DISGRACELAND - Peter Tosh (Pt. 1): Legalizing It, Police Brutality, and the Steppin’ Razor

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

Peter Tosh was a reggae subversive who used his music as a means to fight corruption, oppression, and hypocrisy. Unlike his one-time bandmate Bob Marley, Tosh didn’t fight for peace. He fought for truth–and justice. He did this with a guitar shaped like an M-16 automatic rifle. He lobbied for the legalization of marijuana, using the profits of the drug trade to get his message onto the most iconic album of his career. All of this put Peter Tosh in the crosshairs of authority, the government, and those who wished to silence him – some who even wanted to see him dead. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. This episode was originally published on March 5, 2024. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Peter Tosh are insane. He was a reggae subversive who used his music as a means to fight corruption, oppression, oppression, and hypocrisy. Unlike his one-time bandmate Bob Marley, Peter Tosh did not fight for peace. He fought for truth and justice. He played a guitar shaped like an M-16 automatic rifle.

He funded an album that lobbied for the legalization of marijuana by running drugs from Jamaica to Miami. He was arrested for smoking weed and then beaten by seven police officers for over an hour in a prison cell. All of these trials and tribulations were reflected in his music, great music, some of the greatest reggae music of all time, both as a member of the Whalers and as a solo artist. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Dred Kylie, MK1. I played you that clip

because I can't afford the rights to a clip from Night Fever by the Bee Gees. And why would I play you that specific slice of falsetto cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America. on April 22nd, 1978. And that was the day that Peter Tosh went on a 30-minute tirade during the One Love Peace Concert,

a rant that nearly got him murdered. On this, part one of a special two-part episode, reggae subversives, truth and justice, M-16 guitars, running drugs, police brutality, and Peter Tosh. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. Seven-year-old Peter Tosh was dangerous, not because he was involved in the political violence that was quickly becoming commonplace in his country.

Even way out here in Westmoreland, Jamaica's westernmost parish. Peter Tosh was dangerous because he knew the truth. A truth that was hiding in plain sight. It was in the ocean, in the clouds. It was carried on the wind, but few people actually saw it. Politicians, the people in power, the devil himself. They all worked overtime to blind you to the truth.

They created conflict, a divide. Brother against brother. All that hate, all that bloodshed, diversions away from what was really happening. Lies, injustice, corruption. The world was evil. Peter Tosh knew this to his core. He could feel the truth coursing through his veins. It was in the blades of grass that he trampled underfoot as he ran through the Westmoreland fields,

running toward the sound of his parents' voices, voices that he hadn't heard in years, voices that his aunt told him he might one day hear again. As he got older, he would come to realize this was nothing but wishful thinking. Right now, however, as a child who, whose parents had abandoned him, a child who wanted that which he did not have. Peter ran toward the voices. He was so focused on them, so disoriented by their ghostly sound, so open to the truth that pulsed around him in all aspects of life, that he failed to see the bog wire fence.

It was obscured, just up ahead, covered in lush green overgrowth, hidden there by the devil himself. Peter ran face-first into the barbs. They dug into his eyelids, the rusty knots biting through his skin. He felt a burning sensation on the surface of his eyes and felt the blood as it began to run down his cheeks. Suddenly, Peter feared he would be like everyone else now, sightless, silenced. His own personal awakening obscured forever by one fateful accident. His consciousness in slumber. He knew he was destined for more than this, to live his life fumbling through the darkness. Slowly, carefully, he began to open his eyes, staring back at him in the mirror, a bloody reflection. The devil may have tried to blind him, but the devil was unsuccessful.

Peter's two eyelids were sliced open. One cut so deep that he could see right through the gaping hole to his eyeball. He breathed the sigh of relief. Wounds would heal. He still had his sight. He used that sight to watch an old man up the road pluck out country and western tunes on an equally old guitar. The sound the man made was the sound of beauty in an otherwise ugly world. Peter internalized the chord voicings, the rhythms.

