No Woman No Cry

Bob Marley ONE LOVE evokes fond memories for this Aucklander

A few days ago I went to see the Bob Marley ONE LOVE movie with my wife, one of my daughters and one of my granddaughters. Three generations and we all loved it. A trip into the past that brought back some fond memories and some dim memories.

The first I remember hearing Bob Marley was in 1977. I moved into a flat in Sarsfield Street, in Herne Bay with my German Shepherd, Lady. It was a nice part of Auckland, with good vibes, a super easygoing landlord and flatmates.

Sadly I don’t remember any of the names, I didn’t stay in touch with any of them after I left Auckland for another sojourn in Nelson the following year. yet some memories are vivid.

The couple in the room next to mine had a great stereo (record player) and the timber behind the hessian covering made their room sound like a bass bin, and there was a stunning crispness to the Congo drums. I’m glad we liked the same music :D

As I said, I can’t remember their names. I remember the guy had an emerald sewn into his middle eye, which was pretty eclectic for the time. Their favourite song was No Woman, No Cry, and he seemed pretty amazed that I didn’t know any Bob Marley songs. Well over the next many months, I got to know them inside out and back to front and I loved them.

The owner of the house also lived there and he was super easygoing. I asked him if I could decorate the room a bit because it was very bland. He said, “Do what you like, paint the walls, I don’t care. Have fun.” So I did.

I got red and black enamel paint and had great fun drawing lines and arrows around the room while listening to great music.

My instrument collection was a lot smaller back then, and one of my prized instruments was my sitar. Selling it to Al Kingsley Smith when I left Auckland, was one of my big mistakes. It wasn’t the first time he had bought instruments from me, telling me how tough the market was, and then selling them for a decent profit. But then that was his business, and we musos were lucky to have people like him in the industry. I left Auckland with a pack and my guitar on my back riding off on my motorbike, and that’s all I had room for sadly.

I didn’t know what I was doing with the sitar, but I had listened to a lot of Indian music. People like Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan who played the sarod. I take solace in hearing that people like George Harrison, said he didn’t have a clue what he was doing when he first started playing sitar. It didn’t matter to me. Another inspiration was Strawbs who introduced sitar into their repertoire as they did beautifully in this little clip:

The video below was the last concert that Shankar played before he passed away in 2012. I had the privilege of seeing him perform in the Auckland Town Hall back in the 80s.

I loved to sit on our doorstep and play the sitar with my dog. I never knew whether it was because she was happy, or because she hated it, but whenever I was playing, she would sit beside me and howl. She didn’t leave my side, she could have gone back inside the house if she wanted to, so I assume she liked it.

Several people including Anoushka Shankar (Norah Jones's sister) said that their pets liked listening to Indian classical music, so maybe Lady was harmonising with me. I’ll never know, but it was like a show trick, you could count on her joining in with me.

I feel like I have a distant memory of going to Bob Marley’s concert at Western Springs, but I’m not sure that I did. I went to pretty much any concert they had there in my younger days, but my memories of his visit are mixed with things I saw on TV, and I suspect if I had gone, I would have more vivid memories, but I can’t even remember the names of all of the bands I saw, especially in the late 70s, which was when loads of artists were nearing the end of big careers and that was when a crowd of maybe 15-20,000 was worth their bother to come down under.

When I could afford it, I would pay to get in, other times, I would bribe my way through a hole in the fence, paying security guards with beer, to sneak in at the back, and crawl commando style down the banks, as spotlights searched for people who had the cheek to not pay.

Anyway. I loved his music and always thought it would be cool to visit Jamaica. Finally, around 2008 the opportunity came up. My daughter was representing New Zealand in the World Cheerleading Championships and I was along as a chaperone and supporter.

I checked out Travelocity and found that if I booked online and paid in US dollars, I could get a great deal for the two of us to go to Jamaica via Miami before coming back home, so we did.

We had a great time visiting Marley’s home, where one of his old friends was sitting in the compound blowing smoke from his monster spliff, under the protection of the security guards. He was apparently an old friend of Bob’s and always welcome. I didn’t take a photo out of respect.

We had a driver who showed us the sights and I have to say that it felt like we had gone right back to the 1970s. I’m not saying that like it was a bad thing.

Anyway, our trip allowed us to share a Marley connection and watching the movie, my daughter and I both felt a little emotional afterwards, enjoying our memories, like our visit to Margaritaville.

I’m going to leave the last clip to remember Marley’s official Maori welcome to New Zealand. I love this clip, as one of the Wahine who guides him onto the Ngā Hau e Whā Mara marae in Pukekohe says “OK, Haere Mai mate.” A reporter said to him in an interview “You must have had many welcomes from people around the world. “Not like this”, replied Marley. If he hadn’t before, he would always have a strong connection to the people of New Zealand from then on, where reggae remains very popular. It was cool to see a few little clips of his visit to Auckland during the credits of the movie, although most of the audience had left by then and missed it.