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

by Roger Steffens

  JAD Records posse Danny Sims, Joe Venneri, Jimmy Norman and Arthur Jenkins celebrating the launch of the Complete Bob Marley and the Wailers 1967– 1972 boxed set series at S.O.B.’s, New York City, April 1996.

  DANNY SIMS: When I met Johnny Nash he was young, but he was well trained with mic technique and all those things. And we wanted Bob to sing so you could see his face, ’cause he had a very nice face. But if you hold a mic in front of your face, you can’t see his face. So we had him hold his mic under his chin, and get the same volume. And that took a long time. When he got into a song, he was animated. As soon as the song started and he got in the groove, he was gone.

  JIMMY NORMAN: One of the first things I remember is that we had to hold Bob still in front of the mic, he was just jumping all over the place. I had to teach him how to record properly.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Marley learned a great deal from the American studio musicians he met through JAD’s connections. And they would, in turn, be affected by him. Among these new guides was Bernard Purdie, an Atlantic Records master drummer and studio musician, who played on many of the 1960s Wailers’ sessions for Johnny and Danny. Italian reggae fans have created a website which contains the following brief but fascinating interview.

  BERNARD PURDIE: I played and recorded with Bob in Jamaica. I cherish the memory of the very relaxed mode of approaching the music and being allowed our time to set it right. His music was always entertaining, with great rhythm and exceptional melody. When thinking of Bob, here is a picture that always comes to mind. We would leave the studio for a break. Bob would always climb up the hill, find a large rock, lie down upon it, light up, commune with nature and be at peace. The musicians there taught me the real authentic reggae music, which usually has percussion played by five different people. Because of what I had learned with Bob Marley’s musicians, I incorporated so much of the reggae feel into my music over the years. For example, listen to Aretha Franklin’s “Day Dreaming” and “Rock Steady,” Cat Stevens’s “Foreigner,” Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack’s “Where Is The Love?” to name a few.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Joe Venneri, Purdie’s colleague, formed a similar impression of Bob.

  JOE VENNERI: The only time I met Bob Marley was in New York. It was in the late sixties, we were all together in his lawyer’s office. I had no idea how huge he would become, but he had this charisma, this spiritual thing that’s in his voice—it’s still there in every song I hear him sing. It’s not musically perfect; it just seems to be an association with the earth. He’s got this honest thing that just comes across. Whether he’s sharp or flat or sideways, there’s something to everything he sings.

  DANNY SIMS: I did at least eight albums on Marley. But at that time I was recording a lot anyway. We did maybe sixteen albums on Johnny Nash. And Lloyd Price. We did an album with Byron Lee and an album on Neville Willoughby at the same time. I mean we were there; we recorded every day.

  JIMMY NORMAN: “Soon Come” was my song, Peter put some other lyrics to it, same arrangement, same melody, same music. We did thirty or forty of my songs in about eight months in 1968. I sang bass on “Chances Are” and “Soul Rebel,” and lots of others too. We were constantly working.

  DANNY SIMS: A lot of the songs we did with Bob were just fooling around in the studio, seeing what we could come up with. Bob was totally flexible, and we did lots of different kinds of experiments trying to come up with a hit single. We published the Cowsills, and we’ve got tracks of Bob covering their songs. We were the ones who encouraged the Wailers to cover the Box Tops song “The Letter.” We did a lot of Curtis Mayfield stuff with Bob that’s all there in the can; we even thought Bob wrote those songs by himself at first.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Bunny was finally released from prison after serving fourteen months.

  BUNNY WAILER: When I returned from prison in September of 1968, as soon as me come it was pure hard work in the studios, harder hours of singing. Sing all dem “Milkshake and Potato Chips,” and we sing a tune we have to learn in all two days and three days. ’Cause Jimmy Norman write them fast. And they chose who to lead this and who to lead that. They force down songs for you to lead, but the project is on and these guys know what they are doing. And they feel like your voice would fit that form, and so they give you that shit. Johnny Nash had a lot of money that time and I know a lot of money spent. They didn’t come to Jamaica to do business, they came for fun. Sun island, sunbathing and a lot of girls, clean skin African girls. So that’s what they came for and then ran into the Wailers and found this music and this group. And then he saw the opportunity of signing Bob’s publishing. So he did all of that and it worked out for him.

  DANNY SIMS: Bunny was probably, of the artists, I’d say strongest of the singers, so far as his singing straight contemporary American music. Bob had a style, a charisma, and was the obvious superstar. But you could tell in that setup, all three of those guys were superstars. They were brought together as kids, but they were all superstars. And they all wrote songs, and they all had singles out in those days. We did close to ninety tracks on them.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Bunny’s return changed the dynamic in the group once again, as he was immediately swept into the systematic working arrangements that JAD required of them, recording songs written by Jimmy Norman that seemed to be directed at a white teenage market. Meantime, Peter was accepting session work to supplement his meager income from Wail’n Soul’m sales, and released several instrumental singles for other producers. But he was a major contributor to the ever-evolving Wailers sound, even being brought to America to record in New York studios for other artists.

