Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but - Bob

Transcription

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our
minds”
In memory of Robert Nesta Marley
06-02-1945 / 11-05-1981
Babylon By Bus. Bob Marley & The Wailers in the Netherlands
by Martijn Huisman
www.oneplanetoneworld.info
Cover design by Tim Huisman (www.worksoftime.nl)
Revised Edition (August 2011)
2
Contents
Preface .......................................................................................................................................................................... 4
I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................. 6
II. Live! (1975) .............................................................................................................................................................. 9
III. The Rastaman in Amsterdam (1976) .......................................................................................................... 14
IV. Interview with Evert Wilbrink (part I) ......................................................................................................... 21
V. Back in the Netherlands: The Hague 1977 ................................................................................................ 26
VI. Interview with Leon Ramakers ..................................................................................................................... 33
VII. ‘The reggae party of the year’: Rotterdam 1978 ................................................................................... 36
VIII. In his own words ............................................................................................................................................. 41
IX. Geleen 1978 & 2010 and an unexpected interview.............................................................................. 43
X. Last concert in the Netherlands: Rotterdam 1980 ................................................................................. 52
XI. Interview with Evert Wilbrink (part II) ........................................................................................................ 60
XII. In conversation with Mike van der Linde ................................................................................................ 64
XIII. Marley and the Dutch press ........................................................................................................................ 69
XIV. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................ 75
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................. 78
The facts ..................................................................................................................................................................... 82
3
Preface
Third World hero, icon, international superstar, king of reggae, protest singer,
representative of the oppressed, pride of Jamaica, troubadour in difficult times, legend. In
life and death Robert Nesta Marley, better known as Bob Marley, obtained many names
and titles. Not surprisingly, a lot has been said and written about the Jamaican singer and
his music. In the summer of 2010 I published Jamming in Japan. A history of Bob Marley and
reggae, which described the history of reggae in Japan and the role of Bob Marley therein.1
After the project was finished, I realized it was quite strange to have written about Marley’s
visit to Japan as there was very little known about the concerts of Marley in my native
country the Netherlands. A search on the Internet for example yielded only a few websites
with scant information, although Marley performed no less than five times in the
Netherlands between 1975 and 1980. Therefore I decided in October 2010 that another
study was needed, this time about the visits of Bob Marley to the Netherlands.
This second document, the last of a two-part study of specific episodes in the career
of Bob Marley in respectively Japan and the Netherlands, was first published on May 11,
2011. This date was chosen on purpose, as exactly thirty years earlier, on May 11, 1981,
Marley died just before noon at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami. The title of this
work, Babylon by Bus, was also chosen on purpose: it refers to Marley’s live album from
1978 as well as to the visits of Marley to the Netherlands. Marley and his band traveled
through ‘Babylon’ (Western Europe) by bus for years to perform in many places, including
the Netherlands. But where does the name ‘Babylon’ come from? In the words of Ilse-Marie
Dorff in an interview with Marley in 1977: “Babylon is the name that the Rasta’s give the
imperialist-capitalist society and its culture, which they reject and in which they refuse to
participate”.2
Besides an attempt to chart the (early) history of reggae and Bob Marley’s visits to
the Netherlands for the first time, this document is above all intended as a tribute to the
man who made reggae popular and spread the music around the world. A tribute to a man
who after his untimely death has continued to live on in the hearts of people around the
world through his songs of redemption. A man who moreover gave and gives millions of
people around the world hope and inspiration. Above all, I hope this document
contributes to keeping alive the memory of Marley and his music. Moreover, I hope this
document will provide readily available and accessible information about Marley’s visits to
the Netherlands.
Before proceeding to the introduction I would like to thank a few people. Without
their help this project would have never become what it is now. In particular I thank Evert
Wilbrink, Jan Smeets, Leon Ramakers and Mike van der Linde for taking the time and effort
to answer my questions. Mike was also kind enough to show me his huge collection of
1
Jamming in Japan. A history of Bob Marley and reggae can be downloaded from:
www.oneplanetoneworld.info/publications-bm
2
Dorff, 1977; 43.
4
video and audio material of Bob Marley and other reggae artists. He also provided several
photos for this project. Thanks also go to Buro Pinkpop in Geleen for opening up their
archive and the Jaap Edenhal in Amsterdam for sending me newspaper clippings.
Furthermore, I thank the Volkskrant, Vrij Nederland and the Groene Amsterdammer for
opening up their archives and sending me newspaper and magazine articles. Thanks also
to the helpful people at the Bob Marley Magazine forum, especially Ritesh for sending
photos and a television program about Bob Marley’s visit to Amsterdam in 1976. Thank
you!
One Love!
Martijn Huisman
20-04-2011
5
I. Introduction
“He performs at one and the same time spirit possession, the rock star, liberation fighter
and himself, a man called Bob Marley” 3
To this day Bob Marley has been the first and perhaps only truly international superstar to
emerge from the so-called Third World. Robert Nesta Marley was born on February 6, 1945
in the village of Nine Miles in rural Jamaica. As a child of a black mother and a white father,
Marley largely grew up in the slums of the Jamaican capital Kingston. In difficult
circumstances he there developed his musical skills that would later bring him worldwide
fame. Already in 1962 Marley’s first single ‘Judge Not’ appeared, a not very successful ska
song. Ska was then still the most popular music in Jamaica. Out of ska developed the
slower music style rock steady. Around 1968 rock steady in turn evolved into reggae. It was
not until 1972 when Chris Blackwell of Island Records contracted Marley and his band the
Wailers, which included Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston, that the international career of
Marley and reggae music took off. The collaboration with Island Records resulted in 1973
in the classic reggae album Catch a Fire, followed the same year by Burnin’. The two albums
consisted mainly of rerecorded songs for international release that Marley and his band
had already recorded on Jamaica in previous years. Blackwell added electric guitars and
keyboards to the songs, however, to make the music more ‘rock and roll’ and thus more
accessible to Western audiences. 1974 saw the release of a third album for Island Records,
Natty Dread, this time without Tosh and Livingston who had left the band in favor of solo
careers. Beginning in 1974, Marley and his newly formed band the Wailers received
increasing attention by the international music press. The next chapter covers the events
that unfolded in 1974 and 1975, particularly the two legendary concerts take took place in
London in July 1975. These London concerts would have a major influence on the career of
Marley.
During his lifetime Marley, as a singer and part of the established mainstream music
industry, had in the words of Jason Toynbee, “the capacity to bring people of diverse origin
together in common affiliation to his music and world view”.4 In the thirty years since his
death there has been no other artist who rose from the periphery of the music industry,
the Third World, to bind so many people worldwide to his or her music and personality as
Bob Marley has done. Marley’s music, imbued with social criticisms and calls for resistance,
have proven to be globally powerful messages and above all sources of hope and
inspiration. It is therefore not surprising that, as stated in the foreword, over the years
much has been written and said about the Jamaican king of reggae and his music. My
previous work about the history of reggae in Japan and the role of Marley therein was an
attempt to contribute to the ever expanding body of literature about the career and
impact of Marley and his music around the world. This time I focus on the Netherlands and
3
4
Toynbee, 2007; 180.
Toynbee, 2007; 180-181.
6
look how Marley’s music found acceptance there and popularized reggae music. Although
the history of reggae in the Netherlands is also addressed, this work focuses mainly on the
Marley concerts and surrounding events in the Netherlands. Much more than in the
previous work about the history of Japan, the focus of this study lies therefore on Marley
instead of reggae music in general.
This means that I will not go into detail about the background of, and
developments within, reggae music. Nor will definitions of, for example, Rastafarianism,
the strongly with reggae interwoven religious beliefs, be recycled. After all, throughout the
years a lot of written material has appeared about reggae music, Rastafarianism and
related topics, which can be consulted online as well as offline. For those who want to
know more about reggae music in general, Reggae Routes: The Story of Jamaican Music
(1998) by Kevin O’Brien Chang and Wayne Chen and Caribbean Popular Music. An
Encyclopedia of Reggae, Mento, Ska, Rock Steady, and Dancehall (2006) by David V.
Moskowitz are good starters. An extensive and detailed book about Rastafarianism is
Rastafari. From Outcasts to Culture Bearers (2003) by Ennis Barrington Edmonds. For readers
who want to know more about Bob Marley there is a huge amount of literature available.
Recommended readings from recent years are Timothy White’s Catch a Fire. The Life of Bob
Marley (2006), Christopher Farley’s Before the Legend. The Rise of Bob Marley (2007), John
Masouri’s Wailing Blues. The Story of Bob Marley’s Wailers (2008), and Bob Marley. The Untold
Story (2009) by Chris Salewicz. In addition, a lot of information as well as rare photos of
Marley can be found on Bob Marley Magazine (www.bobmarleymagazine.com).
The aim of this work is thus mainly to describe Marley’s visits to the Netherlands
and how these events have helped popularize reggae. The focus of this project therefore
lies on the years 1975 to 1980, a period in which Marley and the Wailers experienced great
successes internationally and in which (roots) reggae had the artistic momentum that
would slowly disappear in later years. To this end, the second chapter gives a brief account
of Marley’s performances in London in July 1975, the months preceding Marley’s first visit
to the Netherlands, and how reggae slowly gained popularity. The third chapter recounts
Marley’s first visit to the Netherlands and his meeting with Dutch journalists in Amsterdam.
Then follows the first part of an interview with Evert Wilbrink, at the time as label manager
at BMG Ariola responsible for the sale of Marley’s LP’s in the Benelux. Chapter five tells the
story of Marley’s performance in the Houtrusthallen in The Hague in May 1977 and the
interviews with Marley by Dutch journalists in Brussels. Chapter six contains a short
interview with Leon Ramakers, the man who on behalf of Mojo Concerts organized four of
the five Dutch Marley concerts. The next two chapters describe Friday and Saturday 7 and
8 July 1978. On these days Marley performed respectively in the Ahoy in Rotterdam and
the ice rink in Geleen. Squeezed in between these two chapters is a short interview with
Marley by Theo Stokkink. Chapter ten presents an account of the last concert of the
Jamaican king of reggae in the Netherlands that took place on June 23, 1980 in Rotterdam.
Then follows the second part of the interview with Evert Wilbrink and an account of my
conversation with Bob Marley fan and collector Mike van der Linde. As an eleven year-old
Van der Linde attended Marley’s last performance in the Netherlands. Exclusively for this
7
project Van der Linde has put his memories on paper. Finally, I conclude this document
with a chapter on the relationship between Marley and the Dutch press. This is followed by
a short conclusion which summarizes the main findings of the several chapters. A list of
used resources and information about the five concerts in the Netherlands is attached at
the end of this document.
Besides several interviews with people who were involved with Marley, this study
builds heavily upon newspaper and magazine articles that appeared in various Dutch
media. The initial main source of information was music magazine Oor, which published
several articles and interviews with Marley. Extensive research in the Rotterdam Municipal
Archive and the Royal Library in The Hague moreover yielded articles from national
newspapers (Algemeen Dagblad, NRC Handelsblad, De Volkskrant, Trouw), regional and
local newspapers (Haagsche Courant, De Groene Amsterdammer, Het Vrije Volk, De
Limburger, Leeuwarder Courant) and weekly newspapers and magazines (Vrij Nederland,
Muziek Expres, Hitkrant, Haagsche Post) as valuable sources of information. Since I never
had the pleasure to see Marley perform live, and because I make use of a large body of
sources, I have tried to provide a balanced portrayal of Marley and his visits to the
Netherlands by using both positive and negative articles as sources of information.
Finally, some remarks of a more practical nature. This document is a translation of
the original Dutch text. As such, subtleties of the Dutch language, especially in direct
quotes from newspaper and music magazines, have mostly been lost in the translation
process. Moreover, Marley’s words were translated – or rather interpreted, due to Marley’s
heavy Jamaican dialect – by Dutch journalists and for this project translated back into
English. Secondly, when I started working on this document I set out to write an easily
readable and accessible report. However, it is in my view essential to explicitly state used
sources of information. Therefore this document makes use of an academic style of
referring in which sources can be found in the footnotes as well as in the bibliography.
Thirdly, direct quotes from original texts, albeit translated, are used to best preserve the
words of the authors. Modifications to original passages are indicated through the use of
square brackets. Fourthly, I was unable to add many photos to this document due to
copyright issues. However, many photos of Marley in the Netherlands can be found on the
Internet.5 Lastly, I often only write about Bob Marley. Marley was never alone on stage,
however, and was always accompanied by his band the Wailers and the I-Threes, the
female choir which included Marley’s wife Rita. Although they are not mentioned very
often, the Wailers and the I-Threes most certainly also deserve recognition for their work.
Without them, Marley would perhaps never have become the ‘king of reggae’.
5
Visit www.gettyimages.com and search for ‘bob marley nederland’.
8
II. Live! (1975)
“Bob Marley’s voice sounds somewhat plaintive, sad rather than angry.
The music is relaxed and has none of the aggressive ranting
that features so much European, supposedly revolutionary, music” 6
The history of reggae in the Netherlands starts around 1970. Although the music is initially
not widely known, there is a small group of enthusiasts who plays reggae on the radio and
several songs passed off for being reggae music have become hits. In 1969, Desmond
Dekker scores a number one hit with ‘Israelites’, followed by successes by Dave & Ansil
Collins, Greyhound, and the Pioneers in 1971. More than two years before their
international breakthrough, Bob Marley and the Wailers themselves score a modest hit in
the Netherlands at the end of 1973 with ‘Get Up Stand Up’ from the album Burnin’.7 ‘Get Up
Stand Up’ is played in November by Radio Veronica, a radio station illegally broadcasting
from a ship in the North Sea. With the Dutch government threatening to end its activities,
the radio station is looking for songs to mobilize its listeners. Although ‘Get Up Stand Up’
only reaches the thirty-third position on the Veronica charts, the song becomes Marley’s
first hit outside of Jamaica.8 According to Evert Wilbrink, at the time label manager for
Island Records at BMG-Ariola Benelux, the popularity of reggae in the Netherlands
developed very slowly however. One reason that reggae enjoyed little popularity was
probably because the film The Harder They Come was still unknown to the Dutch public
until at least 1976. The low budget film by director Perry Henzell which starred reggae
artist Jimmy Cliff had been released in 1973 and, after initially having had little success,
became an international cult hit two years later. The Harder They Come not only showed a
charismatic Cliff as Ivanhoe Martin, but also portrayed the music industry in Kingston and
daily life and criminality on Jamaica. More importantly, however, the film was
accompanied by an exceptional soundtrack consisting of songs from Jimmy Cliff himself
and other well known Jamaican reggae artists such as Toots & The Maytals and Desmond
Dekker.
The role of The Harder They Come and especially its soundtrack as international
promoters of reggae should not be underestimated. Chris Salewicz writes: “Promoting the
film and thereby both reggae music and Jamaica was one of the greatest soundtrack
albums ever made. Perry Henzell had personally chosen the record’s reggae gems and The
Harder They Come album became – before the success of Bob Marley – the gateway to
introduce reggae music to the international audience it now enjoys”.9 When the film
became a cult hit outside of Jamaica in 1975, it also put reggae on the international music
radar. In the Netherlands ,however, Henzell’s film was not shown until at least 1976
because of problems with broadcasting rights. Although the film was present in the
6
Van Dijk, 1976a.
Keunen, 2002.
8
Van der Plas, 2001.
9
Salewicz, 2009; 205.
7
9
archives of the Dutch broadcaster VPRO, it was not shown on Dutch television.10 This has
likely contributed to the fact that reggae gained popularity later and slower in the
Netherlands than in other countries. More importantly, in the absence of The Harder They
Come, reggae had to win the hearts of Dutch music lovers in a different way. As in many
other countries, it was Bob Marley and his band the Wailers who would truly popularize
reggae in the Netherlands.
In 1974 the third Marley and the Wailers album for Island Records, Natty Dread, was
released, containing reggae classics such as ‘No Woman No Cry’, ‘Them Belly Full’, and
‘Lively Up Yourself’. The album was internationally greeted with positive reviews and in the
Netherlands even voted as album of the year. At the same time, the supporting tour
through the United States and Canada drew packed concert halls. In New York for example
Marley played for an audience of fifteen thousand people.11 The Natty Dread album proved
to be the definitive breakthrough of Marley and the Wailers and reggae music in general in
Europe and North America.12 Two legendary concerts on 17 and 18 July 1975 at the
Lyceum Ballroom in London put Marley and the Wailers definitively on a path to worldwide
fame. In a press release several years later Island Records wrote about the two concerts in
London: “[they] fully established Marley as the most evocative and potent performer of the
Seventies. ‘It was reggae’s finest hour’, commented the Melody Maker, whose front-page
headline simple stated: "MARLEY, KING OF REGGAE!" Those concerts subsequently
provided the band with a stunning live album and their first-ever British pop hit, ‘No
Woman, No Cry’. Bob Marley, one of the great street poets of our time, had brought reggae
into the mainstream of popular music".13 Chris Blackwell of Island Records would later
describe the London concerts as ‘sensational’ and a turning point in Marley's career.14 The
two memorable evenings at the Lyceum were recorded and released at the end of the year
as a live album simply titled Live! Marley’s popularity increased even further as the single
‘No Woman No Cry’, taken from the live album, sold millions of copies worldwide. Anton
Witkamp, at the time director at record company BMG-Ariola Benelux, recounts about this
period: “When Natty Dread was released in early 1975 the reviews were very positive. It was
even voted album of the year. People became curious and Marley’s music started to sell.
When Live! appeared in the fall and the single ‘No Woman No Cry’ was released he became
even more popular”.15 In the Netherlands over eighty thousand copies of the Live! album
were sold between 1975 and 1977, a clear indication of the increased and increasing
popularity of Marley.16 Today the album remains a much acclaimed classic within the
reggae genre.
During the two tumultuous nights in London, Marley and his band built up a great
stage reputation in the presence of the international music press. At the invitation of Island
10
Van Dijk, 1976a.
Moskowitz, 2007.
12
Franssen, 1986; 51.
13
Buro Pinkpop – ‘Press release Island Records’ (1977).
14
Masouri, 2008.
15
Van der Plas, 2001.
16
Van Nieuwenhoven, 1977b.
11
10
Records several Dutch journalists accompanied by Evert Wilbrink also traveled to London
to attend the concerts and interview Marley. According to Anton Witkamp, the
breakthrough of Marley and the Wailers in the Netherlands was largely because of these
journalists from the music press. “In the middle of the seventies the music press was
extremely powerful. Music magazine Oor could make or break artists”. 17 The Dutch
journalists all returned home from London with positive stories. Elly de Waard, in the years
thereafter present at almost every Marley concert in the Netherlands, wrote a
comprehensive and detailed article about Marley, who De Waard thought of as a major
innovator within pop music, particularly because Marley had brought a "pretty rough, but
rhythmically interesting version of rock” to a higher level. “Marley developed and refined
the potential of reggae music”.18 De Waard would later write that with the release of the
first studio album for Island Records, Catch a Fire in 1973, it had been immediately
apparent that reggae "could become an important influence within rock music, especially
through the rising figure of Bob Marley”.19
Peter Brusse, also present at the concerts in London, wrote in De Volkskrant that the
music of Marley was a ‘spiritual revolution’. Like most Western journalists, Brusse had
found it difficult to talk with Marley because the Jamaican always seemed to be stoned.
Moreover, Marley did not seem to understand the interviewers questions and often gave
cryptic answers. As a consequence, Brusse seemed to have learned little about Marley
while in London. A notable example is the claim that Marley, according to Brusse due to
the fact that policemen were murdered daily in Jamaica, was scared of the Jamaican police
and therefore did not want to live in one place. Brusse moreover wrote that “it was not
easy to tempt Marley to perform”, while in reality Marley had been performing for years as
a up-and-coming artist.20 The article by Brusse is an indication of the relative obscurity of
Marley and reggae music in the Netherlands in July 1975.
By far the most enthusiastic about the performances of Marley in London was Harry
van Nieuwenhoven, a reporter working for the influential Dutch music magazine Oor. Van
Nieuwenhoven had attended both sold-out concerts at the Lyceum and had witnessed
how the Jamaicans had “conquered London by storm”. Van Nieuwenhoven wrote: “From
the memorable moment that Bob of the Rebel club put his foot on the stage for the first
time, the audience went crazy! At first sight a quite optimistic and blind reaction of the
audience. A reaction that was fully justified however by what was offered at the two
concerts. For even attending a gig of Bob Marley and the Wailers twice in a row is
attending a sensational and unforgettable affair. Events that make the sun shine in your
heart and strengthen the belief that this is the best reggae band in the world!” A reggae
band who, according to the Oor reporter, had moreover made reggae music fit for a
Western audience without affecting the authenticity of the music. On the contrary, the
Wailers played reggae music that in no way denied the roots of the music. Precisely this
17
Van der Plas, 2001.
De Waard, 1975.
19
De Waard, 1978.
20
Brusse, 1975.
18
11
authenticity – or the alleged lack thereof – of Marley’s music would become an
increasingly important theme in the Dutch media in the following years, also for Van
Nieuwenhoven himself who would continue to write about Marley for Oor magazine. After
the concerts in Londen Van Nieuwenhoven concluded about Marley: “A consummate
angry young man and, although seemingly without any effort, an impressive and
compelling stage personality. While constantly having a painful expression on his face and
dropping through his knees in a rather peculiar way, he swings his dreadlocks fiercely and
playful through the air”.21 Less than one year later, when Marley visited the Netherlands for
the first time, Van Nieuwenhoven would already be much more critical of this
“consummate angry young man”.
In the run up to the first show of the Wailers in Amsterdam and in response to the
positive reviews about Marley and the London concerts, enthusiasm for Marley and reggae
music gradually increased in the Netherlands. In the Haagsche Post (now HP/De Tijd) two
comprehensive and very accurate reggae articles written by Dave van Dijk appeared.
