Steppin' Razor: The Life of Peter Tosh

By John Masouri

The very first biography of Peter Tosh, rude boy, founder member of The Wailers and a compelling recording artist in his own right.

Tosh was Jamaica’s most controversial reggae star. A fiery advocate of Rastafari and African nationalism as well as the legalisation of marijuana, his uncompromising political stance won him a reputation as Jamaica’s Malcolm X.

Now revered second only to Bob Marley among reggae audiences worldwide, Tosh was awarded the Order of Merit, Jamaica’s third highest honour, as the nation celebrated 50 years of Independence.

Based on hundreds of interviews with those who knew Peter Tosh best, including Bunny Wailer and close associates, here are the stories behind hits like ‘Legalise It’, ‘Equal Rights’, ‘Get Up Stand Up’ and ‘Johnny B. Goode’; Tosh’s infamous appearance at the 1978 One Love Peace Concert; and his now legendary adventures with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

One of reggae’s most extraordinary stories, the life of Peter Tosh came to an end when he was brutally murdered in 1987 amidst rumours involving the supernatural and Kingston’s criminal underworld. This is his story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Omnibus Press
• Release date: May 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9780857128713

Book preview

2012

PART I

RASTA SHOOK THEM UP

Chapter 1

Didn’t It Rain

I didn’t start playing the blues, ever, T. Bone Walker once said. That was in me before I was born, and I been playing and living the blues ever since. That’s the way you got to play them.

When Peter Tosh lived in Westmoreland, back in the fifties, the parish had a tough reputation. In 1938, sugar workers set fire to fields and refused to work until they got better pay and conditions. News of their anger and frustration spread like wildfire, triggering island-wide strikes. Union leader Alexander Bustamante emerged as a people’s hero, was jailed for his beliefs and then formed the Jamaica Labour Party in 1943. Jamaica’s first elections took place a year later, shortly before Peter was born. The Labour Party duly won by a landslide – Bustamante having outflanked his cousin Norman Manley, who headed the rival People’s National Party, or PNP.

Within just 20 years, Jamaicans will have voting rights and a new constitution, as well as independence from Britain. The politicians played their part except two of the country’s most valuable exports – reggae music and Rastafari – won’t have originated with them, but with the same, poor black underclass that had forced change in the first place. Their struggle will provide a central narrative of Peter Tosh’s music once he’s found his own voice and freed himself of a religious upbringing that had its roots in colonialism, as well as Christian tradition.

Retracing his steps entails a trip to Savanna La Mar, just 20 miles from Negril. Unlike its more fashionable neighbour, Sav La Mar has less obvious charms. The Rough Guide describes how a profusion of low-lying concrete keeps the air still, making it hot and uncomfortable and it’s true. Whereas Kingston is vibrant, Savanna La Mar has an air of weariness. Remnants of colonial grandeur are silent witnesses to wealthier and more influential times, at least for some. Norman Square, on the corner of Great George Street and Rose Street, represents the final flowering of the planter class, as does the Court House with its ornate pillars. Next to it is the Cast Iron Fountain, imprisoned in an octagonal, gilded cage flanked by arches, each bearing a carved pelican. A brace of accompanying signs warn users to ‘keep the pavements dry’, although it’s difficult to imagine the stuttering trickle of tepid water causing much of a disturbance.

The main thoroughfare is Great George Street, which stretches from the northern outskirts of the town, all the way down to the quayside. That’s where you’ll find the Westmoreland Parish Church – an imposing building with stained-glass windows and a fountain out front. Traditionally, its congregation would be drawn from the town’s middle classes; women wearing starched petticoats and intricate lace, squired by local worthies in British style dress, despite the baking heat. American and Japanese cars and trucks have now taken the place of mules and carts but Savanna La Mar still has weekly markets, where voices strain to be heard amidst the constant clamour. Traders with handcarts laden with farm produce still push their way through the crowds, bantering with bevies of women wearing gaily coloured headscarves. Those food shopping may find mangos, oranges, star apples, breadfruit, ackee, beans, peas, okra, cashews, cabbages, sweet potatoes, cassava or arrowroot, depending what’s in season. Livestock cries out and tables groan under the weight of mullet, wahoo, snook, bull shark and the curiously named burro grunt; also tilapia, which they call St. Peter’s fish.

Markets are the same the world over, and it’s just the minor details that change. There’s always the odd skirmish or commotion, and fifties Jamaica was no exception. Walk through the market place in Peter’s time, and you’d see people struggling with barrels, sacks or bales of cloth. Middle-class women would buy ornaments made from cut glass or china, whilst others settled for a pair of sand platters – wooden sandals for walking on the beach. Today’s stallholders sell gaudily coloured string vests and x-rated dancehall outfits; bootleg CDs, Rasta knitwear and the usual tourist stuff, most of which is imported. Their predecessors were more self-sufficient, and traded bags of coffee and cocoa for calico, shoes, crockery, pots, pans and spoons – items they couldn’t grow at home or trade with a neighbour. In other respects, life has continued along the same slow-moving path. Women in headscarves carrying baskets still rest themselves on wooden benches, sharing gossip and comparing prices. Some carry bunches of daisies, chrysanthemums, hibiscus, lilies or Sweet Williams, the colours looking radiant against their brown and black skin. Once Baptists would have gathered on the street corner, preaching against smoking, dancing and drinking – pursuits cherished by those trying to shake off a week’s worth of toil. The rum bars probably won’t have changed much, except they would have had their share of World War II veterans in Tosh’s day. Like their American counterparts, these men had lain their lives on the line for democracy, and yet met with the same old prejudices back home. Some chose to dull reality with over-proof rum, having repeat conversations with men either tired and spent, or maybe younger and blinded by ambition born of giddy half-truths. Their womenfolk might have had a Chinese Bump where the hair is softened with juice from a cactus, and then rolled on top of their heads and skewered with hairpins. Those were frugal times, and yet music from the jukebox flowed through their bodies as they whirled in faded dresses and bright smiles.

