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The only cigarette lighter I’ve ever owned.

It’s the original cover of Bob Marley & The Wailers’ Catch a Fire. It looks like a Zippo lighter and, hinged and riveted, it opens like one too. Only the very early copies had this cover and I bought it with a record token I’d received for my birthday. I only bought the record for the cover, I didn’t really know who Bob Marley was. It was only years later when he became huge that I even remembered that my precious Zippo cover contained one of his albums. Bob Marley would have been 70 today and like most of the world, I’m a massive fan. I’ve spent my life boasting that I was into Bob Marley long before everyone else and could prove it by producing Catch a Fire in its original Zippo sleeve. But the truth is, I wasn’t. And today seems the right day to finally admit it.

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