Rising Sons
As they relish newfound solo success, Stephen, Damian, and Ziggy Marley invite EW inside their inner circle and open up about overcoming the loss and legacy of their father, reggae icon Bob Marley
WELCOME TO JAMROCK The 2004 single by Damian Marley (right), co-produced by his brother Stephen (left), led to a U.S. bidding war and a top 10 album, serving notice a new generation of Marleys had come of age
PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES DIMMOCK
By Margeaux Watson
An uninvited guest lurks on Stephen and Damian Marley's luxury tour bus in the backstage parking lot of Coachman Park in Clearwater, Fla., on this mid-March evening. Relaxing with a couple of postshow spliffs and beers, the shy scions of Jamaican reggae legend Bob Marley coolly acknowledge their awestruck visitor with a customary patois greeting: ''Nuff respect.'' But this is no ordinary groupie. He's Greg ''Shock G'' Jacobs, frontman of the rap group Digital Underground (''Humpty Dance''). ''This is deep to me,'' marvels Jacobs, as he takes in the scene — dense clouds of ganja smoke, flowing manes of dreadlocks, throbbing reggae music, and 9 of Stephen's 12 kids holding court in the lounge area. ''Whooh!'' Jacobs hollers. ''You got George Clinton, Jesus Christ, Bob Marley — and Tupac! It's crazy.''
Inside the cramped mobile recording studio/master bedroom, Stephen and Damian exchange knowing glances that suggest awkward encounters with their father's fans are a routine nuisance. After 10 minutes of clumsy idol worship, Jacobs leaves, Stephen resumes his work at the keyboard, and Damian turns his attention back to this writer.
How often do you get bum-rushed like that?
''Every now and then,'' he says indifferently. ''But I guess it's a good thing, especially when it's genuine, because [it lets] you know the music is important to the people.''
When Bob Marley died of cancer in 1981 at age 36, he left behind a timeless catalog of music now estimated to be worth $100 million. His death also inspired the lion's share of his 11 biological children to continue his mission of promoting peace, love, and liberty through song. These days, the charge is being led by Damian (nicknamed Jr. Gong), 28, Stephen, 35, and Ziggy (né David), 38. At press time, their surname dominates Billboard's Top Reggae Albums chart: No. 1 (for nine consecutive weeks), Stephen's long-awaited solo debut, Mind Control, released March 20; No. 2, Damian's third disc, 2005's Welcome to Jamrock; No. 3, Forever Bob Marley, the latest of countless collections of Marley's pre-Island Records output; and No. 7, Ziggy's second solo CD, 2006's Love Is My Religion. As if that weren't enough, collectively Stephen, Damian, and Ziggy have scored a dozen Grammy wins, something their dad did not live to achieve. (Grammys were not given out for reggae until 1984.)
All this — the sales, the awards, the credibility — signals the brothers' emergence as the rare progeny of music royalty to successfully foster their own careers while honoring their lineage. ''I don't think anybody ever before has had a second generation of three children carrying on a legacy,'' says Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, which signed Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1972. ''These boys have actually carried Bob's message further in that they have reached the black American audience. That was the one thing I would say Bob felt that he failed to do. Had he lived, he would have done it.''
Marley may have struggled to crack the U.S. R&B charts, but by the end of his brief life he'd achieved international stardom, unimaginable wealth, and godly reverence. And yet, while celebrity offspring often flounder in their efforts to follow in the footsteps of their famous parents (Lisa Marie Presley, Julian Lennon, Nona Gaye...), Marley's sons are proving themselves to be remarkably capable. ''Our father is a very strong role model in our life,'' says Stephen, who oversees Tuff Gong, the label founded by his dad in 1970. ''He gave us so much more than material [things] because they can fade away. It's like him teach me how to fish more than giving me fishes, so that me can fish for me self.''
NEXT PAGE: An unorthodox upbringing forges an impenetrable bond between Marley siblings
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ZIGGY MARLEY His Love Is My Religion won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album, one year after brother Damien won the same award for his Jamrock
PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES DIMMOCK
Marley and his widow, Rita, now 60, were struggling musicians when they welcomed Ziggy, Stephen, and daughter Cedella, now 39, in the late '60s and early '70s. (Their brood also includes Rita's daughter from a previous relationship, Sharon, 42.) As kids, Ziggy and Stephen grew up working-class in Kingston's Trenchtown ghetto.
