Bob Marley was a powerful figure in both music and politics. His musical teachings preached peace and an end to senseless violence in Jamaica.
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Because of his outspokenness, he found himself in the middle of a battle between the democratic socialist People’s National Party (PNP) and the conservative Jamaican Labour Party (JLP). He sided with the democratic socialist party, at least in sentiment. His affiliations nearly cost him his life back in 1976.
Marley was tapped by the Prime Minister, Michael Manley, to perform at a free concert dubbed The Smile Jamaica Concert on December 5 of that year. Ironically, the concert was organized in an effort to defuse political tensions. Despite those intentions, Marley found himself on the bad end of a shooting outside his house.
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Marley, his wife Rita Marley, his manager Don Taylor, and band employee Louis Griffiths were shot by seven gunmen. Remarkably, they all walked away with their lives. Marley was left with a bullet lodged in his arm. Rita was grazed in the head by a bullet but was relatively unharmed. Taylor was shot five different times and managed to live to tell the tale.
“At the moment when the gunmen broke in, we were rehearsing ‘I Shot The Sheriff’,” keyboardist Tyrone Downie once explained. “Bob had stepped out, ’cause the horns weren’t on that record and the horn players wanted to play on it…He came out of the rehearsal room and went into the kitchen to get a grapefruit or something.
“And all of a sudden you see a hand come through the door like, around the door, and start firing this .38,” he continued.
Despite the assassination attempt, Marley kept his promise to the prime minister and performed at the Smile Jamaica Concert. Marley still had the bullet in his arm while playing to the crowd. It was a strong show of resilience from an inimitable social force. Ultimately, the brush with death caused Marley to go in a different direction creatively.
“After the shooting, me never want to just think about shooting,” Marley once explained. “So me just ease up me mind and go in a different bag. What me stand for me always stand for. Jah [God] is my strength.”
(Photo by Andrew Putler/Redferns)
