A.E. Guy: [00:00:07] Welcome to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with your hosts, Phil Proctor and Ted BonniI. Phil and Ted's guest today is Mr. Reggae. Roger Steffens. Roger is an actor, author, poet photographer, Vietnam veteran. And reggae expert with a world's largest collec.on of Bob Marley material.
And now your sexy boomer hosts, Phil Proctor and Ted BonniI
Ted: [00:00:35] Welcome to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show I'm Ted BonniI and I'm Phil Proctor. And today we are in reggae land.
Phil: [00:00:41] We're in the museum of reggae and the ska and the ska’s the limit, uh, at the beau.ful home of Roger Steffens. And as Roger said, it's his third home because he collected so much memorabilia. He had to move out of his first two houses, but he's got, you have seven rooms here dedicated to you, your collec.on of in rooms, Florida ceiling. And there's no room leX. And Raj is the primary. Go-to man for the history and story of reggae, he's wriIen 10 books and seven of them have been about reggae. And how many about Bob Marley in par.cular?
Phil: [00:01:30] And we'll get into all of that stuff, but, but the real thing about Roger and me is that we've been friends for Roger reminded me 45 years. 45 years. Yeah. I remember when we were friends for
Phil: [00:01:50] That's right. That's right. But did we meet through? Oh, we met, we met gebng stoned in New York.
I said, you're married to Phil Proctor. Oh my God. He, you know, the Firesign Theatre kept me sane when I was in Vietnam. How was it that you first got turned on to the Firesign Theatre? I had a friend. A poet named Jerry Burns, who was living in, um, on the border of Berkeley and Oakland in 1966, t
Phil: [00:02:35] A guy named burns is the perfect one to introduce you to the Firesign theatre.
And I, you know, I wore the record out. Making all those, those tapes, but guys all over the country from the DMC to the Delta, we're listening to the fire sign theater on casseIes. And every .me a new album came out I’d repeat the process. So I imagine we saved a lot of lives
Ted: [00:03:37] Were drugs prevalent as, as they say, they were like, how us would Foresign take off in the field?
But when I got to ‘Nam, I realized you needed something to break that 24/7 tension. Oh yeah. There was no front line. I mean, eventually they dropped three rockets on my block, in the middle of the Saigon and burned 400 houses to the ground on her achievements, birthday. And so there was a tension all the .me and all the lifers were, were drinkers.
And if you're drunk, you're drunk, but if you're stoned and somebody starts shoo.ng at you, you can straighten out. PreIy quickly. So I had to learn how to, oh really. And the guys, the 10% of the guys in my unit in November of 1967, who smoked would take me to their rooms and they would stop on, on the way back to the barracks.
And they would ask the local cyclo driver for a pack of park lanes. Which I'm holding in my hand now, the, hold it a liIle closer to the mic. So you can got it. Empty pack of park, complete with the Vietnamese tax stamp on it, or repacked Bri.sh cigareIes with Cami weed in them. And they were twenty-five cents a pack or $2 a carton of 200.
And in other words, a penny, a joint, and that's how. We lost the war.
Phil: [00:05:16] And so you went out behind the garage
On the main street of Saigon, a couple of blocks away from the PSYOPs headquarters and it became a mee.ng place for, uh, the war correspondence and, uh, for, you know, world tourists who wanted to come and see a groovy war. And yeah. Um, off duty officers who got ouIa uniform and would have been court-mar.aled in an instant, if they had been caught smoking park lanes with Sergeant Steffens.
Uh, so it, it was, it was a wonderful experience in, in many ways. I always say it was a million dollar experience who wouldn't give 10 cents to do over. Yeah. Right. You said PSYOPs. Yeah. Psyops so this is, this is my story. I for many, many years, I did a one man show called “Poetry for people who hate poetry.”
And it was all living American writers and E.E. Cummings who was just too good to ignore it. And I was actor in residence at a Catholic woman's college in St. Louis in April of 1967.
Phil: How old were you then?
Shakespearian character is opposite 12 of the drama students. no, no. We had planned, it was an all women's college. We didn't need any women. And I got draXed on the opening night of that show.
Phil: Oh my God.
I had been the New Jersey state oratory champion in my senior year in high school in 1960. Um, the cons.tu.on, a barrier against tyranny. What a load of crap that turned out to be, you know, I worked for Bill Buckley in New York on his mayoral campaign and I read na.onal review and I was just brainwashed by 15 years of Catholic educa.on.