Illustrative for the increased popularity of reggae was that the second article was
published after readers had repeatedly requested more information about reggae and its
leading artists. Author Dave van Dijk had already met Bob Marley in the winter of 19681969 in the Swedish capital Stockholm. The then little-known Marley had spent a full year
in Sweden together with the American singer Johnny Nash to write songs for a film
soundtrack. Van Dijk: “He [Johnny Nash] is accompanied by a very taciturn Jamaican with a
green-yellow-red knit cap on. The few words I try to exchange with the man result in
mutual incomprehension. Johnny Nash praises his musical qualities. I cannot stand Nash
and forget the incident. Only years later I realize I had met Bob Marley”.22
Van Dijk had become really interested in reggae in 1974 and in the years thereafter
continuously tried to get the Dutch public interested in the music from Jamaica. At the
instigation of Van Dijk Marley’s concert in Rotterdam in 1978 was fully recorded for Dutch
radio.23 The producer of programs for VPRO radio can justifiably be called one of the
pioneers of reggae in the Netherlands. In his two articles for the Haagsche Post Van Dijk
appears as a particularly well-informed lover of reggae. This is remarkable, because the
majority of Dutch journalists knew little about Marley and reggae music in general, even
years after the breakthrough of Marley and reggae on the international music stage.
Perhaps this was because reggae was for a long time largely ignored by the Dutch music
industry. In his second article about ‘the rebellious music’ known as reggae, Van Dijk for
example fiercely criticizes the Dutch public broadcasters: “The great mass of pop
consumers is lead astray by the hollow chatter on Hilversum III [a Dutch public television
channel]. They sometimes play disco-groups with slight soft-reggae influences, but they
remain almost totally silent about the fact that Marley is part of a very lively and rebellious
music scene”.24
21
Van Nieuwenhoven, 1975.
Van Dijk, 1976a.
23
Feis, 2009.
24
Van Dijk, 1976b.
22
12
Despite the fact that about two hundred albums with Jamaican music, including
reggae music and related music styles, had been imported to the Netherlands at the time
Van Dijk wrote his articles, reggae was often still ranked under other genres like pop, soul
or funk.25 In other words, reggae did not yet enjoy a wide popularity in the Netherlands in
1976 and as such it had not yet carved out its own place within the Dutch music scene.
When Bob Marley and the Wailers came to the Netherlands for the first time in June of the
same year this finally changed. The year 1975 ended in shock for Marley and the
Rastafarians when the news came from Ethiopia that Haile Selassie, the ‘living god’ and
focus of the Rastafarian movement, had died at the age of 83 in the capital Addis Ababa.
The bad news did not withheld Marley and his fellow Jamaican musicians from coming to
the Netherlands a few months later for a concert in Amsterdam. The show would
definitively establish Marley and reggae music in the Netherlands as respectively a top
artist and a new and fashionable type of music.
25
Van Dijk, 1976b.
13
III. The Rastaman in Amsterdam (1976)
On June 13, 1976 a dream came true for Dutch reggae fans: to promote the internationally
successful album Rastaman Vibration, already released in April, Marley and the Wailers
came to the Netherlands. Hitherto no Jamaican reggae artists had visited the Netherlands.
The arrival of Marley, at the time already the foremost representative of reggae music,
made the hearts of many Dutch reggae fans beat faster as they had waited for years to see
a Jamaican group perform live.26 According to some sources, Marley would initially already
have played in the Netherlands in 1975, but due to vague reasons the concert had been
cancelled. One source mentions that Marley did not feel like coming to the Netherlands
yet, while another writes that the show was cancelled because of bickering between the
Dutch promoters.27
Although the album was released in late April, the Rastaman Vibration-tour had
already started in March with shows in the United States and Canada. Enthusiasm for
reggae had taken a flight in the United States, where the influential music magazine
Rolling Stone even proclaimed Bob Marley and the Wailers ‘band of the year’. The
European tour started on June 6 in Germany with a concert in Offenburg at the Sunrise
Festival. In the week that followed there were concerts in Dusseldorf, Hamburg and the
Swedish capital Stockholm. The Rastaman Vibration-tour was the biggest tour undertaken
by Marley and his associates up till then, reaching a new and wider audience than ever
before. This was also the case in the Netherlands, where Marley played in the Jaap Edenhal
in Amsterdam. Two days after the concert in the Grona Lund in Stockholm, Marley and his
fellow Jamaicans set foot on Dutch soil for the first time. On the day before the concert,
Marley and his band were offered a cruise through the Amsterdam canals by Ariola,
Marley’s record company in the Benelux. The cruise was not just meant for the Jamaicans
to see Amsterdam, but also to generate publicity: it was the only moment when journalists
could interview Marley.28
Marley and his entourage of about forty Jamaicans stayed at the expensive Hilton
hotel. This prompted Harry van Nieuwenhoven, reporter for Oor magazine, to wonder
whether Marley had put himself in the lion’s den as the Hilton was ‘Babylon at its best’. In
the Hilton the Jamaicans had rented an entire floor for themselves. Moreover, the
expensive presidential suite had been offered to them free of charge. There, they
continued in “surroundings of American pragmatism and efficiency” a way of life that,
according to Van Nieuwenhoven, could be described best as “if we don’t get there today,
than at least tomorrow”.29 By way of exception the Jamaicans were also allowed to cook for
themselves in their suite, thus making it as comfortable and pleasant as possible for Marley
and his band. Over the years it had become a habit, and an important part of the tour and
26
Van Alphen, 1976.
28
29
27
14
the atmosphere within the group according to Chris Salewicz, to bring an own cook who
cooked for all band members.30
Illustrative of the aforementioned Jamaican mentality of ‘soon come’, the
Jamaicans left for the canal boat at half past four instead of half past three, followed in
their wake by a few journalists and photographers. Interviewing Marley on the boat
proved to be difficult for Van Nieuwenhoven and his fellow journalists. Because of his
frequent use of patois, a kind of Jamaican-Creole dialect based on English, Marley was
difficult to understand. According to Phil Cooper, at the time working at Island Records
and responsible for the international promotion of the reggae star, journalists often did
not understand a word of what Marley said. Instead, they simply wrote what they thought
they had heard.31 According to Jason Toynbee, Marley answered questions of interviewers
in patois, full of allusions and enigmatic expressions, on purpose. Although he
acknowledged that he needed the media to reach an international audience, Marley
wanted to keep power over the journalists who were in his eyes part of ‘Babylon’. 32
In his articles, Van Nieuwenhoven extensively describes his first encounter with
Marley in 1975 in London at the Hilton Kensington Hotel, where the international music
press had been invited by Island Records to meet and interview Marley after the two
famous concerts at the Lyceum. “Most of the already by alcohol affected press hounds
didn’t understand anything of the answers given by Mr. Marley in Jamaican English on the
predominantly relevant questions. Seldom have I seen confusion so complete as during
this interview”.33 Like the other twenty journalists present, Van Nieuwenhoven was already
after “the first reply from Bob from [the] rebel club […] completely lost. What was the case?
Marley was as high as a kite. After the fifth question he answered the first. And everything
in that almost incomprehensible shorthand English (patois)”.34 On the canal boat in
Amsterdam it was not much easier either for the Oor-reporter and his colleagues:
interviewing Marley was difficult due to a noisy guide who wanted to ‘prove himself’ and
because the photographers were constantly competing with each other for the best shots.
The Jamaicans themselves had moreover brought a cassette tape with dub music which
was continually played on a loud volume. Marley, smoking one joint after the other, was
thus even harder than usual to understand. A year later, Van Nieuwenhoven would write
that during the afternoon on the canal boat in Amsterdam Marley appeared as “a very slow
talker, who in a incoherent way and in a strange dialect of Jamaican English answers
questions in a very chaotic way”.35
One of the photographers present that afternoon was renowned music
photographer Laurens van Houten. A few years ago Van Houten recounted his memories
of hanging out with Marley in a Dutch television program. Van Houten: “He [Marley] asks,
‘can you get some good weed for us?’ So I say, ‘no problem’. He says, ‘yes, but good
30
Salewicz, 2009.
Salewicz, 2009.
32
Toynbee, 2007.
33
34
35
31
15
quality’. I say, ‘of course, you are in Holland. How much?’ ‘Well, half a kilo. A pound’. […] I
think the majority of it was for Marley himself. I didn’t divide it among them. The next day I
presented the bag with weed at the Hilton. Marley sat in a beautiful suite, looked at the
bag, smelled it, and says: ‘hmmm, that’s what I call a Dutch treat’ […] In 1976, it was of
course still quite illegal and that’s also what Marley said to me. He said, ‘in England they all
shit in their pants for the police. Netherlands is really cool’ “.36 In the Netherlands it was
indeed rather easy for the Jamaicans to purchase and consume marijuana, not least
because concert organizer Mojo Concerts invariably presented Marley and the Wailers with
gifts in the form of ‘Thai sticks’, a form of cannabis from Thailand mainly popular in the
sixties and seventies. Other European countries did not share the Dutch policy of tolerance
regarding the use of marijuana however. Every time before crossing the Dutch border into
Germany and Belgium, the tour bus in which Marley and the Wailers traveled through
Europe had to be extensively cleaned. Moreover, the last half hour before reaching the
border all the windows of the bus were opened.37
Three weeks after Marley’s stay in Amsterdam, a large article by Harry van
Nieuwenhoven appeared in Oor about the first visit of the Jamaican reggae king to the
Netherlands. Because Van Nieuwenhoven could understand little of what Marley had said
on the canal boat, the article was a sort of compilation of two interviews held in London
and Amsterdam and ‘less definitive and detailed’ than Van Nieuwenhoven had hoped. The
interview is nonetheless interesting, not least because Van Nieuwenhoven proves himself
as a shrewd and critical interviewer. Under the heading ‘Is Positive Rastaman?’, he asks
aloud whether Marley, the Rastaman, is really positive and what the real motives and
intentions of Marley and his company are, now that they earn ‘money like water’. Van
Nieuwenhoven describes Marley as a “thoroughly sympathetic guy who, because of his
cheerful ‘positive’ nature and smoking joints for fifteen years, laughs a lot and, after
touching his sensitive ‘Rasta-key’, tells a lot of pompous information about the Rasta-faith.
Although he constantly tries to give the impression that everything he does, he does for
the Rastafari among the oppressed Jamaican ghetto residents, in my opinion it should not
be forgotten that the love for reggae music but especially the economic profit for our
Rastaman, who adds a lot of commercial water to his reggae wine, is probably as important
if not more important”.38 Although Van Nieuwenhoven was quite critical at times, the
general tone of the article was positive. Van Nieuwenhoven wrote for example that the
global successes of several albums had made Marley and his Wailers a world class
formation of which Marley acted as a ‘thinking voice’. “Marley is a hypnotic stage
personality and a born leader who apparently only rallies intelligent and talented people
around him”. Nevertheless, most reggae fans in the West, ‘Babylon’, would not be attracted
to reggae and Marley’s music because of its engagement with the Rasta-faith and its
accompanying ideology. No, it was mainly the “to our Western ears [...] simple and
infectious reggae sounds” that make Marley a success. “Tikkie takkie tikkie takkie boom!
36
Corton, 2000.
Salewicz, 2009.
38
37
16
Boom! Boom!” Sounds that according to Van Nieuwenhoven, partly due to a so-called
‘super slump in pop music’, were very refreshing and optimistic in nature, “warm the heart
from the inside” and strongly encourage to dance along.39 The concert that took place the
next day in the Jaap Edenhal would indeed show that Marley was slowly but surely
conquering the world.
On Sunday the Wailers performed in the Jaap Edenhal, a ice skate hall with a
capacity of about four thousand visitors which had been built only three years earlier.
According to Leon Ramakers, the man responsible for the organization of the concert on
behalf of Mojo Concerts, the Jaap Edenhal was chosen as location because the Ahoy in
Rotterdam would be too large for Marley. However, even before the concert started it was
already apparent that the Jaap Edenhal was too small. The concert was sold out and
according to Jim van Alphen, present on behalf of Dutch newspaper Het Parool, many fans
without tickets were waiting outside. Some of these fans even tried to get inside by
demolishing entrance doors. The next day there appeared a short message in newspaper
De Telegraaf, stating that the concert in the Jaap Edenhal had been accompanied by
several small riots and the sounds of glass being smashed. After several young men
without tickets had been denied access to the hall, they had started to throw in windows
in the vicinity of the hall out of mischief and frustration. After others had joined the group,
the police, truncheon in hand, had restored order.40 Such scenes had also taken place some
months earlier at the two memorable and equally chaotic concerts in London. There, the
police had intervened after hundreds of people, mostly Jamaicans without tickets, had
demolished an emergency exit to enter the Lyceum.41
Without any further problems the concert started. As with every Marley show, the
stage at the Jaap Edenhal was decorated with banners bearing the portraits of Marcus
Garvey and Haile Selassie and the red-yellow-green colored flag of Ethiopia. Marley did not
play his guitar very much, but together with the I-Threes focused mostly on the singing.
Marley not only brought the audience in ecstasy, but also the various journalists present.
Elly de Waard, working for De Volkskrant, wrote that the concert had once more clearly
shown that Marley was a “charismatic, almost messianic personality”. Jim van Alphen
wrote that Marley, moving across the stage “as a rubber doll with long black ringlets”, took
Amsterdam by storm in the same way he had done in London in the previous year. The
hypnotic repetitions and simple life messages in the music had, according to De Waard, a
psalm-like strength that was even further enhanced by Marley and his “imploring gestures,
dances, head shaking and grasping of his guitar”. Characteristic for Marley’s qualities as a
performer and the enthusiasm of the public, was that at the end of the concert, especially
during the song ‘No Woman No Cry’, the music by the Wailers became more of an
“accompaniment to the movements and the singing of the public than vice versa”.
Although the performance, including an encore consisting of ‘Positive Vibration’, ‘Get Up
39
De Telegraaf, 1976.
41
Salewicz, 2009.
40
17
Stand Up’ and ‘War’, only lasted for one hour and fifteen minutes, Marley and the Wailers
left the stage with thunderous applause.42
Elly de Waard wrote that it rarely happened that a musician by doing “so little,
elicited such an immense response from the public”, as those present already sang along
en masse at the first chords struck by the Wailers. The breakthrough of reggae on the
international stage was, according to De Waard, evidence that true innovation in rock &
roll music always had to come from a regional level, in this case Jamaica.43 Peter Koops
wrote that the concert showed that reggae, having initially crossed over from England, had
definitively secured a place in Dutch hearts as a new and fashionable style of pop music
and a style of music one could nicely dance on.44 Jim van Alphen concluded in Het Parool
that the victory of reggae in the Netherlands was far from complete. On the contrary, the
country was just getting warmed up for the national pride of Jamaica. In later years this
prophesy came true as Marley would perform in ever larger concert halls in the
Netherlands and the rest of the world.45
Also present at the concert was the then sixteen years old Nico Dijkshoorn,
nowadays a well-known Dutch columnist, poet, writer and musician. Dijkshoorn recounts
his memories of the concert on his own website:
“The evening itself. Many hours too early at the Jaap Edenhal. Adults eat something or sleep a
bit, we just waited. With our noses against the front door. First to be inside. I can’t remember an
opening act. I did experience the usual excitement at seeing the red lights on the amplifiers.
Now it was quiet, but soon we would hear the four tics and bang. Remains magical. Too few
bands start in the dark.
I think Marley started with all lights on. First the band. You already heard him. Trenchtown Rock
was the first song, as on the legendary live album. I think he played the songs in the same order
as on the live album. There he was. Wearing a denim suit. A magical moment. One of the few
people who meant every word. You knew for sure. The hall did not exist, just the music. “One
good thing ‘bout music, when it hits, you feel no pain”. Magnificent. For the first time in my life I
saw a spirited, obsessed musician.
Concert was great. I especially remember the backing vocalists. Huge women, beautifully
singing and moving. "Ajeejo, Ajeeeejo!!" Question and answer. Normally terrible (all the ladies in
the house say...) but now it worked. It was one of my first concerts (I had been to Roxy Music in
the Concertgebouw and Lou Reed in Carré before I believe) but the cliché is true. I felt that I was
looking at something very special. A unique experience. A feeling of being a conspirator. I see
this, I am present.
42
De Waard, 1976; Van Alphen, 1976.
De Waard, 1976.
44
Koops, 1976.
45
Van Alphen, 1976.
43
18
When I play the record I am there again. Row 5 from the stage, in the middle. That’s all I know.
He danced a lot on one leg. Face in the air, eyes closed, as if he felt pain. Which he probably did.
Nice that he sang with it.” 46
During their first visit to Amsterdam, Marley and the Wailers also record some songs
for the Dutch television program TopPop. AVRO TopPop, as it was officially called, was
broadcasted from 1970 to 1988 and was the first weekly pop program to be shown on
Dutch television. The program consisted mainly of footage of pop artists who performed
their latest hits in the TopPop studio. Marley was invited by TopPop to record several
songs in a studio in Nederhorst ten Berg, a town near Amsterdam. With these songs
TopPop thought and hoped to have future hits. The recorded songs never really became
hits, however, and lied unused in the archives for over thirty years. Recently, TopPop has
released these ‘unique recordings’, compromising the songs ‘Positive Vibration’ and ‘Roots,
Rock, Reggae’, on the Internet to be watched freely.47 After the concert in the Jaap Edenhal
and a performance for TopPop, the Rastaman Vibration-tour continued with no fewer than
six sold out performances in four days at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. At that
point Marley was already advertised as the ‘first superstar from the Third World’. The soldout concerts at the Hammersmith Odeon indeed proved that Marley was becoming an
international superstar.48 After several appearances in other English towns and in Wales the
tour ended on June 27 with a concert in Manchester.
Meanwhile, the forthcoming elections in Jamaica had put the two warring political
factions on edge. Political unrest was running high with violence occurring daily in the
streets of Kingston. The incumbent prime minister Michael Manley had declared a state of
emergency and had put the army onto the streets. The situation had become so serious
that the island seemed to be on the brink of a civil war. In October, Bob Marley was
approached with the question whether he and the Wailers were willing to give a free
concert on December 5, eleven days before the elections, to help relax the explosive
situation. Marley agreed to perform at the Smile Jamaica concert as it would be called.
Ultimately, Marley was ‘betrayed’ by the ruling political party, who made it appear as if
Marley had chosen their side in the political conflict. In reality, Marley had always wisely
kept aloof from Jamaican politics. It was a metaphorical stab in the back of the reggae star,
but that was not all...49
Two days before the Smile Jamaica concert six armed men sneak into Marley’s
house at 56 Hope Road in Kingston and immediately open fire on everyone they see. One
bullet brushes Marley’s chest and then hits his left arm. Rita Marley is shot in the head,
while manager Don Taylor, standing between Marley and the attackers, is shot in five
different places. As quick and suddenly as they have appeared the armed attackers
disappear, leaving the wounded victims behind. Miraculously all involved survive the
46
Dijkshoorn, 2003.
For the video ‘Positive Vibration’ see: http://www.123video.nl/playvideos.asp?MovieID=93704
For the video ‘Roots, Rock, Reggae’ see: http://www.avro.nl/Pages/player.aspx?maid=tcm%3A8-234538
48
Salewicz, 2009.
49
Moskowitz, 2007.
47
19
assassination attempt and only Taylor needs to undergo intensive surgery to recover.
Nonetheless, Marley and the Wailers play two days later at the Smile Jamaica festival under
heavy security for about eighty thousand people. Although it has been announced that
the performance will be short Marley and his band are on a roll and play for one and a half
hours. During the performance Marley pulls off his shirt and triumphantly shows the injury
caused by the assassination attempt to prove he is alright. The next day, however, Marley
immediately leaves Jamaica to not return for a long time. Thus starts a self-imposed exile
and ends 1976. A year in which Marley has been extremely successful internationally,
including a first appearance in the Netherlands. A year that ends though with an
unsuccessful attempt on his life and a forced leave from his native Jamaica.50
50
Moskowitz, 2007; White, 2005.
20
IV. Interview with Evert Wilbrink (part I)
While searching for information for this project, I stumbled on an interview with Evert
Wilbrink from 2001. In the interview, Wilbrink talks about his experiences with and
memories of Bob Marley, reason enough to contact Wilbrink who nowadays lives in the
United States. 51 In the years between 1971 and 1981/1982 Wilbrink worked, among others,
as label manager for Island Records at BMG-Ariola Benelux. As such, he was also
responsible for the sale of Marley albums in the Benelux. Wilbrink wrote the following
about this period in his career in Dutch magazine Het Platenblad: “Thirty years ago, I
waved the scepter of my own Island Records-kingdom within record label BMG Ariola. I
could do whatever I wanted with Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry, Bob Marley, Bad Company,
Cat Stevens, Fairport Convention. I could oppose everyone within Ariola, because Island in
London always backed me up. And sometimes I could even afford to oppose the office in
London, by for example releasing ‘Stir It Up’ against all orders as the new single from Bob
Marley’s Babylon By Bus. After all, for years I had built up credit with the directors: Tom
Hayes, David Betteridge, Phil Cooper and Chris Blackwell”.52 Wilbrink had met Marley for
the first time in July 1975 in London after the two legendary concerts in the Lyceum that
were honored later that year with the monumental album Live! Wilbrink attended both
concerts and even claims that he can be heard on the album, as he was within range of the
recording equipment while enthusiastically singing along with all the songs.53 During the
visit to London, Wilbrink was accompanied by several Dutch journalists. According to him,
the articles of these journalists that appeared in several Dutch newspapers and magazines
were the beginning of widespread publicity in the Netherlands for Marley and reggae
music. During our conversations via Skype I asked Wilbrinks among others about this early
period in the history of reggae in the Netherlands.
Is it true that before 1975, when you took some journalists to London, there was
virtually no attention paid to reggae music in the Netherlands?
“Yes, that’s right, although I did have a 1971 number one hit with ‘Double Barrel’ by Dave &
Ansil Collins and a top ten with ‘Black and White’ by Greyhound. There was some attention
paid to artists like Bob and Marcia, Greyhound, and The Pioneers on the radio. And I think
we had a couple of reggae hits in the ‘60s, but those were mostly pop such as ‘Pied Piper’
by Bob and Marcia. Although Marcia Griffiths later sang with the Wailers, it was not really
reggae. ‘My Boy Lollipop’ by Millie Small was seen as reggae while it has nothing to do with
it. I think I’ve been of some importance for reggae in the Netherlands, because at one point
I released Hot Shots, a compilation album with only reggae. That was in 1971 or 1972 I
51
The interview with Evert Wilbrink by Marco Virgona can be found on the Bob Marley Magazine Forum:
www.bobmarleymagazine.com/interviews/showentry.php?e=1133
52
Wilbrink, 2009.
