Bob Marley
Robert Nesta Marley
1945 - 1981

More than any other single event, Marley´s embracement of the Rastafarism helped him to make his life right, and to help understand – in short – the meaning of life in every way. The rest of The Wailers was also drawn to this religion, and they all began to grow their dreadlocks and live their life according to Rasta tenets. Now, Marley and the Wailers used the money Marley had left to establish the recordlabel Wail ´n´Soul. By now, the music Ska had changed into what we know as reggae. But the music business wasn´t easy, and Marley struggeled for a long time. Times were bad, and during this time in a conversation with a friend, Marely said: ”Me know I going to die when 36.”

Time went by, and the Wailers and Marley didn´t have it easy. But some time in the late 60´s they met Lee Perry, the man who by some are considered the inventor of reggae. Marley and the Wailers collaborated with Perry and some other musicians and finally found their sound as we know it. But Perry wasn´t the best man to work with, and cheated the Wailers out of quite a bit of money. Marley and the Wailers ended up beating him up for this and some other problems, and left him. Later they met up with Chris Blackwell, and in 1972 the first true reggae album ”Catch a fire” was released in Great Britain, and shortly after in the USA. Bob Marley and The Wailers went on tour to support their album, and visited both Breat Britain and the United States where they received a warm reception.

The second album ”Burnin´ ”came out in 1973, and was immediately hailed as a reggae masterpiece with songs like: ”I shot the sheriff”, ”Burnin´ and lootin” and ”Rastaman chant”. When touring for that album, they happened to open for an up-and-coming artist named Bruce Springsteen.

Their next album ”Natty Dread” was relased in 1975, which included the beautiful song ”No woman, no cry”. By now, Bob and his wife had four children (Sharon, David ”Ziggy”, Cedella and Stephanie), and were living in Bull Bay, about 10 miles east of Kingston. Bob Marley had suddenly become an international superstar, with good help from Eric Clapton´s cover of ”I shot the sheriff”. In that same year, a livealbum was released, called simply ”Live!”. But the stardom and money was never that important to Bob. All he wanted was to see mankind live together in peace, love and harmony, and his lyrics was often about things like that in addition to the Rastafari religion. And trough his lyrics he often critisised governments, and especially the Jamaican government. This led him to be considered a dangerous man. Even the CIA had him on their lists, as the ”most watched” man on Jamaica.

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