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A lot of the songs are sung from a first-person perspective rather than third-person or the singer as a character. Is the listener meant to take it literally when, on Get Out of Town for instance, you sing about wanting to leave and move somewhere else? When the song was written, I was really thinking about getting out of town, yes. (Laughs) As songs go, they always take on more meaning than what it started out as. There is always more behind it than what we intend it to be eventually, when it finally is completed. The initial spark is real. Really, I’m a man of nature. I’m a man of peace. If my environment is not that, then I really need to get out of town. On Road Less Traveled, is it fair to say you are critical of your father and in defense of your mother? It is not critical, it’s just reality. It wasn’t, in any way, taking sides in terms of my parents. It was an expression of the life that I experienced as a child. That particular (lyric) was what I saw. We make a choice. There are many things about my father and my mother that I emulate, but there
INTERVIEW ZIGGY MARLEY
are some things where I want to take a different route. In my family life, I’m an independent-minded person. I left the confines of my family environment, in terms of being around my brother, my sister, my mother and her step-daughter. I went off and did something. I’m a little outside the box, even of my own family. This album has a lot of personal things in it that are expressive of my life, the journey that I’ve been on through my father’s days until now. Your son Daniel appears on the song Changes. Do you feel any unique connection as you and he are both eldest sons of international music superstars? I don’t know what his experiences are from that perspective, being the first son of an international music whatever. We grew up in different times. Our experiences are really different. Obviously my father is a much bigger deal than I am. He is a much more revered person than I am. He’s my son. I don’t really think of him in the same light as I think of myself. He’s my son, that’s how I think of him.