53
Virgona, 2001.
21
think, on the Trojan label. A little bit of goodwill for reggae developed but it happened
very slowly. Reggae was not common in the Netherlands, that’s for sure.”
An earlier study about the history of reggae in Japan showed that the movie that
appeared around that time…
“The Harder They Come. Jimmy Cliff. Only years after that movie came out it became a cult
film. I saw it probably in 1972, but it became successful three years later. Chris Blackwell
showed us the movie on a mountain in Switzerland. Blackwell was the producer of the film.
It was late at night and the reel with the film broke thirteen times. It took about three or
three and a half hours before we had seen the whole movie because it had to be put
together with tape every time. Yes, that was very special. We were watching the movie
with ten to twelve others. I found it very impressive. I can’t remember when it was first
shown in the Netherlands. I think I saw it in 1976, but it was only in the ‘80s that the movie
was shown in the Netherlands. I can’t quite remember if that movie was even officially
released in the Netherlands at all. We did release the soundtrack. I also released a single,
‘Rivers of Babylon’ by The Melodians. To my utter surprise Boney M had written a brand
new song a few years later…”
Do you remember anything about the cruise with Marley through the canals of
Amsterdam in 1976?
“I remember that I rented a boat from the firm Lovers to cruise with Marley through the
Amsterdam canals and to give a few journalists the opportunity to interview him. I recently
received a photo where I’m standing with Marley on that boat. Unfortunately, I have
nothing else from the past. I used to have several shirts. Marley-shirts, T-shirts, coasters,
about twelve gold and platinum records I received for my commitment to Marley. I was
very proud of those gold and platinum records.”
Did similar activities takes place during later visits of Marley to the Netherlands?
“I don’t think so. They much rather stayed in their hotel rooms to smoke, it was always blue
with smoke. Marley was very private, a happy smoker is not a troublemaker. Marley often
operated out of the Hilton hotel in Amsterdam. To Oberhausen and Düsseldorf [Germany]
if he had to play there. And afterwards they came back to Amsterdam because they had
their own cook and their own kitchen there. That was an integral part of the tour, the
football trainer and the cook were very important.”
Were you continuously involved with Marley and the Wailers to make sure
everything went alright?
“Yes. The first time in Amsterdam we stayed at the Hilton. We had the presidential suite
and we had a suite where we were allowed to cook. Marley only wanted to eat food
cooked by his own cook. We had to fly back to London at four o’clock. Since I knew about
the slower mentality of Jamaicans, we had them come to the hotel lobby at eleven o’clock.
And when they were finally all present around one o’clock, we searched them all for
22
marijuana to prevent they would be picked out and held at customs. We also searched
Seeco Patterson, who was the oldest Wailer and did the percussion, but he was still picked
out at Heathrow and held by the authorities because he had marijuana seeds in his jacket,
which we had failed to find. Yes, there was a lot of smoking going on!”
Did such things happen often?
“I remember very well that there was a festival in Germany. We had rooms arranged in a
hotel nearby where they could change their clothes. There was always a guy, the tour
manager, who accompanied them, and he had the bright idea to book Marley in, let’s say,
room fifteen. He then gave Marley the key to room seventeen, so when the German police
searched room fifteen they could not find anything because Marley was simply not there.
When the police officers arrived at the festival they saw Marley with a big joint in his hand.
One of those officers began talking to him. But as it usually goes with a joint, it just went
into the hand of the musician next to Marley and so they could do nothing about it.
Abroad we always had to think of those things. In the Netherlands we never had any
problems with the police. And we were never paranoid about such things either. But in
Germany they thought it was a good idea to see if they could arrest Marley.”
Do you think Bob Marley ‘brought’ reggae to the Netherlands?
“You know what the strange thing is? I think Marley did not really make reggae. It is
reggae, but it was more… I think Marley made a form of reggae that was separate from…
Marley made something that was on a much higher level. He made the reggae, the spirit of
reggae, a part of himself.”
So did Marley make something new or was it ‘just’ his own style of reggae?
“I think he has taken elements of reggae and made his own style of music out of it. There’s
nothing quite like it. Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingstone and all those others who at that
time were with him can’t be compared with it. They made much more traditional reggae
than Marley ever did. I think the only people who achieve a really high status in pop music
are people who make their own music. Bruce Springsteen, is that a style of music? I don’t
know. I think Bruce Springsteen is great, but he doesn’t need to be labeled. Neil Young, is
he a folk singer? Absolutely not. Neil Young is Neil Young, and there is nothing to compare
him with. So you can’t just simple label them. I think Marley fits in between them, between
the giants who can’t simply be described and labeled.”
But wasn’t Marley’s music strongly influenced by rock after he was contracted by
Chris Blackwell’s Island Records?
“I think it’s very good that Blackwell added certain things that were not done in Jamaica.
Take the original production of the album Burnin’ [1973] for example. If you compare it
with the English mix it has enormously gained in strength. The same goes for Catch A Fire
[1973]. Both have been released as two versions. There have been a number of people
involved. John Bundrick, who has been the pianist of The Who for twenty or twenty years,
23
plays some important parts. There were some people who made a sort of cross pollination.
But I can’t say that Blackwell forced Marley to do it. I think it happened because Marley
became interested in London by Blackwell and other artists. Fairport Convention, Cat
Stevens, and also Jimmy Cliff who had already previously worked with Cat Stevens in
London. I think it was a natural way of things. I don’t think it was imposed on Marley by
Blackwell. Marley didn’t let anybody impose anything on him.”
Not even in 1972 and 1973 before his international breakthrough?
“We shouldn’t forget that Marley already had a career [in Jamaica], and that he had had a
huge hit in America with Johnny Nash, ‘Stir It Up’.”
Were you present at all Marley concerts in the Netherlands?
“Yes, I think so. Although I remember more about sitting in the bus and hanging around at
the hotel. I do remember I sat in the audience in the Jaap Edenhal. At the other gigs I stood
behind the stage.”
What was it like in the bus and in the hotels?
“It was very pleasant. I wasn’t there as a fan. No, it was just fun to hang out and form part of
the atmosphere. That’s hard to put into words.”
Can you remember any particularities that happened at the concerts?
“For me it was just great. When I stood on the side of the podium, I looked at the I-Threes
and how they moved. How they all moved, almost as if frozen, in response to the rhythm
section. And Marley, who also moved in an enchanting manner across the stage. Things
that happened outside of the stage didn’t really interest me at that time. Perhaps they
should have interested me more, but I didn’t notice. I was mesmerized by what was
happening on stage.”
The concerts were almost magical experiences?
“Yes, and I never had that feeling when I was watching Dylan or Clapton. I think Dylan is
magical, but I don’t really need to go to a concert of him. Marley was what happened on
stage. I don’t believe in spiritual séances and things like that which put you on a higher
spiritual plane. But one way or another I became stoned by watching Marley. It was very
compelling and intriguing.”
Does that explain Marley’s popularity in the Netherlands?
“Absolutely, I think he was more than just a rock and roll phenomenon or a music
phenomenon. I think he had a magical personality. Don’t ask me why, but one way or
another, his charisma and presence… You have it or you don’t have it, I think. I think we
witnessed something magical. Something that may never happen again. I think I’ve written
somewhere that Marley would perhaps have become a prophet to many people rather
than a musical phenomenon. If he had lived longer he would have been more important.
24
You now see that Marley has a very positive influence on a lot of youth, especially blacks in
America and Surinamese in the Netherlands.”
In that context, what kind of people came to the concerts?
“Now that I live in America I have become much more aware of whether people are black
or white. Before I never looked at it like that. What was always a little bit strange, was that if
we had a junket to London and we went to a concert we were only with white people. That
might have been because there were few colored pop music journalists in the Netherlands
and also in Germany and France in the seventies. That’s all I can remember. And at one
point I was in Amsterdam with Marley in the Jordaan because we had been invited for a
party. At the door I was refused entrance because I was white. Only then I realized that I
actually had a different color than Marley. But at concerts I never paid any attention to
such things.”
25
V. Back in the Netherlands: The Hague 1977
After the attempt on Marley’s life, the Wailers left Jamaica and went abroad for an
extended period of time. The first months of 1977 were spent in London working on a new
album, Exodus. Nowadays, this album is seen as Marley’s masterpiece and in 1998 it was
even voted ‘Album of the Twenteeth Century’ by the American magazine TIME.54 Although
Exodus was officially released on June 3, 1977, a supporting tour through Western Europe
and North America had already been on the road for three weeks. The European tour had
started with a concert in Paris on May 10, followed by a performance the next day in
Brussels. The day before the tour started, Marley had incurred an injury to the big toe of his
right foot during a football game in Paris, caused by a heavy tackle by an opponent. It was
not the first time, as Marley had incurred a similar injury to the same toe several years
before. That wound had strangely never fully recovered. Although the doctor in Paris
advised Marley not to perform in order to give the foot rest, the tour was not cancelled. In
the Netherlands, fans eagerly awaited the arrival of Marley. An article appeared in the
Veronica TV guide in which the background and the popularity of reggae was described.
According to the author this popularity was mainly due to the ‘compelling rhythmic
character’ and not so much because of the message in the music. The enthusiasm of the
writer was remarkable, but so were the mistakes in the article. The Rastafarian movement
was consistently called the ‘Rastafa-movement’ and Marley’s mother was ‘a pub singer’.55
On June 13, before heading to Germany for four shows, the Jamaicans briefly stopped in
The Hague for a second appearance in the Netherlands, this time in the Houtrusthallen.56
The Houtrusthallen, built in 1937, were already an outdated accommodation.
Because of its poor acoustics, the hall was in fact totally unsuitable for concerts as had
previously been shown at concerts of Frank Zappa and the Bee Gees.57 The Houtrusthallen
were an emergency solution for organizer Mojo Concerts, as other possible locations such
as the Groenoordhallen in Leiden and the Ahoy in Rotterdam were unavailable. The
concert in The Hague was nevertheless sold out with about nine thousand people
attending the concert. Too many, Leon Ramakers of Mojo Concerts admits. As a result,
many concertgoers had a very poor view on the stage. For some, the whole evening was
ruined by the shortcomings of the Houtrusthallen. Menno Schenke, reporter for the
Algemeen Dagblad, even devoted his entire article to the abominable accommodation.
Schenke thought that the Dutch audience, which paid twenty-five guilders for a ticket, was
the most tolerant audience in the world. For it cared little about the “pervasive smell of
French fries and beer, stuffy surroundings, [and] weak lighting”, or the very poor sound
and the fact that the performance could only be seen from a wooden floor without seats
which provided a very poor view on the stage.58 The venue was moreover filled with
54
Toynbee, 2007.
Hagenaar, 1977.
56
Moskowitz, 2007.
57
De Waard, 1977.
58
Schenke, 1977
55
26
hashish- and marihuana fumes. Anton Witkamp recounts: “From the beginning people
smoked at Marley’s concerts. Especially the Surinamese smoked a lot at the concert. I
remember that the air was filled with fumes”.59
Prior to Marley taking the stage, visitors were entertained by Rico Rodriguez, a ska
and reggae trombonist from Jamaica. Although the conditions were far from ideal, Marley
made the concert into an extraordinary party through his “hypnotic music and the
charisma of his person”. Despite his foot injury, Marley was “livelier than ever; he made
hefty jumps and whipped the audience into an almost hysterical enthusiasm. In many
cases, the audience was singing so loudly that the band could hardly keep up with the
volume”.60 The latter was perhaps not so surprising given the poor sound system.
Compared with previous concerts, there was more room for improvisation and show
thanks to the input of the new guitarist Junior Marvin, who was given enough room by
Marley to show his craftsmanship. The concert began with the song ‘Rebel Music’, where
Marley’s ‘magical aura’ directly worked: “He swung wildly with his ‘dread locks’ […], made
acrobatic jumps, and pulled the audience along with Burnin’ & Lootin’ en Them Belly
Full”.61 A ten minute version of the song ‘The Heathen’ was also played. Along with familiar
songs, the audience was also treated to some tracks from the new album, including now
well-known reggae classics ‘Jamming’ and ‘Exodus’. At the time of the concert most people
in the audience did not know these songs yet. This didn’t harm the attention and
enthusiasm of the spectators however: everyone kept “swinging along and singing along
with the sunny reggae sounds, a source of energetic inspiration for listeners and those
who like to dance”.62 During ‘No Woman No Cry’, thousands of cigarette lighters went in
the air while everyone sang along. After the last song, the thousands of lights remained on
until Marley and his band, prompted by loud cheering and clapping, appeared on stage
once more for an encore consisting of two songs including ‘Get Up Stand Up’. Despite the
shortcomings of the accommodation, the nine thousand visitors had witnessed “a unique
performance in which the singing, rhythm, color and sound coalesced into a true
synthesis”.63 In the next few days art and culture sections of national and regional
newspaper extolled the concert with headlines such as ‘Bob Marley, prophet of pop music’
(NRC Handelsblad), ‘Bob Marley: ecstasy’ (Het Parool), ‘Bob Marley: exciting music
(Haagsche Courant), and ‘Bob Marley livelier than ever’ (De Volkskrant). In Trouw, Marley
was even described as the ‘Godfather of reggae’, being the first superstar from the Third
World. Elly de Waard wrote the following day in De Volkskrant that it was promising that
Marley’s music, mainly concerned with social problems such as hunger and oppression,
was not just good music but also popular music. The concerts themselves were according
to De Waard an almost religious experience in the ‘good sense of the word’. Marley acted
as a sort of preacher who by means of question and answer played his ‘church’, the
audience, with massive harmonies, melodies, messages, and incantations, which resulted
59
Van der Plas, 2001.
De Waard, 1977.
61
Van Alphen, 1977.
62
Van Nieuwenhoven, 1977a.
63
De Leeuw, 1977.
60
27
in a “comforting and uplifting experience”. Her colleague De Leeuw shared a similar view
and wrote that Marley’s performance was “much like […] a massive religious gathering
with Bob Marley as a pastor”. Moreover, the concert in The Hague had proven once more
that even in the Western world reggae music was fully accepted.64 Thom Olink, reporter for
the local newspaper Haagsche Courant, seemed to be in higher or at least poetic spheres
when he wrote his review:
“With thousands of others in the Houtrusthallen steeped in music for the diaphragm, I
wondered how Bob Marley wants to escape. Where are the gaps in his music, which may
provide ‘his new world’. [...] Bob Marley has pinned himself down; his music is a kind, and who
surrenders loves this kind. A gathering drum: Reggy, rock, a base consisting of West Indian
rhythms, some of which have been sifted, simplified. […] His music has a fixed pattern, in
rhythm, in sound, color and composition. The vocals too; Marley in free flight for a second, then
the supporting choruses of the three women. The text of his story – there is a war going on, be
yourself, fight for yourself, the day will come – just as consistent. […] The phrases return.
Everything together: the ever oncoming enchanting music, pounding, going back and re-telling
of the text, that was what made the atmosphere. On top of that the person Marley, who gives
himself entirely to his music. […] Get up, stand up, get up, stand up; in the hot hall you could
feel the affection. In the dark, hundreds of lighters burned and the choruses flowed: ‘No woman,
no cry’. Towards the morning light, shall we say, in the umpteenth version. It was beautiful how
this music filled the room. […] It was really a meeting last night. Marley and his followers. And
they like his music.” 65
In the NRC Handelsblad appeared an article by Peter Koops in which he among
others described the popularity of Marley and reggae music in general in the Netherlands.
“One group, Bob Marley & The Wailers, also known as the ‘The Trenchtown Experience’,
provided, with a gig in June last year in the Jaap Edenhal, the first effective propaganda for
the Reggae. This show immediately brought the main representatives of this cult within
reach”. Since then reggae, which had crossed over from England, had been completely
naturalized in the Netherlands, especially because it was easy and pleasant to dance to.
Although reggae was no longer a rarity in the Netherlands, a “bastardized, strongly
commercialized form” had even gained a place in pop music, Jamaican groups that tried to
preserve the “authentic, pronounced basic character” had barely visited the country, Koops
wrote.66 With this, Koops implicated that Marley’s reggae was not authentic, but ‘just’ a
highly commercialized and bastardized form of the reggae that was made in Jamaica.
From 1977 onwards this alleged lack of authenticity in Marley’s music would become an
increasingly important theme in the Dutch music press.
Because of the continued popularity of the Jamaican singer, music magazine Oor
published a large article about Marley’s visit to The Hague. This time the Jamaicans didn’t
64
De Leeuw, 1977; De Waard, 1977.
Olink, 1977.
66
Koops, 1977.
65
28
stay in the Netherlands, but in a hotel in Brussels as they performed there just two days
prior to the gig in The Hague. Besides the fact that Marley’s management didn’t want to
book a hotel in The Hague for just one night, the Jamaicans had actually been refused
entrance to the only hotel available in that city. Therefore, Marley and his band were forced
to travel by bus from Brussels to The Hague and back. Babylon by bus. Because interviews
with Marley could only take place in the hotel in Brussels, Harry van Nieuwenhoven had
traveled to the Belgium capital on behalf of Oor. Van Nieuwenhoven had also been present
at the concert in the Houtrusthallen and like his colleagues also lamented the unsuitable
accommodation. Despite the poor visibility, the poor sound and “a curtain of hash and
cigarette smoke causing watery eyes” the concert had been a successful festival
nonetheless. There had been an atmosphere of hysteria and ecstasy in which even the
“biggest anti-dance types” had gone crazy.67
When Van Nieuwenhoven arrives in the hotel in Brussels he is asked to take his
shoes off. According to the Oor-journalist perhaps because Marley gets a kick out of seeing
“a bunch of white idiots entering his suite on their socks. Maybe he does it on purpose”.
Inside, Van Nieuwenhoven is greeted by an overwhelming air of hashish and some twenty
stoned Jamaicans. Marley himself is lying flat on a couch, not particularly motivated to do
another interview. Suddenly, Marley remembers Van Nieuwenhoven and the canal cruise
through Amsterdam, where the singer to his own hilarity had been “stoned as a monkey”.
When asked whether the concert in Amsterdam was special, Marley answers that there are
no special concerts for him. During every performance he gives himself one hundred
percent. Therefore, every concert is a special happening. According to Marley, it’s about
“the liberating feeling that you give the participating audience...”68
Then follows a barrage of questions. How does Marley stay so extremely mobile on
stage? “Spiritually, the Rasta-faith gives me the strength to go on. Physically, I stay in shape
by playing a lot of football. I think it is a great sport. Like playing reggae music it is an
inspirational activity where you can completely forget the world around you”. And what
does Marley do in his spare time? "Think. I think a lot. […] Together with my Rasta brethren
and sisters I think about one thing only: how can we bring humanity together? How can
we make the differences between black and white, rich and poor, etc. disappear from this
earth? Reggae music can be a tool to accomplish this”. In the remainder of the
conversation, Marley appears as a perfectionist although the Barrett brothers, bassist Aston
‘Family Man’ and drummer Carly, more or less determine the sound of the band. Asked
whether he as a superstar, among other successful music stars who often cannot deal with
their success, always manages to keep himself under control even when things are not
going well, Marley answers: “I don’t do business with phenomena. I only do business with
reality. For me, a phenomenon like success does not even exist”.69
Although he admires the “vibrant reggae music [which is a] latent source of
energetic inspiration and unprecedented swinging”, Van Nieuwenhoven is remarkably
67
69
68
29
suspicious and critical of Marley as illustrated by the following passage: “Even after the
third (Brussels) interview, I still don’t know whether Mr. Marley is constantly fooling the
press hounds, or that he really means all these pompous theories about the Rasta-faith
which he constantly utters as the cosmopolitan Jamaican he has become. I think more and
more that Bob Marley, in a very cunning way, uses the basically simple Rasta-faith to get
rich really quickly”. Van Nieuwenhoven concludes with: “Of course I can be wrong…”70 At
the time these thoughts and opinions of Van Nieuwenhoven were not yet shared by
(many) other journalists. In later years, however, the motives of Marley would be
increasingly held against the light and doubted by journalists.
In Brussels, Marley was not only visited by Van Nieuwenhoven but also by the
young, and in her own words completely fresh, Haagsche Post reporter Ilse-Marie Dorff.
Together with a photographer, Dorff had traveled to Brussels unannounced to interview
Marley without having an appointment. Surprisingly, Marley agreed with an interview,
perhaps because he was happy to be interviewed by a black woman instead of the white
male journalists who often ‘did not understand’ his words anyway. Dorff and Marley were
soon talking about the Bible and the Rastafarian movement, as Marley did not really want
to talk about his music or the concert of the previous evening at the Forest National in
Brussels. When Dorff mentions the word ‘star’, Marley responds with his Bible in his hand:
“I’m not a star. I am Rasta Man. Do you remember the three wise men who followed the
star during the birth of Jesus? Good. If you want to see me as a star, see me as star followed
by wise men”. Marley seemed more candid than usual in the interview with Dorff. Dorff
writes: “He looks handsome, and gradually I am beginning to like him; nevertheless it will
be a difficult conversation. Marley’s thinking is far removed from mine”.71 The singer talks
about his new album Exodus, according to Dorff a curious mix of commerce and religion,
which deals with the “movement of Jah people to Africa”. Marley says he has a message for
all people, but for black people in particular. In accordance with the Rasta-faith that
message roughly translates to the “mental and physical movement to Africa”, especially
the movement to Ethiopia where all black brothers and sisters, or at least all Rastafarians,
should return. In the earlier interview with Van Nieuwenhoven Marley had said that the
‘movement of Jah people’ referred to “the movement of common sense, of reality, of
people who are preparing to return to Africa”.72 In response to Dorff’s objection that she
rather doesn’t go to South Africa, with its regime of apartheid, Marley replies: “Then you
stay here and die. Oh, those whites in South Africa, them cannibals, man! I don’t want to
know more about it because it is part of the Babylon plan”.73
Marley also tells Dorff that, despite his self-imposed exile from Jamaica after the
attempt on his life, he can always go back to Jamaica when he feels like it. He just wanted
to leave the country for a while, but it had nothing to do with the assassination attempt on
his life or the political unrest in Jamaica. About the attempt on his life and the people
70
Dorff, 1977.
