Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright

by Hank Bordowitz

  A lanky third from the Trenchtown yard, Peter Tosh, soon joined the jams, reportedly by virtue of owning a real guitar.

  The Wailing Wailers were born, and that year launched the ska single “Simmer Down” as the first in a string of successful but financially unrewarding recordings cut at nearby Studio One, under the tutelage of popular Jamaican deejay Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd.

  They were a menacing trio, crowned with knit wool tams and fast adapting to the rebellious “rude boy” culture that was sweeping the yard’s downtrodden youth population. Three years and one hiatus later (Marley worked briefly on an assembly line in Wilmington, Delaware; Wailer was jailed for possession of marijuana under Jamaica’s strict narcotics laws), the group reformed with a new-found interest in Rastafari.

  The era gave rise to classic Wailer/Marley collaborations such as “One Love” and “Who Feels It Knows It”, while Wailer himself branched out to sing lead on his own songs—“Dreamland”, “Dancing Shoes” and even a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone”.

  Today, Wailer will recall only positive vibrations, including the group’s standard-setting recordings with producer Lee “Scratch” Perry at the turn of the ’70s.

  But he bristles at the mention of Island Records’ owner Chris Blackwell, with whom the Wailers signed in 1972, setting the stage for the groundbreaking Catch A Fire and Burnin’ albums.

  Those records contained such politically charged classics as “Get Up, Stand Up” and “I Shot The Sheriff” (soon to become a worldwide smash via the bluesifying hands of Eric Clapton), paving the way for Marley’s pending superstardom.

  “I saw destruction ahead,” Wailer says tersely, when asked of those troubled days.

  “I saw hurt for a lot of people, because the plan was wrong. The direction Blackwell was setting was like taking a fish and putting him in the goddamn oven to survive.

  “I was too conscious and aware for that. I was way ahead of their plan.

  “A lot of things could have been avoided. If Bob and Peter had taken my direction and gone back home, they’d be here today. Alive. “The fact that I am here and they are not is proof enough for me. I miss them, but that is what we have today.”

  When pressed, Wailer won’t put specifics to his bizarre innuendo; in any event, the departure of Wailer and Tosh in 1974—they were supplanted by the introduction of the I-Threes (Judy Mowatt, Marcia Griffiths and Marley’s wife, Rita) as Marley’s new harmony squad—is regarded by many as the end of the Wailers’ truest fire.

  Says Toronto broadcaster/commentator Milton Blake, host of the weekly Musical Triangle on Toronto campus station CKLN-FM (88.1): “Ultimately, Bunny’s reasons for leaving are something only he can explain, but you have to respect the fact that he turned his back on certain fame to stand for his principles.”

  But Blake, a former radio host with the Jamaican Broadcasting System in the early to mid-’70s, says Wailer’s prolonged absence from the spotlight may in itself point to a simpler explanation.

  “It’s particularly interesting that Bunny has waited so long to return. The fact is that the mystique of the Wailers has long outlived the group itself and, because of it, he could’ve translated that into megabucks a long time ago.

  “Maybe he just wanted to stay in Jamaica.”

  If it was homesickness that took Wailer home in 1973, he has clearly overcome the sensation in 1990.

  The latter-day Wailer, trumped up with confidence, sounds virtually bursting to snatch the grail of reggae he so handily passed on a generation ago.

  “It is dangerous to think that reggae is the responsibility of one individual. I don’t see it that way. I am just a part of the shoulder that the music rests upon.

  “But, as an artist who deals with the prophesies and links with history, I see these things and I have a need to tell them.

  “I’m not saying it’s supernatural—anyone who follows the same route will arrive at the same conclusion.

  “Even Nostradamus didn’t prophesize events, he just happened to be paying attention to the signs of his times and he related to it. If you’re alert and you study, you will find it.”

  Wailer’s message for now—and the next few years—calls for a continuation of world liberation, where eventually “people will embrace each other for what they are.

  “We went through a time of building walls, we went to the limits of hating and destroying each other, so where else can we go but to a point where mankind will be born anew.

