My songs are a revolution, not smiling songs on the periphery of understanding the nature of existence. (Mark of the Beast, Honorary Citizen Disc One) - Peter Tosh
On October 19, 1944 Winston Hubert McIntosh was born in Westmoreland, Jamaica. The man he would grow up to be would be known to the world as Peter Tosh. His music and ideas would gain him international success and leave him with the legacy of being an uncompromising rebel who left a sour taste in the mouth of 'Babylon'.
Together and separately, Tosh, Robert Nesta Marley and Neville O'Reilly Livingston (Bunny Wailer) would create some of the most important work for reggae and popular music.
His work would cover a wide range of topics. The most prominent of these are his chants for equality and justice, his fight against apartheid (before it was fashionable) and of course, both by verse and deed, his endorsement of smoking marijuana.
Tosh has been recognised as a very prolific musician who started studying piano at age 10. He would later teach himself to play the guitar. Tosh would reveal in interviews that his first contact with musical instruments came well before age ten, however. He noted that his first instrument, a sardine tin and strings (a kind of ghetto guitar) he played when he was age five.
As he would also reveal, his musicianship was also fleeced. Tosh would reveal in interviews that recordings of his 'studio rehearsals' were made and sold, for which he never got a red cent.
Solo projects
Although he had engaged in solo projects while with The Wailers, Tosh went on his own full-time, in 1974. This came about after he accidentally drove his car off a bridge, fracturing his skull and killing his girlfriend. He reportedly became more 'hard headed' and went on his own way. This is not how Tosh is cited as explaining the disbandment of The Wailers. Although he has been described as bitter, he is quoted saying; "We were still friends but we didn't see each other the way we used to see each other because Bob was miles away. I realised that 10 or 12 years had been wasted and I still don't reach nowhere. So I had to be busy picking up myself, dusting off myself and starting all over. I didn't have time to look for Bob 'cause that was the past. I was busy making the present."
His career would be marked by increasingly revolutionary and confrontational works. His statement, "I don't want no peace, I want equal rights and justice" became an anthem for the 'downpressed' masses (and their supporters) the world over from his first solo album with CBS Records in 1976.
Equal Rights was not be the only anthem Tosh created. Legalize It, his second album with the record company, would also gain the same prominence. However, Tosh's ganja smoking, as well as his brash attitude reportedly made him a regular target for the police. Tosh is reported to have been very proud of the marks he received from his various confrontations.
His performance at the famous 'One Love' peace concert in 1977 brought him to the attention of Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. He subsequently signed to Rolling Stones Records in 1978 and produced three albums with them: Bush Doctor, Mystic Man and Wanted Dread and Alive. Tosh's last album with his next record company, EMI with which he produced Mama Africa and No Nuclear War, won a Reggae Grammy award in 1988.
Peter Tosh was slain in 1987.
Tanya Batson