72
73
Dorff, 1977.
71
30
responsible Marley has some ideas, but he refuses to tell Dorff, or any other journalist for
that matter, who were involved. The attack was a result of political unrest in Jamaica, says
Marley, which in turn was fueled by larger foreign powers. However, “Rastafari has nothing
to do with politics”. In the interview with Van Nieuwenhoven, Marley had said that he did
not trust politicians because they were only out to gain power over the backs of the
common people. “They are cheap manipulators”. Marley moreover told Van
Nieuwenhoven that he could only guess at the motives for the attempt on his life,
although several people around him had made suggestions. When Dorff finally asks Marley
whether Haile Selassie, or Jah Rastafari, was not really a tyrant, an agitated Marley replies:
“What do you mean. Leave god alone. God is life. God is not a problem, the people are a
problem. You look at Haile Selassie as a man, you can’t see god as a man. He is a living
example of how you can give everything to the people. God is also creation, everyone has
god within himself and that shows how great god is”.74
After a few days in Belgium and the Netherlands with shows in Brussels and The
Hague, Marley and the Wailers traveled to Germany. During the tour Marley would
continue to suffer from the injury on his big toe. After the European tour ended on June 4,
the reggae star visited a specialist in London. Because Marley had continued to perform
and play football the wound had not healed. It turned out that the big toe was infected
with melanoma, a type of skin cancer. A second opinion in Miami confirmed that Marley’s
big toe was affected by melanoma, which was also the reason why the wound was not
really recovering. At first, amputation of the entire toe seemed to be the only solution to
prevent metastases. Ultimately, however, it was decided that only the infected parts of the
toe were to be removed. Marley underwent an operation in Miami, which caused the entire
American Exodus-tour to be canceled. Over time, the doctors declared Marley fully
recovered and free of melanoma. It would take ten months until Marley, in 1978, entered
the stage again to perform.75
Concert ticket for the Houtrusthallen
Source: www.bobmarleymagazine.com
74
75
Dorff, 1977; Van Nieuwenhoven, 1977b.
Salewicz, 2009.
31
Above: Announcement for the concert in music magazine Oor
Source: Muziekkrant Oor 20-04-1977
Below: live in The Hague
Photo’s: P. van der Linde / Source: Mike van der Linde
32
VI. Interview with Leon Ramakers
While looking through music magazine Oor I came across an advert by Mojo Concerts
announcing the concert in The Hague. Mojo Concerts was founded in 1969 and is today
the best known and largest concert promoter in the Netherlands, annually organizing
many concerts of both Dutch and foreign artists. Through Mojo Concerts I came in contact
with Leon Ramakers, the man responsible for organizing the concert in The Hague.
Ramakers is co-founder and former owner of Mojo Concerts and is nowadays recognized
as one of the most successful people in the Dutch music industry. Ramakers was kind
enough to answer my questions via e-mail. The interview below is a compilation of the
correspondence that took place over the course of several weeks. During this e-mail
exchange it became clear that Ramakers had not only organized the concert in The Hague
for Mojo Concerts, but also the shows in Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
How many people attended the concert in The Hague?
“There were nine thousand people!”
Was nine thousand a lot in those times? And was the concert sold out?
“Totally sold out. It was a big event, but we also had three Pink Floyd concerts in Ahoy
[Rotterdam] and three Eagles concerts. So it was big, but not the best or biggest.”
How long was the concert?
“Marley concerts usually lasted quite long, about two hours.”
Why did the concert took place in the Houtrusthallen? This location was notorious for
its bad acoustics.
“The reason why the concert was given in the Houtrust was rather banal. A competitor,
Wim Bosman from Voorburg, had offered a large sum for the Groenoordhallen in Leiden.
Ahoy was not available and Wim had the Groenoordhallen. I therefore had to ‘divert’ to the
Houtrust.”
In their reviews of the concert, journalists wrote that the sound system as well as the
lightning were very poor and many people could hardly see the stage. Is this correct?
“There were far too many people inside, for many the view of the stage was indeed bad! I
cannot remember technical problems however.”
Did Mojo Concerts arrange for Marley to come to the Netherlands or was it ‘offered’
by his management?
“If a group wants to do a tour of Europe, they hire an agent (in this case the company of
Alec Leslie and Mick Cater, I can’t remember how their business was called) who then starts
33
calling promoters. We had a very good relationship with Alec and Mick and thus got the
call.”
Did you met Marley and talk with him?
“We only shook hands, that’s all.”
Do you remember anything special from the concert, perhaps some anecdotes?
“Marley had asked his manager if I could get Thai sticks. After much searching I managed
to get seven of those sticks, according to the dealer enough to make an elephant stoned. I
proudly gave it to the manager, who immediately took it to Marley’s dressing room. After
fifteen minutes they asked where the rest was…”
Did Mojo only organize the concert in the Houtrusthallen or also other concerts of
Marley in the Netherlands?
“We did them all. I organized them all!”
Can you tell me about these concerts? Were they also sold out for example?
“All concerts were sold out. The Jaap Edenhal four thousand, Houtrust nine thousand and
both gigs in Ahoy also nine thousand spectators.”
What kind of people came to the Marley concerts?
“The audience was of course more diverse and ‘colored’ than at other pop concerts. Many
people from Suriname!”
Why was the first Marley concert in the Netherlands held at the Jaap Edenhal in
Amsterdam?
“If something took place in the Jaap Edenhal, it was because you thought that was the
right location. In other words, because you thought the Ahoy would not get sold out...”
Het Parool reported about the concert in the Jaap Edenhal that doors were forced, so
that one might conclude that ‘there were still a lot of fans standing outside’. Can you
recall that there were people waiting outside who wanted to enter the hall without a
valid ticket?
“Marley’s concerts were always quite violent events. There were always people, always
men, who felt that you did not have to pay for something and who could not accept that a
concert was sold out. So they tried to get in anyway... For an organizer not always the
nicest concerts.”
34
Was Marley already popular in the Netherlands when he first performed in
Amsterdam in 1976?
“Of course he was much bigger in London. I had heard stories from Mick Cater about how
chaotic the concerts in London had been.”
Was it because of the increased popularity of Marley that he performed in Ahoy in ‘78
and ‘80 or were there other reasons?
“There simply was (and is) no other location in the Netherlands with the same quality as
the Ahoy!”
Did you also have to arrange for Thai sticks around the concerts in Amsterdam and
Rotterdam?
“In Amsterdam it was easier than in The Hague, and some guys from the band already had
suppliers in Amsterdam...”
You mentioned that there is no other large hall in the Netherlands of the same
quality as the Ahoy. In other countries like Germany, France, Spain and Italy, Marley
performed in football and other sports stadiums. During the European tour of 1980
he played at the San Siro in Milan in front of 100 000 people for example...
“I don’t think Marley was that big in the Netherlands yet.”
Was it never discussed or possible to have Marley perform in stadiums in the
Netherlands?
“That would have happened if he did not become ill.”
Were there plans to sign Marley for a concert in the Netherlands in 1981 or 1982?
“Yes, but vaguely.”
Do you think that Marley had become even more popular?
“Yes, he would also have played in stadiums here!”
35
VII. ‘The reggae party of the year’: Rotterdam 1978
After an absence of more than ten months, Marley’s first performance was in April 1978 at
the One Love Peace Concert. It was the first time since the attempt on his life in December
1976 that Marley returned to Jamaica. Like the 1976 Smile Jamaica concert, the One Love
Peace Concert was also aimed at easing political tensions in Jamaica and bringing the two
warring political factions closer together. At the concert Marley performed alongside many
other famous Jamaican reggae artists such as Peter Tosh, Dennis Brown, Jacob ‘Killer’ Miller
and Culture. That night in April over thirty thousand Jamaicans witnessed a special
moment when Marley unexpectedly called the two leaders of the two political factions on
stage. While he sang an improvised version of ‘Jamming’, Marley held the hands of the two
leaders above his head and united them. A unique moment in the history of Jamaica and
in Marley’s life, in which he symbolically reconciled the two leaders, their parties and
ultimately the Jamaican people. The concert was a great success, although it ultimately
contributed little to reducing the violence in Jamaica.76 Later that year, Marley was
awarded the Third World Peace Medal by the United Nations for his noble action during
the One Love Peace Concert.
Despite these events, the international press had become increasingly critical of
Marley, especially after the release of the new album Kaya in March 1978.77 Some thought
that after the attempt on his life, Marley had largely abandoned the social criticisms in his
lyrics in favor of more romantic and commercial reggae. This new creative direction, of
which Kaya is the best and most apparent example, was not appreciated very much by
most journalists and fans. At the end of 1977, Island Records had issued a press release for
the promote of Kaya which celebrated the talents of Marley as a singer, songwriter,
musician and artist as being a vital and indispensable contribution to the music of the
seventies. For this reason everyone was looking forward to the release of Kaya. The press
release also promised that Marley and the Wailers would sound better than ever on the
new album: tight melodies combined with strong lyrics, brought with conviction and
commitment, and backed by the best rhythm section in the world. Therefore, most tracks
on Kaya would undoubtedly become ‘Marley classics’.78
The reality was quite different however. Kaya contained mostly softer songs about
love and marijuana (and the love for marijuana) and was not nearly as militant and socially
engaged as previous albums. It led to criticism from the international as well as the Dutch
music press, who wrote that Marley had renounced his ‘Rasta principles’. This criticism was
in itself odd, since most journalists had always written that the primary strength of reggae
music lied in its rhythms while the lyrics didn’t really matter. After all, most Westerners
could not identify with lyrics about for example Rastafarianism. The release of Kaya
revealed however that the lyrics were more important than had often been thought. Kaya
76
Moskowitz, 2007.
Franssen, 1978b.
78
77
36
was not only criticized by the press, but also by music lovers who found the new album
generally dull and boring.79 Of the ten tracks on Kaya not one song became a hit.
Despite the disappointing new album, a supportive tour through Europe and North
America was planned. After gigs in the United States and Canada, the Kaya-tour continued
in Europe with shows in England, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the
Netherlands. Despite the criticisms, Marley and the Wailers played in greater concert
venues and for more visitors than ever before. Chris Salewicz writes about this
development: “As befitted these larger venues that Marley and the group were now
playing, the shows were an exaggeration of their past, heavy with rock guitar from Junior
Marvin, and almost histrionic in their presentation”.80 In other words, Marley played in ever
bigger venues while attracting increasing amounts of concertgoers. In turn, the concerts
were increasingly adapted to these bigger crowds and venues. Next to rock guitarist Junior
Marvin, a second guitarist, the American Al Anderson, joined the Wailers in 1978. Anderson
had already played with Marley for several years, but had switched to Peter Tosh’s band in
1976. Anderson was familiar with the Netherlands: from 1972 he had lived in Haarlem and
Amsterdam in search for work as a guitarist. In the absence of interest in his musical
services he had moved to London where he later joined Marley’s band.81
After having done shows all across Europe, Marley and the Wailers stopped by in
the Netherlands in July to play at a sold out Ahoy in Rotterdam. Initially, organizer Mojo
Concerts had planned and advertised a reggae festival with Marley and the Wailers
headlining at the Groenoordhal in Leiden. In June, for reasons unknown, the venue was
suddenly changed to the Ahoy in Rotterdam. On Friday July 7, the Ahoy was literally filled
with blue hashish fumes as VPRO radio made recordings of the entire concert.82 The stage
at the Ahoy was decorated with huge banners bearing the portraits of Haile Selassie,
Marcus Garvey, and a flag in the Ethiopian Rasta colors red-green-yellow on which ‘One
Love’ was written. Music magazine Oor had, like in previous years, sent a reporter. Harry
van Nieuwenhoven had been replaced, however, by Pieter Franssen. Disappointing new
album or not, Franssen rightly noted that Marley was the only Jamaican able to get the
Ahoy sold out with his “reggae based on rock” music. The opening act for Marley was the
British reggae band Steel Pulse. Most visitors could hear very little of the four songs, due to
congestion at the entrances and the low volume at which the music was played.83 The
more than nine thousand spectators had to wait a long time to see Marley, and were in the
meantime ‘entertained’ with recordings from Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton concerts –
resulting in massive whistling by the audience. At half past nine the lights suddenly went
out. “The otherwise cold concrete Ahoy’ hall is immediately much more intimate. […]
When the first notes of the well known ‘Them belly full’ are heard, no one sits on his seat
79
Franssen, 1978b.
81
El Fers, 1991.
82
Parts of the concert and an interview with Marley have been broadcasted in the program Globaal Kabaal on VPRO-radio.
The program contains two songs, ‘Concrete Jungle’ and ‘Crisis’, from the 1978 concert in Ahoy and part of an interview with
Marley in 1980 after the concert in Ahoy. To hear the songs and the interview, see:
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/programmas/afleveringen/20761094
83
Franssen, 1978a.
80
37
anymore. Standing on chairs everybody sings along, led by the stirring movements of the
Jamaican. It results in a great atmosphere”.84 Marley and his band would play sixteen songs
that evening.85 Besides many older songs, ‘Crisis’, ‘Running Away’, and ‘Easy Skanking’ from
the new album Kaya were played, although these were not appreciated by the audience
very much who were clearly less interested in the new songs.86 As always and everywhere,
the public in Rotterdam liked classics such as ‘No Woman No Cry’, ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ and
‘Them Belly Full’ the most.
Two advertisements in music magazine Oor for the third concert of Marley and the Wailers in the Netherlands. The left
one appeared in Oor in May and announced a reggae festival to be held in Leiden. In June, a different advertisement
appeared after the show had been moved to Rotterdam Source: Muziekkrant Oor May & June 1978
Pieter Franssen noted that especially during ‘Concrete Jungle’ – an old song from
the 1973 album Catch a Fire – ‘War’, ‘Crazy Baldhead’, ‘Jamming’, ‘Get Up Stand Up’," and
the closing song ‘Exodus’ it was apparent how good and unparalleled Marley and the
Wailers actually were. Like his predecessor Van Nieuwenhoven, Franssen was also more
critical than most other journalists. At crucial moments during the concert the volume was
suddenly much louder, ‘mass manipulation’ according to Franssen. Positive, however, was
the excellent guitar work by Junior Marvin and Al Anderson and the appearance and
‘sweet voices’ of the I-Threes. “Wearing turbans in the rasta colors red, green and yellow,
they were, as they stood there rocking, a feast for the eyes!” Conclusion: “hand clapping,
lighters, loudly belting out and at the end frenzied dancing: the reggae party of the year”.87
After the concert Franssen spoke with Marley in the dressing room in Ahoy,
resulting in an article that was printed several few weeks later in Oor magazine. The article
begins with a critical analysis of the recent activities of Marley, such as the release of the
disappointing Kaya. “It is time to ask ourselves why a group like Culture does have
something meaningful to say, while the ‘Rastaman’ Marley doesn’t open his mouth and
even avoids certain questions. How genuine is Bob Marley?” After waiting for forty-five
84
Het Vrije Volk, 1978.
One of these songs, ‘The Heathen’, can be listened to on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xtwewby5EM
86
Olde Monnikhof, 1978.
87
Franssen, 1978a.
85
38
minutes, Franssen is finally allowed to enter Marley’s dressing room, and this time the
journalists are allowed to keep their shoes on. Although people are quarreling in the
background, Marley himself, with a joint in his hand, is initially in a good mood. The
Jamaican singer is again largely incomprehensible, of which the interview in which
Rastafari is often praised bears testimony. Not very original, Franssen writes, and also
annoying as Marley ‘avoids the facts’.88
It gets more interesting when Franssen tells Marley that other groups, such as the
Jamaican reggae band Culture with their now classic reggae album Two Sevens Clash, are
more spiritual and involved with Rasta in their music than Marley himself. Marley responds:
“What are you saying? […] Yes, yes. Look, what I sing now is… what I feel like singing, you
know?”
Franssen: “Not much about Rastafari anymore?”
Marley: “Look, I am a Rasta, so all I do or make is Rastafari. Whatever I’m do is a Rastafarithing. They can’t separate me from Rastafari. No way!”
Franssen: “But some people express this in their songs, right?”
Marley: “We are free to do what we want. Right? […] I try to make music that people like. If
we like our music, many other people agree with that. And the people appreciate it. […] I
don’t want to sing only about the oppression of the people. I sing for a certain kind of
people. They listen to what I say and understand it.”
About Kaya and the meaning of the word Marley finally explains: “Kaya means something
like ‘be steadfast, freedom, unity, peace. You can apply it to many concepts. It’s a typical
African expression. Comes from Ghanaian. We reach so many new people with this album.
Africa...I think this is my best record”.89
After the weekend, several articles appeared in newspapers about the concert in
Ahoy. According to Algemeen Dagblad-reporter Ton Olde Monnikhof, Marley and his band
played their reggae music in an unprecedented and unmatched way. Marley himself had
moreover presented himself as a ‘shrewd demagogue’ who easily enraptured the
audience. And: “what the Jamaican reggae king and Rasta-high priest Bob Marley has to
say during concerts is not so different from what a priest or a preacher preaches from the
pulpit every Sunday. Except that the first has put his message on cheerful music and a
catchy rhythm, so that he always performs in packed venues”. Unlike the Kaya album,
Marley’s concerts were still strongly influenced by his Rasta-faith because Marley mostly
played his older, more socially engaged songs. But, this reporter also wrote, the more than
nine thousand spectators were not present for Marley’s lyrics but for the ‘packaging’ of the
music.90 The article by Olde Monnikhof is an example of the reasoning that the music of
Marley was not ‘real’ and authentic because of a perceived lack of spirituality and Rastainfluences. At the same time, critics wrote that reggae depended on the rhythm of the
88
Franssen, 1978b.
Franssen, 1978b.
90
Olde Monnikhof, 1978.
89
39
music: the lyrics of the songs were actually of little or no interest. As time passed and
Marley stood more and more in the international spotlights, this way of thinking became
increasingly dominant in the Dutch press.
Elly de Waard from De Volkskrant was, like the two previous Marley concerts in the
Netherlands, much more positive. She wrote that Marley was one of the few who could be
compared with Bob Dylan. “During his concerts he is the hypnotic prophet of a cheerfully
swinging peace, but based on justice. His performances in both venues (Rotterdam and
Geleen) were once more festive events with an audience dancing and singing along en
masse”. Thus, “Marley clearly proved that his reggae has become the gospel of the West”.
De Waard, like several others, recognized a change in the music of Marley and wrote that
the social commentaries in Marley’s music had given way to religious beliefs.91 This is quite
remarkable as most journalists felt that on his new album, Marley had given up his
religious beliefs and largely ignored social issues, thus moving from revolutionary tinted
music to more romantic and commercial music. Geert Kistemaker of Trouw was also
positive about Marley’s performance and had, like De Waard, noticed an increased
dominance of religious beliefs in Marley’s music. Kistemaker even wrote that Marley, “he is
Jamaican, wears long ringlets, smokes a lot of marijuana, and sings”, was the spiritual
leader of the Rastafarian movement. While indeed a famous Rasta, Marley was obviously
not the spiritual leader of the Rasta-movement. Kistemaker also wrote: “The music acts as a
propagator of the Rasta-religion and Marley is the undisputed king of reggae. He sings his
hypnotic, visionary lyrics with a painful-sounding voice to a particularly compelling
rhythm. […] The refined rhythmic accents, especially the bass and rhythm guitar, and the
many repetitions create a trance-provoking music”.92
Jim van Alphen of the NRC Handelsblad, however, wrote that major attention for
reggae seemed to have subsided, although the concert in Ahoy was sold out. According to
Van Alphen, Marley and the Wailers seemed to have increasingly moved away from “the
roots of the Rasta-movement” because of their commercial successes, especially compared
to lesser-known reggae groups from Jamaica and England. This was among others because
of the combination of rock and reggae that Marley and his band played, “which from the
opening song ‘Positive Vibration’ produced an intense and swinging ensemble”. Thus,
wrote the NRC-reporter, Marley and his band again confirmed their reputation as the best
reggae band in the world. “Marley himself has undoubtedly become the most important
exponent of reggae music and the voice of the Rastafarians (the politico-religious
movement in Jamaica), because he and his group the Wailers are the most famous reggae
group”.93 After the show at the Ahoy, Marley’s third visit to the Netherlands did not come
to an end yet. The next day the Jamaican reggae king would perform again, this time in
Geleen, a place in the southern province of Limburg.
91
De Waard, 1978.
Kistemaker, 1978.
93
Van Alphen, 1978.
92
40
VIII. In his own words
Shortly before or after the first concert in Rotterdam, Marley was interviewed by Dutch
television and radio maker Theo Stokkink for his radio program, the Theo Stokkink Show. In
the interview, which lasts for less than five minutes, Marley is audibly irritated because of
Stokkink and his questions. Stokkink in turn has great difficulties understanding Marley
because of the singers rich use of patois (Jamaican dialect) and also seems to be somewhat
intimidated by the irritated singer. This chapter presents a written account of the
interview, partly as an example of the difficulties Western reporters faced when
interviewing and trying to understand the Jamaican singer. Although some words have
been changed to make the text easier to read, the content of the interview as presented
below is essentially the same as the words spoken by Marley. Some parts of the interview
were unfortunately inaudible and/or incomprehensible. These parts have been marked
with […]. For those interested, the entire recording can be found on the Internet. The
interview starts with Marley explaining about his religious beliefs.
Marley: People from everywhere know that there is a god. I mean, I don't know if it’s
god… I don’t know if the English business with god, when them say god... I don't know if it
is something that fill the white man mind, so that when him go say that this is God. If him
want. You know what I mean? But when I say now, the god I and I deal with now, is
Rastafari. Reality, god really mean. So, you know, maybe you are not fooling yourself but
you are dealing with the truth.
