Peter Tosh: Stepping Razor Red X

As it was designed by Jah who is my creator

Who sent me here... to help

to alleviate, the Shitstem. The dirt, the filth and corruption

that my people have been inoculated with

It is only my duty to teach those who will learn

That's the beginning of my days, at war

World War I

with the Devil.

It's only the truth that can make a man free.

It's only the truth that can make a man live.

The truth has been branded outlawed and illegal

It is dangerous to have the truth in your possession

You can be found guilty and sentenced to death

So irrespective of what men want to invent

or try to imitate, because they cannot create, you no see

they only try to invent, and researching and discovering destruction

but you know, so it was, so shall it be and these are the last days.

Reggae superstar Peter Tosh and another man known as Doctor

were shot dead, at the singers Plymouth Avenue home at about 20.30 last night

five other persons including radio JBC-dj Free-I were shot and wounded

according to the P.I.C. three gunmen travelling on motorcycles

went to Tosh's residence and demanded money

Tosh and his guests were shot when they refused

the gunmen escaped. The police have launched

a top level investigation into the killing.

I know that Peter had been loved by everybody apparently

so I didn't believe that anybody would do that to him

I wasn't looking for him to die that way

I say maybe you would die in a car crash, I know that he drive very fast

I wasn't looking for him to die by a gun shot

Nothing was really firmly established accept the motive of robbery

You know, rumors were fairly rife

Well the youth involved, was in one incident in which policemen stopped them

he had a weapon on him, Peter took her up

and when they got to the police station the table got reversed

he came out feeling bitter he'd sacrificed himself for Peter without compensation

He said to me one day, he was told, that the security forces are out to get him

he would be shot on the spot and he said...

he knows that, but he's not afraid to speak the truth, to die for the truth

I wasn't surprised when he died I knew that this was coming

There must be, there has always been the other side of the story

there are three sides to the story. Your side, my side, and the side of the truth

and most of the time, everybody tries to pull the side of the truth to their side

and the truth is standing right there, by itself.

And everybody is trying to pull the side of the truth to their side.

I came from a poor family

who financially wasn't capable to give me a proper schooling

or a proper education in no level

But at the same time, my ambition and determination, my hopes and aspiration

and my inner concept of creativity that was born in me

showed me to help myself, and I did.

In this society, I am classified as illegitimate

but that does not make me lose faith within myself

Because my mother was not married to my father

Because of unfavourable financial conditions

my mother wasn't able to grow me under her own nature and admonition

Yes, this is the street where Peter and I grew up, from the age of six

we grew up here with my uncle, Euriah Campbell

He was very strict, when it comes to church

we had to go to church twice on sundays plus every other night during the week

When I was about seven years old

I cannot forget when the Devil tried to blind me, with barbed wire

I heard my parents call

running very fast

I clashed with the wire.

Two barbs, could be three or more

stopped in my eye lid, right on the surface of my eyeball

I wiped the blood from my eyes, I looked into a mirror

and I saw where my two eye lids were slit open

open so wide I could see through them

That was one of the first major...

pit of destruction, that the Devil dug before my feet

So I would not see the ills, the corruption, the filth, the shit...

the destruction, the lies, the hypocrisy and the order of today.

My times, when I came to the planet, in the forties

the black people, would be recognized as nobodies

I had never seen a black lawyer, a black judge

a black preacher.

We become like sheep without shepherd

children without parents, students without teachers

Born in the conflict of poverty

all we had, was nothing.

But because of the divine spirit that we was born and raised with

it teaches us to multiply nothing with nothing and get something

zero with zero and get one.

I never know that he could play, so quick

until the school teacher tell me, that he can play the piano

That was where we realized that he had an inclination for music.

He used to be in the singing groups, the choir.

Yes he used to sing, from he was about four years old

and collect moneys

In that time it was shilling-days, people gave him a shilling for he could sing

but he used to sing Christian songs. - Then they started to teach me

of the Devil, and the Satan, and the Hell

they teach me of the Christians

but they make sure they teach me that Jesus, son of God, is a white man

When I ask why am I black, they say

I was born in sin and shaped in iniquity

One of the main songs they used to sing in church, that makes me sick

Lord wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

In my search I heard of the name God

I go to church and they say: God made man

of his own likeness and image.

If I make a doll, in my image

it is quite obvious, that the doll must look like me.