Ted: [00:07:41] You were an Nixon man that didn't vote for Catholic president.
Ted: Against, uh, John Kennedy against Kennedy, who was the first Catholic president.
And he said there were no sta.ons. And, um, he didn't say yet. Yeah. So I enlisted for an extra year. And aXer basic training, they sent me well, basic training. Yeah. I don't even want to get into that.
Phil: [00:09:10] No, you should see Roger's face, but he said the word
To study shorthand. And I, but as luck would have, I have it, it was the same small base where DINFOS was located. So a master Sergeant at DINFOS took pity on me and said, you don't belong in stenography. I'll get you transferred. So I got transferred into PSYOPs with a bunch of guys. Who'd been professional broadcasters in real life.
The guy who created chicken man, Dick Orkin, really, really bunch of great crea.ve guys. And, uh, we had a 13 week course, one week we were directors next week we were writers. Then we were camera ops. Then we were, uh, running the Telus in AE and then we were on camera and it was the best training I've ever had at any school I've been to in my life.
Now, when you say PSYOPs psychological opera.ons, which was the modern term for propaganda warfare. Well, ironically, my orders, when I was going to finish the broadcast course were to go to as Mara Eritrea. To a mountaintop sta.on, uh, where I was going to help run the radio TV sta.on. It was accessible one of two ways, helicopter or safari.
They were in constant warfare with the main country of Ethiopia, you know, Eritrea. I s.ll are, and I was all set to go. And the last week of class, every single one of us had our orders canceled and we were shipped off on mass to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. To the PSYOPs school, all of you, all of us, a whole class, and we were trained to carry 80 pounds of loudspeaker, backpacks, broadcas.ng, prerecorded, surrender casseIes to the Vietcong, into frontline combat opera.ons.
Our training began on the very first day with a showing of the four hour. Uncut version of Lenny rife, installs triumph of the will. The Nuremberg rally not see four hour version four and the final class three weeks later, they repeated the en.re four hour. Film and said, go to Vietnam and emulate this because it's the best propaganda work ever done.
So I began to have doubts about certain things and it was such a bizarre place. I remember being called to an assembly and there were about 800 people in this huge auditorium at Fort Bragg. And the .tle was, why are we in Vietnam? And they didn't seem. To be answering the ques.on. And finally, somebody in the crowd stood up and said, Sergeant, why are we in Vietnam?
And he looked him in the eye and he says, that's classified.
Phil: Oh, wow. Oh man.
Phil: Well, with a loud speaker on your back with loud speakers on my bed, you wouldn't make much of a target.
How would you like to live in the walling hotel? Across the street from the compound in an air condi.oned room with hot and cold running water, or you could go to the ninth infantry division and go out to the field. Oh, you thought about that for a couple of days. Okay. It was fine for three months and then the Tet offensive broke out.
Ah, And there were huge sewer pipes, like eight feet in diameter on the street in front of us that hadn't been. Laid underground yet. Yeah. And there were 52 refugee families living in the sewer pipes. Oh my goodness. And the Vietnamese government was saying in the middle of the Tet offensive, we have no refugee problem.
We don't need any help. And the streets were filled like, like the LA looks now with, with homeless. So I had done a great deal of work in the schools in Racine, Wisconsin. Uh, spoken at every one of them two or three .mes and all the kids knew me. And so I wrote a leIer to the editor of the Racine journal .mes describing.
The condi.ons in front of me. And I said, if you would send me food or clothing, I guarantee you that I will personally distribute it to the refugees, uh, and make sure it doesn't end up on the black market. So they published an editorial in support of this, along with my leIer. And three weeks later, two, five ton trucks pull into the compound.
But these huge conexes, you know, the nine foot tall metal container shipping containers. And my roommate was the mail clerk and he was so pissed off and he opened one of the doors and these liIle boxes all addressed to be started pouring out. And I went into the Colonel's office and I said, Colonel, sir.
You got to come outside and see something I'm very busy. Private. No, no, Colonel, please. You've got to see some, he comes out and he sees these two conexes with packages pouring out of him and he said, what the hell is that Stephens? And I said, well, I think it's refugee supplies that my friends have sent me and I've got to send them all back.
What do you mean. Come into my office. And I said, well, you know, I'm so busy typing your leIers, Colonel. I, I don't have .me to personally distribute this stuff. And I promised my friends. I gave them my word that I would cause I don't want it on the black market. He promoted me to spec for the spot, gave me my own Quonset hut, told me I could go anywhere in Vietnam from the DMZ to the Delta work on any project I thought was worthwhile.
