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

by Roger Steffens

  ROGER STEFFENS: Some of the songs on the album were written while Bob was living in Miami, where he had ensconced his mother and sister Pearl in a big house on Vista Lane. With him was Dessie Smith, a friend from Trench Town, who was his personal assistant on the road and often helped Bob compose songs.

  DESSIE SMITH: On a typical day in Miami for us, Bob would get up around ten, eleven. He used to go to bed real late. Then he’d wake up, get some mint tea. He might burn a spliff. He might reason, and within that time now, him read up the Bible, read a psalm out loud and discuss it with us, like a teacher discussing the meaning of the psalm, how it’s relevant to everyday life, what it’s saying. And after that, he takes the guitar and might come up, depending on the vibes him get, we might or might not get a song. A spliff, the Bible and music, that’s the best, that’s how the day run! Might just play some ball after that, the guitar, eat, back to the guitar. We played ball outdoors and sometimes play indoors, inside the kitchen area, Bob used to play scrimmage in there. Mrs. Booker was crying out, “Why you mosh up the things? Play ball outside!”

  And then we had boxing matches there, ’cause me and him bought two pair of boxing gloves. We always sparred. He tries to hurt me but I always hold back. And he has everybody in his corner, like him say, “We haffe fight now.” I can’t even get one of the ten people there. Everybody’s his cornermen! We spar all the time, even before his shows, ’cause he likes to warm up before a show. So by the time he goes on the stage, he’s wet already. He warms up just like he’s gonna play a football game or a track.

  We would play football, then we’d play bigger football. We used to play in the backyard, over by the jeep: Seeco, Gilly, Neville Garrick is usually there. We played before dinner, then we’d eat and then go around the back and have music again, guitar vibe. You’d have a lot of people there who would join in the singing, when we were making them songs. And we’d call them to come in and sing the chorus. The back room, it had sliding-glass doors. I used to sleep out there. Bob used to sing to us at night, and we would end up sleeping on the couch, cowboy style. Most of the time! Boots, shoes. Bob was just like that.

  And most of the time there was a tape running, but not all the time. Sometime him haffe just get jamming. You have another time when him jammin’ just like that and him say, “All right, get the tape player.” Him figure that very effective.

  Many of those are unfinished, like the first three or four lines. We had one called “Drastic Step,” we just got that line three times and then we left that. Same time we start one small little one, four lines:

  Come down, come down from your high riding wall

  Can’t you see you’re riding in the past?

  False pride cometh before a fall

  So when you drop don’t bother bawl

  Can’t say me never warn you

  Before we spurn you

  Some just a show off naturally

  Fighting battles and personality

  Then come the bounce-back my friend

  Some call it reaction again

  Come down from your high riding walls

  Can’t you see you’re riding in the past?

  I remember “We And Dem” was definitely made around ’78. 1 remember when me and him sit down and I told him that in that song, we had actually written, “We no have no friend / in the House of Parliament.” And even I said, “That too direct.” ’Cause we usually try to word it that you can hear something and feel that it deal with you, but you can’t be sure, you can only assume. So I figure at that time that was too direct towards the politicians. And he must have been thinking the same thing. He went to Jamaica to record and when he came back he had pulled that out. He must have seen that that was too direct. [It was changed to “we no have no friends inna high society.”]

  I used to write a lot because my top subject in school was English literature. Used to do a lot of Shakespeare, and from we start jamming, sometime he just come and hum, and I get a vibes. Don’t get the word but get the melody. Either write the song by getting the lyrics first or the melody. He might play the guitar and find a good melody on it. Like me and him might sit down face to face and him [hums] and wait for me to come up with something. But most of the songs him come up with the lyrics. We worked together that way on the Survival and Uprising, songs like “Zion Train,” “Coming In From The Cold,” “Redemption Song,” “Real Situation,” “Pimper’s Paradise.” Most of these were Miami songs. “Coming In From The Cold” was written about three or four years before it was released. “Redemption Song” too, from around early ’77.

  “Pimper’s Paradise” was written about some girl in England he had an experience with. I think it was a friend’s experience, really. Bob writes from other people’s experience too—me and him, we could kick like that. He could take one of the lines, like hum for me to come up with the line, look me in the eyes. If I can’t come in, he tries. Like that song, “We Getting The Fight,” it took us about a week. We tried but couldn’t come up with one line. He was singing “we getting the fight from all direction.” I come up with “complexion,” and he acknowledge this, he smile, shake his head out.

  The songs that I collaborate on that I’m proudest of are “Black Survival” and “Real Situation.” But I never think of asking for cowriter’s credit; no, we just deal on a different level. We don’t deal with that; that never mean anything to us. We just get up and do that stuff. And that’s how he is. You don’t hear him speak or argue about “Where’s money?” Never, never.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Uprising was released in mid-June, while Bob’s record-shattering final tour was in its early stages.

  ERROL BROWN: We started the tour in Europe. That was a dream, to see how people went on over reggae music. It’s like you are at pop concert, everywhere sold out!

  ROGER STEFFENS: Two months after his triumphant performance in Zimbabwe, Bob played to the largest audience of his career in San Siro, a soccer stadium in Milan, on June 27, 1980. Pope John Paul II had appeared there the week before and Bob outdrew the Pope!

