Details
Name: Bob Marley
Ref: Legendary Reggae Artist
Background
| “Celtic has always been my team. And now it is my son Rohan’s team. He’s only six but he loves Celtic. I can’t tell you how much I envy you having played at Celtic Park.” Bob Marley to ex-Celt Dixie Deans |
Bob Marley is one of the most surprising & inspiring members of the wide diaspora of the Celtic support.
He is the legendary godfather of reggae music, with an eternal legacy that actually puts him in the highest echelon of musicians.
Bob Marley broke down barriers back in the 1970s, his music having touched the hearts and souls of people across the world. He was also a football and cricket fan too, taking a keen interest in certain teams with Celtic being one of his great loves.
His affinity for Celtic has been confirmed by his son Ronan Marley and also through a chance meeting between ex-Celt Dixie Deans with Bob Marley himself.
Bob Marley floored Dixie Deans when they got talking about Celtic, saying: “Oh, you know I’m a big Celtic fan. I would love to go to Scotland to see Celtic Park and maybe even kick a few balls there. I know all about Jock Stein”.
He added: “I love reading about British football teams and Celtic has always been my team. And now it is my son Rohan’s team. He’s only six but he loves Celtic. I can’t tell you how much I envy you having played at Celtic Park.”
A proud and very humbling connection for the Celtic support.
Articles
The incredible Bob Marley-Celtic connection as son reveals music legend was Celtic fan
By James Cairney @JamesCairneyHT Sports Writer
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/18951212.incredible-bob-marley-old-firm-connection-son-reveals-music-legend-celtic-fan/27 comments
REGGAE legend Bob Marley might not be the first name that springs to mind when discussing the Glasgow derby but the musical giant rarely missed a game – according to his son.
In an interview with the Celtic View, Rohan Marley told how his father would regularly regale his children with tales of the Parkhead club’s exploits and when on tour in Europe, the musical giant would often tune in to watch them on TV.
Rohan says that he has fond memories of watching Old Firm derbies from times past in videos that his dad had recorded, and that the family would have kickabouts among themselves regularly.
And according to Rohan – who says his dad was such a huge Hoops fan that he even tried to get his son a TRIAL with the club – Marley Senior would regularly cheer on the Parkhead outfit.
He told the Celtic View: “My father loved football. He knew everything about football, he watched it all the time and he loved European football.
“He played all the time as well, I can remember playing with him when we were young.
“My granny actually had a tape of me and two of my brothers, Ziggy and Steve, playing keepy-up with him. We used to stand in a circle and try to juggle the ball with him.”
Rohan continued: “I always loved Celtic, they were one of my father’s favourite teams.
“He would talk about Celtic and that’s how I came to know them.
“When he was in Europe, he was able to see a lot of the big football games on TV. He watched a lot of English football and Scottish football.
“He would record all the games and I watched them years later at my grandmother’s house.
“That’s how I came across all these Celtic players from the late 1970s and early ‘80s because I’d watch these tapes of Celtic versus Rangers games over and over again.”
‘So Bob Marley asked me… Are you the Dixie Deans who used to play for Celtic?’
By RUSSELL LEADBETTER
Evening Times
7 Oct 2011
REGGAE superstar Bob Marley’s secret ambition was to visit Celtic Park – and play on its turf.
And Marley was such a fan of the club that he could even recite its 1967 European Cup-winning team in full.
Marley, who died in 1981, stunned Celtic legend Dixie Deans when the pair met in Australia.
But Deans, who was playing for Adelaide City as his career wound down, didn’t know who Marley was.
Writing in his new autobiography, which starts an exclusive three-day serialisation in the Evening Times today, Deans says he was introduced to Marley during a training session.
Says Dixie: “I didn’t know him from Adam. Our manager said he was a musician and a keen footballer but the name didn’t register. I remember he was quiet-spoken, almost shy, and his hair was long and looked, frankly, as if it was matted together and needed a good wash.”
But Marley floored him when they got talking about Celtic, saying: “Oh, you know I’m a big Celtic fan. I would love to go to Scotland to see Celtic Park and maybe even kick a few balls there. I know all about Jock Stein.
He added: “I love reading about British football teams and Celtic has always been my team. And now it is my son Rohan’s team. He’s only six but he loves Celtic. I can’t tell you how much I envy you having played at Celtic Park.”
Added Dixie: “We had a chat about all things Celtic and I was greatly impressed by the great man’s football knowledge. And when we got down to training, I was just as impressed by his football ability.”
In the book, co-written by Evening Times’ journalist Ken McNab, Dixie recalls his footballing apprenticeship at Motherwell before the glory-laden years with Celtic.
He lifts the lid on his relationship with Jock Stein, life with Celtic’s nine-in-a-row team and the ‘brotherly bond’ he shared with Hoops icon Jimmy Johnstone
Both players were famously friendly with music superstar and Celtic fan Rod Stewart, who Dixie light- heartedly calls a ‘millionaire tightwad’.
“Rod was never flash with his cash – and that was because he never carried any,” says Dixie. “He was like the Queen. Whenever it came to his round, he always used to say: ‘Sorry lads, I’m on the bell next time’.”
But Dixie has harsher words for another Scots star, Sean Connery, who, he says, switched his support from Celtic to Rangers.
“In the early seventies, when he was at the height of his fame, Sean would tell anybody and everybody how much he loved Celtic. And it’s true that he often came to our games.
“But I was disappointed when Sean seemed to ‘change sides’ in the 1990s after David Murray took over Rangers. I think Murray kind of bought Sean’s patronage of the Ibrox outfit in a way and tried to make it out that Celtic were the poor relations of the two clubs.
“It seemed to me that Sean was like an item of jewellery on Murray’s arm, a piece of Hollywood bling. I could understand why so many Celtic fans were hacked off when they used to see James Bond sitting in the directors’ box at Ibrox as Murray’s VIP guest.”
NO FOOTBALL NO CRY
Rohan Marley, it seems, harbours a desire to play for the Scottish club…
By
NME magazine
5th October 2000
https://www.nme.com/news/music/bob-marley-35-1400310
Bob Marley‘s son ROHAN has confessed he would love to play football for Scottish giants CELTIC FC.
Rohan also revealed how he has followed the Glasgow team’s fortunes since former coach John Barnes took over in 1999, and how he loves the way they play under new boss Martin O’Neill.
Speaking to the Daily Record newspaper, Marley joked:
“I’m fit and ready for the big time. My game is improving and it’s about time I stepped up a level.”
He added: “I’ve seen Celtic Park on TV, so even if the manager doesn’t think I’m good enough, I’d love to have a go on their pitch.”
Marley, who was a successful American Football player for Miami Hurricanes while at college, also attributed the Scottish Premier League leaders’ current run of form to another member of the Marley clan.
He claimed that on a recent trip to Glasgow to help organise a forthcoming Bob Marley tribute concert, his uncle Ritchie “must have given Celtic Park a Rastafarian blessing”.
The Marleys are not the only people in music with a keen – whether real or wished for – connection to Celtic players. Rap pioneer Gil Scott Heron’s father Gil ‘The Black Arrow’ Heron played for the team in the early 1950s. And there remains a tradition for fans to show up at Heron‘s shows wearing the green-and-white hooped shirts of Celtic.
Meanwhile, Rohan‘s partner Lauryn Hill is set to appear early next year in a new film, ‘Sauce’.
In the film, about two rival barbecue kings but with a large nod to ‘Romeo & Juliet’, the Fugee frontwoman plays the daughter of one of the men who falls for the son of the other.
She is also in talks to write the soundtrack for the film.