Peter Tosh, a founding member of The Wailers, was the quintessential figure of protest in Jamaican music.

LAST week marked the 20th anniversary of Peter Tosh's death. Unlike the events that mark the birth and death of Bob Marley, his former colleague in The Wailers, there was little fanfare for one of pop music's true revolutionaries.

Tosh was one of three persons shot and killed by gunmen at his St. Andrew home on the evening of September 11, 1987. Dennis Lobban, the man responsible for the homicides, was reportedly a former friend of the singer.

Of the three most famous Wailers (the other being Bunny Wailer), Tosh was the most controversial. Even his early songs like The Toughest has an edge, something he never lost.

Tosh and Bunny Wailer left The Wailers in early 1974 at a time when Island Records was preparing to record Natty Dread, the album that would prove to be Marley's international breakthrough.

Underground following

While Marley's music gained the attention of pop superstars like Eric Clapton and Stevie Wonder, Tosh built an underground following with hard-hitting albums such as Legalise It and Equal Rights.

Both are regarded as two of pop music's most potent statement albums. Unlike Marley who experimented with ballads (Turn Your Lights Down Low and Waiting In Vain), Tosh remained a hardcore performer. In fact, drummer Sly Dunbar, a member of his Blood, Sweat and Tears band, said Tosh was reluctant to cut the ballad, Nothing But Love, with American soul singer Gwen Guthrie.

The song, from his Wanted Dread And Alive album, was a minor hit in the United States.

Legacy not lost

Tosh's legacy is not lost. Several companies have reissued his albums, most notably Columbia Records, which re-released Legalize It and Equal Rights in the late 1990s.

That company also released Honorary Citizen, a three-CD box set. Peter Tosh Live At The One Love Peace Concert, released by JAD Records in 2000, captured him at his fiery best at the April 1978 Kingston show.

There is no footage of Tosh's performance that night as he prevented filming. "Yuh have some likkle pirate jus' come from America wid dem camera fi get rich offa I an' I. But oonoo mek sure come talk to I because is lightning I flash," he said. The Stepping Razor was never one to compromise.

Peter Tosh trivia

Born in 1944, Peter Tosh was the eldest of the three most famous Wailers. He was one year older than Marley and three years older than Bunny Wailer.

He was recognised as the musician of the trio. Sly Dunbar described Tosh as the "wickedest wah-wah guitarist."

Wailers mentor, Joe Higgs, not Tosh, wrote his signature song, Stepping Razor.

The controversial jacket of Legalise It in which Tosh sits in a ganja field was shot in his home town of Grange Hill, Westmoreland.

Actual name is Winston Hubert McIntosh.

African American guitarists Al Anderson and David Kinsey, who played with Marley, were members of Tosh's Blood, Sweat and Tears band.

- H.C.