Music |
Bob Marley & The Wailers
By
Published: Jan 08, 2023
Category:
World
When Bob Marley died in 1981, he left behind a complicated legacy: music you could dance to, music that made you raise a fist. For me, that begins with the Wailers first album, when they were a group, not a superstar’s supporting cast.
The great rock revolution of the ‘60s was over by 1973 and the music business was once again what it is now: a business. A depressing time for me — I kept looking for flowers sprouting through the concrete and, month after month, came up with only weeds for my troubles.
And then, at Max’s Kansas City, I found what I had been seeking. Some friends of friends were playing; an unknown group called The Wailers was on the bill. These young Jamaicans came out, freaky as Sly Stone, clearly tranced-out behind some serious ganja, and began to play amazingly complicated music that had me twisting in one direction while the beat had me going in another.
Excited and limp, I went backstage (back then, back there, no big deal). Met the Wailers (Bob Marley was not then The Star). And, the next day, bought “Catch A Fire,” their American debut.
There are two versions of the album cover. One is a rendition of a Zippo lighter (it opens — and, very quickly, breaks). The other features Marley smoking a huge spliff. That one came later. I got the original.
And was it ever original. There were sweet seduction songs. There were songs that evoked Jamaica ’s colonial past. Angry political songs. “400 Years” was just the start: “No chains around my feet/But I’m not free/I know I am bound here in captivity…” Listen to “400 Years.
The last song, the Rasta dreamscape “Midnight Ravers,” began with a devastating opening condemnation (“You can’t tell the women from the men/ ’cause they’re dressed in the same pollution”) and moved on to a Book of Revelations vision: “I see ten thousand chariots/And they coming without horses/The riders — they cover their face/So you couldn’t make them out in smoky places.” Rarely has music been better matched to lyrics. A repeated corskscrew organ riff. Guitars that sting, then soar. And a bass guitar/drum pattern that paints a musical picture of horses riding, riding, riding, in the dead of night. Listen to “Midnight Ravers.” [To buy the CD and get a free MP3 download from Amazon, click here. To buy the MP3 download from Amazon, click here.]
One night, in a Philadelphia club, I had dinner with The Wailers in their dressing room and watched them smoke so much ganja they should have passed out. Instead, they went on stage and — like angels, or aliens, or just humans blessed with telepathy — played a note-perfect set that converted everyone in the room to blithering fandom.
The sanctification of Bob Marley began the following year. There was only one more true Wailers album (“Burnin’”) before the band changed. And then came all the songs you know — great songs, but great in isolation, like great singles. “Catch A Fire,” on the other hand, is a great album: there’s a logic to the flow of the songs, a satisfaction that’s bigger than the sum of the individual tunes.
One afternoon, I went down to the Chelsea Hotel to suggest a movie to Marley. Before I could tell him my ideas, he put his spliff down long enough to draw a square on a piece of paper. “This one is us,” he said. He drew another square. “This one is the bank.” He drew a connecting line, looked up at me and grinned — I’m sad to report, I never cracked the plot.
Yeah, you’ve got the greatest hits. But do you have the greatest album? Not until you have this.
