by Rita Marley
Aunty was at the house in Bull Bay with the kids, and when they heard on the radio “Bob Marley and Rita Marley have both been shot,” you know they went crazy. Oh poor Aunty, just her out there with the kids … The police went there immediately to get them, as we didn’t know what to expect next.
That was close, a close call, and Jah was so good that nobody died that night, though Don Taylor was struck by five bullets and eventually airlifted to Miami with one lodged near his spine. Everyone thought he was dead and wouldn’t touch him, but Bob lifted him up and put him in a car along with me, and Diane Jobson drove us quickly to the hospital. When we got there, the doctors didn’t operate on me right away because they said they couldn’t touch the bullet immediately, that it was too near the brain. So they had to allow it to settle and wait for the swelling to go down, and since this would take a few days, I was admitted to the hospital under police guard. When Aunty and the kids came to see me, everyone was crying.
On Sunday, though, I was onstage, singing, because Bob decided to go ahead and do the concert. Come what may, he said, they could kill him now, but he was going to do it for the people. Some members of the band refused to play, so other musicians came together. Judy was also there with me to do background, though Marcia had gone to New York; she had been warned not to perform from early on, she said, so she had flown out. Bob stood there, out in the open, exposed to whatever might happen, his arm in a sling, unable to play guitar. I was still in my hospital jacket, my head all bandaged up and everything. And we sang.
I know those shots changed me, and they changed Bob too. After that he was frightened, though at the concert he bravely rolled up his sleeve to show his wounds to the crowd and reenacted the shooting in a dance. But now he was frightened in a way he hadn’t been, because even though he’d been warned by these gunmen that they were out to get him, he never thought they would try. And all of us now knew that with no trouble at all they could succeed, and how little it would take for them to try again.
Everything went down the drain then, everything, because nobody could have anticipated the situation we were now in. I went back to Bull Bay after that just to pack some things and get us out of Jamaica; this was so unreal. When you discover that somebody will try to kill you, you have to start thinking differently. So plans had to change. Bob and the kids and I, along with Neville Garrick, went to Nassau to live for a while, in one of Chris Blackwell’s homes there. I called Bob’s mother and she came down from Delaware to help out and stayed a few days.
At the time of the shooting, Cindy Breakspeare had just won the 1976 Miss World title. I hadn’t even known that Chris Blackwell had sponsored her to the contest, but Bob had and was a little more prepared for the eventuality of her winning. After she won they’d been planning to do a movie to be called Beauty and the Beast. So she soon arrived in Nassau, and I suppose they abandoned their plans to make the movie, because I never heard of it again. She wouldn’t dare stay where we were, of course, but she came in from London and stayed in a hotel, and he would visit her there. Cindy—and Cindy’s mother, it was later revealed—had expectations that were never fulfilled. I guess like any young girl she wanted to get married and was acting on the premise that this would eventually happen. Her mother asked Cedella Booker, “Why doesn’t Bob get his divorce? He promised Cindy that they were going to get married, and he’s still living with Rita!”
But Moms just said, “Uh-uh, just stop there, don’t touch that line.” Because although she was interested in Bob’s different relationships and the girls that he would bring to see her, she always gave me that love and respect.
Married or not, Bob then went into exile in England, where Cindy was living. And I realized that oh, this was going to happen eventually. As for me, I couldn’t stay in Nassau indefinitely, and there were the children to think of, who had to go to school, so I brought them back to Jamaica, to Bull Bay. But after such violence, I didn’t feel safe.
It’s hard to describe how I felt during this time, knowing that I would have to leave my house and garden, and trying to recover from my injury (the doctors said my thick dreadlocks saved my life). And like another, invisible wound was my grief and confusion about what was happening, with Bob off living in England. By then he was really living in England as well as doing studio work; it was living in exile or whatever, but he was living there. I felt tossed and turned, as if everything had started to shuffle. I would wake in the morning thinking nothing was right, wondering how long this was going to last, and if it was going to last or would it end. I kept telling myself, get ready to stand on your own two feet, you don’t want to be left out in the cold, you were trained to be independent, and now you have to be. Be strong, stand up and fight.
