A year later, Tosh released a second album, Equal Rights. Legalize It was banned on Jamaican radio, so Tosh printed the lyrics in an ad he took out in a Jamaican newspaper. The guerrilla-aping cover of Tosh's 1977 album, Equal Rights. "He said, 'So what are you gonna call it?' And Peter said, 'I'm gonna call it Legalize It.' And the dealer got really upset and said, 'No, man, you're gonna put me out of business!' But eventually he changed his mind and gave Peter the money." "He approached a pot dealer in Miami to invest in the album, and the dealer agreed," says Steffens. Steffens says that when Tosh recorded his first solo album in 1976, he sought an alternative source of funding in the U.S. He's said to have griped about the starring role given to the lighter-skinned Marley by the group's manager, Island Records chief Chris Blackwell. Tosh left the Wailers in 1973, as the group was gaining international fame. Peter aligned himself fundamentally in the black camp." "Even though Jamaica is predominantly a black country," Grant says, "there is a brown and white elite, and I think people took sides and aligned themselves fundamentally with one side or another. Colin Grant, author of a new book about the Wailers, says the dark-skinned Tosh developed Afrocentric pride early on. He was arrested for demonstrating against racial murders in southern Africa. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, whose writings were banned in Jamaica. In the 1960s, Tosh was influenced by such civil rights leaders as the Rev. Wailer says they asked Tosh to join because he was a self-taught, accomplished keyboardist and guitarist. At a local gambling joint, he met Bunny Livingston, later known as Bunny Wailer, who along with Marley had started a band. He didn't just talk the talk, he walked the walk - and people respect that all over the word."īorn Winston Hubert McIntosh in rural Jamaica, Tosh moved as a kid to Kingston's rough Trenchtown neighborhood. "He was almost beaten to death on several occasions by Jamaican police because of his anti-establishment views. "In places like Africa, Peter is an even more respected star than Bob because of his militancy," says reggae archivist Roger Steffens. He was also an activist who crusaded against police brutality and advocated for drug law reform and equal rights. Though perennially overshadowed by Marley, Tosh was a major songwriting presence in the Wailers' early days. Now his first two albums are being reissued with a wealth of bonus material, including rare demos and alternate versions of some of his best-known songs. Tosh was a founding member of the Wailers, who went on to a rich solo career before his untimely death in 1987.
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