He made his own guitar from a piece of wood, some fishing line, and a sardine pan. And he watched his own hands learn to make music. And he watched as the devil kept pulling the wool, kept separating black Jamaicans from positions of power. There were no black lawyers, black judges, black preachers, not here. Even the son of God was a white man. Rousseau Peter Tosh was told in church. Not a house of the Lord.

A house where Peter and his family sang the hymns the devil wanted them to sing. Lord, wash over me. and I will be whiter than snow. No, no, no. Dangerous thinking. As dangerous is being found with the truth in your possession. In 1960s, Kingston, in the Trenchtown ghettos, the truth was being intimidated, shot, blown up.

Peter Taj, now a teenager, now truly on his own for the first time in his life, adjusted to his new city with some trepidation. Didn't matter that Jamaica had finally achieved its independence. Frustration was everywhere. Frustration with the establishment, with authority, with a two-party system that failed to serve the disenfranchised. Rude boys, young, unemployed, disaffected youth. They did the bidding of the People's National Party or the Jamaican Labor Party, whichever paid them more to violently disrupt the other.

They heckled. They threw stones. They sowed discord at local polling stations. The burgeoning ganja trade added. weapons to the mix, thanks to Americans and Europeans who couldn't get enough Jamaican grass. They traded grass for guns, but guns weren't enough. Pipe bombs, Maltaff cocktails, machetes, knives, all of them, tools of the trade. Tools of the poor, the oppressed, the burners and the looters, unable to express their anger

over the growing social divide in any other way. They were under the state's corrupt thumb, and they wanted out. They wanted money. They wanted power. They wanted a voice. Peter Tosh had a voice to lend. A voice that could not be silenced from speaking out, just like his eyes could not be shut by tangles of barbed wire. A voice that blended well with those of his Trench Town friends, Bob Marley and Bunny Livingston. At first, the whalers were a do-out vocal group, a group armed with only their voices. But Peter had other weapons at his disposal. Not that old fishing line and sardine pan guitar, and not the guitar shaped like an M-16. That would come later. Peter slung a less paw all over his shoulder and taught Bob Marley how to play guitar. Procussive strokes on the offbeat, sounding like a machine gun when you squeeze the trigger. Their goal, or rather the goal spurred on by Peter Tosh's guidance, was to steer it up.

Not unlike the Rube Boys stirring it up in the streets. But unlike the rude boys, the whaler sought to combat the disinformation, making its way through their community. They did this first by dropping the doo-op schick and finding their unique voice as a group. And then they get down to writing songs. Peter wrote 400 years about slavery. And together Peter and Bob wrote Get Up Stand Up. Dangerous songs. Songs without compromise.

Songs for all the boys and girls who, like Peter, had no parents, no hope. No outlet. They were in turn hypnotized by these songs, songs that were powerful weapons. Songs that cut through all the noise and delivered the very thing that everyone from the devil to Jamaica's two-party system,

the shit stem, as Peter Tosh called it, were so desperate to silence. The truth. Peter Tosh was in the revolution business. And with his bandmate Bob Marley and Bunny Livingston, Peter Tosh revolutionized reggae music. first working with producer Cox and Dodd at the legendary studio one in Kingston, then with the eccentric Lee Scratch Perry at Black Ark,

and now with Chris Blackwell of Island Records. From Skah to Rock Steady to the whaler's own unique strain of reggae, a strain as potent as Jamaican Ganja, as well defined as the Rastafari religion with which it identified, played as tight as a pack's spliff thanks to Peter, who taught each of them that a guitar could be more powerful, powerful than a loaded gun. But there was no money in the revolution business.

The money was in the music business. And to get that money, the Whalers had to compromise their original sound in order to break through in the Western market. It's hard now to overstate just how foreign reggae music sounded to rock and roll fans circa 1972. Even the seasoned American session musicians hired to record overdubs on the Whalers' Island Records debut catch a fire. their fifth album overall, had trouble finding the one.