Their gaiety masked a local music scene in transition. The big bands had started to break up, and some of the more talented local musicians had already left for Britain or America. Others headed for the north coast where clubs and hotel bars reverberated to the sounds of Trinidadian calypso and Jamaican mento. Favourite artists included Count Lasher, Lord Fly, Count Sticky and Hubert Porter, whose ‘Ten Penny Nail’ kept Jamaican audiences smiling for months. This was the music Peter Tosh heard as he reached his teens – songs like Lord Composer’s ‘Hill & Gully Ride,’ Harold Richardson’s ‘Healing In The Balm Yard,’ Lord Messam’s ‘Linstead Market’ and Monty Reynolds’ ‘This Long Time Gal A Never See You’. Lyrically, these songs often poked fun at people’s everyday lives and some even wove political commentary into the mix, thereby laying the foundation for seventies roots music. It was music people could relate to, and gave the impression of being for them.

As an indication of calypso’s popularity, Harry Belafonte, who spent part of his childhood in Jamaica, had the first million selling LP with a collection of calypso songs. This was in 1956, when Peter Tosh was 12 and dockside labourers really did load bananas onto ships in the cool of evening, singing as they worked. Belafonte tells of this in ‘Day O (The Banana Boat Song)’ and could have easily been describing Savanna La Mar back in the early fifties, when buses with no doors and wooden poles to support the roof would trundle down Great George Street, ferrying passengers from the centre of town to the quayside. Some 60 years later and two familiar landmarks are still visible from there: a rundown pier and the Old Fort, which was started in the eighteenth century but never finished. The outer wall has mostly fallen into the sea now, but people still swim in the harbour and go out to sea in fishing boats.

Typically candid, the Rough Guide dismisses Savanna La Mar as rather soulless and advises tourists to head five miles out of town to Petersfield, where a dazzling blue mineral pond lies like a castaway jewel among endless cane fields. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful place even at twilight, when fruit bats stream from nearby caves and crickets strike up their evening chorus. Blue Hole Garden is another local beauty spot, where you’ll find a deep, natural pool surrounded by gardens, waterfalls and sprays of white trumpet flowers.

Real-life pirate of the Caribbean Henry Morgan set sail for Panama not far from there, in 1670. He left from Bluefields, which is a few miles east of Savanna La Mar along the A2, a road that follows the coastline southwards and is framed first by green mountains and then sheer limestone cliffs as the landscape gives way to swamplands known as the Great Morass. The houses in Bluefields are scattered around a gently curved bay with white sand beaches and palm trees. Pelican Hole, an estuary haven for seabirds, isn’t too far away and nor are the ruins of a Spanish settlement called Oristan, dating from the sixteenth century.

The next village is Belmont, where a hand-painted sign welcomes visitors to the Peter Tosh Memorial Garden – entrance fee US $5, or $300 Jamaican. Peter’s mother, Alvera Coke (nee Morris), still lives in an adjoining house just yards from the busy highway, across from the ocean. Increasingly frail and elderly, she offers a courteous, if occasionally bemused, reception to the succession of foreigners who stop by. There’s an unmistakable sadness in her eyes. Also, the surroundings are disappointing given that a projected museum/library remains unfinished, and the various CDs, T-shirts, posters and recordings on sale can’t even begin to properly represent her son’s achievements.

Peter’s tomb is housed in a white, oblong building with a roof that juts over the front like the peak of a baseball cap. It has red, green and gold V shaped stripes on all sides, and neatly kept borders lined with white gravel chips. These same ribbon-like designs then reappear on the interior walls, where they criss-cross the tomb itself and meet either side of a mural facing the entrance. The lines In Loving Memory Of Peter Tosh, framed by ganja leaves, form its centrepiece, and Jah Is My Keeper is painted above that in large, uneven letters, adorned by bolts of lightning. There’s a cartoon-like image of him wearing wrap-around shades and smoking his pipe in one corner, and the words Legalise It emblazoned in the other. Inside, sunlight is refracted through arched stained-glass windows whose bold colours and naïve patterns give Peter’s sepulchre the look of a child’s bedroom, rather than the final resting place of Jamaica’s most radical superstar. The place has been smartened up since 2001, when the Tosh estate was awarded a settlement (believed to be in the region of US $2 million) over rights to the name Tuff Gong – the label Peter had formed with Bob Marley and Bunny Livingston more than 40 years earlier. Everything’s now more inviting than it was and happily, there’s been no attempt to dilute Tosh’s message during the facelift. Legalize Marijuana still stares boldly from a nearby fence, whilst another has a portrait of Peter wearing his trademark black beret, a spliff dangling insouciantly from his mouth.

Peter spent the formative years of his life in this sleepy corner of western Jamaica, which might appear like paradise to those who live and work in over-populated cities, but is still a backwater of sorts. The ocean twinkles invitingly, rivers and streams are plentiful and the surrounding countryside is undeniably lush and fertile. It’s a land where immediacy and the sense of a dark, foreboding history exist side by side, as if superimposed upon one another in transparent layers. The sites of former plantations – Orchard Great House for example – nestle uneasily next to flimsy shacks housing the descendants of those left broken and bereft in the wake of slavery – people who’d been sold into servitude and robbed of everything that had defined who they were, whether family, land, language, traditions, religious beliefs or self-worth. It was the plantation owners, not their former slaves, who’d been compensated after Emancipation. In the hundred or so years that followed many black people were forced to return to the plantations at starvation wages, this time as labourers and with no political rights. In the words of Rachel Manley, Their freedom proved to be as much myth as reality. As a consequence, Jamaica inherited a seemingly permanent underclass which lived in poverty and had no voice.

