Episode Details

In 1966, a young immigrant who went by Donald drove a forklift at a Chrysler plant in Delaware. That man was Bob Marley. This deep dive strips away the peace-and-love poster image to examine the mixed-race outsider from Nine Mile who became a Pan-Africanist voice feared by Jamaica's political establishment.

We follow his years in Trench Town, the vocal harmony group he formed with Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh under mentor Joe Higgs, his embrace of Rastafari in Delaware, the slower one-drop sound developed with Lee Scratch Perry, and Chris Blackwell's rock-style marketing of Catch a Fire. We also cover the 1976 shooting, the One Love Peace Concert, and the melanoma that killed him at 36.

• How American rhythm and blues radio, ska, and rocksteady fed the birth of reggae in Trench Town
• Why Catch a Fire was packaged with a Zippo lighter cover to sell Marley as a rock rebel
• Performing the Smile Jamaica concert two days after gunmen shot him in his own home
• Bringing rival leaders Michael Manley and Edward Seaga together on stage in 1978
• Debunking the football-injury cancer myth and his misquoted final words