And those overdubs were the brainchild of Chris Blackwell, not only the records producer, but Island Records' founder and Bob Marley, who understood that compromise was necessary in order for his message to reach a larger audience. Peter Tosh, however, did not do compromise. Not when it came to music, not when it came to revolution, and certainly not when it came to the money that he'd be. believed he was owed. Money that Chris Blackwell was now telling the band they owed him. Forty thousand pounds in tour expenses. Expenses Chris Blackwell promised to cover if the

Whalers came to England, played some shows, started working on another record. In Peter Tosh's eyes, Chris Blackwell broke that promise. Just like he was now breaking up the Whalers long-standing bond by putting Bob Marley up front as the main attraction. The Whalers were no longer the Whalers, they were Bob Marley in the Whalers now. And Peter Tosh was fucking pissed. Irritated that he was being screwed out of money. Irritated that he was being creatively demoted by the very band that he made musically literate. A band that was supposed to be giving a voice to the voiceless,

but which was now being led by a man groomed for pop stardom, a man who was singing, baby, baby, we've got a date. Bob Marley wasn't a revolutionary, not like Peter Tosh anyways. He wasn't dangerous like Peter. And that's not to say that Peter had actual real beef with Bob. They weren't in conflict, weren't divided. Though the devil would like to make you think they were, they were just on different paths.

Bunny Livingston too. Bunny left the band first, but Peter then followed shortly after. True to himself and true to the songs he left behind. Stop that train. I'm leaving. It wasn't just the Bob Marley train that chugged along without Peter Tosh. It was Island Records, too. They didn't want anything to do with Peter Tosh's debut solo album.

Legalize it. Is he fucking crazy? Marijuana was 100% illegal, pretty much everywhere. Advocating for the decriminalization is something that could get you serious jail time, even if you were a rasta and considered at Sacramento. That wasn't a hill Chris Blackwell and Island Records were willing to do. die on. If Peter Tosh wanted to put a target on his head, that was his prerogative. Didn't matter. Peter spoke his truth. He didn't fear targets. He didn't fear death either. Even though by the mid-1970s,

death was all around him in Trenchtown and beyond. Fearing death meant becoming death. And this wasn't about cheating death either. Peter knew that every time he was knocked down, it was another opportunity to get back up. He was knocked down plenty. His guitars routinely suffered the consequences of his actions, smashed to pieces as he tried to jump fences or walls as another cop nipped at his heels. The law made possession of marijuana a bigger crime than smoking marijuana, so the first part of this little game Peter played with the police was to take a huge toke off his joint when he was caught in the act, and then run. Running made his lungs burn. Even for a veteran weed smoker like Peter.

He knew he wasn't going to be fast enough, though. Not this time. But he wasn't about to give in so easily. If the cops wanted him, they'd have to catch him. And they did. Two, three, four of them. He couldn't quite tell from his vantage point, lying on the ground, arms shielding his face.

And then the cops beat him mercilessly with their batons. They hit him until he bled, and until a few of his ribs were fractured. all for a little ganja. Experiences such as these strengthen to Peter's resolve. Knocked down but never kept down. Public enemy number one with no fear, diving head first into making a record called Legalize it.

Not just no fear, no cash. What little his old friend Bob Marley gave him helped pay for the recording of a few songs, but he needed more. Kingston, 1976. The DC3 was left. loaded to the gills with Jamaican herb. And there were no passengers, just the pilot and the smuggler.

Not a true smuggler, per se. More of a guy who put thought into action and got shit done. And for this, he had his associate, Peter Tosh, his blessing. Hundreds of pounds of marijuana on its way to a buyer in Miami. The whole idea was a win-win. The farmers got paid, and the island got that much-needed injection of foreign currency. And Peter Tosh got his album made. The pilot asked about his cut, and the would-be smuggler told him to chill out and get this bird to its destination and you'll be handsomely compensated on the back end, just like we discussed.