I told Bob we’d have to move, because if I felt this way, the children felt worse, and we had to live in a secure area where we felt protected. Bob agreed, and it was Gilly, our tour cook, who said, “Yeah, man, it’s scary for you to live all the way out there in Bull Bay alone with the children,” and found a house for us in Kingston on Washington Drive, a few doors away from the then prime minister, Michael Manley. I rented it at first and then Bob bought it for us.
After we moved from Bull Bay into the building on Washington Drive, which was what we call a “three-sister” and Americans call a “three-family” house, Abba Mendefro and Zacgi from Ethiopia, the former a priest of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the latter a teacher, became our tenants there. The church couldn’t afford rent, and living conditions had been difficult for Abba, so he agreed to help Aunty take care of the kids. He became like a grandfather to them, and I felt so much better then. I was sure that with Abba around, Satan wouldn’t dare come in that yard! The children were safe—Ziggy even became an altar boy—and it was as if my faith were being restored. So there again I was able to hold on to whatever that power was—Jah? God? Allah? Whatever name you want to use, I was able to use that power to sustain myself.
Bob and I still spoke almost every day. He would call to ask, “What you doing? What’s happening with the children?” He was in the studios up there in London, and one day he said, “You know I need the I-Three, we want you all to come up to record some background vocals, because I’m here working.” So I said fine, okay, we’d do that, because now that the children were safe with Aunty and Abba, I felt I could go back to work. So I called Marcia and Judy and we flew to England. And it was when I returned home that I found another message from Frank Lipsik’s French company, Hansa, about this solo album they wanted from me. It seemed like a very good time for that to happen.
When Eric Clapton recorded Bob’s tune “I Shot the Sheriff” and made it a big international hit, Bob got a lot of recognition as a revolutionary. This pleased him immensely; he was happy to be known as “the musical revolutionist,” fighting his war with his music. His songs seemed to reach out beyond national borders and apply to everyone’s life with their meaning intact. Most of the American singers who were prominent during that time had been listening to Bob Marley. Keenly.
Stevie Wonder, for one, loved Bob’s music, and he was getting to love Bob the man as well. He always said, “Bob, I want to plan a tour with you. Be the opening act for me,” and that tour had been in the planning stages when Bob got sick. Stevie wrote “Master Blaster” with Bob in mind. When he came to Jamaica and we did a concert with him it was so deep, as if these men had been seeing each other for years—and I mean seeing with eyes, because even though Stevie is blind, he sees so much because he feels so much! It was as if Stevie had been seeing Bob for what he was and what he wanted to be. Roberta Flack was another one who came to Jamaica, drawn by Bob’s talents. I remember being around her for a while and being aware of what a strong woman she was. Stevie, Roberta, Barbra Streisand, a lot of those people were into Bob’s music.
But the music’s content didn’t please everyone. In the States this was a time when anyone who preached “revolution” and “peace” in any way, even musically, was subject to intense
scrutiny. Now that Bob had become so well-known outside Jamaica, his impact on other political situations besides our own was being tracked. It wasn’t easy to be in that position, either. I still have a package that proves that Bob’s moves were being monitored by the U.S. intelligence agencies. And because he found himself the victim of a “We are watching you” situation, he had to be very discreet; he had to start watching himself. Although at the time it was difficult to prove that any such thing was happening, in later years someone was able to secure the files through the Freedom of Information Act.
Six months after the shooting, Bob decided to come home. I think he was getting bored with London, or maybe it was getting too close to winter (he wrote “Misty Morning, No See No Sun” there). But he was influenced, also, by friends in Jamaica, because there was still unrest in the country, and gang warfare. People—in the ghettos especially—were still asking for him, saying that unless Bob Marley came back to Jamaica there would be no peace. Political heavies, too, were eager for him to return, “because if the people see you …” By then some of the guys who had attempted the assassination had been found. So Bob returned to a hero’s welcome and a great deal of excitement.
