It was in the early 1970s – brothers David and Chris Wight were “missing home” while studying abroad in England, and felt their only connection to their beloved isle Cayman was West Indies cricket and reggae music.
At the time, Bob Marley was breaking into the British music scene with his reggae music “and that’s how we started to follow him,” David Wight, who is the Member of Parliament for George Town West, told the Compass.
His twin brother Chris, a local businessman, explained, “We were very lonely at school and we were homesick right through the term. We listened to music all the time and the early ’70s was when Bob’s music really started to take off. All the other students were listening to their music, and we were listening to Bob Marley music.”
“We started with the music coming out and watching on TV. We started going into the stores and buying the records. The first record I seem to remember was ‘Catch a Fire,’ and from that it just grew – anything Bob Marley, we were buying it,” David added.
Now, more than five decades later, the brothers, who are both former cricketers, are considered super fans and have amassed more than 500 items in their Marley collection, which they keep in their parents’ home.
It’s thought to be one of the largest private collections of memorabilia of the late Jamaican reggae superstar, and includes scrapbooks, limited edition prints, stamps, postcards, portraits, posters, family photographs, receipts of the Wights’ many souvenir purchases, news articles, T-shirts and vinyl records.
“The bigger he got, the more [we collected]… publication and print, everything we could click, or read or buy,” Chris said.
They have eight scrapbooks filled with newspaper and magazine clippings, which they started putting together from the early ’70s.
The twins said when they first started collecting, they did so with no intention for displaying the collection. “We were just doing it for our own personal gain and memory or connection back to the Caribbean. In all the 50 years, we’ve only displayed our whole large collection twice,” David said.
Along with their collection, Chris would turn his love for Marley into artistic drawings and sketches of Marley’s face and famous Rastafarian locks.
The brothers never met Marley nor saw him in concert, but they grew to share an affinity for the man who became one of the most successful artists in Jamaica and who cemented his name in the world of reggae music.
“The collections really took off after the passing of Marley,” Chris said. “We would listen to his music, buy his music, keep clippings but after he died and he blew up, the love grew more.”
Marley died in May 1981, at the age of 36.
‘They just let us in for free now’
The twins would travel together frequently to Jamaica, and it was on a cricket tour there that they had the chance to visit the famous Bob Marley statute across from Jamaica’s National Stadium in Kingston, which commemorates the legendary One Love Peace Concert the music icon headlined there back in 1978.
“We used also to go to the museum and buy whatever was there, and the lady, whose name was Charmaine, after a while, she used to hold anything new that came in, and after a while we’d go in and skip the tour.
“And since we never did the tour, they’d just let us go in [the museum] for free. We saw the bullet holes and touched the bullet holes from the actual shooting that took place.”
The museum was once the house and studio where Marley lived, and was the scene of an assassination attempt on the singer in December 1976.
The Wights said a highlight from their trips was one day meeting the singer’s friend, Georgie – the late George Headley Robinson – who was featured in Marley’s ‘No Woman No Cry’ classic.
The brothers said they watched Marley’s funeral service on television and have the funeral service programme.
“We weren’t able to go… we wanted to go, but we have family in Jamaica, and they went, and knowing that we love him, they saved a funeral programme for us,” Chris said.
Soon after Marley died, the Wights put together their gold and created the “thing we treasure most” – an expertly crafted solid gold Bob Marley head pendant, which David was holding tightly in his hand during the Compass interview.
David said, “Richard Barile, of Black Coral Jewelry, he did this for us. The most astonishing thing about this pendant is that every lock of Marley’s is individually sculptured and soldered on to the gold to make it look real.”
They twins said they only bring the pendant out on special occasions.
‘Bob Marley: One Love’ biopic
The brothers were among the first to watch the world film premiere of the ‘Bob Marley: On Love’ biopic in Cayman on 14 Feb. and said, they were “proud to be there” and “it was amazing”.
The movie script was co-written by Caymanian filmmaker Frank E. Flowers.
“We enjoyed it, and we thought it was beautiful and just proud of… Frankie …his involvement in it,” the brothers said.
Chris and David said they’re “extremely proud” of their collection.
They said, “One of Bob’s best friends, the great Jamaican international footballer, Alan ‘Skill’ Cole, came to Cayman to view our collection and proclaimed it’s the biggest collection he has seen in the world.”
More than five decades after being introduced to Marley’s music, the two are still adding to their collection.
David said Marley’s message was always loud and clear to them as it was throughout the musician’s life and music career – one love.
“There’s nothing more rewarding, to see what’s going on especially in Cayman right now, than to pass the message on that Bob was trying to spread – unity and love.
“And that’s what we definitely need in Cayman, unity and love. We should all find a way that we can do the same thing… [unite] and love.”
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