How Island Records Made Bob Marley Into a Household Name After His Death

In the Village Voice, Chris Kornelis writes about how Bob Marley became a household name posthumously thanks to some careful remarketing:

Robinson had a hunch that suburban record buyers were uneasy with Marley’s image — that of a perpetually stoned, politically driven iconoclast associated with violence. And so he commissioned a London-based researcher named Gary Trueman to conduct focus groups with white suburban record buyers in England. Trueman also met with traditional Marley fans to ensure the label didn’t package the album in a way that would offend his core audience.

Less than a decade before violence and drugs became a selling point for gangsta rap, the suburban groups told Trueman precisely what Robinson suspected: They were put off by the way Marley was portrayed. They weren’t keen on the dope, the religion, the violent undertones, or even reggae as a genre. But they loved Marley’s music.

“There was almost this sense of guilt that they hadn’t got a Bob Marley album,” Trueman says. “They couldn’t really understand why they hadn’t bought one.”

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