  “We will tear down and embrace each other for what we are.”

  Wailer has finished work on two separate album projects, both slated for release on New Jersey-based Shanachie Records. One, Just Be Nice, is Wailer’s gesture to youth, incorporating hip-hop, R & B/disco, and technology-driven dance patterns.

  The other, Gumption, he describes as a continuation of the lyrically low-cal dancehall experiments he dabbled in at the turn of the ’80s with his Rock ’N’ Groove LP.

  “You can’t give children an adult’s food—it will hurt them—so instead you must give them lollipops and candy. Just Be Nice is very childish, but very educational, and is meant to depict the new generation and what they’re into.

  “‘Gumption,’” Wailer continues, “deals with dance hall because that situation needs direction right now. The reggae dance hall children are in confusion at this time, they don’t know where they want to go. “You have to use their language, but if you do, you can get beyond the formulas and give them something that says more than, ‘I love you, baby,’ and, ‘Darlin’ I need you’.

  “In this world of market and commerce, it doesn’t pay to have one kind of stock. You’ll stagnate and be run out of the market.

  “On top of reggae music being the Bible of our times, the direction of our times, it has different ranges, different levels. You could go on playing reggae music for years and years and just play hard messages, and then you could play reggae music for another decade and do just lover’s rock. Then another decade of hard-core dance hall stuff.

  “But in the end, the Sourceis Jah.”

  Still Wailing; Aston “Family Man” Barrett of the Wailers Is Keeping a Reggae Tradition Alive

  by Joshua Green

  (Source: Denver Westword, February 19, 1998)

  It’s no exaggeration to say that behind every great reggae band is a great bass player—and the bass player who’s been behind more great reggae bands than practically anyone else is Aston “Family Man” Bar-rett. His work with the Skatalites, Lee Perry and the Upsetters, Bob Marley and the Wailers and countless other acts in this bass-driven genre clearly establishes him as one of reggae’s most influential instrumentalists. Moreover, the history of his career is in many ways the history of the music. Barrett has been at the heart of everything from the development of ska to the most recent performances of the Wailers, which he helped revive a little over a decade ago.

  Of course, Barrett is primarily known for the years he spent with Bob Marley, and that’s as it should be; practically no one outside of Kingston, Jamaica, had heard Marley’s name until his vocal trio (featuring Bunny “Wailer” Livingstone and Peter Tosh) hooked up with Barrett’s band. But Barrett claims that this famous team might never have come together had he been blessed with better pipes.

  “That was my first general approach to music—I wanted to sing,” Barrett reveals from his Jamaican home. But his voice, which, as he laughingly demonstrates, resembles the squawk of a tortured parrot, was not up to the challenge. “I guess I find that area of the music taken care of, you know?” he says. “So I take a different curve.”

  Before long, Barrett gravitated toward the bass guitar. He taught himself to play as a child, and by immersing himself in soul, funk and jazz, he learned how to convey subtle nuances on his ax of choice. He subsequently formed a makeshift band with his brother Carlton and friend Max Romeo, who went on to fame as a singer. “We were just flexin’ as youths, just playin’ music,” he recalls. The group was so info
rmal, in fact, that it didn’t even have a name when the players were discovered. “There was a manager for a hotel called the Flamingo that was looking for a resident band to play there in the times that they got tourists in and things like that,”

  Barrett explains. “Someone who worked there was passing by and heard us rehearsing and come in and look at us and say, ‘Look dem youth. Dem look like musicians, not bad boys. Just different; down to earth.’ He liked the way we sound. He say we sound the way we look.”

  This talent scout arranged an audition, and for the tryout, the three nascent performers chose to play the ska music that was then all the rage. Their efforts went so well that they were hired immediately—as long as they came up with a suitable moniker, that is. Fortunately, the hotel manager came to the rescue. “The manager see how we look and hear us play and she say, ‘You guys remind me of the hippies.’ So we ended up being the Hippie Boys.”

