A hungry mob is an angry mob. That line, from the song Them Belly Full (But We Hungry), could stand as the warning label for the whole record Bob Marley and the Wailers released on October 25, 1974. Natty Dread, the seventh studio album from the Jamaican group, arrived at a moment when Marley had reason to feel cornered: Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer were absent, and his own publishing deal was working against him.
Recording without Tosh and Wailer
Natty Dread was the first Wailers album made without Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, the two men who had sung and written alongside Marley since the group's early days. Their departure left Marley alone at the front, and all the songs were written by Marley, even though the sleeve credits family, friends and bandmates. Recording took place at Harry J. Studios in Kingston, Jamaica, with Chris Blackwell and the Wailers producing for the Island and Tuff Gong labels.
The sound that emerged was leaner and harder than before. At just under 39 minutes, the record mixed reggae with rock textures, a blend that would later be called reggae-rock. Aston Barrett played bass and his brother Carlton played drums, with the I-Threes — Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths — adding backing vocals. The opening track, Lively Up Yourself, was a blues song.
The No Woman, No Cry credit
The album's most famous song came second. No Woman, No Cry looked back at growing up in Trenchtown, the Kingston ghetto where Marley spent his childhood. The writing credit went to Vincent Ford, a childhood friend known as Tartar, and Marley said he might have starved as a boy without Tartar's help. That gesture of giving away a credit was not simple charity, though. Marley was locked in a contract dispute with his old publishing company, Cayman Music, and he did not want his new songs tied to them. Putting Ford's name, and later those of other friends and relatives, on his compositions looked like a way around the restrictions — and a way to share the money.
The stakes were not only legal. Them Belly Full (But We Hungry) warned of hunger among the poor, and its line about an angry mob made the threat explicit. Talkin' Blues and Revolution carried sharp political criticism, while Rebel Music (3 O'Clock Roadblock) was written after a night-time police patrol stopped Marley. The album also showed his deepening Rastafarian faith in songs like So Jah Seh, Natty Dread and Lively Up Yourself.
Chart positions and gold certification
The commercial response was modest but real. In the United Kingdom the album reached number 43 and sold more than 100,000 copies, enough for a gold certification. In the United States it appeared in May 1975 and climbed to number 92 on the Billboard 200. Those were not superstar numbers, but they kept Marley moving forward at a time when his band had just been torn in half.
The publishing fight over Natty Dread dragged on for years. Former manager Danny Sims sued over the rights and royalties, claiming Marley was the true author of the songs credited to Ford and others. In 1987 a court sided with Marley's estate, giving it full control of the catalogue. By then the album's reputation had already outgrown its chart positions: Rolling Stone placed it at number 181 on its list of the 500 greatest albums, and the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die made room for it.
What Natty Dread proved was that Marley did not need his old partners to sound like the Wailers. He needed a studio in Kingston, a rhythm section that could lock in, and a set of songs that turned poverty, police stops and faith into something a crowd could sing back. Marley rebuilt his band and gave it a new centre: himself.