Yet still, I am faced with the ignorance

lost into fantasy

seeking to find the reality of what they taught me, of this illusion of God

I didn't like the blood business

I hate blood

And everytime I hear them talk about the blood of Jesus

I imagine, how much of my blood they would like to see shed

Because of them shed up Jesus blood so imagine, how praise him.

All of these things came down to what the black man could draw on

and what he came back to draw on, was a sense of himself through religion

a sense of expressing cultural assertion

in an environment where the black man culture was continual being suppressed

So he in a sense, fell back on religion and symbolism as a mode of survival

The church thing, he manipulated and assimilated, it didn't mean much to him

As a way of convincing the slave master that he was now civilized

could deal with the idiom, and master it hence his attempt to translate that

into musical forms that mystified the white man, and blew his mind.

My words is the truth and the truth causes offence

and I don't care what men want to say about me

because, without the truth there is no consciousness.

I was singing at the age of two.

When I was five, I made my first guitar.

I was learning piano music at the age of thirteen.

And if I only had the opportunity, of having my own professional instrument

I would bring the songs that angels sung.

When I came into the city of Killsome which is called Kingston.

It's the first time of me being on my own.

Leaving, under my parents jurisdiction

It was a new era in my life

A whole new page turned over

Because this was totally different from what I grew up with in the country

The most dangerous things I've ever heard or see in my life

is when I find myself, in Trenchtown.

I see many people, many youths in general

become victims of the Shitstem.

I see them die, I hear them cry

All the pain, the agony they bear.

Many I see die

because of impatience.

I see many get frustrated, hallucinated,

kinky, crack, nuts, crazy, walking out of themselves

lost into fantasies, seeking to find the reality.

And I see myself in the same similar Shituation.

I grew up with Peter. He used to bathe me, comb my hair

Because he was the oldest one of the family at the time

And he gave me... He says to me

That I shouldn't worry, and he's here to protect me.

I was attacked by evil forces, seen

Spiritual evil forces, that caused my mouth to cease from function

Caused my hands and legs to cease from moving

it's only my mind that was in function and my two eyes.

And I was on the brink of what you call, Death.

It started with him... when he came to live with us, Peter was in his teens.

I was wondering if I was paralysed.

At that moment, it caused me to make some inner communication

because that was the last resort.

So I made some inner communication and that caused me...

to get more confidence that there is a creator that dwells within man, seen

so I begin to ask him this question: What must I do?

I said what must I do, just lie there dead so and tomorrow I'm dead?

The spirit say, just say move your Bomboklaat

It say, don't hesitate you're on the countdown

In the countdown, it's like I heard 3... 2... and when 1... I was gonna say

Move your... BOMBOKLAAT! It just fly out like, BOMBOKLAAT!

Immediately, every spell was released.

In Jamaica, using the word Bomboklaat, it's like...

Using the F-word here in America

Bombo Blood Klaat, that's why these guys said these things in decent language

so that them can release their Vampires on you

and if you don't have that spiritual communication and counteraction

you go to heaven with your big-toe's jive.

The ghetto, it's the art of the Jamaican ghetto, right? And the jamaican ghetto

I don't know if the ghetto is the same all over the world, but in Jamaica

there's nothing there. We're talking about dirt, and dust

It's like each one have to help one another, every man for himself

The only thing we have that's for everyone is the inspiration of the Almighty God.

Bob, Bunny and Peter is more than just a band of musicians.

Them live and trod, like brothers you know, blood brothers.

You have feh overstand seh, Peter Tosh son, seh Andrew Tosh

Andrew must also call Bunny, uncle, Andrew's mother is Bunny's sister

And Bob's sister Pearl, is Bunny's sister, also.

So them tie up familywise you know what I mean

It wasn't just youths playing music, them live music.

When they first went to Coxsone they observed some professional efforts

But the were not professionals. They told them to stay with me.

But the Wailers was, that in my opinion, I needed to convey in them the ability

for each person to be able, to account for himself, in a Wailing form.

Because to be a Wailer, you have to cry, seen.

Because that is what it means, to go through troubles, temptation, seen

Humiliation and aggravation, police brutality

How much of them, ever go through that? How much of them, ever been to jail?

How much of them, ever been humiliated? How much of them, ever been executed?

He was the man with the guitar.

He was the one who would insist

on the harmony pattern, right, the melody.