Bob marley who is

More tests revealed malignant melanoma. He refused to have his toe amputated as his doctors recommended, claiming it contradicted his Rastafarian beliefs. Others, however, claim that the main reason behind his refusal was the possible negative impact on his dancing skills.

The cancer was kept secret from the general public while Bob continued working. Returning to Jamaica in , he continued work and released "Survival" in which was followed by a successful European tour. In he was the only foreign artist to participated in the independence ceremony of Zimbabwe. It was a time of great success for Marley, and he started an American tour to reach blacks in the US.

The cancer diagnosed earlier had spread to his brain, lungs and stomach. Bob Marley died in a Miami hospital on May 11, He was 36 years old. Sign In. Edit Bob Marley. Showing all 57 items. Started every performance by proclaiming the divinity of Jah Rastafari. He was also an official guest at Zimbabwe's independence celebration two years later, an honor Marley was quoted as saying was the highest he'd ever received.

He also had seven illegitimate children Rohan b. Survived an assassination attempt, receiving minor injuries in the chest and arm December His albums are in the process of digital remastering and are being re-released with additional material such as alternate versions and unused demos. His posthumously released anthology collection "Legend" is one of the highest selling "greatest hits" recordings by a solo artist. He is buried in a crypt at Nine Miles, near his birthplace, with his Gibson Les Paul Guitar, a soccer ball, a cannabis bud, and a Bible.

Born to Norval Sinclair Marley , a Jamaican Marine officer and captain of Welsh descent, who later became a plantation overseer, and his wife Cedella Marley. His song "One Love" has been used extensively for Jamaican tourism commercials.

His album 'Exodus' was chosen by Time magazine as the greatest album of the 20th century. Was arrested in England for possession of a joint of a marijuana.

Considered by many to be the first superstar from the Third World. His song 'Rasta Man Chant' is a traditional Rastafarian chant, known to every adherent of the faith. Following the attempt on his life, he left Jamaica and lived in England between and They had a son together, Damian Marley. He took Marley and the Wailers under his wing, bringing them on as an opening act during an English tour in late But Nash left them stranded there.

Unhappy with the direction of their careers, they sought out Chris Blackwell, the owner of Island Records. Blackwell, who was raised in Jamaica, had started his label as a way of exporting the popular music he had grown up with. He gave the band money to return to Jamaica and to record its next album.

There are a few reasons that oral history has become the preferred format for revisiting the recent past. Steffens generally resists hagiography. In one particularly engrossing section, Steffens confronts Carl Colby, a documentary filmmaker who had surprisingly unfettered access to Marley in the mid-seventies.

Colby, whose father was the C. Colby denies the allegations. Steffens is largely here to direct traffic.

But his authority derives from exhausting every possibility. Where Marley became a symbol of peace and unity for a troubled nation, Tosh remained combative and politically militant. After the gunmen shot up his home, Marley moved to England in a kind of self-imposed exile.

He returned to Jamaica two years later, to headline the One Love concert, which was an attempt to bring the country together while a bloody political war raged in the streets.

It was a powerful image. But for Tosh, who had been onstage hours earlier and blasted both parties, what Jamaicans needed was not peace but justice. He lived down the road from the Prime Minister. He had brought Rastafari, long seen as an outlaw cult, into the mainstream. And he gave freely to those in need. Yet Marley was troubled by the demographics of his growing number of disciples. In September, , he arrived in New York.

He was scheduled to open for the Commodores at Madison Square Garden—a strange booking, given that Marley himself was world famous. His failure to dent the black-radio market in America had been one of the lingering frustrations of his career. Part of this failure had been by design. In the seventies, Blackwell marketed Marley to white, college-educated rock fans and maturing hippies, who were drawn to reggae as earthy and authentic.

He was met at the Kingston Airport by a crowd of , According to some accounts, he adopted the religion soon after his return to Jamaica, as early as or In turn, his faith would help Marley find new depths in his music. T he timing could not have been better.

