57 Fun Facts About Bob Marley

What was Bob Marley's middle name?

Nesta. By an often-told account it came first on his birth papers, until a passport official swapped his two names around because Nesta sounded like a girl's name.

Which Grammy-winning singer had five children with Bob Marley's son Rohan?

Lauryn Hill. Her song 'To Zion' is about choosing to have their first child, and in 1999 she turned Bob Marley's 'Turn Your Lights Down Low' into a posthumous duet with him.

At age 12 Marley moved with his mother to which Kingston neighbourhood?

Trenchtown. Its crowded government yards, each shared by several families, raised so many ska and reggae singers that the district is known as the birthplace of reggae.

Which Bob Marley song did Ajax supporters adopt as their anthem after hearing it at a 2008 friendly in Cardiff?

Three Little Birds. The stadium played it during the trip to Cardiff, the travelling Dutch fans sang along, and it has been the club's unofficial anthem ever since.

Which Studio One founder discovered the Wailing Wailers and produced their earliest hits?

Coxsone Dodd was a sound-system operator turned producer; the Wailers later walked out on his label in a dispute over how little they were paid.

The Wailers' first Jamaican number one, in early 1964, was which song?

Simmer Down was Marley's warning to Kingston's hot-tempered ghetto youths to cool off; the ska single was an overnight smash that made the Wailers stars at home.

The Wailers' 1965 debut album included 'One Love', a reworking of which Curtis Mayfield song?

People Get Ready was a hit for Curtis Mayfield's group the Impressions, the American vocal act the young Wailers modelled their own harmonies on.

After marrying Rita in 1966, Marley briefly moved to which US state, working at DuPont?

Delaware was where his mother had settled, in Wilmington; he worked there as a lab assistant and on a Chrysler assembly line under the alias Donald Marley.

As a Rastafarian, Marley regarded which ruler as an incarnation of God, or Jah?

Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia was known as Ras Tafari before his 1930 coronation, which is where the faith gets its name, yet he never regarded himself as God or followed Rastafari.

Which record label boss signed the Wailers in 1972 and moulded their sound for a rock audience?

Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, met the Wailers when they were stranded in London in 1972 and advanced them £4,000 to go home and record an album.

The Wailers' first Island album, released in April 1973, was called what?

Catch a Fire was treated like a rock album, not a batch of singles: after the Kingston sessions, the tapes were reworked in London with overdubs aimed at rock listeners.

Eric Clapton's first US number one, in the mid-1970s, was a cover of which Wailers song from Burnin'?

I Shot the Sheriff became Clapton's only US number one, and the cover's success sharply raised Marley's own profile abroad.

Marley's first hit outside Jamaica, in 1975, was a live version of which song?

No Woman, No Cry began as a studio album track; the take recorded at London's Lyceum Theatre became the single that carried Marley beyond reggae circles to a mainstream audience.

Which old friend of Marley's holds the official songwriting credit for 'No Woman, No Cry'?

Vincent Ford is the credited writer, though many believe Marley wrote the song himself and gave away the credit so that the royalties would support his friend.

When the original Wailers split, which female vocal group including Rita Marley took over the harmonies?

The I Threes were Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths; Griffiths went on to record 'Electric Boogie', the song the Electric Slide line dance is done to.

Which album was Marley's first after his two co-founders quit?

Natty Dread was the first album without his two co-founders, one of whom had refused to go on touring abroad for the label.

The Island Records boss gave Marley his Kingston house at what address, later the Bob Marley Museum?

56 Hope Road, once the label's Island House headquarters, became his home and rehearsal base; gunmen attacked him there during a band rehearsal in 1976.

Which 1976 album was Marley's first to reach the top 10 of the Billboard 200?

Rastaman Vibration reached number eight in the US; several of its songs are credited to Marley's friends and family, which many believe was his way round a dispute with his old publisher.

Marley was shot at home on 3 December 1976, two days before which free concert?

Smile Jamaica went ahead with a wounded Marley on stage, singing for a reported 80,000 people while some of his band were still in hiding.

