ABON 0153. 1973. THE WAILERS – CONCRETE JUNGLE (JAMAICAN STUDIO TAPES VERSION)

By 1972 The Wailers had been releasing singles in Jamaica for almost ten years (see ABON 0043). Some of these singles had been licensed by Chris Blackwell’s Island record label for release in the UK. But throughout that time, Blackwell had never met Bob Marley or the other Wailers face to face.

Blackwell was white of Jamaican origin and moved and operated seamlessly between Jamaica and London. His mission in life was to take the music he knew so well from his Jamaican upbringing and bring it to an international audience. He’d spent the previous few years focussing on trying to break his number one Jamaican hope, Jimmy Cliff, outside Jamaica. That had climaxed in Blackwell securing Cliff the lead role - and future prosperity - in the influential, and eventually cult, feature film, ‘Harder They Come’. Cliff in return had promptly deserted Island and signed for EMI, leaving Blackwell in search of another Jamaican act that had the potential to reach beyond a Jamaican audience.

As luck would have it, just at the time Blackwell was smarting from Cliff’s desertion, The Wailers were in London, at a loose end after the failure of a tour supporting Johnny Nash. They were short of cash but more crucially they had also decided that they wanted to break out beyond their Jamaican fan base – which was why they’d come to London in the first place.

A meeting was finally arranged and Blackwell decided then and there to sign them to Island. Together they hatched a plan. If they were to take The Wailers to a non-Jamaican, white, Rock-buying audience then they needed to create a record that early 70s Rock fans might buy. And that meant a ‘proper’ album, rather than a few singles or even an album of singles with fillers in between.

So he gave them the funds to return to Jamaica and record what would effectively become Reggae’s first ever album that was designed as an album from the very start.

The five Wailers - Marley (vocals and guitar), Peter Tosh (vocals, guitar and organ), Bunny Livingston (vocals and percussion), Aston Barrett (bass) and Carlton Barrett (drums) supported by Rita Marley and Marcia Griffiths on backing vocals – recorded eleven tracks in all, nine of which would form the World-changing, ‘Catch a Fire’.

All of the above story was widely known at the time and soon became an accepted and key chapter in the history of Reggae. What was less well known until only a few years ago, even by die-hard Marley fans, was that Blackwell and The Wailers really were very very serious about reaching a broader audience and this they believed required over-dubbing the Jamaican tapes with additional instrumentation that they felt would help attract and satisfy an audience of white British and American Rock fans.

So the original Jamaican tapes were taken back to London where Blackwell and Marley oversaw the recording and mixing of additional Rock-tinged guitar and keyboard parts that were played by two white American Rock musicians - Wayne Perkins and John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick.

Blackwell and The Wailers were delighted with the results and the album was released in that form - without any reference to the two session musicians on the album credits. And the rest is – as they say – history. The Wailers became international stars, Reggae gained a dramatically larger World Wide audience and Bob Marley, particularly after Tosh and Livingston left The Wailers in 1974, became a World Wide phenomenon.

At the time of the album’s release no-one seemed to be aware of the original Jamaican Versions. Then in 2001 the Jamaican Versions - including the two deleted tracks - were at last released. Whilst the original Jamaican tapes weren’t dramatically heavier or rougher (which was a surprise), they did reveal an even more minimalist simplicity that if anything increased the feelings of sincerity and sense of purpose that the UK album versions already conveyed in spades.

‘Concrete Jungle’ as the first track on the UK album was the most over-dubbed -  in order to ensure that Rock fans got beyond their first listening experience! The overdubs on that track include a very Rock, although totally apt, guitar solo played immaculately by Perkins. But in its rawer simpler form, without his guitar, the Jamaican Version possesses a complete confidence in its own power and integrity. A confidence that – if only they could get people outside Jamaica to listen once without prejudice - their music could appeal to the World and could change the World as well. And if the revolution needed a nice guitar solo by a Southern American Blues guitarist to kick start it then that was a small price to pay.

I’ll post the UK album version for comparison later today.

Released 1973.

Available on the double deluxe re-release of ‘Catch A Fire’, which also contains the UK album versions as well: Amazon