Lost Recordings Of Bob Marley Found In London Hotel 40 Years After His Death

Some lost recordings by Bob

Marley have been found in a

damp hotel basement in

London after more than 40

years and have been restored,

BBC reports.



The tapes are the original,

high-quality live recordings of

the reggae legend's concerts

in London and Paris between

1974 and 1978. Tracks include

No Woman No Cry, Jamming and Exodus.



They were at first believed to

be ruined beyond repair,

largely because of water

damage. Marley, who died in 1981,

would have been 72 on

Monday.



The tapes were found in a

run-down hotel in Kensal Rise,

north-west London, where

Bob Marley and the Wailers

stayed during their European

tours in the mid-1970s. They were discovered when

Joe Gatt, a Marley fan and

London businessman, took a

phone call from a friend, who

had found them while doing a

building refuse clearance.



From the 13 reel-to-reel

analogue master tapes, 10

were fully restored, two were

blank and one was beyond

repair. Work lasted one year

and cost £25,000 ($31,200).



"They were (in an) appalling

(condition)... I wasn't too

hopeful," Martin Nichols, a

sound engineer at the White

House Studios in the west of

England, told the BBC.



The recordings are from

concerts at the Lyceum in

London (1975), the

Hammersmith Odeon (1976),

the Rainbow, also in London

(1977), and the Pavilion de Paris (1978).



They were recorded on the

only mobile 24-track studio

vehicle available in the UK

then. It was loaned to Bob

Marley and the Wailers by the

Rolling Stones.