10.
“One morning, [Marley and the Wailers] woke up and wanted to play football, and it was snowing. I remember they opened the window and Bob said, ‘What that?!’ I said, ‘It’s snow, Bob.’ Peter Tosh said it was a sign from Jah that they should leave Babylon. They had this huge argument amongst themselves, and basically Peter and Bunny [Wailer] refused to continue the tour, so they all went back to Jamaica.”
“After that, Bob came back with a vengeance. This was the gig that was going to do it. There was no going back, just forward. He walked on that stage and he just took it apart. This was the gig of gigs – one of the best he ever played.”
11.
“I’ll tell you something – the Lyceum was packed. People were trying to climb on the roof to get in. It was so hot, so packed, so sweaty that the body heat went up and hit the ceiling and it came down like it was raining! Everybody went, ‘Jah!’ They all thought it was a sign, but it was just the body heat going up, then down.”
12.
“That shot was the last photo I ever took of him. He called me and said, ‘You need to come over.’ He was staying at an apartment in London. It was strange – as I walked in, he was on his own, and normally, Bob is never on his own. There were always people around, but this time it was just the two of us. Normally, he’d be jiving me about being a black kid from England, not from Jamaica: ‘What are you doing hanging around all them punks,’ you know? But this time, he was really quiet. When he was talking, it was like he was questioning his success and the things he had done. I’d never seen him like that before.”
“He picked up the guitar and began strumming. At the time, I didn’t realize that he was playing me ‘Redemption Song.’ I was probably one of the first people to hear it.”
“Most of the images you see him in, his locks have a bit of electricity, some vibrancy. But this time, it’s like the locks have taken over, and his fingers and face are quite gaunt. It’s quite sad. At the end, no one knew how ill he was.”
13.
“This is a portrait I did in ’76. The color treatment was much later, when I got much smarter.”
“Going through the photos, it just brings back the memories of being in the presence of such a powerful and influential man. He shaped my career and my life, in a sense. I was a young kid with a dream of being a photographer, and I remember when they said to me, ‘Don’t be silly, there’s no such thing as a black photographer.’ But Bob said to me, ‘They will always tell you that you can’t do what you want to do, Dennis, but you can do what you want to do. You just have to believe in yourself. The system is to bring you down, but you can rise up.’ That was the beauty of Bob Marley, for me. He made me see that there was much, much more than what was out there.”
