So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley

by Roger Steffens

  When Bob come now, him just take charge and we patrol the yard a nighttime. Is four of we a patrol, position north, south, east and west, to cover the four corners. Daytime, him there down in a dungeon, like kind of big castle, a slave-master house. Built that you go round some corner, there are groves for privacy. And we were mostly downstairs in a bottom room. Any man what come to him, we screen him first. All kind of photographer and man come up, and we screen them. If a guy joke, we just say, “Down the hill!” and him go down back. Pure screening we do fe him. Nobody no approach him so easy after that. Him a say, boy it funny how all the man what him pay fe protect him, when the time come, him no see none of them! Some bad men, Frowser and them man. But Strawberry Hill is an enclave, it’s a very private place. Not really well defended, but kinda way up there so no man can come through without we know.

  Bob was apprehensive. Any sound outside him woulda lock off the light. Him get quiet at first. But you know Bob is a man any time him come in yah, any time him see every man cool, him start crack back him joke and thing. Him a jovial man. But every now and then you see him get back like him think to himself who the blood-claat do that? Him was apprehensive more than afraid that it might happen again, ’cause him probably never believe it woulda happen in the first place, you know, say a man woulda really do that.

  CHAPTER 22

  Smile, You’re in Jamaica

  R

  OGER STEFFENS: Having gone into hiding following his release from the hospital, hours after the shooting, Bob was surrounded by friends and associates from the Twelve Tribes, listening to everyone’s point of view on whether he should do the concert and risk being shot again at the open-air event.

  CAT COORE: Third World had been hired to play on the Smile Jamaica show. There was a guy named Jeff Walker who was in Jamaica who was hanging out with all of us, Third World, Bob Marley, Jacob Miller. He was moving through all the camps of Island artists. And he was really down on this thing that the show must go on, it must go on! Because if the show doesn’t go on, then the guys who came for Bob would have won. So the show must go on.

  JEFF WALKER: I joined him late the second day. He went up alone that night. I went up the next afternoon, and kept going back and forth to Kingston. The day after the shooting, in the morning, we went over to Hope Road with a film crew. Family Man and Tyrone took us around the site and pointed out the events of the night before and described what happened on camera. It was three years before Bob got to see any of the footage that was taken that night.

  ROGER STEFFENS: In the footage of Family Man back at Tuff Gong the day after the shooting, he is seen putting his fingers into the bullet holes. In late November 1979, during Bob’s final visit to Los Angeles, I arranged for screenings of Jeff Walker’s footage. There was a crowd of about fifty, including the band, in the large living room of the bungalow at the Hollywood Sunset Marquis in which Marley stayed. As that scene appeared Bob started to laugh, and the whole room stilled, absolutely stunned and unable to comprehend what Bob was finding humor in. In June 1977 Blackwell had insisted he did not want any of it to be released publicly because it was “too political.”

  JEFF WALKER: The only humor inherent in the situation I think was Family’s relation of the events. And the “Boom Boom!” and acting out everything that happened, and ducking, and so forth. And seeing it three years later. And this was the intensity of the morning after it all happened. The basic events of that day had been spent with the barrage of press inquiries that were coming in from around the world, and all the wrong stories and rumors that were getting out about people’s conditions and the fact that both Rita and Don [Taylor] were still in the hospital and that Don was in surgery and in critical condition. After Taylor was jet-lifted to Miami the next morning, it was then that I went up to see Bob.

  At this point, Chris Blackwell had left the island. He and Dickie chartered a jet and were off to New York the same evening. He was not there the next morning. But I was in touch with Chris in New York, calling him on the phone, in order to arrange a jet to take Don Taylor and Bob off the island. He arranged from New York to have a jet come to Kingston.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Walker says he does not resent Blackwell’s departure.

  JEFF WALKER: Obviously, there was some sense that there was something pending. I think the only problem I ever had with the fact that he left is that we were never offered a ride out if we wanted it. None of the film crew.

  CARL COLBY: [On Saturday] Jeff rode around with us a couple of times in the car and he’d sit in the backseat like, “Oh God, we’re shooting this political stuff.” He was like, “We’re not gonna do this. This is not what we want to do.” And we got back late that afternoon and I don’t remember what happened that evening, just everybody was pretty tired. So the next morning we got up and I asked Peter Frank, “What are we doing?” And then suddenly Jeff said to me that we’re going up to Blackwell’s house, we’re going up to where Bob’s hiding out. And I remember I said, “Well, what camera do I take?” Peter said, “Well, you’re not taking the good camera.” And he didn’t want to go. He said, “I wouldn’t go up there if I were you.” And I said, “What are you worried about?” And he goes, “Well, he was shot at, I don’t know who’s up there.” And I said, “Well, this is the movie. I mean, we came down here to shoot a movie about Bob Marley and I haven’t even seen him. Why wouldn’t we shoot a scene with Bob Marley? I mean, what are you afraid of? I don’t care.” And I remember being very irritated and I said, “All right, so I’ll take the other camera.”