Stokkink: But I am not sure that people from all over the world during the concert...
Marley: People from all over the earth, mon, is the breeze blow. It’s a lightning flash. I
mean, lightning don't flash in Holland. Thunder don't role over there. Eh? But you explain it
some scientific way, say it is the cloud meet and all of that. Well, we say Rastafari the god
almighty. Seen? And there is no bigger argument about it.
Stokkink: But I think you have to tell a lot of people about...
Marley: I don't have to tell nobody about it. Is every enough people heart it there. If it not
in there, you can’t put it in there. It have to be there.
Stokkink: You really think that they understand the lyrics of the Rastafarians? Because of
the slang?
Marley: The people, the masses of the people, the suffering people, the people who suffer
this, them know all things.
Stokkink: Yeah.
Marley: Yeah. So the people know. ‘Cause them suffer now. Because them who suffer now,
them must have go live good. And the good will say has come is Rastafari. Seen?
Stokkink: It’s because this special sound of reggae?

Mon - can represent every person in Jamaica - man, woman, and child.
Breeze blow - a person who cannot firmly establish loyalties, opinions, thoughts, or ideas. Uncommitted.
41
Marley: Hmmm?
Stokkink: It’s because this special beat of reggae? That’s why?
Marley: Reggae. Reggae. Reggae are earth music. People, you know? People music. That is
a music that everyone trying to find. Reggae. All musician trying to find reggae. Because
them know reggae is... as long as you play music, you know what reggae... you know which
music the reggae music is. And you know, reggae is a conquering music. It now become
really… it is not a music which bows... the vibration we carry, and Nyabinghi order. You
know, African roots. [cut] Truth is Rastafari, is god almighty. And Rome crumble. Rome
crumble. And Africa stand. Yes, ask them why them always go to Ethiopia go attack the
people them down there. Big big Christian like pope of Rome go down to Ethiopia and
attack the innocent black people. Because him want wipe out certain thing that God
control, that us today I and I can stand up firm and say Rastafari and know the truth. And
them couldn’t take up Ethiopia and can’t go a Rome, nor the bloodclot pope couldn’t […]
neither. Seen? […]
Stokkink: But I don't think that all the people in the world know what means Rastafari.
Marley: Well, all the people don't know the meaning but when you say it to them, heart
feel it. It's a vibration, the word... Everyone know it, everyone know… From them hear
RASTAFARI, them wanna know what that mean. Now you come show me someone who
don't know, who don't want to know what is the meaning of Rastafari. Can you show I
someone who don't want to know the meaning of Rastafari? Haile Selassie is the god
almighty, tell her at that. And how long? Look bloodclot out, cause he is the last message
of a them. Hear that?
Stokkink: Yeah.
Marley: Good. [laughing]

Bloodclot - a Jamaican swear word.
42
IX. Geleen 1978 & 2010 and an unexpected interview
Of all the Marley concerts in the Netherlands, the one on July 8, 1978 in Geleen is by far the
most obscure. Not only because until recently very little was known about it, but also
because the show took place in Geleen in the southern province Limburg, quite far away
from the Randstad, the Western part of the Netherlands where most Dutch people live and
where all the other Marley concerts took place. This is also the reason that the Geleen
concert stands out in terms of attendance: after years of increasing numbers of visitors, the
Jamaicans performed in Geleen for a relatively small audience. According to former BMGAriola Benelux director Anton Witkamp, Marley was a ‘typical Randstad-phenomenon’:
“Later he also did well in the east and the north [of the Netherlands]. There was never
much enthusiasm in the south however”.94 Because most newspapers had already sent
their reporters to Rotterdam the previous day, few journalists were present at the second
concert in two days in Geleen. For these reasons little was known about this show for a
long time, except for some paragraphs in the Bob Marley biography by Mohammed El Fers.
Unfortunately, the work of El Fers is riddled with mistakes, and this is no different in the
paragraphs which deal with Marley’s visits to the Netherlands. El Fers writes that the
European premiere of the Kaya-tour was originally scheduled for June 21, 1978 at the
football stadium in Sittard, Limburg. On this occasion, the Island Mobile Studio would
make recordings for a new live album. According to El Fers, disappointing ticket sales and
technical problems in the newly renovated stadium forced the organization to move the
concert to Saturday, July 8 in the much smaller ice rink in the nearby town of Geleen.95 The
reality is somewhat different.
During my research I stumbled upon an important source of information about
Marley’s visit to Geleen after contacting Buro Pinkpop, the organizer of the concert. Unlike
Mojo Concerts, where nothing has been preserved of the Marley gigs, Buro Pinkpop has
saved everything: letters to and from the municipality, permits, announcements, contracts,
tickets, promotional materials, press releases, and so on. As such, there is a wealth of
information to be found in the vast archives in which information on all concerts ever
organized by Pinkpop is stored. These documents provide a very different and much more
elaborate and cohesive story about Marley’s visit to Limburg than what El Fers describes in
his book. To begin with, the concert in Limburg was always planned for July 8 and never on
June 21. Therefore, the European Kaya-tour could simply not have started in Sittard.
Instead, the first concert of the tour took place on June 22 in Staffordshire, England. Buro
Pinkpop had already sent messages to all booking agencies in May 1978 to announce the
forthcoming concert. Moreover, the Buro had issued a press release in which it proudly
announced the first and only outdoor concert of Bob Marley & The Wailers in the
Netherlands on Saturday, July 8. Marley would be the headliner of a festival in the Fortuna
Sittard stadium, which at the time could house twenty thousand visitors, lasting from six
94
95
Van der Plas, 2001.
El Fers, 1991; 62.
43
o’clock to about eleven thirty. For the price of twenty-five guilders in advance or thirty
guilders at the door, fans could enjoy the Dutch band Sweet d’Buster, the Dutch rock band
Herman Brood & His Wild Romance, and the American band The Imperials before Marley
would conclude the festival with a one and a half hour performance.96
On June 21, however, a new press release announced that the outdoor festival with
the ‘top act’ Bob Marley & The Wailers was moved from the Fortuna Sittard stadium to the
ice rink in Geleen. The reasons mentioned for the relocation were the increased
organizational costs and disappointing ticket sales. Only a meager thousand tickets had
been sold, not nearly enough to cover organizational costs. After consultation with the
management of Marley and the town of Geleen, it was decided to move the concert to the
ice rink in Geleen which could house up to six thousand visitors. The press release also
corrected a previous mistake: not the American band The Imperials would perform, but the
British reggae group Steel Pulse. The evening before in Rotterdam, Steel Pulse had also
been the supporting act for Marley. Despite the fact that only a thousand tickets had been
sold, Buro Pinkpop wrote in the press release that it still expected a packed ice rink.97
Correspondence between the municipality Geleen and Buro Pinkpop sheds further
light on the organization of the concert and the problems Buro Pinkpop was confronted
with. In May, Buro Pinkpop had successfully concluded negotiations with the management
of Marley for a concert on July 8 in Sittard. Because Marley had attracted nearly ten
thousand visitors in The Hague in the previous year, Pinkpop expected that an outdoor
festival with reasonable supporting acts would at least sell ten thousand tickets. It soon
became clear there were rivals as there were other large festivals and concerts across the
country being organized in the same weekend. Marley himself performed on Friday
evening in Rotterdam, while on Saturday Blondie was scheduled to perform in the
Groenoordhallen in Leiden. On Sunday there was another outdoor festival in The Hague
with a capacity of thirty thousand visitors where, among others, Carlos Santana would play.
This competition quickly led to disappointing ticket sales for the festival in Sittard. In
addition, virtually all media attention was focused on Bob Dylan’s first concert in the
Netherlands a few days later on June 23 in the Kuip (Feyenoord football stadium) in
Rotterdam. Dylan’s concert was completely sold out with no less than fifty thousand tickets
sold.98 Although not mentioned in the documents, the distance between Sittard and the
Randstad also probably had a negative impact on the amount of tickets sold.
Due to the disappointing ticket sales, the expected numbers of visitors no longer
stood in proportion to the ever increasing organizational costs. To break even 12 800
tickets had to be sold, an almost impossible task since only a thousand tickets had been
sold. Buro Pinkpop contacted the management of Marley about this, but cancelling the
concert and buying off the contractual obligations would have cost sixty thousand
guilders. An alternative was eventually found in the relocation of the festival to the ice rink
in nearby Geleen. In the past, Pinkpop had regularly organized concerts there, including a
96
Buro Pinkpop – ‘Press release Buro Pinkpop presents the only open air performance of Bob & The Wailers’ (1978).
Buro Pinkpop – ‘Press release Bob Marley & The Wailers in the ice rink of Geleen’ (1978, 21 June).
98
Buro Pinkpop – ‘Letter to the town of Geleen from Stichting Pinkpop’ (1978, 20 June).
97
44
concert of the Dutch rock band The Golden Earrings in 1976. Because of lower
organizational costs by having the festival take place in the ice rink, ‘only’ 5900 tickets had
to be sold to break even. Moreover, the management of Marley was prepared to reduce
their wage of fifty thousand dollars to thirty-five thousand dollars, of which five thousand
was for the rental of a sound system. In a letter to the municipality of Geleen, Buro Pinkpop
admitted that it no longer expected to sell 5900 tickets. Due to disappointing ticket sales
and the costs already incurred, the situation became financially acute for Buro Pinkpop. It
therefore asked Geleen to not only approve the relocation of the festival to the local rink,
but also to be exempted from paying the so-called ‘entertainment tax’, a tax levied on
public amusements, which amounted to four guilders per sold ticket. If Geleen would not
agree, a tenth edition of Pinkpop, the annual three-day music festival and the flagship of
Buro Pinkpop, would certainly become impossible to organize.99
A few days later the Buro got permission to organize the festival in the ice rink,
despite the fact that in May a permit for another concert by the punk group The Stranglers
had been denied. Back then, the municipality had been of the opinion that the poorly
insulated walls, the open south side, and the central location made the ice rink an
inappropriate location for concerts. After an earlier concert in the rink it had moreover
rained complaints from nearby residents about the noise levels. Because it faced financial
heavy weather, the Buro was issued a permit on the condition that the noise levels would
be limited as much as possible. The request for a one-time exemption from entertainment
tax could not be granted however.100
July 8 came, drawing about four thousand music lovers, about as much as two years
earlier at the Jaap Edenhal in Amsterdam, who gathered at the ice rink around six o’clock
to enjoy performances by Sweet d’Buster, Herman Brood & His Wild Romance, Steel Pulse
and of course the main act Bob Marley and the Wailers. While Sweet d ‘Buster was on stage
performing, Rita Marley, the wife of Bob, made an inspection tour of the hall:
“She pauses at a Pink Pop promotion boot: there are Pink Pop-shirts for sale. In New Musical
Express and the book Soul Rebel is a photo of the Marley family in their garden at Hope Road. In
front is a very young Ziggy Marley in shorts and a Pink Pop-shirt. A T-shirt which was snatched
out of the hands of Marij Somers of Stichting Pink Pop at the ice rink in Geleen by Rita Marley
herself. Marij still remembers very well: ‘First Rita Marley wanted a few, but then they wanted
more and more T-shirts. How many shirts? Well, a dozen or so. I thought some T-shirts should
be paid for. Suddenly she started screaming. The other ladies also joined in, so I suddenly had
three women screaming in front of me (the I-Threes), who wanted to have it their way per se
and began to claw at the T-shirts’. Eventually, Bob Marley himself interferes. He looks at the Tshirts, takes a few with him and moments later sends his British tour manager to solve the
dispute between Marij and the I-Threes. Marij: ‘So I had to give them the T-shirts for free after
all’. Apparently Marley is irritated because of all that noise for a few guilders. When Jantien van
99
Buro Pinkpop – ‘Letter to Stichting Pinkpop from the town of Geleen’ (1978, 23 June).
100
45
Asch wants to interview the singer for the Haagsche Post shortly afterwards, she has to
guarantee on paper that she is not on her period.”101
Several days after the festival a review appears in the regional newspaper De
Limburger in which Marley is praised for his “refreshing enthusiasm”. The four thousand
attendees got their money worth as the “adorned with braids, jumpy Marley" was in good
shape and visitors never got the impression that it was just another of the many concerts
for the singer and his band. The performance in the atmospheric ice rink reached its
absolute peak when the Wailers played ‘No Woman No Cry’, a moment where the audience
almost surpassed Marley in volume.102
After the festival, Bertus Borgers, who played the saxophone in Sweet d’ Buster,
tried to talk with Marley, but the Jamaican was completely screened off. Borgers: “It was
striking how they shut themselves off from the outside world. They had an entire floor in
the hotel, so that they could smoke without being disturbed. They also had their own cook
with them. The tour was called Babylon By Bus [sic, it was the Kaya-tour] and that’s what it
was: they had their own world with them and with that they traveled through the
depraved West. As if everything outside of Jamaica was hostile territory”.103 David Hinds,
lead singer of Steel Pulse, would later say about his collaboration with Marley: “The thing I
remember most is the way Marley did sound checks. Sometimes the sound was not what it
should be. And then experience comes into play: it is not so important that you know what
to do if everything is in order. It is more important that you know what to do if everything
is not in order. I have seen Marley perform several times while the band didn’t sound okay.
He knew it, I knew it, but then he gave such a great performance that no one noticed these
glitches”.104
Visiting Geleen and an unexpected interview
On a cold October day in 2010 I paid a visit to Buro Pinkpop in Geleen. Through earlier email contact I had already found out that there was a folder with newspaper clippings and
other documents regarding the Marley concert that had been preserved in the Pinkpop
archives. Reason enough to undertake a trip of nearly three hours by train to visit the
Southern province Limburg. Just before noon, I found myself back in the cold at the train
station in Sittard. Here in Sittard, on July 8, 1978, the Marley concert had originally been
planned to take place in the Fortuna Sittard football stadium. Due to disappointing ticket
sales, however, the concert had been moved to the ice rink in the neighboring village of
Geleen, so I had already found out. After a short ride on the local train I arrived at the small
station Geleen-East, surrounded by meadows on one side and by a mist-shrouded Geleen
101
El Fers, 1991; 63-64.
De Limburger, 1978.
103
Van der Plas, 2001.
104
Franssen, 1986.
102
46
on the other side. Perhaps due to the cold and fog Geleen seemed extinct. As I walked to
Buro Pinkpop I passed the sport and recreation centre Glanerbrook where over thirty years
ago the concert had taken place. Like the Fortuna Sittard stadium, the original ice rink did
not pass the test of time: it has been replaced by a new rink. The entire complex, including
an outdoor skating rink, lies desolate. It’s hard to imagine that more than thirty years ago
the king of reggae, then already an international superstar, performed at this rustic and
seemingly desolate location.
Having arrived at Buro Pinkpop, situated in an attachment to a regular house about
two hundred meters away from the ice rink, I am kindly received. I immediately get to work
as I have been told I can only stay for two hours due to other commitments that day of the
personnel present. It quickly becomes clear that the folder about the Marley concert in
Geleen contains much valuable information. Information moreover that, according to the
staff member helping me, has never been consulted or even viewed by ‘outsiders’ before.
The folder includes newspaper articles, press releases, announcements, posters, concert
tickets, communication between Buro Pinkpop and the management of Marley and the
village of Geleen, drawings of the stage and security during the concert, and even
contracts between Pinkpop and the management of Marley. While I am busy copying the
documents, Jan Smeets passes by. Smeets is the founder of the famous three-day music
festival Pinkpop, which was first held in 1970 and recently had celebrated its fortieth
anniversary. Smeets also organized the Marley concert in Geleen. Today, Smeets is still
festival director and also organizes other festivals such as Pinkpop Classic. When he sees
that I am copying the documents, Smeets tells me that of all concerts and festivals ever
organized by Pinkpop folders with information and promotion material exist that have
never been indexed or stored digitally. This despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that
according to Smeets, “the worst of today’s society is that we drown in the administration
and have to keep everything”. Not surprisingly, the rooms at Buro Pinkpop are full with
filing cabinets reaching out to the ceiling. In addition, the walls are hung with all sorts of
Pinkpop stuff and other objects that form memories for the festival director. Smeets will
later call it “a freak show of objects with a story behind it”. When I ask him if he can free up
some time to answer a few questions Smeets answers positively. And so, after having
copied the documents within the folder, I enter Smeets’s spacious office, which is
decorated with Pinkpop posters, caps, and many other things.
Apart from the motley collection of objects that is displayed in the office, I
immediately notice a framed newspaper article hanging on the wall. ‘Uptown ghetto
living. Bob Marley In His Own Back Yard’, it reads. Closer inspection reveals that the article
originates from the August 1979 issue of the British music magazine Melody Maker. The
article includes a large photo of Marley and his family in the garden of his house at 56
Hope Road in Kingston, Jamaica. The picture shows a young Ziggy Marley, the eldest son
of Bob, in shorts and a pink Pinkpop T-shirt. A T-shirt the Marley family had obtained in the
previous year during their visit to Geleen. Smeets is a busy man, preparations for a new
Pinkpop festival take a lot of time, and because he has several other appointments that
day, we can ‘only’ talk for about forty-five minutes. As I did not know that Smeets would be
47
there, the interview was completely unprepared. As a result the conversation wanders off
several times to other less relevant, but equally interesting topics. The interview begins
with some questions about the visit of Marley to Geleen and the difficulties regarding the
organization of the concert. First I ask Smeets about several statements in the Marley
biography by Mohamed El Fers about the concert in Geleen.
In the biography of Marley by Mohamed El Fers it says that the concert would initially
have taken place in Sittard on June 21? Is that correct?
“I can’t remember anything like that. I can imagine that the concert was first scheduled in
that stadium. No, I think it is was always scheduled like that [July 8]. Only the location
changed. So, that story is incorrect. The concert took place on July 8. I remember that on
the LP, which I have kept as a remembrance, Sittard was mentioned as a part of the tour of
1979. Perhaps there was a earlier tour schedule with Sittard on June 21, but I don’t know
and I can’t remember.”
Is it true that you went to a Marley concert in Germany and that you were so excited
that you wanted to get him to perform in Limburg?
“That’s right, it was not so far away from here. Although it seemed farther, because there
were no highways yet.”
Not only Bob Marley and the Wailers performed that evening, but also several other
artists?
“Yes, because it would be a festival. A festival in the Fortuna stadium. The old Fortuna
stadium, not the new one.”
Can you tell me about the concert itself?
“I remember that the concert was fantastic, unbelievable. Great, it was really
unprecedented. And of course we witnessed the affair with the T-shirts. Suddenly the small
size T-shirts, for children, were gone. In the end we found out that the wife of Bob Marley
had taken those T-shirts. That was also a strange story. Did Marley have three, four wives
with him? Did he have several wives? That was what was suggested back then. At some
point we did not pay attention for a short moment and suddenly all the small size T-shirts
were gone. And that is of course a bit strange… Perhaps we gave that T-shirt that Ziggy
wears there [in the photo hanging on the wall] as a gift. We did occasionally give some
presents. Merchandise in exchange for T-shirts of Bob Marley.”
Do you remember anything else from the concert?
“I only remember the important things. The T-shirt affair, the relocation affair, and the fact
that it was a great gig.”
48
Did you try to contract Marley again to perform in the Netherlands?
“No, he became sick.”
Would you have liked to contract him again?
“I don’t know. I would be lying if I would bluntly say, this and that and that is how it was. I
don’t even remember… I think we have lost money on that concert, but I am not one
hundred percent sure. I have to check the administration.”
Is it true that Bob Dylan’s concert in De Kuip was the reason for the poor ticket sales?
“Bob Dylan was the first major artist in De Kuip. For Bob Dylan the city of Rotterdam
temporarily abolished the entertainment tax, or else Dylan wouldn’t come to Rotterdam.
He said: ‘I don’t want to pay tax to the government’.”
Did you have any contact with Marley?
“No, in the world of pop promoters it’s almost not done to deal with artists themselves.
There have been few artists in the past… I have done a lot. There are a few people with
whom you personally speak, like Noel Gallagher, Luka Bloom to name but a few. I
personally welcomed Mick Jagger, but never spoke with him again afterwards. I can’t
remember talking with Bob Marley. Because of the excitement and the affairs we had to
deal with, I don’t think I had time to talk with him.”
Jamaican artists were sometimes notoriously difficult to work with and had all sorts
of demands. Did you encounter any such problems?
“If those people come in you always have to distinguish between management and
production. The production, the tour manager. One is easier to deal with than the other. I
organized several gigs in that ice rink, so I don’t remember exactly which artists were
difficult. At one time I was asked to get coke [cocaine]. I then put a crate of Coke on stage.
They asked me if I was joking… I’m not going to get cocaine. But I don’t think… I can’t
imagine that the coke was asked for when Marley was in Geleen.”
Do you still program reggae acts at your festivals?
“If an artist is relevant we will contract him.”
What do you think of reggae music?
“If properly made it is fantastic.”
Like Marley’s concert here in Geleen?
“Yes, that was great. And also Peter Tosh [1979] and Steel Pulse [1985] on Pinkpop. We
have done a lot of reggae, but I can’t remember any other names…”
49
Unfortunately, the time is up and Smeets has to leave. Before facing the cold again and
returning home, I ask if it’s alright if I take a few photos of the framed article from the Melody
Maker on the wall. Smeets relates how he unexpectedly found the article:
“I was in London in a taxi and it started to rain. I said ‘wait a minute’ to the taxi driver, ‘I
need to buy that newspaper’. I buy the Melody Maker and throw myself in the back seat. It
can’t be true. What a coincidence. I am in London and precisely then there is that article
with the photo in the Melody Maker. I thought that was very special.”
Ticket for the concert in
Sittard. After the concert
was moved to Geleen the
old tickets remained valid
Source: Archive Buro
Pinkpop, Geleen
50
Announcement for the festival
Source: Archive Buro Pinkpop, Geleen
51
X. Last concert in the Netherlands: Rotterdam 1980
Although Marley did not visit the Netherlands in 1979 for the first time in three years, he
remained somewhat of a hot topic in the Dutch music press. The focal points of the
discussion lay on the motives and luxurious lifestyle of the singer and the alleged lack of
authenticity in his music. This despite the release of a new album in 1979, Survival, in which
Marley returned to more militant and less commercial reggae, according to some even
performing at the peak of his powers.105 In March 1979 there appeared an article in Muziek
Expres entitled ‘Bob Marley: Representative of the downtrodden or commercial guy?’
