ESTHER ANDERSON: It’s completely based on something that happened to Joe Higgs [the magnanimous early teacher of the teenaged Wailers, who would go on to replace Bunny during the group’s final tour in late 1973]. He told me that the night before he had awakened to find the police surrounding and raiding his house in Trench Town. So I told Bob about it and said that we have to write about it. These are the kinds of things that are happening in the country, and you have to document it. “Weeping And Wailing” was the first title. We wrote half of it at Hope Road, another part in Castleton Gardens in St. Mary near Golden Spring, and finished the song in Annotto Bay. People around him were beginning to use cocaine, so that’s what those lines are about when he said, “Let the roots man take a blow, all them drugs gonna make you slow, now.” I added the line about it not being ghetto music. Fams worked out the entire score to go with it in the rehearsal room in Tuff Gong. When we came to London to record it, Bob changed it to “Burnin’ And Lootin’ ” because, he said, that’s what’s going on down there.
ROGER STEFFENS: Bunny Wailer has another, more foreboding, take on the song.
BUNNY WAILER: When we met Chris Blackwell in the fall of 1972 in London, he told us that he had sent the Wailers hundreds of thousands of pounds for the records of ours that he had released in the 1960s [money which the group never saw]. He told us he was afraid to meet with us because he had been hearing that “you people were dangerous people, that you were killers.” So, seeing the Wailers looking at the boss for the first time, the Big Boss, is what made Bob write those lines about crossing the rivers to talk to the boss: “All that we got seems lost, we must have really paid the cost.”
ROGER STEFFENS: Another cover, this of a track cut three years earlier for Lee Perry’s Upsetter label, was “Small Axe.”
FAMILY MAN BARRETT: It was one of our favorite songs, a big local favorite. We wanted to do it in the R & B style on the album in an international style, add a little more flavor to get it across.
ROGER STEFFENS: The oldest song on the album is “Pass It On,” which Bunny wrote around 1962, prior to the formation of the Wailers.
BUNNY WAILER: I should have recorded it at Beverley’s at the same time [1962] Bob did his second solo record of “One Cup Of Coffee.” But I was late, so I missed the session. Over the years I added new lyrics to it and it got stronger still. It took eleven years before it was finally laid. It was one of those songs that I hear when I was a very little child that I never forget. It’s a kind of traditionally adapted song, the first song that I ever wrote.
ROGER STEFFENS: “Duppy Conqueror,” originally recorded in late 1970 for Lee Perry, is taken here, in Fams’s words, “to the next stage.” A duppy is a malevolent spirit in Jamaican folklore. Bob sings about being stronger than a bullbucker.
BUNNY WAILER: A bullbucker means like a guy who bucks bulls, a guy who’s so strong that he can buck bull, knock him out. So if you a bullbucker, then I’m a duppy conqueror. It’s an old traditional saying, like if a man say to you, “If you think you chew ’pon iron, I chew ’pon steel!” I conquer duppy, and duppy’s the hardest thing to conquer. If you think you kill ten men, I kill twenty.
ROGER STEFFENS: “One Foundation,” Peter’s composition, is a plea for togetherness under the implied leadership of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie. Oneness, the Wailers believed, was the answer to all the world’s ism-schisms, and any duality was the work of the devil, a false veil of separation that only a belief in the oneness of Rasta could lift.
“Rasta Man Chant,” the album’s speeded-up closer, was partially inspired by Esther Anderson, who took the original album’s photographs.
ESTHER ANDERSON: I was a photojournalist with a socialist newspaper at the time, with Alex Cockburn. One day Countryman turned me on to a man who lived on the beach across from Bunny in Bull Bay, a man named Bongo Mackie. He’s the dread with the goat in the centerfold of Burnin’. Mackie was living in a big Rasta compound with all these children. I was so amazed at all the red, gold and green there. This was a time when none of the Wailers had dreadlocks yet. I took Bob there the next day with Countryman to photograph them together. In the evening, Mackie started to play these akete drums, and they reminded me of a time I had gone to Africa with Millie Small and Brando was there. The big university in Accra gave a private thousand-drum concert for us, and Bongo Mackie’s drums reminded me of these. When I heard him sing “One bright morning when my work is over,” I told Bob, “You must wear red, gold and green and grow your locks and open your show with the drums.” The rest is history.
