Natural Mystic: The Legend Lives On

by Bob Marley & the Wailers, Bob Marley

Overview

Despite its massive commercial success, Legend, the 1984 Bob Marley & the Wailers compilation, was not an impressive best-of of the group's full career. It was assembled to highlight Marley's U.K. hit singles of the late '70s and seriously under-represented his early standards. You might think, therefore, that 11 years later, when Island Records finally got around to releasing what is in essence "Legend, Vol. 2," the label would redress the imbalance. No such luck. As its title, Natural Mystic: The Legend Lives On, suggests, this Marley "rest-of" has the same flaw as its predecessor. ("Natural Mystic," the leadoff track, is from 1977's Exodus, an album that had already provided five tracks to Legend.) Although there were few additional U.K. singles, this collection gathers them up, including "Iron Lion Zion" and the newly reconfigured "Keep on Moving," both posthumous tracks heavily overdubbed long after Marley's death that sound little like his classic style. The rest of the album scatters tracks from such later albums as Survival and Uprising, though there are four songs (including one new bonus recording for the 2002 reissue) from Rastaman Vibration, an album ignored by Legend, one of them Marley's sole Billboard Hot 100 chart entry, "Roots, Rock, Reggae." Still, the absence of defining early-'70s songs like "Lively up Yourself," "Concrete Jungle," "Stop That Train," "Burnin' and Lootin'," "Kinky Reggae," "Duppy Conqueror," and "Small Axe" from either compilation is so bizarre that the only explanation one can speculate is a financial one. Maybe due to recording or publishing contracts Island has some reason to avoid putting Bob Marley & the Wailers' early classics on their compilations. In any case, Natural Mystic: The Legend Lives On adds to the frustration of fans who expect compilations to actually feature the highlights of the band's career. ~ William Ruhlmann

Product Details

Release Date:	05/21/2002
Label:	Island
UPC:	0731454890724

Tracks

1. Natural Mystic
2. Easy Skanking
3. Iron Lion Zion
4. Crazy Baldhead
5. So Much Trouble in the World
6. War
7. Africa Unite
8. Trenchtown Rock
9. Keep on Moving
10. Sun Is Shining
11. Who the Cap Fit
12. One Drop
13. Roots, Rock, Reggae
14. Pimper's Paradise
15. Positive Vibration
16. Time Will Tell

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Bob Marley   Primary Artist
Bob Marley & the Wailers   Primary Artist
The Wailers   Primary Artist

Technical Credits

Gregory Isaacs   Composer
Rita Marley   Composer
Carlton "Carly" Barrett   Composer
Vincent Ford   Composer
Robert Allen   Composer
Peter Tosh   Composer
Neville Livingston   Composer
Alex Sadkin   Producer
Bunny Lee   Composer
Aston Barrett   Composer
Bunny Livingston   Composer
Glen Adams   Composer
Chris Blackwell   Producer,Compilation Producer
Lee "Scratch" Perry   Composer,Producer
Errol Brown   Producer
V. Ford   Composer
David Foster   Composer
Neville Garrick   Photography,Art Direction
Pete Murphy   Photography
Al Pyfrom   Composer
Ingmar Kiang   Producer
Adrian Boot   Imaging,Photography
Allan Cole   Composer
Allen Cole   Composer
Toy Caldwell   Composer
Trevor Wyatt   Producer,Compilation Producer
Traditional   Composer
Curtis Mayfield   Composer
Jimmy Norman   Composer
Bill Champlin   Composer
Bob Marley   Composer