by Rita Marley
But Tacky said, “No Bob, we can’t fight, we’re brethren. And I’m here because she needs help. She needs someone, and you must respect that.” Tacky went very hard on him. And Bob was sorry for the accusation and did admit it. Poor Bob. He could always see the truth and he knew nothing was going on then between Tacky and me.
But I got very upset. I said to Bob, “After all you’re doing, you’re going to accuse me? What about that bitch you have in the car?”
The next time he went off to London, just about 1973, it was quite obvious that he’d started having women right in my face. At one point I thought there must have been something personal going on between him and Diane Jobson, but I guess she lived to overcome it when she became his lawyer. When I’d ask him, though, it was always the same story: Everyone came for a purpose. “This one’s for this, so don’t get upset, and this one’s for that.” But it had become too obvious. I felt that I was being taken for a ride, and it seemed like it was going to be a long ride. So I decided I wasn’t going to play the game. I told him plain, straight out, if you’re going to be doing this, we will not have a sexual relationship. We will have a relationship because we’re already family, but as far as sexual involvement is concerned, no. We didn’t have AIDS at that time, but there were other diseases, and I refused to be exposed to that kind of thing.
By then Tacky was already coming by sometimes to keep me company. He was my good friend, I knew I could always call on him when I needed help. Although at first it had been strictly a friendship situation—“I see you’re here with the children, and I don’t see Bob coming around”—now there were evenings when I got lonely and wanted to see someone. Because living in that location for the first time, anything could have happened to us, and we needed—I needed—someone. Not living in, because I’ve never done that, but just around me when Bob didn’t come home for a couple of weeks. Tacky would come in the morning to see how is everything, was everything all right last night, you had no problem? Often he’d bring fish, or Irish moss, all the “ital” stuff—foods that Rastafarians eat. Tacky is a very handsome Rastaman, who looks a lot like Bob. He was very respectful of the family, and caring; sometimes he’d even take the kids to school or take me to town in his yellow van. He had a job as an accountant in a big office in Kingston, and I found him intelligent and a reasonable man. We had a lot in common, so eventually I found myself attracted to him as well as grateful for his attention, and we developed a relationship that I thought was normal.
The next time Bob came back to Jamaica, I was almost raped. Because this is where I had drawn the line—“I’m not having sex with you.” But he insisted: “You’re my wife and I want you!” And so we had sex, and I think that’s when I got pregnant again. When I discovered I was going to have another child, my first thought was, my God, what is this—because, despite trying to overlook everything and be the good sister, I was so sick of his ways! (By then he had another outside baby, a daughter born in London.) But he knew that Tacky and I had a relationship; he and Tacky had a meeting—he sent for Tacky to discuss the matter. But during the meeting in came Bob’s current girlfriend, Cindy Breakspeare, saying, “Oh darling …” And Tacky said, “Look at that, Bob.” So Tacky brought him down again, and Bob felt bad about that too, because he would rather she had not appeared at a time when he was trying to correct something that he was so wrong about!
After that, at least for a while, it seemed as if we weren’t going to be intimate anymore. Still, he just couldn’t bear to know that I might find somebody who loved me as a woman. And I wasn’t trying to prove that I could; it just so happened that someone was there for me, and that really saved me. Because the frustration and the insult that I had to face with Bob’s lifestyle was, in spite of the good face I showed to the world, killing me. It could have killed me. So I think God sent me a friend when I needed one.
Still, I had promised myself I wasn’t going to be falling and dying, and this meant that I had to keep an eye on what was happening at Hope Road. Some of Bob’s girlfriends were upset because I was always there, seeing everything. I heard that one of them said, “Oh, she’s getting serious here!” And that’s exactly what was happening. I was getting serious.
From the first, when the whole thing started there, I’d felt a little bit outside of it. I don’t know if it was again the color of my skin or my Rasta philosophy that caused me to feel that way. The uptowns came to Island House out of curiosity, since it was in their territory, although Bob Marley and the Wailers were new to them; while our friends from the ghetto knew the music scene they were coming into if not much about the neighborhood where it had relocated. So the population at the house was a mixture. That part was okay. Additionally, I felt outside because of my personal feeling. So it took a while for me to figure out how I should be a part and yet not be a part.
My third daughter, Stephanie, was born in 1974, and in an effort to feed our large family healthy foods, grown organically according to Rastafarian precepts, and because I’d had such success with my home garden, I’d gone into full-time farming. St. Ann was too far away from Kingston, but a farm in Clarendon Parish, which is much closer, had been up for sale. So Bob bought it for us, and then I started to reap things like coconuts (and more coconuts!), naseberries, star apples, oranges, almost everything that you would think of coming off a farm, all of it organically grown. Recently I gave a portion of the land to the Rastafarian movement; the Nyabinghi Brothers built a tabernacle where they worship, and there’s a section of it that they farm; they also have accommodations for women and children, and a school.
