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

by Roger Steffens

  And then sometime in France [spring 1977], when he suffered a crushing injury to the same toe, stepped on by an opponent wearing iron-studded shoes, he stopped playing and the persistent pain warranted a doctor’s intervention. Whether the injury to the toe was the initial circumstance which promoted the symptoms, i.e. the noticeable pain, or whether there was an earlier lesion under the nail which might have been overlooked, he did some “refashioning.” This is the toe seen bandaged on the Babylon By Bus album jacket, that was subsequent to the intervention by the doctors in France.

  Now, unfortunately, I think what the doctor should have done at that time was an excisional biopsy. In other words, remove the entire lesion and send it for study, which was not done, and it wasn’t until he went to England and then I think it was Chris Blackwell who actually took him to someone at the Royal College of Surgeons. That’s when he had the first real diagnostic approach. What they actually did that time was the incisional biopsy and then the biopsy showed that it was melanoma. I think it was classified as grade three, which meant that it had actually invaded dermis and tissue, then that’s when everyone started getting very aggressive about it.

  JUNIOR MARVIN: After the tour, he was sent to a Harley Street doctor by Island, by Chris and his assistant Denise Mills. The doctor told him that the toe had become cancerous and he would have to amputate it. Of course, once you amputate your toe, you lose your balance. So Bob wasn’t very happy about it, because it would have been damaging to his career at that time.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Dr. Fraser says specialists in London were advising something much more aggressive.

  DR. PEE WEE FRASER: The surgeons at the Royal College of Surgeons were entertaining disarticulation of the hip [meaning amputating the leg]. Because at that time there was no MRI or CT scans—it was just routine where radio-opaque material was injected and scans done to locate hot spots. They thought that disarticulation of the hip for the extremity that was involved would be the best procedure, but [in my view] medical science did not support that. In fact the routine approach to lesions of that type, especially in the extremity, was to first of all discern if there is any lymphatic spread in the contingent areas and then according to the lymphatic involvement you would know what type of surgical approach to take.

  At that time when we actually got to Cedars in Miami the investigation did not reveal a lymphatic spread. Although we know that more than 80 percent of melanomas that are classified at that level usually have metastasis, there was no clinical documentation that there was metastasis in Bob. But the literature supported at that time that you should seek clear margins in the area if that was possible. Then you do the excision of that particular area.

  ROGER STEFFENS: In that period, according to Dr. Fraser, there was a new wave of immunotherapy which called for cutting off the cancer and then doing a skin graft around the affected area.

  DR. PEE WEE FRASER: I think, if I can remember clearly, the histological studies of Bob’s particular lesion showed an increased incidence of lymphocytic response in the area, which was thought at that time to be a good sign to introduce immunotherapy.

  CINDY BREAKSPEARE: As we all know now, melanoma is just a really unpredictable form of cancer. And although it’s a skin cancer you never know what it’s going to do. When the cancer was diagnosed, the doctors said they wanted to remove the toe. But that was vetoed, because your big toe is very important for the balance. So they decided to go with a graft. And I mean that healed beautifully. It healed really, really beautifully, and he used to take good care of it and everything. It really healed well and he wouldn’t allow it to get injured in any way. The skin over it of course was very tender, having been taken from the leg, the upper thigh area. So it wasn’t quite like the skin that would be on the toe. It was softer. It wasn’t hardened or calloused. So one needed to be careful, what shoes you wore and everything, so nothing irritated it and rubbed on it too much, but it healed beautifully.

  JUNIOR MARVIN: I think he was convinced not to cut his toe by various people, namely Don Taylor, and in fact to graft the skin rather than cut it off, which turned out not to be a good idea. On return to Jamaica for the One Love Peace Concert, doctors there advised him that the grafting of the toe would be sufficient, and he wouldn’t have to cut his toe. And from that point onwards, I don’t know what happened.

