Alan 'Skill' Cole, the former Jamaica football star who was a key member of reggae legend Bob Marley's inner circle, is writing a book about their friendship and the challenges the singer faced in his final months.
The Bob Marley I Know is the working title of the book on which Cole collaborates with a writer. He declined to give the writer's name, but said the book should be completed by December and shopped to distributors in 2011.
Cole said reading inaccurate Marley bios influenced him to write his own book.
"All dem write is bare foolishness and lies an' wi want to correct a lot of things," Cole told The Sunday Gleaner, recently.
Much of the book will centre around the time he was diagnosed with a brain tumour at a New York hospital in September 1980, to him travelling to Germany two months later for radical treatment from a controversial physician named Josef Issels.
A prodigy who played for Jamaica at age 15, Cole says he first met Marley in Trench Town during the 1960s at the home of Rastafarian elder, Mortimo Planno.
They became close friends, and Cole was appointed road manager for what would be Marley's final tour in 1980. They were jogging in Central Park on September 21 when the singer/songwriter suffered a seizure and collapsed. The remainder of the US tour was cancelled after Marley performed at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 23.
According to Cole, the suggestion to seek out Issels came from Trevor 'Jumpy' Harris, his former teammate at Santos football club. He recalls paying a bell-hop at a New York City hotel to allow them to see the German doctor who was attending a cancer symposium.
Though Issels was highly regarded in medical circles, he reportedly had links to Adolf Hitler's Nazi party. Cole said no one close to Marley knew of this.
"All we'd a deal wid was him track record. When yuh got to know him he had great humour," Cole said. "To me, he was a great humanitarian."
Along with Marley's personal doctor, Carlton 'Pee Wee' Frazier and cook Glenford 'Early Bird' Phipps (older brother of Donald 'Zekes' Phipps), Cole accompanied the ailing Marley by Concorde to Issels' Rottach-Egern clinic in Bavaria.
He remembers Marley making remarkable progress shortly after his arrival.
"When him leave New York mi haffi a lift him up, dem give him one week to live 'cause him weak, weak, weak," Cole recalled. "After treatment him start walk strong, all start play ball again. By Christmas the man start get healthy," he added.
Cole said Marley's health began deteriorating when "certain people come down" to Germany. He did not identify those persons.
Cole left Germany before Josef Issels said Marley could not be saved, in April 1981. He was in Jamaica when his friend died May 11, 1981 at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami, at age 36.
Several Marley biographies have been written since the singer's death. Some - including 1995's Marley and Me, written by his former manager, Don Taylor - are sensational. Marley's widow, Rita, released No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley, in 2004.
