Allan "Skill" Cole
Producer. Reggae, roots
- Active
- 1970-2025
- Sunset
- September 9, 2025, Kingston, Jamaica
- Also known as
- Skill, Skilly, Allan Cole, Skilly Cole
Allan "Skill" Cole was one of Jamaica's greatest footballers and Bob Marley's closest friend, the Wailers' tour manager through the 1970s, and a credited writer of "War."
A national-team player and a star of Santos in the 1970s, when the club won four national titles in a row, he played briefly for Náutico in Brazil in 1972 and left rather than cut his dreadlocks, which he called his covenant. To Marley he was "his football hero," and in the 1970s he became the band's tour manager and Marley's right-hand man. He took the Wailers' fight for airplay to the radio stations: in later courtroom evidence he described how he and Marley used intimidation and damage to property to get Wailers records played.
"War," Marley's setting of Haile Selassie's 1963 speech to the United Nations, is credited to Cole for the idea and to Carlton Barrett for the music; Marley credited close friends in this way, by Stephen Davis's account, to get around his publishing contract, which left the ownership of several songs in dispute. Cole went on to coach Port Morant and spent much of his later life at Santos. He departed at the University Hospital of the West Indies at seventy-four.
Last updated October 23, 2026
Connections
- Bob Marley (employer)
- The Wailers (employer)
- Carlton Barrett (collaborator)
Notes
- Gregory Bryce, "'He's Leaving Behind a Huge Legacy,'" Jamaica Gleaner, October 12, 2025, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/sports/20251012/hes-leaving-behind-huge-legacy.
- Bryce, "Huge Legacy," quoting Kay Osborne: his locks were "his covenant."
- Roger Steffens, "The Night Bob Marley Got Shot," Rolling Stone Australia, July 10, 2017, https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-night-bob-marley-got-shot-1877. Bryce, "Huge Legacy," on the tour management. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 474, calls him "Bob Marley's right-hand man."
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 474. Bryce, "Huge Legacy," says he challenged RJR to play Wailers music.
- "War (Bob Marley Song)," Wikipedia, accessed October 21, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_(Bob_Marley_song), citing Stephen Davis, Bob Marley.
- Bryce, "Huge Legacy," which gives his death on September 9.
