Natural Mystic: The Legend Lives On [Bonus Tracks] [Remaster]

Performer: Bob Marley/Bob Marley & the Wailers
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Producers include: Bob Marley & The Wailers, Alex Sadkin, Steve Smith, Chris Blackwell, Lee Perry. Compilation producers: Chris Blackwell, Trevor Wyatt, Bill Levenson. Includes liner notes by Chris Salewicz. All tracks have been digitally remastered. Photographers: Adrian Boot; Neville Garrick; Peter Murphy. Poet, prophet, musical innovator--Bob Marley was all these things and more. Born and raised in the trenchtown slums of Jamaica, Marley's name became synonymous with reggae and Rastafarianism during a career that made him a hero to the many--particularly those in Third World communities--who saw him as a symbol of self-empowerment and cultural pride. NATURAL MYSTIC is an addendum to LEGEND, a compilation that gave millions of people their first taste of the magic of Robert Nesta Marley. While much of the material on LEGEND leans towards love songs, MYSTIC dives headlong into Marley's more politicized and religious-themed works. On the opening title track, he warns of how "one and all got to face reality now" in a world of massive upheaval and change. Other songs explore salvation through oneness ("Africa Unite"), the greed that propels the world towards an inevitable Armageddon ("So Much Trouble In The World") and Marley's own role as a persecuted leader ("Iron Lion Zion"). The magic that was part of his and The Wailers' live shows erupts in the included version of "Trenchtown Rock" which has an infectuousness that demands a rhythmic response. And the inclusion of "Easy Skanking" shows a meditative and laid-back Marley, partaking in Jamaica's most profitable cash crop during a spiritual time-out amidst the chaos of everyday life. Since his death from cancer in 1981, no one has made music that crosses as many lines--musical, spiritual, political--as Bob Marley did. NATURAL MYSTIC reinforces the idea that Marley's message lives on in his music, and that we're all better off for it. Despite its massive commercial success, Legend, the 1984 Bob Marley & the Wailers compilation, was not an impressive best-of of the group's full career. It was assembled to highlight Marley's U.K. hit singles of the late '70s and seriously under-represented his early standards. You might think, therefore, that 11 years later, when Island Records finally got around to releasing what is in essence "Legend, Vol. 2," the label would redress the imbalance. No such luck. As its title, Natural Mystic: The Legend Lives On, suggests, this Marley "rest-of" has the same flaw as its predecessor. ("Natural Mystic," the leadoff track, is from 1977's Exodus, an album that had already provided five tracks to Legend.) Although there were few additional U.K. singles, this collection gathers them up, including "Iron Lion Zion" and the newly reconfigured "Keep on Moving," both posthumous tracks heavily overdubbed long after Marley's death that sound little like his classic style. The rest of the album scatters tracks from such later albums as Survival and Uprising, though there are four songs (including one new bonus recording for the 2002 reissue) from Rastaman Vibration, an album ignored by Legend, one of them Marley's sole Billboard Hot 100 chart entry, "Roots, Rock, Reggae." Still, the absence of defining early-'70s songs like "Lively up Yourself," "Concrete Jungle," "Stop That Train," "Burnin' and Lootin'," "Kinky Reggae," "Duppy Conqueror," and "Small Axe" from either compilation is so bizarre that the only explanation one can speculate is a financial one. Maybe due to recording or publishing contracts Island has some reason to avoid putting Bob Marley & the Wailers' early classics on their compilations. In any case, Natural Mystic: The Legend Lives On adds to the frustration of fans who expect compilations to actually feature the highlights of the band's career. ~ William Ruhlmann

Q (6/95, p.136) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...Sure, he was a legend and a natural mystic but--as these songs remind us--he was also a prophet and a warrior-leader." Vibe (9/95, p.194) - 5 (out of 5) - "None of these songs are hard to find; all are hard to live without....For the world's many Marley fanatics...this will sound like an old friend. For the rest of the world...listen and learn." NME (Magazine) (6/3/95, p.50) - 8 (out of 10) - "...concentrates on Marley the uncompromising and unrepentant superstar....like Elvis, Marley remains effective and affecting long after his death because his open-hearted idealism is hard won in a world since blighted by rancour, dissolution, cynicism...."

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