A Bob Marley playlist

I first visited Jamaica in 1981 because Merrise told me it was the most beautiful place on earth, and I wanted to see for myself. The fact that I have ended up where I have will tell you all you need to know about the accuracy of her statement. But it was not just the majestic range of scenery - the mountains, beaches, waterfalls, rivers and natural springs - that alone seduced me. It was the impossible contradictions of the place as well. Anyone who walked through Trenchtown - as Merrise and I did (with considerable misgivings on her part, I might add) 26 years ago - and saw at first hand the grinding poverty of the people who lived there would have found it hard to believe that anything so spiritual and uplifting as reggae music could have been born and nurtured there. No one embodies those contradictions more nobly than Bob Marley - so this post is dedicated to him.
“You getting a three in one music. You getting a happy rhythm with a sad sound and a good vibration. It’s roots music,” said Bob about the music of the ghetto. His characterisation of the reggae aesthetic as one of multilayered possibilities goes right to the heart of explaining why, more than a quarter of a century after his death at the age of 36, his music continues to be played by millions in every part of the world. Marley has sold far more albums since he died in 1981 than he managed in his lifetime, and received an almost continuous stream of posthumous awards, including having his 1977 album Exodus voted Album of the 20th century by Time magazine.
Reviled and ridiculed while he was alive for his Rastafarian beliefs, the passing of time has only served to expand the universal appeal of his lyrical and musical genius. It’s virtually impossible to not to hear a Marley song when you visit Jamaica, so here’s the Beach House perfect playlist – which deliberately avoids any of the tracks on Legend, the posthumous collection which nearly everyone in the world owns.


1 Trenchtown Rock
From LIVE! (1977)
Recorded originally in 1971, this is one of Marley’s most powerful statements about the redemptive power of his music. “One good thing about music/When it hits you feel no pain,” he assures us. This live performance at London’s Lyceum captures all the raw energy and excitement of a Marley concert, and the band led by the Barrett brothers never sounded better.

2 Concrete Jungle
From CATCH A FIRE (1973)
Marley’s most perfectly realised anthem to the ghetto that nurtured his talents. There’s nothing romantic in his evocation of the suffering and persecution of 1970s Kingston, and yet this song moves effortlessly from the lone voice of a lover seeking comfort, through an analysis of how slavery is replicated in the post-colonial power structures, to a final, defiant sense of hope even in the very heart of darkness. Stunning poetry enhanced by Chris Blackwell’s inspired (although very controversial at the time) addition of a wailing rock guitar.

3 Natty Dread
From NATTY DREAD (1975)
The first album after the split with original Wailers - Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh - saw Marley drafting in his wife Rita along with Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths to form a new harmony backing group called the I-Threes. The change seemed to inspire him - this album includes, amongst other gems, the original studio version of No Woman, No Cry. “Children get your culture” he urges in this paean to the spiritual qualities of the Rastaman, the prophetic role already beginning to settle on his slight shoulders. Note how cleverly he evokes the actual grid system of Kingston streets to map out a symbolic seven-street journey to spiritual enlightenment.

4 Turn Your Lights Down Low
From EXODUS (1977)
In December 1976 Marley survived an assassination attempt at his Kingston home, but the sense of betrayal he felt continued to trouble him for the rest of his life. He fled to the Bahamas, then to London, and was almost constantly on the road thereafter. Although his feelings about Jamaica were ambivalent – it was, after all, Babylon – he missed the sunshine and the sense of the natural world. During this double exile, and with his always-complicated love life in crisis (his relationship with former beauty queen Cindy Breakspeare was undermining his credentials as a roots man), he produced some of his most beautiful and haunting songs. Turn Your Lights Down Low is a seduction song to rival anything put out by Marvin Gaye or Al Green.

5 She’s Gone
From KAYA (1978)
Legendary reggae producer Lee Perry – who worked with the Wailers in the early 1970s when many of the songs Marley included on later albums were originally conceived and recorded – claims he was drawn to Marley because of the sense of vulnerability he showed in his lyrics. Outwardly the tough ghetto warrior, Marley constantly surprises us with his emotional honesty. She’s Gone is a lament devoid of self-pity and pretence: the woman has gone because “she felt like a prisoner who needs to be free”.

6 Sun is Shining
From KAYA (1978)
“Sun is shining, weather is sweet,” sings Marley (and never was the word “sweet” imbued with such sensual overtones) “makes you want to move your dancing feet” and we are swept away by one of the all-time great warm-weather dance tracks. Marley’s craftsmanship as a writer is supreme here: having seduced us he takes us on a lyrical journey, counting out the days, into the beautiful Jamaican countryside and the heart of the rainbow. The perfect Beach House song.

7 Misty Morning
KAYA (1978)
The sun is constantly invoked in Marley’s work as a source of rebirth, renewal and hope: a Misty Morning, by definition, is a moment of doubt and uncertainty. When Marley released Kaya it was panned by critics (especially in Jamaica) as “too soft”. Time has generated a more measured verdict, and this, the most enigmatic and puzzling of all his songs, seems to have no answer to the age-old question of why the wicked seem to prosper and the righteous suffer.

8 Natural Mystic
From EXODUS (1977)
This is another song that Marley lifted from the treasure trove of his time with Scratch Perry – although this version has a completely different bass line and vibe from the original. Overshadowed when first released by the album’s title track, this song has come to define the essence of Marley’s philosophical take on the world – that the unknowable mysteries of life are best approached by facing up to earthbound realities and finding joy (usually through music) beyond the pain.

9 So Much Trouble in the World
From SURVIVAL (1979)
Following the triumphant Exodus tour of 1977, Marley’s status as prophet and peacemaker in Jamaica soared. As the bitter feuds between rival gangs supporting the two major political parties escalated and the death toll reached epidemic proportions, Marley was lured back to headline a peace concert where he achieved the unlikely feat of getting bitter enemies Edward Seaga and Michael Manley to join hands on stage. Survival marked a new sense of mission – no love songs, no recast oldies from the Perry era – and is by far his most politicized work, setting out the agenda for the final apocalyptic showdown between the children of Jah and Babylon.

10 Forever Loving Jah
From UPRISING (1980)
By the time Marley came to London to record the songs for this album in early 1980, he knew the cancer that had started in his toe was spreading through his body. He was tired and ill, and the strain shows clearly in photographs taken at the time. And yet he worked with frantic energy, creating some of his most enduring and powerful work, turning the intimate details of his own personal story into a narrative with universal meaning. Redemption Song is possibly the most moving example of this but Forever Loving Jah is as close to a hymn as its possible to get in a pop song