As Bob Marley’s revolutionary artwork director, Neville Garrick designed the singer’s album sleeves, starting along with his 1976 breakthrough album, Rastaman Vibration, whose entrance cowl picture is of the reggae king stroking his chin – a attribute, pensive pose. Earlier this yr, the Rastaman Vibration sleeve – which promised “This album jacket is nice for cleansing herb”– was recognised by Billboard journal as one of many 100 greatest album covers of all time.
“I had some photographs I had shot of Bob,” Garrick, who has died aged 73 of prostate most cancers, mentioned in an interview with the reggae archive livicated.com. He recalled having executed “a watercolour wash of Bob in that militant military jacket” that he minimize out and pasted on to a bit of burlap (hessian), which as an artist he had been utilizing as opposed to canvas.
Garrick’s most radical design was for Survival, Marley’s 1979 album – above a number of flags of unbiased black nations, he imposed a searing graphic picture exhibiting the storage of ship-borne slaves.
He determined his photographs ought to increase the singer’s poetic exhortations. So Marley’s riveting reside exhibits have been enhanced by pink, gold and inexperienced backdrops – the colors of the Ethiopian flag – depicting mythological scenes from the lifetime of Haile Selassie I, emperor of Ethiopia and divine figurehead of Rastafari. “Neville was placing into photos what Bob was placing into music,” mentioned Garrick’s cousin Herbie Miller.
Garrick had a detailed relationship with the Jamaican famous person. Within the phrases of Chris Blackwell, to whose Island Information Marley was signed, “Neville actually beloved Bob and what he was doing. And other people beloved him due to that.”
But it was not all harmonious vibes. There was Garrick’s “very spicy mouth”, as Miller remembers, somebody whose temper may typically appear grumpy. However when Marley was wounded in a taking pictures in December 1976 at his house in Kingston, Jamaica, it was Garrick who whisked him to the exile in London that was commemorated in his Exodus album, staying with him at his Chelsea refuge for six months; and it was Garrick behind the wheel of their Ford Cortina when Marley was busted for marijuana possession in Ladbroke Grove.
Garrick grew up in Kingston in middle-class affluence, attending the town’s prestigious King’s School secondary college. He had one youthful brother. Their father, Kenneth, owned a secretarial and computing school, the place their mom, Baba (Barbara, nee Miller) was the secretary and basic supervisor.
At UCLA in Los Angeles he studied graphic design. “Neville was a really middle-class boy, with a jacket and shirt and tie,” Miller remembered. “However the protests in opposition to the struggle in Vietnam, the civil rights demonstrations, and – most of all – the Black Panther motion modified him vastly.” At UCLA he was taught by, and befriended, Angela Davis, the charismatic poster woman for the Black Energy motion, whose considering impressed her pupil.
He went again to Jamaica in 1973, invited to return by the brand new prime minister Michael Manley, a leftwinger reclaiming the island’s abilities. The nation’s politically explosive temper had its dub facet, the “acutely aware” temper of Rastafari and its soundtrack of roots reggae. For rising his hair into dreadlocks and brazenly smoking “herb”, Garrick was kicked out of the household house by his father.
He turned artwork director for the Kingston Each day Information. There Garrick held his solely ever exhibition, a dozen or so of his hanging photographs of black oppression pinned to the fence of the newspaper. In 1974 he left the Information: he had been made a extra agreeable provide.
Miller was managing Peter Tosh, who had simply left the Wailers, and arrange a gathering between Garrick and Marley. “I launched Bob to Neville. When he [Garrick] had left Jamaica he didn’t know that world. However he got here again extra involved with the black battle than sustaining his middle-class stature.”
Garrick had begun a relationship with Nancy Burke, who had additionally studied artwork. “Neville was like a younger cowboy kind,” she remembered. “He grew along with Bob very organically. They each have been into Rasta collectively. And soccer. And Bob let him do no matter he wished.”
Her household had a property subsequent to the massive home in Hope Highway set in substantial grounds that Blackwell had given Marley as a part of his new deal, following his breakup with the unique Wailers Bunny Livingston and Tosh. (Neville would design a memorable sleeve for the renamed Bunny Wailer’s Blackheart Man in 1976; that yr he additionally supplied the paintings for Burning Spear’s groundbreaking Man within the Hills LP.)
However then Marley died, in Could 1981. Garrick designed the duvet for the posthumous album Confrontation, which was launched in 1983. He turned head of the Bob Marley Basis. When it got here to stocking the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Garrick revealed an extra facet: he was a severe collector, by no means throwing out something referring to Bob or popular culture.
In 1980 Garrick married Colette Thompson, a pal of Burke. That they had two youngsters, Naomi and Nesta, whereas additionally mentioning Colette’s son, Christopher, from a earlier relationship.
In 1997 they cut up up. Garrick took the divorce badly and moved to Los Angeles, the place he labored as a designer and video-maker.
Just lately, Garrick had been advising on One Love, the Bob Marley biopic because of be launched early subsequent yr. Ziggy Marley, Marley’s eldest son and producer of the movie, paid tribute to Garrick, recalling that “everybody beloved listening to his tales and heeding his insights. With out him it couldn’t have been executed. It was a continuation of the work he did for my father and the sturdy friendship that they had with one another.”
He’s survived by his youngsters.
