On a rainy Sunday yesterday, I listened to Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Babylon By Bus, a landmark live album (for all genres even beyond “reggae”).

I remember listening to some sleek and lean solos and fills.  Al Anderson.

Anderson attended Montclair High School where he learned to play the trombone before getting expelled. He later attended the Berklee College of Music, and took up bass guitar. He joined The Centurions, which brought him to the attention of Chris Wood of Traffic, who invited him to play on the band's next album. The Traffic album involvement never materialized, but led to Anderson becoming employed by Traffic's record label Island Records, leading to him being asked to play lead guitar on The Wailers' Natty Dread sessions. Anderson played lead guitar on "Crazy Baldhead" and on theLive! album, remaining with the band until 1976, when he joined Word, Sound and Power, backing Peter Tosh on the albums Legalize It and Equal Rights. He returned to Marley's band and played on the Survival and Uprising albums. After Marley's death, Anderson remained with The Wailers Band, and worked as a session musician in the 1990s. 

When Bob Marley went solo in 1974, on the brink of international stardom, he surprised the Kingston music community by choosing as his lead guitarist a soft-spoken American named Al Anderson. Anderson already had impressive credentials as a result of his studio work in London and America, and playing with such notables as Remy Kabaka and the Detroit Emeralds. But it was his stunning lead work on such classic songs as "No Woman No Cry," "Dem Belly Full," and "Curfew (Three O'Clock Road Block)" that made instant converts of Jamaica's reggae fans.

Anderson has gone on to play with some of the biggest names in the business, including the Rolling Stones, but it is the years with the reggae master that provided some of his most magical moments. "We started from scratch in 1974, and went on to huge successes internationally," recalls Anderson, speaking from his current base in Los Angeles. Among his high points are the riotous Zimbabwe Independence celebrations in April of 1980, where Anderson and the Wailers played to more than 100,000 ecstatic people. A similar-sized crowd awaited them two months later in Milan, in a soccer stadium where the Pope had appeared the week before. The Wailers outdrew the Pope!

On Marley's 1978 tour, recorded for the double album Babylon By Bus, Anderson remembers "Bob telling me, 'Now you can fly. Go for it!'" The result was one of the most tumultuously vital and ground breaking live albums ever, a landmark not just in reggae, but in pop music as well, with dueling lead guitars soaring to heights of passion and bringing tens of thousands of fans to their feet in a state of rapture. That album, in addition to all the others that Anderson played on with Marley, went gold, and still continues to sell unabatedly.

Over a billion dollars' worth of Marley's music, featuring Al Anderson's evocative guitar, has been sold worldwide. Legend, Marley's 1984 greatest hits anthology, has passed the fourteen million sales mark, and the recent Songs of Freedom 4-CD box set has already sold a million copies, a figure matched only Led Zeppelin.

Marley's former partner in the Wailers, Peter Tosh, lured Anderson away for his Legalize It and Equal Rights tours in the mid-'70s. At the time of Tosh's murder in 1987, Anderson was preparing a new group to accompany Tosh on a world tour. During the '80s, Anderson was an intermittent participant in the tours of the Wailers Band, but found more satisfaction working with the likes of Inner Circle. The fall of the Berlin Wall found Anderson jamming with James Brown at that historic site. He has also played with Stevie Wonder, Steel Pulse, Third World and Stanley Clarke. German fans recognize his melodious work with Heavy Roots and Papa Winnie. He brings a tasteful elegance to everything he plays, often helping lift ordinary music to an entirely different level.

On the occasion of Bob Marley's 50th Birthday Anniversary, Al was invited to return to the Wailers for a series of special events, including a huge celebration in Kingston that united the Wailers Band with the I Threes and Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers. A highly-praised major tour of Europe followed in the summer of 1995.

Anderson is excited to be working with products as highly regarded as yours, and promises to give full credit to them on any solo albums and world tours he undertakes.

Al Anderson toured with Bob Marley and the Wailers extensively, including:

• Jun–Jul 1975: Natty Dread Tour (USA, Canada, England)
• May–Aug 1978: Kaya Tour (USA, Canada, England, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium)
• Apr–May 1979: Babylon by Bus Tour (Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii)
• Oct–Dec 1979: Survival Tour (USA, Canada, Trinidad/Tobago, Bahamas)
• May–Sep 1980: Uprising Tour (Switzerland, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, USA)

 Very special thanks to:

http://www.hermosarecords.com/marley/anderson.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Anderson_(Wailers)

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