Peter Tosh Biography

Winston Hubert McIntosh, 19 October 1944, Grange Hill, Westmoreland, Jamaica, West Indies, d. 11 September 1987, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies. Of all the reggae singers from the mid-60s, no-one else ‘came on strong’ like Peter Tosh, who declared it so on his anthem, ‘I’m The Toughest’. He provided the bite to Bob Marley’s bark in the original Wailers, and it was he who appeared most true to the rude boy image that the group fostered during the ska era. Tosh was the first to emerge from the morass of doo-wop wails and chants that constituted the Wailers’ early records, recording as Peter Tosh or Peter Touch And The Wailers on ‘Hoot Nanny Hoot’, ‘Shame And Scandal’, and ‘Maga Dog’, the latter another theme for the singer. He also made records without the Wailers and with Rita Anderson, who later became Rita Marley. The Wailers were a loose band by 1966; Bob Marley went to America to seek work, and Peter and Bunny Wailer recorded both together and separately.

At one point, Tosh spent a brief period in prison, possibly on charges of possessing marijuana. When he was not working with the Wailers, he recorded solo material (‘Maga Dog’ again, or ‘Leave My Business’) with producer Joe Gibbs, retaining his ferocious vocal style. When the Wailers worked with Leslie Kong in 1969, Tosh was at the forefront with ‘Soon Come’ and ‘Stop The Train’, but at Lee Perry’s Wailers sessions (1970-71) he was often reduced to harmonizing, save for three mighty tracks - ‘400 Years’, an attack on slavery, ‘No Sympathy’, where Tosh equated rejection in love with the lot of the black ghetto resident, and ‘Downpresser’, another anti-oppression statement and probably his best record. When the Wailers split from Perry and joined Island Records, the writing was on the wall for Tosh; Island apparently preferred Marley’s cooler, more sympathetic style, and despite contributing ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ to Burnin’, the band’s second album for the label, both Tosh and Bunny Wailer left the group in 1973.

Tosh concentrated on work for his own label, Intel Diplo HIM (meaning: Intelligent Diplomat for His Imperial Majesty), and signed to Virgin Records in 1976. His two albums for the label, Legalize It and Equal Rights, received mixed reactions when they were first released but have since become acknowledged reggae classics. The patronage of Mick Jagger at Rolling Stones Records, which he joined in 1978, nearly gave him a chart hit with a cover version of the Temptations’ ‘Don’t Look Back’, although reggae fans complained that Jagger’s voice was louder than Tosh’s in the mix. Bush Doctor, his first album for the label, sold well, but Mystic Man and Wanted, Dread & Alive, did not. He also released three albums with EMI Records, the last, No Nuclear War, being his best since Legalize It. The record won the first Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album in March 1988, but by that time, Tosh was dead, shot during a robbery at his home in Kingston in September 1987.

Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.