Peter’s passport lists his birthplace as Church Lincoln, which is in the Grange Hill district, less than 10 miles inland from Savanna La Mar. There’s a cluster of other hamlets nearby, including Mint, Top Lincoln and King’s Valley. The Morris family were farmers, and led a hard but decent life based on Christian values. We can rest assured they regarded a good reputation as vital currency. In Church Lincoln, no scandal can go undetected for long as Alvera knew only too well. Her name is supposedly German by the way but its similarity to the Spanish Elvira is unmistakable. I’m told it means foreign, but perhaps unfortunate would suit her better.

Most stories of unwanted pregnancy centre upon love-struck youngsters. This one differs in that Alvera was 26 when she gave birth. She’d met Peter’s father, James McIntosh, whilst working in Saxham, just a mile or so away from where Lee Scratch Perry was born. Although in a different parish, Saxham is no appreciable distance from Grange Hill, and Alvera was there for only five months before returning home for the birth. She named her child Winston Hubert McIntosh. This may have been to appease her family, since she and McIntosh never married or set up home together. On Peter’s birth certificate, Alvera’s occupation is listed as Labourer, whilst the space for his father’s details is left blank. McIntosh did come to look for Alvera before she gave birth, but wouldn’t see her again for another decade. He kept busy in the meantime though – the randy McIntosh would have 13 other children, and Peter never knew any of them.

My father was a bad boy, a rascal, he told the authors of Reggae Routes. That’s what him do for a living. He just go around and have a million and one children! Me never come on the earth under no wedlock. Me is what them call illegitimate, that mean say me is a criminal, bomba rassclaat! That’s why me go write a song called ‘Illegitimate Children’. It took me years to find out I was one …

He was born on October 19, 1944. According to astrologer Jill M. Phillips, "the intensity that characterises those born on October 19 marks them as unlike any other Libra. These broad-minded individuals find fulfilment through both the worldly and spiritual sides of their nature. They have strong, yet flexible opinions. They are curious about life, have a fierce love for learning, and are able to transcend their limitations. Though extremely focused, and can withstand setbacks and disappointments.

October 19th natives are often the centre of attention within their family. Their sunny personality makes them lovable and although they have no trouble making friends, they often find themselves in controversial situations.

All will be revealed in time to come. Back in 1944, it was wartime and Jamaica, like every other British colony, had rallied to the Allied cause. US forces landed in the Philippines that very same day. The naval battle that followed effectively put paid to the Japanese threat in the Pacific, although not before nature intervened. Hurricane Havana, with winds in excess of 160 mph, was headed for Jamaica even as Alvera went into labour. It struck Savanna La Mar on October 20 and whilst the winds may have slowed a little by then, the damage it caused was severe. Several US Navy ships were capsized and well over a hundred aircraft were wrecked or blown overboard from aircraft carriers, causing 800 deaths. In the words of Admiral Nimitz, the typhoon’s impact represented a more crippling blow to the Third Fleet than it might be expected to suffer in anything less than a major action.

The war would end just a year later. After the horror came relief as people began to piece their lives back together, or were forced into trying something new. Alvera too would make a fresh start on what’s been described as a substantial piece of land owned by her father, where Peter is now buried. In the absence of any support from McIntosh her family had provided her with somewhere to live, although the rest would be up to her. Her sense of failure and guilt must have been all consuming at times. Mama Tosh, who moved to Belmont when Peter was three, never had any other children and you can understand why.

Music Times reports she left Grange Hill because, I was having a hard time supporting myself and the child. I always had to support myself and Peter without a father so I always had a job. Peter will later tell Reggae Routes his mother couldn’t look after him because she was out slaving.

"I have no mother here, I have a bearer, he sneered. Jah is my mother and Jah is my father. My earthly parents don’t know my potential or my divine qualities. They weren’t taught how to diagnose or be aware of such things. They were looking at skin complexion and because me born so rassclaat black, she know me was a curse according to the shit-stem them times there. From I born, me learn say, ‘If you’re brown you can stick around; if you’re white then you perfectly alright and if you black, stay back.’"

Subsistence farming was hard, but then so was the weather at times. Westmoreland was hit by further tropical storms that year, and the next two years after that. This was nothing new, as there’d already been three major hurricanes in Savanna La Mar’s history. The first arrived in 1748, just 20 years after it was founded, when it was almost swept out to sea. The second struck in 1780 and left fishing boats hanging from the trees, whilst the third occurred in 1912 and deposited a schooner in the main street. Such vengeful acts of nature, seen through a prism of Biblical and African folklore, can take on profound significance for people having to live in the midst of them. Peter would later incorporate the sound of thunder and lightning in his records, and it’s not hard to imagine what inspired it.

It seems he was a reasonably happy child. Despite recalling how she’d leave him to cry as an infant (Let him sing, she’d say) his mother says he was always drawing and listening to songs on the radio. Asked when she first realised Peter had a talent for music, Alvera said Peter was only about two years old when he first started to sing.

Any song he heard on the radio or at church he would sing over, she told Music Times, proudly. He could catch the words so easily. People always wanted to hear him sing, but in those days he would be singing Christian songs. The first song she recalls him singing was an old spiritual. Roll away, roll away every burden of my heart. Roll away. She says Peter would accompany himself on a sardine pan guitar, and that older people would encourage him by giving money.

In those days a penny was like a pound, and so by saving the half pennies and pennies and putting them together, I could buy me a shirt or a pants or even a suit of clothes, he would later tell radio presenter Habte Selassie. That was the beginning of me realising my potential, and whatever ability for music I had in me.

His first instrument was rudimentary at best. Back then sardine cans were A5 size and maybe an inch thick – just the right shape for a makeshift guitar body if you’re already hallucinating notes pouring out of it. All it needed then was a piece of wood for the neck and strings made out of fishing line held taut by nails. The chances of keeping it in tune and achieving any real mastery on it were practically zero, but making his first guitar (with help from his grandfather perhaps) must have been a proud moment. It showed hunger too, because it was desire, rather than curiosity that compelled him towards the magic world of sound and its infinite possibilities.

