ELEVEN interesting facts about Bob Marley

Today marks 35 years  since the death of one of the world’s most iconic figures Robert Nesta Marley.

There is a it that is known about him and today we decided to share  a few facts that might not be that mainstream:

1. He was first called Nesta Robert Marley but it was switched around when he was a little boy because an immigration official felt Nesta was not masculine enough.
2. At age four Bob Marley was believed to have been a palm-reader spooking people out by predicting  their future.
3. He worked in Delaware in the US at the DuPont and Chrysler plants under the alias “Donald Marley.”
4. The first song he cut at 16 was called Judge Not which the record label credited him as Bob Morley. He spent all his money playing it on a jukebox at a store that the owner of the store took the record out, removed him from the premises and told him to never return.
5. Producer Coxsone Dodd made them practise in small gigs for 2 years as well as at 2am in the morning at the graveyard for ‘de duppy dem’ (duppy is Jamaican patois for evil spirits). The latter he believed would toughen them up and make sure they never feared the stage. That is the inspiration behind the song Duppy Conqueror.
6. According to the Marley documentary the track Small Axe  was a reggae diss track. At the time it was released Dodd and Duke Reid’s Studio One represented one of the ‘big tree’ (Big Three record labels along with ) dominated the music industry in Jamaica. Marley and Wailers were then forming a record label of their own and fighting the system.
7. The song Cornerstone was written after he was rejected by the family of his white father, Captain Norval Marley of Britain’s Royal Marines. In a powerful scene from the movie Marley, his relatives listen to the song and reflect on the fact that despite his being rejected he is the reason the Marley name is known.
8. On Sly and the Family Stone’s 17-city tour, Bob Marley and the Wailers were fired by Sylvester Stone for being too good and hogging all the limelight.
9. Marley drove a BMW for a long time which as far as he was concerned meant Bob Marley and the Wailers.
10. Marley died of cancer in 1981 in Miami, Florida. His body was flown back home to Jamaica where he was buried with a soccer ball, his Gibson Les Paul guitar, and a bud of marijuana.
11. Marley’s last words to his son Ziggy were Money Can’t Buy Life.

35 years later he still stands an icon of world music.

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