TWO 1977 REVIEWS OF BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS' EXODUS.
Review: Vivien Goldman, Sounds, May 1977
FROM A PURELY marketing point of view, this is the one. With Rastaman
Vibration’s appearance, there weren’t many music fans on the planet
unaware of Bob Marley’s existence in his capacity as reggae’s only
international superstar and Rasta representative.
A heavy platform, and depressing when taken in conjunction with sales
figures. The prognosis appeared to be that with all the talent, money,
promotion in the world, reggae wasn’t ever gonna SELL the way that rock
sells.
If any album manages to break that barrier, Exodus should be it. Karl
Pitterson’s usual crisp, clean sound is calculated to be springy enough
for rock fans while staying punchy enough to keep the roots fans ‘just
about’ satisfied. It’s a dangerous tightrope, and Marley’s treading the
same one.
One of the most obvious things about the album is the way it breaks
down into a “hard” side (one) and a “soft” (two). The real heavyweights
start at track three, side one — ‘Guiltiness’. The album’s finest
hour, stately impassioned vocals (“these are the big fish that eat up
the small fish, they would do anything to materialize their every
wish…”) while the track plus the I Three sound heart-rending, so
poignantly severe singing about the fate of the downpressor that I’m
reduced to jelly.
Then there’s ‘Heathen’, which steps so swinging, Bob’s voice
beseeching, thrillingly low on the irresistible rhythms of the chorus…
Carly’s drums tinkle the sound onward and upward, Family’s bass
unyielding as it dances between the notes. With a rhythm section solid
as that, the Wailers have to remain superb. Then on through the sombre
pared-down percussion of the title track, unswerving as it beckons Jah
people to Africa. Marley’s imperious as he whiplashes out the command to
move… you’d have to be deaf to resist. So purposeful; it’s all
delivered with an authority that convinces. Majestic.
Side two is full of surprises. Superficially, it’s a bunch of love
songs, lines like “I don’t want to wait in vain for your love” complete
with crooning “ooh ooh girls”. I pictured riots in Brixton when that
came out. But as Marley explained to me, the message of Rasta is there
for all those with ears to receive it. When you think he’s talking about
a girl playing hard to get, he’s talking just as much about unheeding
audiences of Babylon as he sings oh sooooo romantically, “it’s your love
that I’m waiting on, it’s me love that you’re running from…” See it
deh?
Equally, the chirpy “simplicity” of the world contained in ‘Three
Little Birds’, a sweetly sprightly melody in which tame birds hop on
Marley’s windowsill to inform him, “don’t worry ‘bout a thing, ‘cos
every little thing’s gonna be alright”, could be construed as a manic
attempt to reduce his revolutionary image to nil in three little words.
Not (necessarily) so, Rasta! Checking it fully, the message is about
positive rastaman vibrations again, perfectly in keeping with the
savage, somber exhortations of ‘Exodus.’
Yet it’s still true that side two, functioning on two levels as it
does, is the least threatening side Marley’s ever cut to white western
rock ears. Marley’s answer to that was: (a) Why should he stay in the
same place? Why sing ‘Burning and Looting’ rehashes just to satisfy
people’s expectations? (b) It’s only a return to Wailer’s roots
(remember, the original Wailers cut a single of ‘What’s New Pussycat’,
released on Island over here many moons ago), and© The advantage of
being more accessible is that more people get to hear the message by
buying the album, and there’s no harm in that…
As far as I’m concerned, it’s restricting and regressive to judge any
album purely in terms of how closely it matches traditional
“requirements” of its genre. If the emphasis has shifted from soul rebel
street fighting man to natural mystic (the title of the mellow opening
track, Marley’s voice more silken and haunting than ever before) it’s
dumb to automatically register it as a Bad Thing.
Uncharitable people have been quick to view the new silver-voiced
Marley as a cop-out, a hero in retreat, backpedaling furiously after the
recent gunmen’s attempt on his life. That’s dumb too. Objectively,
Marley’s music has shifted into new gear, moved into a new space. OK, he
sings with a new suppleness that you can describe as ‘soft’, the way
the lilting ‘So Much Things To Say’ merges into the ‘Natty Dread’ style
Biblical blend of sorrow, tragedy and solemn pride on ‘Guiltiness’
encapsulates the point — Marley’s exhibiting a new degree of vocal
control, capable of shifting emotions subtly but unmistakably as he
sings one word.
