There has been a terrible mistake, a catastrophic collapse in communication. I am sitting on a black leather stool in a recording studio in Jamaica. I am wearing a grey Bob Marley T-shirt and there's a pair of padded headphones on my head, a silver dimpled microphone in front of my mouth and an acoustic guitar in my arms. On the other side of the glass is Dr Dizzle, wunderkind record producer and - and this is the terrible mistake - he seems to think I can sing.
"In your own time," says Dizzle. "We're recording." I stare in panic at the photographer, who is furiously snapping away. He, too, seems to be expecting something only I know I cannot deliver. In front of me are the lyrics to "Redemption Song" alongside a sheet that explains the chord changes. It looks simple enough on paper but in the recording studio, freakishly cold despite the blistering heat outside, it seems about as easy as Chinese algebra.
Dizzle is hunched forward in his chair, his hands hovering above the bank of sliders and switches that form the mixing desk. "You hearing me OK?" he asks. "I'm still recording. Do you want me to count you in?" They say that in the final moments before death your life flashes before your eyes; sitting in that studio, I saw my life flash past - not the whole thing, mind you - just the few days since I had arrived in Jamaica, when all this had seemed such a good idea.
"This your first time in Jamaica?" asked Earl, the driver who had met me at Kingston Airport. Yes it is, I say. "And what brings you to Jamaica?" Bob Marley. He nods, no further explanation needed. Marley may have died 28 years ago, aged only 36, but in Jamaica, where he was born and raised, he is everywhere. As we drive I see men in Marley T-shirts, roadside shacks painted red, gold and green and adorned with the reggae icon's face, and street vendors hawking flags and posters bearing his dreadlocked visage.
Had he lived, Bob Marley would have turned 65 next year, an anniversary that is unlikely to pass uncelebrated here in Jamaica. As a huge Bob Marley fan I am here on a pilgrimage but I don't just want to visit his old haunts: I want to record my own unique version of one of my favourite tracks, "Redemption Song".
That is why Earl is driving me to Geejam, a luxury hotel in Port Antonio, in whose recording studio the likes of Björk, Gwen Stefani and Gorillaz have recorded albums. In the past year Geejam has opened the studio to "ordinary" guests, who can, at no extra charge, take advantage of the professional recording equipment.
Who hasn't nursed dreams of being a rock star? When Barack Obama admitted he only decided to run for president because he couldn't be Bruce Springsteen, he confirmed my suspicion that most of us are only doing what we do because we never got to be rock stars. Geejam is going to give me that second chance, and, as the car bumps along the winding pitted roads, fields of green sugar plantation rippling in the breeze, I allow myself a little fantasy: that this could be the start of something big, that perhaps my long-hidden talent will finally be revealed to an astonished world.
Three hours after leaving Kingston the car finally turns up a tiny road and reaches a large wooden gate. The gates swing open: I have arrived.
Geejam is in the eastern part of Jamaica and a world away from the tourist-thronged beaches of Montego Bay. The hotel sprawls across six acres between the foothills of the John Crow and Blue Mountain chains and the Caribbean. There are seven rooms altogether: a villa with three bedrooms and its own swimming pool, a suite, and three one-bedroom villas scattered across the estate.
As I arrive, a young woman hands me the key to my room and a mobile phone with presets for the restaurant, room service and all the main staff at the hotel. I'm in the suite, called Drum & Bass, and to reach it I have to haul my luggage down a succession of stone steps in the fading light, past groves of avocado, plum, apple and star-fruit trees.
From the outside Drum & Bass looks like a simple wooden cabin; inside it is a style-fixated technophile's wet dream. A flat-screen television is loaded with hundreds of films and a huge music library, and the iPod dock comes with a remote control in case stretching to reach it is too much like hard work.
There's a steam shower in the bathroom, and a Philippe Starck bath so deep I suspect if I used it I would never get out. The room is so absurdly luxurious and expensive that I fully expect to see groupies listed on the 24-hour room service menu. I sit outside on the wicker chaise longue, gazing out towards the Caribbean sea, while fireflies sparkle and crickets crackle in the indigo darkness.
I awake to the sound of cockerels in the distance. The mobile rings. It is Jon Baker, the owner of Geejam, who has promised to take me on a drive around the area. Baker is British and he made his money from music, moved to New York and bought Geejam 18 years ago, initially as a holiday home and then a recording studio.
"The record industry has been in decline, so it was obvious that just being a recording studio was not going to pay the bills," he explains. "That was why I decided to turn it into a hotel." While Geejam is owned by Baker, it is managed by Chris Blackwell, the music impresario who founded Island Records and was instrumental in making Bob Marley the legend he became. Geejam's guests tend to work in creative industries - photography, music and film. Former visitors include Grace Jones, Sharon Stone and the graffiti artist Banksy, who left some original stencils on hotel walls.
They come for privacy, and for the glamour that has clung to Port Antonio ever since Errol Flynn and his third wife, Patrice, arrived here in the 1950s. He described Port Antonio as "more beautiful than any woman he'd ever seen" - which couldn't have made Patrice feel too special. Flynn bought a 3,000-acre cattle farm and settled here, and that drew celebrities including Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, the Aga Khan and Sophia Loren to Port Antonio during the 60s.
A favourite of theirs was Frenchman's Cove, a gorgeous palm-fringed beach that was almost completely deserted the morning Jon and I visited. As Jon and I head towards the Blue Lagoon, he spots a friend on the street and slows the car down to say hello. It is Sean Paul, the reggae superstar, who promises to swing past later. They exchange numbers, I tentatively bump fists with Paul, and Jon continues driving.