''Our first school was an old bus — it was junk and then somebody made it into a school,'' Ziggy recalls a month after his brothers' show in Florida. ''As our father started to make more money, they put us in better schools,'' he continues, sitting behind the desk of his home office in Beverly Hills, where he lives with his wife/manager, Orly Agai, and their two children. (Altogether, Ziggy has five kids, including three from prior relationships; he also has cribs in Miami, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Ghana.) ''Then we moved uptown [in Kingston], which is a nice area. So we started getting a little more toys, a little more food in the fridge.''
Between 1972 and 1981, Marley fathered eight children — Robbie, 35, Rohan, 35, Karen, 34, Stephanie, 33, Julian, 31, Ky-Mani, 31, Makeda, 26, and Damian — with as many women. Says Stephen: ''My mother comes from the ghetto. And in the ghetto where we come from, it is not strange for a man to have more than one woman. It's not the perfect situation for a woman, but she knows.''
Despite Marley's philandering, ''Sister Rita's house was like the family HQ,'' says Damian, who was raised by his mother, Cindy Breakspeare (Miss World 1976), in an affluent Kingston suburb. ''Come summertime, Christmastime, Easter, or whatever, you'd spend a couple of weeks there,'' he says. ''You might see Julian, Robbie, or whoever else might be down from America, England, or wherever. It was always the place you could go to find those roots.''
The siblings' unorthodox upbringing forged an impenetrable bond between them. ''We can speak with our eyes; we don't really have to say words,'' says Cedella, who heads the hipsterrific Miami-based clothing line Catch a Fire. ''It's like we're all twins.'' That was evident in Florida, where Julian joined his brothers on stage for a rendition of Marley's ''Could You Be Loved.'' Both before and after the show, the trio primarily interacted with one another, Damian's and Julian's girlfriends, and Stephen's kids. ''They have acquaintances, but very few friends,'' Cedella explains. ''Dad would always say, 'I don't want you to have any friends; I just want you to be friends with your brothers and sisters because at the end of the day, they're the only ones you can rely on.'''
Being Rastafarian has a lot to do with their standoffishness and unpretentious style (they prefer beads to bling and Adidas to Gucci). Rooted in the belief that Haile Selassie I, Ethiopian emperor from 1930 to 1974, was the messiah, they shun material excess in favor of earthly riches: family, community, and home. And while they're the heirs of an artist who ranked No. 13 on Forbes' 2006 list of Top-Earning Dead Celebrities, Ziggy, Stephen, and Damian still abide by the Rastafarian tenets of humility and modesty. ''We're privileged, but militant,'' says Stephen, who now lives within blocks of Damian and Cedella in Miami. He credits growing up in Jamaica — which remains their home base — with keeping them grounded. ''We had to know how to cook, iron — all of that. Me used to come from school, take off me uniform, go down to the cow pen, and milk them.''
Today, Marley's children are scattered throughout Miami, California, Philadelphia, and London. But through Ziggy's U.R.G.E. foundation, along with Marley's and Rita's namesake charities, they sponsor a multitude of community-service projects in Jamaica and Africa. ''People love them in Jamaica,'' says the island's preeminent female reggae star, Marcia Griffiths, who sang backup for Marley as a member of the I-Threes. ''They don't need to walk with security. They are loved because Bob was loved.''
NEXT PAGE: ''I found it very frightening, amazing, and beautiful...when I saw Steve's and Ziggy's kids on stage just like they used to do with Bob.''
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FAMILY GUY Part of the Marley clan (from left) in 1972: Rita, Sharon, Ziggy, Cedella, Bob, and Stephen (in stroller)
Ossie Hamilton/Urbanimage.tv/TRAX
Establishing their own musical legacy has taken Marley's sons 26 years. It started in 1979 when Ziggy, Stephen, Cedella, and Sharon formed Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers. ''These little kids used to come on stage with us and dance up a storm,'' recalls Griffiths, 57. ''I found it very frightening, amazing, and beautiful at the Bob Marley celebration in Ethiopia two years ago when I saw Steve's and Ziggy's kids on stage just like they used to do with Bob.''
Marley died two years after penning the Melody Makers' debut single, ''Children Playing in the Streets,'' and the band's first show following his death was at his funeral. Ziggy was 12; Stephen was 9. ''That's when [we felt] the impact of being looked at as Bob Marley's children,'' Ziggy says. ''Before that, Bob was Bob, moving through the streets. After my father passed away, he became even greater.''
Galvanized by their loss, the Melody Makers signed with Virgin Records in 1988; they peaked with their third CD, that year's Conscious Party. Produced by Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz from Talking Heads, the Grammy-winning disc reached No. 26 on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, but the group's sales plummeted throughout the '90s, and they disbanded in 1999.