  JUDY MOWATT: The most indelible show for me was really the one in Milan. It was about 110,000 people. And when I saw the amount of people my mind reflect on the first time we toured together, in 1975, with the Natty Dread album, in a little place called Paul’s Mall in Boston—you know, it was very small. And we had to work seven nights a week, it was so hard, and even working for seven nights a week we never accumulated that amount of people! Yeah, for one place now, we see this huge mass of people, it was really impressive. All these Italians singing “No Woman No Cry,” and they don’t speak English. It’s the same thing like when we toured Japan, the people don’t speak English, but they know every one of Bob Marley’s songs, they can sing it for you word for word, but they probably don’t know the meaning of it.

  ERROL BROWN: Biggest show was in Milan. Oh, God! You can’t imagine how big that was. Remember, Italy is all about the Pope and football, and then you see “RASTAMAN BOB MARLEY” on the front page of their biggest newspaper. And it said, “Bob Marley create history in the stadium.” Not even football! Football couldn’t carry so much people, because we use the field too, obviously. That place was beyond packed. We had a group named Average White Band that was touring with us. Them have to cut their set short when people start throwing eggs onstage and run them offstage, shouting, “Bob Marley! Bob Marley!” It was a joyous experience. To me it’s like a concert you see today with the biggest pop artist. Big! To me it was a dream. I didn’t want to wake up out of that dream, you know. And right through. That was the biggest one. But I remember Crystal Palace in England, with the big pool in front of the stage full of dirty water. You see, when Bob came onstage, everyone went in that dirty water, just to get close to Bob Marley and the Wailers. The place ram, every show sold out.

  At the end of the tour everybody got bonus, more than their salary for the tour. It was my first big tour like that. At the end of the tour everyone stayed back at Bob’s request. I just wante
d to go home. I remember Bob saw me down in the lobby and asked me where I’m going, I said home, he said, “Hold on, Errol, we have some bonus money coming in.” I said, “Bob, you bring it when you coming, I just want to go home.” He said, “All right, little more then.” But it happened that, unfortunately, Bob never come home. You see, Bob was a good person, he get bonus and shared it among us all. Which other artist would do this?

  ROGER STEFFENS: BY 1980, Colin Leslie, Bob’s business manager, was setting up Bob’s escape mechanism from Island. The release of Uprising in 1980 finished the contract, and Bob was considering a change of label. A multimillion-dollar contract was being offered by Polygram.

  COLIN LESLIE: For Bob that was a package deal, involving all the Tuff Gong artists. He distributed the Abyssinians, Burning Spear, Freddie McGregor, a lot of products for a lot of people. But it wasn’t about escaping necessarily. It was about setting up a sort of organization that would offer an alternative for the Jamaican artist. He wouldn’t have to go to New York or London or wherever. They could get signed right here in Kingston and still get international exposure. For want of a better example, a Motown in Kingston. That’s what he was trying to set up.

  ROGER STEFFENS: But the dream was never to be. As the American leg of the planned world tour began, tragedy struck.

  CHAPTER 33

  Madison Square Garden Then Everything Crash

  R

  OGER STEFFENS: Marley was now a huge superstar, filling stadiums, hounded day and night by admirers and charity-seekers. Great strains were altering his relationship with Cindy Breakspeare.

  CINDY BREAKSPEARE: Well, Bob was not someone that you could really harness his time or his attention, because his life was so demanding and he was so committed to what he was doing that you really had to find yourself or you would become very insecure, very disillusioned, very distressed. Because the man in your life, as it were, probably could never be there quite as much as you wanted him to be. So you really had to look within, and look for your talent, and he was all for that too. He was very encouraging that way, you know. All things constructive and creative, and he was very instrumental in the formation of my shop, Ital Craft. He brought us our first power tools, he brought us our first materials from London, which he sent someone out to buy for me. So he really was very inspirational in my growth and development as an individual, and as I say, just being secure within yourself, and knowing the things you want to do and going after them and not sitting back and waiting for anybody to make your life feel important or exciting or whatever. You had to get it on yourself.

  Our breakup never actually happened until he fell ill. The summer that he fell ill, I moved away from Russell Heights, the home he bought for me in Kingston, Barbican area. I sold it. And to be honest with you, it was never really an official situation where I said, “Look, it’s over,” or he said, “Look, it’s over.” It was just more or less a situation where he’d gone up to Miami to prepare to go out on tour, and I decided I wanted to move away from Russell Heights, because it was just too much of a scene, you know. I felt like I needed some space. So I found a small place in the hills that was just big enough for Damian and me and told everybody else they needed to find their own yard. And when he called me and asked me to come up to Miami and spend some time before the tour began, and I sort of said, “Well, what’s the scene there?” and he described it to me, and I said, “No, I don’t think I can penetrate that scene again. If you want to come back down here and we do something.” Some quality time was what I was looking at. But, of course, when I heard the news that something was seriously wrong, you know, you drop everything and you go.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Unknown to his intimates, Marley’s final act was imminent, made more heartbreaking by the great success of the summer in Europe, where he played to over a million people. The turning point came shortly after the North American leg of the world tour began, following two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. By this point, Bob had fired Don Taylor and hooked up again with Danny Sims.