The pilot had no reason not to trust him, and furthermore, no reason not to trust Peter Tosh, a man who lived by the truth. The pilot fired up the engine and got the plane in the air. He kept it real low, 100 feet from the ground, so close to the Caribbean that the water quivered as the hunk of metal rattled along. above it. But it wasn't a straight shot. The pilot had a maneuver his way around Cuba. There was zero doubt that Castro wouldn't blow their ass out of the sky if he caught them. So the trip took longer than either than wanted to do. The sun went down, red skies at night, drug smugglers delight. Something like that. The DC-3 settled onto a runway at the Miami airport. Its propellers humming. The buyer was waiting. He took the ganja and handed over 75,000. $1,000 in American bills.

Back home in Kingston, Peter Tosh was happy. He finished making legalize it, largely paid for thanks to a massive shipment of grass to the U.S., a strategy that initially pissed off the drug dealers who provided the product because the last thing they wanted to see was marijuana legalized, thus destroying the way they made their money, but I digress. Columbia Records didn't know how Peter funded his album and they didn't care. They released Legalize it in June of 1976. And though it managed to crack the Billboard album chart in the United States,

it was immediately banned in Jamaica. Peter responded by buying a full-page ad in the local newspaper and printing the lyrics of the title track. He was undeterred, but he didn't hold back. He put it all out there. And if anyone had a problem with that, they could come talk to Peter Tosh. They knew where to find him.

We'll be right back after this word, word, word. The same month that Peter Tosh released Legalize it in June of 1976, a state of emergency was declared in his home country. Jamaica was in turmoil, economically broken, distrusting of a government that was seen as duplicitous. Prime Minister Michael Manley could hardly hold it together. And as the general elections approached, the frustration, anger, and resentment. festering below the surface began to bubble up and leak out everywhere and with it came more violence and more bloodshed. A candidate for the People's National Party was shot in the side while helping to set up a podium.

A candidate for the Labor Party was viciously attacked by a mob. His assistant cut down with a machete while his car was riddled with bullets and then blown up with a homemade bomb. They even came for Bob Marley. Two teams of gunmen exiting two white Dotsons and moving fast through the darkness. Pistols and machine guns in hand. They shot Bob Marley's wife, Rita, in the head, outside in the couple's yard. One of the gunmen made his way inside Bob's house to the kitchen, where Bob, his manager, and his guitarist were sitting ducks.

The shooter emptied the clip of his submachine gun and then disappeared. But look at how Bob Marley bounced back. Just two days later, on stage at the Smile Jamaica concert, on stage, two days later, after getting shot, rolling up his sleeve to show off his bullet holes and show his would-be assassins that he was not afraid. Bob Marley was the struggle. He was the hero.

Bob Marley was reggae music, at least to most Americans who were now buying his records in such quantities that he finally cracked the billboard top. But not Bunny Livingston and not Peter Tosh. And if Bob Marley was the struggle, the hero, then Peter Tosh was the truth. And just like his friend and former bandmate Bob Marley, Peter Tosh could put that truth on display for everyone to see. Like Bob, Peter feared nothing, not the devil, not his enemies, not even death. 1978, the gunman who came for Peter Tosh didn't sneak into his home under the cover of darkness.

He didn't even hide who he was, a detective, a so-called man of the law. He pulled out his piece in broad daylight and put it right to Peter's head. He cocked it. Said he'd been wanting to do this for a while now. Ever since Peter ran his mouth on stage at the Kingston National Stadium, the One Love Peace Conference. concert. Two years after, Smiled Jamaica, 35,000 people gathered together, many of them hoping that music could help heal the wounds of the ongoing civil war happening in their country. Peter Tosh wasn't that naive. He knew that his guitar was a weapon, just like the real M16 it was modeled after,

but that it would take more than strumming some machine gun rhythms. And it would take more than joining the hands of political rivals Michael Manley and Edward Seagga. That was a very important. Marley's bag. Peter didn't want peace. Peace was the diploma you got in the cemetery. You rest in peace. Peter didn't rest. Peter wanted justice. Equal rights and justice. Justice per 400 years of oppression. For the colonial, imperialistic situation they now found themselves in. The people in power, the government, the forces of evil, doing everything they could to snuff out progress. Manly, Siga, all of them pirates like Columbus and Francis Drake before them. The people suffering, brutalized, malnourished, trying to make it through each day.

