MUSIC: I & I: The Natural Mystics - Marley, Tosh & Wailer, By Colin Grant, Jonathan Cape, 305pp. £20
THIS IS THE story of three pals who formed a band and dreamed of musical stardom. But these weren’t ordinary lads from an English council estate hoping rock’n’roll would get them off the dole: these were three young black men trying to survive in the squalor and pressure of Trench Town, the notorious ghetto of Kingston, Jamaica. For Peter Tosh, Bob Marley and Bunny Livingston – born Neville Livingstone – music was more than just a meal ticket: it was a stairway to salvation.
The singing trio named themselves The Teenagers, then the Wailin' Wailers, then the Wailin' Rude Boys, before settling on The Wailers. Like many young hopefuls in 1960s Jamaica they were plugged into the home-grown sounds of ska and the imported beat of American RB. Dressed in natty suits and in thrall to the music of Curtis Mayfield, the trio entered the X-Factorof the day, Opportunity Hour, held weekly at Kingston's Palace Theatre, which offered a grand prize of £10. And they auditioned to record at Studio One, the studio run by Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd, which released thumping dancehall tunes tailored for the many sound systems that were springing up on the streets. Their first release, Simmer Down, in 1963, became a local dancehall hit and gave the trio hope that they might eventually break free from the "government yards", the purpose-built tenements of Trench Town.
Eventually Peter, Bob and Bunny became more than just a singing threesome. As The Wailers’ success grew these three men came to be unofficial spokesmen for their country, each confronting Jamaica’s myriad ills in his own idiosyncratic way, and all three representing an ideology of peace and brotherly love that was constantly under siege from a parade of gunmen, gangsters and iron-fisted governments. And though international fame beckoned, and Trench Town was left behind, none of the three could escape the gravitational pull of Jamaica’s ongoing social and political upheavals. For this is also the story of a beleaguered island nation in the Greater Antilles, once a British colony but always under the yoke of extreme poverty, violence and racial tension.
The Brighton-based author, historian and radio producer Colin Grant is the son of Jamaican emigrants, and here he embarks on an odyssey to his fatherland to find the last surviving member of Jamaica’s original reggae triumvirate. Bob Marley died of cancer in 1981; Peter Tosh was shot dead by thieves who broke into his Kingston home in 1987. Only Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailer, survives, and he lives as a recluse on the island, all but forgotten by a younger generation in thrall to the sexually explicit and overtly aggressive messages of ragga and rap.
Grant’s previous book was a biography of Jamaica’s black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, but here he attempts a potted history of Jamaica from the time of the Frome rebellion, in 1938, when workers rose up in protest at their pitifully small pay packets, resulting in several deaths, right up to June 2010, when Jamaica seems to be under the rule of the gun, having the highest murder rate in the world, and where the concept of the “rude boy” was taken to its illogical extreme in the form of Christopher “Dudus” Coke, a ghetto don who was captured after a huge gunfight that resulted in the deaths of 70 people, many of them innocent passersby.
There is little written record of the childhoods of Marley, Tosh and Livingston, but Grant has at least the vast reams of history to help him put the lives of these three men into context. Sometimes, though, the trickle of biographical information can be frustrating: just when we hope to get an insight into the motivations of a young Marley we must wade through a swathe of sociopolitical scene-setting. Still, it’s worth it to learn about the rise of Rastafarianism and its pivotal place in the world view of the nascent Wailers, and it’s crucial to understanding the minds of these young Jamaicans as they tried to square their deeply held beliefs with the materialistic temptations of their new-found success.
When the Wailers hooked up with Chris Blackwell, the white Jamaican founder of Island Records, their fortunes changed, but not all to the same extent. Blackwell pushed Marley to the fore, much to the anger of Tosh and Livingston, who left the group acrimoniously. The group then became Bob Marley the Wailers.
Livingston cashed in his chips and bought himself a 40-hectare property in Jamaica. Tosh, the most militant of the three, carved out a solo career, signing to Rolling Stones Records, duetting with Mick Jagger on a Smokey Robinson song, Don't Look Back, and releasing such incendiary anthems as Legalise It. Marley went on to become a global superstar and the world's most visible evangelist for Rastafarianism. He also fell foul of Jamaica's pressure-cooker politics and rampant gun rule when, in December 1976, after his announcement of a free concert meant to unify Jamaicans, gunmen burst into his home in Kingston, shooting and injuring several people, including Marley and his wife, Rita.
Grant’s central point is that, in their own way, Tosh, Marley and Livingston were “natural mystics”, tuned into the greater pulse of the spirit, and able to communicate that spirit through their music and lyrics. But, as the story shows, these young men were not gods: just plain, red-blooded young men, hungry for fame and fortune; their mysticism was less god-given than learned through exposure to the influence of the local Rasta guru Mortimo Planno – and plenty of exposure to cannabis, or ganja, the weed that produces the sacred smoke of the Rastafari religion. Just as The Beatles picked up esoteric ideas and ran with them, so too did The Wailers grab hold of an ideology and turn it into musical gold.
Kevin Courtney is an Irish Times journalist
