History Trivia / PeterTosh

* NWordPrivileges: The "Get Up Stand Up" Burnin' Demo included the line "Don't be a n*gger in your neighborhood", but Chris Blackwell made him remove it, in addition to replacing the line "bullshit game" with "isms, schisms". When he rerecorded the song for Equal Rights, he added "bullshit game" back in, and the offending line was changed to "Don't be no n*gger now", but CBS had it edited out of the versions released outside Jamaica. For context, amongst the black community in the Caribbean, the n word is used to describe somebody who embodies negative stereotypes and is politically unmotivated, meaning that despite the abolition of slavery, they still effectively allow white people to control them. This usage is very common in calypso music, and Tosh had spoken of the same subject in such songs as "400 Years", "You Can't Fool Me Again" and "You Can't Blame The Youth".

* BerserkButton: He reacted very strongly to patronising attitudes towards Jamaicans. He also objected to the common descriptor of him as 'militant', because he associated the military with babylon and violence. He preferred to be called a missionary.
* TheCasanova: He was the most popular Wailer amongst girls in his early days, which Rita Marley explains in her book. By his own admission he had children with so many different women he couldn't recall all of them.
* CutShort: His last album "No Nuclear War" ends with possibly the least obvious closing track of his discography, the simple and poppy "Come Together".
* DoNotCallMePaul: He didn't like his birth name of Winston because he felt it was too colonial, so he changed it to Peter after the biblical figure of that name. You occasionally see him referred to as Winston in legal documents that have leaked from his many arrests.
* DrivesLikeCrazy: According to Lee Jaffe in his book "One Love", Peter was this. Inevitably, it led to a tragic crash in 1974 that killed Peter's girlfriend Yvonne as well as seriously injuring him.

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* DoNotCallMePaul: He didn't like his birth name of Winston because he felt it was too colonial, so he changed it to Peter after the biblical figure of that name.

* TheyAlsoDid: Peter was a highly-regarded guitarist, and as a result worked as a session musician for Joe Gibbs whilst Bob Marley was away in the US in 1969. He also took up melodica at this time, playing on a large number of dub tracks (these can be found, amongst other places, on the Trojan CD "Arise Black Man"). Peter later contributed his melodica playing to a few Wailers recordings such as "Sun Is Shining" and "Memphis". Outside music, Peter was an adept unicyclist, a photo of which can be seen on the sleeve for for his "Buk-In-Hamm-Palace" 12" single.

* DoNotCallMePaul : He didn't like his birth name of Winston because he felt it was too colonial, so he changed it to Peter after the biblical figure of that name.