Bob Marley: the inside story of his greatest albums, as told by The Wailers

From Uncut Take 262 [March 2019 issue], Bob Marley’s bandmates and collaborators chart the musical evolution of a reggae superstar…

“All the albums are great,” proclaims Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett as he casts an eye over The Wailers’ mighty back catalogue. “I played on them all, and I love them all.” Still touring with an incarnation of the band that includes guitarist Donald Kinsey, the original Wailers’ bassist guides Uncut through the records that delivered reggae from the ghettos of Kingston to stadia around the world, making Bob Marley a superstar in the process. Featuring rifts, shootings, spliff-related studio disasters exile, fish curries and ultimately tragedy, with supporting roles for Chris Blackwell and his Island team, as well as latter-day Wailers’ guitarist Junior Marvin, the band’s story is hardly lacking in drama. Through it all, the music developed and deepened.

“With each album, we changed something,” says Family Man, who has lived up to his nickname by fathering 14 children. “I and I were in deep meditation of the works we were doing. We rehearsed, meditated, prepared ourselves every day to record, making sure we never missed a beat.”

THE WAILERS
Catch A Fire
(Island, 1973)
Having recorded with Lee Perry, The Wailers sign to Island and make their international debut, a ground-breaking blend of roots reggae and Western rock textures
ASTON ‘FAMILY MAN’ BARRETT [BASS]: We’d been working with Lee Perry at Randy’s Studio, 17 North Parade, Kingston. It was a wonderful vibe, nice, no complaints. Bob and Lee got along great, until we moved to the next stage! The first time I met Chris Blackwell was at his house at 56 Hope Road, where Bob later lived. It was a musical conversation. His interest was in the music, he had records piled up to the ceiling. We listened to music he had and talked about the music we would develop together, a crossover of pop and R&B. I liked it.

TONY PRATT [ENGINEER]: Chris had hatched this idea of merging reggae with rock, to appeal to FM-listening rock audiences. Accessibility was important; I think that’s the view Bob took. Bob was already in charge. He was the focal point, with his special charm and personality. His ability to tell a story was very special.

BARRETT: Bob was the leader. My memories of recording the album are of a togetherness vibe. The singers would write songs along with input from the musicians. We smoked a little herb and drink Red Label wine, got the vibes while we laid the tracks down. My favourite is “Rock It Baby”, one of the newer songs we did.

PRATT: Bob arrived in London with the tapes and we started from that point. They were on eight-track, a couple on four-track, so we dubbed them up to 16-track and kept recording. There were vocals that Bob wanted to do again, and keys player ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick played a big part. When Wayne Perkins came in, he struggled with the beat. We were trying to put guitar on “Midnight Ravers”. We ran the track a couple of times, then he waved at me to stop and said, “Rabbit, can you tell me where the fuck the one is?!”

THE WAILERS
BURNIN’
(Island, 1974)
Another Kingston/West London hybrid, featuring studio versions of Wailers classics “I Shot The Sheriff” and “Get Up, Stand Up”
BARRETT: A good thing was happening. We were moving up in stages. On Burnin’, we listened to people like James Brown, Taj Mahal, and developed our sound to have that international blend and feel.

PHILL BROWN (ENGINEER): They did all their stuff in a particular studio in Kingston, Harry I’s. It was eight-track, but track six worke, so it was actually seven. It was quite remarkable because 90% of the record was already there. We sped up some of the tracks in Basing Street, which meant that Bob had to do the vocals again. It Just gave the music extra bounce.

TONY PRATT: The recordings from Jamaica were fantastic. I asked Bunny how they set up in Jamaica, and he said, “We put the drums in the middle and point everybody at him.” Of course! So that’s how I set them up. Some tracks were recorded from scratch at Basing Street, because this time the whole band were around. I think we did “Get Up, Stand Up” and “Hallelujah Time” in Studio 1. There were a couple more we tried again but ended up using the versions from Jamaica.

BROWN: They were heavy guys tut it was lots of fun. While we were mixing they were in the control mom, smoking and dancing. physically melted the “I Shot The Sheriff” tape with the glowing debris from a joint while trying to do an edit. The split fell apart, and reached the tape before my hand! We called them “baseball bats”, it was neat grass. Thankfully, there were three masters of that track, so I was able to steal the drum fill from the third take and splice it together. That was all down to Family Man. I blame him. the herbs burn.

BARRETT: It was a good feeling with the herbs burn. Everyone burnin’!

