Bob Marley - Interview With Neville Willoughby in 1973 https://bobmarley-fan.

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Bob Marley - Interview With Neville

Bob Marley Fan

Interview of Bob Marley by Neville Willoughby in 1973

This interview was recorded in December 1973 in Bullbay,Jamaica by Neville

Transcription

Interviewer: Bob, first of all, you just came from a tour. Where were you?

Bob Marley: In England, you know. Was in America first and then after America,
we went to England.

Interviewer: The tour in America I hear was Sly and the Family Stone. What was it
like working with them?

Bob Marley: Great, you know. Yes we are on this tour with Sly and did some shows
with him until after a while we never finished about 3 of the shows because we added
some dates on ours.

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.

Bob Marley: So that’s how it really went with that.

Interviewer: Listen, now the time has come when you are going on tours with
people like Sly and the Family Stone. I mean these are people that we hear about in
Jamaica and when you hear the name you know they are big stars. When you perform
on the same bill with persons like that do you feel any different from when you
perform in Jamaica on your own?

Bob Marley: Well right now the difference in feelings…right now I don’t feel any
difference. I just want to play good music and play good music. So I don’t care where

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the music is playing because it is not the people that we are playing; we are playing
music. You know?

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.

Bob Marley: So we just love to play good music.

Interviewer: But Bob have you at all made any changes in the way you play your
music when you go to America or you just paly it the same way that you play it here?

Bob Marley: Well, to tell you the truth, the music that I play or the music that I
would like to play is a music that plays in Jamaica but it never really got the full
understanding or the music that I’m going to play…..Because the next… from now on
it’s my music that we’re going to play now.

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. Of course this business about you being popular in
England nowadays. You just told me you’re on the cover of which magazine? What
magazine in England this week; one of the music magazines?

Bob Marley: I hear it is Melody Maker.

Interviewer: Alright. So you’re on the cover of Melody Maker in Britain. That must
mean that they think a great deal of you. Critics write about your records and all that
sort of thing. Do you think this is the point that you want it to reach or what exactly is
the point that you want to get to in music?

Bob Marley: Well the point is the fulfillment of revelation. And I know that it is my
work to go out into Babylon to really do what I do. But I find myself doing it and I
can’t stop it because a greater power that the power that I know of myself. Let me do
it and then I find no harm coming to me so I do it. But the real thing is that His
Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I is earth’s rightful ruler and I am a citizen of the
earth and Zion is Ethiopia. Well, I don’t know if it is my work to go out into Babylon
and really get the youths together but I find myself in a form where if I
have understanding or overstanding I can see it really is doing something towards
something, you know. And it’s revelation now.

Interviewer: Now Bob, can we talk a little bit about you and how you started out in
this singing business? I know you started very young. How did you start?

Bob Marley: Started out crying.

Interviewer: Right from the start?

Bob Marley: Started out crying, you know. And then music becomes a part or music
is a part or was a part. But to tell you how it really started it’s really a thing that I am

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going to have to think about how it really started because I can’t be ungrateful to Jah.
Because today we start yet it was yesterday. So from the beginning, Jah was creating
it in the starting for the man to start.

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.

Bob Marley: You know what I mean? So I really have to think about from creation
then.

Interviewer: Alright. So let’s get it down to this sort of terms now. When did you
first go in a studio or somebody got you in a studio or you went on a stage show or
something; perform in public?

Bob Marley: Oh, about 1960. 1959 or 1960.

Interviewer: Yeah. What is that? You went into a kitchen to record?

Bob Marley: No.

Interviewer: You went on a stage show?

Bob Marley: Kestin, yes. Kestin. They used to have a little thing down by Queens. So
one night I went in there to sing a tune and I won a pound. And the men told me to
start singing.

Interviewer: Right away?

Bob Marley: Yeah because in those times they used to be down Darling Street and
Salt Lane and Back- a- Wall and those places among some brethren who know the
right but get brutalized by just saying right things, you know what I mean?

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know Bob it seems to me you always seem to
come back to the situation when you talk that you’re always aware of the suffering. It
seems to me that you keep coming back to it all the time. Would you say that you’re a
bitter person or angry or you know?

Bob Marley: Well, I see the earth today in evil, and when I look at the earth I know
that people are living off false pretense, the majority of them and I know that I don’t
have to suffer the way that we are suffering. Not because of material things but in
some ways material things become an object that makes us have to suffer. And
because of the people and the teaching that they got and they want to come and teach
us the same teaching- the old wine that they got and we are showing them the truth
today. So they fight against the truth because they say, “Well then because of this self-
pride and respect.” Because you’re older than me I shouldn’t come and tell you
something that you should have known a long, long time ago. So you use this false

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pride and fight me down because when I tell you about Rastafari because of your long
experience that you’ve had from time ago about the teaching that you got, you can’t
see new…This is not even a new wine; this is creation, you know? But you can’t see
something that they don’t teach you; you only have to see what they teach you.

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bob Marley: So it’s not angry and all of that but it’s just truth and it has to burst out
of a man like a river

Interviewer: Right, right. And you way to burst it out is in your music? That’s the
way it comes out. That’s your expression?

Bob Marley: Well, well, yes. That’s how we talk.

