Toward the end of his life, a doctor told Bob Marley that he had “more cancer in him than he had ever seen in a living human being” and that he had only months to live.
Three years earlier, the reggae icon had been diagnosed with melanoma under his toenail in 1977. Doctors removed the nail and nail bed, but Marley refused to have the toe amputated to stop the spread of the disease, insisting that it violated his Rastafarian, a monotheistic religion born in the 1930s that presents itself as the heir to Christianity.
By 1980, the cancer had spread throughout his body, infecting his liver, lungs, and even his brain. Marley played his final show on September 30, 1980, in Pittsburgh, performing Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.”
He died eight months later at the age of 36.