Beyond One Love: Buyer’s Guide to Bob Marley

One of the biggest film success stories of 2024 has been the biopic Bob Marley: One Love, an engaging look at the global superstar who did more than any other musician to bring reggae to the masses. Unsurprisingly, the best part of the movie is its music, from depictions of studio recordings to live performances. Marley’s songs run the gamut from passionate political anthems to gentle love songs. Even at their most intense, the rhythms are irresistible. I was lucky enough to see him twice, in Philadelphia in 1977 and at DU in 1979. In-person Marley was highly charismatic and his shows were powerful and unforgettable.

For the uninitiated, a quick recap of the man and The Wailers, his backing band: Marley’s parents were a 64-year-old British Army Private and an 18-year-old Jamaican native. His father was largely absentee and died when his son was only 10. Marley met Neville Livingstone, later known as Bunny Wailer, in middle school; the pair became stepbrothers when Marley’s mother and Livingstone’s father had a daughter together. Soon after they recruited Peter Tosh and began the Impressions-influenced vocal group The Teenagers that morphed into The Wailing Rudeboys and then The Wailing Wailers, the moniker used on their first album, a compilation of singles. It wasn’t until later in the sixties that the trio learned musical instruments. As documented in The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond, Chris Blackwell’s excellent autobiography, the earliest ska, reggae and rock steady singles were sold from car trunks. The founder of Island Records, Blackwell got his start scouring Jamaica for 45s which he would sell to DJs to use at parties. Blackwell and his competitors famously scratched the names of the artists off each single in an effort to maintain proprietorship over the music they were peddling. 

If you enjoyed the movie and are ready to broaden your exposure to the reggae legend, here is a guide to how to pick and choose from his discography, in order:

Legend (1984)

It pains me to put a greatest hits collection at the top of the list, but Legend is one of the best-selling albums of all-time and has been in the Top 200 charts for decades. It is a great introduction to his music, although the track selection is deliberately softened up for mass consumption. It overly relies on Exodus (five of its twelve tracks come from that one LP) and crucially skips all of his pre-1973 non-Island Records material, but it cherry-picks effectively from his last albums. If you’re going buy one Bob Marley album–and he deserves much more of your musical attention–there’s a reason Legend has sold 23 million copies in the 40 years since its release.

Exodus (1977)

Marley’s ninth studio effort is his most popular and biggest seller outside of Legend, and deservedly so. It perfectly builds a bridge from his earlier political material to a more commercial focus. Where the former is concerned, “Natural Mystic” opens with a slow build to a lament that “many more will have to suffer,” while the title track embraces Rastafarian deity Haile Selassie’s belief that people of African ancestry should return to their home continent, a belief he shared with Malcolm X. At the other extreme are the perfect pop confections “Three Little Birds” and the radio-friendly “Jamming.” It’s no surprise that in 1999 Time Magazine crowned Exodus the best album of the 20th century; it is an essential part of any collection and the best way to start a serious Marley library.

Catch a Fire (1973)

The Wailers’ first real attempt to find fans in the UK and USA had an interesting birth: Chris Blackwell was intrigued enough to bankroll its recording, but he found the result too edgy for rock-oriented seventies audiences. Enter guitarist Wayne Perkins from The Swampers, the legendary backing band from Muscle Shoals, who had literally no experience with reggae. Perkins dubbed in the guitar parts that jump out on album opener “Concrete Jungle,” the oft-covered classic “Stir It Up” and “(Baby Baby) We’ve Got a Date.” The resulting mix put Marley and the Wailers on the map and paved the way for greater success. Later expanded editions of Catch a Fire include both the original Jamaican version and the Perkins-enhanced edition that most fans are familiar with.

Live! (1976)

Recorded at the Lyceum in London in July of 1975, Live! was another big step toward finding a larger audience; “No Woman, No Cry” is still Marley’s biggest hit all these years later. The album finds Marley aggressively stepping into a leadership role after the departure of Tosh and Livingstone. The material from Natty Dread, Burnin’ and Catch a Fire packs a stronger punch in a live setting. “Trenchtown Rock” opens the record with an upbeat welcome (with the classic first line “One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain”) before “Burnin’ and Lootin’” and “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)” pull the listener into the frustration and anger of the Rasta struggle. Much live Marley material was released in the following decades, but this is still the best representation of his in-concert magnetism.

The Capitol Session ‘73 (2021)

This gem was discovered in the vaults nearly a decade after Marley’s death but still not released until three years ago. Recorded the same October 1973 week as Talkin’ Blues at a studio session at Capitol Records in Los Angeles, the real find here is a DVD of the performance only available with the CD edition. The compelling footage finds a loose Wailers rehearsing and casually working up material and includes Tosh taking lead on his excellent compositions “You Can’t Blame the Youth” and “Stop That Train.”

Burnin’ (1973)

The follow-up to his Island Records debut was the last album Marley made with Peter Tosh and Neville Livingstone; both musicians left to pursue solo careers as the spotlight increased on their bandmate. Burnin’ featured several tracks that became Wailers staples: album opener “Get Up, Stand Up,” which Marley and Tosh cowrote, is one of their most widely known protest songs, and “I Shot The Sheriff” spurred the Eric Clapton cover that became the guitarist’s biggest hit after his work with Cream. The LP also included inspired reworkings of older Wailers classics “Small Axe,” “Duppy Conqueror” and “Put It On.” The last song on the last album from the original band was the traditional Rastafarian hymnal “Rasta Man Chant.”

