Bunny Wailer dead: The last of the Wailers

Reggae legend Neville Livingston was the last standing Wailer.

For 34 years, Neville O’Riley Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailer, lived as the repository of the history of reggae music and the band he formed alongside Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Tosh was shot dead in an attempted robbery in 1987. This was six years after Bob died of cancer, leaving Bunny as the surviving member of the original Wailers. Now the world of reggae is wailing over Bunny, who died on Tuesday aged 73.

Revered in many forms – the keeper of reggae’s flame, guardian of the Rastafari movement – Bunny was born in 1947 in rural Jamaica. He is one of the last of a generation of reggae artistes that pioneered the genre, including Toots Hibbert of the group Toots and the Maytals, who gave the world the name reggae. Toots died last year.