And he came back to live with us on Washington Drive, but things had changed so radically, I’d find the most dangerous men around him sometimes (he said “for protection”). And I’d be thinking, wow, they’re sleeping in my bed? He’d come home saying, “Rita, we have to put up this guy tonight,” and we’d have to sleep in the living room. I just started making my bed up and taking it down, and making it up and taking it down. It seemed as if things were left to their discretion mostly, not his, as if he had given himself up to them. And then I would say, “You’re just like Jesus Christ, he gave his life for the people.” Sometimes I still think like that—yeah, he gave it up, he gave it to them. But you could see he was no longer comfortable in Jamaica; he couldn’t take it anymore, he became very paranoid and edgy. We thought of going to Ethiopia to live, but he said the Twelve Tribes organization said it wasn’t his turn yet; they usually sent members by turns. I still don’t understand that.
Usually, before we traveled, each of us on the tour was allowed to get a salary advance, in case we wanted to leave money for our families or anything else. Before we left on what would turn out to be our last tour, I asked for an advance, because I too wasn’t feeling good living where we were. By then it was election time again, and many of Jamaica’s wealthier, upper-class people were running away from the system that remained unchanged, the gang violence that once again threatened to engulf the island. And so houses were going for what seems like a small amount now—twelve thousand to thirty thousand dollars. For me that was big money in 1980. We were still talking about security being important, and I didn’t want to leave the children around the Washington Drive area because, with the election imminent and us being neighbors to one of the political leaders, it didn’t feel safe any longer. I wanted to buy a house I’d seen that was up on one of the hills overlooking Kingston. It was a beautiful Spanish-style building, a house on the hilltop, like the one I’d first visited when we started to work with Johnny Nash. The kids loved it. I knew I couldn’t pay cash, but that something would work out.
I told Bob I’d found a home and that I wanted to set the kids up before we left. What I didn’t know was that Bob had Diane Jobson’s father planning a real estate thing, to build a mansion for him in Nine Miles. When I did hear about it I realized I wasn’t being mentioned, that it wasn’t really for me, because then Bob began to talk about having a big underground studio; he was going to stop touring and settle down with his children.
So I said to him, “Okay, you do what you want to do.” He said he wanted a bigger house. But I wasn’t going to give up so easily. I said, “Okay, but the one I found has a nice acreage of land, and my lawyer said, if I’m gonna choose it I have to fill out the papers before I go, because there are other people who are interested, and I should leave an advance.”
I didn’t push it at first, because I thought I might be getting too … too demanding maybe. But then I got really determined, thinking, he’s not leaving me. I asked him to come up to see the place. When he arrived, with Diane Jobson, Bob looked around, and his response was that the place was nice, but it was too small for his children. So I said, “Well, it could be bigger. This is a big property. I mean, we can develop on it if you want; make more rooms when we get back from the tour.”
But he said, “No, I’m not interested.”
Later, when we were alone, he explained more about what he was doing in Nine Miles, which is actually where his mausoleum is now. He was preparing that place to live, he told me, because this would be his last tour, his last deal with Island Records. The contract was up, and he was to be on his own, definitely on his own with his music. So he was making a decision for his life. Where to go from here, after his last album for Chris Blackwell. He’d be a better father, spend more time with his children, he’d be a better husband, he’d be a better friend … blah blah blah. We laughed and talked all night. Promises, and oh …
“Okay, Bob,” I said. “But in the meantime, I’m going to buy this house.”
Before this, I was always able to keep an eye on him. And he was happy for that. I was his eye, I was his pain; when things were not right, I would be the shoulder. I created home for him anywhere I was. And he loved that. He loved to know he could get away, especially after he became public property, and oh they would pick on him. And when I looked at him, I’d see him getting skinny, I’d see when he started to fret, I could tell when he wasn’t happy. Even the whole woman thing was becoming a problem for him. They might enjoy sex, but he wasn’t enjoying his life. Sex is one thing, but what happens afterward? What can you give? What is your contribution? And that’s what was lacking in most of Bob’s relationships; the one-night stands were becoming physically and spiritually boring—that took a lot out of him.
