What Actually Happened
The Last Night He Ever Played
Two nights before Pittsburgh, Bob Marley collapsed while jogging through Central Park. He'd just played Madison Square Garden, co-headlining with the Commodores, finishing the U.S. leg of his Uprising tour. Doctors found what a 1977 diagnosis had already warned was possible: the melanoma had metastasized throughout his body. They told him to cancel the tour immediately.
He flew to Pittsburgh anyway.
On September 23, 1980, at the Stanley Theatre, Bob Marley walked onstage one more time. Nobody in that room knew it, but they were watching the last full concert he would ever play — twenty songs, closing on "Get Up, Stand Up." He never performed live again. He died eight months later, on May 11, 1981, in Miami, at 36.
The setlist below is real — the same set the Marley estate released in 2011 as the live album Live Forever: September 23, 1980 • Stanley Theatre • Pittsburgh, PA, recorded at that actual show. This isn't a set someone imagined he might have played. This is the set he played.
