Allan ‘Skill’ Cole, Football Legend And Bob Marley’s Former Manager, Dead At 74
The mercurial Allan ‘Skill’ Cole, former Santos and Jamaica football star and manager of reggae superstar Bob Marley, passed away on Tuesday evening at age 74.
His daughter, Debbie Cole, confirmed that the ailing sports legend had passed away after suffering heart failure at an undisclosed medical facility.
Cole was defined by his prowess as a sportsman as much as his close friendship with reggae superstar Bob Marley. He toured with the King of Reggae as road manager for much of the 1970s, and lived for three years in Ethiopia, where he coached the national team.
At the peak of his powers, Cole was a midfield maestro and remained the Jamaica’s youngest senior football international, donning national colours against a Brazilian team when he was only 15 years old. He was one of Jamaica’s most popular sportsmen throughout the 1970s as Cole reached folk hero status with athletic feats for Santos in the local National League that football aficionados labelled as ‘legendary’.
Football genius Alan ‘Skill’ Cole may, perhaps, be the most authentic repository of many untold stories about the life of reggae superstar Robert Nester Marley. Once the music manager of Marley, Cole was extremely close to the music legend, particularly at a time when Marley was on the threshold of becoming the greatest reggae artist of all time.
“Many people jumping on the bandwagon and claiming that they know about Bob, most of it is just fiction,” Cole revealed in a Gleaner interview.
“Bob is a man who never talk much, so it is unlikely that people would know much about him. I am the only person that I can honestly tell you that he didn’t hide anything from. When we used to drive together and sell records, Bob would tell me stories. He would drive, and I would listen, and as soon as anyone came close, he would cut off – and that was the quiet part that nobody knew. He told me his life story, and I don’t think anybody else knows,” Cole revealed.
Music and football were the unifying forces that brought the two mega-stars together. According to Marley’s confidant, “He loved football and I loved music. It was part of a divine plan. That’s how we came together”.
Cole first met Marley at a minor league football match in Trench Town in the early 1960s, but the friendship wasn’t cemented until the latter part of the decade when the Wailers (Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer) began to conduct their own business under their Wail ‘n’ Soul record label.
Right on the heels of this venture, Cole entered into a business relationship with the Wailers by becoming their manager, while Marley had the vision of starting a new company and a new label.
“He wanted something tough like a gong,” Cole reminisced.
The association between the two ventured into certain unexpected areas like songwriting mentorship, and mediation. Cole wrote Marley’s big hit, Rat Race , and co-wrote with him on Natty Dread and Johnny Was, which told the story about a talented young musician who was shot dead.
The recordings One Love, voted the song of the millennium by the BBC, and Cry to Me, originally recorded by the group for the Studio 1 label, were reworked by Marley at the instigation of Cole.
The lives of Cole and Marley also intersected in the Beautiful Game, football.
In a DancehallMag interview a few years ago, Cole rubbished a few misconceptions about his great friend Bob Marley, the King of Reggae and King Pelé, one of the greatest football players of all time.
“Bob Marley never met Pelé, I have seen photos online where the two of them embrace, but that never happened in real life, that’s one. Another rumor is that Bob used to wear Pelé’s jersey at times when he performed, that’s a lie too. He, Bob was a great fan of Pele, but he never wore his jersey at shows. I know that Pele listened to reggae music, he loved it…he listened to Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley,” Cole told DancehallMag.
Cole, who was also tour manager for Bob Marley and The Wailers during the 1970s, played against Pelé during the Brazilian great’s 1975 trip to Jamaica.