No Woman No Cry Page 15

  So many of Bob’s lyrics reflect our personal life, from “Nice Time” to “Chances Are” to “Stir It Up,” which he wrote when I came back from Delaware. And, of course, “No Woman No Cry.” Sometimes, on tour, if we’d had an argument before the show and he wanted to apologize, while we were performing that song he’d use the opportunity to come over to me onstage and put his arm around my shoulder, with sometimes a kiss or a whisper “I love you” in my ear.

  I could go on and on about what song meant what, because basically when Bob wrote he didn’t always write alone, but sometimes with Bunny or Peter or Vision or his other friends feeling a drum sound, or humming a piece. He relied on me for different kinds of advice at the end of the day. He might call to say, “Did you read what I did last night; it’s on the table.” Or “How does this sound?” Or “Did I spell this right?” Or “Was that the right way to say it?” So that most of the lyrics you come across, especially in the early times, pertained to the life we shared. I don’t want to make it seem as if I’m claiming them, but we did a lot of writing together. Sometimes we’d go into the Bible for verses or psalms. In the little cellar studio at Bull Bay—those were some of the times when he would really go into his soul. Bob always wanted his lyrics to give a positive message of love, peace, and unity. And he would come out the next day with “Wow, we could do this one.” And he would take it from there to the next step.

  At some point during the touring years, although the fight was in there and the trouble war existed, we were getting along and had begun living as man and wife again. This was about the time we took in Karen, who was born in London and whose mother had taken her to Jamaica to live with her grandmother (the baby’s great-grandmother). The mother had left and then told Bob “the baby’s in Jamaica”; I guess she was trying to get Karen as close as possible, to make sure Bob provided for her. Typical Jamaican girl (and I can’t exclude myself—to some extent). Mother always ends up with the baby!

  When Bob said to me, “I have a daughter in Harbour View,” I was a bit surprised, at the location more than the fact. He said, “You need to go look at her,” and I could tell he might be worried, so I agreed. When I got there, the great-grandmother said to the child, “Here’s your mother.” The little girl, who was about four or five, very shy and obviously not happy, said, “Mommy,” and when I was leaving, after having spoken with the great-grandmother for a while, she started to cry. When I got home I told Bob that I thought we should take her because it didn’t seem to me that the great-grandmother could manage her. “And let her and Stephanie grow up together,” I said, “because Karen is one year older, and Stephanie is the smallest among the big ones, so she and Karen would be company for each other.”

  By now he was used to my thinking like this. Still, he said, “Do you really mean that?” I said, “Of course.” So we took Karen to live with us, and she and Stephanie, and Stephen because he was also close in age, grew up like triplets. They became quite a team. Karen was the leader and Stephanie always followed her. Sometimes, if I had three or four days off while on tour, I’d fly home to see everyone. One night at 9 P.M. I arrived unexpectedly to find that Karen and Stephanie weren’t there. I called the police, everyone I knew, all their friends, we even went on a search. We were all so worried—I almost lost my mind! We found them with friends early the next afternoon, too scared to come home because it had been so late, and no one had expected that I’d be home to make such a fuss!

  In many ways, during most of those touring years, though I traveled all over the world, I remained at the same place mentally that I’d been the day Bob’s driver arrived talking about “an emergency.” Every once in a while, when I was home, I’d say to Marcia and Judy, “Sorry, you girls can continue, but I’m thinking very much of getting out of this and leaving him alone.” Because between tours Marcia had her career and Judy had hers, but my life was still tied up in Bob’s and I felt unfulfilled and sometimes used. When I told him that I needed to really do something for myself, he was very supportive; I knew he felt sorry for me and knew what I was feeling and how I must be thinking—Bob was very honest with me. He even wrote a song for me to sing: “Play Play Play” (“All you do is just play play play”). Oh he understood (somewhat), because he had a lot of dreams for me in terms of what he wanted me to be. If I complained sometimes about the other baby mothers, he’d say, “Baby, you couldn’t have all the babies that I feel I should have. I don’t want to get you pregnant every year. So some of that is really just taking the burden off you and your body.” That was one of his lines, “taking the burden off you.” “Because I know you have to work,” he’d say, “I know you want to work. I know you have to sing.”

  But then, when the possibility of my working solo did arise, he was less understanding than controlling. That opportunity wasn’t presented until the very late seventies, when an offer came from Hansa Music, a French company. When the I-Three worked as an opening act for the group, each one of us got to solo. Bob was making statements and attracting attention in the overseas media, so the Hansa people came to see our show one night in France and said, “Oh Rita, you could do the same, your voice is so good and your albums will be great, let’s do promotions on it.” They thought that in me they saw something big. Frank Lipsik, the head of the company, and Catherine Petrowsky, their public relations person, came down to Jamaica and we met. Frank Lipsik was really excited—he began calling me every day to say, “We’re coming for you, we want to bring you to Paris!” Oh, they were going to do great big things. So of course I was very interested. I knew, also, that it was important for me to try by myself.

  But Bob said, “Oh no, that’s not what should be happening.”

  “But this is my thing!” I said.

