Survival Tour

The Survival Tour was a concert tour organised to support the album Survival by Bob Marley & The Wailers. It was Marley's second-last tour.

The tour started in Boston in late October 1979, and ended in Libreville, Gabon, on January 6, 1980. During 1979 which was the International Year of the Child the band made appearances at a few benefit concerts for children, as was the case on August 10, 1979, in Jamaica, prior to the Survival Tour, and on December 15, 1979 in Nassau, Bahamas. The tour mainly took place in the United States, but also included performances in the Caribbean and in Africa.

The performance in Santa Barbara, California on November 25 has been released on VHS and DVD as "Bob Marley - The Legend Live". The performance in Oakland, featuring Ronnie Wood (The Rolling Stones) in the encore five days later, had also been taped on video by Bill Graham Presents, but hasn't been released yet.

Most concerts in the United States and in Africa were opened by soul and R&B singer Betty Wright. Furthermore the Survival Tour was the only tour the band included a horn section, featuring Glen Da Costa on saxophone and David Madden on trumpet. After the concerts in Gabon the band returned to Jamaica to record the Uprising album and to make trips to Brazil and to Zimbabwe to perform at its independence celebrations on April 18, 1980, before kicking off the Uprising Tour in Europe by the end of May.

While on tour Marley performed for the first time in Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, and in Africa.

Setlist

The standard setlist of the tour mostly looked like the following:

• "Positive Vibration"
• "Wake Up And Live"
• "Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)"
• "Concrete Jungle"
• "I Shot The Sheriff"
• "Running Away" / "Crazy Baldhead" (medley)
• "Ambush In The Night"
• "The Heathen"
• "War" / "No More Trouble"
• "Africa Unite"
• "One Drop"
• "Exodus"
• "No Woman, No Cry"
• "Jammin'"
• "Is This Love?"
• "Get Up, Stand Up"

At the beginning of the tour which started with seven shows at the Apollo Theater in New York City, Marley varied the setlists much more than later on the tour. Most shows had a standard setlist which closes with "Exodus", and an encore set which usually ended with "Get Up, Stand Up". From show to show sometimes an additional song was edged in the middle or attached at the end of the setlist, like "Ride Natty Ride", "Natty Dread", "Lively Up Yourself", "Roots, Rock, Reggae", "Zimbabwe", "Stir It Up", "Kinky Reggae", "So Much Trouble In The World", "Burnin' And Lootin'", "Natural Mystic", "So Much Things To Say", "Rat Race", "Rebel Music" and "Survival". Live performances of each of these songs happened very rarely during the tour.

Tour dates