  DANNY SIMS: Peter had his own agenda, but he was with us 90 percent of the time. We used his guitar on practically every track we did. He held us together; he held our rhythm together. Peter was the teacher, along with Paul Khouri, for that rocksteady sound. Peter directed us; we spun off Peter Tosh. I never worked with a guy I liked working with more than Peter. He was always with us, always! I saw him as the Rock of Gibraltar with the rhythm.

  And we can’t downplay the role of Rita Marley, either. I remember Johnny Nash calling her an “African Madonna with a voice like silk and honey.” She was with Bob every single day, and she sang all the harmonies under him. I thought she had one of the most commercial voices I’d ever heard.

  I was just so excited about them all, especially Bob. I remember calling Bob’s mother, Cedella Booker, at her home in Delaware and telling her that Marley was going to be one of the biggest acts on earth. Every time I see her, she reminds me about that.

  CHAPTER 10

  Leslie Kong Meets the Tuff Gang

  R

  OGER STEFFENS: The so-called JAD period (1968–72) ushered in parallel careers for the Wailers, in which they made and released recordings for the domestic Caribbean market on their own labels—Wail’n Soul’m and the renamed Tuff Gong imprint—and JAD productions for the international market. They still experienced difficulty in getting local airplay from a system that ran almost exclusively on payola, and never sold enough to enable them to fulfill their dream of building their own home and studio.

  Marley would spend time in the winter of 1970–71 in Sweden working with Johnny Nash on a movie he was making there, helping him write the soundtrack. New opportunities, both ending in extreme frustration, came from Jamaican producers Leslie Kong and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Bob suggested that the Wailers use his football hero pal Allan “Skill” Cole as their manager; he was not unwilling to use unorthodox methods to get airplay for the Wailers newest compositions.

  Meanwhile, legal affairs occupied much of their time as they tried to untangle themselves from Studio One.

  DANNY SIMS: When Johnny Nash finished Hold Me Tight we had been working with Bob Marley for nearly a year before he signed the formal contract. We didn’t officially sign the contract—although we were working together and recording every day—until we got Bob Marley into America, into Walter Hof ler’s office, the guy who was our lawyer. We went ba
ck to Delaware, and he and Rita and his mother came up, and we did the first contracts on him there, and we brought the contracts down and we signed everybody in Jamaica.

  ROGER STEFFENS: This formalized the agreement under which Bob would write songs for Johnny Nash and other international artists under the JAD label.

  MORTIMO PLANNO: It was a difficult time for the group. Me and Danny and Johnny decided that we didn’t want the same situation that was happening to Bob—sitting down inna yard in Trench Town experiencing police brutality and harassment—to prevent our production. We wanted to produce the best of Bob Marley, and the best of Bob Marley was to get him in himself.

  DANNY SIMS: Bob got in touch with us and said he wanted to have the right to release his records in the Caribbean and we gave him that right. He had to make a living. We had an exclusive right to release his records worldwide. That product then was illegally picked up by international pirates, and it’s been pirated ever since, starting with [Leslie Kong’s] Beverley’s and Lee Perry.

  ROGER STEFFENS: The agreement between Marley and JAD, as well as the piracy Danny mentions, would become a major source of tension later and lead to much conflict, but for now Danny was an outspoken advocate for Marley and his talents, and provided him with financial and professional support at a key moment in his career.

  DANNY SIMS: My first duty with Mortimo Planno was to attack Coxson for royalties. Bob and Mortimo told me Coxson owed him hundreds of thousands of dollars of royalties, and wanted me to collect his money. So I went to Neville Willoughby’s father who said, “Danny, you’ll never beat Coxson in a Jamaican court.” What about the power of the white Marleys? I went to Norval Marley’s brother, who was a lawyer. The Marleys were very wealthy people. I told them I thought Bob Marley could be as big as Elvis, and they immediately became interested and said they would defend him to collect the money from Coxson, but they didn’t believe they would be able to collect it. They said they’d take the case, but with the provision that Bob Marley would denounce Rastafarianism. [It should be noted that Rastafarians despise the term “Rastafarianism,” insisting that their faith rejects all “isms” everywhere.]

  So in 1967 I took Coxson to court and found that he did have a contract, and didn’t owe Bob any money. If anything, he didn’t sell enough records in the Caribbean to recoup his recording costs. So I apologized and walked away from it.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Coxson’s initial contract with the Wailers as performers and songwriters was indeed upheld in court, though it wasn’t challenged until several years later.

  COXSON DODD: It’s been upheld in court in Jamaica, because [Island Records head] Chris Blackwell had issued a cease of pressing and it went to the High Court and the High Court was satisfied with the contracts that I had, also was their lawyer. And at that time I requested three million to go in bond if they want me to stop from pressing. Well, their lawyer was convinced with the contract shown by the High Court judge that it was legal. I think in ’72.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Mortimo Planno had acted as an adviser to the Wailers, but did not always have their best interests at heart. After Bunny was released from prison, Bob told him a story of Planno’s treachery.

