Bob Marley and Johnny Nash stirred it up in suburban school in the seventies
THESE amazing pictures show Bob Marley before he became famous visiting a London school to play a concert with soul legend Johnny Nash.
Bob Marley, right, with Johnny Nash, playing their lunchtime concert in 1972
Marley, still chasing his big break and Nash, then a bigger star, had been talked into performing a couple of lunchtime shows at Peckham Manor School in south London.
The pair played songs including Stir It Up, a Marley composition which Nash had just released as a single, and I Can See Clearly Now which went on to be a huge worldwide hit for the soul star.
Art teacher Keith Baugh met the pair at the famous Bag O’Nails club in Soho while out with a friend, Martin Lickert, who was a promoter for Nash.
Keith, now 70 and a successful artist, recalls: “Johnny was the big star at the time and Bob was introduced as the songwriter.
"My first impression was that Johnny was very charismatic and Bob was quiet.
“We got talking and I suggested they do a concert at the school because it would be good publicity.
The pair having a kick-about in the playground
"Johnny’s response was immediate... ‘Yeah, let’s go for it, Keith’...and from Bob, a huge smile and ‘Nice’.
“I wasn’t sure it was happening until the night before when I got a phone call.
"The students were delighted.
"They got 45 minutes off the curriculum.
"It made me a bit of a folk hero.”
The gigs took place in late March 1972 in a gym on the school’s Cator Street site, which is now part of the Damilola Taylor Youth Centre, built in memory of the schoolboy who was killed in 2000.
We got talking and I suggested they do a concert at the school because it would be good publicity
The duo played two 45-minute acoustic sets, finishing with a rousing version of Stir It Up.
The pair also joined pupils for a kick-about in the playground.
During a break, the reggae star revealed he was barely scraping a living as a musician.
Keith said: “It had been a long hard winter and Bob had had enough.
"He said, ‘Man, I want to go home but I’m skint. I haven’t got the air fare’.
“They were fantastic, just the two of them on guitars.
"Bob and Johnny had fantastic harmonies and you could sense that Bob was going to be a star.”