Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley

White, Timothy

ISBN 10: 0805011528 / ISBN 13: 9780805011524

Published by Henry Holt, New York, 1989

About this Item

8vo, 476 pp., Revised and enlarged edition with new material on Reggae politics, Ziggy and the Marley family.

Seller Inventory # 094896

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley
• Publisher: Henry Holt, New York
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805011528
• ISBN 13: 9780805011524
• Binding: softcover
• Illustrator: Illus. with photos
• Edition: Revised ed.
• Condition: Fine copy
• Seller catalogs:
  • Music

About this title

Synopsis

This book chronicles the life and career of Bob Marley and the milieu that shaped his spiritual and political beliefs. Now includes information on Jamaica's troubled music business.

Review

Bob Marley, reggae superstar and pop culture icon, left an indelible mark on modern music. Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley delves deep into the life of the lionized leader of a musical, spiritual, and political explosion that still reverberates more than a decade after his death. Almost nothing pertaining to the life of Bob Marley is left out; the origins of Rastafarianism (the Ethiopian religion that was the keystone of his life), the roots of the reggae sound, the Jamaican political and social debacle that informed his lyrics--this is a comprehensive account of the life of the artist and the times that produced him.

Catch a Fire is assiduously researched; the details writer Timothy White presents of the King of Reggae's life are cinematic in scope and, at times, cumbersome. White includes much of his primary source material, ranging from full interviews with band members to unearthed CIA documents, and devotes a whole section to describing his exhaustive research process. The final product is rich with elements of spiritual tome, rock biography, and history text; it is a hagiographic epic--the story of a man and his legend. --Brendan J. LaSalle