"Bunny Wailer is not an easy guy to get in touch with. Bob Marley is gone. Peter Tosh is gone. Bunny is the last surviving Wailer and those are pretty big shoes to fill. There's an endless stream of press, promoters and musicians trying to find him, and as far as I can see he ignores them all. Forget about trying to get him on the phone. We spent a week talking to his manager, trying to locate him. People would tell us they just saw his Lexus in one of the hotel parking lots, or that he was just hanging out at Skateland. We always managed to 'juss miss 'im, mon.' Finally we decided to visit him at home, uninvited. His house is a fortress with an iron gate out front and barbed wire topping tall concrete walls. On top of the walls sit concrete statues of the Lion of Judah. We found him sitting on his porch, holding court with several of his bredren, smoking a spliff that looked like the butt-end of a carrot. Bunny and the herb go way back. He spent a year and two months in jail for possession of ganja in 1967 and has since been a regular target for police harassment. He greeted us politely and showed us a shopping bag full of colas from his latest harvest.

'Who grew this?' we asked, each rolling a spliff. 'Jah grow this...and the sun and the wind and the rain...' No doubt about it, the best herb I had on the whole trip was Bunny's.

Bunny is an enigmatic individual. He talks like a teacher, clearly and slowly, concentrating on every word. He even laughs slow. After the interview, he told us to meet him at the same time 'tomorrow' for photos. He never showed. We visited him every day after that, joining the small group of people who, as far as I can see, do nothing but wait for Bunny. Even his wife would drive by looking for him. After a week of waiting, all we got was sunburn." - Chris Simunek

High Times:

When did you start smoking herb?

Bunny Wailer:

Within this dispensation of time, about 17 years of age I put my first spliff to my mouth and it taste good, heh-heh-heh, and I am still doing it you know. It still taste good. It hasn't lost that taste, the feeling and everything that goes with it.

High Times:

How does herb affect you musically?

Bunny Wailer:

Herbs take you further, within the herb faculty. It relaxes you and releaxation makes you go far within meditatin. Whatever you do, herb helps you to do it better. Heh-heh-heh. A reality, you know? You see things that you will not ordinarily see when you are looking through herbs.

High Times:

How would you evalute the herb situation in Jamaica for Rastas? What are they going through right now?

Bunny Wailer:

What they have been always going throug, same old story-go to jail, charged, fined and then sent to prison for having ganja in your possession or cultivating or importing, exporting traffic. Any charge that can be put on you. They say that we have been liberated from slavery. Before the first slave was enslaved, man used to smoke his peace pipe. So we still await that liberal day where we can burn our spliff without worrying about being penalized and thrown in dungeons.

High Times:

In your lifetime have you seen it come closer to that

Bunny Wailer:

I have seen, in traveling, countries make it easier for people to just smoke the herbs without being molested. That is a good practice. Jamaica should adopt that practice. You will see less people going to jail for something that really is not harmful. If you smoke one joint too many all you do is fall asleep. Harmless, you can't hurt no one.

Herbs is everything planted by seed. So why concentrate on one herb when there are so many other herbs? Why make one illegal? Why make one brother the sinner? Herb still is what it has been through the ages. Natural seeds you put in the earth, water it, grows in the sun and wind and the rain, and the power of the sustenance of life that was injected in billions of ages ago still is there. It is not something you can add to, although you could take from it, yeah. Not like man's machines who have not yet seen a pea grain come out one of those machines. We don't see all these seeds-what you call it? Cyber-herbs! We don't want no cyber-herb!

Machines made by man. Man was given choices. If you think right, and invent right, everything would be all right. But if you fool around thinking wrong things and inventing wrong things you will hurt yourself, and until you stop doing that you are going to keep hurting yourself. It is going to be a continuous hurt on the Earth.

High Times:

How did you get involved with the RCO?

Bunny Wailer:

Rastafari himself, Haile Selassie I tell us that we should motivate ourselves as a people to centralize and organize at home and abroad. So we are like the ant and we practice ant-ology so that the Rastaman within his revolution will develop the stages necessary to obey Rastafari's word of centralizing, organizing within the unification of the Rasses. It's a command of Jah Rastafari.

The music. Reggae music identifies with Ras. Reggae ganja Ras. The Rastaman sound the trumpet which is reggae, goes out with a song that breaks every barrier-color barrier, class barrier, rich and poor barrier, everything. The Nyabingi is the order so the trumpet sounds from the Nyabingi because Nyabingi is first, then reggae comes out of the Nyabingi and it brings nations together. That is what made reggae and will ever be reggae, it comes for all nations. It is a beauty to look at Sunsplash to look at Sumfest in that way, to see the multiracial nation. It brings everybody together and though sometimes the message is hard, it doesn't hurt.

High Times:

It is also the only music that popular that deals with spiritual issues.

Bunny Wailer:

Truth and right, it does not just deal with the romance, most music deals with romance. Romance yes, but not too much of it. Not all. We have serious things to be dealing with because romance makes babies. You have to feed them or else they're going to feed on you. That is what you see happening today before our eyes, the overpopulation of the Earth. So many mouths have to be fed and there is not enough food, there is not an emphasis on food in that respect, it is more on commerce and arms. But what is wealth without health? A guy has a lot of money but he spent so much time having money that his liver broke down, that his kidney broke down, that his heart broke down. The money can't buy back those things so easily.

High Times:

What do you think is the biggest misconception about herb in the Jamaican government? Why do you think they are so afraid of legalizing it?

Bunny Wailer:

It is reasons you know. You see most things have to have reasons. They did not have any reasons in the first place to penalize people for it, so it is hard to find a reason for them to legalize it. Somebody came up on the secret and then you could be penalized for finding a pot of gold. Heh-heh-heh. Even in your own garden.

Bill Clinton claims he didn't inhale, who is there to say he didn't? These leaders. I think they sit down in their offices too much. They don't go amongst the people, eat out of the pots they eat out of, smoke out of their pipes, sit on the corner, talk, reason, fall asleep. You could fall asleep on hte bench and wake up and the people are there with you. They need that. They are afraid of the same people that put them there. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall...He became an egg, he stayed away too long. Heh-heh-heh. Why can't the President go among Americans if God bless America? He need some spliff, some chalice. These guys worry too much, they don't pray as often as they worry, something is wrong.

You have to be careful of that monster who sucks the soul from man, who feeds from the soul of innocence and says he has power. One can't get strength from the weak. If you have a little baby you can't feed off that baby's legs, arms, whatever until he can stand on his own two feet. You can't get strong from a baby other than giving him strength so that when he is strong he will defend you with the strength you gave him. But if you think you are going to feed upon his little weakness, you better pary that he does not get strong.

The above interview appeared in the January 1997 issue of High Times magazine. The issue was also the annual High Times Jamaican issue.