Some thoughts on Bob Marley from Perry Henzel

My first memories of Bob Marley are of a youth who used to hang out around Mortimer Planno, who used to visit him when I was doing research for the "The Harder They Come" in Trench Town, Tenth Street I think it was, and the last time I saw him was in concert just before he died. And I saw him at pretty much every important stage in between -- working with Johnny Nash and Danny Sims at Graham Heights, his first big concert with Marvin Gaye at the stadium in Kingston when Don Taylor first came onto the scene. I remember when he came to Boston and triumphed in the first big concert outside Jamaica with Peter Tosh and Bunny, tapping the power in the audience that "The Harder They Come" had built up over the eighteenth months playing continuously at the Orson Welles theater near Harvard Square. Five hundred viewers per show three times a day for a year and a half, all wanting to hear and see more of this brand new music. So the concert took off like rocket, expanding the audience for the film -- the film and the concerts, bouncing a growing crowd between them in city after city, country after country, round and round the world.