If any album might be declared Bob Marley’s masterpiece, it was Exodus. Recorded throughout a interval of exile in London within the aftermath of a gun assault on Marley’s residence in Jamaica, it was a musical assertion of towering authority that mixed visions of Biblical drama with profound expressions of solidarity and tender private emotions. Launched on June 3, 1977, it housed a string of Marley’s greatest and best-loved hits: “Jamming,” “Waiting In Vain,” “Three Little Birds,” “One Love/People Get Ready” and, in fact, the title monitor. Time journal pronounced it “the best album of the 20th century.” In 2024, its recording turned an enormous plot level within the celebrated biopic of Marley’s life, One Love.
Just lately named one in all Apple Music’s Greatest 100 Albums Of All-Time, hearken to the restricted version model of Exodus now.
“A key figure of power and political influence”
Even earlier than Exodus, Marley had develop into one of many best-known figures within the Third World. As Timothy White famous in Catch A Fireplace: The Life Of Bob Marley, the reggae star was “quoted as a poet, heralded as the West Indian Bob Dylan, even the Jamaican Jomo Kenyatta [Prime Minister and founding father of post-colonial Kenya].” This made Marley a key determine of energy and political affect, whether or not he preferred it or not. On returning to Jamaica after the Rastaman Vibration tour in 1976, he quickly discovered himself caught up in occasions main as much as the overall election of December 15.
The standing Prime Minister Michael Manley cajoled Marley into agreeing to carry out at a free live performance known as Smile Jamaica, sponsored by the Ministry of Tradition, to be staged ten days earlier than the election. Manley reasoned that this “Jamaican Woodstock” would assist to defuse tensions on the road earlier than the election, whereas little question hoping it might ship him a major propaganda coup into the discount. Tensions, nonetheless, remained something however defused when, simply after sundown on December 3, two automobiles drove by way of the entrance gate of Marley’s residence at 56 Hope Street and unloaded a number of armed males who attacked the home the place the Wailers had been rehearsing.
Marley was hit by a bullet that creased his breast beneath his coronary heart and lodged in his left arm. His spouse Rita’s cranium was grazed by a bullet that left her miraculously unhurt, whereas Marley’s supervisor, Don Taylor, was hit by 5 bullets in his decrease physique, which additionally someway didn’t kill him. The Smile Jamaica Live performance went forward on the Nationwide Heroes Park, Kingston two days afterward 5 December. With the bullet nonetheless lodged in his arm, Marley demonstrated precisely why his avenue title was Tuff Gong, as he and the Wailers courageously placed on a 90-minute efficiency in entrance of an viewers of 80,000 followers, which mercifully handed off with out incident. The subsequent morning, Marley flew out of Jamaica and wouldn’t return for greater than a 12 months.
After a interval of convalescence in America, Marley and the Wailers convened in London to start out work on Exodus in February 1977. Marley lived at varied addresses within the capital which was in the midst of a musical and cultural upheaval brought on by the upsurge of punk. The Notting Hill Carnival riots of the previous 12 months had left a legacy of unease and unrest on the streets of West London the place Marley and the Wailers had been primarily based for a lot of the time recording in Island’s Basing Road Studios. Marley performed soccer in Hyde Park and frolicked with musicians together with Levi Roots and filmmaker Don Letts, who was carefully related to the Conflict.
Shared punk’s outsider perspective of society
Whereas his music had little in frequent with the abrasive, adrenaline-rush sound of punk rock, Marley shared punk’s outsider perspective of society as a part of a longtime order that wanted to alter. After the Conflict included Junior Murvin’s “Police And Thieves” on their first album, Marley wrote “Punky Reggae Party,” a tune with a visitor record that made his personal allegiances abundantly clear. “New wave, new craze/The Jam, the Damned, the Clash/Wailers still be there/Dr Feelgood too,” he sang. The quantity was launched because the B-side to “Jamming,” which reached No.9 within the UK singles chart, confirming Marley as a key determine in forging the unlikely however enduring alliance between UK punk and reggae.
The comb with demise in Jamaica and the following change of scene appeared to impress Marley creatively. “After the shooting, me never want to just think about shooting,” Marley advised Vivien Goldman of Sounds. “So me just ease up me mind and go in a different bag. What me stand for me always stand for. Jah [God] is my strength.” The “different bag” was, in fact, not so totally different from earlier albums, however Marley was now tapping into the motherlode with new confidence and urgency. There have been two distinct sides to Exodus – actually so in its authentic vinyl format.
On Aspect One, the fireplace and brimstone was introduced from simmering to boiling level as Marley provided a fiercely non secular and politicized prescription for fixing the ills of the world in a sequence of songs – “Natural Mystic,” “So Much Things To Say,” “Guiltiness,” “The Heathen” – every extra messianic than the final. The aspect closed with the title monitor, a rippling, surging, seven-minute name to arms for a nation of displaced souls on the march to a brand new religious homeland. “We know where we’re going/We know where we’re from/We’re leaving Babylon,” Marley sang towards a cyclical riff that was turned, like clay on a potter’s wheel, to perfection.
Sermon over, the occasion kicked off on Aspect Two with “Jamming,” the tune which might later encourage Stevie Surprise’s ode to Marley “Masterblaster.” “Waiting In Vain” was a craving expression of unrequited love that emphasised Marley’s often-overlooked ability and humorousness as a lyric author: “It’s been three years since I’m knocking on your door/And I still can knock some more/Ooh girl, is it feasible?” he pleaded. After the straightforward expression of optimism encapsulated in “Three Little Birds” (“Every little thing gonna be all right”), the album ended with a reprise of the Wailers 1965 single “One Love” an inspirational message of religion, concord, and solidarity now spliced to the Curtis Mayfield tune of “People Get Ready.”
Exodus was a significant hit within the UK the place it reached No.8 and stayed on the chart for 56 consecutive weeks. In America, regardless of an enthusiastic reception from press and radio, the album solely reached No.20. It might in all probability have achieved higher if the band had not been pressured to cancel their tour of America, resulting from an damage to Marley’s toe sustained whereas taking part in soccer with some journalists in Paris in Could. Two exhibits (out of six) on the Rainbow Theatre in London on the finish of the European tour had been additionally canceled due to the damage. It was the one troubling be aware for the time being of Marley’s best triumph.
Order a restricted version of Bob Marley’s Exodus now.