  DANNY SIMS: When we came off the European tour in 1980 the New York DJ Frankie Crocker was coming to Jamaica with us trying to get him and Pepe Sutton, the owner of WBLS, to get me to get Bob to come and do the show with the Commodores. They did that tour and I did the American tour. There was a lot of setting up and rearranging from agents and everything from the way Don Taylor had things set up. Bob Marley wanted to do arena soccer in every city. That wasn’t an easy setup, to get in touch with everyone so they could play indoor soccer. He wanted to play all the indoor arenas on every concert, he wanted to play in them during the day. And that took a long time to set up.

  ROGER STEFFENS: The idea for the tour was to go on the road with black artists like the Commodores in an outreach to the African-American audience. Bob wanted Sims to help him because he had access to that audience and to stations that could break him in a black market. He was talking to Stevie Wonder about doing a number of shows with him. (The 1980 world tour had been originally planned with Bob co-headlining with Jacob Miller and Inner Circle, but Miller had been killed in an automobile accident in the spring.)

  DANNY SIMS: Yes, yes. That’s what he wanted to do. And that’s how the WBLS show came about. Because for Bob Marley to open at this time in his career for the Commodores was nearly an insult. And I’m not putting the Commodores down, because they were a huge act. But the difference was that WBLS was having trouble, ’cause it was their show and they had put a lot of money in it, and the tickets weren’t selling, even to the black market it wasn’t selling. So they agreed to play Bob Marley’s “Could You Be Loved” every hour on the hour for three months. For how much? For nothing! To play Madison Square Garden and open the show for the Commodores, that’s for how much.

  And I remember my being on the bus and my introducing it to Bob. I remember Bob had met Frankie Crocker, WBLS’s top DJ, and he liked Frankie Crocker. He was animated and a big-time name, and this was right down Bob Marley’s alley, he wanted the black market. And Frankie Crocker went back to New York, they called me in and said, “Danny, can you get him to do it?” I said, “Well, I’ll talk to him.” And I went and had a talk with Skill and Bob and I said, “The Commodores are going to have a lot of trouble and are you afraid to open the show for the Commodores?” He said, “No.” And I said, “Frankie Crocker and Pepe Sutton have been playing your record but they’re getting no response from the black market.” No acceptance, nobody went out to the stores to buy it. And I think Chris Blackwell was very disappointed ’cause he was anxious to break that market, it would just expand Bob. And we put that record on nearly every major black station, major play, “Could You Be Loved,” even in Los Angeles on KJLH. They played the record every hour on the hour pretty much. That was for money.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Marley gave Danny Sims $80,000 to promote it by buying airtime on black stations in America.

  ERROL BROWN: Bob Marley wasn’t big in the U.S. until “Could You Be Loved” was released. That’s the song broke Bob Marley in the U.S. ’cause it was a disco-reggae song, it was a crossover. U.S. never really accept reggae before, it was a hard market.

  DANNY SIMS: Then I started to hear complaints. How could Bob open for the Commodores? Just a lot of rhetoric. And I told Bob, I said, “Bob, that’s gonna happen.” They said they’d only give us an hour. And, shit, how could Bob Marley do a show for an hour, when he’s used to doing an hour and a half or two hours and overtime? I think the Commodores underestimated Bob. Now, Bob had been touring and his shit was on the spot. I remember my saying to Bob, we only got an hour, so you have to cut your show. Bob wanted to do that show—it wasn’t me encouraging him, which I was accused of.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Marley was seen in New York with Vivian Blake, who ran the notoriously violent Shower Posse gang, responsible for over 1,400 murders. A frightening picture of them together, in which Bob appears gaunt and ghostly, was published years later in Shower Posse, a book by Blake’s son Duane.

  DANNY SIMS: I
remember that Bob said that he was a little bit afraid for his life. And Allan said that he thought that the posse or whatever it was wanted to assassinate him. But here’s what I’m saying: he felt threatened either because he got shot in Jamaica or there was something looming from that.

  ROGER STEFFENS: To ensure that Bob would feel safe for the show at Madison Square Garden, Danny Sims took some unusual measures.

  DANNY SIMS: I took him to see a guy named Joe Armone, the head of the Gambino [Mafia] organization. Joe Armone was my partner for forty years before he died. And at the same restaurant that Castellano got killed, I took Bob and Allan to that restaurant to meet with Joey Armone. And Allan told Joey that they wanted protection for the Madison Square Garden. And you remember one of the members of Bob’s band, Wya Lindo, came late for the show, and wound up in the audience. That was one of the Gambino guys who had him out in the audience. Because he came late they didn’t know who he was. They thought he was coming to do something wrong. So when he came in, they shifted him right into the audience. So he had that place surrounded. And the whole country would have been the same thing, because the Gambino organization was the biggest in America. They would have been the security people for the rest of that tour because of the death threats. It wasn’t just for New York; the Jamaicans were in the whole country. And then, the Jamaican government’s hit squads, they can go anywhere.