Anyone in Jamaican music industry heard the side talks and stories about how Chris Blackwell came to be one of the most important music executives in reggae. Public sentiments about Blackwell include both aggrandizement and disdain. He is an over achiever who in some people’s eyes posed a threat to the legendary group Bob Marley and The Wailers both during their lifetime and in their death.
Rastafarian attorney-at-law Miguel Lorne outrightly blamed former Island Records founder for ‘mashing up’ The Wailers at a Symposium at the University of The West Indies.
Lorne also said that “because of Bob’s Caucasian father, Blackwell found it more easier to package and promote Bob to an European market.”
“Blackwell helped to break-up the group… on the basis that Blackwell felt that he could market Bob Marley to the world. But when he said the world, he really meant the white world,” he continued.
Lorne had said that when he asked Tosh why was he so bitter against Marley, the Mama Africa singer told him that Marley should not have agreed to the deal with Blackwell — whom Lorne claims Tosh referred to as “Whitewell”.
Former music publicist and Attorney-at-law Maxine Stowe has also said that the late Bunny Wailer was done wrong by Blackwell and that there is still unsettled business . “His (Bunny’s) issue with Blackwell was how he took Bob Marley and the Wailers name, the title, and redid the works of the Wailers and removed their image and just put Bob’s image. They were sidelined in their visibility… because the industry now is what is your brand, and even your earnings are depleted because people don’t know if this is you, Bob Marley and the Wailers…,” Stowe told Anthony Miller in an interview on Jamaica’s Entertainment Report.
“FROM THE MOMENT that Bob and I set to work remixing Catch a Fire in London, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer felt threatened. To them, it seemed it was now me and Bob. They were so protective of the three of them, which was understandable. It had always been their thing. They had fought hard to keep their band going when so much conspired against them, and then here, all of a sudden, was this white guy deciding for them that they needed to move in a different direction.”
The Bunny and Bob’s relationship predated the forming of the group. Both of their parents Thaddeus Livingston, Bunny’s father and Cedella Booker, Marley’s mother, had an intimate relationship. They were raised in the same home in West Kingston where they met the third member of the Wailers, Peter Tosh as part of a recruitment drive to form a band.
Livingston said, “..in 1961 there was a recruitment of the Wailers from the community of Trench Town”. He expressed in a 2011 YouTube interview that it was a challenge to find the final members for the group because there were many talented candidates from the community.
With their bond in mind Blackwell said he knew they had the potential to reach a bigger audience but it was Bob who was most curious and interested, though skeptical at first.
“Even Bob didn’t initially understand my line of thinking until I took him to a show in America… Appealing to this audience wasn’t a betrayal of your integrity.”
“Bunny, a fundamentalist Rasta, started getting anxious about the kinds of venues we wanted the Wailers to play, the rock clubs and colleges. He was unsure about the types of people who went to those clubs, their diversity. To him they were full of freaks, which freaked him out. He also never got used to the cold in Britain and the difficulty getting the vegetarian ital food. Whereas Bob took to exploring possibilities outside Jamaica with relish, sensing exciting ways he could maintain his Rasta beliefs while expanding his horizons, Peter and Bunny were uncomfortable.”
He said that was the driving force behind the Wailer split besides the fact that Bob had more charm than the rest of the group.
“Soon enough, the Wailers became known as Bob Marley and the Wailers, not least because, although Tosh and Bunny were formidable talents and had great rebel presence, Bob had by far the most charisma and the most songs. He was clearly the leader — and, in a wider sense, transcending music, a leader. He was always hungry for experience and loved traveling and seeing other parts of the world.”
“Peter Tosh didn’t like me. He suggested I favored Bob because Bob was half-white, with an English-born father. Behind my back, he referred to me as “Whitewell” and “Whiteworst.” All I can say is that his suspicions were misguided, as were those who accused me of exploiting Bob to make money. I never paid a Jamaican act a penny less in royalties than an English act. I was helpless without the artists. I wasn’t a singer or a writer; it made no sense to rip them off. I put my all into getting Bob’s music, and Jamaica’s music, into the mainstream.”
Blackwell was instrumental in developing Bob Marley’s career while he was alive but even in death he helped the Marley family retain the family legacy by lending them the money to buy his musical rights. So confirms Rohan Marley.
Rohan Marley was a guest on the I am Athlete podcast, where he revealed that the Marley family had struggled to secure a successful legacy for their father.
“When my father passed away he didn’t have a will, so the government in Jamaica wanted to sell all his rights, so it was my sister Cedella and Mama Rita and she was the one to fight for it…we had no money, everything was frozen, my dad wasn’t making any money..All we had was our father’s rights, his likeness and his music and we did not sell that,” he reasoned.
He recalled a time when Michael Jackson had the opportunity to help the family out of their struggles and instead Michael offered to buy the rights to Bob Marley’s Catalogue.
“We went to Michael( Jackson), and say ‘hey Micheal, could you help us?’ We need some money, we don’t have no money and they trying to take ours, Michael say ‘no, I’ll buy it’. MCA (also) wanted to buy it.” He said.
“Chris Blackwell(Founder Of Island Records), the guy everybody don’t like, he loaned us(the family) the money,” Rohan said gleefully.
“We were able to buy our father’s rights because when they sold it they gave the children first rights of refusal…We had (to raise the) money at the time to buy the publishing rights, name and likeness,” the Marley Coffee Owner said.
“Thats why today it’s us”, he concluded on the subject.