As long as I took pictures. So he could take the credit for it. And I didn't care. I wasn't a lifer take all the credit you want girl. So when my year was up, I found that I can get a five month early out if I stayed in Vietnam up un.l that point 31 months and I could get the drop. So I was there for a total of 26 months.
So the last 26 months of the 1960s, I was in Vietnam. Wow. And then did worked all all over the place, just for
Ted: [00:16:17] people who don't know, what the Tet offensive?
And, um, That was a major shock to people in the states. And that's when Cronkite went over and came back and took the an.war stance. And that changed American public opinion too. So it was, it was a major defeat for the Vietcong, but it was a major propaganda victory. And in the long run that made all the difference.
Phil: [00:16:58] Yeah, it's a real crapshoot who is going to command you and who you have to, you know,
Yeah. You know, it was guys like me who should have been officers and didn't want that responsibility and thought the war was a crock of shit.
Ted: [00:17:25] Right. You had already changed your poli.cs before you got draXed?
They, uh, they had women in the PX is beau.ful blondes and mini skirts cut up to their navel, prac.cally selling Ferrari's and Masera.'s. And with built-in insurance, if you die. You can leave the car to your girlfriend or your, your wife. And, you know, if you want an anything, you could find a way to get it.
And, uh, you know, the, the mess Sergeant would trade stakes for television sets and it was just about money. Fisher stereo had an office in Saigon. They sold $3 million in 1967 worth of stereo equipment to the soldiers. Everybody was making money, right. And leX. Catch 22. It was, it was Milo minder, binder, gun, completely ballis.c.
And a lot of drugs, you could buy a lot of drugs that druggies liked, uh, in any drug store in Saigon. I was never into any of those heavy drugs. I just like park lanes once I learned how to smoke them. But we had friends who sent us acid from the states and, uh, Uh, by the end of the second year, I, I had done a lot of acid and then there was the coconut monk and that was a whole different world.
Johnny Steinbeck became a good friend of mine. This John Steinbeck, the fourth, the author, his son, he was there in the army. He got busted for pot. He tes.fied in Congress when he was. Out of the army as a civilian. And he came back, um, and he spent a lot of .me with Sean Flynn, with Errol Flynn son who was a CBS camera man who is later lost and kind of Cambodia.
Yeah. And, uh, so Johnny and Sean took me in January of 1969 to a place in the middle of the Mekong river. Called the island of the coconut monk con foam. The coconut monk was a liIle
.ny four and a half foot tall guy who hadn't laid down in 20 years. He slept sibng up in the Lotus posi.on. He'd been, uh, trained, uh, I think as a chemical engineer by the French in France and came back to Vietnam and they wanted him to become a colonial func.onary and steady became a monk.
I lived on a, uh, in a Palm tree, like a. Uh, a liIle,
Phil: [00:20:16] was he a French?
Phil: Trained by the French occupa.on, yeah. Forces
Had Chinese benefactor. Gave him a sandbar island in the middle of the me Cong and the north bank was controlled by the Americans and the south bank by the communists. And they fire rockets and mortars over the island, but never touched the island. And it was a religious Disneyland and they were constantly adding to it.
And at the end of the island, there was a circular prayer plaxorm and there were nine columns. The Mekong is the river of nine dragons. It has nine tributaries. And each column was surrounded by a spoiling yellow dragon and capped with a pink Lotus blossom. And on top of one was Christ shaking hands with Buddha on top of another was the Virgin Mary hugging.
Quantopian the Chinese female day at home. And every three hours, day and night. Each of the families on the island would send one representa.ve to the plaxorm to pray for peace to Christ, Buddha, Muhammad loud, say Confucius son and Victor,Hugo, and Winston.
Phil: I love that. I love that. And the island, what was the name of it again?
The Vietnamese south Vietnamese government allowed it to exist because it was a place where they could keep them from sebng themselves on fire, on the streets of Saigon, the interna.onal press. And he wanted to hold a peace conference on the island. Uh, and he guaranteed that if people came to the island and met with him for a week, by the end of that week, there would be peace in Vietnam.
And of course, everybody just laughed him off. What happened ul.mately? He was, um, arrested in 75 and put on house arrest and died in 91 under house arrest. But now you can
Phil: [00:22:34] get a drink called the coconut monk, uh, at trader Joe's in his memory.
Ted: [00:22:46] I thiought we had a new sponsor.
