Island Records’ Chris Blackwell Still Resented For Wailers Breakup

Ten years after Rastafarian attorney-at-law Miguel Lorne outrightly blamed former Island Records’ boss, Chris Blackwell at a university symposium, for ‘mashing up’ The Wailers group by devaluing Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh’s equal role in ascension of the trio, the actions of the now 83 year old, is once again under the microscope.

Attorney-at-law Maxine Stowe, who served as the late Bunny Wailer’s manager up to the time of his death, said The Black Heart Man was dejected by the manner in which Blackwell, erased himself and Peter Tosh, brushed them aside, and rebranded their collaborative works, to which they have intellectual property rights, as solely Bob Marley’s.

In addition, she said “the major asset of the Wailers and the Wailers catalogue has still not been settled”.

The Wailers started out as a sextet back in 1963, and later morphed into the trio of Bob, Peter and Bunny in 1966, which gave the world hits such as Simmer Down, Trench Town Rock, Nice Time, Stir It Up and Get Up, Stand Up, before each of the three went solo in 1974.

“His (Bunny’s) issue with Blackwell was how he took Bob Marley and the Wailers name, the title, and redid the works of the Wailers and removed their image and just put Bob’s image.   They were sidelined in their visibility… because the industry now is what is your brand, and even your earnings are depleted because people don’t know if this is you, Bob Marley and the Wailers…,” Stowe said in an interview with Anthony Miller which was aired on Friday night on Television Jamaica’s Entertainment Report.

“That whole confusion; that whole much which is why his work was known.  We have to get back the Wailer identity, so if even past generations have not known or learned, future generations should… it is an evergreen asset,” Stowe explained to the very probing Miller.

As Miller continued to dig further for answers about the effect of the downplaying of Bunny and Peter’s contribution to the Wailer’s brand, Stowe said there are other major issues including the circumstances surrounding the creation and ownership of the song One Love, the Song of the Millennium, which is yet untold.

“One Love was written by Bob, Bunny and Clement Dodd.  So when Bob covered One Love in his solo career, it should have credited the original, but it is presented as if it’s just Bob Marley’s original song.  It is not only Bunny that was upset you know.  My uncle is Clement Dodd and my mother, his sister always said to me that your uncle went to his grave with the song One Love on his mind… He also felt cheated,” Stowe said.

In October 2010, the Jamaica Observer, in an article titled Who broke up the original Wailers? Miguel Lorne answers, Chris Blackwell, the newspaper noted that Miguel Lorne, whilst speaking at a Peter Tosh Symposium, at the University of the West Indies, said the major reason for the break-up of one of Jamaica’s most celebrated trios, was due solely to Chris Blackwell’s approach in handling the group.

“He (Lorne) argued that because of Bob’s Caucasian father, Blackwell found it more easier to package and promote Bob to an European market,” the Observer wrote.

“Blackwell helped to break-up the group… on the basis that Blackwell felt that he could market Bob Marley to the world. But when he said the world, he really meant the white world,” Lorne had also said.

Lorne had said that the break-up of The Wailers “in the sense of division among Bob, Peter and Bunny, really hurt Peter Tosh” who according to him, went on to state that the Equal Rights singer was so upset with the affair to the point where he began referring to Bob as “the white man son”.

Lorne had said that when he asked Tosh why was he so bitter against Marley, the Mama Africa singer told him that Marley should not have agreed to the deal with Blackwell — whom Lorne claims Tosh referred to as “Whitewell”.

“He said from where they were coming from, the struggles that they had gone through, that there was no way when ‘Blackwell’ or ‘Whitewell’ come with this trick, that Bob should not have agreed,” Lorne had said at the symposium.

In February that same year, director/curator of the Jamaica Music Museum at the Institute of Jamaica, Herbie Miller though not direct as Lorne, had also rued the erasure of Tosh and Bunny, by what he described as “clever record company public relations and publicity personnel and other interest parties that distort reggae music’s reality, purposely or innocently”.

In his opinion piece in The Gleaner titled Re-empowering the Unsung Wailers – The importance of Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston to Marley’s ascendancy, the cultural historian who has specialized interest in slave culture, Caribbean identity and ethnomusicology, had said there were redress misconceptions perpetuated about the music which he and other historians and commentators were attempting to dispel.

“The case of the original Wailers, who were primarily Bob Marley, Bunny Livingston and Peter Tosh, but at times included Junior Braithwaite, Beverly Kelso, Cherry Green, Rita Marley and Constantine ‘Dream’ Walker, is a paramount and instructive case.   It is a case, which, according to a Marley insider, without any apology, seeks to “position Bob in the public consciousness morning, noon and night”. What was implied is that this would be done without much, if any, mention of the others who have been part of the group,” Miler had written.

The historian had also highlighted an incident where a popular radio disc jockey played an extended selection of old Wailers recordings at the beginning of the week that would mark Peter Tosh’s birthday, and repeatedly referred to the selections as Bob Marley’s without acknowledging the others, “even when Tosh or Livingston was obviously the lead singer”, and on some selections where Marley was clearly not present.

Miller said that after he rang the station to point out the error to the DJ and to suggest that he dedicate the session to Peter Tosh since the Legalize it singer’s birthday was only a few days away, the man, in no uncertain manner, told him that he knew what he was doing and did not need his opinion.

“The DJ went back on the air and said: “A bredda just call and want to talk ’bout Peter Tosh. If him want to hear Peter Tosh, mek him go play him own Peter Tosh”,” Miller wrote.

“This is the kind of mindset that is cultivated if Bob Marley continues to be positioned in the public consciousness at the expense of the other principal members of the original Wailers, the group which, in my opinion, is Jamaica’s finest,” he added.

Island Records celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019 and is said to be arguably, the most prestigious record label in the history of British music.   The company was founded in Jamaica by Graeme Goodall and Chris Blackwell, who nurtured and promoted Marley’s career and other Jamaican artists such as  Millie Small whom he took to England in 1963 to record My Boy Lollipop, which was the first record to sell a million copies.