Jérémie Kroubo is publishing a new book, "Bob Marley & The Wailers, 1973-1976", a collection of interviews with Lee Jaffe, with the publisher Camion Blanc.
Nicknamed the "White Wailer", Lee Jaffe met Bob Marley in 1972. He went to join him in Jamaica for what was meant to be a two-week holiday, and ended up staying five years. The man who plays harmonica on the album "Natty Dread" became a witness to the Wailers' growing fame, up to the arrival of the manager Don Taylor. It was he who would produce Peter Tosh's album "Legalize It" (he even took the famous photo on the sleeve).
An interview "with no holds barred", promises the back cover. And with good reason: Lee Jaffe is never lost for words and speaks plainly, delivering anecdotes about Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Chris Blackwell, Aston "Familyman" Barrett, the Wailers' first American tours, the New York scene of the time, the lawsuit against Rita Marley… The highlight of the story is probably the financing of the album "Legalize It" through an international ganja smuggling operation to Miami (we are talking hundreds of kilos). A subject that would reportedly be of strong interest to Kevin Macdonald, the director of the documentary "Marley", for a new film.
Lee Jaffe even put out a book in 2003 with Roger Steffens, "One Love: Life with Bob Marley and the Wailers".
Jérémie Kroubo is notably the author of the book ''Vibrations jamaïcaines'' and the translator of "People Funny Boy", the exemplary biography of Lee Perry by David Katze.
"Bob Marley & the Wailers: 1973-1976"
Lee Jaffe, Jérémie Kroubo Dagnini.
Publisher: Camion Blanc.
296 pages (150 photos), 30 euros.
Due out mid-June 2013.