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REVIEW: The Best of Bob Marley

Comissioned as a review of a Bob Marley box set, but instead a general comment on the way that record companies were exploiting Bob Marley’s name...

The Guardian, March 12th 2004

Originally I was asked to do a review of a Bob Marley box set that was about to be released, but instead I wrote it as a general comment on the way that record companies were exploiting Bob Marley’s name. I had a great response to the piece. As always these things are edited before they appear, sometimes to fit the page, and in my case to correct my grammer etc, but here is the unedited version of the article.

Bob Marley was great, but we all know that. Even if you don't like reggae you cannot ignore the fact that his music had an uplifting effect upon the music loving world. I don't think I've ever visited a country where he is not known and that can't be said of Cliff Richards. Liberals use him as a password, he's not mad, bad and dangerous to know, he's cool to know. I have lost count of the amount of times people have said to me, ‘I don't know much about Reggae music but I like Bob Marley.' Some Rastafarians see him as a modern day prophet, there is a band in New Zealand that have dedicated themselves to doing Bob Marley covers versions, his face has been on Jamaican postage stamps, there is a tribe in South America that worships him, and my mum loves him. Me too, I love him. Not only do I think he was one of the greatest musicians to appear on planet Earth since the artist formally known as King David of Israel, I think he was a really nice bloke. When I was just a kid, a struggling unknown poet ranting on the streets of Birmingham, he was the only singer that ever replied to any of my letters. I actually got advice from brother Bob, he told me to ‘keep it up', he told me to ‘stay militant', he said that one day people will read my poems. The prophet communicated with me, and it really is impossible to say exactly how much that meant to teenaged me. Bob Marley was my hero, and then he became my penpal. Very heaven.

 

I grew up to the sound of The Wailers, it is important to understand what this means. I was listening to them long before they were ‘Re-packaged' with Marley as the front man. Trust me, back then I was their biggest fan. Throughout the history of The Wailers, and Bob Marley and the Wailers, or BMW as they are known in some circles, they never released a dud album, every one was a classic. But since Bob Marley's death in 1981 there has been a string of posthumous albums and every one them, with the possible exception of ‘Confrontation' has been floored, in my humble opinion. Bob Marley can't be blamed for this, neither can the Wailers, most of the surviving members of the band are involved in court actions claming that they have been ripped off in one way or another. And I feel like going to court because I feel as if I'm being ripped off too. I got all the real Wailers and BMW albums, but I also have albums like, King of Reggae, Lively up yourself, songs of freedom, Dreams of Freedom, Chant Down Babylon, Soul Almighty, Soul Captives, Legend, and many more. They sell them at car boot sales, petrol stations, post offices, and newsagents, I even have two albums called Natural Mystic and they only have one track in common, a track called Natural Mystic. What all these albums do have in common is they are all so called ‘Best of' albums or they claim to contain ‘Rare' tracks that are ‘Newly discovered' or ‘Digitally re-mastered re-mixes'. The truth is Marley put out the best of his tunes when he was alive, what we now have is various record companies trying to make as much money as they can from the icon.

 

The record company Universal Music acquired the rights to 211 Marley recordings, and to celebrate the completion of the deal they released a 3-CD box set called Grooving Kingston 12. They say, to their credit, that unlike other ‘Backstreet record labels', they will pay the musicians their royalties, and they also claim that they have six previously unreleased tracks. Two of them, ‘Music Gonna Teach' and ‘One love True Love' appear on the new box set, I've listened to all six of them, and they are certainly not the Best of the Wailers, actually, there're not very good. I don't believe I just wrote that, how could I? I'm his biggest fan, but did I say that there are some Bob Marley tunes that are not very good, is that allowed? Have I blasphemed? There is a kind of political correctness, a musical politeness, that says that you can't say a bad thing about Bob Marley tunes, and now I risk being force fed meat by angry Rastafarians, hippies will curse my Karma, and my mum will slap me when she reads this, but it's true, if these tunes were hot they would have been released years ago.

 

At the beginning of the last decade I remember being in The Fallout Shelter, a recording studio owned by Island Records, when someone came in rejoicing and proclaiming that a brilliant Bob Marley recording had been discovered. I was in the middle of recording another one of my obscure political albums, it was going so well but it had to stop, I had to sacrifice my precious studio time so that my producer could use the studio to get to work and quickly release this new old tune. But I didn't complain, there was something surreal about being interrupted by Bob Marley. What happened next was like an emergency surgical operation. The studio was blocked off, only those with the password could enter, top musicians were brought in, they swore an official secrets act and began to record overdubs and add more horns, and then the track was given the best treatment money could buy via a state of the art digital mixing console. That track was called, Iron Lion Zion, which went on to become a big hit worldwide. Now that's what happens when a genuine gem is found. Why would a record company place a newly discovered work of art on a album that's a collection of oldies and call it a bonus track, if it was good enough they would release it as a single it its own right, even if it needed attention from fresh musicians North London.

