Music |
Peter Tosh
By
Published: Mar 17, 2019
Category:
World
When Peter Tosh sang “Get Up, Stand Up” — you think of it as a Bob Marley song, but Tosh and Marley wrote it together — that was something to see. Literally, because Tosh stood six feet five inches, and he stood straight and proud.
Proud and angry. Bob Marley jogged in place as he performed, like a soccer player warming up, and he emphasized the positive message of the Rastafarian cult: “One Love, One Heart/ Let’s get together and feel all right.” Tosh, in contrast, was a “Stepping Razor” — “If you wanna live/ Treat me good/ I’m like a walking razor/ Watch my sides/ I’m dangerous.”
Tosh was one of the original Wailers, and if you could tear your eyes off Marley, you’d be captivated — and maybe a little threatened — by him. He wore serious dreadlocks. And just in case you didn’t believe he considered himself an African, he wore a long robe.
Tosh was born angry and never chilled out. A 1973 car crash killed his girlfriend and fractured his skull. After that, it’s said, he was a total pain in the ass. He left the Wailers and recorded a solo album. When Chris Blackwell, the head of Island Records, refused to release it, Tosh dubbed him Chris Whiteworst.
That record came out on Sony in 1975. Its title: “Legalize It”. A bit hit among the stoned? Though it was banned in Jamaica, it was the biggest hit of the year. The next year he put out “Equal Rights”. And at every opportunity, he condemned the “shitstem.”
Almost inevitably, Rolling Stones Records took him on, and he and Mick Jagger recorded a lovely duet on “Don’t Look Back”. But that’s not to say Tosh was mellowing. At the One Love Peace Concert in Jamaica, he smoked a spliff onstage and bluntly criticized the Prime Minister, who just happened to be at the concert. Later that year — and I’m sure you’ll agree this was a complete coincidence — Tosh was busted for marijuana possession and beaten for 90 minutes by 6 to 7 policemen. Doctors needed 30 stitches to close his skull wounds.
The best of his songs have been anthologized on a CD called, appropriately, “Scrolls of the Prophet”. This is music that inspires, thrills, amuses, and, in its relentless reggae syncopation, forces you to get up and dance. [To buy “Scrolls of the Prophet” from Amazon, click here. To buy “Legalize It” from Amazon, click here. To buy “Equal Rights from Amazon, click here.]
In 1987, some men known to Tosh came to his house. Something went wrong — one shot and he was dead, at 37. The shooter turned himself in. In what has been described as “the shortest jury deliberation in Jamaican history”, he was convicted in eleven minutes.
I tell you Peter Tosh’s life story instead of simply praising his music because, outside of his cult, he is little known. And yet he is — his cultists say this, and I tend to agree — Marley’s equal as a writer and singer. His songs have more balance than my description of his life might lead you to think; his vision of a peaceful future just happens to include a puff of herb and the right to be left alone. Not that radical, really.
