The Bigga BaggaRiddim Tour | Sept. 22 | 3 p.m. | Grand Sierra Resort, Reno, Nev.
As Bob Marley was dying of cancer, Al Anderson made him a promise.
“We got really close then,” says The Wailers’ longtime guitarist. “He said, ‘Keep our music alive. But whatever you do, do not imitate me.’ I promised him.”
More than 40 years since, Anderson keeps his pact with the music icon through The Original Wailers who play the classic catalog alongside original compositions. Featuring a diverse cast of musicians from Puerto Rico, Ghana, Mexico and Jamaica, the group carries on the philosophical spirit that inspired the founding trio: Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer.
The Original Wailers will be part of the Bigga BaggaRiddim Tour on Sept. 22 in Truckee also featuring UB40, Big Mountain and Maxi Priest.
“It’s all about trying to continue the sound now that the three of them are united on their journey,” says Anderson. “It’s a continuum from what our teachers and scholars taught us. We are honoring the legacy.”
The son of two Harlem musicians (his father once backed James Brown on bass), Anderson ordered his first instrument, a bugle, from a Marvel Comics catalog with money he earned selling Christmas cards. Lacking the funds for a college education, he crashed with friends in Boston University dorms, worked at Dorothy Muriel’s bakery and audited classes at Berklee College of Music where he rubbed elbows with jazz icons including Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius and Herbie Hancock.
“[Bob Marley] didn’t talk much. He was shy. But he could write songs on a dime. He could see energies going on in front of him and write a song about it. That’s when I realized he had magic in songwriting.”
–Al Anderson
Anderson collected vintage guitars and sold some to Aerosmith. As his connections in the early 1970s rock subculture grew, the saxophonist of Traffic, Chris Wood, convinced him to move to London. He was jamming with Paul Kossoff, the lead guitarist of Free, when he got the invite to play on Marley’s 1974 album, “Natty Dread.”
“He was my good, good friend,” says Anderson of Kossoff. “He had the best guitars and amplifiers. We used to drink tons of beer and just play. He had a slight drug problem, so he chose me to sub for him.”
Marley was coming off the revolutionary “Catch a Fire” album, which featured Muscle Shoals session guitarist Wayne Perkins and he wanted to follow it up with a contemporary, American sound. Anderson entered the studio and simply played what he knew.
“You just find a groove,” he says. “I didn’t think deeply. It just came out of me. When I did the ‘No Woman, No Cry’ solo, he came alive. A couple days went by, they had a meeting and asked me if I would join the band.”
Anderson soon moved to Jamaica where he lived with Marley’s extended family.
“I thought we’d go right into rehearsal mode,” he says. “For the first six or seven months, I was just feeling out the island. We didn’t do anything. Bob just played football and trained all the time. He plays rough.”
“He didn’t talk much,” says Anderson of Marley. “He was shy. But he could write songs on a dime. He could see energies going on in front of him and write a song about it. That’s when I realized he had magic in songwriting.”
Managerial problems and the specter of assassination led Anderson to quit The Wailers in 1977.
“Bob was becoming more of politician at that time than a musician,” he says. “There were death threats from the opposite party and agents all around the place bullying us. His intention was to politically unite Jamaica, but I was not in a position to be threatened wherever I went.”
Anderson instead played with Peter Tosh on groundbreaking albums: “Legalize It” and “Equal Rights.”
A couple years later, he was walking through the Miami airport when Marley called his name and convinced him to rejoin the group. Anderson played on The Wailers’ final two albums, the politically charged “Survival” and “Uprising” and remained close to his friend until the end.
“I’ve never seen musicians put music and life together in that way,” he says. “The country, the rhetoric, the philosophy. They put all their struggle and strife into their poetry. It was never a fantasy. It was all a reality.” | lateniteproductions.com
