JIM LEWIS: We had to agree that the Peace Council [representatives of each of the warring factions in the ghetto] would take possession of the film rolls as they came out of the cameras. They assigned guards to each camera and they were handed the rolls as each one ended. They then handed them to another person, and they quickly disappeared. I hoped they would manage to keep track of them all, which they did. We also agreed that the Peace Council would control the exposed footage until we sorted out the revenue split from the movie. There were about seven guys, two principally, a JLP and a PNP. It was scary because these guys were notorious.
Once we were given the go-ahead we had Tony Marsh on one camera and John Swaby on another. I think Randy Torno had the handheld camera in the audience, and I had one stage left. There wasn’t much of the show left by the time we were ready. There was no special lighting for us, we just had the stage lights. Bob’s lighting fellows wouldn’t really make the concessions to the lights that the filming called for.
ROGER STEFFENS: The all-star bill for that evening included the Meditations, Althea and Donna, the Mighty Diamonds, Culture, Trinity, Jacob Miller and Inner Circle, Big Youth, Beres Hammond, Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus, Marley and his former partner Peter Tosh, whose tumultuous scene-stealing act was third from the end of the eight-hour show.
NEVILLE WILLOUGHBY: Peter Tosh’s performance—everybody was taken aback. When he took out his spliff and started blowing it all over the place and at these police who were around, I said, “What’s gonna happen?” Nobody did anything. When he started, I think he used a few curse words. I thought he was going a little overboard and that bothered me. I was very glad when Bob came on, because I said, “Wow, that was hard!” Hard to take, you know, it was rough, it was rough that night, very rough. ’Cause I was watching the Minister of Security and that type of fellow, I was watching the policemen to see what they were going to do, ’cause I was quite worried, because I thought Peter is doing some things that I thought were a little bit too much. So it was bothersome for me.
CHARLIE COMER: I loved when Peter said, “I don’t want peace, I want justice,” and actually took a spliff and blew it right in their faces.
JIM LEWIS: We rehearsed the day before, when Peter Tosh and a few more acts rehearsed. As we had already got our footage of Peter and the others we had no intention of shooting anyone else except for Bob Marley. There is nothing of Peter at this concert in the film, though it is assumed that his footage was shot at it. Many articles refer to it.
When the emcee introduced Bob, he seemed unsure how to introduce him. He said that Bob had “carved out a nice niche for himself in Jamaican music.” What kind of a triumphant return from exile is that, right? The key was the audience’s vibes. You have to remember that when he hit the stage the people had been there for over six hours. Then he got there, performed, and gave them more than they ever could have wanted.
JUNIOR MARVIN: I said to myself, Jah must have planned this, because to go home, playing with Bob Marley and the Wailers, the Rolling Stones of Jamaica, and playing at the peace concert—I couldn’t believe it! I thought, hey, to be part of this, of something that’s promoting peace, such a positive thing. I had to thank Bob a million times over for involving me in such a thing. It was a really beautiful experience, and I’ll never forget that. To play in front of your own people, on a project which is bringing governments together, bringing all the people together, using all our positive energy, with Bob at the forefront—it was amazing.
JIM LEWIS: We were fortunate: the right time, the right place, with experienced people. Asking what I remember about being on that stage with Bob then isn’t a terribly fair question because when one is acting as a cameraman one isn’t terribly aware of anything other than what’s through the eye. To be honest, it was knowing that something very special was happening, and it was knowing that something even more special was imminent, namely that the two political leaders were going to come onstage. This was an unprecedented move, and only a limited number of people knew that. It felt anticipatory. I have been onstage with rock ’n roll stars and filmed the vibrations and enthusiasm, but this was very different. Even the nasty bodyguards were grooving by the end of the night.
Of course, there were times that I was aware of the vibes. I would say that it was, like, on the edge. The audience vibes were very positive and they were going with it. But, on the other hand, they were also in check because anything could have happened. I felt this kind of elation, but reserved. It was very different, a non-joke concert. No one was clapping for the sake of clapping. If you clapped you meant it. Then it was over, everyone went home. I remember walking out of there that night with the crowd, and it was like Woodstock in a way.
NEVILLE WILLOUGHBY: There’s no doubt to me the high point of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh was when the One Love Peace Concert came on at the stadium. I was one of the emcees, with Errol Thompson. But I remember when I was leaving, Bob had introduced Manley and Seaga onstage and after all that was done he was continuing singing. And I decided I was going to leave before the crowd even though I was the emcee. Because once he took over, at a certain point, he did the rest of the show himself, he didn’t need an emcee again. So I walked across the stadium, and I walked to go through the tunnel and stopped over by the exit and turned around and when I looked I saw the most astonishing sight. First, it was a full moon night and it was like a picture. There was Bob in the middle of the place, and I mean, the man actually looked he was climbing in the air from where I was standing in the exit. And I stood there, I didn’t leave until he had finished about two more songs. “Jah Live” and “One Love.” Though I stayed and then left as soon as I saw the crowd start to move, because I wanted to get out before the crowd. But that I’ll never forget, standing up there looking back at Bob in a spotlight, and he had a way of moving as if he were almost climbing in the air. And from that distance I watched it and then the moon above, it was a beautiful sight, I remember that very distinctly. Most fabulous show I’ve seen Bob do, it was really a show!
