As I write this, the live version of No Woman No Cry’s just come on the radio. A perfect piece of synchronicity: NWNC at the Lyceum is, I think, my favourite song, warming me and caressing me every time I hear it with its magical, sensual, seductive melodic power and its sweet-steady rhythms and harmonies. Above all, its utter, utter empathy with and compassion for everything that’s fabulous and painful about being human make me feel happy, make me feel grateful that Bob Marley and I were on the same planet at the same time. And: this beautiful, loving, transcendent work of art is by a bona fide ‘hero’, a hero who was awkward, angry, sometimes unpleasant, often destructively self-obsessed and who fathered at least eleven children in a life of compulsive unfaithfulness . . . Continue reading »