In and , as Marley and the Wailers began recording again, the Jamaican music scene was undergoing another critical change. Ska had slowed its beat — life in Kingston was growing grimmer, and there was less interest in dancing to exuberant music. By , though, ska and rock steady had given way altogether to a sound that was fluid and resilient enough to incorporate both faster and slower rhythms.

This new style was called reggae, for its ragged cadence, and its lilting and mesmeric quality seemed especially suited for new dimensions of storytelling and social commentary.

Most important, reggae was allowing room for other previously precluded voices. Marley took to reggae. It gave him new vision and ambition: He wanted to make music that would satisfy and represent his homeland but that would also reach a larger world outside. The resulting work, Catch a Fire , was a landmark: It was the first wholly formed, cohesive reggae album, and it immediately cast Marley into the artistic big leagues for many critics. The record, however, sold marginally.

In short, Bob Marley became a considerable and widely recognized force, and numerous other artists during the s — from Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder to Elvis Costello and the Police — would reflect his influence by following through on some of the possibilities that his music was creating. The conservative JLP was more ruthless. By , Bob Marley was recognized by both parties as a force to contend with. He had been friendly with Manley over the years, though as new elections approached in December, Marley professed neutrality about the race.

Politicians, he said, were of the devil. Each party, though, believed it could be helped or hurt by Marley. As the election neared, violence was out of control; Kingston had become so tense that people were staying home from work and off the streets.

But while he professed no favorite in the race, there was a widespread perception that Marley wanted to see Manley become the next prime minister.

According to various accounts, Marley received several threats as the concert approached — including a supposed warning from the CIA. Some people close to Marley left the city — even the country. At about P. A short time later, two small white cars pulled in the driveway and several men with rifles scrambled out. Some of them surrounded the property while others headed for the house and opened fire. When the gunfire was over, something like eighty-three bullets had been expended.

At the end of his set, Marley lifted his shirt and displayed his wounds. He struck a mock pose, as if he were a pistol-bearing badman, tossed his head back and laughed — and then he was gone.

He left the island for a long time, heartsick that fellow countrymen had taken up guns against him, and in some ways Jamaica was never again his home. For a time, nobody knew where he was; he would never say. He later spent time visiting American relatives in Delaware and Miami and then traveled to England, where Lee Perry introduced him to British punk bands, most notably the Clash.

In early , he would return to play another show intended to keep Kingston from exploding into war. On April 22nd, at the One Love Peace Concert, Marley managed to coax both Michael Manley and Edward Seaga onstage with him and held their hands together with his in a gesture of coexistence. Both men looked horribly uncomfortable. Nothing much, though, changed in Jamaica. Manley had won the election, while political violence still roared from time to time, hurting some, killing others, frightening everybody.

Meantime, the poor were kept in hell, the gates closed tight. There were rumors that the JLP may have had a hand in it, and several journalists and documentary filmmakers have put forth intriguing arguments about possible CIA involvement, supported in part by a former agent at the time.

The police never named any suspects; the case went nowhere. There was never any justice reached in the matter — at least never any official justice. B ob Marley later said he believed that Haile Selassie had protected him that night. Selassie was now dead — he had been driven from his throne during a rebellion and died in August , while confined to his palace. Selassie had shielded him, Marley believed, because Marley still had work to do, and it would be God alone, and never man, who would take him from the world.

Even so, Marley would have to work steadily. There was, to be sure, something urgent and possessed about Marley in his last few years. There was also, in all this, a reckless mix of bravado and fear. Doctors told him he would have to stay off the foot, but he ignored them. In May , while on tour in Paris, he injured his right toe again — this time it was far worse. A few months later, when he was limping painfully, he saw a doctor in London who said the damage had turned so bad that the toe could turn cancerous and should be amputated.

Marley thought the doctors were lying. Instead, he saw an orthopedic surgeon in Miami who performed a skin graft and told him the treatment had been successful. Instead, he concentrated on doing what made life most meaningful to him: making music that might improve the world that he would leave behind.

His earlier groundbreaking records featured lovely music bearing tales of unbearable realities. Rather, these were albums about sustaining hopes, small pleasures and the solace of love.