  GILLY GILBERT: The skin graft was in early ’78 in Miami, or late ’77. He thought it was cured at that point, ’cause it healed. They gave him a cap to put over it if he was going to play soccer. He played after, he played hard soccer. It was like a sponge thing. He never talked about it over the next two and a half years. At the start of the U.S. leg of the ’80 tour he had an exam that he passed. To this day I just can’t understand. Bob played soccer in Australia, Zimbabwe, everywhere we go and he was playing like a champion. Even before we went on the U.S. tour in ’80, we had a send-off soccer game in southwest Miami here against a Haitian team, Am-Jam United, my team in Miami. He was running well like anybody else, he was kicking the ball like a bullet. If Bob was feeling pain I would have seen it while he was playing.

  ROGER STEFFENS: There’s a deeply held belief that “Rasta no deal with death.” Even speaking of its possibility, in a world of word–sound–power, is to be avoided. Rastafarian elders were giving Bob advice about his illness, decrying Western medicine and promoting Rasta teachings and herbal remedies. Others close to him had no knowledge of the disease.

  DANNY SIMS: It was strange how I learned about Bob’s cancer. This is only hearsay now that came from Allan “Skill” Cole, ’cause I didn’t talk to any of the Jamaica people, and Allan was constantly my friend. Allan told me that Bob was playing soccer and hit his toe and that Chris sent him to a doctor in London. And that he then discovered that he had melanoma cancer. That’s because when his toe was hurt he didn’t think it was cancer. The Jamaicans then weren’t dealing with cancer. So they kept that away from me. Oh my God, 100 percent away from me!

  Don’t forget now, I’m a nutritionist. I did The Beverly Johnson Guide to Health and Beauty book. And all my family had cancer; it practically runs in my family’s blood. So we in America knew a lot about cancer, as laymen. And so then I said, “What happened?” And Allan said, “He came to Miami to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital and the doctors there said he had to cut off half his foot.”

  I didn’t find that out until the accident in the park three years later. Nothing. Because let me tell you something, not only would I have told him to very happily cut off all traces of the cancer. Half his feet, with the technology today with the war, you can get the kind of extension to really move. Bob Marley moving on stage didn’t have a lot to do with his feet, as much as it did with his whole body, his head, his hand. I don’t know why they wouldn’t tell me, I don’t really understand. Even why Mrs. Booker wouldn’t tell me. I didn’t see him in ’77. When I saw Bob again he came to my house and he took Betty Wright on tour with him in 1979. I knew nothing about his illness; they kept that a very big secret. Maybe because it was cancer and Jamaicans were not accustomed to that.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Marley would cancel his entire U.S. tour in 1977. There would be rumors later that French doctors injected melanoma into Bob’s foot, or that Marley’s cancer was the result of the CIA somehow “dosing” Bob with the disease. Both of these allegations have been debunked by many medical specialists. Here Dr. Lowell Taubman, longtime reggae collector, writing in The Beat, explains the disease in medical terms.

  DR. LOWELL TAUBMAN: Bob Marley died of metastatic malignant melanoma which originated on the big toe of his right foot. In nonmedical terminology, melanoma is a skin cancer which, if caught early enough, is usually curable with aggressive treatment.

  It has been proposed that Bob Marley was injected with melanoma. According to the present medical literature, malignant melanoma cannot be transmitted by a needle injection. Melanoma also does not arise from injuries.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Let Marley’s white cousin have the final word, w
hich points to a probable genetic basis for Bob’s illness.

  CHRISTOPHER MARLEY: Our white Marley family has had a long history of skin cancer and at least one prior case of melanoma.

  CHAPTER 27

  The One Love Peace Concert

  R

  OGER STEFFENS: In the elections held shortly after the Smile Jamaica concert, Michael Manley was overwhelmingly reelected as prime minister of Jamaica. One of his first actions was to put some of the leading gunmen from both political parties in prison. Bucky Marshall (PNP) and Claudie Massop (JLP) shared a cell. They began comparing notes and soon realized that they were both being played by the political class in Jamaica in a game of divide and conquer. It’s as old as the Bible itself: keep their proxies fighting among themselves in the lower ranks, and they won’t drive up to Beverly Hills and attack the real enemies of the people. So these two vicious gunmen declared a truce between themselves. And when one of the other prisoners from their cell was released, he brought the news back to the war-ridden ghettos of West Kingston and a spontaneous peace movement broke out.

