The definitive biography of Bob Marley, newly revised and expanded, with a comprehensive discography and bibliography. Over the past fifteen years Catch a Fire has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and has indisputedly established itself as the best book ever written about Bob Marley.
For this new revision, Timothy White presents new material on the powerful ongoing influence of reggae in Jamaican society. He reveals previously restricted documents about the C.I.A.'s monitoring of Marley's activities and recounts the ongoing legal battles around Marley's estate and legacy. There's up-to-date information about the music being made by the next generation of Marleys and a new comprehensive discography and bibliography.
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
