James Brown, the soul man who was a strong influence on Bob Marley in the 60s, spoke of “a revolution of the mind” in an album title and on the final verse of the 1972 anti-drug single “King Heroin,” which depicted addiction as a form of slavery.
Bob Andy, with whom Marley had recorded at Studio One in the 60s, touched on the concept of mental slavery in his brilliant 1977 song “Ghetto Stays In the Mind”: once you’ve been through a long struggle, it never leaves you. Marley had connections with artists from Jamaica and the US who wrote songs touching on similar concepts. It was only when he signed to Island in 1973 and could afford to run a permanent electric band that this aspect of his music was largely set aside.Īs for “Redemption Song”’s lyrics, they, too, followed a familiar pattern, and their theme was by no means a detour from the reggae norm. Marley wrote songs on an acoustic guitar, so every so often a record in a gentler style would emerge from The Wailers’ camp. He was aware of Bob Dylan, and his group, The Wailers, adapted “Like A Rolling Stone” for their own “Rolling Stone.” For poor Jamaicans, the ownership of an acoustic guitar – be it battered, or a home-made “cigar box” instrument – was as much as they could aspire to when it came to musical expression. Bob, like most musicians of his generation, was influenced by the folk boom of the early 60s. While “Redemption Song,” in which Marley accompanies himself alone on an acoustic guitar, is often regarded as an exception in the singer’s canon, it is not an aberration. Marley’s songs set him free, made him somebody – though he was well aware of the mental slavery that can still exist even when you are said to be free. The wretch that was saved in “Amazing Grace” was rescued from Hell by a song – “how sweet the sound.” The appalling crime he’d committed was the same crime that afflicted Bob Marley in his “Redemption Song”: the writer of “Amazing Grace” was a slaver Bob Marley was a descendant of slaves. The idea that songs can bring redemption has echoed down the centuries.
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