Allegedly, the author of the article had gone to London to interview Marley and find out
whether the Jamaican was honest and not just a ‘smart profiteer’. Although the article did
not answer the question, it was typical for how Marley and his music were approached by
some Dutch journalists in this phase of his career.
At the end of 1978, the live album Babylon By Bus had been released. One of the
tracks from this album, ‘Stir It Up’, was valued by Dutch music consumers with a gold
record, indicating that more than fifty thousand copies of it had been sold. The remarkable
story about this single, which was only released in the Netherlands, can be read in the next
chapter in the second part of the interview with Evert Wilbrink. To support Babylon By Bus
and to promote themselves and reggae music, Marley and the Wailers toured through Asia
and Oceania in April and May 1979. In Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii, the king
of reggae performed live for the first time, which lead to enthusiastic responses and the
further spreading of reggae around the globe. The second half of 1979 was spend touring
the United States and concluded with a concert on the Bahamas. Although declared
healthy and free of cancer in 1977, it slowly became clear during the Survival-tour through
the States that ‘something’ was wrong with Marley. Just before the start of the tour the
singer had caught a cold, which strangely enough remained throughout the entire tour.
Marley also seemed to be tired continuously. As a result, promotional activities such as
giving interviews were increasingly delegated to other band members.106
In January 1980, Marley and the Wailers visit Africa for the first time, performing
twice in Gabon. In April, the Jamaicans flew to Africa again, this time to perform at the
independence ceremony of Zimbabwe, the former British colony of Rhodesia. About one
month later, on May 30, the Uprising-tour began in support of the new album Uprising,
which was scheduled for a release at the end of June and contained among others the
track ‘Redemption Song’. The Uprising-tour was bigger than any previous tour undertaken
by Marley and his group. In Europe they performed mostly in large football stadiums in
front of more visitors than ever before. During the tour Marley and the Wailers visited
Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Switzerland for the first time, playing for over one million
people in fourteen different countries in total. The long and intense tour was very tightly
scheduled with six concerts a week, each in a different city and often in a different country.
105
106
Moskowitz, 2007.
Moskowitz, 2007.
52
Between May 30 and the end of the tour on July 13, the Wailers played a total of thirty-five
concerts in forty-five days. After the opening concert in the Swiss city of Zurich on May 30,
the tour continued with a series of shows in France and Germany. The most memorable
concert of the tour was held on June 27 at the San Siro Stadium in Milan. That evening the
Jamaicans performed for as many as 100 000 spectators, with some sources even
mentioning 120 000 visitors. At that time no artist had ever drawn so many visitors to a
concert, and to this day the San Siro concert remains the best visited concert in Italian
history.107 Meanwhile, nobody seemed to notice that Marley was very sick.
Four days before the concert in Milan, Marley and his fellow Jamaicans were once
again in the Netherlands. On June 23, 1980, one week after the official release of Uprising,
Marley and the Wailers played for the fifth and last time in the Netherlands. Like two years
earlier, the Ahoy in Rotterdam was the location where thousands of reggae fans gathered
to see the Jamaican singer perform live. The concert started around half past eight with an
introduction consisting of three songs by the I-Threes, the three female backing vocals of
the Wailers, who often opened Marley’s concerts during the Uprising-tour. Marley, wearing
a green-yellow-red jersey, subsequently appeared on stage under loud cheering and
chanting of his name. Elly de Waard wrote that Marley’s dreadlocks had grown so long that
it almost seemed as if he was wearing an octopus. The first song that evening is ‘Natural
Mystic’, “a powerful opener that gives him immediately the opportunity to show his
prophetic talents”. The next songs, ‘Positive Vibration’ and ‘Revolution’ show that Marley’s
lyrics are always ‘preachy’ “in the best sense of the word. They are about something and
about something very real, namely the elevation of the oppressed part of mankind,
especially black people”. Especially the Barrett brothers on drums and bass, keyboard
player Downie and guitarist Junior Marvin are on fire that night. During the Ahoy concert,
in the heart of ‘Babylon’, the black revolution and repatriation to – and unification of –
Africa are celebrated in songs like ‘Zimbabwe’, ‘Zion Train’, ‘No Woman No Cry’, ‘Jamming’,
and ‘Exodus’. A very satisfying concert concludes De Waard, “which combined frivolity and
earnest, and was characterized by a natural participation by the public”.108
After the main set, consisting mostly of songs from the albums Natty Dread,
Rastaman Vibration, Survival and Uprising, another five songs were played during the
encore. They were to be the last songs that Marley performed live in the Netherlands. After
‘Work’ from the new album, the Jamaican reggae king played the magnificent
‘Redemption Song’ on his acoustic guitar. Then followed ‘Could You Be Loved’ and ‘Africa
Unite’. The long awaited ‘Get Up Stand Up’ was the very last song of the one and a half
hour performance and also the moment when the public went crazy. “Marley now truly
showed himself, the ‘charismarley’ was complete”. The Wailers played superbly and
provided “the repetitive rhythms of reggae with rich decorations”, while the colorfully
dressed I-Threes also strongly contributed to the whole performance. Reporter Stan Rijven
107
108
Moskowitz, 2007; Salewicz, 2009.
De Waard, 1980.
53
concluded that Marley was still capable of innovation and, together with his band,
providing a high quality concert.109
Rijven was also one of the few journalists present who noticed that there was
‘something’ different about Marley. The Trouw-journalist wrote that, although the concert
in Ahoy was exceptional, the whole performance had less momentum than before.
Moreover, the atmosphere was not like previous Marley concerts. According to Rijven this
was perhaps because “Marley has slowly but surely become a superstar for whom the
Rasta-doctrine has become a commercial vehicle. From Jamaica he is in fact the liaison for
black consciousness in Africa and black America, although with less revolutionary fervor
than before. The qualification ‘black Dylan’ gets more and more significance, now that
Dylan emerges as a religious pop artist”. During the concert, Marley, “small in stature, made
himself big with his mesmerizing gestures and reaping manes, a prophet who propagated
his visual texts in a hoarse voice”. Classic songs like ‘I Shot The Sheriff’ and ‘No Woman No
Cry’ sounded ‘rougher’ than usual.110 Elly de Waard noted that it was sometimes evident
that the long-Uprising tour, with concerts every night, took its toll of Marley. ‘I shot the
sheriff’ for example was not Marley’s best rendition and had sounded better in the past.111
Peter Koops, however, had not noticed anything special during the performance
and described the concert in the same manner as in previous years. Marley, the only
reggae artist capable of filling the greatest
concert halls in the Netherlands, ruled “as a
king over the thousands of spectators who
had gathered in the Ahoy hall”, mainly
because Marley’s supremacy had become
taken for granted over the course of years. In
his article, Koops repeated that the lyrics of
reggae were unimportant as the music was
almost solely about the reggae rhythm.
“Marley is called the world’s most influential
political entertainer. The message derived
from his Rasta-faith, which promotes the
liberation of slavery and the ‘back to Africaideal’, found a huge response in the countries
of the Third World. Not that Marley’s militancy
was not appreciated in the white West, but
here the public attention focuses more on the
purely musical element: the infectious reggae
Ahoy, June 1980
rhythms”. Koops was, however, of the opinion
Photo: Mike van der Linde
that Marley’s music had remained authentic:
“Although Marley is not unsympathetic towards fashionable trends like disco, he has never
109
Rijven, 1980.
Rijven, 1980.
111
De Waard, 1980.
110
54
made an outright capitulation to the consumption habits of the average Westerner.
Without denying his ideals or the authenticity of reggae, he did make his music slightly
more accessible to Western ears”.112
A critical Huub de Graaff from the Algemeen Dagblad noted that Marley had gained
widespread popularity, something which was not liked very much by so-called ‘reggae
purists’. “Deviating from the right doctrine is in these circles considered a mortal sin.
Marley sings about the Back-To-Africa-ideal, the basis of the Rasta-theory, which he
promotes through reggae music. But his interpretation is more like ‘we are not going
home yet’, since his luxurious lifestyle is quite inconsistent with what he sings.”113 Jim van
Alphen, present at every Marley concert in the Netherlands except for the one in Geleen,
had particularly noticed the commercialization of Marley. “It seems a huge paradox that
reggae in imitation of punk is rapidly encapsulated by commerce. […] With the world’s
most famous reggae group Bob Marley & The Wailers it appears as if the principles of the
Rasta-movement are less and less important. Bob Marley has slowly become a world star,
something which unmistakably leaves its traces. The green-yellow-red Rasta-colors have
now more than ever become a trademark, like the leather jackets and safety pins of the
punk, as revealed last night when Marley and his Wailers like two years ago played in a sold
out Ahoy. This apparent detail was indicative of the extremely professional way in which
Marley presents his reggae nowadays. The playful, revolutionary zeal is largely gone”.
Although Marley’s music in terms of its presentation was increasingly geared towards a
massive audience in the eyes of Van Alphen, “the quality of the music […] is high and
certainly keeps enforcing admiration”.114
Louis du Moulin from Het Vrije Volk on the other hand thought that Marley as
‘reggae propagator number one’ had left the more commercial creative direction behind
him, as was evident from the new album and the numerous political expressions during
the concert. And: “Whoever didn’t get high from the low-hanging hashish clouds, became
high from the reggae rhythm”. The thousands of visitors were in trance for one and half
hours by the music of Marley that “led potential apostates and defectors to Peter Tosh,
Inner Circle and other artists […] in no time back on the right track”.115 In the local
newspaper Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad also appeared an article about the ‘grand
happening’ in the Ahoy. The wildly enthusiastic responses from the public and the
powerlessness of the Ahoy security crew in getting people to sit on their seats, led Kees
Jonker to conclude that “Reggae by Bob Marley & the Wailers […] is stronger than
authority“. Jonker wrote that Marley had gotten this far in the music industry thanks to his
unparalleled personality and especially because of sheer luck. Surprising, as reggae as a
genre was according to Jonker known as “the simplest kind of making music”. Marley’s
successes were moreover mainly due to the frequent use of drugs, which was also the
reason why Marley was little known in the United States. “Last night he also […] entered
112
Koops, 1980.
De Graaff, 1980.
114
Van Alphen, 1980.
115
Du Moulin, 1980.
113
55
the podium while being stoned. The question arises how Bob Marley performs when he’s
sober. But an answer to that question will not be given anytime soon…”116 Although
Jonker’s article contains mostly nonsense, this last sentence hit the nail on the head as the
concert at the Ahoy was the last one Marley ever gave in the Netherlands.
Directly after their performance, Marley and the Wailers received a double platinum
album for the one hundred thousand copies of Babylon By Bus that had been sold in the
Netherlands. Remarkably enough, Marley’s live albums and singles always sold the best in
the Netherlands, with first the album Live! and its single ‘No Woman No Cry’ and later
Babylon by Bus and the single ‘Stir It Up’. The double platinum album was accompanied by
a pair of clogs – which Marley initially recognized as strangely shaped toy boats – and a
large cheese, allowing photographers to shoot some photos.117 Organizer Mojo Concerts
moreover presented the Jamaicans with the usual and well appreciated gift of Thai
sticks.118
After the concert several journalists were allowed into Marley’s dressing room to
interview the singer. Similar to the previous Marley show in Ahoy, Pieter Franssen
interviewed Marley on behalf of music magazine Oor. The conversation would only last ten
minutes and ended in utter disappointment for Franssen. From the article in Oor and the
therein described atmosphere in Marley’s dressing room, it becomes painfully clear how
vulnerable and sick Marley must have been at the time.119 The many performances, the
concert in Ahoy was the seventh in one week, made the Jamaican reggae star probably
even more tired. The outside world including Franssen did not know anything about
Marley’s sickness however. Symptoms of Marley’s disease were, partly through ignorance,
interpreted by those around him as fatigue resulting from the long tour. Franssen’s article
appeared a few weeks after the concert in Oor under the telling title ‘Rasta-blah blah.
Dressing room conversation with Marley et al’.120 The article again begins with criticism on
the authenticity of Marley’s music: although the concerts are of a high level and sold out
every time, there are artists like Lee Perry and Sugar Minott who really make more
indigenous reggae than Bob Marley. Nevertheless, Marley is “the dreadlock-spiral around
which everything revolves”.121 Remarkably, Franssen will later weaken these statements
and write that Marley had actually already come out of his ‘mild period’ in 1979 after the
release of Survival, which was filled with militant songs.122
Upon entering the dressing room, Franssen finds a not so talkative Marley slumped
on a couch. Franssen notes that Marley seems to be “in distant spheres, his responses are
slow and late or not at all”. When asked how he is doing, Marley tellingly answers, “a lot of
116
Jonker, 1980.
Hitkrant, 1980.
118
El Fers, 1991.
119
For a photo of a tired Marley in his dressing room as well as other photo’s taken at the Ahoy concert, see:
http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/8004/muziek/photoalbum/detail/1262506/966053/11/Bob-Marley-30-jaar-geledenoverleden.dhtml or http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/8072/muziek/photoalbum/detail/1262506/966053/11/Bob-Marley30-jaar-geleden-overleden.dhtml
120
A part of the interview can be heard in Globaal Kabaal: http://3voor12.vpro.nl/programmas/afleveringen/20761094
121
Franssen, 1980.
122
Franssen, 1986.
117
56
running back and forth
forth””. Marley remains silent and lets Tyrone Downie, the ke
keyboardist
yboardist of
the
he Wailers
Wailers,, answers the questions
questions. After a few minutes
minutes, Marley suddenly comes back to his
senses as Downie is answering a question about the critical situation on Jamaica. “Hmm,
senses
what s going on? What do you mean?
what’s
mean?”” When
When Franssen subsequently asks about the Tuff
Gong studio in Jamaica, Marley only replies “ohhhh?”. About the show in Zimbabwe,
Marley relates that the people there had found it fantastic and that it had been a ‘big
spiritual thing’. When Downie takes over from the dozing Marley and further talks about
the visit to Zimbabwe, Marley suddenly bursts out, “ ‘‘II am a Rasta, you know: Rasta? You
know what that means?
means?’ The other interviewer in the room nods in confirmation. Bob: ‘You
do
don’tt know at all
all,, otherwise yyou
ou wouldn’t
would t ask such stupid questions
questions’.. The situation
becomes critical”.
critical . Talking
alking with Tyrone Downie or Tommy Cowan from Tuff Gong Records
isn’t very useful either. ““This
This is going nowhere. Very sad. I think”, writes Franssen.123 Marley
Marley
is extremely tired and weak, something which also appears from the memories of Dutch
pop photographer Rob Verhorst and former BMG Ariola
Ariola-Benelux
Benelux director Anton Witkamp.
Verhorst recalls that Marley seemed very tired. “He accepted the album
album,, the clogs en some
cheeses, said a few polite words and immediately sat down again. The gold album [sic] did
not seem to interest him. But when you are terminally sick those things are not important
of course”. Witkamp talks shortly with Marley. “He must have been quite sick already
because he didn’t look well. I remember we talked about Westerners who, like him, wore
dreadlocks. He didn’t like it. Dreadlocks were a religious symbol of the rasta’s. They were
not for others to have”.124
Concert ticket Ahoy 23
23-06
06-1980
1980
Source: Mike van der Linde
After the European tour ended, Marley left
le for Miami for two months to re
recover
cover and
re
charge for a new series of concerts in the United States, again in support of the Uprising
recharge
album. People in the direct vicinity of Marley, however, were
album.
were increasingly concerned about
the singer’s health as Marley looks haggard. Initially
Initially, this was
wa attributed to fatigue resulting
from the many shows during the long and arduous European tour. After two months rest
the situation had
ha not improved and Marley still seemed sick.125 In
In September,
September the band
traveled to New York nonetheless
traveled
nonetheless,, not knowing that Marley was so sick that only five more
concerts w
would
ould follow. While jogging in Central Park
Park,, Marley suddenly collapsed
collapsed.. In the
123
Franssen, 1980.
Van der Plas, 2001.
125
Margaret Vaughn visited Marley in Kingston in the summer of 1980 and wrote that it was already clear that Marley was
very sick and dying. See: http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/hauntedhttp://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/haunted-by--the--face
face-of
of-marley
marley-1.513083
marley 1.513083
124
57
hospital it was discovered that he suffered from a malignant brain tumor and probably had
only two or three weeks to live. Despite this devastating diagnosis, Marley performed one
more time. The final concert took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 23,
1980. The outside world still had no idea that Marley was dying. Only after the cancellation
of the remainder of the tour it became clear that there was something wrong with the
singer, though he would later announce that nothing was wrong and that he expected to
tour again soon. A second opinion found out that the cancer in Marley’s body had also
spread to his stomach and lungs. Despite the expectation by doctors that he had only
several weeks to live, Marley would continue to fight for his life for several months in a
specialist clinic in Germany.126 At the beginning of May 1981 it becomes clear, however,
that Marley would lose the fight against cancer. Subsequently, the singer flied to Miami to
try and fly back to Jamaica from there. He never made it back to Jamaica however. On May
11, 1981, just before noon Marley died at the Cedars of Lebanon hospital in Miami. The
king of reggae was no more. Nine days later, on May 20 and 21, a two-day state funeral
took place in Kingston where Marley was honored by thousands of Jamaicans. On the 21st,
Marley was brought from Kingston to his final resting place in the rural village of Nine Miles
where he was born thirty-six years earlier. From Kingston to Nine Miles took about five
hours and along the entire route were over one hundred thousand Jamaicans to pay
Marley their last respects. The man who made millions of people around the world familiar
with reggae music was upon arrival in his hometown put in a white mausoleum, where he
still rests today.127
126
For a comprehensive article about Marley’s sickness, see: http://www.tribune242.com/sports/04122011_BobMarley_features_pg9
127
Moskowitz, 2007.
58
Marley in Ahoy on June 23, 1980. In the background a large
banner with the cover of the new album Uprising.
Photos: Mike van der Linde
59
XI. Interview with Evert Wilbrink (part II)
The second part of the interview with Evert Wilbrink begins with an anecdote about a
strange adventure that Wilbrink had in 1976 after the first concert of Marley in the Jaap
Edenhal. It is an amusing anecdote, which also sheds further light on the practices of Don
Taylor in his capacity as manager of Bob Marley from 1974 to 1980. In 1980, Taylor was
sacked during a visit to Gabon, Africa after it was revealed that he had negotiated a fee of
sixty thousand dollars for two performances while telling Marley the fee was only forty
thousand dollars. This would have allowed Taylor to pocket twenty thousand dollars.
Subsequently, Taylor admitted in front of the whole band that he had been stealing money
for years, by for example only paying the band five thousand dollar of advances for
concerts amounting to fifteen thousand dollars. Taylor had also been involved in shady
practices where money belonging to Marley was exchanged on the Jamaican black market,
without informing his client about these practices or the huge profits gained by these
practices. According to Rita Marley, Taylor had also arranged the flight tickets for the band
for years, thus pocketing huge profits. Several months after the incident with Taylor in
Gabon, the incensed Marley wrote the song ‘Bad Card’ which appeared on the Uprising
album and was directly related to his former manager Taylor.128 Evert Wilbrink had his own
experiences with Taylor and recounts:
“I know about the concert in the Jaap Edenhal that it was partly paid for in gold. Don Taylor
was at that time the manager of Bob Marley and had made those arrangements, Mojo
[Concerts] was not involved. Taylor at one point told me that there were some gold bars
which had to be transported to London. He asked me if I could bring them. I would be
picked up by a limousine in London. I was a bit naive and thought, ‘no problem’. So I take
the gold and I am already at Schiphol [the Dutch airport near Amsterdam] ready to walk to
the boarding gate. But suddenly I start thinking: ‘Taking gold bars with me? I think it is
smuggling. When I get through customs he will probably have earned a pretty penny,
because it is not quite legal’. So I started to sweat terribly. I then bought four or five bottles
of liquor. When I arrived at customs in Heathrow I was of course picked out. I said: ‘yes, it is
clear that I am smuggling. I am sweating terribly. I have five bottles of liquor with me’. The
customs officers had a terrible laugh and then just let me through. I have no idea how
much gold I had on me because it’s already a long time ago, but it must have been a
substantial amount. I know that I was very worried because of it. Once in London I was
picked up by a limousine. I gave Don his gold and then I never heard from him again. A
total lack of loyalty. I thought he was really an asshole. Most people who hung around
Marley were terribly nice people. He also had his own football coach. The last time in the
Jaap Edenhal…”
128
Moskowitz, 2007; Salewicz, 2009; White, 2006.
60
Alan ‘Skill’ Cole?
“Yes, on Sunday morning I was on the phone with Bob and the coach to try and call Johan
Cruijff. I got Willy Alberti on the phone and he gave me the telephone number of Cruijff. I
told him: ‘Marley is here. He played in the Jaap Edenhal yesterday and he wants to talk with
you’. ‘I don’t care. It doesn’t interest me’, is what Cruijff answered.”
How did Marley respond to this rejection?
“Laconically. ‘Irie, mon’! It would of course have been quite unique. I also remember that
Bob was talking with Skill in the Houtrusthallen during the sound check while at the same
time managing to keep the football in the air with his feet for three, four or five songs. The
ball never touched the stage and all the while Bob kept singing. I thought that was quite
special.”
How popular was Marley in the Netherlands when he first performed there in 1976?
“He already had had a hit with ‘No Woman No Cry’ and the album Live! was gold. ‘No
Woman No Cry’, that was the breakthrough. I think the number one hit ‘Stir It Up’ [from the
live album Babylon By Bus, 1978] was the icing on the cake, although it did not really
increase his popularity. I think Live! is still one of the best selling CDs. Back then it was
sufficient to make Marley popular in the Netherlands. But my favorite is Babylon By Bus.
That has to do with the fact that I was the only one in the world who released ‘Stir It Up’ as
a single. Nobody was allowed to do so.”
It was at first not allowed by Chris Blackwell of Island Records?
