On the day before the funeral, the coffin was placed in the arena, a large, gymnasium-like building. And the prime minister, Edward Seaga, had to prepare his eulogy. Invitations had to be sent out, the mausoleum had to be constructed, and security had to be organised at the National Arena, where the main ceremony would be held.

The announcement of the country’s national budget was postponed by several days to accommodate Marley’s state funeral. There was no reason to grieve, the Rastas told anyone who expressed sorrow. That was the mood in Kingston when Marley’s body arrived on a flight from Miami a few days later. “Jah give,” he replied, “and Jah take away.” They raised their eyes, and the roadie paused in the middle of rolling his spliff. “A sad day,” I said, unable to think of anything more profound or perceptive. The only people left were a caretaker and one of Aswad’s roadcrew, both Jamaicans. But it was long after midnight, and the musicians had gone home after watching the tributes to the dead man hurriedly assembled by the British TV networks. On the night of his death, on May 11, I had gone to the Island Records studios in an old church in Notting Hill, north London, where Aswad had been cutting tracks in the very basement studio where Bob had completed Catch A Fire, his breakthrough album, nine years earlier. Alongside Marley’s embalmed corpse, the casket contained his red Gibson Les Paul guitar, a Bible opened at Psalm 23, and a stalk of ganja placed there by his widow, Rita, at the end of the funeral ceremony earlier in the day. His heavy bronze coffin was carried to the top of the highest hill in the village and placed in a temporary mausoleum painted in the colours of red, green and gold. They buried Bob Marley on at Nine Mile, the village where, 36 years earlier, he had been born.

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