  BUNNY WAILER: The Wailers wanted to do a free show for the people. Bob was at home preparing for the show when he got a message that Mortimo Planno was at the theater collecting money. Bob decided not to show. Bob took his little VW and go down to Nine Mile. So when people heard that Bob Marley wasn’t coming, Planno had to give back every dime, which pissed Planno so much off that him drive all the way to Nine Mile to say he’s going to kill Bob, with one little weak pipsqueak guy named Jeff Folks, a little batty bwoi, one of Planno’s little girls.

  ROGER STEFFENS: Tipped off in advance, as the car reached the edge of Nine Mile, a member of the feared Vikings gang stopped them and grabbed one of Planno’s men and beat him, while the country people stoned the car with rocks. Bob had to beg them to stop and let Planno and Folks return to the city. Bob was angry that Planno was using his free show to con money from the audience, making Bob look like a hypocrite if he had come to perform, as if he were in cahoots with Planno. According to Bunny, Planno was always trying to set a trap for Bob.

  Later, a friend of Bob’s named Frankie Dark heard Planno’s people planning to burn down the shack where Bob and Rita were living in her aunt’s yard in Kingston. Bob alerted the Vikings, which were like his neighborhood protectors. They sprung an ambush on Planno’s men as they approached their target. Led by Frankie Dark himself, they were willing to kill them all. Planno’s thugs fled in terror. Nevertheless, Marley and Planno would come together again at various times in the future.

  ALLAN “SKILL” COLE: In June of 1968 Bob cut “Selassie Is The Chapel,” written for him by Mortimo Planno. I wasn’t at that session, I was in school, but I knew about it. In the groove of the record it says “FVR.” I think it was something like “For the Victory of Rasta.”

  ROGER STEFFENS: “Selassie Is The Chapel” is considered one of the rarest and most sought-after of all Bob’s songs, with only twenty-six copies pressed. It is a solo version of “Crying In The Chapel” (a recent pop hit at the time for Elvis Presley) with altered Rasta lyrics written by Planno and, according to him, recorded at the JBC studios on June 8, 1968. Shortly after, the Wailers would move on from Planno as the group began to gain more control over their own affairs in Jamaica, working a parallel track to their JAD commitments.

  ALLAN “SKILL” COLE: I’ll tell you how my acquaintance with Bob turned into friendship. During 1968–69 I used to meet and buck up Bob when I passed through Trench Town. I pass through, hail him up, see him with Planno. Most of the time I meet him over at Planno’s house. But what happened was, there was a period when I got involved playing for a [soccer] team with a fellow by the name of Gary Hall. And he was into the music business. Gary was probably one of the first Jamaicans that was working at the BBC in London. At the time Gary was working at Dynamic Sounds as the general manager. So I was playing for his team, Real Mona, for a season. During that period of time now, Bob and myself and a couple of guys start playing ball against them. From Trench Town we bring a team and they come from the east and play us. So Gary Hall got us together. Bob at that time [and the Wailers] had gone independent after a while. They were having problems, so Gary got me together, started teaching me the business, and then I took Bob to meet him.

  Back in ’67, ’68 going down in that period, they were going through a lot of hard times. Bob got so frustrated one time that he left and went to country. He wasn’t making no money and getting no airplay. Everything changed though when I came into the scene, we start working together and we revolutionize everything. We made a way for a lot of independent promoters to come along and survive at that time. Because in those days it was very, very hard. The top companies controlled everything and independent producers in those times—oh my God, it was unbelievable. If you didn’t go to the big Jamaican companies in those days there was no hope for you as a producer or even as an artist. It was the big companies that run the station, the big companies that control, the big companies that run the payola and everything. There was no space at all for you as an artist unless you went through those companies. And in those days the artists in the country didn’t have no knowledge of the music business so they suffered. They were going there, they were doing all these hits for these top producers, didn’t have no knowledge of the business, no contracts, so you end up at the end of the day getting no money. It was raw talent being exploited by some producers who didn’t have no heart. So if you as an artist went and try to do a thing for yourself, you wouldn’t get no play on the radio station. And that was the thing that was happening to the Wailers. They were no different from any other artist—no play. As I said, after that now we revolutionize everything. We came inside the industry and we sort of change up everything.

  ROGER STEFFENS: The changes they wrought sometimes led to threats and physical altercations.

  ALLAN �
�SKILL” COLE: The manufacturing companies in those days were the producers, so they controlled everything, they controlled the radio stations, the payola, the charts, everything. It wasn’t until we came inside that we start to get a piece of it but we had to do it through force. Because nobody going to take our money in those days, nobody going to take the Rastaman money. We had to get the street forces and we did our things. If a guy didn’t play our music we had to go up there, talk to him, threaten him, sometime we had to puncture them car tires and things like that. Those were the kind of things we had to do, put your hand in a man face, and jook him in the nose and box him. That’s what we had to do, send the guys who do all those thing. That’s the thing we had to do. We never kill nobody, you know!