How much of a draw is the recording studio, I ask. "There are loads of people who always wanted to be musicians but fate took them on another road," says Jon, "and here they get a chance to indulge their fantasy."
We reach Winnifred's Beach, known locally as Rasta Beach, which was bequeathed to the community by a landowner in the 1950s, so locals are charged with taking care of it. The sea shimmers turquoise and the hot white sand is empty save for a bare-chested man sweeping up leaves with a rake. "I encourage guests to really explore the area," says Jon. "So at weekends we'll arrange cook-ups here at Winnifred's, where they can eat fish prepared at one of these beach restaurants. Or guests can go kayaking or rafting, or take an escorted trip into the rainforest and see the wildlife."
I wish I had the time to do all that, but I am here for Bob Marley, so I visit the Bob Marley Museum, near Kingston. In the house that was once his home - he bought it from Chris Blackwell - I wander through the rooms, admiring the platinum discs, peering into his bedroom and gazing at his favourite denim shirt hanging on the wall. In the garden there is a tree by which Marley was famously photographed and in the kitchen there are still bullet marks from the day in December 1976 when assassins broke into the house and tried to murder him.
Marley fled to Strawberry Hill, a gorgeous hotel, also owned by Blackwell, that oozes true vintage rock'n'roll bohemia. It was here, high up in the mountains, that the Rolling Stones hung out in the 70s, and Marley found the place so inspiring and relaxing that he wrote "Natural Mystic" while staying there. All this left me feeling inspired to record my own tribute to the man: I felt Bob was with me and I was ready to face the music.
"Sarfraz? Are the headphones working? You hear me in there, yes?" I take a deep breath and find myself back in the studio, with Dizzle speaking from the other side of the glass wall. This is it. I count myself in and start singing. "Old pirates, yes, they rob I; Sold I to the merchant ships..." The song pours out of me: I give it my all, pushing my limited vocal range beyond its natural capability. I don't know how well I have done until it is replayed back to me. It is then that I realise why being a singer has until now only been a dream: my singing is, not to put too fine a point on it, absolutely godawful.
Singing in the shower means you can live with your illusions, but hearing my strangulated, oddly high-pitched voice repeated back on professional speakers is a chastening experience. I had thought this would be great fun, but in fact being in a studio is like staring into an unforgiving mirror - one that peels away all your delusions.
"That was good," lies Dizzle. "Let's do it again." I sing those verses again and again, until I am sick of the sound of my own voice. Dizzle wants to play keyboards.
"I don't think you should replicate the Marley version," he says, when I ask why he is reluctant to let me play guitar.
"Believe me: there is no danger of me replicating the Marley version," I tell him. "How was my singing?"
"It had a free jazz style going, you get me," he says.
I know when I am being insulted. "Is there anything you can do to help me?"
"There is a program that can fix vocals, sort out the pitch and make everything in tune," he says, "but I don't have it on this computer."
It hasn't been a great session. I have hated my singing, and am not happy with Dizzle's suggestion that we go for a keyboard version of "Redemption Song". I leave him to twiddle knobs and head off to the Bushbar for an evening meal.
Jon is waiting with his wife and his mother, who spends the winters with him. An elderly woman walks towards us. "This is Patrice," says Jon. Patrice as in the widow of Errol Flynn. Now 82, she is stick thin but still exudes old-school elegance, with her brightly painted pink nails and white lace hat. I wonder if the guests at Geejam - the too-cool-for-school musicians and artists - realise who the old lady at the bar is.
Back in the day, Patrice was friends with the Rat Pack and appeared in the original Ocean's 11 film, made in 1960; in the 50s, she and Flynn socialised with Noël Coward, who lived nearby, and Ian Fleming, whose Goldeneye home is just along the coast. It is hearing Patrice talk about hanging out with Frank Sinatra that I realise why my own recording has gone so poorly. I have been listening to others too much; I need to do it my way.
"I don't feel happy with what we did yesterday," I say to Dizzle the following morning. I had come to Geejam to pay my own tribute to Bob Marley and that meant being true to Marley and me.
"I want to play guitar: no keyboards, no overdubs and no cheating," I tell him. Dizzle shakes his head and starts pressing a few buttons, and I start singing and this time I accompany myself on guitar with a rough, chopping, strumming action. My singing still sounds like I am torturing a cat, and I play guitar with all the delicacy of a lumberjack hacking at an oak tree but I feel great. It feels like I own the song; it may be rubbish but every note of it is my rubbish and what it lacks in tunefulness it makes up for with passion.
"I think you got something there," says Dizzle, sounding surprised as he burns me a copy of the song.
I take the disc and thank him. The next morning I check out of Geejam, handing back the mobile phone and waving goodbye to Dizzle and Jon. The wooden gates of the hotel close behind me. As I say farewell to balmy Jamaica and prepare for rainy London I'm glad I got the chance to play at being a rock star, but I also now know exactly why I am not one: some are born to be stars; others are destined only to be fans.
Essentials
Sarfraz Manzoor flew to Jamaica with Virgin Atlantic (08705 747 747; virginatlantic.com). Fares from Gatwick to Kingston start from £549 including taxes.
Rooms at Geejam in Port Antonio start from US$505 per night plus taxes. Use of the recording studio is included in the price. Rooms at Strawberry Hill, Blue Mountains, start from US$205 per night plus taxes. Both hotels can be booked at islandoutpost.com or call UK reservations on 01895 450731.
