Business View Caribbean | May 2019

7 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN MAY 2019 BOB MARLEY TAPES TO BE AUCTIONED AFTER 40 YEARS IN HOTEL BASEMENT A cache of long-lost Bob Marley live recordings found in a damp hotel basement in London after more than 40 years there, and painstakingly restored, will go under the hammer in Liverpool this month. These iconic recordings are from a point in time when Bob Marley was really at his peak and having such a huge fan base. It’s expected that there will be worldwide interest in the tapes which were recorded on the only mobile, 24-track studio vehicle available in the UK at the time, loaned to Bob Marley and the Wailers by the Rolling Stones. The recordings are from concerts at the Lyceum in London (1975), the Hammersmith Odeon (1976), the Rainbow, in London (1977) and the Pavilion de Paris (1978). These lost and still unmixed master recordings were discovered, severely water damaged in cardboard box files, in a damp hotel basement in Little Venice, North West London, where Bob Marley and The Wailers stayed during their early tours of Europe in the mid-1970s. The tapes were initially thought to be too damaged and beyond repair by flood water and covered in a hardened resin seepage. Jazz artist and founder of London International Productions, Louis Hoover, was told about the tapes by his friend and London businessman, Joe Gatt, who had been given the recordings by a refuse worker tasked with clearing out a rundown hotel basement in Kensal Rise, North- West London where Bob Marley and the Wailers stayed during their 1970s European tours. “When I finally saw the labeling and footnotes on the tapes, I could not believe my eyes – but when I also saw how severely water damaged the reels were, it was pretty gut-wrenching. Saving the sound quality of the recordings looked pretty hopeless,” Hoover lamented. OPENING L INES