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Every
Little Thing Gonna Be Alright: The Bob Marley Reader
Edited by Hank Bordowitz (De Capo, 2004)
Bob Marley books, like Bob Marley albums, are a
dime a dozen these days. It's
certainly a testament to the level at which he touched people that they keep
finding more and more details to discuss. Or,
in some cases, more and more ways to rehash the same details.
Every Little Thing stands out as a unique approach to the Marley
mythos, however. As the title
states, it’s a "reader," a collection of documents -- mostly magazine and
newspaper articles, but also excerpts from books, interviews, press releases,
and even a Bob Marley comic book -- from the past 25-plus years that have
explored Marley's life and legacy. The
older pieces that were written in Marley's lifetime are particularly
intriguing in today's 20/20 hindsight. The
naive (not to mention condescending) viewpoint of Lester Bangs in the 1976
article "Innocents in Babylon" is glaring in his comment that "the
music-biz situation depicted in [The Harder They Come] has been rendered
a thing of the past, principally by the founder-president of Island Records,
Chris Blackwell."
Also, it's
interesting to note the description of Marley's music in Patrick Carr's 1975
article "Bob Marley Is the Jagger of Reggae" (itself a funny comparison) as
"good-time boogie music, like if Jefferson Airplane suddenly found fresh
brains and started to dig their own potatoes."
Whether your viewpoint is nostalgic, dismissive, or even scholarly, though, reading the older documents in Every Little
Thing is like discovering a time capsule: a bit dated, occasionally
perplexing, often fascinating. The
information in the book is organized clearly, with the first five chapters
covering Marley's life in chronological order and the later chapters
reflecting on Marley's legacy -- including his family and the maze of legal
difficulties involved with his estate. Other
intriguing topics touched upon include: Rita Marley’s views on her husband and
his well-documented extramarital affairs (in articles that led to her recent
book No Woman No Cry), conspiracy theories behind Marley's passing, the
chaotic behind-the-scenes story of his performance for Zimbabwe's
independence, and the viewpoints of Peter Tosh and
Bunny Wailer, not to mention
various viewpoints on the origins of reggae and Rastafarianism and the state of
the music. Not "every little
thing" in Every Little Thing is wholly insightful or intriguing, but as
a package, it's a unique and informative testament to the power of Bob Marley,
even two decades after his death.
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