Brent Clough

Not long after this pick-up match between Bob and members of the Wailers versus New Zealand record company reps and music journalists (outside the White Heron Hotel in Parnell, Auckland) I ended up being the only person other than famous music scribe Dylan Taite to sit down for a one-on-one conversation with the reggae star. I’m pretty sure that’s me on the far left of the photo, leaning up against the wall, just enjoying the scene. The various other journalists lined up for interviews grew weary of the long, long football practice and filtered away, some muttering dark comments about “Islander time” and worse. I was more than happy to watch Bob display his concentrated kinetic skills on this overgrown lawn on a bright sunny Aotearoa day. I’d been promised an interview by manager Don Taylor before the concert at Western Springs. After the soccer was finished with no sign of Don Taylor, I asked a passing band member (I think Seeco) if Bob was about and willing to chat. He told me to just go knock on the door of his room. I did as instructed and Bob graciously invited me in. He excused himself to take an after-match shower and came back to sit down for a conversation. I was disarmed by his warmth and matter-of-factness and we spent a good half hour talking music, politics and spirituality. Here he was on a gruelling international tour, introducing Jamaican music to adoring fans in the Pacific (changing the course of our popular culture in the process), barely touching down in Aotearoa before he was gone again, but he still had time for a cheeky, fresh-faced 17-year-old school newspaper editor. Having loved The Wailers music since I first heard it at age 13 I knew I couldn’t miss the chance to meet one of the people who’d opened a profoundly new world to me. Bob was lively, full of hope and energy when I talked with him. Just over two years later he’d be gone. My memory of him as a person not a ‘pop star’ remains as bright as that sparkling day in Auckland.