Interviewer: Alright, listen now. You talk about material things, right? But Bob
quite frankly I don’t think you would fairly say that right now you are a sufferer in the
sense of money.

Bob Marley: Well, if you check what money is then money doesn’t make you suffer
and money doesn’t make you not suffer. Hey, everything really rest in your mind.
Because dig this. I am a farmer, you know and I do live with money. They could never
give me a penny and I have to live. But again I can play music and I am not afraid of
the earth. So I play music and if money should come out of music let money come out
of music; it is not that my heart is really opened wide and bleeding blood to get
money.

Interviewer: Yeah, right.

Bob Marley: Because the thing is Selassie I is the king of kings on earth. Now which
guy on earth rich like the king of kings? So my father is the richest man on earth so I
am a rich, rich man. But I and I mind let I and I suffer here because it’s not material
things that make you suffer because Jah said he never give a man more than he can
bear. That means even is a man told me that he never drank and tea and the other day
he never drank any tea because I know if the man wanted to drink tea he could have
drank tea. So it’s the mind that the thing are in.

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s fantastic- you know? A lot of people listen to
popular music, right? They listen to records and if they’re not….Some people listen to
it and all they hear is the rhythm; something for them to dance to. But it seems to me
that you put a lot into your lyrics. Does it bother you that Jamaica’s people don’t hear
your lyrics as well as they should? Or you think that they understand them and your
message is getting across?

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Bob Marley: Well, I say, “Many shall be called and only few are chosen” right? And
then the people have to listen for the trumpet which is not any trumpet that is going
to be blown. It’s men that are going to talk that His Imperial Majesty is earth’s
rightful ruler

Interviewer: Now, Bob, a lot of recording artistes have come on the show and a lot
of them have talked in very bad terms about record producers in Jamaica and about
the record industry in Jamaica, generally. Now you have been in it for a couple years
well now. What is your opinion of the situation now?

Bob Marley: In Jamaica and the recording scene in Jamaica?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Bob Marley: Well I think we’re having a nice revolution because plenty of youths
doing recordings that didn’t know that they were going to do recordings. You know
what I mean? So right now I love what is going on. Truly.

Interviewer: But when you first started out, did you have any bad experiences with
record producers?

Bob Marley: Well, yes but that is what causes the revolution today. Because they
treated us so badly in those times the word spread around that the producer is
treating us badly that means that all artistes start doing things for themselves. And
men are doing things for little sufferers and getting it together down in the ghetto.
And the guys that have their big studio and draw off that they are middle class and
this and we can only come in their studio and talk to them and do a tune and get a 20
pounds. All of those things get a beating and it’s only opportunists going through
those tribulation right now. Because it’s tribulations on both sides. For the youth
when he is coming and for the man when he gets old.

Interviewer: But listen did you- when you were coming along in the business and
you’re having some bad experiences- did you feel at any time that you had had
enough? That you would like to get out of this business or is it something that you
cannot get out of?

Bob Marley: Yeah man. One time…Well alright, getting out of the business is a
different thing. But one time I felt like I should take up my arms, you know, and do a
thing but Jah said, ‘No, youth. Cool.” Because that’s how earth rests. I am glad that’s
how it worked out for men. They go on with too much wickedness out there.

Interviewer: Tell me, now let’s go to this business of your religion. You’re a
Rastafarian. How long have you been a Rastafarian?

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Bob Marley: How long have I been Rastafarian? I am a Rasta man. I stand Rasta.
To say how long is like again you have to say from creation, you know what I mean? If
you can overstand it that way. Because you would like me to say 10 years or 15 years
but it’s not really that way. It’s from creation.

Interviewer: But you know a lot of people in Jamaica they hear about Rasta, they
see Rasta but there are a lot of things about it that they do not understand. Could you
explain to people exactly what it means- being Rastafarian?

Bob Marley: I would say to the people, man, “Be still and know that his Imperial
Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia is the almighty.” Now anyone who has
anything to say come up and say it loud and let me hear what they have to say. Now
the Bible says so; Babylon newspaper says so and I and I the children say so. You
know?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Bob Marley: So I don’t see what kind of more revealed our people want God to be
revealed to them. What do they want? Do they want a white god? Well, God comes
black.

Interviewer: Well, listen Bob…

Bob Marley: True, true.

Interviewer: Yeah, but listen, a lot of people have a feeling that a lot of guys who
claim to be Rastas are really as on song says ‘rascals’.

Bob Marley: Many shall be called but only few chosen, you know. And there shall be
sheep and wolf in sheep clothing. But I and I couldn’t watch that this day because I
and I have to live Rasta and know Rasta. I don’t come to judge a man. Jah says,
“Leave all judgement to him”. So all the people that see a man out there and say, “Oh,
he is going on as if he is a Rasta!” Who are they to say why he is going on like that
when God says leave all judgement unto him?

Interviewer: What do you think about all this crime and violence going on though
as a Rasta?

Bob Marley: Well what I-man think of all the crime and violence going on is that it’s
loss that cause crime and violence. Well I don’t really…. earth is coming to how
creation was and how earth if to rest. It’s a mind thing. Now all the laws that we abide
by and blah blah, bum bum bum that cause us to suffer as any man can know that.
Those laws that they have are not a must. You know what I mean?

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