The Wailers then came back and forth to the UK throughout the 1970s, before settling at 42 Oakley Street in Chelsea, London, in 1977 after the assassination attempt against Marley in Jamaica, while they recorded Exodus. The result was “Catch A Fire”, the band’s first big UK hit and one that paved the way for international recognition. Blackwell was so impressed that he asked the young artist to aim for an entire album. In 1973, Marley sought out Chris Blackwell at Island Records’ Notting Hill HQ in the hope of him funding a single. From there, he would visit the UK’s growing Rastafarian community, spreading the word in the north of England via secret or spontaneous gigs, like the one in Manchester Irish ballroom, the New Ardri, in Hulme. Although he initially moved into digs near Tottenham Court Road and then Bayswater, having come over from Jamaica, where the Wailers were already well established, on a mission to bring their music to a wider audience, his first proper base in the UK capital was in the northwest borough of Neasden, a small, semi-detached house that the band moved into in 1972. Marley’s grandchildren are getting in on the act, too, with Island Records reggae prodigy Skip Marley doing particularly well (see his recent collaboration with H.E.R for proof).Īs detailed in the 2020 BBC documentary When Bob Marley Came To Britain, Marley came to fondly regard the UK as his “second home”, after living and launching his international career in London. This includes Grammy nominee Julian and reggae artist Ky-Mani Marley, as well as the most high profile, Damian Marley, a Grammy-winner who was born in 1978 to Cindy Breakspeare, best-known for his hit “Welcome To Jamrock” and a collaborative album with rapper Nas. While they were married, Marley had eight other children with eight other women, many of whom, like Ziggy and Stephen, have also gone on to be musicians. When Marley and Anderson married, he adopted her daughter from a previous relationship, with the couple going on to have three of their own children: Cedella Marley, David “Ziggy” Marley and Stephen Marley. Marley’s website officially acknowledges 11 children, although the ”real” number is disputed, given the number of litigants who tried to stake their claim to the “Marley millions” after Bob’s death. “Bob believed in music as a tool for social and personal change,” says BBC Radio 6 Music broadcaster Don Letts, “and consequently it went some way into making me the man I am today.” “At the time there was no spoken-word poetry, there was no dub poetry, so to read those words.” Marley is credited with inspiring a generation of black British youth with his universal message of one love and unity. “It really inspired me to keep doing what I was doing,” he claimed. Keep doing what you do.” Unveiling an English Heritage Blue plaque at 42 Oakley Street, London, in 2019, Zephaniah said the letter was one of the main reasons he felt encouraged to pursue “dub poetry”, the style for which he is now most famous. What do you think of my poems?” Incredibly, he received a hand-written reply, all the way from Jamaica, where the musician told him, “Young man, Britain needs you. Nobody’s really listening to me in England.
When he was a schoolboy, one of Britain's most prolific contemporary writers, Benjamin Zephaniah, wrote a letter to Marley along the lines of, “I’m a poet from Birmingham.
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