  “If you’re gonna do something, let it stay in the family,” he insisted. “You don’t want no white man to come steal your business. This is family! Why are you doing this? Why don’t you continue to give me a hand while we’re trying to form our own thing? Why don’t you wait? Let me get a break; then after my break I’ll give you a break.”

  But I said, “Your break is your break, and I feel I’m being stifled, because I know I have the ability.” And in spite of his disapproval, I agreed to do an album for this company and began sending them cassettes as we went along with the album production. As for Bob, I thought, he’ll be mad, but at the same time, hey hey hey—I can sing!

  When he found out, he was happy for me but still not in favor of it and said, “I don’t like this.”

  And I’m saying, Uh-oh … Because they had given me a five-thousand-dollar advance, which in those days was big money. I said to him, “Look, this is my check! And it’s for the album! So I have a commitment.” I went ahead with it and went to Paris for interviews; Hansa sent photographers to Clarendon for photo sessions. They were all over me; they were very good. At one point they sent me to Sweden for radio and TV promotions, because the record was soon going to be released in that country. And there, waiting at the airport, was my father! Papa had got word that I was coming and had been looking out for me. It had been so many years, but there he was—I couldn’t believe it! And we hugged, and oh, he took me here and there, we took pictures, and the next day our story was all over the newspaper: “Lost Father Found in Sweden.” That was the first time I’d seen him since I had gone running from Delaware to Brooklyn to him and Miss Alma. I spent about four or five days with him, and we were so happy to see each other. I loved Papa. It was hard, after missing him and seeing him again, to leave him. I wasn’t to see him again until Bob’s funeral.

  The album I was making for Hansa was to be called Who Feels It Knows It, and some of their people came down for the last sessions. We did one photo shoot and the next day were supposed to be going out to the country to do another when Bob chased the publicist away! I think he was a little bit crazy with jealousy at that point. He started shouting at her, “Get out of here and leave her alone! I will sign her! I will promote her! You’re using he
r, you want to take her away …”

  Catherine Petrowsky, who was a lovely young woman, cried like a baby. She said, “No, Bob, that’s not the point. Rita is her own individual self and she can be. She has the talent, she can be what she wants to be.”

  I felt so sorry for that white girl. But he walked her out, telling her, “Leave my wife alone. Leave my wife alone!” It was a devastating experience and I was furious and ashamed. But we were about to leave on tour, and I couldn’t do anything about it then.

  Bob must have known, though, that I wouldn’t let the matter rest. And, fortunately, neither did Catherine Petrowsky. In Europe she turned up at every concert, polite but determined just to see me and let me do interviews for my album. Without fighting with Bob, the two of us worked on him. We met with him, explained that I was doing great and the deal was on. Finally, one night in Brussels, we wore him down. He looked at Catherine, eye to eye, and said, “Hansa … is the answer … for Rita!” So eventually I did go into a deal with them. And, sadly, during Bob’s illness I was on promotions for this album when I had to leave to go to him. I went from the promotions to the hospital. And his mother said, “Why your career now, all of a sudden your career, just when he don’t want that around him?”

  I tried to explain that this was something I couldn’t help, that it was something that had been set in motion a good while before he got sick. But in the end, although I didn’t want to drop it, I felt I had to anyway. Bob’s health was my priority. I suppose I should see it as ironic, but to me it’s just sad that these moments coincided, that Bob would be leaving me just about the time that I was about to make my way as an individual performer, into a career as more than just a background singer. There was more to our lives, though, before all of that happened.

  chapter eleven

  WAR

  IN THE FALL of 1976, with an election scheduled, the crime rate in Jamaica was high, tensions were running high, and the government had been unable to bring any stability to certain areas of Kingston. We had been independent since 1962, and black people finally had the right to vote, but many of Jamaica’s poor were still suffering, not only in city ghettos like Trench Town but in rural areas like St. Ann. Both major political parties, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP), continued to make promises they couldn’t keep and continued to use the rude boys for their own purposes. When it was time for politics, the party bosses would hand out guns and say, “Go kill the opposition.” After elections, they’d be unable to take these guns back, because the boys were now gun crazy, possessed. So you’d find these street toughs, or whatever name you want to call them, with guns in their hands. And the war continued.

  By this time we had been touring long enough to be known all over the world, which only added to Bob’s already existing reputation in Jamaica. At home he was seen as “the voice of the people,” and the ghetto youth were very aware of this. Despite his move uptown, they still regarded him very highly. The biggest murderers, the biggest gunmen, would come to him for help. Hope Road became a welfare center—there was no night there, twenty-four hours a day they’d arrive demanding to see him. He’d become more important than the prime minister. It began to seem as if he had to live for them. Added to this, he was subjected to certain pressures from one party or the other, and it was risky to be in the middle. He was living a very dangerous life, simply because he had brought all this attention to the island of Jamaica through his music. It can be nice to be on top, but not when some heavy burdens settle on your shoulders. You may be up there, but you’re also out there. Bob had no time for himself, and no privacy.