  Perry Henzell gave me the camera and it was like an old, mildew-filled, humid, velvet box and a couple of lizards run out of the box. And I thought well, at least it worked. And then there was a sound man there, so we went up the mountain to do this. And I remember Peter didn’t go, nobody else went. It was just myself and a couple of guys and I think, I’m not sure if Fred Brocetti was there—he must have been there because he was shooting with me.

  So what I ended up doing was going up the mountain in this car, I guess late morning sometime. Perry didn’t go. Which is another part of this thing that bothered me, because I thought to myself if you’re gonna make a movie about somebody, particularly one man, or one legend, or one great charismatic character, you better know this guy. Like what I did with George Hurrell, or a lot of other artists, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning. I’ve done a lot of films about a lot of artists: you’ve got to get to know their whole world and understand them. And I always thought with Bob I was halfway there, because I was such a fan and I kind of understood what he was about coming from the third world and representing a country like that. I’d spent only about six months of my life in the United States before I was twelve years old, so to me America was like a foreign country.

  So we get up there and it’s Chris Blackwell’s estate. It’s very beautiful, the Blue Mountains, and we arrive and it’s kind of overgrown and these guys did jump out of the trees with machetes, “Who are you guys?” and this and that, and it’s like protected and all of that. I’d already heard rumors because the day before we’d gone by Hope Road and there were bullet holes in the walls and a couple of guys recreated the whole shootout for us and told us what went on when and who must have come in and who fired at whom. Saturday afternoon, I remember also talking to Family Man and the other Barrett brother, I believe, Carly. And another fellow was there, talking about what happened. There were bullet holes, someone must have come in here at some point and shot at these guys, but for what and for what purpose?

  So that had happened the day before. Anyway, we get up to the house and these guys jump out of the trees with the machetes and that didn’t really bother me because I thought they’re protecting Bob. I thought the only thing to say was the truth—we’re here from Island Records and we’re doing a project. I realized that there were a couple of magic words that opened a lot of doors. So saying “Island Records,” the machetes just immediately dropped. So then we go in and we go up and we see Roberta Flack
come around after a while and she was nice, and we stand around and there were a few other musicians and friends sort of around. We were there all day. At one point I saw Bob, he comes walking around and it seemed like there were some women and Bob talking on the lawn, quietly, and Bob was sort of relaxed, almost tired—world-weary almost, kind of like he hadn’t expected to be shot at, as if he just wanted to go to sleep, very tired, very worn-out almost, a lot of stress involved with these things happening. The energy was very low, it seemed, he was sort of tired and haggard, almost. So I didn’t want to bother him or anything, and he was speaking to them, and at some point we joined up and started talking to him and we asked him if it would be OK to ask a few questions and he said yeah.

  We did a whole interview on film. He was sitting in this low easy chair and smoking and kind of relaxing, just talking about all sorts of different things. I was asking him a bunch of questions about this and that and his music and New Orleans and Detroit and the radio, and where’d you get this. Remember I listened to every album a lot and I loved the music and I knew a little bit about Jamaica and I knew a little about the political situation, so I asked him a lot of questions and Fred was shooting it. Then we’d stop sometimes. He’d say, “All right, man, that’s enough already,” and he’d wander off and he’d come back and we’d talk.

  ROGER STEFFENS: In the chaotic aftermath of the shooting, opening lines of private communication was essential.

  JEFF WALKER: We needed to communicate with Bob, did not want to take the chance on phone calls being overheard. And it dawned on us that we had this whole walkie-talkie setup that we brought down to do the filming with. I was determined to take a walkie-talkie up to Bob so that we could stay in touch with him. That was the night before the concert.

  ROGER STEFFENS: When Jeff Walker arrived that evening and walked onto the property, a Rasta with a machete dropped out of a tree in front of him. It scared the hell out of him.

  PABLOVE BLACK: I wonder if it was Little D, that? Is a whole house, and the land is like maybe about two acres around it, maybe more. Four a we cover it, that we walk and meet one another, walk back and meet the next man at the corner. That’s how we a cover the four corner them fe the first night. Right through till sun come up. The other guards were Little D, Binghi Roy and one more. ’Cause is two man me a meet whole night. The next man me no know who.

  JEFF WALKER: I think there are some mentions in Stephen’s book about Rastas in trees with machetes. I met one firsthand as I walked from the car to the house at Strawberry Hill. He literally dropped out of the trees in front of me with a gleaming machete poised. I remember his teeth, and the gleam on the machete, were just absolutely bright from the moonlight. It was incredible! I raised my arms and said, “I’m with Bob.” And I was escorted up and Marley said, “Yeah, he’s OK.”

  ROGER STEFFENS: Jeff Walker had arrived in the midst of a council of Twelve Tribes elders.

  JEFF WALKER: The night that I brought him the walkie-talkie was the night of the council—there were some Rasta elders, some people from the Twelve Tribes. Cat Coore was there. Cat was really the only one there that I knew. At this point, most of the Wailers had scattered. Don was in critical condition. Rita was shot and still in the hospital. Bob was not at any point entertaining coming down to do a concert, that second day. The discussion and the decision-making process began that night, after Don had been evacuated from the island, and after we knew Rita was going to be all right. The overwhelming sentiment at that point was that Bob would be crazy to go down and perform. Everybody, particularly the elders, the more conservative Rastafarians, were very much against Bob going down to perform. They urged him to stay up in the mountains.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Among those who had come up to Strawberry Hill to consult with Bob was the founder of the Twelve Tribes organization, a man known as Prophet Gad.