Phil: [00:22:48] That's why we're, we're just broadcas.ng
So. I w this is 1970. This is Kent state Jackson State murders, massive demonstra.ons all over the country. And I put together as a slideshow, 300 pictures that I had taken over my 26 months in ‘Nam and I just said, I'm only going to tell you what I personally experienced, and I want to explain to you. Why I am a different person from the man you knew before I got draXed.
Phil: Good for you.
I heard. Just before I arrived here that at Kent state today, four students were murdered by the na.onal guard. The whole audience just lept to their feet. Screaming turned out. A lot of people had rela.ves who were students who can't stay. And I mean, they rushed for the telephones. They just abandoned the auditorium. I get. Goose pimples about that day.
[00:24:38 So I had all these gigs booked for the rest of the month, but the schools were all on strike. So instead of being the convoca.on speaker, I became the strike commiIee speaker and did dozens of, of talks. And, you know, the only complaints I got from people were from the leX.
People who said, why? Why aren't you encouraging the students to burn down the administra.on, building the radical leX over the radical leX? Yeah, they didn't think much of what I was doing, but I got to speak to an awful lot of people who would never have entertained an an.-war speaker before.
Ted: [00:25:14] When you think back at Vietnam, how do you regard it?
Phil: [00:25:21] It sounds like you had freedom, you know,
So when I would hear about things that needed to be done, I would bring medical and dental assistance. And you plane loads of clothing and medicine and food. And yeah, I also flew a leaflet drop missions. Oh, God, they had these liIle OTU bees, which were push pull airplanes. Um, they had an engine behind the cabin and an engine in front of the cabin and they cut a hole in the floor and we would drop leaflets through the hole in the floor.
And I remember on one of these missions, I wrote about it in a, an essay I did called nine medita.ons on Jimmy and numb. But Jimmy Hendrickson, um, uh, that's been widely reproduced and, you know, we're flying 50 feet over a mountain yard village, scaring the shit out of people dropping leaflets on people who are illiterate.
And we look off in the distance and I've got AFVN, the armed forces radio sta.on on, on my earphones. And. I look off and we see this rocket, maybe seven, eight miles away, but we can see it taking off and it describes this arc and it lands on a barracks and you see this two story barracks, just go up in flames and pieces of it rocke.ng off in every direc.on.
And. I'm listening to Hendrix going “Excuse me while I kiss the sky.” Oh. In the whole war was, was just surreal and surrealis.c.
Ted: [00:27:13] You're listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show
Phil: [00:27:14] And we're going to have a, some more with Roger Steffens right aXer this imported message.
[00:27:21]Proctor and Bergman in the audience here in Hollywood, wai.ng for America's newest game show to begin army bleach Lincoln, and welcome to eat. Please walkbackwards on tape for blind Satanist for a million dollars. What am I holding in my hand? Oh, a .ny ball or a 10 ton elephant. I'm just going to go with my ins.nct here. Your dollars. I know millionaires men.oned just stuff it in no for double or nothing who is responsible for the pi.ful plight of America's homeless? The old man with the beard in the sky? You just lost all your money and your home. So you're going to have to go live in a box. But not just any box Louann. We're giving you a triple ply corrugated cardboard box with a rest, easy, easy staples, and a garbage bag to wear over your head. Isn't she lucky? Lucky?And remember everybody in America is eligible.
A.E. Guy: You're listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with Phil Proctor and Ted BonniI. To hear all the Sexy Boomer shows go to sexy boomershow.com and press the subscribe buIon in your podcast player. To know when a new episode drops back to fill in dead and their special guest. Mr. Reggae, Roger Steffens.
Ted: [00:29:01]We're back. And we're speaking with Raj, also known as Roger Steffens.
Phil: That's right on, on KPFK that's right.
.me was when I came back from my first visit to Jamaica in 1976. And, uh, Dr. Demento put me on his show. Oh, liver. I played Ram goat liver about a bus that hits a Ram and everybody in. The Jamaican bus gets off and roast the Ram and eats it.
Ted: [00:29:38] Reggae Beat, your show on KCRW.
Ted: [00:29:45] What was the spark for you that, that turned you onto reggae?
So. How did he take all of them? The minute I got home and he found out I'd been in Jamaica already buying reggae records in 76, when I had my pocket picked in Bob Marley's record store by one of the biggest reggae stars of the .me. And I figured with his collec.on and his vast knowledge. And my radio background, we could do a great show and we tried for a whole year to get on the air and we finally got on KCRW.
