We’re all used to hearing about new stashes of “lost” material from artists long-passed that turn out to just be a bunch of unremarkable alternate takes, but this time around we’ve got a discovery worth getting exciting about in Bob Marley’s “lost masters”, unearthed after forty years in hiding.
As The Guardian reports, finding the 13 reel-to-reel recordings, which document several of Marley’s live shows in London and Paris from 1974- 78, was only half the battle. Having slowly been drowning in a run-down basement in London with only a cardboard box for protection, the tapes were badly water-damaged when they were discovered over a year ago, and were originally feared to be damaged beyond repair.
Discovered as the basement was finally being cleared out, they were originally dumped in the bin, but were thankfully passed on to London businessmen Joe Gatt and Louis Hoover after a tip-off from a friend, and the decision was made to try to salvage them despite the condition.
After 12 months of pain-staking work on the part of sound technician Martin Nichols, most of the reels were able to be restored to working condition in a process that cost the equivalent of over $40k AUD.
“They really were in such an appalling condition they should have been binned,” Nichols told The Guardian, “but I spent hours on hours, inch by inch, painstakingly cleaning all the gunge off until they were ready for a process called ‘baking’, to allow them to be played safely.”
“The end result has really surprised me,” he adds, “because they are now in a digital format and are very high quality. It shows the original recordings were very professionally made. From the current find of 13 tapes, 10 were restored, two were blank and one was damaged beyond repair.”
The tapes preserve London performances from the Lyceum in ’75, the Hammersmith Odeon in ’76, and the Rainbow in ’77, as well as at the Pavilion de Paris in ’78. The high quality of the recordings apparently owes itself to the advanced 24-track mobile recording Marley borrowed from his pals The Rolling Stones.
Now presumably in the hands of the men who spent that $40k on the restoration, the recordings will hopefully be released for the rest of us to enjoy. After hearing the effort behind it, we’ll be more than happy to throw a bit of cash their way.
If you’re hoping to hear some live Marley classics, you’ll be able to catch Bob’s band The Wailers playing all of the hits with his son Julian Marley at the Raggamuffin All Stars reggae show coming to Melbourne and Sydney later this month.
