I saw Bob Marley, live in concert at the Glasgow Apollo and again at Crystal Palace in 1980 on the Uprising Tour, just before he died, where he opened his set with; "sun is shining, the weather is sweet" and it was... He cast a mystical, tranquil spell over his many adoring fans that day.
Bob Marley's unique brand of reggae music, revering Ras Tafari, Emperor of Ethiopia, as the living King of Kings and Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, resounded throughout the known world and struck a cord within oppressed peoples from the Bronx to Botswana and the jungles of Borneo. At the bottom of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Havasupai Indians revere Bob and sing his songs.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God, but the warmongers are most threatened by the people's champions and as a result, they often meet a premature and mysterious end, like Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Lee and John Lennon. Bob Marley was no exception. When Bob fell ill in 1980, after his last performance at Madison Square Garden, he was diagnosed as suffering from exhaustion, but within a year, he was dead at the age of thirty-six, riddled with cancer in his lungs, stomach and brain.
Lew Lee, a documentary filmmaker said; "People came by his house. There were always people going in and out. Someone gave Bob a pair of boots. He put his foot in and said "Ow!" A friend got in there - you know how Jamaicans are. He said, "let's get in here" - in the boot, and he pulled a piece of copper wire out. It was embedded in the boot." The assumption is it was radioactive because Marley later broke his toe playing soccer in London and when the bone wouldn't mend, the doctors found that the toe had cancer.
The cancer metastasised throughout his entire body, but Bob believed he could fight this thing. He wanted to do anything but to turn to Western medicine, however he rapidly deteriorated and had a slight stroke. At the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, the chemotherapy itself seemed to be killing him, so, innocently he handed himself over to struggle with the disease for eight months at the 'alternative' clinic of Dr. Joseph Issels in Bavaria, who was considered a quack by the American Cancer Society. Lee claims, "Dr. Issels said that he could cure Bob."
They cut Bob's dreadlocks off and he was getting all of this crazy, crazy (experimental) medical treatment in Switzerland. Lew Lee knew this because of Ray Von Evans, who played in Marley's group, they were very close friends. As Bob was receiving these medical treatments, Ray would come by every two or three months and told Lee, "Yeah, mon, they're killing Bob. They are KILLING Bob." He said, "What do you mean they are killing Bob?" "No, no, mon," Ray said. "Dis Dr. Issels, he's a Nazi!"
During Bob's stay at Dr. Joseph Issels clinic in Bad Wiesse, he was subjected to blood transfusions, hyperthermia and illegal injections of THX. He was put on a restricted diet until he weighed only five stones and was forbidden from eating ital food brought from Jamaica. His friends who found his weight loss alarming, felt the treatment was "breaking down Bob's physical structure."
But a very 'telling' conversation took place when Dr. Issels told Bob a story about a German friend who had advised Issels not to treat him, saying that Marley was the most dangerous black man on the planet. A strange (Nazi) acquaintance for an eminent doctor? Not really, Joseph Issels was an officer in the SS, a colleague of notorious Joseph Mengele and had served a jail term for manslaughter. Mengele survived the war and enjoyed the protection and employment of the CIA.
Bob himself sometimes felt the injections he was given were poison, and in bad moments thought they were trying to kill him. When Bob was too ill to continue treatment and Issels sent him home to die, he kissed his teeth bitterly and said softly, "Dr. Issels is a madman." Robert Nesta Marley, the King of Reggae, had been at the pinnacle of his career and was in danger of inciting peace and unity when he died of cancer in a Miami hospital on Monday May 11, 1981.
This could be the first trumpet
Might as well be the last
Many more will have to suffer
Many more will have to die...
But the National Security Act of 1947, the CIA charter, does not grant national security thugs and Nazi doctors a license to kill. Who the cap fits, let them wear it. |
