He was/is…a legend that is. As Damien Dempsey sang in his anthem “Almighty Love”, “When Bobby Marley sings the downtrodden grow wings”. His influence is still there to see and hear across the Caribbean and Africa. We went on holiday to Barbados in 2014 and his image and music were everywhere.

“Legend” has to be one of the best selling Best of/singles collections there is (a quick Google tells me it’s the best selling Reggae album of all time with over 25 million worldwide sales !). It is very much aimed at the casual Marley fan, not including too many of his rebel songs, really only “Buffalo Soldier”, “Get Up Stand Up”, “Redemption Song” and “Exodus”. The remaining songs are weighted toward his love songs and positive vibes. Which is no bad thing, Marley was a masterful songwriter and singer and the idea of this album, after all, was to shift units and they succeeded in that. It’s a pity they couldn’t find room for a couple of his more righteous singles, maybe “Concrete Jungle” and “Zimbabwe” but that’s just me being nit-picky.

“Legend” is one of the best singles collections there is.

Redemption Song - https://youtu.be/yv5xonFSC4c?si=BaoRbQLv-iMHoEex

I first heard this album when…my Dad bought it. Yes you heard that right. My Dad is very sussed when it comes to music and as a musician he has never said what many mates Dad’s said along the lines of “Turn that rubbish off” or other variations on the same theme. He has told us to turn it down cos we were very likely playing stuff too loud but he’s never expressed ridicule for what we listened to (well, apart from once asking why we were listening to the worst rhythm section he’d ever heard while one of us was playing U2). He bought my brother his first copy of “Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols” and told him it was important and that Johnny Rotten was likely our Bob Dylan. My Dad is pretty damned cool.

Thanks to him I got very familiar with this record, I think I played his copy more than he did. This album and it’s follow up “Kaya” were recorded at the same sessions in London during January to April 1977. Marley had come to London to recuperate after an attempt on is life in Jamaica during a particularly charged General Election pitting Prime Minister Michael Manley (who Marley supported) against Edward Seaga. “Exodus” had been thought of as a song and album title for some time and the song was finally written after Marley was taken with one of Manley’s election slogans “We know where we’re going”.

The album is split into two very different sides. Side 1 contains the Roots/Rebel/Rastafari songs headed up my the gorgeous “Natural Mystic”. It fades in slowly, setting up the groove before Marley intones “There’s a natural mystic blowing in the air, If you listen carefully now you will hear”. 

Side 2 contains more pop based songs and 4 of Marley’s best known. The dance reggae of “Jammin’”, “Waiting In Vain” was a top 30 hit in the UK, “Three Little Birds” and Marley’s mashup of his song “One Love” (originally released as a single by The Wailin’ Wailers in 1965) with Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” have become two of his best known songs.

I was always more drawn to side 1 than 2 but you can’t deny the guy knew how to write a hit as well as songs of rebellion and faith, title track “Exodus”, based on a political slogan and the Biblical story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt as an analogy of the hope Rastafarians could be led to freedom, went top 15 in the UK. Follow up album “Kaya” was a much more poppy affair that cemented Marley as a global superstar but  “Exodus” is the one I reach for.

The Heathen - https://youtu.be/dfwu0iZp7OM?si=rm2BvpomF0cXbCOk

“And this, I wan’ tell ya, is a Trenchtown experience…all the way from Trenchtown Jamaica, Bob Marley & The Wailers…C’mon”

And with that introduction Bob and his incredible band (the rhythm section of the Barrett brothers Carlton and Aston “Family Man”, keysman Tyrone Downie, Al Anderson on lead guitar, percussionist Alvin “Seeco” Patterson and the I Three’s, Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths) glide into the most incredible performance of “Trenchtown Rock”. It’s a song and a performance I’ve loved since first hearing it (probably courtesy of my school friend Howard Bramble), particularly because it has a lyric that sums up the way I feel about music and always have. The first thing Bob sings on this record is

“One good thing about music, When it hits you feel no pain

So hit me with music, Hit me with music now”

If that isn’t a great enough start Bob repeats it throughout the song and when he gets towards the end follows up the “Hit me with music” line with what I believe is now known as a mic drop

“Brutalise me with music”

BOOM! If I’m awake there is barely a moment in my life when there isn’t music playing no matter what else I’m doing, my life has to have a soundtrack. Thanx Bob for setting my feelings about music, to music…and to think we never even met.

From then on the crowd are treated to one of the finest performances you’ll ever hear, what it must have been to see this band. “Burnin’ And Lootin’”, “Them Belly Full…”, the sheer exuberance of “Lively Up Yourself”, by the time you get to “No Woman No Cry” you’re thinking like you’ll get a breather but…it’s such an emotionally charged, incredible performance of the song there’s just no let up in the intensity even though things have slowed down. It’s the definitive version of the song, knocking the studio version from “Natty Dread” right outta the park. For those that don’t know the song was written by Bob Marley but he gave a co-writing credit to his friend Vincent Ford who ran a soup kitchen in the Government Yard public housing projects of Trenchtown (“I remember when we used to sit, In the government yard in Trenchtown“). The royalties generated by the song allowed Ford to carry on with the kitchen.

"Live!" is right up there in the top 5 of the greatest live albums, a masterful performance of superb songs by a fearsome group of musicians. All the ingredients you need.

Trenchtown Rock - https://youtu.be/ziQSNGFzlp4?si=EKDFHdg7zw-f6XhY