Why Bob Marley was left enraged by Eric Clapton’s ‘I Shot The Sheriff’
Bob Marley was not an angry man. His outlook on life was one that cherished peace and calm. Hell, even his rally for nuclear disarmament was a mellow one. However, Eric Clapton’s take on his classic track ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ left him enraged and in need of a tranquil listen to Exodus to get his chakras back on the zen. But why was Mr Marley so damn angry with Clapton?
Well, he had good cause to be annoyed really. Clapton covered the song on his 461 Ocean Boulevard LP in 1974, a mere year after it was originally released and somehow this reggae appropriation managed to eclipse the success of the far superior Marley original. In fact, it remains the only number one that Clapton ever secured.
Naturally, this helped to launch Marley internationally by proxy. However, Clapton’s version was also receiving more airplay in Jamaica itself and this was a point that stuck in his craw. Reggae was, in part, a celebration of Jamaica’s identity and an inferior Westernised version being championed over the real thing was beside the point of the music and Marley’s point.
As Stephen Davis: “Clapton’s ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ was being played every hour on the JBC, while the Wailers’ new single ‘Knotty Dread’ was never to be heard.” The leading station was ignoring its own gems and playing Clapton “as no Wailers song ever had been.” This reality is almost ironic given that part of Marley’s reggae sound was borne from the colonial past.
In the end, Marley was so enraged by this that actually broke from his calming tradition and threatened one of the premiere JBC DJs. On the surface, this passive threat of violence might seem in keeping with the murderous song, but as ever with Marley, it is, in fact, a spiritual metaphor.
As Marley’s ex-lover explains in the film Bob Marley: The Making of a Legend, the sheriff was actually a doctor who prescribed her birth control pills. Of course, Marley didn’t shoot the doctor, but he did ask her not to take that pills as he viewed them as a symbol of the “elements of wickedness” that the sheriff represents. Hence lyrics like, “Every time I plant a seed/He said kill it before it grow.”
Now, it is Marley’s anthem that eclipses Clapton’s cover in terms of legacy. However, the tale is one that goes to show how the history books of culture often reveal truths we miss in retrospect. There is a notion that reggae exploded out of nowhere, but in actual fact, it still had to wrestle with the status quo before it got its brilliant moment in the sun.
