no biopic, no cry

5 Essential Bob Marley Facts That Didn’t Make It Into One Love

Who are Peter and Bunny—and how did Marley really react to his cancer diagnosis?
5 Essential Bob Marley Facts That Didnt Make It Into ‘One Love
© Paramount/Everett Collection.

Musical biopics are a tough nut to crack. If you go the cradle-to-the-grave route, you risk sounding like a Wikipedia entry. But focusing on a particular period in an artist’s life (like John Lennon’s early years in Nowhere Boy, or Kurt Cobain’s last days in Last Days) can sometimes be more successful.

Bob Marley: One Love, starring Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch as Bob and Rita Marley, hedges its bets a bit. The spine of the film takes place over two years, beginning with the assassination attempt made against Bob in 1976, then moving to time spent recording and touring in Europe, and ending with a “One Love Peace Concert” back in Jamaica in 1978. (The movie would have you believe that this event solved all of that nation’s political problems through the power of song; in reality, the organizers of the show were both murdered within a couple of years after the concert.)

Sprinkled throughout these two key years—during which time he would expand his sound for the Exodus album, discover he had a rare form of cancer (and ignore his doctor’s medical advice), and have an argument with his wife—the film, coproduced by Marley’s family who worked with four credited screenwriters, flashes back to key moments in Marley’s life. While cracking the window like this does add resonance to some of the relationships, it also causes problems. Put bluntly: There’s a lot about Bob Marley that could have been included in One Love but was not.

Here are five tidbits that did not make the final cut.

“In a Government Yard in Trenchtown”

In one of Marley’s signature tunes, “No Woman, No Cry,” he sings to his wife, Rita, about the place where they grew up: Trenchtown, in Kingston, Jamaica. Another tune, “Trenchtown Rock,” is all about how Marley found inspiration and camaraderie growing up in the dirt-poor area.

The opening title cards of Bob Marley: One Love do contain a passing reference to Trenchtown—but it is surprising that the unique culture of this community, which was so important to Marley’s work, never gets a center stage moment in the film.

The area was originally owned by a wealthy Irishman named Daniel Trench, which is probably where it got its name—although, during its years of squalor, it also had several visible trenches. It’s now fair to call it the most important neighborhood in the development of Jamaican music. In addition to Bob Marley and the Wailers, several other groups, like Toots and the Maytals, Alton Ellis, the Abyssinians, and the Mighty Diamonds have their roots there.

Babylon, Delaware 19801

In one of the film’s flashbacks, young Bob tells young Rita that his mother has left Jamaica to live in America. But he says he won’t follow her. (Later, after the attempts on both of their lives, Bob suggests that Rita take the children to live with his mother for a little while, which she does.)

But in reality, Bob Marley did spend some time deep in, of all places, Wilmington, Delaware. (Indeed, one can now take kids to a playground in One Love Park.) Just how long he lived there is up for debate. But it is known that he worked for a spell at a Chrysler plant in Newark, Delaware, in the 1960s, and this is what inspired his song “Night Shift.” He also worked as a lab assistant at DuPont. His mother ran a Jamaican music store there called Roots.

“Peter and Bunny”

During the aforementioned fight-with-the-wife scene outside a swank party in Paris, Rita says that “this” is why “Peter and Bunny left.” (The “this” in question is, one surmises, Bob’s controlling demeanor, but it’s a little unclear; the screenwriters and the guiding hand of the Marley estate did not turn in the world’s sharpest script.)

Peter and Bunny are Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, who were key collaborators of Marley’s before their breakup in 1974. Both had important careers of their own: Tosh’s Legalize It and Equal Rights albums are as essential to a robust record collection as Bob’s stuff, and the Wailers were still called the Wailers long after Bunny Wailer left.

One of the great flashback scenes in the movie is an audition the Wailing Wailers (as they were first called) make for an unidentified record producer, presumably Coxsone Dodd at Studio One. (They play “Simmer Down,” Marley’s first hit, and the sequence kills.) The closing credits do mention two actors playing Peter and Bunny, but they hardly register onscreen. Even with the bulk of the film taking place from 1976 to 1978, it seems strange that these two individuals are never formally introduced; it would be like making a movie about Sting where Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers are maybe in there for 45 seconds.

Ras Tafari

Bob Marley: One Love is to be praised for not diminishing the driving force of so much of Marley’s passion—his devotion to Rastafarian beliefs. If this movie were about a Christian, it would be called a “faith-based film.”

There are a few short sequences to help orient viewers in the religion (Bob came to it via Rita), and she explains some of the concepts, like why adherents use the term I and I and other Iyaric expressions. (My personal favorite is replacing the word “understand” with “overstand,” because Rastafarian philosophy emphasizes uplift.)

Key to Rastafarianism (and a recurring visual symbol in Bob Marley: One Love) is Haile Selassie I, the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974, with a short gap in the late 1930s. His birth name was Tafari Makonnen, with “Ras” being a title equivalent to “Prince.” Rastas worshipped Selassie as a living god, and continue to consider him a messiah. The movie takes it on faith that audiences know that he was a real political figure, and not just a mythological one riding a horse (as he is seen in Marley’s visions).

What Killed Bob Marley?

Bob Marley: One Love is a little unclear about how the great artist dealt with his cancer diagnosis. It is true that he first visited a physician after a soccer injury left his toe a bloody mess that did not heal. He then learned that the underlying problem was a rare kind of skin cancer—acral lentiginous melanoma. He was advised to amputate the toe but refused. (The movie leaves out that Marley reportedly made his decision based on his Rasta faith, which prevents believers from making “cuttings in their flesh.” Strict adherents have a whole list of things they are forbidden to do.)

In reality, Marley had an excision surgery, which removed the nail and seemed to leave him in good shape for a while. But still, the cancer spread, and he died in 1981 at the age of 36.

If there is one good thing about Marley’s early and possibly preventable death, it is how several health organizations, like skincancer.org, use this household name to assert the importance of early detection—and also to encourage people of color to look out for signs of skin cancer.