Ted: [00:30:45] Well, it's interes.ng how young reggae is. Yeah. 68. What is reggae? Where did it come from in 1968?
And he said, reggae music crawls into your bloodstream, like some vampire amoeba from the psychic rapids of upper Niger consciousness. I said, man, I ain't never heard of this before, but I got to find this right now. I was living in Berkeley. I ran out to a, a used record bookstore on ShaIuck avenue and found a $2 and 25 cent used copy of Catchafire, which had a sleeve that opened in the middle leg Zippo.
And I took that home. And from the first notes of. Of concrete jungle. I was stunned. And the next night there was a liIle theater on the north side of Berkeley's campus, liIle 40 seat revival theater, and they were showing the harder they come and it was a full house or 40 seats were filled. And there's a scene halfway through where there's a midnight smoking session with a big bong.
And when that came on the screen, Everyone in the theater lit a joy and it was so much, you couldn't see this screen. I bought the soundtrack to the harder they come and my life changed forever. Um, I could not believe that there was a body of such great work that existed a couple of hundred miles off the coast of Florida that we never heard about.
My boy lollipop was sky. Nobody ever called it sky. The, the Israelites Desmond Dekker and the ASIS. That was a novelty song. Nobody ever said, listen to this, a reggae song. Yeah. The style itself,
Ted: [00:32:49] is it based in roots music?
So they were incredibly skilled musicians. And in 1963, when, when Jamaica became independent, they wanted to have a music of their own. Um, and they were playing a lot of
soca, which, uh, Calypso in, in Jamaica, but Calypso was not Jamaican. It was Trinidadian. So they wanted to have a conscious. Music crea.on.
That was Jamaica's own when they became independent and they, what year was this? This was 1963. Really? When, when ScoI took hold, it was a double .me. ScoI, ScoI, ScoI, ScoI, ScoI, ScoI. And it became big in England because of all the Windrush genera.on who were brought over there to do the menial jobs.
And they had huge colonies of in, uh, Jamaicans in England, scar was
Phil: [00:33:50] fast and reggae was slow. And you said it was because of, uh, the rumor is there was a terrible, drought.
So they, they wanted to slow down the beat and they. Changed it to, uh, an alternate kind of heartbeat. Cause all of Jamaica's music is heartbeat. It's just the tempo that changes. So ScoI, ScoI, ScoI, ScoI, ScoI, ScoI became, but bumped them, but boom, boom, boom.
And most of the soundtrack of the harder they come is his rock steady era.
And then, eh, the sound systems, which brought the music to the hinterlands in Jamaica with big speakers and turntables, uh, when they would play a record, oXen someone would toast over it or rap over it. Rap really was born in Jamaica and it was a Jamaican who brought it to the Bronx Kool Herc. And then they started pubng out singles.
Where they only had one song on it. They had the, the, a side was the vocal and the B side was instrumental. So you could play the instrumental at a sound system dance and a local rapper could rap over it. And then they started to record those raps and put them on record with people like, like you, Roy who passed away last year is considered the father.
Yep. And, um, in 1968, the studio musicians changed it up to Chuck. Chuck Chuck. Chukka slowed down even further from rock steady. And that heartbeat music was known as the roots music. This was the music that the Rastafarians played at their ground na.ons at their religious gatherings. And it was mainly a drum music.
And then the, the electric bands would. Take different instruments to take the part of the ACAT, a drum or the bass drum, and use that. You hear that, especially when you hear Rastaman vibra.on roster, man chant. That's where its roots origins are. The SkaIelites were dreadlocked and they used to do ground Asians up in the Hills, above Jamaica with people like count Ossie and the mys.c revela.on of Rastafari.
And they are on a song called Oak Carolina. That is considered the first real reggae song. And that was recorded in 1958.
Phil: [00:36:29] To get to Bob Marley, Proctor and Bergman. We're performing at Paul's malls. Paul's mall in Boston. And our booking agent told us that we would be opening for a group called. The Wailers.And since it was Boston, I thought it was an Irish group that would be seeing, well, whole went home and off we go, you know? And, and so we show, we show
up at the club and we go into the dressing room and there's all these bad guys. And. And, and we figured out, you know, oh my God, this is that reggae group we've heard about.
And I think it was their first American tour. It was, and Bob was there and they were smoking a ganja smoking pot in a rolled up, uh, uh, issue of the wall street journal. And they were keeping their pot. In a bag from the bank of Boston in a white. And so Bergman being bourbon said, Hey man, can we have a liIle bit?
