{"id":13015,"date":"2021-05-05T15:10:53","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T19:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=13015"},"modified":"2021-05-10T12:54:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T16:54:01","slug":"marley-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/marley-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Marley & Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My connection to Bob was through my father, who was his longtime attorney and friend, so it wasn\u2019t just luck that I tracked Marley down for my first interview as a freshman disc jockey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By then, everybody knew Bob was sick. Most people knew the story: He had discovered acral lentiginous melanoma in his toe after a soccer injury in 1977 but didn\u2019t want the toe amputated due to his Rastafarian faith, and the cancer eventually spread throughout his body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marley was in Germany receiving treatment for the cancer when I interviewed him. I was at home for Passover, and my father told me he would be talking to Bob and perhaps I could talk to him if he was willing. Bob didn\u2019t want to talk to anybody at that point. So in the beginning of the recording you can hear my dad asking, and Bob says, \u201cNo, no, I\u2019m all out of time.\u201d My father persisted. \u201cPlease Bob, it will take just a few minutes, he\u2019s all hooked up on the phone.\u201d \u201cOK,\u201d Bob said, \u201cLet\u2019s hear what he have to say.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got on the phone and started firing away with my questions: Who created reggae music? <\/em>\u201cReggae music was created through the environment.\u201d Where is the Rastafarian movement headed? <\/em>\u201cAfrica.\u201d Do you enjoy any other<\/em> kinds of worldly music? <\/em>\u201cI enjoy all music, but to tell you the truth I am not into the punk business, but I like some of the new wave music. I like the Police, some of the music of dem do.\u201d What\u2019s the message you are trying to portray in your music? <\/em>\u201cPeace, love, and harmony.\u201d Before I knew it, the interview was over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast-forward about two weeks. It\u2019s Monday, May 11, and I\u2019m back on campus studying for a final when I got a call from my father saying that Bob had died. I was incredibly sad, of course, but my first instinct was to run to the station. I kicked the disc jockey o the air and made the announcement at 9:25 a.m. \u201cWe have some really sad news to pass along,\u201d I said. \u201cI just found out that international recording star Robert Nesta \u201cBob\u201d Marley, at the age of 36, has died this morning in Miami, Florida, with his family by his side, and we\u2019re going to do a tribute and play Bob Marley music all day.\u201d Then I played Redemption Song.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t think many people would be listening, but within minutes the phonelines lit up, and I remember thinking, \u201cOh no, I\u2019m in trouble.\u201d We were getting calls from the AP, CNN, and MTV. I talked with Pete Fornatale, the legendary disc jockey from WNEW in New York City. The wire services started reporting that WMCX had announced Marley\u2019s death. At some point I picked up the phone, and it was my father on the other end. \u201cWhat the bleep <\/em>did you do?\u201d he shouted. And I was like, \u201cYou didn\u2019t tell me I couldn\u2019t tell any- one!\u201d The phones rang all day long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I played reggae music well into the afternoon and aired parts of the interview, which ended up being Bob\u2019s last, and is likely the last recording of his most precious and beautiful voice. At the end of my interview with him, I had asked him to say, \u201cThis is Bob Marley, and you\u2019re listening to WMCX in West Long Branch,\u201d which he did. But for me, the best part of that interview\u2014then and now\u2014is the end. After I hopped off the phone with Bob, he and my father had this beautiful exchange, and the last thing you hear on the recording is Bob faintly saying, \u201cGood mon. Bye-bye.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forty years ago this May, Bob Marley died, and Jeff Steinberg ’84 was the last person to interview the reggae legend. Here, he recounts the call and breaking the news on WMCX.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":13018,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":95,\"y\":51}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-back"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"The Back","issue":"Spring 2021","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13015"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13774,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13015\/revisions\/13774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}