Interesting story about the false quotes that have been bandied about.
And neither did Mark Twain ever say that he "read some obituaries with great pleasure." In fact, here's what he did once say:
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
Bastardizing Clarence Darrow and Mark Twain. God bless the internet.
"Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for."What is
wrong with people? It would be hard to find a quote that sounded less like anything Bob Marley ever said. Way to simplistic and unjumbled. Nothing about "Jah" or "I and I" or "Haile Salassie" or "ganja". Here is a typical Marley quote, from his oft-cited 1973 interview with Jamaican journalist Neville Willoughby:
Willoughby: But listen, you know a lot of people have a feeling that, a lot of guys who claim to be Rastas, are really, as one song says, rascals.
Marley:
Many shall be called, but only a few chosen. And there shall be sheep and wolf in sheep clothing! But I&I couldn't watch that, this day. Because I&I have to live Rasta and know Rasta. I noh come fi judge a man. Jah seh leave all judgemant onto him. Soh all people who see a man out deh and seh "how him a gwaan like seh him a rasta". Who is dem fi seh how him a gwaan so. When God seh leave all judgemant onto him.Why anyone would believe the "truth is" quote was from Marley or comes from a Marley lyric is beyond me, much less why gazillions would give their affirmation on fucking Facebook. Most young Marley fans I meet - and two of them I know are my own sons - think he was either all about getting high, or all about black revolution. They don't want to hear that it was not nearly that simple, that Marley had the gift of being able to galvanize fairly disparate groups of people into some form of rebellious union, at least temporarily; but was also crass and calculated and commercial and full of shit. He was a pan-African idol to millions, but also the Jamaican Mick Jagger, his thick Rastafarian patios as fake as Sir Mick's exaggerated Cockney accent. Young fans do react with a weird sort of reverence when I relate that I saw him and the Wailers in concert in the summer of 1978, at the Music Hall, on his
Kaya tour, which I believe was the penultimate tour of his career. I gave the torn-in-half ticket stub from that concert to my oldest son years ago, and he still has it, kept safely somewhere in his labyrinthine bedroom. I know this because he will periodically get it out and show some new friend, who will be suitably impressed. It's weird. I was as big a Bob Marley fan as their was, and still am very fond of his music, but I don't get why, 30 years after his death, he still attracts such reverent (and gullible) new fans.