 

I'm no good at this, reviewing music is not my job, and under normal circumstances I never do reviews, I'm not even a journalist, I'm just a keen Bob Marley fan who feels exploited. All of these posthumous releases have nothing new to offer, how many times can you listen to a slightly different mix of that tune recorded in 1968? How many more tapes are waiting to be found in the vaults of recording studios in deepest, darkest Jamaica? Bob Marley knew every track he recorded, at the height of his career he could have had the Red Sea parted if he requested it, so have no doubt about, if he wanted a track to be released, it would have been released. The two new tracks on this Grooving Kingston 12 are not terrible, but they are not great. Like many of the early recordings Marley is trying stuff out on this album, he is seeing what works, experimenting and tuning his writing and recording skills. When you listen to his early works you find that there are many versions of the same songs, many songs borrow lines from each other, and many recordings are drafts of the greater things to come. On the track called Black Progress it sounds as if Marley is trying to come up with a black power anthem in the style of James Brown's ‘Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud.' Marley tries to rouse us with a rather overdone America accent, which he was never to try again, and he knows why.

 

What I found most painful listening to this new box set is the acoustic tracks on CD 3. You could say this is all good, Bob Marley unplugged is another good angle, capturing the Reggae master sitting around a fire playing his guitar could be very cool, but I suspect something more sinister. These recordings sound like the CIA ease dropping on a rehearsal. I may be wrong, one of these recordings could make the charts and a whole new genre of music could be created, it could be called reality music. Yes fans, listen to the puffing, the arguments, the conversations, and vote for your favourite musician. On some tracks you can hear things like, ‘are you ready', okay, nothing new about that, but on Stir It Up you hear even hear Bob asking the backing singers if they are in tune, ‘you have dat', and all you get for your money on ‘Guava jelly' is one chorus lasting 43 seconds. I didn't find this painful because of Bob's performances, after all, there are only a few times when you can hear him sing so intimately without the trappings of the band, I just felt that I hadn't been given permission by him to hear all this, I just don't believe that he would want all of these recordings in the public domain, quite honestly I felt as if I was colluding with the record company in a grave robbing venture.

 

Reggae means poetry, story telling and consciousness raising, but today's musicians prefer to call themselves Ragga and Dancehall musicians, it's about how big and bad you are, peace and love is out of style, guns and cocaine are in. I can't help asking myself if there's not a bigger problem. Since the death of Bob Marley no one has come near his creative intelligence, nobody has combined philosophy with accessibility in the way he did. I think it is ridiculous to expect another Bob Marley to come along, but reggae has not been able to come up with another songwriter with the ability to reach out to the world and connect with people in the way that a truly great songwriter like Marley does. In fact there are only a handful of young artist that call themselves Reggae musicians now, most are in their forties and doing the nostalgia circuit. Just like Julian Lennon reminds us of his father, it is often said that Ziggy Marley sounds (and looks) so much like his father. Old fans may get a good feeling when they see them perform, but in both cases, if their fathers were alive today they wouldn't sound anything like their sons do now. Damian Marley is in my opinion the only one of Bob's sons to really find their own sound. Bob Marley was always on the cutting edge of what is sometimes referred as ‘Roots' music. One of the great things about him was the way he managed to keep the essence of Reggae in his work at the same time making sure that every new album was a true progressive step forward, no two albums sounded the same. Marley refused to stand still or go backwards. I recall a music journalist asking him what he thought of the ‘Two tone' Ska revival that was beginning to take hold at that time, Marley laughed in amusement, and went on to explain that he just couldn't see why anyone would want to go backwards after all the years of hard struggle that people like him had endured to move the music forward.

 

It would be a much greater tribute to the memory of Marley if those record companies that have make so much money from the Wailers began to invest in some of the Reggae artists of the future, but that may be asking too much. Most record companies don't exist because they love music, they love money, and Bob Marley has made more money in death than he ever made in life. Marley has become a brand. In Jamaica his old house in Hope Road, Kingston, has become a museum, I have heard Marley's music being played in places where Rastafarians are not even allowed, and products bearing his image have become a must have for tourists to the island. Fair enough, the hungry must be fed, but even here in Britain his music has been used to sell soap power and mortgages. Not only will the revolution be televised, it will be advertised.

 

If you are the kind of fan that wants a recording of every single word that Bob Marley ever said, if you want to know everything he ate, drank, touched and smoked, if you really think that you will not be a complete person unless you capture every breath he took, feel free to go on spending your hard earned cash, the record companies will not complain, but remember what Marley said, ‘it's only a machine that makes money'. So go ahead, feed the machine. But if you are the kind of fan that respects the artist, just love what he has given to you, and if you feel the need to play a part in keeping his name and legacy alive, buy real BMW goodies, or help the poor of Jamaica by sending financial donations to the Bob Marley Foundation. At times like this it's tempting to bring out that old cliché, let him rest in peace, but he won't rest in peace, he is still rocking the dance floor and exciting minds. The fact is if another Marley tune is never found he will still live forever. Genuine biographers and Marley experts like Roger Stephans and Chris Salewicz may find an academic interest in these ‘new finds', and their fine work does help us understand what made the great man tick, but we mere fans should be out there dancing, we should be jamming and dancing to the real deal. And don't worry, you'll know the real deal when you hear it, it will be a good tune, with great lyrics, and no hype. 

Benjamin Zephaniah