  It reached the point where people preyed on him, people who felt that he had to have them around, for “protection,” for one thing, because “somebody might try to kill you.” And for another thing, you might be able to help them financially, which he always did. So they had reasons to be hanging around, to have their prey in view. In one of Bob’s songs, he sings, “Too much mixup, gotta clear my wheels, once and for all, I gotta clear my wheels, I don’t care who falls, because it’s too much mixup.” He became paranoid and found himself waking up every morning just waiting for these people to come and get him. And faced with that sort of thing, I’m saying, “Keep it out of the family house, away from the children …” There were times when we slept on the floor because we had to give up our beds to people who needed to hide out from other gangs.

  Eventually—inevitably—he was targeted to help bring stabilization to the country, to appease the ghetto youth. The government said, “Bob, it’s only you who can say it through your music. Let us have a concert.” It was a peace concert they wanted, to be called “Smile Jamaica,” in order to calm everyone down before the elections that were to be held in December. Bob invited Peter and Bunny as the original Wailers to perform, but they refused. Peter said he wanted no peace, he wanted equal rights and justice. Bunny said no because the event was political and he wouldn’t participate. The concert, sponsored by the Jamaica Ministry of Culture, would be free. At first it had been planned for Jamaica House, but I had a dream that we should change the venue; I told Bob, and he arranged for it to be held at the National Heroes Circle in Kingston.

  We were still so young—Bob was thirty-one and I was thirty. At that age, in such a high-profile position, in a business full of producers and managers and handlers and what have you, you were not always able to say “Well, no, no thank you” on your own. You were always being advised, and other people’s decisions were so often considered to be “what is right for you.” And even with a roomful of advisers, Bob was still caught up in certain situations that had less to do with his career than with his social and political position.

  And so he decided to do the concert, even though we realized how dangerous it had become. It was scheduled for Sunday, December 5, 1976, but instead of something for the people, it became something for the politicians. And Bob was being used. Rumor had it that he was doing this for the party in power, the PNP, when that was not so. Then this drew some action from the opposition, and he was warned not to do the concert because they were going to kill him. The whole week before, regulars at Hope Road noticed strangers on the premises from time to time. Bob got caught up in this and it was terrible, the divisions and the contradictions. But he was determined to do the show for the people who suffered the most.

  The Friday afternoon before the concert, while we were rehearsing, we heard what sounded like firecrackers, and I said to myself why firecrackers, it’s not Christmas—though sometimes we do have Chinese New Year, so it might be … Later, toward evening, I had just said good-bye to Bob because I had to go to another rehearsal that night with the drama group I was in, which I kept up with when we weren’t touring and was scheduled to present a musical called Brashana “O.” I’d said to him, “See you later,” and he’d said, “Okay, take care …”

  Shanty and Senior, two young men from the neighborhood, had come to town with me from Bull Bay, and they were waiting in my car to go home. As I got into the front seat and turned around to greet them, I saw some guys I didn’t recognize on the stairs to the second floor I’d just left. They had guns in their hands. I thought, oh no, and quickly started the car, a nice, loud Volkswagen—bwap bwap bwap bwap—just as they began firing wildly. The sound of the motor distracted one guy, who half turned around as he got off a shot toward where I knew Bob was speaking with Don Taylor, his manager. Then the gunman turned back toward me. I stepped hard on the gas pedal, vroooom, but he and some others came after the car as it began moving—I guess they couldn’t tell who was driving out. I put that pedal to the floor, trying to get away, but then bullets started flying through the car, from the rear, like crazy …

  The youths in back fell to the floor yelling, “Duck, Mommy, duck duck!” I bent as low as I dared over the steering wheel and kept driving until I felt a warm thing coming down my neck and I thought, shit, I’m dead! I’m dead, because a bullet hit my head.

  So I s
topped a little way from the gate, and pulled up the emergency, and rested my head on the steering wheel, and said to myself, yes I’m dead, this is how dead feels. And I thought of Aunty and the children and wondered if they’d really killed Bob. One of the gunmen came to the car window and looked in and put his gun to my head, but then he said “Everybody dead, everybody dead” and didn’t fire again.

  Then the people next door started to turn on their lights, and I heard windows opening. The guy stood there a little longer. I guess he was going to make sure I was dead, but someone must have called the police, because I heard a siren. Then, with all the noise, he—and the other six I later learned about—obviously realized they had to get out of there. I kept pretending to be dead, trying not to breathe, until I heard running footsteps, and then I lifted my head a little to see men with guns running past the open gate to their car, which was parked across the entrance, blocking the gate, so I wouldn’t have been able to drive out in any case.

  The blood was coming through my locks and running down my face, and in the middle of telling myself I was dead all of a sudden I realized I was really still alive, and I thought, oh my God, where is Bob. I got out of the car and looked in the back for my two passengers. They were well under the seat, and I said, “They’re gone, come, you can get up.” But the poor guys were frozen. The whole back window of the car was shattered, nobody sitting upright could have come out of there alive. That those young men had survived was a miracle.

  Bob could easily have been killed that night. Too easily. He had gone to the kitchen after I left him and had been standing there, peeling a grapefruit. The gunman who got him was aiming for the heart, but the bullet just creased his chest and hit his elbow (and stayed there for the rest of his life; he went to his resting place with it still there).