If You Love Bob Marley is the unique and utterly compulsive story of the King of Reggae, told not through the life and times of Marley himself, but through the music and magic of the musicians who grew up around, and under the influence of Bob Marley and his band, the Wailers. Outlining some 200 artists, albums, songs, movies, and books, If You Love Bob Marley tells how reggae music was torn from the confines of a small-world music cult to become one of the biggest-selling genres popular music has ever known.
Recommended performers and performances are analyzed in the depth that each deserves, as the book moves out of reggaes Jamaican heartland to track its influence across the world, from California punk to French pop and beyond. Genre-spanning countdowns of the best-ever Bob Marley covers, the greatest British ska, and even the rudest songs ever written populate the pages, as author Thompson highlights artists as far apart as Eric Clapton and Rancid, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, and Serge Gainsbourg and the Clash.
If You Love Bob Marley digs deeply, too, into the annals of Jamaicas own star-studded musical history, to train fresh ears on such legends as Black Uhuru, Toots & the Maytals, Sean Paul, and Peter Tosh.
