“I Shot The Sheriff’ is like I shot wickedness,” Bob Marley said in a 1975 interview. “That’s not really a sheriff, it’s the elements of wickedness. The elements of that song is people been judging you and you can’t stand it no more and you explode, you just explode.”

The song may have been about shooting wickedness, but Marley offered a different take in an interview a year earlier when asked about the meaning of the lyrics. This time he was a bit more blunt. “I want to say ‘I shot the police’ but the government would have made a fuss so I said ‘I shot the sheriff’ instead,” he said. “But it’s the same idea: justice.”

According to the book Wailing Blues — The Story of Bob Marley’s Wailers, Marley seemed to enjoy keeping a shroud of mystery around the song. The book describes when Marley first met Eric Clapton, whose cover of “I Shot The Sheriff” went on to become a #1 hit. Author John Masouri reports that Marley wouldn’t give a direct answer to Clapton about the song’s meaning, telling him some of the lyrics were true but refusing to divulge which ones.

“That’s not really a sheriff, it’s the elements of wickedness. The elements of that song is people been judging you and you can’t stand it no more and you explode.”

Whatever his original intent, Marley and The Wailers’ song about killing a sheriff in self-defense and being falsely accused of killing a deputy became an anthem against corruption and injustice. It was a hit record that increased their fan base and visibility. And while Marley and other music journalists have stated that the song’s meaning is metaphorical, recent revelations indicate there may be a more personal layer to the song.

According to Esther Anderson, a former girlfriend of Marley who co-directed the 2011 documentary Bob Marley: The Making of a Legend, the song’s lyrics grew out of their disagreements over her use of birth control. In a review of Anderson’s film in the Miami New Times, J.J. Colagrande reported that Marley believed using birth control was a sin and “the doctor who prescribed those baby-killing pills became the sheriff.”

The article goes on to highlight this passage form the song as having particular significance: “Sheriff John Brown always hated me/For what, I don’t know/Every time I plant a seed/He said kill it before it grow.”

As people have often interpreted the meaning of “plant a seed” as a marijuana reference, this new revelation gives listeners an interesting alternative. Instead of a police officer telling Marley to kill his pot plants, perhaps the song is talking about Marley’s anger towards a doctor prescribing his girlfriend birth control.

Lyrics often have multiple layers. When a musician writes down words for their music, meaning can creep in that the artist isn’t even aware of. Sometimes lyrics have little initial purpose and morph into something meaningful over the years.

Without Marley here to give us his version of the story, it is unfair to say the song is about one fixed topic. But it is interesting to consider Ester Anderson’s version of how “I Shot The Sheriff” came to be while listening to the song.