PRATT: Basing Street was right in the middle of Portobello Road, Latimer Road. The area was incredibly well Integrated, and Island Studios was a very social place. The doors would open around six o’clock in the evening and all these Jamaican ladies from around would bring in steaming pots of fish curry and rice and peas. There was a wonderful sense of community

BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS
NATTY DREAD
(ISLAND, 1975)
Marley takes title billing as Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer depart. The I-Threes vocal trio add joyous backing to “Lively Up Yourself”, “No Woman No Cry” and “Rebel Music”.
BROWN: Peter Tosh wasn’t happy, and he and Bunny left after Burnin’. Up until that point, it was more of a democracy. It’s always tricky, the lead singer tends become the leader in people’s eyes. Bob was reserved, quietish. This was before he became this world figure. He was just another Rastafarian, but he was a bit special. There was an incredible vibe coming from the guy.

BARRETT: This album was made without Peter and Bunny, but it was still in a family setting – that never changed. We were rehearsing in the back room [of 56 Hope Road], doing jam sessions until we got it the way we wanted it. That’s what we would do all the time. It was work as usual, but the music developed. It got louder! We started to go into different areas, the songs had messages that we wanted to put out. Songs like “No Woman No Cry” and “Rebel Music” came out of thinking about what was happening in the country – or in the world, to be exact. They were real, so we worked on getting it sounding better and arranged better to express them on record for the people. I love all the songs on that album; all of them have something that resonates with me. With all of us. Natty Dread is it. Twenty-one thousand miles from home.

BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS
LIVE!!!
(ISLAND, 1975)
Recorded over two steamy July nights at a rammed London Lyceum, the result is one of the most exhilarating live albums ever captured on tape
BROWN: Chris had wanted to get a live album pretty much as soon as we finished Burnin’. We recorded two nights. The first night, the stage was invaded, the big doors at the back of the Lyceum got forced, mics got kicked around. We didn’t really get anything useable. We went in early the next day to make things more robust. Pretty much the whole mix comes from the second night. Wikipedia says it’s from the first night? Wikipedia is notoriously wrong! It was definitely the second night. There was too much chaos on the first night.

BARRETT: They said we had to record again the second night. It was a night to be remembered. A lot of people were there, it was sold out. It was wonderful, very special. We weren’t nervous or feeling the pressure, we were just going into it even more. It was so perfect and exact. That’s just how it was. We knew what we were doing!

BROWN: A day or two after, on the Sunday, we mixed the entire album in six hours, just Chris, me and the band. The I-Threes’ vocal mic went down, which was a pretty major problem. The way around that – it seems absurd now – is that we brought in Sue and Sunny, two English white girls who had sung on Joe Cocker’s “With A Little Help From My Friends”. They bolstered up the poor signal from that mic by singing their parts in a kind of cod Jamaican accent. When we came to mix it, Chris kept saying, “More audience.” He was happy with the way the music sounded, but he wanted more crowd. That’s why you can hear the audience singing along. We edited it, made four copies, and that was it. We started at 2pm, and I left Basing Street at 10.30 with a copy.

BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS
RASTAMAN VIBRATION
(ISLAND, 1976)
Hitting the US Top 10, the album elevates Marley to stardom. Militant anthems “Crazy Baldhead” and “Who The Cap Fit” reflect the volatility of Jamaican politics. At the end of ’76, days before the Smile Jamaica concert, he and his entourage are attacked by gunmen at Hope Road
DONALD KINSEY [GUITAR]: Rastaman Vibration was very spiritual, political, heavy. It was roots. There was a lot going on. We were overdubbing at Criteria studios in Florida. We were doing “Want More” and I asked them to play the track for me. I was just familiarising myself with it, but they said, “No man, we got it.” That’s how the session went. Every time I played they were recording. It was a very natural thing. Then I joined The Wailers and went on tour. Reggae music in America was just on the verge of breaking through. We would fly into a city and the first thing I’d do is grab Billboard to see if we’d busted into the charts. I remember we landed in Chicago and “Roots, Rock, Reggae” had busted into the top 100. It was really something, because that song actually states that we’re “bubbling on the top 100.” It’s like a prophecy! From that point, reggae really broke. We did four nights at the Roxy in LA, and that was the last of the clubs. The album made Bob a star in the States – you could feel it, you could see it. Things started to change drastically and very fast.

BARRETT: We didn’t worry about our safety. We never worry. Jah protect. Our people worry, but not we.

KINSEY: The closer we got to the Smile Jamaica concert, you could feel it. One day I saw [The I-Threes’] Marcia Griffiths come up to Bob and say, “I’m afraid for my life, something’s not right.” I asked Bob what was going on, he said, “Don’t worry, man, everything’s all right.” I knew better than that. On the day of the shooting, we had just set our instruments down to take a break from rehearsing. Me, Bob and his manager Don Taylor were in the kitchen when we heard the first shots – they just started dumping bullets. I squatted behind my amp case until I didn’t hear any more shots. It seemed like forever. Nobody died, it was amazing. The higher power was with us.

BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS
EXODUS
(ISLAND, 1977)
Exiled in London, Marley and The Wailers make an album for all-comers: Side One is by turns angry, philosophical and mystical; Side Two offers uplifting party tunes. The lineup features new guitarist Junior Marvin
KINSEY: Bob left Jamaica and went to the Bahamas, then decided he wanted to go to England. They really went underground for a while, into exile. JUNIOR

MARVIN [GUITAR]: I met Bob in London on Valentine’s Day 1977. We started rehearsing right away. My first jam that day was “Exodus”, “Waiting In Vain” and “Jamming” – we played each song for about 45 minutes. Bob was still putting final touches to the lyrics and the music with the keyboard player, Tyrone Downie, who at the time was filling in on bass. Tyrone and myself helped write “Exodus” and “Is This Love?” It was a very electric experience. It was the first time I ever saw somebody’s aura. He was so happy to be alive after the shooting, smiling and having a good time. He was very comfortable in London. There was a great Jamaican and Afro-Caribbean community, people from Ethiopia, Africa…

BARRETT: We spent some good times in London. Just living life, all of us in the band, doing music as we always did. Recording at Island studios was a vibe. It was nice.

MARVIN: There was no rush in the studio, nobody watching the clock. We had it booked 24 hours a day; for Bob that was a dream come true. The songs on Exodus were generally more recent than the ones on Kaya. “Waiting In Vain” was fresh because he had just fallen in love with Cindy Breakspeare. “Exodus” was partly written because Bob had left Jamaica after the shooting attempt – “movement of Jah people,” meaning everyone is part of that movement, no matter your colour, creed or history. “Natural Mystic” was very current, because he couldn’t believe he was still alive, getting protection from the spiritual vibration. The songs definitely had continuity and a special sense of time and place. It had love songs, too, but it had a militant edge. We had a good time recording live, the organic way. It would be drums, bass, piano, acoustic guitar, lead guitar, and rough vocals. Bob would redo his rhythm guitar, and a lot of the vocals. We spent a lot of time mixing, trying to perfect everything. We’d compare our album with the top albums of the time and see how ours measured up sonically. It wasn’t just great songs, but musically almost perfect. It really revolutionised the sound of reggae.

BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS
KAYA
(ISLAND, 1978)
Another London album, and a summery contrast to Exodus. With its blissed-out hymns to love and herb, it led to accusations that Marley was getting soft
BARRETT: Exodus and Kaya were done at the same time; Exodus was just put out first. Softer? It was just another good album.

MARVIN: We spent three months in the studio recording Exodus and Kaya; we did two albums in one. Kaya was a bit more mellow. Like, OK, let’s meditate a little here! Some songs, like “Sun Is Shining”, Bob had written many, many years ago and done other versions of them, as far back as the ’60s. Now he had a modern studio with really good engineers, it was an opportunity to revamp the songs and the way he heard them. Bob was a songwriter, too, and as a songwriter, all your songs are like your little babies. People would say in the press, “Bob Marley smokes 100 tons of weed a day.” We’d laugh, it was so ridiculous. The main thing was having a balance. He did daily meditation, he ate well, he trained every day. He had the awareness to take care of himself. He liked to write about life and love and betterment for everybody, not just people in the ghetto, but also people uptown who needed to upgrade their consciousness.

BARRETT: Afterwards, we returned home to play the One Love concert. It felt good to be back. Security was high, but it was a great feeling. Everyone was secure.

BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS
UPRISING
(ISLAND, 1980)
The last album of Marley’s lifetime, recorded in Kingston and featuring funky hit “Could You Be Loved” and the elegiac “Redemption Song”. Within a year Marley was dead from cancer, aged 36
BARRETT: The final album with Bob here with us in the flesh. We never knew he was sick. The recording was like always: on point, fun, great vibes. I especially loved “Forever Loving Jah” – that song is the truth – and “Redemption Song” is a powerful song. The lyric was our story.

MARVIN: Uprising was made at Tuff Gong Studios, although I started “Could You Be Loved” when we were in London, and I was fooling around with that opening guitar riff. Bob said, “What’s that?” I said it was just something I was messing around with, and he said, “Can I use it?” Then we went to Brazil together, with Jacob Miller from Inner Circle, and we completed the song together. We never got any official credit or compensation, but from time to time Bob would quietly give me some money to keep me sweet! We didn’t find out Bob was unwell until we were supposed to go on tour with Stevie Wonder. He was going to do 60 dates across America, which would have been amazing. It would have offered up a brand new audience to Bob. His contract was up with Island, too, and he was getting big offers from other companies. Ten days before the tour, Bob had a stroke. They rushed him to hospital. We were in shock. He never saw himself as an icon or superstar. His friends would always tell him, “When you make it, make sure your feet are always on the ground.” And they always were.