ROGER STEFFENS: Let the final word on the eternality of Burnin’ rest with Jon Pareles, the eloquent chief pop critic of the New York Times. In 1996, the Times’s Sunday magazine celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary of publication, and asked each of its critics to choose one work of art in their field that they believed would survive a hundred years into the future. Pareles chose Burnin’, immortalizing it with these eloquent words.
JON PARELES: Bob Marley became the voice of third world pain and resistance, the sufferer in the concrete jungle who would not be denied forever. Outsiders everywhere heard Marley as their own champion; if he could make himself heard, so could they, without compromises. In 2096, when the former third world has overrun and colonized the former superpowers, Marley will be commemorated as a saint.
ROGER STEFFENS: Even though the work the Wailers had just completed showcased them at their best, urges to explore their own muses more deeply widened the gaps among the three of them. And the pressures exerted by the label and its failed promises became unbearable.
Karl Pitterson was a young engineer working in local studios, encountering Bob on different recording sessions during this period. I spoke with him in his new studio in Miami in 1995.
KARL PITTERSON: I was around during that time. A lot of people put the blame for the breakup on the divide-and-conquer thing, with Island Records taking the best of the group. But I think that’s the way it was planned by the maker. It’s part of a script.
CHRIS BLACKWELL: I realized that it wouldn’t have been possible to work with all of them. And the main ones sort of at war were Peter and Bob. Bunny has always been Bunny. He stands in his own place really.
BUNNY WAILER: After the spring tour of 1973 in the UK, we went to Chris to discuss where the tour would be going next in the United States. We were looking forward now to larger venues, getting exposed to bigger markets because we had proved ourselves. If we continue to play these little gigs we wouldn’t be making money. So I said, “Chris, what kind of thing you have planned for us going to America now—where are we going to play?” He said, “Freak clubs.” So me say, “What you mean by freak clubs?” Him say, “Well, you know, clubs where gay guys and gals, gals meet gals and guys meet guys and freak out. Drug business, all kind of stuff—freak.” We say, “What the blood-claat?” So me say, “Chris, you know I & I is Rasta. How you want to take us all in that direction? Why you want draw us down in dem kind of things? After you know say we is Rasta, we no stand for dem things. Why don’t you get us cultural centers and even the polytechnic college what we just do? We stay on a trend now and we sing for children now. We no care to go sing for no freaks.” Chris said, “If you don’t do these clubs you are nobody.” Just like that. So me just say, “Listen, Chris, ‘body’ is buried. I am a living being, a living soul. I’m not a body. And if where you have in mind for the Wailers is where bodies go, I won’t be going. And one monkey don’t spoil no show.”
Well Bob jumped up and said, “What’s happening, we come to talk about tour or what?” Me say, “Listen now, me bredren, you are my brother. I love you and respect you and the decisions that you make all this time. But,” I said, “this one decision I have to make to protect my integrity. And you can’t speak for my integrity. You can speak for me which you have done. But it’s my integrity, Bob. And my integrity tell me—don’t move.”
So I just state, “I am not going, me bredren.” The mee
ting end kind of. Everybody was amazed, dismayed, everybody was lost because a decision had to be made. I wasn’t going, so the rest of the man would have to decide, say well, Chris, if Jah B not going we are not going either. So you better get your act together. But I was voted out. By everybody. And I know that they were heading for shit. I felt good because I wasn’t going to wallow in no shit.
ROGER STEFFENS: Sebastian Clarke, who was working with the group at the time, wrote that “After waiting several months to get some funds we were confronted with a pile of papers so high, telling us that we owed Island Records forty-two thousand pounds as tour expenses. And yet before we made the tour there was an agreement that Island Records would cover all the expenses. On a subsequent visit to Jamaica, Blackwell had talks with Tosh, who became infuriated, left and returned with a machete to confront Blackwell who left immediately.”