And Marley says, oh sure, man, he reaches into the bag, takes out a handful of ganja and adds it to us. Okay. And aXer spending like, you know, 15, 20 minutes. Talking to these great guys. We said, you know, Bob, you have to go on first. The crowd out there is your crowd. So why don't you go on and sa.sfy them?
They'll never tolerate us. And then we'll do our crazy act aXerwards. He said, sure. So they went on all wonderfully stoned, leaning up against the, the big speakers and they. Killed. It was just wonderful. And aXer it was over liIle intermission, Peter and I go out to do our highfalu.n college oriented,
And we look out at a sea of black faces basically, and I say, this is going to be different, Peter. And there was this Roman show on PBS called I Claudius, which was a tremendous hi. were doing a parody of that show and I did this crazy speech as this character, and right when I ended it. There's dead silence. And we hear from the audience, a female voice, say, what did dat man say? You know, that totally unforgeIable.
Ted: [00:39:09] When people heard first about reggae, was it always the connota.on that it was related to? Ganja and marijuana and gebng high, but it was very .ght. Were they very rehearsed?
They would. Top three women vocalists in Jamaica, really? And, um, she said one day they did a rehearsal of a, I forget what song she told me, but it was one of his most important songs. And he wanted it to be really .ght and right. And they did it for 14 hours. She said un.l they in tears begging him to stop.
And he has no, not .l you get this right. And he made everybody in his band learn how to play every other instrument. So they were so well-rehearsed and they knew how each song fit together. So keenly that on a live show and I, I have a whole cabinet filled with live tapes over there. Um, No woman, no crime.
I might be 4:24, 1 night, and the next night it might be 7:16 and another night it might be 13 minutes long and he could do that on stage with just a flick of a finger, an eye movement, and the band was ready to go wherever he wanted to take him perfec.onist. So the ganja didn't affect it. No, no.
Look, all these answers that are sung all over the world today. Redemp.on song, get up, stand up. Exodus. They were all created directly under the conscious use of verb. And he got
mad at people. He says, herb is not for . He told me, he pointed to, as far as he said is for . I love that. And he didn't like people who abused it, it was sacred.
It was the way to see and feel and hear God and bring God consciousness and manifested into our conciouness
Phil: And to write good comedy records.
Ted: [00:41:14] Is that a Jamaican, this no.on of heavy ganja use,
Ted: So it caught on why wasn't it.
Ted: [00:41:28] you have said that Bob Marley was the most important musician of the 20th century. Yeah,
Look, Bob's music can be translated into any language and be understood. How do you translate subterranean homesick blues into Urdu? His music speaks to the essen.al elements. Of a consciously lived life it's music that comforts the suffers it's music that challenges the autocrats, it music that inspires the revolu.onaries it's music that tells you how important ganja can be in a crea.ve life.
Kids love it for that reason. If kids just get into it because of Nangia, they're going to be taken to places they never dreamed of if they listened right. So there, there is no figure in the 20th century musical sphere, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, I don't care who you bring up that has had the effect. That Bob Marley has had to this day.
He is s.ll the top selling reggae ar.st year and he was tremendously poli.cally engaged despite himself. He despised poli.cs. He despised poli.cians and I'll tell you a story. The great moment in his life. One of the greatest moments is in 1978, when he returns from exile aXer the assassina.on aIempt.
The concert that he did on his return was called the one love peace concert. And it was to concre.ze a peace truce between the two warring fac.ons in the gheIo, the JLP the Labour party, uh, which was the right-wing party of Edward . Whom they called CIA and the socialist Democrat, Michael Manley, who was the prime minister at the .me that people's na.onal party.
And at the end of the peace concert, he brought both of them reluctantly on stage and made them shake hands in front of 40,000 people. A moment that his art director said was like
Christ on the cross between the two of them. And I had the great pleasure in 1979 when I was traveling with him through California, uh, we had just started the reggae beat and island records called us up and asked us me and Hank, if we would mind going on the road for two weeks with Bob.
And, uh, he had two free nights and he was staying at the sunset Marquis and, um, on. On the Monday night, we showed him, um, footage from the smile Jamaica concert, which was done two nights aXer he was shot. He had never seen that before. And then the following night, a movie called Heartland reggae was being edited in town by the Canadian guys who made it of the, uh, one love peace concert.
And. I watched Bob as he watched Bob on the screen. And there was that moment when he takes the hands of these two guys and whose names. So many thousands of people have been murdered in the gang wars in Jamaica holds those hands aloX, and he makes this Bennet benedic.on to Rastafari. Wow. And he was asked aXerwards what was going through your mind at that moment?
