Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley [Paperback]

Timothy White (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1998

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

Review

"Probably the finest biography ever written about a popular musician. "-Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle

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Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (September 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080506009X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805060096
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,668 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best rock biography........., June 30, 2000

By 

Rolltide (Columbia, Tn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley (Paperback)

This book covers it all from the humble beginnings to bob's rise as third world poet and prophet and then to the controversies that occured after his death. White takes much time to tell about the politics and religious issues that help one to understand what is happening and to bridge the cultural gap. In many ways this biography does not paint a comlimentary picture of bob, in many ways it does. It is the truth based on verifiable facts. It's important in a study of this man's life to cut through the varnish of the legend and the myth to what really happened. Bob Marley deserves that much. White takes us right to trenchtown and attempts to paint a complete picture.

Life in the kingston ghetto that spawned reggae has a code of it's own. When there was an attempt on bob's life in 1976 it was trenchtown gangs who brought the accused to justice. This story reads like a great novel and never gets boring or stale and that's just one of hundreds of examples.

This work is a great study of jamaican life and culture as well as reggae and bob marley. A must read for real fans and the best biography by far of this great man.

One reviewer suggested that the book doesn't pay enough attention to bob's rasta faith. Not true, marley's religious faith is the motivation for most of what he does, how he viewed the world. White never misses this point. As bob's world got bigger his perspective on his faith changed.

A must read.

....................socks

62 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley, January 25, 2000

By 

"nichleo" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley (Paperback)

I recently read "Catch a Fire" while on vacation in Jamaica, and found it the best reading choice I could possibly have made. I was awed by Timothy White's success in describing and documenting the cultural, economic, historical, musical, racial, religious and political contexts which spawned Bob Marley. The book is not just an account of one musician's rise to fame, but of the land and society which inspired, sustained, and betrayed him, and which continues to learn and grow from him. Though I lived in Jamaica for many years, I learned much from the book about the culture and history which I never knew before.

The book made Bob Marley at once more human and more astounding. It documents the human perils, uncertainties and challenges he encountered and how he dealt with them, sometimes better than others. At the same time, it does not attempt to explain away his genius, inspiration or transcendent powers - those inexplainable qualities which made him extraordinary and which resulted in the ongoing legend which may never stop.

The experience of reading the book whilst involved in activities such as touring the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, listening to his recordings, and discussing Marley with people across the island made it impossible for me not to make mental comparisons between the birth and growth of the legend of Jesus of Nazareth and that of Robert Nesta Marley of Nine Miles.

Timothy White has done a superb job of documenting the birth of a legend. As Bob sang and White concluded, "Time Will Tell."

52 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the Best Ever, August 29, 2000

By 

Mrs. E.A. Clayton (Liverpool, Merseyside United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley (Paperback)

This is the first biography of Bob marley that I have read. But I have read (and written) numerous biographies of people in popular culture, social history, military history etc. This book is written in a way that is hard to describe - it uses the jamaican patois so cleverly and appropriately that you realise there is no other way the events in Bob's life could have been described. So detailed are the descriptions that it is obvious the author writes from a personal knowledge of Bob, his family, his friends and his musical associates. Absolutely rivetting, and impossible to put down, it stays with you. I listen to the music now with a quite different appreciation of what is going on in the songs.