13 April 1973 – BOB MARLEY And His WAILERS Release Monumental Album ‘CATCH A FIRE’ 52 Years Ago Today

Significant longplayers from the past

13 April 2025

The late reggae icon BOB MARLEY and his WAILERS
released their monumental 5th LP CATCH A FIRE.

Info on the album’s cover: The original 1973 vinyl release was enclosed in a sleeve depicting a Zippo lighter. The sleeve functioned like a real Zippo lighter case, opening
at a side hinge to reveal the record within. Only the original pressing of 20,000 had the Zippo cover; because each cover had to be hand-riveted, which was not cost-effective.

Subsequent pressings had an alternative cover featuring an Esther Anderson portrait of Marley smoking a spliff. with the album now credited to Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Rolling Stone: “‘Concrete Jungle’ and ‘Slave Driver’ crackle with streetwise immediacy, while ‘Kinky Reggae’ and ‘Stir It Up’ revel in the music’s vast capacity for good-time skanking. ‘Stop That Train’ and ‘400 Years,’ both written by Peter Tosh, indicate the original Wailers weren’t strictly a one-man show”.

SINGLE

ALBUM


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Instagram – All Albums

Big Albums Released This Day In 1973 (2) And 1979

Back in time…

13 April 2021

Artist: DAVID BOWIE
8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016
Album: ALADDIN SANE – 6th LP
Released: 13 April 1973 – 48 years ago today

Notes: Recorded with his band The Spiders from Mars.
Partly thanks to the mega-hit ‘The Jean the Genie’ the album
topped the UK charts.

Rolling Stone wrote: “Aladdin is grander, more produced:
David is more than ever more mastermind than participant.
Aladdin’s very eclecticism makes it less exposed, conceptually,
than Ziggy.”

Stream here…

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DAVID BOWIE: All Albums

Artist: BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS
Album: CATCH A FIRE (means: ‘Burn In Hell’) – 5th LP
Released: 13th April 1973 – 48 years ago today

Notes: 2 songs written by Peter Tosh, 7 by Marley.
The cover sleeve depicted a Zippo lighter. At first
the LP wasn’t a great success at all on release. But
after The Wailers toured the US and the UK in
support of the record sales exploded.

BBC Music said: “Reggae, up until this point, was a niche genre,
bought in the UK by ex-pat West Indians. It was even less widespread
in the States. Catch A Fire changed all that. Without it Bob Marley would
never have become a figurehead and no one outside of the Caribbean
would have heard of Bunny Wailer or Peter Tosh either. For this alone
Chris Blackwell should be canonised.”

Stream here…

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BOB MARLEY: All Albums

Band: THIN LIZZY
Album: BLACK ROSE: A LEGEND – 9th LP
Released: 13 April 1979 – 42 years ago today

Notes: Peaked at #2 in the UK. The first full
album with Gary Moore. The track/single ‘Sarah
was about his newborn daughter.

All Music wrote: “Thin Lizzy’s last true classic album,
and their “most musically varied, accomplished, and
successful studio album.”

Stream here…

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THIN LIZZY: All Albums