I & I: The Natural Mystics

I & I: The Natural Mystics

Marley, Tosh and Wailer

Summary

Discover the untold history of reggae legends of Bob Marley and the original Wailers.

The perfect must-read if you loved the film One Love.

Over one dramatic decade, a trio of Trench Town R&B crooners, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and Bob Marley, swapped their 1960s Brylcreem hairdos and two-tone suits for 1970s battle fatigues and dreadlocks to become the Wailers - one of the most influential groups in popular music. Now one of our best and brightest non-fiction writers examines the story of the influential reggae band.

Charting their complex relationship, their fluctuating fortunes, musical peak, and the politics and ideologies that provoked their split, Colin Grant shows us why they were not just extraordinary musicians, but also natural mystics. And, following a trail from Jamaica through Europe, America, Africa and back to the vibrant and volatile world of Trench Town, he travels in search of the last surviving Wailer.

'In Grant's hands life in Trench Town in the 1960's is energetic and theatrical, rich in comedy and tragic irony...This brilliant book is not just about Jamaica, but about ourselves' Guardian

Reviews

  • By the end, the three central characters, the force that they became together and the forces that drove them apart... are more vividly portrayed than in any previous biography. What's more, Grant's clear, concise book, as well as revealing the Wailers in the light of their own culture, helps us to see into the heart of Jamaica itself, through the lives of three of its sons
    Daily Telegraph

About the author

Colin Grant

Colin Grant is an author, historian and critic. He has written acclaimed biographies of the Wailers and of Marcus Garvey. Bageye at the Wheel, his memoir of growing up in a Caribbean family in 1970s Luton, was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize. His history of epilepsy, A Smell of Burning, was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. His most recent book, Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and Daily Telegraph Book of the Year. He is director of WritersMosaic and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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