A master tape of Bob Marley singing some of his most iconic songs has been found in a basement of a London hotel. The recordings were discovered after more than 40 years in a cardboard box at Kensal Rise, a north-west London hotel where Marley and the Wailers stayed in the mid-1970s while touring Europe.
The tapes known as “the lost masters” among Marley’s fanbase were believed to have been lost to water damage. But the recordings of his concerts in London and Paris between 1974 and 1978 were recently restored after 12 months of hard work, the Guardian reported Saturday. They include hits such as “No Woman No Cry,” “Jammin,” “Exodus” and “I Shot the Sheriff.”
The recordings are a tome to modern music history. Marley performed the songs at the Lyceum in London in 1975, the Hammersmith Odeon in 1976, the Rainbow in London in 1977 and the Pavilion de Paris in 1978.
Sound technician specialist Martin Nichols of White House studios spent hours cleaning and restoring the tapes.
“The end result has really surprised me, because they are now in a digital format and are very high quality. It shows the original recordings were very professionally made,” he said. “The experience was comparable to, say, finding Van Gogh’s easel, paint pallet and paints in an old room somewhere, then Vincent emerges through a secret door to paint 26 of his finest masterpieces … purely for us.”
Marley fan and London businessman Joe Gatt received the music from a friend who called him up one day to say he had found what appeared to be Marley’s old tape recordings.
“I couldn’t standby and let these objects, damaged or not, simply be destroyed,” he told ITV.
Jazz singer Louis Hoover, Gatt’s business partner, said the tapes were covered in “literally plasticized gunk oozing from every inch” when they were found.
“I was speechless, to be honest. It was quite comical, looking back now, as Joe was so cool and matter of fact about rescuing these global artifacts that I actually had to stop the car to check that I had heard him correctly,” Hoover said. “When I saw the labels and footnotes on the tapes, I could not believe my eyes, but then I saw how severely water damaged they were… saving the sound quality of the recordings looked like it was going to be a hopeless task.”
Marley died in 1981 but would have celebrated Monday his 72nd birthday.
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