JIM LEWIS: I never saw the film again until I met Bucky Marshall at Toronto International Airport some time later. I had to find the airfare to get them, Bucky and Claudie, to Canada. I did that by putting an advert in a Jamaican reggae newspaper. I said that a major motion picture about the Woodstock of reggae needs money; call this number. Somebody called, and I asked them if they could pay for flight tickets for Bucky Marshall and Claudie Massop. It’s gonna cost $780; if you don’t do this the film may never get finished. And this person who I’d never met or spoken to before went and bought the tickets. Her name was Mary Pever. She showed seriously good faith. It turned out that Bucky Marshall wasn’t really his name, so when he went to claim his tickets she even had to get new tickets in his real name, Austin Marshall. So the lads came up here. We had never actually met in all of the hubbub at the concert.
Bucky Marshall was a frail little wiry guy, about five foot eight, in tremendous shape and very alert and aware of everybody and every thing. Claudie Massop was about six foot four, a great big hunk of a man. He was much older, about thirty-five, and had many dependents. He was ruthless and very smart, very calculating and very well connected.
Knowing that these guys with you were ruthless gunmen there was some trepidation, but at least I was on home turf. I knew they hadn’t traveled much in their lives. They couldn’t believe that, suddenly, they had landed in Canada. By the time they got their tickets sorted out, many weeks had passed since the concert. This was in the summertime. They arrived with the undeveloped film rolls in their baggage. I met them at the airport and took them to various places. Eventually we got the film to the lab. It was all straightforward. The only thing we had to do was sort out who claimed the film when it came through, as cargo. The guy asked me who it was for, I told him it was for me and them, so I put their two names on too. Once it hit the lab it was never under their names. It became my property as far as documentation was concerned because it was up to me to
get it processed, then to show it to them and discuss with them what to do with it. Long negotiations followed.
I had them staying at their own place. Eventually they were taken care of by followers of their own factions, expatriates. I acted as their driver while they were here, taking them to their various meetings. I was very cooperative. Eventually, after receiving a phone call, Claudie told me that he’d got to go back home because there was trouble brewing there. By then we finished all the negotiations. We had to deal with the Marley aspect of it. His people had told me to go ahead and film the show. He had basically put the show on and paid for it out of his own pocket.
Two days after they left, this other guy appeared. He was sent up here to make sure they didn’t rip me off! He was a very intellectual guy, named Trevor. Each one knew that the other was incredibly dangerous, but they knew they needed each other. They were nothing without the other one. They were scared to death of each other and yet they needed each other. I also felt that they knew their days were numbered. These people saw life from the point of view that in twenty minutes it could end. I lived life through their eyes while chaperoning them. Very strange. Bucky Marshall was about twenty-four years old when he died in a shootout in New York. He had never known anything but gang warfare from when he was twelve years old.
Bob Marley and I talked on the phone about the making of the movie, but not really in any detail. I also talked to other relatives and Mrs. Booker. I was just so busy working on the film, but Billy Mitchell had many reasonings with him. But we just talked on the phone and when people talk on the phone it is different than in person. I would generally tell him where I was at, how things were progressing, and I tried to get across to him that I was somebody who knew the runnings a little bit so he didn’t have to worry, and that he should just cut me some slack until I got the film done, then he could see it. He sensed that, and he was smart enough to know that he was dealing with good people. So there was never any friction, and I guess Don Taylor had said that we were determined to do a good job. Film doesn’t lie, especially this kind of vérité shooting. You can’t manipulate it, it can only tell the truth. If it’s got something to say, it’s gonna say it.
My last conversation with Bob was in a restaurant. I remember he was very positive, saying words like “forward,” all positive stuff. Bob got sick during the period I was working on the production of the film, so it became a matter of dealing with that and living up to my obligations that I made with him.
So I did see the project through, but what choice did I have? Any man would have. It was just a compulsion. This project got much bigger than I expected it to in terms of endearing itself to me. I’m still in touch with Mrs. Marley. They administrate the video; we made it direct to the Estate. And, of course, the Peace Council disintegrated, which didn’t surprise me. I don’t think it was formed for the right reasons. I think it was hastily founded out of despair, the wrong kind of despair. It didn’t really have a lot of chance. Trevor was very intelligent but not a lot of the others were. Peace is such a fragile thing.
GILLY GILBERT: If they had meant it, it would have been a better Jamaica right now. I mean, with ghetto people, even when Bob died, they should have taken that as very important significance. So the peace truce was really like a drop in the pan, it wasn’t really authentic. It was just a One Love Peace show. He tried to get everybody together for that one night and figured that it was going to continue, and we all strengthen it, the ghetto people, people from all walks of life within the Jamaican community. ’Cause it was a good gathering. We trying to get away from the evil and the bad, and work for the good, and the betterment of human life and environment. When it failed I felt bad and I know Bob must feel cut up about it also. I just never love what gwan.
