In 1974 Bunny Wailer was on the verge of stardom with his friend Bob Marley, but decided to retreat to a simple, rural life in Jamaica.
Jimmy Cliff, Toots and the Maytals and Johnny Nash were already popularising reggae, but Chris Blackwell of Island Records correctly foresaw that the Wailers, fronted by the charismatic and handsome Marley, would take the musical genre to another level.
Over the previous decade the Wailers’ ska and dancehall sound had been refined into the slower rhythms of reggae with Wailer’s sweet tenor voice harmonising beautifully with Marley’s while Wailer added percussive beats on the drums. After Blackwell signed the band in 1972, they produced two classic albums, Catch A Fire and Burnin’. Blackwell needed them to tour.
Yet Wailer and the other founder member, Peter Tosh, were unhappy that Island wanted to cash in on Marley’s looks and charisma by giving him a more prominent role in the group while infusing their roots-influenced tracks with modern production techniques and lead guitars. The prospect of touring the bohemian “freak” clubs of America made up Wailer’s mind. Such a chaotic lifestyle on the road would go against his Rastafari beliefs.
Marley did indeed go on to stardom. Wailer retreated to the hills with no regrets to smoke his “herbs” in peace but continued to record for the next three decades, notably producing the acclaimed album Blackheart Man in 1976.
If he had missed out on fame and fortune, at least he was writing, producing and performing music on his own terms. He re-emerged to tour the US and Europe and recorded three Grammy-winning albums in the 1990s. Latterly he embraced the role of reggae’s elder statesman, his greying dreads swirling about as he did a little jig and performed one of the Wailers’ classic tracks.
Neville O’Riley Livingston was born in Kingston in 1947 and brought up by his father, Thaddeus “Toddy Shut”, a part-time preacher who ran a grocery store and later became a ganja farmer and owner of a rum shack. Neville, as he was then known, accompanied hymns as a percussionist at the Revivalist church where Toddy preached.
He moved with his father to the village of Nine Mile in Saint Ann Parish where Toddy started dating Cedella Booker, the mother of Marley. Effectively raised as stepbrothers, Neville and Bob recorded their first music together at Stepney Primary and Junior High School. In the mid-1950s the family moved to Trenchtown, a government housing project that had risen out of the squatter camps near the port in west Kingston. Here, the gangland disputes of the “rude boys” gave them plenty of inspiration for their songs. Neville built his first guitar from “a bamboo staff, the fine wires from an electric cable and a large sardine can”.
Bob’s friend and gambling partner Peter McIntosh or “Tosh” joined the group and the boys were nurtured by the local singer Joe Higgs, known as the “Godfather of Reggae”, who gave them the run and safety of his yard to write and jam. The boys formed the Wailing Wailers in 1963, added Junior Brathwaite on vocals along with backing singers Beverly Kelso and Cherry Green and soon shortened their name to the Wailers.
A serious and spiritual young man with large, doleful eyes, Neville adopted the name Bunny and would be variously credited as Bunny Livingston or Livingstone before settling on Bunny Wailer, a reflection of his ringing tenor voice as well as a useful marketing device.
Simmer Down, a call for peace in the ghetto, was recorded in December 1963 at Studio One under the auspices of the producer Coxsone Dodd and reached No 1 in Jamaica. Their debut album The Wailing Wailers followed in 1965.
The band broke up when Marley married Rita Anderson and moved to America to be with his mother who, fed up with Toddy’s womanising, had settled in Delaware. Wailer, meanwhile, was convicted of cannabis possession in 1967 and spent 14 months in prison.
By the time of Wailer’s release Marley had returned and they put the band back together. They signed to JAD Records and started working with Lee “Scratch” Perry, who helped them to evolve the slower reggae style; Wailer recorded his signature track Dreamland. Their albums Soul Rebels (1970) and Soul Revolution (1971) cemented their reputation as one of Jamaica’s top-ranking acts. In 1972 they toured the UK with the US reggae singer Johnny Nash, who to Wailer’s chagrin became a mentor to Marley. They recorded a set for the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test, but by the end of the tour they were stranded in London with no money to go home.
In return for their signatures on a recording contract, Blackwell paid their air fare and gave them $8,000 to record an album for Island Records, Catch A Fire (1973), which includes Stir It Up. Already embittered by fights over royalties with producers, Wailer was furious that more solemn tracks such as Concrete Jungle and Slave Driver had been “rocked up” to make the album more commercial. “I felt the way to break the Wailers was as a black rock act,” Blackwell told Rolling Stone.
Later that year Island released the album Burnin’, which included the songs I Shot the Sheriff, Small Axe and Get Up, Stand Up. A proposed US tour persuaded Wailer to leave, along with Tosh. They later each accepted $45,000 from Blackwell over unpaid royalties. Wailer insisted on being paid in cash and built a house in St Thomas, 60 miles from Kingston. There he lived with his girlfriend and later wife, Jean Watt, who went missing last year. He was believed to be the father of ten daughters and three sons. One of his sons, Asadenaki, is a singer.
Island released his albums Blackheart Man and Protest (1977), which featured material he had saved up having felt increasingly marginalised in the Wailers. Over the years he experimented with different styles of music. He was awarded Jamaica’s Order of Merit in 2017.
After the death of Marley from cancer in 1981 and the murder of Tosh by gunmen who broke into his home in 1987, Wailer was a fiercely protective keeper of the flame, albeit for a price. He reportedly received a substantial sum to be interviewed for the acclaimed Kevin Macdonald film Marley in 2012.
“Robert Marley can’t tell a story, Peter Tosh can’t tell a story. I have to tell all three Wailers’ stories,” he said in 2017. “All dem people mismouth but they know nuttin bout that,” he added. “I am the survivor.”
Bunny Wailer, singer-songwriter and percussionist, was born on April 10, 1947. He died of complications following a stroke on March 2, 2021, aged 73