According to his biographer John Masouri, Peter believed Bob had betrayed the Wailers by siding with Chris Blackwell, and it happened because Bob was half-white. “There was an old saying that, ‘If you’re white, you’re all right. If you’re brown stay around. But if you’re black, stay back.’ Well that’s what it had come to. It felt like he and Bunny were too black for the group now they were at the threshold of success, despite having worked long and hard in building the Wailers’ reputation. Bob had sold them out right at the point where they were supposed to stand firm, although Peter felt it was time to strike out on his own in any case. ‘I did not come on earth to be a background singer.’ ”
Peter confirmed to me that they were given only a hundred pounds each at the conclusion of the tour, which dropped its twelve final dates due to Peter’s bronchitis. Years later his anger was still at fever pitch.
PETER TOSH: It was a ras-claat and pure fuckery. Well, the reason why I stopped these things too, the agreement that we had, the company wasn’t living up to their side of the agreement, the respect and everything that was due, was pushed aside. And we couldn’t take them fuckery there, because after having twelve years of experience of what reggae music is, the first thing Chris Whitewell told us was that it would take him five years to build us. That was after we knew all that we know, it was going to take us another five years of twelve to build us again. I want to know what else he was going to put on us. [Yet it] was not a breakup you know, is just going three different ways and sending the music in three different directions. It was just that my inspiration was growing and my cup filled and runneth over.
ROGER STEFFENS: The sadness that filled the reggae world was overwhelming, once it was realized that the Wailers, like the Beatles three years earlier, had dissolved their group at the height of their powers.
*In 2004 I was asked by Island Records to write the liner notes for a deluxe rerelease of the final Wailers trio album, Burnin’. It is the only time in my career that I have ever had a liner note rejected. This chapter contains information, previously unpublished, from those notes, which were refused with the accusation that they were “too honest.”
CHAPTER 15
The End of the Beginning
R
OGER STEFFENS: Bunny’s departure from the Wailers exacerbated the tensions between Peter and Bob, and by the end of 1973 the three would no longer tour or record together. Their final album, Burnin’, would receive ecstatic reviews and showcase lead vocals from each member, leaving the world to wonder what was going to happen now. A big wave had thrust them upward, only to smash the group on the rocks of dissension.
NEVILLE WILLOUGBY: By 1973, Bob had now broken in a way, he had gone and done a show abroad. It was a big thing to me. So I decided that I would like to talk to him. And a very very wonderful person who is now deceased, Denzil Laing, percussionist, who was a good friend of mine, I said to him one day, “I want to interview Bob. You know where his house is in Bull Bay. Would you come with me and show me where it is?” So Denzil came with me that day, and we went out there quite early on a Sunday morning, like about nine o’clock, and they were rehearsing already. And you know Bob isn’t the type of person who fuss over anybody, he just saw us and said hello and we sat down and waited. And then he asked us if we wanted some breakfast and we had breakfast with him. They went on practicing. He asked what I wanted. I said I wanted an interview. He said well, he had to practice first. So I sat down, and we were there for hours listening to him. Hours! Hours and hours! Later on in the day, after lunch, they rehearsed right through and I stayed there because I made up my mind I was going to get it.
I discovered that about him, that he liked to test people. For instance, if you listen carefully to the interview, every now and then he would be answering a question and he’d stop in the middle and he’d say, “What did you ask me again?” And I realized that what it was, was to see if you’re really listening carefully. He wanted to see if you’re really that interested in him. So that when it came back to you, if you couldn’t remember the question, he’d dismiss you. Not literally, but just his eyes would dismiss you.
Because I realize that Bob was the type of person, if you didn’t realize that he was worth waiting for, then tough on you. That’s the feeling I got from him. But if he saw that you really were sincerely interested in him and his talent, it’s all right. That is why so few people interviewed him, because not many people would sit down for half a day and wait for him while he rehearsed. Because they’d say [kisses his teeth], “That bwoi feisty,” you know, that type of attitude. But I saw something special about him that I’ve never seen in any other person, any other recording artist in Jamaica.