  The appellation wasn’t chosen at random. Since most of the tourists who vacationed in Jamaica during the early Sixties were from the United States, the musicians who played the circuit did whatever they could to Americanize themselves. Ska helped them do so: it was derived from the so-called Jamaican boogie of the late Fifties, but it caught on with U.S. visitors because of its kinship with jazz and swing music.

  Unfortunately for the Hippie Boys, Jamaica’s tourist industry began to dry up after the country won its independence, in 1962. But around the same time, an indigenous recording industry sprang up to provide other employment opportunities. Barrett and company quickly became session men working under some of the island’s premier producers.

  “We do a lot of session gigs in the studio for Lee Perry, who was another kind of revolutionary-type people, and him love the sound that he hear from us,” Barrett notes. “We work with Bruce Ruffing, Derrick Morgan, Burning Spear, Justin Hines, Delroy Wilson, John Holt, Slim Smith of the Uniques, and many, many others.”

  In those days, producers tried to set themselves apart from their competitors via studio bands that worked for them exclusively. Bar-rett, however, didn’t want to limit himself to performing for only one label, so he came up with a plan to rechristen his combo for every new producer who hired it. “For Perry, we called ourselves the Upsetters,” he says. “For Joe Gibbs, we added a singer and called ourselves the Reggae Boys. The last name that we work under before we join with the Wailers was called Youths Professional, because I figured that is what we are. So we had some distinguished names, I tell you.”

  Barrett’s scheme came to an end—not because he ran out of good handles, but because the band landed a gig so good that it didn’t need any others. Perry, whose relatively diminutive stature stood in direct contrast to his power as a star maker, paired his foremost vocal group, the Wailers, with the Upsetters, and the combination became an immediate smash. After scoring with blockbusters like “The Return of Django,” Barrett says, “we decided to swing with the small guy.”

  The unprecedented global success of the Wailers/Upsetters teaming had a lot to do with Marley’s obvious, well-documented talents, but Perry’s foresight and Barrett’s bass prowess should not be overlooked. Because Perry recognized that Marley, Livingstone, and Tosh would need a self-contained band in order to court success abroad, he encouraged the Upsetters to become full-fledged Wailers. In addition, he recognized that reggae’s sound was mutating in the face of influences such as Rastafarianism—and thanks to Barrett, he found a sound that symbolized this seismic shift. The bass hadn’t been an important part of the Jamaican sound, but Perry boldly axed the horns and pianos that dominated ska and moved Barrett’s sinister playing to the forefront. The result was spectacular and lastingly influential. To this day, ominous bass lines are reggae’s hallmark—and Barrett’s were the first and the finest. Barrett puts it simply: “Everything started out right at Lee Perry’s table.”

  But if Perry, a recent Westword profile subject (“Learning From Scratch,” November 6, 1997), deserves much of the credit for the bass-heavy revamping that marks classic Wailers albums like African Herbsman and Soul Rebels, Barrett confirms that the driving force behind them was Marley. He portrays Marley, now thought of as a musical deity, in very human terms. “He was a regular, ordinary guy doing some extraordinary work,” he says. But even Barrett admits to being awed by the man. “You can feel a vibration with him, feel it coming out. You can see how the people are reacting in the audience. Like in the early years in London, they write upon us and said our first number cause a spell, and then after that it was like magic. I tell you, that was the best way you could express it. I never forget that because it’s true.”

  Tosh and Livingstone left the Wailers to pursue solo careers in 1974, but Barrett stuck with Marley. It turned out to be a good move: The outfit, dubbed Bob Marley and the Wailers, became more popular than ever upon the release of several platters that Barrett refers to as “the international series”: Natty Dread, Exodus, Uprising and Kaya. With the support of a new label, Island Records, the Wailers introduced reggae to the world.

  Recording and touring with Marley filled most of Barrett’s days, but he still managed to appear on many of the era’s biggest reggae hits by other artists. “In my spare time, I managed to do a couple things, like Bunny Wailer’s first, Blackheart Man,” he says. “Also Peter Tosh’s first album, Legalize It. And I support Burning Spear on Social Living.” Barrett appeared on countless lesser albums, too—so many that even he can’t remember them all.