After the 1976 attempt on his life, Marley went into self-imposed exile, settling in which country?

England became his base after a short stay in the Bahamas: he lived in London for more than a year and recorded two albums there before going home.

Which 1977 album did Time magazine name its Album of the Century?

Exodus won Time's 1999 title because, the magazine said, it drew inspiration from the Third World and then gave voice to it the world over.

A future supermodel appeared as a child in the 1978 video for 'Is This Love'. Who?

The video was shot at the Keskidee centre, a Black-led arts venue in London; the single reached number 9 in the UK.

At the 1978 One Love Peace Concert, Marley joined the hands of Michael Manley and which opposition leader?

Edward Seaga led the Jamaica Labour Party, whose feud with Manley's party had Jamaica near civil war; he went on to become prime minister himself in 1980.

In 1978 Marley was awarded the Peace Medal of the Third World by which international body?

The United Nations medal came from its African delegations, weeks after he returned from exile to headline a concert meant to calm Jamaica's political violence.

In April 1980 Marley was invited to perform at the independence celebrations of which African country?

Zimbabwe was already the title of a song he had released the year before in support of the independence struggle, and its inspiration to the fighters earned him the invitation.

Marley's final studio album released in his lifetime, in 1980, was called what?

Uprising was meant to be toured across the United States, but Marley managed only a handful of American shows before illness ended his performing career.

Unusually for a Marley track, 'Redemption Song' is recorded how?

Solo, on acoustic guitar, with no band at all: that bare, folk-like sound has since drawn covers from singers as different as Joe Strummer and Rihanna.

Lines in 'Redemption Song' derive from a speech by which Pan-Africanist orator?

Marcus Garvey told a Nova Scotia audience in 1937 that only they could free their own minds; Marley reworked the line into the song's best-known words.

The hit 'Buffalo Soldier' was first released on which posthumous 1983 album?

Confrontation was pieced together two years after his death from unreleased recordings; 'Buffalo Soldier', left unreleased in his lifetime, became a hit he never lived to hear.

Marley's song 'Buffalo Soldier' is named after which fighters?

Black US cavalry regiments raised after the Civil War were known as Buffalo Soldiers; Marley used them to tell the story of Africans taken in the slave trade and made to fight in America.

Marley's 'Stir It Up' first succeeded abroad after a 1972 cover by which American singer?

Johnny Nash, the American singer of 'I Can See Clearly Now', had taken Marley to Sweden to work with him on a film score before recording his song.

Which 1984 compilation, released three years after Marley's death, became the best-selling reggae album ever?

Legend was built by Island's Dave Robinson, who tested songs on focus groups and played down Marley's militant side to win over mainstream record buyers.

On their first US tour in 1973, the Wailers opened New York shows for which then little-known rocker?

Bruce Springsteen was still relatively unknown himself; the Wailers moved on to open for Sly and the Family Stone, who were then at their peak.

In 1977 doctors found the melanoma that would kill Marley where on his body?

Under a toenail: he took it for a football injury, and when doctors advised amputating the toe he refused, citing his Rastafarian beliefs.

Marley played his last concert in September 1980 in which US city?

Pittsburgh's Stanley Theater got a show he had been told not to play: two days earlier Marley had collapsed while jogging in New York and been advised to cancel the tour.

Marley sought alternative cancer treatment at Josef Issels' clinic in which country?

Germany was home to Josef Issels' Bavarian clinic, whose regime leaned on avoiding certain foods; it could not halt the cancer, and in May 1981 he set off for home.

Marley died in May 1981 in a hospital in which city, before he could complete his journey home to Jamaica?

Miami was as far as he got on the journey home from treatment in Europe; ten days later Jamaica gave him a state funeral.

Months before his death, Marley, long a Rastafarian, was baptised into which Christian church?

Ethiopian Orthodox Church clergy baptised him in November 1980 and gave him a new Christian name, and its rites were woven into his state funeral six months later.

Shortly before he died, Jamaica awarded Marley which national honour?

