We had unsupervised access to Marley and the Wailers band during their soundcheck before the show the day before the interview. The Wailers all seemed in a good mood. Greg saw band members walking up the steps backstage at Northrop with grocery bags filled with pot and rolling joints that he jokingly referred to as the size of the Sunday paper, big stashes of the sacred Rasta sacrament ushered into the university building like take-out food.

Backstage, Bob begrudgingly posed for Greg amidst a bunch of percussion instruments, looking tangled up in Bob. He also flirted with Pauline, one of the Schon Productions women minding the backstage area and in charge of catering (although the group ate their own prepared Rasta food, mostly curries). He sang a verse of the Hank Williams classic, “Hey, Good Lookin,'” to her with a wide smile, his dreads tucked up under his cap. “Whatcha got cookin’?

Soundcheck started and the hired, young British roadies scattered to plugs and amplifiers. But not before one absently quipped how much he detested “that N-word Rasta shit” they had to smell on tour at every stop. In Tim White’s definitive 2006 Marley biography, there is much talk of “magic” around Bob and the Rastafarians White encountered, inexplicable realities that to materialistic, science-worshipping Westerners does not fit most paradigms. But the photo guy and I never anticipated experiencing it ourselves.

After about 20 minutes of jamming, the Wailers’ heavy sound shifted so dramatically that it stopped me as I strolled through the auditorium listening to the mix. Even the little racist roadie bastards scurrying about onstage halted in their tracks like a heart attack. A groove so pronounced and indescribable materialized from nowhere, instantaneously emanating from the players onstage but coming from someplace else entirely.

It was an undulating, lost rhythm that lasted 20 seconds maybe — although time really ceased to exist in those moments. The sound seemed to shred time-space, freezing those who heard it. I’ve thought it about for many years and could never imagine hearing it again. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “The time was out of joint.”

Was this a real “Rastaman Vibration,” that the group sang about? It’s convenient to say it was, and it wasn’t. But it enveloped the whole of Northrup. The concert later that night delivered everything one could expect from this powerful artist and a grippingly flawless band. The balcony literally bounced to the rhythms as the second floor audience danced in place.