“It was never allowed. At one point I was told that we would face big financial and legal
problems if I would not pull the single back. I said: ‘that’s bullshit, the song is already in the
top ten. I won’t pull the single back’. At that moment it was number two in the charts. I
then made a bet with Island that it would become number one. If it indeed became
number one they had to stop giving me trouble about it. The song remained at number
two for four or five weeks however. The TopPop team together with a cameraman would
go to Jamaica to film Bob Marley. We would have ‘Stir It Up’ on television so that the song
could become number one. But there was no cooperation from Island as they did not want
to help me win the bet. So we had to cancel that trip. I did have twenty-three minutes of
16mm film footage from the concert at the Lyceum in London in 1975. I gave that reel of
film to Rien van Wijk, working for TopPop, on Friday at two o’clock or so. On Monday
evening Bob Marley could be seen in TopPop, singing ‘Stir It Up’, while it was never
actually filmed. You couldn’t see that it was not authentic because it was perfectly put
together. A kind of reverse karaoke. And so, on Friday, we were number one in TopPop. I
called Island: ‘I have won, we are number one in TopPop’. The TopPop chart was not the
official one as Veronica was more important, and in the Veronica chart ‘Stir It Up’ was still in
second position, but I thought I had won anyway. After that I never heard anything about
it. I can’t remember if they released the song in the UK. In America there was certainly no
release. I think I was the only one. I never asked for permission, I just did it. The Germans
61
almost started a third world war because they wanted to release ‘Stir It Up’ as a single, but
Island simply refused. The Germans and the French, the Italians, in Sweden. They all
wanted to release the song as a single, because they all wanted a number one hit. But it
wasn’t released anywhere in the world. Bob Marley did want the song as a single, but Chris
Blackwell had told Marley that he did not like it and that it was not suitable as a single.”
Wasn’t that a bit strange, seeing that the song had already proven to be a number
one hit in the Netherlands?
“But Blackwell has never been one who just made music for the money. He simply did not
like it as a single. But Blackwell was a sort of… You have those people in empires who do
not tolerate opposition, so that people think, ‘if I say something wrong, I get fired’. Nobody
dared to oppose Blackwell and tell him they should release the song as a single. If
Blackwell said it was black it was better to say it was indeed black, even though it was
purple or red. At least, that is how I saw the people around me who worked together with
Blackwell. They didn’t want to oppose him or didn’t dare to oppose him. And certainly not
in the case of Bob Marley, of which they understood little anyway.”
What kind of relationship did Blackwell and Marley have, if Blackwell did not want to
be opposed?
“If you are on equal footing it is of course possible to have such a relationship. I think
Marley and Blackwell operated very closely, but Blackwell just thought that ‘Stir It Up’ was
no single.”
Do you think Babylon By Bus is a better album than Live!, or is it because of the
personal involvement in the release of ‘Stir It Up’ as a single that Babylon By Bus is
dearer to you than Live! ?
“I just like Babylon By Bus more because it was a very important album for me. I scored a
number one hit with it. Something which nobody else has done. It is totally unique. Of all
the people who worked with Marley I was the only one to accomplish this. So that was
great. Therefore, Babylon By Bus is always close to my heart. By the way, I can’t recall which
album was released in the same week that we were at the Forest National… The album
came out on the Friday before the construction industry holiday. On the same, Friday Bob
Marley played in Brussels. Around eleven o’clock in the morning me and Harry van
Nieuwenhoven – a journalist of music magazine Oor – headed for Brussels with two
thousand LPs in the back of the car. There were no LPs in Brussels yet, but we had a press
conference and Marley would perform in the evening. But there were traffic jams. We had
to wait at the bridge over the Hollandsch Diep near Raamdonksveer because of a car
accident. And we couldn’t get off that road. We waited there for three hours. Harry van
Nieuwenhoven had no cigarettes left and went almost crazy. ‘We have to go!’ Finally, I
went off the road and drove through a ditch and several pastures. In retrospect, I totally
sacrificed the suspension of the car. We arrived on a road already packed with cars. Risking
our lives, we drove past all those cars. It was a two-lane road, luckily there appeared no cars
62
from the other side… We finally arrived at the ferry which would bring us to the other side
of the Hollandsch Diep. I quickly passed all the other cars and drove onto the ferry. Others
followed us, so I couldn’t get off anymore. A truck driver threatened me and wanted me to
get off the ferry. ‘What’s going on here?’, the ferry boss asked us. I said: ‘It was probably not
my turn, but I didn’t notice’. ‘Well, we can’t do anything about it’. And so we arrived literally
five minutes before the press conference at the President Hotel in Brussels started, along
with the LPs for the Belgian press. I think those records were also sold at that concert. It
was a very close call!”
Did you also go to the concert in Geleen?
“Yes, that was in ‘the middle of nowhere’. I can’t remember why Jan Smeets couldn’t get
Marley for Pinkpop. He wanted to organize a festival in the stadium of Fortuna Sittard. This
was obviously a good sign, because it meant that Smeets was a big fan of Marley.”
Did you know that Marley in 1980, and perhaps already in 1979, was very sick and
dying?
“I didn’t know anything about it. It was a complete surprise for me, I did not even know he
was sick. I knew about his toe that had seemed broken, but which had probably been
eaten away by the cancer. In retrospect I realize that, but back then I didn’t know. I was
walking on Fifth Avenue in New York when a taxi stopped. Cat Coore of Third World
stepped out and told me: ‘Evert, do you know that Bob is dead?’. That was very strange. I
was walking on Fifth Avenue in New York, some Jamaicans drive by and they bring me the
bad news. I thought that was crazy. So I heard that Bob was dead.”
Would Marley have become even more popular in the Netherlands if he hadn’t
become sick?
“I think many people would have considered him as a prophet, and that he would have
become as famous as Dylan and Neil Young.”
Would he have become a stadium act as he already was in neighboring countries?
“Absolutely!”
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XII. In conversation with Mike van der Linde
“People go to church to listen to the priest who tells stories from the Bible.
We go to Reggae Sunsplash or Burning Spear,
because he sings about Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie”
Overwhelming. That is the word that keeps shooting through my thoughts when I say
goodbye to Mike van der Linde around half past six in the evening. I have spent more than
four hours with Mike at his home, listening and looking at a small part of his enormous
video and audio collection of Bob Marley and other reggae artists. Four hours might seem
long, but time has passed quicker than ever, not least because Mike is a passionate
collector and an enthusiastic storyteller. Seemingly without any effort he comes up with
dozens of stories, anecdotes and insights – like the one at top of this page – about Bob
Marley, reggae, Haile Selassie and Rastafarianism. Not surprisingly, Mike has contributed
information and materials for books about Bob Marley and other reggae artists in the past.
Mike is also a Rastafarian, though at first glance you would not say so. After all, Rastafarians
are often associated with dreadlocks and smoking (a lot of) marijuana. Mike has no
dreadlocks, however, nor does he smoke. Rasta is on the inside, so he says, and not only
about outward appearances.
Mike has been part of the international reggae scene for years. As such, he has
contact with various artists from the past and present, including the children of Bob Marley
and Peter Tosh and former members of the Wailers, but also with writers and fellow
collectors, including the well known American Bob Marley collector Roger Steffens, who
even stayed a few days at Mike’s home during a visit to the Netherlands. Although the
collections of Steffens and Van der Linde share similar items, Mike specializes in video
material. He not only collects video’s, but also restores and digitizes when necessary. At his
home are filing cabinets reaching to the ceiling full with books, sound- and video
recordings of many reggae artists, especially Bob Marley. During my visit Mike shows and
lets me hear many recordings from the 70s, not just Bob Marley but also of artists like Peter
Tosh, Burning Spear, and Alpha Blondy. The highlight of the afternoon, however, is when
Mike hands me a medal he was given by Al Anderson, the American guitarist who played
with the Wailers for several years. It is one of the medals which Marley and the band
members were given in 1980 when they performed at the independence ceremony of
Zimbabwe, heretofore the British colony of Rhodesia. A special item, and as Mike himself
says, “not everyone has one of those”.
In addition to collecting anything reggae related, Mike travels around the world to
attend reggae festivals and meetings. He also regularly tours with artists and picks them up
from the airport when they come to the Netherlands. Mike has also visited Africa several
times in search of Rasta communities. He still maintains contact with the people there and
regularly sends them all sorts of stuff. Mike explains: “I promote reggae music. So I travel
anywhere, arrange everything. But if I’m honest, my heart is with those people. Everything I
64
do, the benefits are also for those people. And that’s what I’ve inherited from the lyrics of
Bob Marley. It’s very simple for me. I also used to collect stuff at flea markets. That’s the
place to be. For what we Dutch people throw away… I take it with me and store it
somewhere”. And: “Those black people – others say, ‘I don’t like them’. But they are my
friends. I love those people, I do anything for those people. I have send typewriters to
Africa, the strangest things. There is more, you know? There is Bob Marley, and that
continues. Also through me”.
At the same time, Mike is also a wealthy collector. In the past he bought rare LP’s or
rare footage of Marley in his younger years for thousands of dollars. Where does this
fascination for Bob Marley come from? When he was eleven years old he went to see
Marley in the Ahoy in Rotterdam together with his father, which was the last concert of
Marley in the Netherlands. Mike recounts: “The love for Bob Marley has been around since I
was seven. From that time I started to love that music. I was never influenced by other
music styles. New Wave, U2, you name it. Disco, house. I have never been influenced by
those. So that is where the love started. Then I started to collect Bob Marley stuff, first an
LP. I wanted to hang one on the wall but also listen to it. So I had to buy two. One for on
the wall and one to listen to. Hence I have records that have never even touched a
turntable”. About his conversion to the Rastafarian faith Mike says: "As a Rastafarian you
have to be clean. You must be clean of everything. I do not drink alcohol, there are
Rastafarians who do. I have changed my lifestyle. I’ve been a vegetarian my whole life. I
realized that I didn’t want meat and fish anymore, I also don’t eat fish, shortly after puberty.
I realized that that was what I wanted. I’ve never been indoctrinated, nobody has ever told
me what I should do. It is something which I chose for myself and which I feel comfortable
with”.
Bob Marley and reggae music have an enormous impact on Mike’s life, so much so
that he claims he couldn’t live without Marley and his music. “My life is Bob Marley. I would
not be able to live without Bob Marley. I am very honest about this”. But what is it about
Marley and his music that appeals so much to Mike and made him decide to dedicate his
life to Marley and build up a huge collection? Something that particularly appeals to Mike
is how Marley conveyed his thoughts and beliefs to people around the world. “Look, Bob
Marley is Bob Marley. We cannot compare him with anybody, with no other artist. How this
man, how Bob Marley, communicates something to people without even saying a word…
With a simple gesture he makes things clear. Always straight on and very serious. The
message will arrive. Some people did not understand what he sang, but they saw what he
was talking about. And that is very difficult. If you are able to convey that… I have always
thought of Bob Marley: that’s the good guy. Bob Marley, that’s the messenger, the black
Messiah on earth. He has to be. But purely because I think Bob Marley… Look, I know the
background and I know how it was formed. And when I hear the message he has preached
to the whole world… ‘Them belly full but we hungry’, you know? Listen to his lyrics, and
everyone – no matter who – finds something in the lyrics with which he or she feels
comfortable. Bob Marley, that’s the guy. Everyone has his passion, his thing. Bob Marley is
my lifestyle, a way of life”.
65
However, not everything about reggae and Rasta is positive. Mike is especially
concerned about how people deal with the heritage and musical legacy of Bob Marley.
Like many fans, Mike does not really like Rita Marley, who after the death of her husband
seems to have undergone a metamorphosis in which monetary gain has become
increasingly important. Remarkable, as the value of the ‘Marley empire’ at the time of Bob’s
death in 1981 amounted to 650 million U.S. dollars according to Mike. Today there are all
sorts of products released with the name and image of Marley on them, from coffee beans
to amusement parks and coffee shops. Mike says that especially nowadays Bob’s memory
is shamelessly commercially exploited. “I will be honest. I met Rita Marley many times. I
have spoken with her, I’ve also toured with her a lot. When I listen carefully to Rita Marley,
going to shopping malls and similar things are the most important for her”.
Much worse is the fact that former members of the Wailers, without which Marley
would probably never have become a superstar, are now living in poverty and miserable
conditions. Mike: “If you consider that there is so much money, how is it that [Alvin] Seeco
Patterson roams the streets of Kingston? And how is it that Earl Wire [Lindo], the keyboard
player, is mentally a bit confused? Do these people not deserve to be put on a pedestal?
Wouldn’t that be fair? I also have contact with Junior Marvin. A year ago I received an email from him, asking me if I could help him to sell CD’s. He would sign the CD’s and they
would be sold for twenty-five Euro’s. He asked me if I could sell those autographed CD’s.
Can you imagine? It is out of pure necessity, otherwise they have nothing”. But what about
Marley himself? Even during Marley’s heyday in the seventies journalists wondered about
his real motives and whether it was morally responsible to have commercial success with
reggae music. Mike is sure Marley never did it solely for the money. About the enormous
wealth that Marley amassed during his career, Mike says: “It has never been Marley’s goal.
Certainly not on such a scale. Bob Marley is for the people!”
Finally, I ask Mike about the last two years of Marley’s life. How sick was Marley in
1980 for example when the European Uprising-tour was underway and the Jamaican
singer performed in the Ahoy in Rotterdam? “Bob Marley was actually very sick. Too sick.
He became sick in 1979, early ‘79. If you look at the Santa Barbara concert [on November
25, 1979] and also at the interviews during the American Survival-tour [from October to
December 1979], you see that Bob Marley already looks half-numb. I know that he was
already very sick in 1979. He himself also knew this. He just didn’t tell anyone because he
was so busy with everything. If you do what you really like you think, ‘I actually feel pretty
good’. But really you’re not”. So Marley already knew in 1979 he was sick? “Yes. And this I
heard from Damian [Marley, one of Bob’s sons]. It is hardly described in most books
because it’s a delicate topic. Bob Marley was of course already sick in 1979, but it didn’t
show until… If you look at the tour photo’s and you see Bob on the bus, you can also see
that his foot is bandaged. That is where it started more or less. And that is not even 1979,
but already in 1978”.
What does Mike think would have happened if Marley had won the fight against
cancer? “I think that if Bob Marley had lived now, the world would have been different. Bob
Marley would have made an even bigger statement. He would have had a lot of influence
66
around the world through his messages. He was already a phenomenon. A legend. And
now we are talking about him. Bob Marley is livelier than ever. And the more we talk, the
more alive he becomes…”. Talking about Bob Marley and reggae is certainly what Mike
and I have done. In four hours I have heard fascinating stories and have seen unique video
recordings. As I say goodbye to Mike he promises to write down his memories of June 23,
1980, the day when he and his father went to the Marley concert in Rotterdam. Exclusively
for this project Mike has put his memories about the concert, the direct cause of his
fascination with – and adoration of – Marley and reggae, on paper:
“I remember very well that we arrived at Sportpaleis Ahoy. At that time I was living near
Zuidplein, so Ahoy was within walking distance. I was wearing my army jacket, which I always
wore when I went out with the ‘rasta boys’ (a group of boys who were also fan of Bob Marley
and reggae). Earlier in the day we had already been on the parking lot where Bob Marley
arrived to do a sound check and to play some football. To my knowledge, Bob stayed at the
Zuiderpark Hotel close to Ahoy. Anyway, that evening we arrived at Ahoy and my father and I
waited in line. I was only allowed in by being accompanied by my father or another older
person, but no one asked about it. There were several Rasta families with children. Inside there
were a number of stalls, selling tour booklets, stickers, T-shirts and scarves. I chose a Bob Marley
scarf. Because we already knew many people from the reggae scene we could stand in the front,
very close to the stage. There was a huge banner in the hall with a picture of the Uprising
album. I made some photos with my Kodak ‘click clack’ camera.
We waited for quite some time. The show would start at 20:15, but it soon became 21:00. My
father went to get some drinks. I was suddenly alone with a huge group of Rasta’s and other
acquaintances surrounding me. When my father returned, the lights suddenly went out. Several
spotlights were aimed at the big banner of the Uprising album. Earl ‘Wire’ Lindo came on stage,
followed by Aston Barrett and Carlton Barrett. Guitars were plugged in and some strings were
touched. A loud beeping sound came through for a second, then the Wailers started to play. A
short intro and then a song by Marcia Griffiths, ‘Stepping Out Of Babylon’. Wow! Super loud
and a very tight sound! I knew this song only a little bit, but I sang along anyway. There was a
lot of jumping going on around me by Rasta’s, the same ones we had been talking to moments
before. But now they all went crazy! I stood on the fence and took some pictures, because the
whole stage was lit up. All those beautiful colors, with Rita, Judy and Marcia in front. After the
intro song had ended it became quiet for a moment.
And then began Marley’s intro. Marley! It sounded familiar to me. I saw Bob raise the stairs on
the side and enter the stage. Everyone around me was screaming and whistling, and before I
knew it Bob Marley was right in front of me! ‘Yes, greetings in the name of His Imperial Majesty,
Emperor Haile Selassie I, Rastafari!’ Marley turned around and immediately ‘Natural Mystic’
started. Wow, what a sound! I was very emotional, we jumped up and down on the bass and
drums of the Barrett brothers. A tight ‘ruffle’ by Carlton Barrett and ‘Natural Mystic’ has begun.
Bob starts with the first lyrics, ‘there is a natural mystic blowing through the air’. Phew, what a
67
sound! Nobody around me is standing still. Marley himself seems completely entranced by the
song. Unbelievable, with a few gestures Marley has the entire audience in his power. ‘Rastafari’
is what is constantly yelled by the people around us. ‘Rastaman vibration yeah!’ The ‘positive
vibration’ literally sounds like music to the ears! Truly, the whole Ahoy hall is shaking on its
foundations.
The heavy bass by Aston Barrett makes everyone dance and jump, especially when ‘Exodus’ is
played. Bob does his ‘kink step’ dance – looks at us for a moment – and then, while still dancing,
steps backwards. Awesome, and so intense that he seems completely in trance and in the
music! Later, songs like ‘Work’ and ‘Could You Be Loved’ were played. Especially the song ‘Work’
was not known by many, but we sang this song along perfectly because we had already heard
it on BBC radio! ‘Could You Be Loved’ was of course sang along by many, it was a hit song. After
a very brief pause, Bob came back on stage with his acoustic guitar to play the magic
‘Redemption Song’, a true statement. Marley was completely absorbed by this song. When the
band joined in and it became a ‘band version’ the audience became really unstoppable. What a
sound, what a feeling, what a magic! Bob Marley at his best, dancing with his guitar in hand.
With a big smile on his face and bathed in sweat Bob leaves the stage. It’s the last thing I see.
Bob walks down the steps with his guitar and I’ll never see him again. But Bob, ‘we understand
your message’! The band continues to play a little bit longer, and then the lights go on. We stay
where we are. People chant: ‘Bob Marley! Bob Marley!’ Many people walk to the exits. Was this
the last song? Unfortunately, yes! The crew goes to work and finally my father and I leave the
hall. And that was my time with Bob Marley in the Ahoy in June 1980. I’m sure Bob was the right
hand of Haile Selassie. In any case, I saw the light that evening. And even now, many years later,
Bob is still Jah, God or whatever you want to call him. Immortal! He is a part of life and as he
sang, ‘we will be forever loving Jah!’, I will certainly continue to do!”
Mike with a small part of his collection
Photo: Mike van der Linde
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XIII. Marley and the Dutch press
“Who are you to judge me, and the life that I live?
I know that I’m not perfect, and that I don’t claim to be
So before you point your finger, be sure your hands are clean” 129
Two weeks after Marley’s death there appeared a long article in the Groene
Amsterdammer by Rein Spoorman about the development of reggae music from ‘slum
music’ to world success. Like many other journalists Spoorman believed that over the
years, Marley had removed himself further and further from the ‘authentic reggae’.
Although this had made “the sometimes too preachy texts diminish in strength, he has
been of enormous significance in making reggae accessible for a wide audience”. Marley
had, according to Spoorman, “deliberately indulged with the synthesizing and
commercialization of the original music, in order to spread the Rasta-message to large
crowds”. Most peculiar about the article was that Marley, so wrote Spoorman, eventually
had died because of the “encapsulation and commerce, the enormous pressure of being a
living symbol of Rasta, reggae, Jamaica, black people and everyone who wants a better
world, and the gnawing disease of welfare. […] The conflict with his original lifestyle, the
hectic life of a pop star and the pressure of public and the media on him as a symbol of
resistance were in the end fatal”.130 Although a very curious writing about the cause of
Marley’s death, the article by Spoorman has a lot in common with critiques Marley
increasingly had to endure in both Dutch and international media. Especially after the
Jamaican became popular all over the world, sold more records and performed for ever
increasing numbers of spectators in ever larger venues.
Already around 1975, on the eve of his international breakthrough, journalists
asked themselves and Marley whether it was proper to be successful with reggae music as
the music mostly described revolution and misery. And what did Marley do with all the
money he made with his music? And why did Marley in Jamaica drive a BMW through the
streets of Kingston? (the quick-witted Marley had replied that he did not need such an
expensive car, but that BMW simply stood for Bob Marley and the Wailers).131 As can be
read in previous chapters, criticism on Marley increased throughout the years. In 1975,
Marley had been ‘refreshing’ and ‘rebellious’, in the following years ‘authenticity’, and
especially the perceived lack thereof, and ‘commercial’ became watchwords for many
journalists when writing about Marley. Reggae was initially seen as a refreshing and
exciting new style of music, but in later years the genre was increasingly described as a
very simple form of music, on which it was enjoyable to dance for Westerners but which
lacked further depth. Furthermore, journalists often wrote that within reggae only the
rhythm was important since the words – the lyrics – hardly mattered. These criticisms are
129
From Marley’s first single ‘Judge Not’, 1961.
Spoorman, 1980.
131
Van Dijk, 1976b.
130
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evident in the following passages from an extremely critical article in the Nieuwsblad van
het Noorden of August 1, 1980, about six weeks after Marley’s last appearance in the
Netherlands. Unfortunately, both the author and the source of the article, an interview
with Marley during the European Uprising-tour, are not mentioned.