  PABLOVE BLACK: Gad come look fe him now. And Gad said, “What you want to do?” And him said, “I don’t know yet.” And Gad said, “All right, if you gwan to do the show, we there with you. If you decide you don’t want to do it, we still gonna support you. Any decision wha’ you make.” And then when him leave, we now with Bob and say, “Anything weh him say.”

  CAT COORE: So the night before the show, all of us went up to Bob at his hiding place in the hills and we say, “How you feel about the show?” And there were a lot of guys around Bob at the time and everybody was telling him this and that, and “Bwoi, a perfect assassination attempt, the man them try to kill you already and you must understand that.” People talking real truth to Bob still, most telling him not to go, and no one could really say that they weren’t giving him good advice. Because even I was feeling at the time that it was crazy for Bob to head out and go to that show.

  JEFF WALKER: Basically everyone took turns talking to Bob and giving them his opinion, and I really at that point felt that I had no choice but to get up and put in my two cents. Standing on the outside looking in, I could not see any alternative than for him to go down and perform. I pointed out to him that if this concert was canceled, that everything they had intended to do by shooting him would have been accomplished and that would have been to stop the music. And he said, “There’s no way I’m going on stage without a machine gun.” And I remember this very vividly, because the line I gave him in return was, “Your guitar is your machine gun.” And that got a round of laughter. And it was probably the truly corniest thing I’ve ever said in my life but there was a certain element of truth to it. And I said, “I know it’s easy for me to say, Bob, but I don’t see how you cannot go ahead with this concert. And if it means anything, I’ll stand up there on stage also.” Which I did, and which everyone else who was there that night did. If there was a risk to be taken, we were all there on stage, within a ten-foot circle around Bob.

  I think at this point he was beginning to lean toward going ahead and performing. This is just an instinct. Because he agreed that whatever might happen, we could come up the next morning with the film crew in order to record whatever events might take place. We even signed a hastily written agreement to guarantee he would retain control and approval of any sound recordings. So he was at least considering playing. This was the day of decision, leading up to the concert that evening. It was during this period, in the afternoon before Rita came back up, where I think we were all pretty well convinced that Bob was going to do the concert. Then Roberta Flack showed up, literally out of nowhere, and urged him not to perform, not to take the risk.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Accounts of Flack’s effect vary from witness to witness. Credit for Bob’s final decision has been assigned to several different people, one of whom is PNP official Tony Spaulding, one of the organizers of the concert.

  JEFF WALKER: It’s been said that a Jamaican government official named Tony Spaulding came up to Strawberry Hill and talked Bob into playing. I don’t think it was so much that he talked him into it, although Tony Spaulding did show up.

  JUDY MOWATT: The government minister Tony Spaulding kept insisting that Bob should do the show after the shooting.

  PABLOVE BLACK: Up to when Spaulding come, we don’t know what Bob a go do. And when him look ’pon me and say, “Bwoi, me a just do this show here, and get dem man here offa me back.” You know, him realize it never woulda go away.

  CAT COORE: As the night came, as the feeling of the people became more sympathetic towards the shooting, people were in the streets saying, “Bwoi, if I ever see that man [the gunman] I just kill him!” You realized how much the country really cared for this man. Then I realized that there really was no need to be any fear and that no one would try to do anything in a crowd like that to him. So we [Third World] decided that we were going to do the show.

  JEFF WALKER: Around this point, the director Perry Henzell, who was up there with us, did not want to wait around any more for Bob to make up his mind, and decided to go down to the concert site. So we were left, unfortunately, with a defective camera, which we didn’t even know was defective a
t the time. And this is where the various intrigues with the walkie-talkie are concerned. There was a walkie-talkie down at the concert site, and there was one with the Russell brothers, Greg and Compton, the pro tennis players, who were going around the island trying to find whichever Wailers they could. Periodically we would get a call on the walkie-talkie and someone like Don Kinsey would be there and say, “OK, I’m going over to the concert site.” We managed to gather everybody but Family Man.

  Throughout this day we were getting news reports, we were getting communications from the concert site when Cat Coore went down and felt the vibes and saw the huge amount of people—because it just started growing and growing. At about six o’clock there were fifty thousand people there, waiting for Bob, convinced that he was going to show up, although there still hadn’t been any announcement made that there would be a concert.

  CAT COORE: The prime minister called us at like ten to nine and said, “I’m on my way to the park now.” Sort of saying under his breath like, “I hope you’re on your way to the park also.” This is in the evening, like when the show was supposed to start. Nobody knew if the show was going to happen or not. Everybody was saying it’s gonna happen, it’s not gonna happen. Sixty thousand people gathered down there. The prime minister said, “Something’s got to happen. If I even have to just go there and talk, something gonna have to happen.” So we say, “You know, this true. Let’s go do this show. ’Cause everybody going to be safe, no problem. Jah just going to protect.”