the hell can you use that because green made people look dead. And this is Rasta and green got to work for me! And all the rock groups now use that 8-rahtid-74 [“rahtid” is a Jamaican swear word] which them used to think I was mad for all that. I was coloring the music. I wasn’t going off what the books say. It was all a feeling, vibes business. I didn’t come out of no school of lighting.
I knew the lyrics. I was trying to enhance what they say. If him talking about water, it going to be blue, I’m going to have a wash blue in there. If him talking about sun shining, him going to have sunshine. If it’s a green vibe, if it’s something melancholy, you have lavender. And red if it’s something like “Burnin’ And Lootin’ ” and cut through with yellow and make fire and them things. It was a whole tricks. So I used the color to represent something.
In the early days, I went through plenty of criticisms in my life in innocence because I wasn’t approaching like how these [others did]. Bill Graham called me on the intercom once. And I didn’t even know who Bill Graham was. On the intercom while I’m lighting the show I don’t want to talk to people. But he wanted to talk to me on the intercom: why am I fuckin’ flashing the lights so much? I say, “Who is this fuckin’ Bill Graham? I don’t know Bill Graham.” Them say, “He’s the promoter.” I just say, “Mr. Bill Graham, reggae is another bag!” and just slam down the phone. Them don’t know reggae lighting more than me, because they never had no reggae lighting before, so therefore I had the opportunity that whatever I did is reggae fucking lighting.
Several photographers at that time used to say, bwoi, my colors, if I can help them. That’s why I even started to put Car 54 immediately over Bob’s head and don’t put no gel in it, so I could just keep it up a little bit. And sometime I would just solarize it a bit and some light coming from there. But all I was doing was like to help the photographers. Because after all I want them to take good pictures and Bob get more promotion!
ROGER STEFFENS: In the summer of 1976 Columbia Records released an album of early Coxsone ska-era tracks called Birth of a Legend. Coming at the same time as Rastaman Vibration, the album shocked people who had only heard Marley’s more sophisticated Island material. It was a highly controversial project, with recent overdubbing, and one which caused great concern to Coxson himself, who felt he had been conned by a man with mob connections.
COXSON DODD: On the CBS The Birth of a Legend album I think Ernest Ranglin did some guitar overdubs. If there was any piano dubbing it would be Jackie Mittoo. What I think we did was to improve on the top ends because it was a bit bassy with no top, so we added like hi-hats and little drum here.
I did them with Tom Walton at my studio in New York. And when the One Love at Studio One album on Heartbeat came out we went back to the original mixes.
The Birth of a Legend came about with Nate McCalla who was with Roulette Records, and Morris Levy. Nate was a Jamaican and he came to me and really admired the sort of material that we had. So he came up with this idea that he would be able to market the album in America here, which I agreed. I collected five thousand dollars advance on the transaction. But the check was returned. It wasn’t honored. And ever since I’ve never collected a penny from nobody. When I got in touch with CBS they was putting me on to Shakat Music, but Shakat Music doesn’t exist anymore because it was operated by Morris Levy and them and whatever it is, and there was something with the government that I figured, more or less, that the government must have frozen some of their assets and things like that and demand that they leave, because they were all crooks.
ROGER STEFFENS: Levy was a convicted racketeer who, at the time of his death, was facing ten years in prison for extortion.
So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley Page 22