The cover of the new Marley DVD.

BOB Marley and The Wailers: The Legend Live, a DVD of the Reggae superstar in concert during his 1979 American tour, has been released in the United Kingdom by Trojan/Sanctuary Records. Originally released in video cassette form in the early 1980s, the DVD edition has several new features including seven additional songs and interviews with Marley.

Marley and The Wailers were promoting their 1979 Island Records album, Survival, and one of their more powerful shows was the band's gig at the Santa Barbara County Bowl in California. That set was made popular through the video-cassette but for the new product, British film director Don Letts has added footage from another concert that took place three nights later at The Roxy in Los Angeles.

There are 20 songs on the DVD. Among them are Wake Up and Live, Ambush In The Night, Ride Natty Ride and Africa Unite from Survival, and old favourites like Concrete Jungle, Crazy Baldhead and Jamming.

Marley archivist, Chris Salewicz, who produced Bob Marley and The Wailers: The Legend Live's video introduction and sleeve notes, says the DVD captures the band at the top of their game. He adds that it also brings fresh perspective to the singer/songwriter's goal to break into the American market.

"The point of this tour was to get Bob over to a US audience, both black and white, and he clearly had succeeded admirably," Salewicz told Splash last week from his London home.

The show at The Roxy was actually a fundraiser hosted by superstar boxer, Sugar Ray Leonard. It was an indication of Marley's desire to make inroads into the Black-American market with Survival, his most militant album since Exodus in 1977.

In the promotional release for Bob Marley and The Wailers: The Legend Live, Salewicz says Marley was determined to make an impact with blacks in the US. While on the Chicago leg of the tour he reportedly visited Johnson and Johnson Publications, publishers of Ebony and Essence magazines, expressing concern that he had little presence in black media.

The Survival tour officially started at the National Arena in September 1979 when The Wailers performed at a benefit show for Rasta children.

They next headed to the US where Marley opened at the famed Apollo Theatre in Harlem; Salewicz notes that Marley had requested the dates at the New York City landmark which was a centrepiece of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s.

Marley and The Wailers had built a huge following throughout Europe since the early 1970s. But though the Rastaman Vibration and Exodus albums had won him high-profile fans in the US including Rhythm and Blues superstar, Stevie Wonder, he was still not a household name there.

Prophecies and Messages, a 51-minute interview with Marley and Wailers keyboardist Tyrone Downie, is another feature of the DVD. Both men discuss the Rasta religion, and the significance of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I and Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey to the movement.

Survival was Marley's homage to the struggles of African freedom fighters in white-ruled Rhodesia. It included the local hit song, Ambush In The Night, a song about the assassination attempt on his life in December 1976. One Drop, another song from the album, also made the Top 10 charts in Jamaica.

Salewicz has written extensively on Marley and The Wailers and Jamaican music since the early 1970s. He is author of the books Bob Marley: Songs of Freedom, Rude Boy: Once Upon a Time in Jamaica and Reggae Explosion: the Story of Jamaican Music.

He was co-screenwriter of the 2000 low-budget action film, Third World Cop. Letts, whose parents are Jamaican, directed the 1997 movie, Dancehall Queen.

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