The day after I had decided to buy the house on the hill, I drove up there (in the BMW Bob had bought me—I guess as a consolation—when he became more friendly with Cindy). I looked around again and said to myself, wow, I’m taking a chance. But hey, it’s a positively savvy chance, I told myself, when you consider you have to do it, you just have to do it. Buy yourself a home that you love. Girl, if you don’t make it happen, nobody’s gonna do it for you. Make up your mind; Bob seems to be on a different trip. Something felt strange, I could feel a different vibe. But I’d been through all that. There were enemies, and it was an easy thing to have enemies. And I had friends. Just a few. Real friends were a few.
So I took the advance money for the tour and I told the manager, “Don’t pay me on the road, just send the money straight to this lawyer in Jamaica.” Because, after all, that was me. I’m not gonna live in the darkness, I told myself, I have to be where the light shines. And I’m gonna live in the house on the hill.
chapter twelve
WOMAN FEEL THE PAIN MAN SUFFER, LORD
IN SEPTEMBER 1975, during a football game, one of the players wearing spikes stepped on the big toe of Bob’s right foot. The injury was somewhat severe, but he refused to give it much attention, because Bob was Bob, who never gave in to pain, and a hurt toe wasn’t as serious as other things that needed looking after. So he took it very lightly and continued to play on the foot even though doctors recommended that he rest it and not run around for a while. I would be the last one who saw it most evenings, when he came home and took off his sneakers and socks. He was hurt enough to complain—ouch!—and I could see the toe was not healing. I kept saying, “Bob, it’s still not looking good, you have to quit wearing these kinds of shoes and give up the football for a time.” He’d say okay, and he’d stop for a day or two, and the next day he’d be out on the field again.
Eventually, after he reinjured the toe in 1977, the nail fell off, and then malignant melanoma developed, ironically, a disease that rarely occurs in people of color. But Bob felt the doctors who made this
diagnosis were lying, even Dr. Bacon, a black doctor in Miami who loved Bob and who said to me, “If Bob would allow me to get rid of the toe, we could stop this thing.” After the doctor spoke to me I spoke to Bob about it, but Bob thought I was crazy, because he believed that if he consented to this he wouldn’t be able to stand up during performances. “How would I go onstage? They won’t stay looking at a crippled man!” He spoke angrily to me, as if I were being deliberately negative. So I thought, okay, this is not a time for him to feel that way about me. I felt I had to support his will because I didn’t want him to feel as if I were trying to weaken him when he needed strength most of all.
In any case, the decision wasn’t left to me. My influence was more and more limited in that hothouse, superstar atmosphere where rumors flew about his illness and people told him this and that. Naturally, I had my opinion about some of the things that were said, but I didn’t try to make a fuss, to publicize my feelings.
Bob was told that Dr. Bacon was lying, that it was only a sore toe and would get better soon, that he should come out of the hospital where this diagnosis had been made. Which he did.
So that final tour went on, and we traveled from one country to another, one city to another, doing the same thing we had done for almost seven years. Night after night, city after city, crowds of fans—thousands of people—came out to see Bob; for them he had become more than just a singer; they wanted to hear the message in his music, what he had to say. Along with this every aspect of his life was inspected—whatever he did, whatever he thought, whatever others thought of him.
This meant an openness, with many more people having access to him. When he became that accessible, because of the growing demand, I started to lose him, physically as well as morally. And with that loss of his presence came the loss of his feelings toward a lot of things. I felt I’d lost his respect, his attention, his value. Yet all the while these public demands became more important than his personal ones, I continued to be there as one of the I-Three and not as his wife. I still felt the situation demanded it. He was not very happy; his toe never healed; there was no time for that.