Following their split, Ziggy relocated to L.A. and Stephen moved behind the scenes to focus on producing. Once again, he kept his talent in the family, contributing tracks to Julian's CD, Lion in the Morning, and Damian's first album, Mr. Marley, both released in 1996. Three years later, he spearheaded Chant Down Babylon, a star-studded tribute album featuring hip-hop-flavored updates of his father's songs. Propelled by Lauryn Hill's inspired cover of ''Turn Your Lights Down Low'' — originally an ode to Damian's mom — the disc sold 782,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and introduced Stephen's work to a wider audience. ''Stephen is the patriarch of the family as far as the music goes,'' says Tuff Gong president Cristy Barber. ''He works on everybody's records. He's like Prince — he can play every instrument you can imagine.''
In the meantime, Damian was struggling to find his own niche. In his early teens, he formed a group called the Shepherds with Shiah Coore, son of Third World guitarist Cat Coore, and Yashema McGregor, daughter of I-Threes vocalist Judy Mowatt and reggae singer Freddie McGregor. They never released a CD, but they earned props in Jamaica for their live shows. After striking out on his own with Mr. Marley, Damian hoped to be embraced by the island's rough-and-tough dancehall community. That didn't happen. ''My first album was more well-received in places like Hawaii than it was in Kingston,'' he says. ''I couldn't tell you why. Maybe just the nature of the music...it's very happy sounding.''
NEXT PAGE: ''''People are not expecting us to do love songs or zip-a-dee-doo-dah kind of things; they're expecting reality, substance music.''
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ALL TOGETHER NOW (From left) Damien, Ziggy, Stephen, Ky-Mani, and Julian Marley perform in 2004 in Virginia
Frank Micelotta/Getty Images
Creatively, Damian's second disc, 2001's Halfway Tree, was much stronger. A balanced fusion of dancehall and hip-hop — produced mostly by Stephen — the disc seemed poised to capitalize on the momentum of Chant Down Babylon. Unfortunately, it was released on 9/11. ''That really set back the whole tone of the album,'' he says. Despite winning a Grammy for Best Reggae Album, Halfway Tree sold only 138,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, resulting in Damian's dismissal from Universal's roster in 2002. ''I was kind of relieved because I don't think it was a beneficial situation. They weren't really enthusiastic about those records.''
While Damian plotted his next move and Stephen intermittently worked on Mind Control (originally titled Got Music?), Ziggy resurfaced with a new CD, 2003's Dragonfly, which failed to produce any hits and quickly vanished from the charts. Of course, Ziggy and his brothers don't have to worry as much as other artists about disappointing sales. Still, without a successful follow-up to Babylon, it seemed they might have to retire on their inheritances.
Then, in 2004, Damian dropped the stunning single ''Welcome to Jamrock.'' Co-produced by Stephen and Damian, and independently released by Tuff Gong, the track was an overnight sensation. A three-month bidding war ensued, with several major U.S. labels competing to ink a deal with Marley's youngest son. In the end, he returned to Universal for sentimental reasons — it houses his dad's catalog.
During that time, Stephen was nearing completion of Mind Control. But with the buzz about ''Jamrock'' at fever pitch, he postponed his CD to co-produce Damian's album. It was a worthy sacrifice. In September 2005, Welcome to Jamrock entered Billboard's Top 200 chart at No. 7, landing 33 notches above Marley's highest debut, 1976's Rastaman Vibration, and marking the second-best opening week ever for a reggae album. At last, his sons had set a new benchmark in the Marley hall of fame. ''Jamrock put us in a position to really do the kind of music we want,'' Damian says. ''People are not expecting us to do love songs or zip-a-dee-doo-dah kind of things; they're expecting reality, substance music.''
This February, a year after Jamrock earned Damian his second Grammy for Best Reggae Album, that prize was awarded to Ziggy for Love Is My Religion. In 2008, Stephen — who's currently producing upcoming albums by Julian and Ky-Mani — is likely to bring it home for Mind Control. ''People don't realize how hard these guys work,'' Cedella says. ''They're not jumping on their name; they have God-given talent. I think it's been harder for them because you always have people who are ready to criticize them because of who their father was.''
But from now on, instead of just being compared with their dad, they'll be measured against each other — and ''Jamrock.'' It's a challenge they welcome. ''We can't get away from the legacy of our father,'' Ziggy says. ''We don't run away from that. We embrace it. His purpose was to bring light to darkness and to open people's minds and consciousness. We do the same work because it's a spiritual lineage. It's not a make-believe thing we do. Our thing is real.''
SOURCE:
www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20038840_20038841_20041272,00.html
