"Family" here is an exceedingly fluid term: Settlement of the estate has been hopelessly delayed because of feuding, particularly among the women who bore Bob's children. It is a far more complicated affair, involving a class struggle and a clan struggle. It's too easy and tidy to claim that the estate mess is the fault of rapacious litigators. And he kept so many lovers and side deals going that the list of those who can claim they were "exclusively involved" with Bob, privy to his thoughts, is extensive, says one estate lawyer. But a simple man, hardly: He also sang of uprising and African destiny and political violence, and thus constituted a threat to the Jamaican elite. He sang sweet songs about love, sun and rain. "Because he was so humble, because we are so humble, they think they can just trample over us."Ĭertainly Marley was humble - he lived as a devout Rastafarian, communally, eating fruits and vegetables, smoking marijuana, sharing his fortune with thousands in need. "He was a simple Rastaman," Mother B says of her son. These lawyers were paid up to $250 a hour, while Mother B's grandchildren were getting from $100 to $800 a month as their inheritances. The family was delivered a unifying focus for its outrage when lawyers, working on the estate's behalf, sued to take away the house Bob had bought for his mother in Miami. Some heirs are furious that estate administrators and lawyers in Kingston, Miami and New York have reaped $4 million in fees while supposedly acting in the heirs' best interests. The estate is administered by Jamaica's largest bank, with courts intervening when necessary - which is often. Mother B and other Marley family members are attempting to reclaim the reggae king's legacy before it is lost completely to legal fees or auctioned to foreign investors. His estate may never have the earning potential of, say, Elvis Presley's (still bringing in $15 million a year), but it's an unbelievable bonanza in a dirt-poor country like Jamaica (where the minimum wage is the equivalent of $14 a week). Marley had little tangible property, but his recordings generate $2.5 million a year in royalties. But he left no will, sparking endless claims for his fortune, suits and counter-suits. Yah, mon!"Ĭedella Booker, 65, regal in flowing black robes and yellow headdress, is known in Jamaica as "Mother B." She is matriarch of the sometimes contentious musical family that survived Marley he had at least 11 children by eight different women. You know what my fees are - 'īob Marley's mother, who hasn't heard this one before, chimes in excitedly: "That's what's going on with this estate. They go to a lawyer, who says, 'Okay, I'll help you settle it. Then there's an argument over who the pearl belongs to: the one who found the oyster or the one who discovered the pearl. One picks it up and says, 'Look at dis nice oyster.' The other says, 'Let me see,' and takes it and opens it and finds a pearl. "Two guys are walking on the beach and they see an oyster. Standing outside the Bob Marley crypt in the mountain village where he was born, about 30 miles west of Ocho Rios, she tells this one, her summation of 10 years of legal wrangling since Marley died of cancer: Now she advises his mother, Cedella Marley Booker - who, like everyone connected to the Marley estate, needs good legal advice.Īnd like every lawyer, Jobson knows a lawyer joke. She's a Rasta lawyer.įor many years, Diane Jobson was legal counsel and close friend to Bob Marley, the great reggae musician and proponent of flack liberation. Her brown hair, just going gray, is matted into dreadlocks, tucked beneath a black tam. She's smoking a hand-rolled marijuana cigar. NINE MILES, JAMAICA - Diane Jobson isn't like any lawyer you've ever seen.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |