It’s entirely possible that Lee Jaffe is the Most Interesting Man In The World. Jaffe will be at the College of Charleston’s Rita Liddy Hollings Science Center (aka “The Rita,”) on Nov. 13 to talk about the three years he spent with reggae legends Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in Kingston, Jamaica, in the 1970s.
Jaffe, now 75 and living in New York City, served as Marley’s manager around the time the Wailers was recording its breakthrough 1974 album Natty Dread. At the time, he was also a full musical member of the Wailers, playing harmonica on the Natty Dread album and tour.
After his association with Bob Marley ended under what he described as shady circumstances (Jaffe mentions a “slick, sweet-talking Jamaican” manager who convinced Marley he needed a black manager to get on black radio), Jaffe began working with former Wailer Peter Tosh, producing his seminal album Legalize It. Jaffe also took the cover photo of Tosh kneeling in a field of ganja, a photo often cited as one of the greatest album covers of all time.
Jaffe has a stunning collection of photos that capture his daily life during his three years in Jamaica. His photos and anecdotes capture them in surprisingly human, intimate moments. But even if you don’t like reggae music, Jaffe’s talk is a must-attend experience.
Over his six-decade career, Jaffe, born in Brooklyn in 1950, has worn many hats. He’s been a documentary filmmaker, producer of a half-dozen albums and, these days, is a renowned large-scale visual artist whose work has appeared at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.
Here are lightly edited highlights of an hour spent talking with Jaffe:
Charleston City Paper: How did you end up in the orbit of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh?
Lee Jaffe: “I had a friend named Jim Capaldi who was in a band called Traffic. The band was playing in New York, and I went to see him at his hotel after, and there was this Jamaican guy there, and Jim said, ‘You have to hear his record,’ and he gave me a cassette of the first Island Records release, titled ‘The Wailers.’
“It was a shockingly fantastic album. It was the best thing I’d ever heard. I’d had a movie that had just fallen apart, and when I met Bob, I was thinking about going to Brazil to join a guerilla movement.”
CP: You were going to join a guerilla movement?
Jaffe: “Yes, there was a guerilla movement fighting the military dictatorship, and I thought I might join it. (At this point in the early 1970s, Jaffe had already been briefly jailed in Brazil for his work with anti-government activists.)
“But Bob and I really hit it off. He was in New York to buy equipment for this big Wailers tour. I played harmonica with him and he played guitar, and I helped him find sound equipment.”
“Chris Blackwell (president and founder of Island Records, Marley’s label) asked me if I’d be interested in helping the Wailers set up a North American tour. That’s because while Island Records was having hits with acts like Free and Cat Stevens, it didn’t really have a support team.”
CP: Had you done anything like that before?
Jaffe: “I didn’t know anything about booking tours or running them, but I figured it wasn’t rocket science. So I jumped at the opportunity. I felt like politically and socially, I had the chance to work with an artist who was embedded in social consciousness. I thought there was nothing more important than getting his music out into the world.”
CP: What were the original Wailers — Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer — like to be around?
Jaffe: “I’ll tell you a story that Chris Blackwell told me. He said that when The Wailers walked into his office, they were so charismatic and had such presence that he immediately gave them $25,000 to make an album, without signing a contract. He just told them, ‘When the album’s finished, send it to me.’ ”
CP: What was it like being Bob Marley’s manager?
Jaffe: “Well, everything needed doing, and the only person around to do it was me. Bob was cautious because had a manager named Danny Sims before me, and Danny was always bragging about his Mafia connections, which were probably real.
“It’s not something that I wanted to do as a profession. I didn’t want to be a manager of anybody. My calling was to be an artist, not to be a businessperson.”
CP: How did your time with Bob end, and how do you begin working with Peter?
Jaffe: “Bob’s new manager absolutely didn’t want me around because he didn’t want someone keeping an eye on him, especially someone who had Bob’s ear.”
“Not to mention that it had become unsafe for me to be living at Hope Road (Marley’s home in Kingston) due to political violence. Bob had these two kids, these infamous teenage killers, be my bodyguards. I didn’t think I needed bodyguards. But of course, I did. The house I had been living in for three years got shot up after I moved out.”
“And right around then, Peter got in touch with me. I had always noticed some tension with Peter in the Wailers, but I didn’t know what that was about. I went to see him, and he sat across from me with an acoustic guitar and played me 30 songs. And that’s when I realized what the tension was between Peter and Bob, because on those first three Wailers albums, Peter only had three songs.”
“He had these incredible songs and this built-up frustration at not seeing a way to record them. I’d worked with Peter on tour and become friends with his girlfriend, and she pushed him to get in touch with me to help produce that record. I’d learned how he liked to make records, and I had that familiarity.”
CP: You also took the iconic cover photo of Peter’s first solo album, 1976’s Legalize It, with him surrounded by marijuana plants. How did that photo come about?
Jaffe: “I’d been smoking a lot of herb since I was in high school, and no one ever knew what the actual plant looked like. So when Peter played me that song, ‘Legalize It,’ it was such an anthem I told him, ‘You should be on the cover, and you should be in the earth.’”
“Columbia Records (Tosh’s label) didn’t want it, by the way. They fought us. Peter had to insist.”
Editor’s Note: The “Roots, Rock, Reggae” event is expected to have even more jaw-dropping stories, including expected mentions of the Mafia (both Jamaican and American), white powder and the CIA.
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Talk at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6:45 p.m., Nov. 13 for Roots, Rock, Reggae: Stories of Jamaica in the 1970s from a former Wailer. Rita Liddy Hollings Science Center, 58 Coming St., Charleston. Free: calendar.charleston.edu/rita-science-center
Help keep the City Paper free.
No paywalls.
No subscription cost.
Free delivery at 800 locations.
Help support independent journalism by donating today.