An Indian man who lived up the road from Alvera then took Peter’s musical education one step further.

My mother and father didn’t know anything about instruments, Peter would later tell Timothy White. Me just see a man in the country play guitar one time and say, ‘My, the man play that guitar nice.’ It attract me so much I just sat there, taking it in for about half the day and when him done – he was playing one tune for that whole half day – he had hypnotised me so much that my eyes extracted everything he had done with his fingers. I picked up the guitar and played the tune he had just played, without him showing me a thing. And when he asked me who’d taught me I tell him it was him!

Two months before his sixth birthday, Hurricane Charlie happened. It was the worst tropical storm in 70 years and caused extensive damage. Port Royal was destroyed for the third time in its history as the death toll neared 200 and families lost everything they had. Crops were destroyed and fruit trees uprooted, which in turn made food hard to come by. Amidst the devastation, a new chapter opened in Peter’s life.

I used to go to work and leave Peter with his grandfather in the daytime but then after a while he got a job, so I had to find someone else to help me with him, Alvera explains. My aunt in Savanna La Mar, Loretta Campbell, decided to help and so Peter started to live with her. He went to school during the week and on weekends he came home.

Euriah and Loretta Campbell lived in a street made of red earth that was mostly hot and dusty, but stuck to everything after it had rained. Men and women would walk barefoot to save their shoes, which they knotted over their shoulders. By Jamaican standards it was almost suburban although there was no sidewalk, only clumps of rich foliage dotted among the houses. Nevertheless, it was a decent neighbourhood back in the fifties, before zinc fencing appeared and the area became rundown. The Campbells were already helping raise a young niece but had a spare bed and could offer Peter more stability than at home. At least he’d get a decent education staying with them. Bluefields School had been typical of those found in country villages with its single classroom, wooden benches and worn-out blackboard. Resources were limited, books were scarce and a tap outside provided the only form of refreshment. Facilities were less basic in town, and the teachers better qualified. Peter would attend the Savanna La Mar Infants and Primary Schools and they’re still there at 50 Rose Street – the two schools being situated next door to each other. Then as now, they are government run and so unaffiliated to any religious organisation. The Campbells were however, and took Peter to church almost every evening and twice on a Sunday.

The Pentecostal Church in Bluefields had consisted of little more than a rudimentary altar and floor space, whereas the one in Savanna La Mar had a piano. It’s almost a cliché to read of singers being raised in the church and yet there’s no denying its influence on so many musically inclined youngsters. A religious upbringing shapes a person’s thoughts, gets inside their minds and affects them for the rest of their lives. Peter will famously rail against his, even as it informed his character. The good news is he got to learn a lot more about music’s power to transform people from an early age, and the lessons would never leave him.

The cornerstone of the Pentecostal Church – apart from acceptance of Christ’s teachings as written in the Bible – is the importance of being born again. Followers have to be baptised in the Holy Spirit and can’t be saved otherwise, since good works or penance can’t suffice on their own. The key to the Pentecostal faith can be found in the Book Of Acts, Chapter 2, which describes what happened at a Jewish festival in Galilee.

"And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And those dwelling at Jerusalem were Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitudes came together and were confounded because every man that heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, ‘Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans?’

Others, mocking, said, ‘these men are full of new wine.’ But Peter, standing up with the 11, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, ‘Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day and that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapours of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood before the great and notable day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Those wondering how Hubert Winston came to be known as Peter need only reflect upon his family’s religious beliefs. Dr. Samuel C. Gipp discusses these references to Peter in a well-known Bible commentary.

Here Peter lives up to his true personality, he writes. When others are silent, Peter speaks up! Peter was always quick to say exactly what he thought, even if what was on his mind was not always correct. Time and again Peter speaks first and thinks later. Peter may have to answer for his actions, but he certainly seemed to have made up for his error by quickly speaking up for Christ later. Those Christians who judge Peter harshly for his denial of Christ one time, will have to answer for their own multitude of denials through silence.

Outlawed by his blackness and illegitimacy, Peter was prevented from self-pity by childhood innocence and the Campbells’ disciplined routines. His horizons had expanded since the move to Savanna La Mar, but he still looked forward to seeing family and friends back in Belmont most weekends. One trip home would prove especially memorable.

I will never forget that when I was seven years old, the Devil tried to blind me with barbed wire, he recalled on the Red X tapes. He’d heard his mother calling and ran towards her, not noticing the barbed wire fence until it was too late. The barbs were at face height and missed his retinas by a fraction but when Peter wiped the blood from his face, both eyelids were so torn he could see right through them. We can assume a doctor or even local midwife applied stitches, and he was forced to wear a bandage over his eyes for several days. It’s also possible he was treated with a poultice of herbs, to draw out any infection and ease the stinging pain. Peter would retain trust in natural healing practices for the rest of his life, and suffered no obvious, long-term effects from the injuries he suffered as a child.

His mother had a shop by this time – in reality just a lean-to by the roadside, from where she’d sell whatever fruit and vegetables were in season. Peter loved drawing and would sit in there at weekends, sketching the people who passed by. Alvera delighted in his creativity but will later refer to him as troublesome, because he was always touching things. Whenever she cautioned him, he’d say, Mama, hear me say, me name Tosh, so me must touch it.

