Bob Marley Caricature

Bob Marley Caricature, age 31 at his home in Tuff Gong, Kingston, Jamaica in March, 1976, with his 1970 Guild Madeira A-9 guitar decorated with a picture of Haile Selassie below the bridge (not shown). Photo credit: David Burnett for Time Magazine.

Robert Nesta Marley was a Jamaican singer-songwriter who became an international musical and cultural icon, blending mostly reggae, ska, and rocksteady in his compositions. Starting out in 1963 with the group “The Wailers”, he forged a distinctive songwriting and vocal style that would later resonate with audiences worldwide.
Bob Marley was a member for some years of the Rastafari movement, whose culture was a key element in the development of reggae. Rastafarian is a religious movement of Jamaican origin holding that blacks are the chosen people, that Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was the Messiah, and that black people will eventually return to their Africa. Marley considered cannabis a healing herb, a “sacrament”, and an “aid to medication”; he supported the legalisation of the drug.

The Wailers’ first album for Island, “Catch a Fire”, was released worldwide in April 1973, packaged like a rock record with a unique Zippo lighter lift-top. Initially selling 14,000 units, it didn’t make Marley a star, but received a positive critical reception. It was followed later that year by the album “Burnin'” which included the song “I Shot the Sheriff”.

The Wailers disbanded in 1974, with each of the three main members pursuing a solo career. Marley had his international breakthrough with his first hit outside Jamaica, “No Woman, No Cry”, from the “Natty Dread” album. This was followed by his breakthrough album in the United States, “Rastaman Vibration” (1976), which reached the Top 50 of the Billboard Soul Charts.

On December 3, 1976, two days before “Smile Jamaica”, a free concert organised by the Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley in an attempt to ease tension between two warring political groups, Marley, his wife, and manager Don Taylor were wounded in an assault by unknown gunmen inside Marley’s home. Taylor and Marley’s wife sustained serious injuries, but later made full recoveries.
Nonetheless, the concert proceeded, and an injured Marley performed as scheduled, two days after the attempt. When asked why, Marley responded, “The people who are trying to make this world worse aren’t taking a day off. How can I?”

Marley left Jamaica at the end of 1976, and after a month-long “recovery and writing” sojourn at the site of Chris Blackwell’s Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, arrived in England, where he spent two years in self-imposed exile.
While in England, he recorded the albums “Exodus” and “Kaya”. “Exodus” stayed on the British album charts for 56 consecutive weeks. It included four UK hit singles: “Exodus”, “Waiting in Vain”, “Jamming”, and “One Love”.

His other hits include: “Three Little Birds”, “Redemption Song”, “Buffalo Soldier”, “Is This Love”, “Get Up, Stand Up” and “Could You Be Loved”.

In July 1977, Marley was found to have a type of malignant melanoma under the nail of a toe, a symptom of the already-existing cancer.
Marley’s last concert occurred at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 23, 1980. Just two days earlier he had collapsed during a jogging tour in Central Park and was brought to hospital where he learned that the cancer had spread to his brain.

Marley died on May 11, 1981 at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami, aged 36. The spread of melanoma to his lungs and brain caused his death. His final words to his son Ziggy were “Money can’t buy life.”