Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright: The Bob Marley Reader
One of the things that sucks when visionary artists die too young is the temptation to turn them into gods or prophets. Perhaps no artist has been as deified as much as Bob Marley. That makes sense, considering how much of his career was spent in the “natural mystic” role, preaching for Jah and living on a higher plane than most people. But it’s far more remarkable to think of him as a person.
There’s plenty of deification in this compendium of Marley articles. While these sorts of collections usually serve as lazy-man biographies, this one is useful for the glimpses it gives of the Marley’s human side-particularly the stories that were written during his lifetime.
The book’s centerpiece is Lester Bangs’ insightful “Innocents in Babylon.” The 1976 two-part Creem think piece cuts through the hype that had built up around the artist. Bangs’ skepticism of Marley’s shtick helps unravel that hype, and his transliteration of Marley’s manner of speaking is spot on. Similarly, Vivian Goldman’s 1977 story from Sounds focuses on Marley as a brilliant (if momentarily lecherous) flesh-and-blood man.
While there are some great stories here, there are also some depressing ones. Many of the posthumous works succumb to the temptation to turn Marley into a religious icon or political symbol, or to detail him as someone with little business acumen whose affairs were in tremendous disarray. None of that is anywhere near as uplifting as reading about his art. ~ By Hnak Bordowitz / Harp Magazine
There’s plenty of deification in this compendium of Marley articles. While these sorts of collections usually serve as lazy-man biographies, this one is useful for the glimpses it gives of the Marley’s human side-particularly the stories that were written during his lifetime.
The book’s centerpiece is Lester Bangs’ insightful “Innocents in Babylon.” The 1976 two-part Creem think piece cuts through the hype that had built up around the artist. Bangs’ skepticism of Marley’s shtick helps unravel that hype, and his transliteration of Marley’s manner of speaking is spot on. Similarly, Vivian Goldman’s 1977 story from Sounds focuses on Marley as a brilliant (if momentarily lecherous) flesh-and-blood man.
While there are some great stories here, there are also some depressing ones. Many of the posthumous works succumb to the temptation to turn Marley into a religious icon or political symbol, or to detail him as someone with little business acumen whose affairs were in tremendous disarray. None of that is anywhere near as uplifting as reading about his art. ~ By Hnak Bordowitz / Harp Magazine
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