Marley Gets Star Before Season of Honors, Reissues

February 7, 2001 -- LOS ANGELES — The Hollywood Walk of Fame became a festive sea of red, green, and yellow, as more than 300 reggae fans gathered to see their musical hero, Bob Marley, honored with a posthumous star on the walkway yesterday — the 56th anniversary of the Jamaican singer's birth.

An emotional Rita Marley, the singer's widow, was on hand to accept the star. "Oh, wow. Rastafari! Rastafari! Yes, I want to give thanks, glory be to God," she told the cheering fans. "What can I say? But one love. One heart. One aim. One destiny."

The star — the 2,171st to be cemented into Hollywood Boulevard — begins a season where Marley's memory will loom large.

The singer, who introduced reggae to the world before dying from cancer in 1981, will be given a Lifetime Achievement Grammy at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 21.

The weekend before that honor, the 20th Annual Bob Marley Day-Ragga Muffins Festival will be held Feb. 17-18 at Long Beach Arena and Feb. 19 at San Diego Sports Arena.

Marley's longtime label, Island Records, will release its first in a series of reissues this spring. His 1973 LP, Catch a Fire, will be expanded to a double CD and released on March 27.

Neville Garret, Marley's friend and art director, said Marley would be pleased with the continuing passion of fans, but not in an egotistical way.

"Bob was all about people and not really for himself," Garret said amid the Hollywood Boulevard crowds. "He always said to me — knocking his chest — 'If my life is only for me, then I don't want it. My life is for the people.' To see the gathering of all these people, was for me seeing that his message is still growing and still reaching the people, because this is 20 years after he has passed. … His fan base has multiplied maybe seven-fold since his passing — his message is timeless."