No. 130 - Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Three Little Birds” changed my life

Joshua Murray goes back to the roots

Feb 27, 2026

This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.

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• 5 min read •

Rise up this morning, smiled with the rising sun…

I walked out the door, bags packed and ready, a teenager who’d never really lived away from home. My mom came out behind me. About to lock the door, she paused, turned to me, and — in a concerned voice working quietly to keep its composure — asked, “Do you have Bob Marley with you?” I pulled a cassette mixtape out of my jacket pocket (blazer arms always rolled up, I felt a kinship with the guys in the Specials, the English Beat, and their ska ilk; more punk-adjacent than well-dressed). “Yep,” I said with a little smile. Marley occupied one side of that tape. “Good,” she added, “’cause when it gets tough you have to go back to the roots,” and she locked the door behind us.

Don’t worry ’bout a thing, cause every little thing gonna be alright

Summer 1986, leaving for the airport to fly to Pittsburgh, I was a 17-year-old heading out into the wild world on my own for the first time for real. Eager to begin studying aeronautical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, not knowing then that engineering would be a one-year stepping stone towards an industrial design degree — with minors in photography, French, and German — and, later, decades as a designer in the United States and Europe.

Singing sweet songs…

Check my pockets any time during high school and you’d likely find:

1. A guitar pick

I began playing guitar and bass in my early teens and was obsessed. I had one in hand whenever possible, sculpting my fingers into new shapes that would end up etched into my muscle memory.

2. Oodles of Noodles instant ramen

In the ’80s the pickings for a vegetarian were slim to none. A growing boy had to be prepared! “Vegetarian alternative” was not really a phrase yet. Nutrition, apparently not a concern.

3. A cassette tape

Filled with my favorite band of the moment, always ready for a stereo, boombox, walkman, or car radio to appear. One album would occupy each side of the tape for weeks, or even months, eventually rotating out.

The Cure, the Specials, R.E.M. (Murmur & Reckoning). Sometimes a mixtape passed from friend to friend, or sibling, quality eroding with each copy of a copy, made it into my pocket — like the one named “waste don’t youth you,” full of punk, pop, new wave, subversive music only broadcast on college radio. But Bob Marley was a constant, an old-time favorite, “mom music,” along with the likes of the Grateful Dead, James Taylor, Richie Havens, Cat Stevens, Carole King, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and many more. Even Lionel Richie and the Sugarhill Gang would join the mix of music from home sometimes, but rarely did they inhabit my pocket tapes.

... melodies pure and true

My world was a lot smaller then.

Traveling beyond the east coast was barely imaginable.

A lack of interest in sleepaway camp as a kid was just as well since my hippie parents didn’t have money for that anyway. Having been in and out of the hospital due to a serious asthma problem as a small child, perhaps all the days, weeks, and on one occasion over a month spent there at such a tender age removed any childhood inclination towards solo wanderlust.

The previous summer was the only time I’d been away from home for a longer period on my own, on a grant for political science and computer programming summer courses at Yale. Room and board included. Though my dorm was only a 15-minute walk away, I went home just once during those eight weeks. Being so close by, it was a low-stakes first flight from the nest. But interesting new worlds began to open academically and socially while I was there, and after that experience I had no trepidation about leaving home when it was time to leave for college.

In the decades since, I’ve been able to visit and live in different places across the United States, for work and play, and to travel extensively throughout Europe and Asia, including multiple trips to Japan, China, and Singapore.

Unfathomable before.

I was born in Midtown Manhattan, just north of Hell’s Kitchen, in 1968. My dad has lived in Brooklyn since then. His Irish-American parents had shallow roots in New York and Boston, and deep roots in Ireland. Cork and Limerick on his school teacher mom Marie’s side, and Longford on his NYPD and Army officer dad Tom’s side. Close enough for my dad and his brother to have dual citizenship, but distant enough for him to never have actually been to the Emerald Isle.

When I was about five years old, my 18-month-older brother and I ended up with our mom and stepdad, Steve, in New Haven when they were both, against all logical odds, accepted to matriculate at Yale University; mom for undergrad, Steve for architecture. This was especially unimaginable and unlikely for a young, poor, black mother of two from a working-class family in New York, only a few years after Yale had decided to begin allowing women to study as undergraduates. My brother and I did most of our growing up in that ivory-tower/wild-west town, and it was apparent that our little sister was in our mom’s belly when she graduated in 1975. Mom ended up going back to Yale in the early ’80s for a master’s of graphic design, subsequently becoming a professor there for many years. We’re pretty sure she’s the first woman with both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale to have a child (my brother) who earned three Yale diplomas as well.

Not bad work for a girl born into a working-class family in New York just after World War II. Her father, Willie, came from the South, a black man with roots in enslavement, and, further back, some Native American ancestry. He made his way to New York and became a career bus driver. Her mother, Mary, was a homemaker and part-time house cleaner, born to an Afro-Caribbean family from Saint Kitts.

This is my message to you-ou-ou

“Going back to the roots” could have many different meanings. I didn’t reflect deeply upon it back then. But I played music every day in college — in my room, in bands, everywhere — and that was surely crucial in keeping enough balance to persevere.

Don’t worry ’bout a thing, cause every little thing gonna be alright

This song is simply joy. ◆

About Joshua

Joshua Murray grew up on the east coast of the USA, but he has been living in Malmö, Sweden the past 30 years and is the father of a 15-year-old. He also spends some of his free time at his girlfriend’s countryside house on the Danish Baltic Sea island of Bornholm. Josh is a musician (guitar, bass, vocals) who’s played continuously in bands since he was 15 years old, and he’s worked as an industrial designer his entire career. His current free time activity of choice is bouldering.

Instagram @moofboo_josh

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