Each week can't get any worse than this. Any worse is dead. Peter Tosh was a step-in-raiser, dangerous. For half of his hour-long set on stage, Peter carried on like this. For 30 minutes, delivering a fiery rant that rejected the very notion of peace that was aimed at both sides of the political aisle, both of whom were in attendance. It cemented him as a beacon of truth, a voice for the voiceless, and it also made him a marked man. Guys like this detective who had the barrel of his pistol to Peter's head weren't just bothered by Peter's words. That was only part of it. They were bothered by his actions, lighting up a spliff right there on stage and smoking it, Mr. Legalized it himself, as if he were immune to the laws of the land, as if he didn't know his place.

The detective wanted to pull the trigger. He really did, but not like this, not for nothing. He knew Peter Tosh would get his eventually. He hoped he would be there when it happened. Peter didn't show the detective an ounce of fear. He wasn't about to give these colonial bastards the satisfaction. The devil's legion doing the devil's work, hiding the truth behind corruption and lies. He just kept on doing what he did, which right now, in 1978, meant touring the United States behind his new record, Bush Doctor, released on the Rolling Stones' record label. The support of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger,

who appeared on the album's opening track, helped boost Peter's profile in a global market that continued to equate reggae solely with Bob Marley. Back in Jamaica, there was no confusion over who Peter Tosh was. He was the guy standing outside a Kingston recording studio, fresh spliff burning between his fingers, the one who called himself Step-in-Razer, a real tough guy up on the One Love Peace Concert stage.

Two men in plainclothes then approached him, and they didn't say anything. One took the joint from Peter's hand. Power move bullshit. Peter took it back. The man tried to take it again, so Peter mashed it up and tossed it on the ground. And that pissed off the guy in plainclothes to no end.

He put his hands on, Peter. Peter Tosh was a big dude. Six-five. The guy couldn't take him alone, not even with his friend. They called over a third guy, this one with a pistol in his hand. And he wrapped the gun tight inside his clenched fist and took a hard swing. Peter moved fast. The fist missed Peter's head by inches and hit one of the other men standing behind him.

Cracked the guy's nose open, blood everywhere. That fucked Peter. He knew it. More men were coming now. These ones wearing police uniforms. They grabbed them and dragged him to the station. They threw him in a cell. And then they got to work.

Finishing what that detective with the loaded gun had started. Working over Peter Tosh. Their hands, their trunchens, their boot heels. They attacked Peter with everything they had. They took turns. They hit him in the ribs, his chest, his face. He put a hand up to block the blows, and they broke that hand, and they hit him till he bled, till their own knuckles bled,

till they couldn't tell whose blood was whose anymore. Peter tried to escape through a window, but there were too many of them. They pulled him down, and he fell to his knees, and they hit him some more. Peter collapsed to the ground, splayed out, where seven police officers continued to assault him for over an hour, beaten until his face was swollen and blood oozed from his head, beaten until his eyes rolled into the back of his skull, beaten until the cops were sure they had actually done it,

silenced the one man brave enough to tell the truth, killed Peter Tosh. 1981, Bob Marley was dead. Peter Tosh wept. Just like Bob had wept when he rushed to the Kingston police station three years prior to find his friend Peter, a crumpled mass of battered flesh, hand-broken skull cracked open, nearly beaten to death by seven cops in his jail cell, beaten for over an hour for the crime of speaking his mind and smoking a joint.

