Bob Marley

Born

1945 · Nine Mile, Saint Ann, Jamaica

Roots

Jamaican; Black Jamaican mother, white English-descended father

Family

Poverty

His plantation-overseer father was absent and died when Bob was 10; his teenage mother moved them to Kingston's Trench Town.

Education

Left school in his mid-teens for music and a welder's apprenticeship

Started with

A Trench Town yard

Government-yard jam sessions in Kingston, with singer Joe Higgs coaching the neighborhood boys for free.

Affiliations & societies

Rastafari movementDocumented

Converted around 1966; central to his music and public life.

Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.

The pathway

1. 1963 · age 18
   The Wailers form

   With Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh; "Simmer Down" tops the Jamaican chart within a year.

2. 1966 · age 21
   Rastafari

   Converts after Haile Selassie's visit to Jamaica.

3. 1972 · age 27
   Island Records£4,000

   Chris Blackwell advances the band money to record like a rock act.

4. 1976 · age 31
   Shot before Smile Jamaica

   Wounded two days before the concert; performs anyway, then leaves for London.

5. 1977 · age 32
   Exodus

   Recorded in exile; named album of the century by Time in 1999.

6. 1978 · age 33
   One Love Peace Concert

   Joins the hands of Jamaica's rival party leaders on stage.

7. 1981 · age 36
   Dies of melanoma

   The posthumous Legend compilation becomes the best-selling reggae album ever.