But back then I would be collecting all this produce, which turned out to be far too much for one family, and I thought, what am I gonna do with it? I gave away a lot to friends, but there was still a surplus—we even had goats and cows! Then it occurred to me to ask Bob to let me open a little “depot” at Hope Road. Every day there were rehearsals there, or meetings or some such; the place was always crowded, a packed house of musicians and fans. The scene was like a party, with a lot of hungry and thirsty people who had nowhere to go for refreshment. So I thought I might do something different, and one morning I said to Bob, “You know, I think I could do a juice bar over there, right beside the gate.”
He frowned a bit, then laughed and said, “You sure? What would you do?”
I said, “Sell things, and so forth.” I realized the word “things” wasn’t specific, but I meant it, because if one thing didn’t work, I was going to try something else. And if I had to sell oranges, they would be the best oranges in Jamaica! So I explained that I could sell coconuts (in their shell, with a straw) and I could make juices with the different fruits that we were getting. And so he agreed, because he believed in my abilities—he’d sometimes say, “Whatever Rita says always works.”
We hadn’t thought about doing food before I started this, since we didn’t think we’d be allowed to in a residential area. But the idea of selling things was already in place: By then we sold records and anything else having to do with music. And I had a history of “selling things” successfully. So Bob said, only a little bit doubtfully, “That’s not a bad idea, if that’s what you want to do.”
I said, “Yeah, let me try.” I just wanted something to occupy my time, in terms of not sitting down and waiting, or not having anything to do but stay home and do housework. My babies were fine, they were growing up with us, and it was fun to have—if not a career—then at least something else to do that I enjoyed. So I created the Queen of Sheba Restaurant, and when I began to bring the food everybody went crazy. They loved it! Even my avocados were different—when it was avocado time, I had the best. And coconuts, oranges, star apples … When it comes to growing, I know I’m really God blessed, because whatever I plant grows. Whenever my fruit trees are bearing, they bear exceptionally well—big and good—and organic, because I don’t ever, ever use any fertilizer other than manure. After the juice bar took off, I built a brick oven to bake whole wheat bread ri
ght there. Bob was my best customer. I still thought I should be around my husband to be sure he ate properly, and this was a way of doing it.
Not long after Catch a Fire made Bob Marley and the Wailers instant superstars, I remet my old friend Minnie Phillips, the Rasta sister from uptown Kingston who used to buy records from our little bedroom shop in Trench Town. One night Bob and I were at a gathering of a Rastafarian organization called the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and there was Minnie with Judy Mowatt, one of the top women reggae singers. I hadn’t seen Minnie for eight or nine years, and as she says now, that night it was as if only the two of us were there. For hours we talked about old times and our children (like me, Minnie had had a few—Mike, Sahi, Saleh, Rutibel—in the years we’d been apart).
Before the night ended, we had planned a woman’s organization, to be called Mada Wa Dada (Mother of the Nation). We knew it was going to take some money. One of our immediate goals was to build a school for Rasta children, since at that time in Jamaica a child who wore dreadlocks was not admitted into the government schools. (Some schools even now deny such children admittance.) Back then we thought we should take up that responsibility, we felt we had it on our shoulders. To raise money, we decided to put on a concert. Since we had the talent, and the promoters were using us to pack their houses, why couldn’t we do it for ourselves? So we went to Bob—“Brother Bob, have mercy on the Rasta child!”—and he agreed to perform without pay. We were ecstatic, because that alone could fill the National Arena. Minnie was a Twelve Tribe member at the time, as was Bob, but I was not. Even though it was a Rasta organization, I didn’t feel as if I had a part there, since I thought of it as a “mixing pot” and didn’t see myself “mixing.” Minnie was rebuked by the leaders of the organization for joining with me, a nonmember, to put this show together—it was “against the rules.” (Their attitude toward women then needed adjustment, as women were always put in the background, which is why a women’s organization was needed.) And they were the culprits in the long run, because Minnie trusted these brethren and had them at the gate controlling all the money, and they robbed us of every cent. Every last cent! The night after the concert we got nothing. Despite the fact that the National Arena had been packed and all the food sold off, we got nothing!
But after that Minnie hung with me, and a more loyal sister you could not find. Most important, she helped me create the Queen of Sheba Restaurant. She’d be hook and hook with me, sometimes twenty-four seven. We would go to the Clarendon farm together and bring in the produce, set up the coconuts and the oranges. And Bob was so proud of us. He was like an agent pulling in customers, my proud PR man. He would tell everybody, “Go look over Rita’s shop! Go get something over Rita’s shop!”
Now I had a reason whenever I wanted to get away—I had to be off to the farm. If Bob was around, pretty soon I’d hear his Jeep coming in, and he’d be yelling, “Yo, Rita! Where are you?”
And I’d yell back, from between the rows of corn or coconut trees, “I’m over here, baby!”
He would sometimes be suspicious of me, and if he couldn’t find me, he’d go up to Minnie’s, looking, “Where’s Rita???” And I might be somewhere sitting quietly, reading a book. I think it was his conscience, and as the song says, “In every man chest there beats a heart.” I may have been resentful of this scrutiny then, but now I feel that he somehow had me in mind. That with all that was happening around him, innocent or not, he felt that some of it was not too good for Rita.