But Peter wasn't actually dead. He only played dead to get the police to stop attacking him. When it came to Bob, playing dead couldn't stop attacking him. the cancer that took his life. Losing Bob Marley left a hole in the reggae world. Many looked to Peter Tosh to ascend to superstar status, to take his former bandmate's place as the genre's dominant avatar. They called him the new king of reggae.

But there was nothing new about Peter Tosh. Besides, Peter had been Bob's teacher. Bob Marley would have been nothing without Peter Tosh. In Peter's mind, at least. Peter was not a superstar. He was an architect, a missionary, a messenger, a man who used music to shine light on the truth. He feared nothing. Not the retribution of political leaders, not detectives pointing guns in his face, not plainclothes cops trying to get him to step out of line,

and certainly not the maniacal Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. Technically, Peter's boss, seeing as Peter was signed a Keith's record label, Keith could be a prickly fuck, but Peter didn't care. The stones were hosing him now, just like Chris Blackwell and Island Records hosed him all those years before. Using Peter to boost their own bad boy image, Keith fighting a heroin bust up in Canada, around the same time Peter was fighting for his life in a prison cell. But the stones weren't doing shit for Peter's career. They weren't properly promoting his records.

They wanted him to pay for his touring expenses. Money. It was always about money. In reality, the stones were the ones who were in debt to Peter. That's how Peter saw it anyway. At least Keith was nice enough to let Peter stay at his place in Notre Rios for a few days. The Jamaican resort town was geographically and spiritually far removed from the dangerous ghettos of Trenchtown. Peter liked it a little too much.

He didn't want to leave. Neither did the collection of Roughneck Rastafarians, gangsters, and go-goats. that were now squatting with him in the mansion of one of the most famous rock stars in the world. Peter figured, what the hell? Keith Richards owed him. And if Keith Richards wasn't going to pay up, then Peter Tosh was going to take what was his. News of Peter's intention made its way to the stones out on tour. Keith was furious.

He picked up the phone and dialed the number of his house in Ocho Rios. Peter answered. Keith told him in no uncertain terms to vacate the premises. The step-in-raiser had officially taken advantage of Keith's generosity. And Peter told Keith to fuck off if he even tried to physically remove Peter from the house. Peter said he would use one of the machine guns he found stashed in the mansion's many rooms to stand his ground. Keith called Peter's bluff. He was on his way back to Jamaica.

Right now, get lost or get fucked. Keith Richards arrived in Otro Rios a few days later, find Peter Tosh no longer in his house. And it wasn't long before Peter was no longer on Keith's record label either. Peter wasn't about to steal from anyone, not even Keith Richards. He who steals me steals destruction, Peter Tosh said. And destruction, that was the devil's business. Peter Tosh's business was to stay the course. Whether or not he was in league with the stones or filling the shoes of Bob Marley, it was irrelevant. It was happening all the same. He was filling the shoes. He was performing at that heightened level. He was the guy,

the guy who gave voice to the people. But like he said on stage at the One Love Peace concert in 1978, hungry people are angry people. People like Dennis Lepo Lopin, one of many hangers-on who hit up Peter for money on the regular, a usual suspect at Peter Tosh's house. The ex-Con asked for 50 bucks here and 100 bucks there. Peter once bought Lepo a mattress after he did a stint in prison. Some said he did that stint because he took the rap for a gun possession charge that threatened Peter's freedom. Didn't matter.

The point is that Lepo had come to expect that Peter would take care of him. But now Peter Tosh was on tour in America and no one was taking care of Lepo. It ate at him. Listening to Peter interviewed on the radio, talking about the United States, talking about making records, talking about his good life and the large sums of money he was making, the money he was owed, millions of dollars by Peter's math. Everyone thought they were owed something.

Peter Tosh thought that Keith Richards owed him. Dennis Lepo Lobin thought that Peter Tosh owed him. Just like Peter had gone to Keith's house to get what was owed, Lepo was going to do the same at Peter's house. But unlike Peter, Lepa wasn't going to back down and leave. What's the truth? I'm Jake Brennan, and this episode of Disgraceland is to be continued.

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