“Everything that he [Marley] does is already ‘cool’ in advance, whether he puts absolute
confidence in the ‘Almighty’, or argues for legalization of hashish. In Jamaica he lives like a king
and is treated by many blacks as such. He is their advocate for equal rights, the one who wants
to give them the possibility to repatriate (to Africa) and their prophet Jah (God).
The three things are clearly absurd to white Europeans who visit a concert of Marley. At most,
they get carried away by his ‘inspiring personality’, which is arousing during reggae sessions,
but always resigned. […] Rebellion is unnecessary for the higher power will bring better days
when it suits Him. Not earlier. The suffering may only be temporarily mitigated with ‘Ganja’
(hashish).
Marley himself doesn’t live under such wretched conditions. He gives concerts around the
world, with which he earns enough money to maintain his high luxury standard. Marley is no
longer the black man-in-the-street from the slums of Trenchtown. Everyone knows this. Yet he is
still regarded as the mouthpiece of Jamaican misery. Better yet: Marley himself has been
elevated to religion and is considered the mainstay of the oppressed. Among young people
around the world this provokes sympathy; it even moves them to cheer for him in a way that
resembles worshipping.
Marley still wants to ‘achieve’ something. This raises questions: is it not odd that he, the most
commercial reggae musician, who also makes the most money, very often makes money by
performing for a predominantly white audience. There is nothing to achieve there for Marley.
Confrontations with such contradictions arouse irritation in Marley. ‘I am a Rasta, no white
journalist can understand that’, is his response. Talking to white people is hopeless, is thus
what Marley says. […] He has no problems with performing for a white audience however.
What is it about then? Marley: ‘I don’t want to give people political, but spiritual assistance. Our
music gives people spiritual support so they can survive’. According to Marley it has hardly any
purpose to make people more conscious when they don’t have spiritual power (read: if they
don’t believe in Jah). On the proposition that religion really carries to few calories to stay alive,
Marley doesn’t want to respond. ‘You will never understand us’, is his only response.” 132
In 1983, some of these negative comments were echoed by Rik Zaal in a book
review in De Volkskrant. Zaal writes about the lyrics of reggae for example: “The lyrics have
a novelty character, never dig deep and can include proverbs, advertisement texts,
132
Nieuwsblad van het Noorden, 1980.
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headlines, recipes for home remedies, spells, bible quotes and gossip”. According to Zaal,
Marley was the right man to spread the ‘good news’ coming from these lyrics and as such
became “the King of Reggae, the Hero of the Third World, the Hope of the Western Youth,
but above all: the Disciple of Haile Selassie”. The ‘gospel’ of Marley as ‘Disciple of Haile
Selassie’ was, according to Zaal, like any gospel “an amorphous hodgepodge of
misinterpreted histories, romantic expectations and a view on the present based upon
guilt, penance and Fate”. And: “This results in strange songs. There must be a revolution,
there must be more smoking of marijuana, the rich have to become poorer and the poor
richer, the street children must act, mothers have to raise more children, people should
emigrate rather to Africa than to England, love and socialism have to be spread all over the
world, in short, everything must be done different and much better, and everything under
the leadership of Ras Tafari, Jehovah himself, or emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. Because
that is the incomprehensible thing about reggae: the absolute belief in an absolute tyrant
as an absolute god”.133
Although certainly not representative for the entire Dutch music press, these are
the only two very critical and negative articles, the above passages form an indication of
how the views of a number of Dutch journalists about Marley and his music had changed
over the years. Chapter nine showed that already in 1979 a Muziek Express-reporter had
traveled to London to interview Marley with the intention to find out whether the singer
was a cunning profiteer or not. Usually, however, criticism was more veiled. With the
passing of time, the release of new albums under different creative directions, and the
growing popularity and wealth of Marley and his associates, the music and performances
by the Jamaican reggae king appeared in a different light to many journalists. Marley no
longer made rebellious, innovative, fresh and ‘authentic’ reggae. Instead, he made
‘commercial’ reggae, far removed from what journalists called ‘authentic reggae’.
The question what ‘authentic reggae’ exactly was, was rarely answered by the
critics of Marley however. Rein Spoorman wrote that the ‘original reggae’ was the music of
the Jamaican people and dealt with topics like the oppression of the poor, love and war.134
An unnamed reporter of the Leeuwarden Courant wrote in 1979: “The reggae from
Kingston. Like the blues from Chicago, the beat from Liverpool and the punk from London
in commercial form penetrated into the charts from Amsterdam to Tokyo. Pure, however,
only to be found in Kingston. […] Back in Leeuwarden it is as if the music has been left
behind in Kingston. Without the feeling, without the smell, reggae is no longer reggae. The
sound has become tinny, the bass has disappeared”. And: “Music is here [in Jamaica] a cry
for help, an accusation against a society that after four hundred years of slavery, plantation
economy, exploitation and neglect, has little more to offer. Reggae is not, like in the West,
the rhythm of clanging cash registers, reggae is the rhythm of poverty and despair”.135
According to this author reggae could only be ‘pure’, ‘real’ and thus authentic in Jamaica,
while reggae outside Jamaica was by definition commercial and not authentic. A rather
133
Zaal, 1983.
Spoorman, 1980.
135
Leeuwarder Courant, 1979.
134
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strange point of view, wherein every reggae artist performing outside of Jamaica was
automatically not ‘pure’ and ‘real’.
Pieter Franssen from music magazine Oor compared Marley to other reggae artists
like Dr. Alimantado, Sugor Minott and Lee Perry and concluded that these artists made
more indigenous reggae than Marley, which implied that Marley’s music was not
indigenous and not authentic. Other reggae groups such as Culture were according to
Franssen more spiritual and willing to put their religious beliefs in their music than Marley.
As written in a previous chapter, Franssen toned down his criticisms on Marley after the
Jamaican reggae star had died. One month after the death of Marley, Franssen for example
wrote: “There is no other reggae artist like him who presents a cocktail of Jamaican reggae
mixed with Western rock and American funk while at the same time keeping the message
– equal rights for black people – intact.136 On the other hand there were also people, like
Evert Wilbrink in chapter four, who acknowledged that Marley had taken elements out of
reggae to create his own, internationally more appealing form of music. In short, the
authenticity of Marley’s music continued (and perhaps continues among reggae
aficionados) to be a hot topic.
Directly connected with the criticism that Marley’s music was not authentic, was the
widespread notion that his music was too commercial. When Kaya with its more romantic
songs was released in 1978, Marley was accused of having become commercial and to no
longer care about the problems in his home country and his own religious beliefs. Thus,
“Marley […] was in later years accused of laziness when his politically sharp lyrics like
‘Them Belly Full’, ‘No Woman No Cry’, ‘I shot the Sheriff’, ‘Get Up Stand Up’, ‘Burnin’ and
Lootin’ had become sing-along’s and he mostly wrote love songs.137 Marley’s music did
indeed change over the years, while his concerts at the same time appeared less
‘rebellious’ and more organized and professional. The first albums for Island Records had
already been enhanced by introducing rock elements to make the music more suitable to
Western listeners. After the addition of the American guitarist Junior Marvin to the band,
rock influences on Marley’s music even increased further. The concerts became more
professional, something that was inevitable in part due to the increasing numbers of
visitors and the larger venues where the Jamaicans played. Jason Toynbee wrote that
these changes were not only enacted by Marley, but also resulted from the inevitable
encapsulation of Marley in the mainstream music industry. For it is difficult for an artist
from the periphery of the global music industry, Jamaica, to suddenly be accepted and
become popular in the center of the music industry, primarily Western Europe and North
America, and not somehow adapt to the standards of the dominant music industry. This
happened also to some extent with Marley, who under pressure from the music industry –
record companies, publishers, radio and television, music magazines, colleagues –
inescapably had to adapt to at least some extent to the new realities of life as an
international music star.138
136
Franssen, 1980; Franssen, 1978b; Franssen, 1981.
138
Toynbee, 2007.
137
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Criticism on Marley often contained a paradox of which journalists themselves
seemed rarely or never aware. Several journalists wrote that the lyrics of reggae were
almost entirely subordinate to the music and the rhythm, and that reggae was not really
much more than a very simple musical style.139 This was partly because very few
Westerners were attracted to lyrics about Rastafari and because many texts were simply
incomprehensible to Western ears, even for experts and enthusiasts like Dave van Dijk.140
An unknown journalist of the Leeuwarder Courant wrote about this in 1979: “The true
meaning of reggae has never been understood in the West. We quite liked the rhythm, but
it shouldn’t last too long and it was only acceptable in a polished form. The texts we took
for granted because half of it was unintelligible. We didn’t understand Jamaican English
with its African background and Spanish influences. Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff, Bob
Marley, Peter Tosh, all splendid, but their message? We don’t know”.141 Especially after the
release of the Kaya album it turned out that the lyrics were not so unimportant as many
people thought and wrote. Suddenly, Marley, so journalists wrote, had abandoned and
even betrayed his religious beliefs and social and political engagement. Those same
journalists had in fact already recognized since 1975 that the lyrics were important, when
Marley as an ‘consummate angry young man’ had been praised for making rebellious and
militant music. On the one hand journalists wrote that Marley was too commercial and not
authentic, and that the popularity of reggae in the West depended on the rhythm and not
at all on the lyrics.142 On the other hand, Marley was convicted precisely because of the
content of his lyrics, which became of an increasingly romantic and commercial nature
after 1977. And when Marley in turn made militant reggae, journalists wondered whether
it was proper to be successful with such music as it dealt with issues such as poverty and
inequality. Thus it appears that Dutch reporting on Marley was usually accompanied by
incomprehension and contradictions, probably because most journalists were not familiar
with Marley’s background, music, and thinking.
The Dutch press was of course not always so negative and critical of Marley. On the
contrary, as seen in the previous chapters, most journalists were enthusiastic and positive
in their articles. Elly de Waard, who together with Evert Wilbrink and some other journalists
had attended the legendary concerts in London in 1975, remained consistently positive
about Marley and his concerts in the Netherlands. A few days after Marley’s death, De
Waard wrote in De Volkskrant that the release of Marley’s first album for Island Records
had from the outset shown to anyone “who could listen […] that this was a talent who was
capable of lifting the ethnic character of reggae to a renewed impetus of which the entire
rock and roll would benefit”.143 And: “Like no other he has been able to interpret and
musically express the mentality that underlies reggae, which is one of black self-awareness
and ethical awareness based on the Bible”.144 Others wrote that “Marley was like no other
139
Muziek Expres, 1979.
Van Dijk, 1976b.
141
142
143
De Waard, 1981.
144
De Waard, 1980.
140
73
responsible for the refreshing influence of reggae and its accompanying (religious)
philosophy””, and that “Marley developed himself into a songwriter who could like no
other articulate hope (Rasta and Revolution) and bitterness (oppression, colonialism,
oppression of the Rasta’s)”.145 Moreover, Marley had taught humanity that “Jamaica was
more than a sunny Caribbean paradise, the island of rum beans and Harry Belafonte. With
his cryptic, yet through constant repetition understandable lyrics, he unveiled the
mysteries surrounding the Reggae and the closely related Rasta-movement”.146
145
146
Koops, 1978.
74
XIV. Conclusion
The previous chapters have shown that enthusiasm for Bob Marley and reggae music in
the Netherlands soared after the two legendary concerts at the Lyceum in London in July
1975. The Dutch reporters present at the two shows returned home with enthusiastic
stories of praise, resulting in an increasing amount of attention for reggae in the Dutch
media. In 1976 the enthusiasm for Marley and reggae music increased even further in
anticipation of Marley’s first performance in Amsterdam. The concert in the Jaap Edenhal
was the first time that people in the Netherlands could see a Jamaican reggae band
perform live. After the concert in Amsterdam, Marley and reggae music started to enjoy
even more popularity in the Netherlands as was reflected in the numbers of concert
visitors and albums sold. In 1977, the Houtrusthal in The Hague was completely sold out. In
Rotterdam, the king of reggae played twice in a sold out Ahoy, the last time in June 1980.
On this occasion Marley was presented with a double platinum album for selling more
than one hundred thousand copies of the live album Babylon by Bus. Although strictly
forbidden by Island Records, ‘Stir It Up’ was released in the Netherlands as a single thanks
to the persistent and stubborn Evert Wilbrink. The song stormed the charts and was
awarded a gold record after more than fifty thousand copies had been sold.147 Live songs
such as ‘No Woman No Cry’ and ‘Stir It Up’ and the two live albums Live! and Babylon by Bus
sold the best in the Netherlands, while Marley’s studio albums were less successful. In the
words of Evert Wilbrink: “Marley was what was happened on stage.”
Incidentally, Marley not only popularized reggae in the Netherlands: Rastafarianism
also earned a place in Dutch society through the music of the most famous exponent of
the Rastafarian faith. Livio Sansone commented: “Rastafarianism came to the Netherlands
by way of reggae music. Until Bob Marley gave his first concert in Amsterdam in 1976,
Rastafarians were virtually unknown in the Netherlands. In 1980 some young Surinamese
began to grow dread locks and wear clothing in the colors of the Ethiopian flag (red, gold
and green)”. According to Sansone, Amsterdam subsequently became the “most
important ‘rasta city’ on the European mainland” from 1981 to 1984.148
The five concerts in the Netherlands were all unique performances. In 1976 in the
Jaap Edenhal there was the novelty of Marley’s first appearance in the Netherlands, the
year after that a great concert in the crowded Houtrusthal despite the weak sound and
lighting, followed by two shows in 1978 and 1980 in a packed Ahoy in Rotterdam with in
between an intimate gig in the ice rink in Geleen. According to Mick Cater, tour manager of
Marley during the European tours, the performances in the Netherlands were among the
best concerts of Marley in Europe, partly because only in the Netherlands fans threw joints
towards the stage while the venues themselves were filled with blue clouds caused by the
smoking of hashish and marijuana.149 Marley’s concerts in the Netherlands largely followed
147
Franssen, 1981.
Sansone, 1992; 161.
149
El Fers, 1991.
148
75
the same pattern as in other countries: each year the Jamaicans played in bigger venues
for larger audiences. Mick Cater recounts that during a first tour of a country about fifteen
hundred people for example attended the concerts. During the next tour this number had
already grown to somewhere in between five and ten thousand. The next time Marley and
the Wailers played in huge venues or in the open air in front of large numbers of
spectators.150 In the Netherlands, however, this never came to be. Despite the fact that
venues were sold out, with people without tickets also trying to get inside, Marley never
became a stadium act in the Netherlands, although the festival in Geleen had initially been
slated to take place in the Fortuna Sittard football stadium. Evert Wilbrink and Leon
Ramakers from Mojo Concerts are both convinced that if he hadn’t died, Marley would
definitely also have become a stadium act in the Netherlands. It remains doubtful however
whether Marley could for example have filled the Kuip in Rotterdam, with a capacity of fifty
thousand visitors, like Bob Dylan did in the spring of 1978.
The previous chapters also looked at how the Dutch music press wrote about
Marley. Although the coverage between 1975 and 1980 was very diverse, the infectious
enthusiasm that was dominant in 1975 gradually gave way to criticism on Marley and his
music. Initially, journalists asked themselves and Marley whether it was morally justified to
have commercial success with militant, socially engaged reggae. Later, the singer was
accused of having thrown his Rasta-beliefs and principles overboard in favor of more
romantic and commercial music. The alleged lack of authenticity of Marley’s music became
a hot topic. The king of reggae was also increasingly accused of being too commercial and
even of making music just for the money. In a recent column from February 2011 by Dutch
music journalist and critic Gijsbert Kamer these criticisms surfaced again: “These years
[1974-1981] are still considered classic, and not just because of Bob Marley. Indeed, in ‘my
time’ 1979-1981 Bob Marley was a little bit doubtful and past his peak. I remember his last
album, Uprising, came out with that hit Could You Be Loved (1980) and the only track that I
thought was good, was the last one on side 1 (or was it 2?) Redemption Song. The rest was
disco, and that was in 1980 in some circles, where I was also associated with, suspicious.
No, in 1979 we liked true reggae: Dr. Alimentado, Burning Spear, Culture, Max Romeo,
Jacob ‘Killer’ Miller and Augustus Pablo. Those were the Jamaicans, but the British were
also good: Linton Kwesi Johnson, Steel Pulse and Aswad”.151
Besides some critical and negative articles, Marley mainly received positive reviews
from Dutch journalists however. Elly de Waard stayed ‘loyal’ to Marley for example, while
Pieter Franssen toned down his previous critical views after Marley’s death. From the
numerous newspaper and magazine articles which formed the basis for this project, it
appears that most journalists did not really know what to do with and write about Marley.
Marley’s thinking, lifestyle, religious beliefs and even music were indeed far removed from
the white journalists from ‘Babylon’, who moreover often simply did not understand what
the Jamaican singer said because of his excessive use of patois, Jamaican dialect. As a
consequence many reporters clearly struggled to understand and describe Marley, his
150
151
Kamer, 2011.
76
music and his career, both in life and after the death of the Jamaican reggae king. The
reporting about Marley and his music probably influenced his popularity in the
Netherlands, as the Dutch music press and especially music magazine Oor were extremely
powerful in the seventies and could ‘make or break’ artists.
Anno 2011, Marley is probably better known and more popular around the globe
than he was in life, thanks in part to modern communication tools like the Internet. Thirty
years after his untimely demise, Marley and his music are alive as ever as his music and
messages have proven to be timeless and continue to inspire millions of people around
the world. Through this study, and my previous project about the history of Bob Marley
and reggae in Japan, I hope to have contributed my part to unraveling how Marley and the
Wailers, as the main ambassadors of reggae music, popularized the music in the
Netherlands and Japan, thereby laying the foundations for their own world fame and the
spread of reggae around the world. For as Marley himself sings in his classic song ‘No
Woman No Cry’: “In this bright future you can’t forget your past…”
“My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know
facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.”
- Bob Marley, 1975 -
77
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The facts
Amsterdam ‘76
Date
Location
Tour
Visitors
Opener
Band lineup
Setlist
Sunday 13 June 1976
Jaap Edenhal, Amsterdam (Noord-Holland)
Rastaman Vibration-tour
+- 4000
Bob Marley (vocals, rhythm guitar), Aston Barrett (bass), Carlton Barrett
(drums), Donald Kinsey (lead guitar), Earl Smith Kinsey (lead guitar), Tyrone
Downie (keyboards), Alvin Patterson (percussion), Marcia Griffiths, Rita
Marley, Judy Mowatt (The I-Threes, backing vocals).
Trenchtown Rock, Burnin’ And Lootin’, Them Belly Full (But We Hungry),
Rebel Music (3 O’Clock Roadblock), I Shot The Sheriff, Want More, No
Woman No Cry, Lively Up Yourself, Roots Rock Reggae, Positive Vibration,
Get Up Stand Up, War / No More Trouble.
The Hague ‘77
Date
Location
Tour
Visitors
Opener
Band lineup
Setlist
Friday 13 May 1977
Houtrusthallen, The Hague (Zuid-Holland)
Exodus-tour
+- 9000
Rico
(drums), Junior Marvin (lead guitar), Tyrone Downie (keyboards), Alvin
Patterson (percussion), Marcia Griffiths, Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt (The IThrees, backing vocals).
Intro Jam, Rebel Music (3 O’Clock Roadblock), Burnin’ And Lootin’, Them
Belly Full (But We Hungry), The Heathen, I Shot The Sheriff, War / No More
Trouble, No Woman No Cry, Lively Up Yourself, Jammin’, Get Up Stand Up,
Exodus.
A tape of this concert exists, but the recording is poor and Marley is only
heard in the distance.
Rotterdam ‘78
Date
Location
Tour
Bezoekersaantal
Opener
Band lineup
Setlist
Friday 7 July 1978
Ahoy, Rotterdam (Zuid-Holland)
Kaya-tour
+- 9000
Steel Pulse
(drums), Junior Marvin (lead guitar), Earl Lindo (organ), Tyrone Downie
(keyboards), Alvin Patterson (percussion), Marcia Griffiths, Rita Marley, Judy
Mowatt (The I-Threes, backing vocals).
Positive Vibration, The Heathen, Them Belly Full (But We Hungry), Concrete
Jungle, Rebel Music (3 O’Clock Roadblock), War / No More Trouble, Crisis,
82
Running Away / Crazy Baldhead, I Shot The Sheriff, No Woman No Cry, Is
This Love?, Jammin’, Easy Skanking, Get Up, Stand Up, Exodus.
Recorded entirely by VPRO-radio and available online.
Geleen ‘78
Date
Location
Tour
Visitors
Opener
Band lineup:
Setlist:
Saturday 8 July 1978
IJshal Glanerbrook, Geleen (Limburg)
Kaya-tour
+- 4000
Sweet D’Buster, Steel Pulse, Herman Brood & His Wild Romance
(drums), Junior Marvin (lead guitar), Earl Lindo (organ), Tyrone Downie
(keyboards), Alvin Patterson (percussion), Marcia Griffiths, Rita Marley, Judy
Mowatt (The I-Threes, backing vocals).
Unknown.
Rotterdam ‘80
Date
Location
Tour
Visitors
Opener
Band line-up
Setlist
Monday 23 June 1980
Ahoy, Rotterdam (Zuid-Holland)
Uprising Tour
+- 9000
The I-Threes
Bob Marley (vocals, rhythm guitar), Aston Barrett (bass), Carlton Barrett,
(drums), Al Anderson (lead guitar), Junior Marvin (lead guitar), Earl
Lindo (organ, clavinet), Tyrone Downie (keyboards), Alvin Patterson
(percussion), Marcia Griffiths, Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt (The I-Threes,
backing vocals).
Natural Mystic, Positive Vibration, Revolution, I Shot The Sheriff, War / No
More Trouble, Zimbabwe, Zion Train, No Woman No Cry, Jammin’, Exodus,
Redemption Song, Work, Could You Be Loved?, Natty Dread, Africa Unite,
Roots Rock Reggae, Get Up Stand Up.
83

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but - Bob

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