  At the end of 1977, Massop and Marshall were released and headed to England to beg Bob to come back home and headline what they hoped would be a “One Love peace concert,” named after one of Bob’s most alluring songs. Knowing that he was talking to people who had allegedly been involved in his assassination attempt, he was highly reluctant. Then finally he assented, agreeing to return once his safety was guaranteed.

  When he landed in Jamaica at the end of February 1978, he sat for another interview with broadcaster Neville Willoughby. The Tuff Gong headquarters was bustling with a variety of armed men—murderers, police, gang members—and a constant stream of foreign press.

  NEVILLE WILLOUGHBY: When I interviewed Bob in 1978 I could tell there was something different about him from ’73. He wasn’t this sort of happy, sort of bubbly type of person he had been in ’73. I never saw him laugh again in ’78. But when he was talking in ’73 he would laugh at things, make jokes. Never did in ’78. And I think it’s probably because he was sick and we didn’t know. Never can tell, the man might have been in pain. I don’t know.

  JUNIOR MARVIN: Bob came back to Jamaica about eight weeks before the concert. I went to the airport to meet with him. And the airport was rammed with people. There were buses, and all the Rastafarians were there and [ska star] Prince Buster was there. I remember everyone jumped the barrier to get to the plane. Just like when His Majesty came. And I decided to jump the barrier too, with everyone else, not even thinking about it, and ran towards the airplane. When Bob came down the stairs, he was engulfed by the people. I was right behind Prince Buster, and Prince Buster grabbed Bob on his right, saying, “Bob! See me here! See me here!”

  That’s when the picture was taken that was on the front page of The Star, with Buster with his arm around Bob. All you see of my picture is my hair. Very short locks. Right behind Prince Buster. And Bob ran, and Ziggy wanted to get to Bob, and he ran to his father. Bob grabbed Ziggy, and they grabbed Bob, threw him in a car and drove off with him. He didn’t even go through customs or anything. They just grabbed him and took him off down to the racecourse because they had a gathering there. The people were invited to come to the racecourse and meet Bob. To show that Bob Marley was back again in Jamaica, he was home, home to greet his people, and he was thinking positive, he wasn’t thinking negative about the shooting or anything like that. And we drove to the racecourse, and there were thousands of people there. The great Nyabinghi [a Rastafarian drumming festival and ritual, also known as a grounation] started before Bob arrived, and it was going right through. Twenty-four hours nonstop. It was downtown, near Parade, in a kind of broken-down area, not far from Tivoli Gardens and not far from the waterfront. A lot of Rastas live in that area, right near Seeco’s house, near Love Lane. And, myself just returning to Jamaica, I didn’t know A from B about Kingston. I’d been away since I was nine years old. Everything was new to me, it was great, it was very exciting. I’d go anywhere. I was very innocent to all the things that were going on politically. To me it was just Rastafari and love.