JUNIOR MARVIN: Some say the peace didn’t hold. But I say the peace did hold. Up until now. Because you see, what you have to understand is that, without that move, a lot of people would be dead now. A lot of people would have died innocently. A lot of people wouldn’t have even thought before they picked up a gun. But that instigated a lot of thought in a lot of people. That is, a whole generation of people from that time think differently today, because of that concert. I feel it was a success. Yeah. The battle was won. In life, you have to deal with the positive. Now, what did we achieve from that? And even then you have to look at the positive. Because you know, you’re never gonna say, “Well, we won everyone.” There’s still a lot of people who are hopeless sinners. As it says in “One Love,” “Is there a place for the hopeless sinner who has hurt all mankind just to save his own?” The lucky thing is that God always forgives. So therefore, you realize that we won 90 percent of those sinners. So you can’t say that you lost.
ROGER STEFFENS: A year and a half later, in November 1979, Hank Holmes (my founding partner on our Reggae Beat show on KCRW in L.A.) and I would ask Bob about his decision to return, and how he helped bring the two warring political leaders in Jamaica together on one stage in the National Stadium. At the time we were on the road with the group in San Diego. His exhaustion was apparent, and he rebuffed nearly all attempts at one-on-one interviews. On November 24 he held a pre-show press conference in a Sports Arena dressing room, seated next to his friend and bandleader Family Man Barrett, with keyboardist Tyrone Downie and several Twelve Tribes associates nearby.
BOB MARLEY: Dem never want come. Is we send go tell they have to come. We send go tell them, the man from both sides, go up, go tell them say well, the man say they want you ’pon stage to show the people oonoo live and can hold hand together, so the war, the war have to be out between—‘cause people every day see dem things. . . . People could say, if Michael Manley and Seaga sit face to face they will fight. And we know say dem will never fight. So why is the people a fight ’gainst one another if the leader dem wouldn’t fight themselves? So we bring dem together and show dem the truth in themselves, a fuckery a gwan!
Bob Marley during a press conference backstage at the San Diego Sports Arena, November 24, 1979. This picture became the cover of the posthumous album Soul Almighty, which spent fifty-six weeks on the Billboard reggae chart.
ROGER STEFFENS: As Bob became more and more aware of the liberation politics in Africa, his music would take a turn toward their struggles for independence, with songs like “Africa Unite” and “Zimbabwe.” He was keenly aware that without justice there could be no peace, and that it was only united youth in revolutionary movements who would succeed in the coming battles. In Jamaica, the newly invigorated Rastafari philosophy was leading the way.
Africa was riven by proxy wars underwritten by the Soviet Union and the U.S. in their attempts to gain control of the rich natural resources of newly independent countries and those fighting for freedom from colonial control. It was Peter Tosh who sang that he didn’t want peace, he wanted equal rights and justice.
BOB MARLEY: When Tosh say no peace, Tosh must know who him a talk no peace for. I say peace for the youth who live in the ghetto who is warring against one another. And I say that again and fight for that and defend that anywhere. No peace with the Devil now. We ourselves have to have peace, then we can have unity, then we can demand justice. Because unity is strength. If we a war, which strength we gonna have? Is we a war against [there’s a war against us]—we need the strength. Yet we a war against one another. You see what I mean? That is foolishness, man.
TYRONE DOWNIE: What Peter mean by when Peter say we don’t want peace we want equal rights, I think what him mean is, them want peace, but before you say peace you have to show some justice. Then automatically you get peace.
BOB MARLEY: A man who stand up out there and look ’pon it different from a man who involved in it. A man who’s there ’pon the outside and just a skate round it, different from a man who inna it. Yeah, mon, a inna it we deh. When peace a make a way inna England de whole a man dem come when a war, say peace, which part we a deh in England? A deh so we get the whole, full overstanding of what we a deal with. ’Cause some people
never know nothin’ ‘bout the peace, dem only hear say like peace and t’ing, dem no know where it a come from, dem no know wha’ppen ’bout it.
ROGER STEFFENS: Marley’s remarks were often misinterpreted by journalists. Dr. Matthew Smith, a professor at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, helps to “penetrate the patois.”
DR. MATTHEW SMITH: Bob is referencing the One Love Peace Concert. What he is saying essentially is, “When we decided on the peace treaty we were in England [1978] and all the big players [political enforcers] came up to meet with us in England at a time of war [in Jamaica] to discuss peace. That was where we got the full understanding of the power of our influence.” [By which he means his influence, though he speaks in the plural we—“oonoo”—on political events in Jamaica: that they sought his counsel and intervention in an attempt to end the bloody political warfare in the island.]
TYRONE DOWNIE: That’s the only way Bob would have returned down there. ’Cause there was peace. But if like the war was going to continue bitterly like that, then that’s a piracy peace.
BOB MARLEY: Which piracy peace? [He said this to Tyrone, who first used the term—perhaps a reference to how the peace was stolen after the One Love concert.] Now watch me! Society set up themselves that the youth and youth must get a thing that you call frustrated and fight ’gainst one another. Now we say, we will fight with the youth, to make the youth come together, so you a go always have a force what try make them fight, because if them come together then them will know themselves and then them might go on like Ayatollah.
So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley Page 31