Years later, when Roger Steffens asked him how he got the name Peter Tosh, he replied that Peter was his pet name and as a youth growing up, his friends would call him McIntouch. Well, I don’t like to be mocked, so I just take the MacIn off from there, he explained. Peter’s size – he was tall even as a child – undoubtedly prompted some teasing as well, although he rarely lacked company. He and his best friend Kingsley Daley, whom Peter called K.D, would go fishing, climb trees and trap mongooses. Even as a grown man, Peter would call K.D. from Kingston, wanting to know if he’d seen any mongooses. Finches, pigeons and woodpeckers were plentiful and the pair used to stalk them by hiding in trees with branches tucked into their clothes, for camouflage. Once in position, they wouldn’t be able to move or breathe a word until an unwary bird drew near, then they’d kill it with their slingshots, light a fire and eat their fill. Often, they’d take a line down to the beach hoping to catch that evening’s supper, or visit rivers and streams where clingfish would lie in wait under the waterfalls. Either that or they’d go exploring in the fields, where sugar cane of all hues, from green to black, towered above them. Farming in the area was still not mechanised and so neighbours helped one another, especially during planting and harvest time when the larger farms would employ additional workers. You could hear them singing from afar as they chopped cane with their machetes, just as they’d done for generations – first as slaves, and then hired labourers or small-time farmers. Donkeys would be tethered nearby, weighed down with hampers holding water containers. The stalks were then transported to the mills for crushing, and the juice boiled to make sugar. It was hard work, but life in the countryside could also be idyllic. Villagers wove baskets out of bamboo or made mats from banana leaves, and there was no shortage of cabinetmakers, tinsmiths, shoemakers, potters or rope makers.

As Peter sat in his mother’s store, he’d see the local women stroll past with goods balanced on their heads, or watch as a sporadic procession of ducks, geese, chicken, goats and dogs wandered listlessly in search of food or shade. Lunch might be boiled plantains or yam and a little fish, served with a drink made from bitter oranges and sugar. Lizards would dart along the walls, making short, rapid movements before freezing motionless or basking in the hot sun. Ram goat roses, white azaleas and mammy trees with their crimson fruit provided splashes of local colour, as did plum roses and rose apples. White winged doves fluttered among the outbuildings, and scorpions scurried in the shadows. It was a world mercifully free of globalisation, where chain stores simply didn’t exist. Since Jamaica was an island it relied on imported electrical goods and there were few phones or televisions. The postal service was hit-and-miss too, just like the water and electricity supplies – providing you were connected to begin with, and most people weren’t. Instead, they cooked over fires, divined for water with forked sticks and made do with candlelight. Some even grew a little marijuana in their back yards, which they’d boil up and drink as a tonic. Westmoreland is famous for its herb, thanks to the many indentured Indian workers who came to Jamaica. Some brought seeds with them and it was these Indie Royals as they were known, who taught Jamaicans how to cultivate it.

Emancipation Day celebrations fell in August, when people treated themselves to a well-earned day off and towns and villages hosted donkey races, sports, food stalls, merry-go-rounds and maypole dancing, as well as concerts by local mento musicians. Vendors laden with guineps, tamarind and other fruit walked through the crowds, whilst others sold foxtail grass (for stuffing mattresses) or brooms made from dried coconut fibre. Ragged children in bare feet played hide and seek or ring games like Drop The Handkerchief, hoping they’d be treated to cups of shaved ice mixed with syrup called snowballs. Bruckins – derived from bragging – was also popular. This was a game of one-upmanship, of Creole origin and accompanied by exaggerated movements. We’ll see echoes of it in how Tosh brandishes a sword or Ethiopian cross on stage nearly 30 years later.

Despite the rural setting, consumerism was already on its way. Little girls craved dolls, although the only ones they saw were pink with blue eyes and maybe blonde hair. Toys were expensive and hard to come by, so children would have to improvise with whatever came to hand – usually wood, clothes and nails. Boys played cricket of course, inspired by the West Indies team, which was one of the few areas where Jamaica’s unwritten colour bar didn’t apply.

When Peter was eight, Jamaica’s athletes won gold and silver at the Olympic Games held in Helsinki, even breaking two world records. This was a cause for great celebration. A year later, Britain’s newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II stopped off in Jamaica on her way to Australia. It was the first time a reigning English monarch had visited the island, and vast crowds turned out to cheer her. Soon afterwards, in 1954, there was an island-wide outbreak of poliomyelitis, which afflicted over 800 people. Some Rastafarians believed the Queen’s visit had brought bad luck but such misgivings were soon swept aside as Jamaica celebrated 300 years of British rule.

Tercentenary activities went on for the entire year. The most popular was a road show featuring sports and music that travelled throughout the different parishes, Westmoreland included. Kingston hosted an Industrial Fair during September and then just a few months later, Norman Manley’s PNP won the general election. One of his first tasks was to welcome HRH Princess Margaret, who visited Jamaica during February. Deference to Britain was still very evident, especially in country districts where it wasn’t uncommon to see portraits of the Queen and Prince Philip hanging on people’s walls. A lot of Jamaican boys were named after Winston Churchill, including Peter Tosh.

When he was 10, Alvera took him to meet his father, who still lived in Hanover. Peter will later claim McIntosh gave Alvera a few shillings and several oranges at this meeting. It’s the only time Peter will see him, and yet it’s doubtful the experience unsettled him too much. His uncle and grandfather still served as primary male role models and he was being kept busy at school and church in any case, where he sang in junior choir and at concerts. Alvera recalls aunt Loretta telling her that Peter had sang in front of 100 people or more outside the courthouse one day, whilst his teachers had urged them to send him for proper music lessons after he’d shown promise at the piano.

Years later, Habte Selassie asked Peter how he got started in music. It’s the other way round, because music happened to me, he explained. "I was born with music inside of me and that was the first flower that bloomed on my tree but I was the highest key in my school, and also the lowest key, seen? That means I was very important in music and any time it was taking place at school … Any activities, like concerts and all of those things and I am not involved, then you knew something was missing, because in those times, when I was 12 and 13, I sang like a girl. My voice was the highest pitch until I was 16, 17 and even now I can still do them, but in falsetto.

