Some of my favourite pop songs ever have been written by the truly great Bob Marley. Family road trips were spent with Bob Marley and the Wailers tapes playing for hours with the kids singing along. Waiting in Vain, Exodus, Is this Love, Get up Stand Up, I Shot the Sheriff and many more are true classics that generation after generation have and will continue to enjoy. Now his family are behind a licence deal for Bob Marley.
“Seattle-based Privateer Holdings announced Tuesday it has reached a licensing deal with Marley’s heirs to offer marijuana strains, including ones famed in Jamaica, where regulations permit by late 2015. It also plans to sell weed-infused lotions, creams and various accessories.”
“My dad would be so happy to see people understanding the healing power of the herb,” – Miami-based Cedella Marley said in a company statement. She’s the eldest daughter of the music legend who died of cancer in 1981 and is Jamaica’s most iconic figure.
Read more about it here.
So is the Bob Marley most recognisable legacy about to become that of a hero to cannabis users and just a rasta man on the front of a Camden t-shirt smoking pot rather than a brilliant songwriter and musician? It is possible that Bob Marley becomes a caricature and it is totally possible for his record sales to be affected negatively as a result.
Come on Marley family, have a rethink. This is possible commercial suicide as well as destructive to the legacy of a great man. There is a great article in the guardian about this.