06/02/2025
Celebrating the 80th birthday of the Gong!
INTERVIEWER: Do you own land, plant any crops?
BOB MARLEY: Yes, me is a planter by heart! Me grow up in it, y’know. That’s the first thing me ever do—farming. Me grow up inna it, and is it me really love. And me love it more still now. But the farming I used to do, it was slave farming with the machete and a hoe. Or we’d dig it by hand. We didn’t have dem t’ing dat you drive and plow it up.
INTERVIEWER: When did you start taking music seriously?
BOB MARLEY: Me sing in school and all that and love singing but when me really tek it seriously is when I go to learn a trade name welding. Desmond Dekker used to learn trade same place we used to sing and things and him write songs. Before that me did try record with Beverleys . . . me go down there and meet Jimmy Cliff and him get me audition and me record a song for Beverleys. It never really do nothing but it was a good little song still, name “Judge Not.”
So me go on cool and me meet up a bredda name Joe Higgs. Me and him start go round together and a brother name Seeco. Then we used to sing in the back of Trench Town and rehearse plenty until the Drifters come on ’pon the scene, and me love group singing so me just say, ‘well me ’ave fe go look a group.’
INTERVIEWER: Has music always been a part of your life from when you were a little boy?
BOB MARLEY: Yeah you know, grow up in a musical
family. Grandfather, mother, uncle, sister, pickney . . . everything.
INTERVIEWER: What part of Jamaica?
BOB MARLEY: St. Ann, ya know. It’s in the country. A town called Rhoden Hall. It’s not well known. Like a place up in the east, you know.
— Excerpt from ‘Bob Marley: Portrait of the Legend’.