I was the only one in my family to be musically inclined and my mother loved that, he continued. It encouraged my grand aunt to find me a music teacher, because it was quite obvious music was in me. When I was about 12, 13, I went to my first music tutor which was a lady called Mrs. Scott. She was my music teacher for about a year, and after about six months I was playing fifths and B-sharp and all of these kinds of things. I was playing classical music, and from she first taught me it’s like I was magnetic towards it, and learning so easily. In those times you didn’t look at the keyboard, you look in the book, because Mrs. Scott, she was a very aggressive woman when it comes to that. You have to look in the book and your fingers have to be like eyes, seen? But reading and writing is the greatest thing in music. I can’t play the music I used to when I was 13, because I played by notes back then and now I play by ear. I feel out the chords and make lots of mistakes but I remember how it was, and it was one of the most beautiful times in my life … I used to go to my music lesson three times a week, so I would get like maybe four or six hours’ worth of lessons altogether but when I leave that lady’s place, it was impossible for me to play a piano unless I sneaked in the church. You had to practise to get good at it but I never had access to a piano and if I’d have had that, oh man, the music that would be coming out of me now would be incredible …

In 1983, Peter told Mel Cheplowitz he’d studied practical piano forte music for six months aged 13 and reached the fifth grade. He can be forgiven for feeing disenchanted after his formal training ended. The lack of a piano led him to concentrate on guitar, except he’d continue to play piano whenever he got the chance, like at Christmas time when the school would organise singing, dancing and poetry recitals. Some of the older students would act out scenes from Shakespeare and Peter’s school had a decent choir too, featuring a certain Hubert McIntosh. Hymns like ‘No More Auction Block For Me’, ‘Rock Of Ages’, ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ and ‘Coming Through The Rye’ were among his favourites. These songs dated from slavery days, but had lost none of their relevance. It was singing in choirs that had introduced Peter to the joys of harmonies and Christmas was always a special time of year, even though gifts might only consist of food, a hand-me-down dress or pair of second-hand shoes. There was little chance of having a traditional Yuletide in any case, with temperatures in the nineties.

Jamaican schoolchildren would see pictures of snow in books, but never experience it. The nearest they came was during the rainy season, when hailstones sometimes fell from the sky and children would gather up the frozen pellets and make drinks from them by adding sugar or lemon. Out in the countryside, villagers marked Christmas by painting tree trunks white and welcoming the Jonkonnu – groups of street performers whose songs, theatrics and arresting costume designs were rooted in traditional Ashanti rites from Ghana. The Jonkonnu would surface on Christmas Eve, and stick around for about two weeks. Rowdy crowds followed them as they leapt and pranced, acting out ancient rituals whilst playing bamboo flutes and drums.

When Peter was 13, a heavy earthquake shook almost the entire island, causing extensive damage. There was also a serious rail accident in Kendal, not far from where his parents had met. The train was on its return journey from Montego Bay to Kingston when it derailed, killing 200 people and injuring many more. In the aftermath, they were numerous sightings of people killed in the disaster. These ghostly figures are called duppies in Jamaica and fuelled by local superstition, are considered very real indeed. Members of Peter’s family still living in nearby Grange Hill would have helped to pull bodies out of the wreckage and tend to survivors, so we can be sure this event had a significant impact.

As always, there were divisions between the inner lives of Jamaican country people with their beliefs in African-derived folklore, and what children were taught in school. Jamaica’s education system followed the colonial model, and so history and geography lessons rarely touched upon anything controversial. At no point were pupils told that Africa was the cradle of civilisation, or how Jamaica’s original inhabitants had been killed or died out during what Rachel Manley describes as the island’s brief and humiliating past. Peter would discover all this later, and view much of his early education as part-propaganda, part-betrayal. Not that he was much of a rebel at the time. By all accounts, he enjoyed school and made friends easily, despite his busy schedule allowing little opportunity for relaxation. Church activities still took up a lot of his attention and it was there, among the swaying adults and joyous exclamations to God, where his musical education continued to bear fruit.

In some ways he remained resistant to the Pentecostal faith. He told Roger Steffens there’d been many attempts to have him baptised for instance, but that he’d always refused. Yeah man, physical resistance and spiritual resistance! he purred. I go to church because my parents go to church, and I believe the things they were doing at the time were right because they were the ones growing up in righteousness, and their life was supposed to be an example, seen? I was living in belief, not knowing, except the concept instilled within me was to do things that were right, and I never think I should hurt a man. That’s the way I was born and raised, and that’s the way I grow and feel within myself. I don’t think I should harm anything that has life and I’ll have nothing to do with what is wrong, but at the same time I didn’t know right from wrong at that time, because there was no one to teach me.

He’ll grow increasingly disdainful about his church upbringing in future, complaining that he was taught God had made man in His own image – which according to the only pictures he’d seen of Jesus meant Caucasian.

I was taught that Jesus the Son of God was a white man, he sneered, and hearing black people singing, ‘Lord wash me, and I will be whiter than snow’ made me sick. They would always teach me about the Devil, Satan and hell – the teachings of the Christians …

The music was something else though, and still the soaring harmonies filled his soul with joy. Anthony Heilbut talks of gospel as having constructed a world complete unto itself. He mentions its distinctive language, special rhythms and complex sense of ritual and decorum. Gospel has its own very superior aesthetic standards, he writes. The audience’s musical sophistication is remarkable; it’s nothing rare to see thousands of people roaring their approval for the subtlest change in tune, time or harmony. But the most universal approval comes for honesty of emotion. Church people understand spirit, soul if you will, better than anyone.

Before emancipation, the slaves’ only opportunity to express themselves openly came when singing hymns. Black singers tend to flatten and slur notes, and invest them with more feeling. They also found little difficulty identifying with the themes of salvation and deliverance found in so many of the old-time spirituals. Whilst he’d later reject its religious framework, the influence of gospel singing on Peter’s career would last a lifetime and this, together with his popularity at school, helped instil plenty of confidence in his own abilities.

He used to sing higher than the radio! his mother recalls, affectionately. I’d say ‘Oh stop the noise, too much noise’, and he’d say, ‘Alright, when you hear me sing on the radio, then you can turn it off.’