You could tell that he wasn’t too sure about Wailers, when you asked him about Wailers. But he would say, “Yes, I’m still a Wailers,” but he would say it hesitantly. But basically he was in a very upbeat frame of mind, because he saw that he was really going to get where he wanted to get. I felt that way.
ROGER STEFFENS: Third World’s Cat Coore also remembers Bob’s uneasy optimism in this period of transition.
CAT COORE: Bob had already done the Catch A Fire album, so it’s mid-’73. We had backed him up before, and he had known us. We had played with him not only on stage but we had done some sessions at Randy’s too with them. We did a version of “Stir It Up” and “Walk The Proud Land.”
DENNIS THOMPSON: Bob experimented a lot with other musicians. He did a lot of stuff with Sly and Robbie, with Inner Circle, before they even branched out and became Third World.
CAT COORE: Bob was in this restaurant one night, the Epiphany, and downstairs at Epiphany they have a club that used to serve food twenty-four hours. And he was sitting in there. And I said, “Bob, that!”
Even before Bob got big, we Jamaican musicians used to hold him in reverence, because of the kind of songs that he did like “Trench Town Rock.” They were so outrageous and just so commanding, that we used to always hold him in this presence. There used to be all these stories about him, how when him come on stage him don’t sing for two minutes ’cause him listening to the band first until it get right. He had a folklore thing about him already among us musicians, stories, things about him, that he was slightly kinky, slightly off the wall. It was one of the traits that everybody know about Bob as a musician at the time. When you go and play for Bob, you don’t mess around. You make sure you listen to what him say and think, ’cause the man would fly off the handle. And he just came out to me at this restaurant and said, “Wha’ppen? The man no want to play inna Wailers?” And I said, “Bwoi, Bob, too bad I see you. I just started this group. Third World.” And he said, “Who’s in the group?” and I told him and he say, “Oh, cool. Anyway, Wailers a go big, you know!” And me say, “You no have tell me that.”
We were all talking at the end of the show and he was cussing somebody about something. You know he had a way where he just get off on something for a minute or two, and then he’d just come back and laugh again. And he said, “Bwoi, you guys have a good band, and you must keep it together. You mustn’t fight among yourselves and you must always look towards w
hat you can achieve out of it. Don’t just think you’re the star, or he’s the star, or this one is the star.” And I remember [Third World bandmate] Ibo was picking at him that night about Peter and Bunny, asking him what happened, and he was saying to Bob, “How come you just leave and gone on your own?” And Bob said to him, “How come you know I left? Suppose they left me?”
ROGER STEFFENS: In October 1973 the Wailers returned to America.
BUNNY WAILER: They toured with Sly and the Family Stone. Joe Higgs worked as Bunny Wailer, in my place, which was appropriate because I was satisfied to know that if anybody took my place it would have been my tutor, my teacher. I felt good about that.
ROGER STEFFENS: Segree Wesley was on the tour, and he sensed the possibilities of the Wailers’ sound, even without Bunny.
SEGREE WESLEY: I saw Bunny after the breakup and I says, “You know something, everything start opening now. I mean, what’s the matter with the group?” He says, “Man, Segree, Bobby he becoming too commercialized with the reggae, you know?” And I remember I said, “Listen, once you start go there in the international scene there’s a lot of changes you have to make. People gotta be able to understand what you’re saying. All you guys gotta do is try and stay with the international market. ’Cause the local market can’t take care of you guys.” So he said Bobby was a sellout because he was making reggae too commercialized with the kind of music he started coming out with. I said, “But if that’s the music that people are willing to accept abroad, then that’s what he has to do. I say it’s a business; I say you guys spend too many years in this business to break up and don’t go back, ’cause there are things that open. I’m in America—you’d be surprised to know how they accept the reggae. As a matter of fact, the white folks accept reggae more so than the black folks right in America.” There was always that inroad fighting while the music was stepping up. But I know prior to Bob’s death he did say to me, they can’t stop Rasta since everything opens up, which is true. While I was in America, I really saw where the music was taking a stronghold.
So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley Page 18
