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The Story of One Love
(Courtesy of wordsinthebucket dot com)

The song contains an interpretation of The Impressions‘ song “People Get Ready” written by Curtis Mayfield. The original recording of the song does not credit Mayfield’s song and is simply titled “One Love” because copyright law was not enforced for Jamaican recordings at this time. Instead, when the famous 1977 version was recorded for Jamaican-British label Island Records, it was titled “One Love/People Get Ready” and credited Mayfield (as Island wanted to avoid copyright problems) and it gives co-authorship credits to both Marley and Mayfield.

Even though this song is very well-known and its message is widely acknowledged, some lyrics have a deeper meaning.

Marley’s idea was that everyone in the world should stop fighting and become one – a similar sentiment to John Lennon‘s “Imagine” and George Harrison‘s “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth).”

Marley wrote this song amid the turmoil of the Jamaican elections in December 1976, remembered as some of the most violent times in the country. Marley had supported Michael Manley when he won the election in 1972 and became Prime Minister of Jamaica, but four years later – when Marley was by far the most popular person in Jamaica – he refused to take a political stance as the country was divided between Manley’s People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) headed by Edward Seaga.

Marley tried to stay politically neutral while offering peace and shelter however he could. Of course, both parties tried to have Marley on their side, especially Manley who was the sitting Prime Minister at the time and tried to regain Marley’s support.

As Vivien Goldman, at the time Island Records’ PR officer following Marley in those days, remembers in an article in 2006 for The Guardian, when Marley’s plan for a free concert became know, both JPL and PNP parties tried to gain his support. As a result, and without Marley’s approval, the “Smile Jamaica” show was “billed as a collaboration between the Wailers and the government’s cultural office” she wrote. This angered Marley a lot, because he clearly saw how their initiative “had effectively been co-opted by Manley’s PNP“. In other words, they succeeded in transforming a Bob Marley’s concert in “a promotional gig in the very territorial spirit Bob was trying to discourage.” Diane Jobson, Marley’s lawyer, recalls how he said:

Diane, dem want to use me to draw crowd fe dem politricks.

The consequences of this “politrick” caused Marley serious troubles. As Goldman wrote:

Bob had encouraged his Hope Road home in Kingston to become a ‘safe house,’ a neutral zone, in which youths caught up in the turmoil of the warring political factions could hang out and reason away from the old violent mindset. At a certain point, Bob’s utopian vision of the yard as sanctuary was bound to collide with street conflicts. He was in a delicate position, and to add to the irony, the enemies Bob was trying to reconcile were often relations, old neighbours and schoolmates.

This “delicate position” eventually led also to an attempted murder in his own home in Hope Road, two days before the concert. Nonetheless, the concert proceeded, and an injured Marley performed as scheduled, two days after the attempt. When asked why he didn’t rest despite his traumatic experience, Marley responded:

“The people who are trying to make this world worse aren’t taking a day off. How can I?”

The members of local band Zap Pow played as Bob Marley’s backup band before a festival crowd of 80,000, while members of The Wailers were still missing or in hiding, fearing they could be victims of similar attacks. His courageous performance was captured on video in its entirety. From the gritty footage, you can almost feel the tension in the air that night.

Given the premises and the context in which Marley wrote One Love, the request for unity, universal love, brotherhood and peace gains even more power. And there is a deeper meaning behind the song than a “simple” call for unity. Some of the lyrics are about oppression and how sinners will pay for their evil deeds in the end.