Lee Jaffe immortalises Marley in new book
For much of the six years he lived in Jamaica during the 1970s, Lee Jaffe was a member of Bob Marley’s inner circle. He was with the reggae legend during his rise to global stardom, and captured key moments of that surge on his cameras.
Many of those photographs are in Hit Me With Music: Roots, Rock Reggae, a book released in September by Rizzoli International Publications.
Like One Love: Life With Bob Marley and The Wailers, the American’s first book, it has intimate photos of Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer — his colleagues in The Wailers — as well as the era’s leading artistes, musicians and producers.
In a recent interview with the Jamaica Observer Jaffe spoke about the difference between Hit Me With Music and Life With Bob Marley and The Wailers, which came out in 2003.
“This book has many more photographs and extensive essays. I’ve learned so much technically in the 20-plus years that have passed that has enabled me to do a better job preparing the images for printing,” he explained.
The most glaring similarity is Jaffe’s focus on Marley, who died in May 1981 at age 36.
He first met Marley in New York City during the early 1970s and was struck by a cassette with a draft of Catch A Fire, which became The Wailers’ first album for Island Records.
By the time Marley went solo, in early 1974, Jaffe was long aware he was in the presence of a genius. He captured the Rastafarian artiste’s recording sessions, live shows, and leisure time on film.
“Having a camera, there was always a fine line not to be crossed of being intrusive, of avoiding self-consciousness, avoiding the sense of ‘capture’ inherent in the ‘snap’, the ‘shot’ of the camera machine — the device that can change mechanical motion into energy or contrarily stasis. And I was always aware of the historical significance of what I was witnessing daily — the creation of music at the highest level of art — and I was interminably grateful to be part of advancing something so enormously and transcendently important,” said Jaffe.
There are a number of iconic photographs in Hit Me With Music; of Marley hanging out with friends in Trench Town; Tosh in a ganja field in his native Westmoreland; and of the 1975 visit by The Jackson 5 to Marley’s home (now the Marley Museum) at Hope Road.
Jaffe played harmonica on Natty Dread, Marley’s 1974 solo album for Island Records. That year he joined Tosh’s camp and eventually helped him get a deal with Columbia Records, which distributed Legalize It and its 1977 follow-up Equal Rights.
During the 1980s, Jaffe worked as a producer with acts such as Barrington Levy and Joe Higgs, mentor to The Wailers. He has also toured with Stephen Marley.
Bob Marley (second centre) with friends in Trench Town.
Michael Jackson (left) and brother Jermaine (centre) with Wailers percussionist Alvin “Seeco” Patterson (right) during The Jackson 5’s visit to Bob Marley’s Hope Road home in March 1975.
