Archive interview: Kevin Macdonald on Bob Marley

Ten years ago, I interviewed Kevin Macdonald about his definitive documentary, ‘Marley’, for Bristol listings magazine Venue. The film is back on screen at the Watershed on August 6, as part of Cables & Cameras’ Jamaican independence 60th anniversary weekend. So it seemed like an opportune moment to revisit that interview for Macdonald’s thoughts on the nation’s biggest global star, whose popularity shows no signs of waning.

Imagine setting out to make an exhaustive, definitive documentary about a charismatic musician. Trouble is, he’s dead – and so are many of those who knew him. Worse still, there’s virtually no archive material from his formative years. That was the challenge facing Kevin Macdonald, director of the Oscar-winning One Day in September and BAFTA-winning Touching the Void, when he took on the long-gestating Bob Marley film to which Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme had both reportedly been attached at different times.

“It is frustrating, but you just convince yourself that actually it’s also kind of interesting,” Macdonald smiles. “It says something. It shows you that Bob’s from a different world, not just a different time. He’s from a place where nobody took photos of you as a child. That situates him in a different world – in the Third World. I think people find it hard to understand how Bob is the only Third World superstar. But, of course, the flipside of that is that it’s very difficult to talk about certain things because you don’t have the material to support it. I was particularly frustrated by the whole Studio One era, which was ’63 to ’66-’67. There’s a handful of photographs, a handful of record sleeves. No footage. And the buildings don’t even exist any more. I would like to have talked more about that period, but I just couldn’t because it would have become very, very boring. It is the most conventional and TV-ish part of the film, I suppose.”

‘Marley’ director Kevin Macdonald

Having had a miserable experience making a TV documentary about Mick Jagger (Being Mick – a puff piece for Jagger’s forgotten 2001 solo album Goddess in the Doorway), Macdonald was naturally wary about taking on another authorised project. But the lure was complete access to the Marley archives and a promise from Bob’s son and executive producer, Ziggy, that he would be free to create an honest portrait. The result is certainly that. It’s also a rare documentary that leaves you wanting to know more, despite clocking in at a bum-punishing two-and-a-half hours. Macdonald works to a broad canvas, taking in the personal, musical and political/spiritual aspects of the Jamaican reggae icon’s life. “You’ve got to explain quite a lot of stuff to people,” he points out. “That was the tension, really – explaining the progress and history of Jamaican music, plus explaining what Rastafari is, plus doing the biographical things as well. That is difficult. I felt like, for instance with Rastafari, I didn’t have the time in the film to really go into it. We cover it in a short way, but I think people are still a bit puzzled: is this a film about Rasta or is this a film about Bob? But I became fascinated by the difference between what Rasta has become and what Rasta was in the ’50s and ’60s – and what it was that attracted Bob. I think on one simple, psychological level it’s about searching for an identity, being mixed-race, not being accepted by either community – and he’s reaching out for something, a place where he can belong. But there’s also this hugely political element to Rasta at that time, which was trying to teach people a different way of perceiving their own identity historically.”

The young Bob Marley in ‘Marley’

There’s also some terrific newsreel of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie’s visit to Jamaica in 1966, when “this lickle man” (Bob’s wife Rita’s words) was mobbed by Rastafarians proclaiming him to be the messiah. Shame the film didn’t have room to point out that, perhaps uniquely in the history of religion, Selassie was eager to deny his divinity. “It’s absolutely amazing, isn’t it?” marvels Macdonald of the footage. “I don’t know if he said ‘I’m not the messiah’ when he came to Jamaica. He certainly said it later. The reason he came to Jamaica was because he was so curious. He’d heard about these people. And you just need to look at the Rastas who are waiting at the airport – those amazing close-ups in that archive footage. They’re not like Rastas as we know them today. They really were people who lived in the wilds, who stuck to rigorous rituals and laws and were total outcasts from society.”

Ziggy Marley interviewed in ‘Marley’

What may come as a surprise to some is how calculated Marley’s music was. Shy and retiring Island Records boss Chris Blackwell, who gives a rare interview for the film and is another executive producer, set out intentionally to market Bob Marley and the Wailers to a white rock audience. He even overdubbed rock guitar and keyboards on their 1973 album, Catch a Fire, in London, using US session guitarist Wayne Perkins and Free’s keyboard player John Bundrick. This did not go down well with Marley’s purist bandmates Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh (who died in 1987 and refers to Blackwell scathingly as ‘Chris Whitewell’ in an archive interview used in the film). But would Marley ever have achieved such enormous international success without Blackwell’s guiding hand? “No, I don’t think he would have. I think the surprising thing about Bob in some ways is that he was so ambitious. He’s somebody who would say, ‘OK, Blackwell’s given me a shit contract to begin with, but it’s better than no contract. I’m going to take it.’ Whereas Bunny and Peter would be like, ‘That’s an insult. He’s not paying us enough.’ So that determination is very interesting. I think Blackwell believed in him. People say, ‘Oh, Blackwell softened up the music. It’s not as pure as the early music’. I don’t think that’s true. I think Blackwell showed him a way to do something and Bob embraced it. He showed him a way to get to a wider audience. Bob was always doing that. Later in his career, he was trying to break into black America, so he made Could You be Loved disco-y for that reason. My sense is that what he was always trying to do was ensnare an audience and then say to them, ‘OK, look at this whole range of music that I’ve done. Listen to the rest of this stuff. You thought I was all disco, but actually I’m not.’ I think there was a huge integrity to him.”

Bob’s wife Rita interviewed in ‘Marley’

Another aspect of Marley’s personality that the film confronts head-on is his open and relentless philandering. Rita even describes turfing young women out of her literally shagged-out husband’s boudoir so he could get a bit of kip. But is she really quite as stoical and self-sacrificing as she likes to make out? Wasn’t she hurt by this behaviour? “I think so, yes. I think when she says, ‘I didn’t get upset because this was more than just a fun trip. It was an evangelical mission’, that is somewhat true in that that’s how Bob saw himself. One thing it’s hard to grasp is that he didn’t see himself as: ‘I’m a pop star. I’m going to get rich and famous and sleep with lots of girls’. I think he did genuinely believe that he had a message. But with visual interviews, you get to judge for yourself whether somebody’s telling the truth or whether they’re in denial. So I look at her when she says that and I think, you’re putting a brave face on this. And good on you. But we can’t help but feel that it’s affected you more strongly than you’re making out.”

Fascinating local trivia footnote: Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was evacuated to Bath during WWII. He regularly attended the Little Theatre to watch newsreels. Even today, Rastafarians visit the cinema to pay homage to him. So it was appropriate that the regional premiere of Marley took place at the Little back in April 2012.

Marley is showing at the Watershed on Saturday 6 August at 8pm. The screening is followed by a Marley-inspired reggae DJ set from DJ Style. Go here for tickets.

All images: Universal Pictures

Read more: Cables & Cameras celebrates the 60th anniversary of Jamaican independence