| Journalist Bernard Loupias, who followed Bob on tour for "Le Matin," recalls his last meeting with Bob Marley. It is 2 o'clock in the morning and here I am in my hotel room when someone knocks at my door. Suddenly I woke up and open the door, it is Tommy Cowan, the Jamaican manager of Bob Marley at the time, who told me: "Bob wants to see you, now! Under the pallid neon light, Bob Marley waiting, alone, showing prominent cheekbones and feverish looking eyes. I could not believe that he was the same young musician full of energy and health that I had met three years earlier in London. I think that his physical transformation is due to the hard Tour. He inspires deeply. "Bob Marley is in France for a Tour that begins in Grenoble to promote his new album "Uprising." Now we are in Bordeaux, the concert there had been a fantastic two hours of pure unadulterated musical magic. After the concert, in spite of his tiredness, Bob Marley received a group of African students. Two months earlier, April 17 1980, Bob Marley performed in an historic concert in Zimbabwe that celebrated their independence day. U-Roy said: "I did Kingston Shuffle which was my version of Bob Marley's Trenchtown Rock with Peter Tosh playing the melodica." Bob Marley came to see me one day, and asked me if I could do that for him, so we went in the studio and we did the "Kingston 12 Shuffle." Exclaimed U-Roy! Apart from his music Bob Marley was lover of women, he had women all over the world, but the end of the world was closing in on Bob. From the beginning of the year1980, all was not too well with Bob Marley. |