Jamaica didn’t have its own radio station until 1959. Before then many Jamaicans would tune in American stations like WINZ or WCKY, broadcast from Miami. The sounds of New Orleans and America’s Deep South flooded into Jamaican homes via inexpensive, battery-driven transistor radios, which had now become commonplace. The alternative was a British cable system named Redifusion, operated from a wall-mounted box and that introduced Caribbean audiences to crooners such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby. Whilst such singers would prove influential, it was the American rhythm and blues artists and doo-wop groups that captured the attention of most Jamaican teenagers. By the time Peter started at Manning’s High School his favourites included Billy Ward & The Dominos, Sam Cooke, Little Anthony & The Imperials, Ricky Nelson, Fats Domino, The Platters, Lloyd Price, Clyde McPhatter, Jackie Wilson, Dion & The Belmonts and Ray Charles. Even Marty Robbins … The outpouring of music from across the Gulf of Mexico was intoxicating, and it was augmented by jazz, country and western, British pop and whatever else was happening in Cuba and Latin America, as well as other parts of the Caribbean.

His head swimming with youthful exuberance, Peter was convinced that he had a contribution to make – if not as a balladeer, then in a group. He was now growing increasingly distracted. Inevitably his schoolwork began to suffer, and relations with his family became strained. He left school earlier than expected but couldn’t decide on a trade, despite pressure from those close to him. He was beginning to feel as if he’d outgrown Savanna La Mar and its surrounds, and to crave new experiences. The catalyst would arrive right on cue, and Peter could scarcely believe his ears after hearing some of the earliest Jamaican hits by Higgs & Wilson, Theophilus Beckford, Laurel Aitken and others, which combined elements of calypso, rhythm and blues and doo wop, yet sounded so fresh and new. There was no mistaking the American influences in these records, but there was something else too – an expression that could have only been created right there in Jamaica, and that spoke directly to his collective subconscious. Kingston was clearly the place to be and fortunately for Peter, members of his family were prepared to help him.

His mother told Music Times that Peter was 17 when leaving for Kingston. He said he would like to learn welding and I had an aunt in Kingston, Mary Tomlinson, who agreed to find a place for him, which she did. We were very poor, so I knew I couldn’t afford to send him to medical school or law school or anything like that. That’s why I didn’t mind that he took up singing. I thought it was a good idea to learn welding too, but it was his decision to make, then once he got to Kingston he changed his mind about that. He said he couldn’t sit in one place all day long, so that’s when he started to direct all his attention to music.

Alvera would have undoubtedly preferred her son to sing Christian songs about the Lord and Saviour rather than secular music but such considerations were far from her mind as she bade him farewell. K.D was supposed to go too but when he failed to show up for the third time, Peter left without him.

Why did you leave Westmoreland? asked Steffens, years later.

To learn.

What did you take to Kingston when you left?

Well, all I took was my little grip, and some food to eat on the way, and myself and Jah in my heart, replied Peter.

When he was going to Kingston I tell him I don’t approve because he’s not saved, Alvera would later confide to Fikisha Cumbo.

How you know I’m not saved Mama? Peter had replied. "I am saved and I’m going."

He only said that so he could go to town, reflected his mother, sadly, but I knew he was lying.

There are four main roads out of Savanna La Mar. One leads west to Negril, another to Grange Hill and Lucea, and a third to Petersfield. The fourth heads east, hugging the coastline to Black River and eventually Kingston. After Black River the road bends inland, and skirts round a succession of villages with names like Speculation, Lovely Point and Pepper. As Peter’s bus neared Mandeville, the landscape changed to grassy pastures reminiscent of English farmland. It continued like that through Clarendon until they reached the market town of May Pen and then Old Harbour, where ships still docked, awaiting cargos of fresh produce. The next stop was Spanish Town, just 15 miles from Kingston, where the government buildings and churches would remind him of Savanna La Mar in their ornate, but faded splendour. Soon, his bus will enter Kingston and pull up near Coronation Market in the bustling downtown area. His journey had covered less than 150 miles, yet lasted six hours. The food he’d brought with him was long gone and he was tired, despite tremors of excitement welling below the surface. The coming months would test his resolve like nothing he’d ever experienced before except, flush with youthful innocence, he felt ready for the challenge and smiled broadly as aunt Mary walked over to greet him.

Chapter 2

No Sympathy

Peter spent three months in Denham Town, living with his aunt. Years later, he would describe it as a new page, totally different from what I grew up with. Denham Town is in West Kingston, shares its borders with Jones Town and Trench Town, and has an unenviable reputation for violence that persists to this day. Death is an ever-present reminder – across the Spanish Town Road is May Pen cemetery, where many an outlaw lies at rest.

Whilst he may have been staying with family, acceptance from the local community was another matter. New arrivals, especially from the country, are invariably given a hard time. Remember Jimmy Cliff in The Harder They Come, on his first day in town? No sooner does he step off the bus than he’s robbed of everything he’s got. Peter may have been confident; but adjusting to life in West Kingston wouldn’t be easy.

Burning Spear, who journeyed to Kingston from St. Ann’s at the start of his career, says country people lead calmer lives. They tend to live like one, together, he says. People were there for each other, but then when you go to Kingston, it wasn’t like that. It’s like they don’t care about anyone else and nothing surprises them. It was totally different, so it was really hard for you to leave the country and live in the city. It may take you some time before you can accept that way of life and to settle down because people in the country have more time to digest things, and to think and learn about them. You can get to know about yourself more because you have the time, but city people aren’t like that.

Alvera knew this, which is why she’d been concerned for Peter’s safety. Her brother and his family also lived in West Kingston, and she’d heard enough stories to fuel her fears. Real and ever-present dangers lay in wait for the unwary and her son could be headstrong, so it was easy to imagine him getting into trouble. Whilst Peter did try his hand at welding, he hated being cooped up all day and soon left. He still hadn’t decided what to do for a living when leaving Aunt Mary’s and going to stay at his uncle’s house in Trench Town, at 19 West Road. Alvera’s brother was a cabinetmaker but the family also made syrup, which they sold to retail outlets in Kingston. As cottage industries go it was successful enough, and Rita Marley’s father was rumoured to have worked for them at one point.

