T-Bone Burnett found unused Bob Dylan lyrics from the 1960s in shoeboxes at Big Pink and asked if musicians could set them to music. Dylan said yes. Marcus joined Elvis Costello, Jim James and others to write and record songs for them — with Sam Jones documenting everything.
Where this was said
At 50:16 · chapter starts 47:20
The story of the train tour starts in 2011, when someone offered Mumford & Sons access to vintage rail cars and they said yes, doing it with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. That tour won a Grammy for its associated film. The second iteration, more recently, was more ambitious: hire all their favourite musicians as a house band, have special guests come on each night, learn their songs the day before. Lainey Wilson, Darius Rucker, Maggie Rogers, and Noah Kahn all showed up. [1] — Marcus Mumford "Mumford & Sons hired all their favourite musicians as a house band and rode a train across America, learning special guests' songs the day …" 47:15 Everything was run as a socialistic enterprise — everyone got paid the same, and after the considerable expense of the trains, whatever was left got shared out. Sam Jones, who also filmed SmartLess On the Road, directed the documentary. Will and Sean light up at the mention of Sam. Marcus adds that he also worked with Sam on the New Basement Tapes documentary — setting unused Bob Dylan 1960s lyrics (found in shoeboxes at Big Pink) to original music alongside Elvis Costello and Jim James.
In Australia on the opening night of the Prizefighter tour, Mumford & Sons started a new song that went so catastrophically wrong — everyone in the wrong key and wrong time — that they just stopped halfway through and never restarted it. Marcus wanted to fall through the floor.
Reggae didn't emerge from thin air — it was built layer by layer from mento in the 1940s, ska in the late 1950s, and rocksteady in the mid-1960s. Each stage absorbed new influences, from transistor radios picking up Miami R&B to the distinctive 2-and-4 rhythmic accent that defines the genre.
Before hip-hop existed, Jamaican DJs were already doing it. Electricity spreading across Jamaica enabled mobile 'sound systems,' and DJs developed toasting — speaking and singing over recorded music — a tradition that DJ Kool Herc brought from Kingston to the Bronx at age 12.
Joe Higgs is reggae's great unsung hero. This Kingston musician took teenage Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer under his wing and taught them how to sing, write songs, and make music — at a time when most artists would have focused on their own careers. Without him, the Wailers probably just would have sucked.
Reggae archivist Roger Steffens' analogy says it all: Bob Marley was reggae's Martin Luther King Jr., making the music universally palatable; Peter Tosh was its Malcolm X, inserting fierce militant political energy. Together, they gave the Wailers a depth no single voice could achieve alone.
King Tubby built his own hardware from cast-off recording gear to strip vocals and create dubbed-out instrumental reggae — essentially inventing electronic music in Kingston before Kraftwerk did it in Germany. The dubplate he created became the raw material for DJs to toast over, seeding hip-hop.
Two days before the 1976 Smile Jamaica anti-violence concert, gunmen shot Bob Marley in the chest and shoulder, shot Rita Marley, and wounded two others. He showed up and played anyway. The concert had already drawn accusations that Marley was a tool of the PNP government — a charge that frustrated him deeply.
Peter Tosh's killer was a man Tosh had taken in after prison, giving him shelter and food. The man repaid that generosity by holding Tosh hostage, torturing him for money, and shooting him in the head. It is one of the most brutal betrayals in music history.
The Windrush Generation brought Caribbean music to London after World War II, and reggae's 2-and-4 rhythm lodged itself deep in British culture — giving birth to ska bands like The Specials, pop acts like UB40, and even punk. Johnny Rotten was a reggae fan, and Public Image Limited has the dub influence to prove it.
Reggaetón didn't come from nowhere. It emerged from underground Spanish-language reggae-rap scenes in Panama and Puerto Rico, drawing directly on Jamaican reggae's rhythms and attitude. The line from Kingston to Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance is a straight one.
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