And he said, well, I'm on no poli.cian, but if I met a poli.cian on, they went .ng for me to do kill them both. Uh, wow. Ooh, that gives me chills. How was he shot? What happened? He was rehearsing for this smile, Jamaica concert. He was giving a free concert for the people in Jamaica, aXer he had made his big interna.onal breakthrough.
And, um, the Jamaican, there were elec.ons coming up and the scia.ca people felt that by doing this concert and the fact that the prime minister would be on stage with him. Uh, that he was endorsing the reelec.on of Michael Manley and he got kind of suckered into that.
And, um, he was warned not to do the show in advance and he had armed guards around him day and night.
But the Friday before the Sunday concert, this was December 3rd, ’76. The gardens is about eight o'clock at night, just kind of disappeared. Oh, and two carloads of gunmen, mostly teenagers broke through the gates, jumped out and started shoo.ng everyone in sight. His wife had a bullet in their head that lodged in her skull.
His manager was shot five .mes in the groin and survived. And then the gunman turned to Bob and shot him. And he had had a dream that week that, um, his mother was B was shot. And the only reason she didn't die is because she froze and stood. Absolutely s.ll. So Bob froze and the bullet, he was peeling, a grapefruit and the bullet came right across his heart and lodged in his leX arm.
And he went to the grave with that bullet in him. And, um, the gunman all got away and they were people they knew there were people he had helped support. Financially. He tried to help people on both sides of the poli.cal aisle and it didn't do him any good. They came to kill him.
Ted: [00:47:09] How did he first break onto the scene? How did it all start?
Wilson. He even won a talent contest and it was on the ed Sullivan show in the early six.es. And Joe was a mentor to a lot of young musicians.
People like the whaling souls and others. And, um, he as a personal favor to a mutual friend, a man named Errol, uh, was a tutor to Bob from the .me Bob was about 14, 15 years of age. And in 1963, Bob felt he was ready to record. Joe didn't think so, but he went on his own to audi.on for a man named Leslie Kahn who had, um, uh, a lot of early hits and, um, He did a song called judge, not before you judge yourself and another one called one cup of coffee.
Both of them country in Western covers, although he's been credited with wri.ng, judge not, it was revealed recently that he didn't, um, and they, they failed and he went back to Trenchtown and con.nued rehearsing with Joe Hagan who taught him Mike technique and stage craX and composi.on and harmony, and, uh, was as.
From a disciplinarian as Bob himself later became. And, um, the following year, they went for an audi.on at Coxon DOD studio one and, uh, was just a constant Hitmaker. And, uh, they audi.oned for him. And, uh, depending on who you believe in my book, they came back the next morning they came back two weeks later, they came back a couple of later, but eventually they came back.
Yeah. And they recorded a song called simmer down and urging them. People in the gheIo to cool it. Um, that became an instant number when it's sold an astonishing 80,000 copies in a country of only 2 million people. And that was the start of a constant stream of hits for the next two years. And they.
Usually made three pounds a week, no maIer how many tens of thousands of records they were making. And finally in 66, Bob was disgusted and this was, they were being ripped off. They were making tons of money for Coxen and not seeing any of it. So he went to America where his mother had married a man in a Delaware named Booker.
He spent February to October of 66 in America. That was a big civil rights summer. And he was reading a lot of black power literature at that .me and working in the DuPont hotel in Wilmington, sweeping floors. Wow. And he went back in 69 and spent the summer, the Woodstock summer of ’69 at his mother's house and worked on the floor of the Chrysler plant.
Driving a forkliX. And that's night shiX the song he wrote about it called night shiX. And, um, he had two young friends, Ibis pits and Deon Wilson. Uh, IVUS had, uh, an African arts and craXs store across the street from Bob's mother's house and they became friends. And one day I miss and Deon and I've talked to both of them.
Um, We're saying, oh, Bob, you know, you're going to be a big star. You're going to have lots of money. You gonna have lots of kids. You've goIa be world famous and a nice long life. And Bob said, no, no, no. He says, when I'm 36, I'm going to die. That's an odd thing for a kid to be thinking about.
Phil: Certainly is.
And the two of them have confirmed it. So I believe that's true. And you said when he was a kid, he could read palms all the .me.