PHOTO SECTION
A significant day in black history—February 11, 1966. Both of us wearing the same size smile!
Aunty Vie and my brother Wes—my caretakers.
The Wailing Wailers—Bunny, Bob, and Peter, 1966.
Bob’s first recording, “One Cup of Coffee,” 1973.
Bob getting his usual hug onstage with the I-Three, Starlight Theater, California, 1978.
Me in one of my moods.
The Wailers—good to go at the Birmingham Odeon, 1974.
Rastaman vibrations—positive! Hammersmith Odeon in London, 1976.
“Could You Be Loved,” Roxy Theater, Los Angeles, California, 1976.
The I-Three doing their thing. Starlight Theater, California, 1978.
Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, at his coronation, November 2, 1930.
In the ghetto, bitter was sweet.
Studio One—Jamaica’s Motown, where we started.
Our children, 1982.
Bob after performing in Madison Square Garden with the Commodores, September 2, 1980.
A sad moment. With Steven and Ziggy at the state funeral for Bob in Kingston, May 21, 1981.
Me in Central Park, doing one of my charity performances.
Picking up after him! At the Hollywood Walk of Fame Awards Ceremony honoring Bob, with the Honorary Mayor of Hollywood Johnny Grant. Los Angeles, 2001.
The Melody Makers got the gold for “Hey World”!
Serita (Washbelly), 1998.
With Stephanie at my usual birthday party in Ghana.
With Erykah Badu at James Bond Beach, Jamaica, for a multi-artist tribute to Bob, 1999.
chapter nine
EASY SAILING
SOMETHING WAS STILL missing. I had a house, a farm, a shop at Hope Road, but I woke up most days with this: Suppose Bob and I should separate, what would I do? I felt I had to confront my dependency on someone who was so much in demand by the world. So I’d think, where do you really hang your hat? Are you gonna be wife? Or are you gonna be Rita? And who’s Rita?
Because I knew I had the opportunity for a career and wanted more to do, I joined a drama group. Actually, it was more like a light opera troupe, a group of men and women who put on concerts every year. They had advertised in the newspaper for singers to audition, and after I was chosen I mentioned to Bob that I had a part in the upcoming concert. He was interested—not surprising, as he usually encouraged me in anything I tried to do. The singing was good for me, since I hadn’t performed at all after moving to Delaware, and it felt good to use my voice, and to be onstage again, physically. I felt comfortable. But although I had fun, I knew I needed more of a challenge.
After coming home from Delaware I’d met up again with Marcia Griffiths, like Judy Mowatt one of Jamaica’s top female singers. I’d known Marcia since the early days, when like me she was a Coxsone artist, young and pretty and skinny with a big voice. So we were aware of each other’s potential. Since then her “Electric Boogie” had been a hit record in the States (and the source of the ever-popular Electric Slide), and she’d had another hit with Bob Andy in “Young, Gifted and Black.” Marcia and I were already touching bases, listening to each other, when one day she called me to say that she was performing at the House of Chen in Kingston, one of Jamaica’s well-known clubs at the time, and was wondering if I’d come along with Judy. “It would be good,” Marcia said, “if both of you come in and let us just vibe together, just a little thing.” She had already called Judy, who’d said, sure. So now it was up to me.
My first thought was, oh my god, as if I wasn’t ready. But then I thought, uh-uh, being professionals as we were, it wouldn’t be an assignment we needed time for. It wasn’t as if I should say, “Oh no, we’d have to rehearse.” So I told Marcia I’d call Judy and get it straight.
I had been seeing Judy, too. I’d first heard of her back in the sixties as the leader of a girl group, the Gaylettes, who were the top rivals to the Soulettes. We competed on the radio, although the Soulettes had an edge because we sometimes sang with the Wailers. Bob’s friend Alan Cole was dating Judy back then, and he’d begun telling her about Rastafari. Judy was a good-looking young woman and into being glamorous, lots of bangles on her arm and all. But Alan would use me as an example, he was always going on about how Rita looked, and what Rita wore and didn’t wear, saying, “Look at Rita! She’s a big singer too, and you don’t need all this hair style stuff.” At t
he time, Judy had said, “Uuff!” I don’t think she was ready to give up her bangles and her earrings to be a Rasta! But she did eventually. Like many of my friends, I had lost contact with her when I went to Delaware, but now I had remet her through Alan. I reached Judy that afternoon and we agreed it might be fun to “do a little thing” with Marcia.
I had to ask Aunty to come out to Bull Bay and babysit for me overnight, which I’d been trying not to do, in order to spare her, as she was now in her sixties—though she was as spry as ever. I picked up Judy and we went to the club and sat there watching Marcia onstage until, in the middle of her performance, she announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I have two of my best friends and sisters here with me tonight, Rita Marley and Judy Mowatt.” And the place went crazy! We went up on the stage and sang “That’s How Strong My Love Is”—no rehearsal, no nothing, just us. And we tore the place down! We had to encore continuously; the audience would not stop calling for more! And from there after we knew that, wow, we could do a thing, you know! And if you are not doing your thing, we could all come together and do our thing!