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Marley Bob 1945 - 1981 (36)

Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.


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Bob Marley (1945-1980) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, guitarist and activist, the best-known artist of reggae music. He was born on February 6, 1945 in the village of Nine Miles, his father was a 50 year old white man from Liverpool who met his 19 years old mother on a trip. The father did not live with them but helped them financially. When he died in 1955, due to a lack of financial resources, mother and son were forced to move to the Trenttown shanty town of Kingston where life was very hard; Bob as a petite and petite faced daily attacks. At 14 he left school and became a welder's assistant so that they could live while in his free hours, he played music. In 1962 he recorded his first two songs and formed a band called the Wailers. They did not have success, so in 1963 and as he was married and in need of money he was forced to move to his mother-in-law's house in Delaware, USA and work as a laborer in the DuPont chemical industry and lager at the Chrysler automobile industry. He stayed 4 years there and in 1967 he returned to the island determined to become a professional musician. He joined the Wailers and from 1968 to 1972 they re-recorded some of their old tracks and created new ones with a more commercial sound. During this period, Bob became a member of the Rastafari movement, with a philosophy of life in which biblical prophecies, the need to live close to nature, the nostalgia of returning to Africa, the worship of marijuana coexisted. At that time he adopted the characteristic pigtails that later became a global fashion.



In 1972 their first album was released, in 1973 some of their songs such as "Get Up, Stand Up" and "I shot the Sheriff" were covered by Eric Clapton and that's how the Wailers became known, who due to disagreements disbanded in 1974 .Marley kept the name and performed as "Bob Marley and the Wailers" with various musicians and the female trio "Three" on vocals. In 1975 he has his first worldwide success with the song "No woman no cry". In 1976 he returns to Jamaica and makes an effort to help defuse the political crisis, he finally finds himself in danger as an assassination attempt is made against him and he hastily leaves for London. In 1978 he returned to Jamaica and organized a concert of political reconciliation called: “One Love Peace Concert.

Marley from July 1977 had a pain in the big toe of the right foot, cancer was diagnosed and amputation of the toe was recommended. He refused because his Rastafari beliefs forbade it, he wanted to ignore the cancer but the cancer spread to many vital organs at a rapid rate. On September 23, 1980, he gave his last concert in Pittsburgh. After the concert he called a famous German doctor who diagnosed that the cancer was in the last stage and he couldn't do anything. He died on May 11, 1981 in a Miami hospital. Bob Marley fathered 11 children, three with his wife Rita and the rest with eight with different women. His last words to his son Ziggy were: "Money can't buy life".