Songs of Freedom (1992)

One of the first large box sets released as CDs supplanted vinyl in the early nineties was this stellar career-spanning 4-CD collection. Over thirty years later, it still stands as one of the best career retrospectives of any musician ever. Re-released as the 6LP set Songs of Freedom–The Island Years in 2021, that reissue sadly omits what made the original box so special: an entire disc of his pre-Island recordings dating back to his first work in the early sixties, along with a stunning acoustic medley from 1971 that finds Marley in rare form, strumming through compositions including “Stir It Up” and “I’m Hurting Inside.” Used copies of the CD box are widely available and well worth chasing down.

Rastaman Vibration (1976)

Rastaman Vibration was the Marley release that removed all the rough edges of his sound. Backup singers The I-Threes (Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths) have a much higher profile, while “Roots, Rock, Reggae” and the title track celebrate the genre with no mention of its political underpinnings. But Marley didn’t completely abandon his themes of oppression: “Crazy Baldheads” is a searing indictment of white imperialism, “Who The Cap Fit” calls out hypocrisy inside and outside the Rasta community, and “War” takes its lyrics from a Haile Selassie speech to the UN General Assembly in 1963. The album’s highlight is Marley’s cover of his wife Rita’s “Johnny Was,” a powerful, moving story of a mother discovering her dead son in the street, the victim of a stray bullet.

Babylon by Bus (1978)

Marley’s second live album followed the one-two commercial punch of Exodus and Kaya and is his best latter-day Wailers live collection. The most popular tracks from those two studio efforts are included, along with energetic versions of earlier Wailers classics “Stir It Up,” “Kinky Reggae” and “Concrete Jungle.” The album’s real treasure is “Punky Reggae Party,” the B-side of the “Jamming” single in which Marley acknowledges the British punk scene in a song written after first hearing The Clash cover Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves.” The lyrics mention The Clash, The Jam, The Damned and Dr. Feelgood along with The Wailers and The Maytals.

Natty Dread (1974)

Marley’s first studio effort without longtime bandmates Tosh and Livingstone is a transitional effort; The I-Three’s are still finding their way into the mix, and Natty Dread sounds more like the albums that precede it than the ones that follow. The album contains two of Marley’s most beloved songs, “Lively Up Yourself” and “No Woman, No Cry,” but both tracks receive more spirited renderings on Live!, and those are the renditions most are familiar with. The album still has bite thanks to the threat of “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry),” the anger of “Rebel Music (3 O’Clock Roadblock)” and the slinky reworking of sixties Wailers classic “Bend Down Low.”

Kaya (1978)

The success of Exodus was hard to follow; Marley opted to kick back with a less aggressive sound. Kaya is still enjoyable and goes well with a sunny day, but there’s nothing threatening or angry about it. It’s the first album where his reggae rhythms have been buffed to an polished sheen in order to appease anyone who found Exodus too political. It’s as if Marley tried to make an entire album that sounded like “Three Little Birds.” “Is This Love?” is certainly one of his most beautiful love songs, and “Easy Skanking,” “Kaya” and “Satisfy My Soul” go down easy, but the complete lack of sharp edges is disappointing. Kaya contains a fraction of the spirit Marley had when he was partnering with Tosh and Livingstone. 

Talkin’ Blues (1991)

In October of 1973 the Wailers were booked as openers on a Sly and the Family Stone tour. The group was fired after four dates, reportedly for blowing the headliner off the stage. Whatever the reason, the band found themselves stranded on the West Coast with time to kill. As a result they played a previously-unscheduled session at the famed Record Plant in Sausalito. Talkin’ Blues includes tracks from that day alongside a couple of alternate cuts and excerpts from a Marley interview. It’s a great, rare opportunity to hear the group at the peak of their power when Marley still shared the spotlight with Tosh and Livingstone; the only reason it’s below The Capitol Session ‘73 (recorded the same week) is its lack of accompanying video footage.

WANT A DEEPER DIVE?

The island rhythms of the early and mid-sixties were deeply influenced by The Impressions, a late fifties American R&B act led by Jerry Butler and Curtis Mayfield, later of solo and Superfly fame. The unique vocal harmonies of the band made a huge impression on Jamaica musicians and inform the earliest ska, rock steady and reggae. Bob Marley’s first recordings start from that evolutionary point and gradually move toward the reggae beat. In addition to the aforementioned first disc on the Songs of Freedom box, there are three earlier records that find Marley developing his sound. 

1965’s The Wailing Wailers is a collection of his earliest Studio One singles produced by Clement Dodd; the depiction of the “Simmer Down” Studio One session is one of the highlights of One Love. Soul Rebels from 1970 was the first Wailers album to be released outside Jamaica and features the group under the stewardship of famed producer Lee “Scratch” Perry. 1971’s Soul Revolution Part II, which was re-released and expanded under the title African Herbsman in 1973, also features Perry at the controls, and is Marley’s last LP before he connected with Chris Blackwell at Island Records. All three LPs are essential for more passionate fans of the genre and feature many classics that Marley reworked on later efforts.