Order of Merit members are styled 'The Honourable', and no more than two can be named in any one year; ten days after his death Jamaica buried him with that title at a state funeral.

Marley is buried in a mausoleum in his birthplace, Nine Mile, in which Jamaican parish?

Saint Ann was the end of his funeral procession, which wound from Kingston past roadsides packed with mourners to the hill village where he was born.

Which of Marley's children bankrolled Jamaica's women's football team?

Cedella Marley stepped in during 2014, after the team had been disbanded for lack of funding; five years later the Reggae Girlz played at their first World Cup.

Damian Marley's mother, Cindy Breakspeare, held which title in 1976?

Miss World 1976 was crowned in London; her son Damian later named an album Halfway Tree, after a Kingston landmark, to mark his parents' uptown and ghetto backgrounds.

Ziggy Marley led which family band until 2002?

The Melody Makers put four of his children on stage together, Ziggy, Stephen, Cedella and Sharon, who first recorded as a group in 1979 while their father was still alive.

Which English football club did Marley support?

Tottenham Hotspur won him over through their Argentine midfielder Ossie Ardiles, who joined in 1978; as a boy he had followed Pelé's Brazilian club, Santos.

In 2006, part of Church Avenue in which New York borough was co-named Bob Marley Boulevard?

Brooklyn's Church Avenue runs through the heart of New York's Caribbean community, whose leaders campaigned to put his name on a stretch of it.

Peter Tosh, Marley's original bandmate, died in 1987 how?

Murdered in a home invasion by gunmen demanding money, Tosh had long been a target of the authorities he criticised: police beat him badly during a 1978 marijuana arrest.

Who played Marley in the 2024 biopic Bob Marley: One Love?

Kingsley Ben-Adir won the part after a worldwide search, with Marley's son Ziggy among the producers; he learned guitar and sang on set, though the film uses only some of his vocals.

Which reggae star had just left Island Records when the label signed the Wailers to fill the gap?

Jimmy Cliff, star of the film The Harder They Come, had moved on; the label's boss saw in Marley the rebel image that could win over rock fans instead.

Which older singer in Kingston taught the young Marley guitar and coached the Wailers' harmonies?

Joe Higgs held singing classes in his yard, where the founding trio came together; a decade later he stood in for a missing member on their first US tour.

Which rock star gave the speech inducting Marley into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994?

Bono made the speech and Rita Marley accepted the award; his band U2 had signed to Island, Marley's own label, the year before the singer died.

Rita Marley says she was born in which country, though her mother-in-law disputed it?

Cuba, in the city of Santiago, is where she says she was born before growing up in Kingston, where she sang in church and then in a teenage vocal group that Marley coached.

Which protest anthem, co-written with Peter Tosh, was the last song Marley ever performed on stage?

Get Up, Stand Up often ended his encores, so it closed his final concert too; in the decades since, its refrain has been chanted at protests around the world.

Twenty years after Marley's death, the Recording Academy gave him which Grammy honour?

Lifetime Achievement Award: the Grammys had no reggae category until 1985, four years after Marley died, and his music had never earned a single nomination.

Which pioneering dub producer paired the Wailers with his studio band, the Upsetters, in 1970?

Lee 'Scratch' Perry gave the trio the drum-and-bass brothers Carlton and Aston Barrett, who stayed on as the Wailers' rhythm section after the group parted from him in a dispute over rights and royalties.

Marley hired Allan 'Skill' Cole, a Jamaican football star, to do which job in the 1970s?

Tour manager was Cole's job for a spell; Marley was rarely far from a football, squeezing in a kickabout between studio sessions or before going on stage.

On his final tour in 1980, Marley drew the biggest crowd of his career at which Italian stadium?

San Siro, Milan gave him the largest crowd of his career, put at 100,000 or more, only three months before illness forced him off the stage for good.

Which novel about the attempt on Marley's life won the 2015 Man Booker Prize?

A Brief History of Seven Killings is anything but brief: Marlon James's near-700-page epic made him the first Jamaican writer to win the prize, by a unanimous vote of the judges.