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How Did Bob Marley Die?

James_H

And I like to roam the land
Joined
May 18, 2002
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I felt I had to start this thread, as I've now heard my third version of his death - as told with absolute certainty by various people.

1)Bob Marley died of cancer in his toe. This is commonly accepted (I think).

2)Bob Marley died of lung cancer. He knew he had it, but refused to stop smoking weed because it would upset his 'balances'(?) as a Rastafarian. Furthermore, that he died of toe cancer is a conspiratorial official version.

3)Bob Marley died of a kind of cancer that doesn't affect black people - but because his father was white he could contract it (I think the narrator said it may even have been hereditary). This certainly sounds suspiciously mythical.
 
My understanding is that Marley's cancer began in his toe following a footballing accident. It was identified early and would have been relatively easy to fix if he had consented to having the toe amputated. He refused to do so because of his Rastafarian beliefs and so the cancer spread through his body... I think it was a brain tumour that ultimately killed him.

Also worthy of note is the Danny Baker urban legend attached to Marley's death. Completely untrue, but regularly trotted out in magazine articles and TV programmes.
 
I've heard Danny Baker repeat this version himself: Marley's touring party were playing a football match in a London park against a team of music journalists (Baker was working for the NME at the time) - Baker tackled Marley heavily and he hobbled away, the injured toe went untreated, and Marley later succumbed to cancer...
 
When Danny Baker was at the NME there was a football match between NME writers and various artists at the time. The story was that he fouled Marley who went off injured and that was what started the cancer.

The story is apparently entirely without foundation but it keeps being repeated.
 
Wikipedia speaks;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Marley ... reputation

"In July 1977, Marley was found to have malignant melanoma in a football wound on his right hallux (big toe). Marley refused amputation, citing worries that the operation would affect his dancing, as well as the Rastafari belief that the body must be "whole"

“ Rasta no abide amputation. I don't allow a man to be dismantled. ”
—From the biography Catch a Fire


Marley may have seen medical doctors as samfai. True to this belief Marley went against all surgical possibilities and sought out other means that would not break his religious beliefs. He also refused to register a will, based on the Rastafari belief that writing one acknowledged death as inevitable and disregarded the everlasting character of life.


Collapse and treatment
The cancer then spread to Marley's brain, lungs, liver, and stomach. After playing two shows at Madison Square Garden as part of his fall 1980 Uprising Tour, he collapsed while jogging in NYC's Central Park. The remainder of the tour was subsequently cancelled"
 
A more conspiratorial theory, if you really want an urban myth, has it that Marley's football boot was poisoned by the C.I.A. Seems a strange way to assassinate someone.
 
But the CIA did love strange ways of assassinating people - why were they were supposed to be assassinating him in the first place?
 
The same reason they assassinated John Lennon?
 
i think there's a thread around that has info about means the CIA discussed or used in their attempts to assassinate Castro. they seem to have a very insular culture in the CIA that foments hysteria. you can just imagine them brainstorming in dimly lit operations rooms, each idea getting slightly crazier than the last. IIRC they thought about blowing Castro up with an exploding mollusc while he was scuba diving.

i'm not looking for the thread because i'm lazy and it's nearly home time.
 
i think if they do assassinate people like this (and i'm not saying they do) it's because at heart they're party-pooping squares.

OR

maybe they were all bullied in school and have a grudge against "popular" people?
 
you can just imagine them brainstorming in dimly lit operations rooms, each idea getting slightly crazier than the last.

didn't they try for him with an exploding cigar? there's not much odds between that and a poisoned football boot...
 
Many years' ago (in the mid to late 80's) my mate Pete worked in a med lab in London where, he claimed, Bob's toe nails were kept in a jar. :shock:

Never thought about it 'til now though.

Rest easy Robert Nestor 8)
 
Surely they'd have used an exploding spliff rather than a poisoned boot though...

Or maybe Danny Baker is an secret agent of the CIA, which might explain a lot, and would shed new light on a number of other strange things such as the Brentford Griffin case (ie it wasn't a hoax to promote a forthcoming play at the waterman art center by Robert Ranken but in fact a CIA campaign of misinformation, Baker covered the story for the local TV news in London you see).

I'm only half joking :shock:
 
I always thought that he had one of his toes amputated in Miami , about a year before he died, but then he eventually succumbed to cancer completely. I'd never heard that he refused the amputation.
 
I'm not the world's greatest medical mind, but how exactly do you get cancer from a footballing injury? Was it more it was discovered due to the injury than caused by it?
 
evilsprout said:
I'm not the world's greatest medical mind, but how exactly do you get cancer from a footballing injury? Was it more it was discovered due to the injury than caused by it?
Any blow which causes bruising or damage to bones can trigger a reaction in the cells which can lead to cancer (I think).
 
It's rare but does happen. I knew a woman who had a leg amputated after a fall. She blamed grit in the wound but I think that may have been her own rationalization of why the healing process had gone so badly awry.

Fortunately, the amputation saved her life. :shock:
 
I remember Marley's death, which seemed to be from bone cancer. As I recall, he had a toe off, after injuring it playing football, and then later some more of his leg.

This struck me at the time as resembling the way diabetic people lose toes, feet and legs, and eventually die. I don't think Marley was diabetic though.

He did refuse conventional cancer treatments and I seem to remember that the toe/foot amputations were too little, too late. There was a sort of 'Elvis' feeling about his death - he was apparently surrounded by sycophants who talked him out of getting help because they didn't want to rock the boat.
 
Per Wikipedia, he refused any amputation which was what led to his death.
 
:lol: Wikipedia is not an authoritative source on anything.
 
I remember Marley's death, which seemed to be from bone cancer. As I recall, he had a toe off, after injuring it playing football, and then later some more of his leg.

I don't think that's right. He collapsed while jogging in Central Park by which time the cancer was all through his body and well past being fixed with an amputation. If he was jogging, we must assume he had an intact foot/leg.
 
escargot1 said:
Wikipedia is not an authoritative source on anything.

No, but it's quite handy and easily checkable when it gives references.
Got anything better on this one?
 
Quake42 said:
I remember Marley's death, which seemed to be from bone cancer. As I recall, he had a toe off, after injuring it playing football, and then later some more of his leg.

I don't think that's right. He collapsed while jogging in Central Park by which time the cancer was all through his body and well past being fixed with an amputation. If he was jogging, we must assume he had an intact foot/leg.

I now have an image of Bob Marley hopping around Central Park...
 
i have a family friend who is jamaican, although i don't think he's a rastafarian in the true sense of the word (but he does blaze a lot..), and i'll ask him about bob marley's death the next time i talk to him! i had no idea there was any speculation as to how he died, and i didn't know that you could get cancer from an injury either...?? well, that's a topic of conversation for next time.. stay tuned!
 
escargot1 said:
This struck me at the time as resembling the way diabetic people lose toes, feet and legs, and eventually die.

Statements like these always cheer up us diabetics ;)
** Hastily counts toes **
 
gncxx said:
A more conspiratorial theory, if you really want an urban myth, has it that Marley's football boot was poisoned by the C.I.A. Seems a strange way to assassinate someone.


I had heard that rumour as well
 
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