  Things changed for the worse in 1981, when Marley died of cancer. A creative vacuum followed: Without Marley to lead the way, reggae lacked a clear direction. Today Barrett puts a positive spin on this difficult period. “A good thing doesn’t last forever,” he philoso- phizes. “But within the work, there’s a message, a consciousness, that we can still bring forth.”

  Five years later, Barrett realized that the best way to keep Marley’s flame burning was to reform the Wailers, with keyboardist Junior Marvin as the new frontman. The idea, he insists, was Marley’s own: “He tell us to do it. And that’s what I am gifted for; that’s what I am destined for. Him say, ‘When one door is closed, many more is opened.’” Money was also a factor, he acknowledges. “It’s business, too. After Bob pass, everybody was doing their little different shows. I was moving around with some of the local groups. So we discuss and say, ‘Why don’t we take a vacation, play some music with all expenses taken care of, and have a pack of money and get ourselves back together?’”

  The group toured quite happily until two years ago when, Barrett says, “Junior Marvin got carried away with certain business aspects and run off to Brazil.” On the surface, Marvin’s replacement—a 23-year-old Israeli-born UCLA student named Elan—seems unlikely, but Barrett thinks otherwise. He calls Elan “spiritual—like a Sabbath man,” adding, “Some people listen and them say, ‘Are you sure he’s not one of Bob’s kids you didn’t know about?’

  “Jah Rastafari is one person; same person, different name,” he continues. “Him move in a mysterious form. Even Bob’s father was a white man. So you see the lineage Bob came through and you know Jah work in a mysterious way.”

  But without Marley, can the Wailers still be regarded as reggae’s top act? Barrett puts forth a convincing argument in favor of this viewpoint. “Every reggae band out there has to play Bob Marley and the Wailers’ songs, you know?” he says. “Even just one. And no one plays them like the Wailers does, ’cause we’re the ones who create and inspire them. They’re the only thing that lasts forever.”

  The Wailers’ Al Anderson

  by Klaus Ludes

  (Source: Classical Reggae Interviews, May 29, 1998)

  How Could This Music Grow So Big?

  KLAUS LUDES: The music of Bob Marley and the Wailers is well-known all over the world. What is the reason for that?

  AL ANDERSON: Bob! You know, Bob. It was his plan, you know. He basically wanted to take it away from just Jamaica and to pass it to other places where people could accept
the music that he was representing.

  LUDES: In a documentary film we hear him say: “I DON’T COME TO BOW I COME TO CONQUER. . . ”

  ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah, that was like a lot of people wanted to take his songs and they wanted him to be a pop star and they wanted him to be what he didn’t want to be as an artist and he stuck to his guns and did it his way, you know.

  He was always talking about wailing and that meant the suffering. He made a point that he was still a sufferer although he was financially a lot better conditioned than others. He was still a subject of prejudice and tyranny of the government!

  Bob Marley As a Politician?

  LUDES: I remember the One Love Peace Concert in 1978.

  ANDERSON: Oh yeah, it was great. ( . . . ) It was cool.

  LUDES: I have it on video. ANDERSON: Really!?

  LUDES: It was strong, strong. What did you feel when Bob Marley took Prime Minister Manley and the other opposition leader together on stage and made them shake hands . . .

  ANDERSON : I thought he was really brave. Yeah, it was a very honorable thing he did. Because maybe they’d never even touched hands for maybe years, you know!

  It was a real tough time for politics then and Bob was trying to change order. I think that if he’d had enough time that he could have run for an office and held a respectable place in politics in Jamaica, which would have been great for the government, because then Rasta would have had, like, a representative. They could see their views and understand them and change the laws of, like, maybe, legalization of herb or decriminalizing it. There’s a lot of things that he could have been responsible for if he had just a little bit more time.

  War and Composing