How can he do this? You keep your eye on him because there's something going on here. And then in my book, right at the beginning, there's a, a novelist from Jamaica named Jeffrey Phillip. And he met Bob at the university of the West Indies in ]75. And, uh, Bob started to tell him his life story. He'd never met him before.
Probably never even heard of him. He was so blown away. He could hardly speak, how could this guy know this stuff?
Ted: [00:51:58] I saw Yellow Man back in the early eigh.es, ’84.
You know, it was everything Bob wasn't and in the immediate aXermath of a Marley, the guy made something like 52 records in a year. Wow. And see Augie took power aXer Bob died and, uh, cocaine came into Jamaica. There was a whole change. And then the music changed and, and reggae, the dance hall took over and reggae died really.
Ted: [00:52:38] So it was a very short-lived genre.
Ted: [00:52:49] And just how big did. Marley's music, uh, become worldwide?
Ted: He was the total package.
Ted:[00:53:40] His life was cut. So short. What happened?
discovered, it was already third stage and they wanted him to amputate his, but this is melanoma. It was melanoma.
Yeah. Eventually went through his blood, into his lungs and his brain. And he had, you know, those last three years of his performing life, he knew he was ill. And, and he, he knew he was going to die at 36 self fulfilling prophecy. Self-fulfilling prophecy. That's why he, his mother told me he slept two or three hours a night
Ted: [00:54:24] because he just wanted to make every moment, right.
And the minute he died, his wife cut off everyone. Wow. He lived for other people. If I can't work for the good of other people, I don't want to be here. He said,
Ted: [00:54:57] how did you, did you see your life going in this direc.on where you become the master of the master caretaker of this incredible legacy, this space with the, with the excep.on of a thick haze of ganja smoke.
Phil: [00:55:33] He loved words. You love rhythm.
Phil: [00:55:48]And the promise of you gebng your own museum space. I know you've been working on that for a long .me. And what exactly is happening with that now? How close are you to,
That's why, and they know it and it really. Belongs in a museum in Jamaica. And I have turned down millions of dollars past from people who would not keep it intact the way the Marley family has tried to buy it a couple of .mes, but they're only interested in the Bob stuff and it has to be kept intact and it has to be made available to the public while respec.ng all the ar.sts rates.
There is a man in Jamaica who is interested in it. He's coming here tomorrow, tomorrow. His idea, if we can work it out is to build a museum in Montego that will have room for all the
different facets of this collec.on. I see it as a museum of Jamaican. Culture. There are 1500 t- shirts there's 2000 posters.
There's probably 3000 handmade buIons. You know, Ukrainian nes.ng Marley dolls. There's 14,000 hours of casseIes. There's 2000 hours of videotapes. Um, there's statues. There's banners. There's ar.facts of is rugs. Autograph set lists, reggae business cards of hundreds of different reggae. Rolling papers.
There's theses there's manuscripts. Uh, pain.ngs, you know, and more and more and more and more and more. Yeah. And it belongs in a museum. So say a liIle prayer. That things go well, we don't want you to have to move again. No guys, this was so much fun.
Phil: [00:58:20] What a wonderful, lovely, hearxelt catch up.
Ted: [00:58:23] Thank you for the educa.on. Roger: [00:58:25] My pleasure, Ted one, love one. Phil: One love everyone.
Ted: [00:58:29] What a fascina.ng conversa.on, but I've
Phil: [00:58:31] known Roger for 45 years and I'm s.ll learning things about his life and his spirit that I'm so happy to know.
Ted: [00:58:42] Thanks for joining us. If you'd like to, uh, subscribe to our show, look for the liIle buIon says subscribe, and you can go to our website at sexyboomershow.com and hear all of our shows with really a great group of fascina.ng people. And if you'd like what you hear, you might want to donate. And if you donate $20, What do they get Phil?
Phil: [00:59:01] They're going to get jipped because all we're going to send them is a loust the bumper s.cker.
Ted: [00:59:08] Yeah. But the adhesive is great.
Phil: But it comes with a car.
Ted: [00:59:13] All right. Un.l next .me
Phil:[00:59:15] field. Yes. Un.l the next .me stay sexy. Bye.
Phil: [00:59:19] You've been listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show. Featuring Phil Proctor and Ted BonniI and their special guest Roger Steffens. “Eat or be Eaten” was performed by Proctor and Bergman and Melinda Peterson. Music by Eddie Baytos and the Nervis Brothers.
I'm A. Earnest Guy. Stay tuned for the next episode of Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show produced by radiopictures.com. The makers of fine podcasts for season hipsters, man.