Start date late October 1979 Legs 1 | End date 6 January 1980 Leg 1 | |
No. of shows 41 in North America
3 in the Caribbean
2 in Africa
46 in total Period October 1979 – 6 January 1980 | ||
The Survival Tour was a concert tour organised to support the album Survival by Bob Marley & The Wailers. It was Marley's second-to-last tour.
The tour started in Boston in late October 1979, and ended in Libreville, Gabon, on 6 January 1980. During 1979, which was the International Year of the Child, the band made appearances at a few benefit concerts for children, as was the case on 10 August 1979, in Jamaica, prior to the Survival Tour, and on 15 December 1979 in Nassau, Bahamas. The tour took place mainly in the United States, but also included performances in the Caribbean and in Africa.
The performance in Santa Barbara, California on 25 November has been released on VHS and DVD as "Bob Marley - The Legend Live". The performance in Oakland, featuring Ronnie Wood (The Rolling Stones) in the encore five days later, had also been taped on video by Bill Graham Presents, but hasn't been released yet.
Most concerts in the United States and in Africa were opened by soul and R&B singer Betty Wright. Furthermore the Survival Tour was the only tour the band included a horn section, featuring Glen Da Costa on saxophone and David Madden on trumpet. After the concerts in Gabon the band returned to Jamaica to record the Uprising album and to make trips to Brazil and to Zimbabwe to perform at its independence celebrations on 18 April 1980, before kicking off the Uprising Tour in Europe by the end of May.
While on tour Marley performed for the first time in Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, and in Africa.
Setlist
The standard setlist of the tour mostly looked like the following:
At the beginning of the tour which started with seven shows at the Apollo Theater in New York City, Marley varied the setlists much more than later on the tour. Most shows had a standard setlist which closes with "Exodus", and an encore set which usually ended with "Get Up, Stand Up". From show to show sometimes an additional song was edged in the middle or attached at the end of the setlist, like "Ride Natty Ride", "Natty Dread", "Lively Up Yourself", "Roots, Rock, Reggae", "Zimbabwe", "Stir It Up", "Kinky Reggae", "So Much Trouble In The World", "Burnin' And Lootin'", "Natural Mystic", "So Much Things To Say", "Rat Race", "Rebel Music" and "Survival". Live performances of each of these songs happened very rarely during the tour.