Peter Tosh’s third outing for Rolling Stones Records is not one album, but two, with different tracklists. One version was intended for the Americas and Jamaica, the other for the rest of the world. The advent of the CD united the twin variants for the first time, and they sit comfortably together on Wanted Dread And Alive, mixing their shared tracks with the smoother offerings of the US release and the slightly fiercer tunes that graced European and Antipodean editions.
Listen to ‘Wanted Dread And Alive’ here.
A critical moment
Tosh had everything to play for in the summer of 1981. Bob Marley, reggae’s figurehead and Tosh’s former partner in The Wailers, had passed away in May that year, leaving a gaping chasm at the top of Jamaican music. Though the third member of the Wailers triumvirate, Bunny Wailer, was also highly active at the time, Tosh’s personality was far more forceful; while Bunny remained stately and dignified, Tosh could be fierce and forthright, sometimes sarcastically funny, and unpredictable. He was never to be ignored. Could Wanted Dread And Alive thrust him to the lofty echelons of stardom his departed ally had conquered?
There’s no point pretending it could: no Peter Tosh album matches Marley’s Legend for commercial impact. But that doesn’t mean Wanted Dread And Alive didn’t deserve more attention than it drew. It’s packed with interesting, biting and entertaining material, some of which is also ladled with commercial potential.
Buy classic Peter Tosh albums on vinyl.
First among these (and not a stereotypical Tosh track – as much as such a thing could exist) is Nothing But Love, a soulful chunk of reggae-disco in which Tosh’s voice melds beautifully with that of Gwen Guthrie (of future Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But The Rent fame) in the best male-female reggae vocal combo since Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths. Rok With Me, an update of The Wailers’ mid-60s ska obscurity Sweetest Rocker In Town, is a gloriously relaxed affair that could have been as big as Inner Circle’s later Sweat (A La La La La Long) and which uses the same four-chord structure. And the album’s title track, which briefly quotes from The Impressions’ Keep On Moving, is a ticking, head-nodding tale of persecution that locks into your mind and stays there.