The Morris family had seven children between them – five boys and two girls. Peter’s favourite was six-year old Pauline, who they called Offie since her middle name was Ophelia. At 17 Peter was oldest of the youngsters, and closest in age to the two boys from his aunt’s previous marriage. Housing in Trench Town once meant lean-to shacks, but Peter’s new home was purpose-built. The rooms were small though, and must have felt cramped given the number of people living there. Pauline remembers Peter babysitting her and the younger ones, and being caring towards them. As Alvera’s only son he was welcomed into the family and behaved well in return, but his restlessness was only too evident. Peter’s uncle had grown up in Belmont and felt sympathy for his lanky nephew, who was never happier than when singing along to the radio and strumming a guitar.

Trench Town was alive with music. Sound systems like Sir Coxsone’s Downbeat and V Rocket would set up on the corner of Fifth Street and Central Road most Friday and Saturday evenings and they’d still be there playing music as dawn broke. That’s where Peter heard Higgs & Wilson’s ‘Manny Oh’, Alton & Eddy’s ‘Muriel’, Jackie Edwards’ ‘Tell Me Darling’ and the Blues Busters’ ‘Donna’ – records that had marked the birth of the local recording industry, and made every other youngster on the island want to be a singer. Crowds of people spilled onto the streets where they’d laugh and remonstrate with each other, or buy roast corn, ripe bananas and oranges from the vendors who thronged the sidewalk. A sense of camaraderie filled the air but then this was 1962, and political rivalry had yet to make its presence felt. On weekday evenings, people congregated by the bridge and met with friends, or practised singing. Locals called this spot corner, and were quick to extend Peter an invitation.

We treated each other like family, recalled Beverley Kelso. Everybody walk from one yard to the next and everybody know each other’s name. After school, you’d go home and do your chores. You have to clean and wash up dishes, do the housework and go to the store. After that now you’d take a shower, get fresh and you’d come out in the street. Everybody would play something. Boys and girls would play football and cricket; some play marbles and girls would be jumping the rope … This was in-between say six and eight o’clock because children had school in the morning so when it got dark, they’d stop playing and get called in. There was no television back then. Some people had Redifusion and would listen to Ranny Williams on RJR. His show was at 10 on a weekday night. We’d all listen to his show sat round the radio and if a family didn’t have a radio, they’d go and visit people who did. The street would be quiet and then after the show was over, everybody would go to bed …

At its southern extremity, Trench Town began at First Street. Its two main thoroughfares were Central Road and West Road, which went past the Clock Circle all the way up to Thirteenth Street and an area known as Ghost Town. Nearby was the Ambassador Theatre, where young hopefuls auditioned for Vere Johns’ ‘Opportunity Hour’. This was Jamaica’s number one talent show and other heats were held at the Majestic, just two blocks away on Maxfield Avenue. A walk in the other direction, down the Spanish Town Road, led to downtown Kingston, close to the waterfront. That’s where Peter discovered Orange Street, also known as Beat Street, which hosted a profusion of record and liquor stores, clubs, rum bars and whorehouses. The main action however revolved around places like Chocomo Lawn, the Jubilee Tile Gardens and Forresters’ Hall, at the corner of Charles Street and Love Lane. These outdoor dancehalls were jam-packed most weekends thanks to a steady diet of jump blues by American artists such as Fats Domino, Louis Jordan and Smiley Lewis, who’d headline at the Carib or Regal Theatres on their occasional visits to Kingston.

As a Trench Town youth, naïve to the city and lacking funds, Peter didn’t get to visit downtown too often. Most of his musical education came from hearing records closer to home, in local dances or on the radio. That’s how he came under the spell of acts like Eric Monty Morris, the Jiving Juniors and Mellow Larks, whose ‘Time To Pray’ topped the JBC charts for several weeks that summer. As well as learning the words to certain songs, Peter practised guitar every chance he got and began sketching out songs of his own, since the inspiration was already welling up inside him. In years to come he’d tell Habte Selassie that Trench Town was where the music was at and it was there I was supposed to be, because it helped to bring out what was inside of me. Because the more I hear people sing, the more I sing, and the more I hear music, the more I sing.

There was some government housing opposite his uncle’s place. Peter would often stop by there in the evenings, and join in with the reasoning sessions that invariably started up once a pot of food went on the fire. Several families lived in this communal block and mingled in a central recreation area ringed by kitchens, bathrooms and toilets. Ras Cardo, who knew Peter during those early years, testifies to the fact life was hard in these tenement yards.

Besides the usual domestic inconveniences of not having your own toilet, bathroom or kitchen facilities in your rooms, there were the additional problems of people not getting along with each other, he writes in Reggae Jamaica. Some people in the same yard were rival tenants always looking for a chance to hurt the other person. People had to live vigilantly, always sleeping with one eye open. Many people will not be able to comprehend what it feels like to be living or merely existing in such conditions from day to day, and around some people who may be at war with you or some member of your family. It was scary to say the least and there was no electricity. Most people used kerosene lamps to pierce the veil of darkness that descended at nights and others would use flashlights. It was a constant happening where a fight that began on one street would end up in a chase on another street and in another yard.

Such experiences taught Peter just how easily people can become victims. He saw some die because of carelessness whereas others lost their lives amidst howls of rage and frustration. As the pressure got to them, it made some people kinky, crazy, angry and lost to themselves.

Soon after his arrival, a Trench Town woman killed her husband and cut up his body into tiny pieces. They named her Chicken Back after that. Ghetto humour could be cruel, but it was never far from the truth. Anyone living in such circumstances quickly developed a hard exterior by necessity. It didn’t pay to show your feelings too openly and yet somehow Peter would retain his