I & I: The Natural Mystics

The history of the original Wailers – Tosh, Livingstone and Marley – as never before told.

Over one dramatic decade, a trio of Trench Town R&B crooners, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and Bob Marley, swapped their 1960s Brylcreem hairdos and two-tone suits for 1970s battle fatigues and dreadlocks to become the Wailers – one of the most influential groups in popular music. Now one of our best and brightest non-fiction writers examines for the first time the story of the legendary reggae band.

Charting their complex relationship, their fluctuating fortunes, musical peak, and the politics and ideologies that provoked their split, Colin Grant shows us why they were not just extraordinary musicians, but also natural mystics. And, following a trail from Jamaica through Europe, America, Africa and back to the vibrant and volatile world of Trench Town, he travels in search of the last surviving Wailer.

‘In Grant’s hands life in Trench Town in the 1960’s is energetic and theatrical, rich in comedy and tragic irony…This brilliant book is not just about Jamaica, but about ourselves’ Guardian

By the end, the three central characters, the force that they became together and the forces that drove them apart... are more vividly portrayed than in any previous biography. What's more, Grant's clear, concise book, as well as revealing the Wailers in the light of their own culture, helps us to see into the heart of Jamaica itself, through the lives of three of its sons

Grant has pulled off a remarkable feat in the telling of their individual stories... An absorbing read that sheds new light on the famous triumvirate

The main merit of this perceptive work is that, by not making Marley its focus, it gets closer to the truth about him than most other biographers... Colin Grant has composed a highly evocative and original account of a misunderstood group, and the misunderstood man at its core

Provides a lively introduction to the life and times of the Wailers and, incidentally, to the neo-African religions and animist cults of beautiful, bedevilled Jamaica

In Grant's hands life in Trench Town in the 1960's is energetic and theatrical, rich in comedy and tragic irony... Grant's original and stylish second book... This brilliant book is not just about Jamaica, but about ourselves, no longer the country of The King's Speech but a post-imperial nation many of whose citizens have a buried history. Read it also for Grant's acute descriptions of its characters

I & I: The Natural Mystics

Colin's other Books:

I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be

Homecoming

Bageye at the Wheel