  We arrived at the Nyabinghi at nighttime. There were a thousand drums playing. There were chalices everywhere and herbs being smoked, and a lot of prayers were being said and a lot of chanting. A lotta lotta chanting. It was a real beautiful experience, because I’d never been to a Nyabinghi before in my life. And it was like I was back in the biblical times, ’cause I saw all these elder Rastafarians, and they were all so humble and very positive to one another. I really felt a lot of warmth and love in my heart for these people, because I said, “Look at the world, there’s people making bombs and ammunitions all over. And these bredren here, almost like Moses and people like that, chanting for the world to be at peace.” Continuous chant. And having the faith 110 percent. That was a great experience, I’ll never forget it. The whole experience of Bob coming home to Jamaica, and the people greeting him, and the Nyabinghi, and the eventual One Love Peace Concert. It was an example for the whole world to follow.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Filmmakers, most especially documentarians, often depend on the luck of the spontaneous and memorable moment. For Jim Lewis, one of those serendipitous instants came during the filming of Heartland Reggae, a musical anthology that remains one of reggae music’s landmark works. Its climax features Bob Marley uniting prime minister Michael Manley and right-wing opposition leader Edward Seaga in a gesture of peace under a full moon before some forty thousand people. Neville Garrick has compared that electrifying moment to Christ on the cross between two thieves. After Bob had viewed the footage of Manley and Seaga joining hands with him onstage, journalist John Sutton-Smith asked what was going through his mind. Bob replied, “I-man no politician. But if I-man a politician, only one thing for me to do. Kill them both!”

  JIM LEWIS: I’m Canadian, more or less a long-form documentary filmmaker. I found myself in the Caribbean after a live-action film that I was doing was aborted, and I started looking around for something that seemed topical. Reggae music made a lot of sense to me in ’77. So I decided to do a TV pilot for reggae music, like American Bandstand except of reggae, for the local Caribbean audience. I made this half-hour show called Jamming, which was played on the public network once. Then I thought I’d get more into reggae, and so the only thing to do was to go down to Jamaica. I first went down there around September ’77. The One Love Peace Concert wasn’t until April ’78. I decided to try to film it as soon as I heard about it. My partner Billy Mitchell encouraged me to go back for it. He went down ahead and negotiated with the various factions. He seemed to think it would be OK. He was confident we could resolve everything. It was more like guerrilla filmmaking than anything organized. I remember Billy telling me that he had been taken to some kind of bunker deep in one of the ghettos, and this is where he negotiated with the warlords of one side. He was amazed at the sophistication, the electronics, in the middle of this so-called ghetto, that they had. But we didn’t know if we’d get to film until the last minute. We didn’t even know who was actually running this thing. Ultimately we had to assume that Bob Marley’s people were running it, so we were dealing with Bob and his representatives, and that didn’t really resolve itself until he was walking onto the stage. Don Taylor was very instrumental in all these runnings, and he seemed to be the guy who could say we could film Bob for X amount of contingencies and conditions. Obviously I agreed to everything, I thought it was worth it to film Bob.

  Canadian film director Jim Lewis with a Japanese laser disc copy of his film Heartland Reggae, a.k.a. the One Love Peace Concert film. Vancouver, Canada, July 2000.

  ROGER STEFFENS: The historic One Love Peace Concert took place in the National Stadium in Kingston on April 21–22, 1978. Bob came out after midnight.

  JIM LEWIS: We had four cameras. One position had to be built; two others were at either side of the stage and one small camera roved in the audience. The scaffolding one was the so-called wide-angle shot, in the cro
wd in front of the stage. I remember the last-minute negotiations in the sweaty locker rooms under the stage. Diane Jobson, the Rasta lawyer, was being a real stick-in-the-mud. Suddenly, somebody came running in and said they were taking all the cameras down. It was still light outside so it would be about 4:30 by now. Everything had been set up and in place. Two of the cameramen came to me and said they were ready to quit. Eventually, I came to an agreement with Don Taylor. It was pitch-dark by then and the show was well under way. We didn’t really resolve anything, not even any handshakes. We agreed to get it filmed and then deal with legalities afterwards.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Bob’s publicist, Charlie Comer, was on stage.

  CHARLIE COMER: We were surrounded by guns, all brand-new guns! Hundreds and hundreds of them, machine guns! And I took Mick Jagger down there and we were on the side of the stage. Manley and Seaga were there, but they weren’t in the first seats, they were in the second row for protection. All the fuckin’ press were in front of them, they were gonna get shot first before the prime ministers, that’s for sure! Because I remember the Montreal Gazette journalist Garry Steckles saying to me, we felt like sitting pigeons. But Michael Manley had a real poker face and so did Seaga. They weren’t giving anything away.