While Marley’s songwriting abilities remain as powerful as they are
(and remember, there’s an album’s worth of fine material left in the
can), while he continues to surround himself with musicians as excellent
as the Barrett Brothers, Dirty Harry and the rest, Bob Marley will
continue to remain King of Reggae in the eyes of the world.
Review: Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone, July 1977
There is a contradiction here between the enormous abilities of the
Wailers — particularly the magnificent rhythm section of Aston Barrett,
bass, and Carlton Barrett, drums, and the spidery lead guitar of Julian
"Junior" Marvin — and the flatness of the material Bob Marley has given
them to work with. The more I listen to this album, the more I am
seduced by the playing of the band; at the same time, the connection I
want to make with the music is subverted by overly familiar lyric themes
unredeemed by wit or color, and by the absence of emotion in Marley's
voice. There are some well-crafted lines here, but given Marley's
singing, they don't come across. The precise intelligence one hears in
every note of music cannot make up for its lack of drama, and that lack
is Marley's.
This is very odd. From the time the Wailers' first American album, Catch a Fire,
was released here, it was drama that carried the Wailers' music across
the water and made it matter to people who had never heard of reggae,
and who may well have had to look up Jamaica on a map to figure out
exactly where it was. "Concrete Jungle" was as dramatic as Muddy Waters'
"Rollin' Stone"; "I Shot the Sheriff" was a one-act play that crossed
the boards in under five minutes. On the Wailers' disappointing last
album, Rastaman Vibration, there was still "War," where Marley
summoned up visions of eternal conflict merely by chanting excerpts from
a speech by Haile Selassie. For that matter, Bob Marley onstage defines
the kind of drama that grows naturally out of the music of a people who
refuse to accept their native land as their true home, whose music,
again and again, points them toward the temporally impossible but
mystically necessary goal of a return to Africa. As with the
overwhelming "Jah Guide" on ex-Wailer Peter Tosh's exciting new album, Equal Rights,
Marley onstage is ominous, determined, full of barely suppressed
violence. At the same time he offers a suggestion of warmth, of
unshakable confidence, of an invitation to the audience to follow him on
a heroic quest.
Exodus doesn't reach these heights, nor
does it seem to aim for them, save on the seven-minute title
performance, which sounds like War on a slow day and wears out long
before it is half over. If I didn't have more faith in Marley I'd think
he was trying to go disco — the tune is that mechanical. The four songs
on the first side that lead up to "Exodus" — songs of religious politics
— are all well made, but within the most narrow limits; the best of
them is "Natural Mystic," Marley's "Blowin' in the Wind" (though where
Dylan seemed to say the answers were blowing away, Marley is certain
they are blowing straight to anyone whose soul is pure enough to receive
them). On the second side the album falls apart; the mix of sex songs
(on "Jamming," Marley sometimes sounds like an obsequious nightclub
singer) and tunes about keeping faith simply do not sustain one's
interest. Marley's performance never reaches out; it seems to collapse
inward. There's no sense of the dangerous, secret messages one half
heard on earlier albums; on Exodus there are no secrets to tell.
It
is very hard to make any sort of more than superficial judgment on a
Wailers album until one knows who it is made for — Jamaicans? American
whites? Jamaicans in England? whites in England? Africans? — and I don't
know. What bothers me is that I have the feeling Marley, likely pressed
by his label to continue the search for an American breakthrough
without losing his original base in Jamaica and England, does not know
either. The complete lack of extremes on Exodus — of deep
emotion, intensely drawn situations or memorable arrangements and
melodies — does not mean Marley is playing it safe, but it does seem to
imply some sort of paralysis that must be broken before he can again
strike with real power.
Of course, there may be another reason for
that lack of extremes: last year, Marley and his band were attacked by
hitmen just before they were to play at an election rally for Michael
Manley, Jamaica's prime minister. Marley and his wife Rita — she is one
of the I Threes, whose singing on Exodus is first-rate — were
both shot. It is a fact that Marley's music and his religion and his
politics, which are hardly separable, could cost him his life. If he has
pulled back from that event in his music and in his singing, then it is
a withdrawal we are bound to respect; but if it lasts, Marley's
would-be assassins will have gotten some of what they came for.
Jamaica's most distinctive voice will forfeit its strength. I don't
expect that to happen on any permanent basis, but it may be what we are
now hearing.
