I
“Yo’r my pride and joy…Everything for a growing boy.” Al Green chuckles at his own double entendre (cum Marvin Gaye reference). “That’s extra,” he teases, adding a phallic riff to the polymorphous plenitudes of his 1973 live concert on Soul. The flow of the sexiest singer ever is beyond quid pro quos. Green embodies erotic variousness. He muses, sighs, cries, laughs, murmurs, shouts, baritones, moans low, skies for notes in his upper register. Miss this high drama and you’re missing a Mississippi—not a mere stream of consciousness. Thanks to Joe C. (who posted the 56 minute clip at Peter Guralnick’s website: peterguralnick.com) for allowing me to dip into this river again.
I first saw Al Green on Soul when I was 16 or 17 just after locking on his perfect album Call Me. (Its weakest track, “Here I Am Come and Take Me,” would have been a career peak for all but the greatest R&B singers.) For this growing boy, who’d never kissed a girl, Green bodied forth an ideal of manliness. A little on down the line, when I might have been in a rush from the graveyard where I sipped my first lips to the bed where I was born again, Al Green led me on by never seeming like a lover in a hurry. Marvin Gaye may have quoted T.S. Eliot on the liner notes of Let’s Get It On but it was Al Green who taught me it was all in the waiting (with the softest touch).
40 years on, Green’s precocity is still striking. This not-so-country boy is at ease with Soul’s urbane, gay host. (“How old are you?” asks Ellis Haizlip in a tone that suggests he’s seen R&B future. “Twenty-five,” Green responds—with no “I” and disarming Southern charm.)
Green knows how to be still on a stage even though he’s as wired as any pure product of America. Aware he’s on Soul—PBS’s affirmative action program—this “boy-genius” of melisma may be consciously representing sensitive outliers on the black-hand side. Alive to sound effects of every syllable, his ear is a wonder. And not just when he’s singing. Yet this son of an Arkansas sharecropper’s precision isn’t off-putting. He’s never precious—always alluring. I flashed on Green’s hot melds with back-up singers on Soul’s version “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” when I read a technical account of how one makes glottal body music: “Production of falsetto…vibrates only the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds while leaving each fold’s body relatively relaxed,” (BTW, Wikipedia has a cartoon demo-clip of those vibrating “folds” that leaves little to the imagination. Just google falsetto!)
While Green is definitely ready for his close-up, he doesn’t come on as a solo act. Each member of his band gets a credit at the top of the show. And that’s a sign of what’s to come. Green digs into their rhythmic pocket to find his own gifts. The band is up for (or down with) the drama of his vocal dynamics. Even when he sings soft, they’re there, keeping him in shape.
Green looks as good as his ethereal funk sounds: fine and fit. “Like he’s got titties on his arms” to quote a fan of bicepsy males. Green’s lovesome presence on Soul reminds me of a woman’s comment on another ’70s sex symbol, Kris Kristofferson: “He looks like he’d last all night forever.” Though even more on point, perhaps, is an episode in the back story of Kristofferson’s co-star in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (as detailed by Chill Wills): “Took 3 women to get it up. [Look what you done for me!] And 5 to get it back down.”
Green’s performance is for the Ages. Though it’s of its time too. His sit-down, guitar-in-hand takes on two tunes hint at the pull of ’70s singer-songwriters. But his acoustic soul, which also anticipates the sound of his late 70s Belle album, is groovier than confessional product of Me Gen’s neo-folkies. When drum kit and congas kick in, “It’s a hip thing, I’m telling you” as he sings in “Judy.” (His use of the h-word redeemed in advance by his square biz—in that short interview with Soul’s host—about being a kid who was never “in the in crowd of things.”) I’ll confess I once projected Green’s groove as echt black, naturalizing its artfulness and whiting out aural magic worked by his mentor/producer Willie Mitchell. (See Charles O’Brien’s expert appreciation of the Mitchell/Green collaboration here.) The band on Soul is not the one that made records with Green in Memphis, but they’re mad tight too. And when they go to church with Green on “Love and Happiness,” you don’t know who’s lifting who into the Upper Room.
They take everyone in the house there with them by the end of the show. Though there may once have been non-believers. Earlier on when Green slows it down for “Judy,” cameras focus on profiles of Sisters in the room—one gum chewer seems to be mouthing her desire for more bubblegummy pop. The bulk of the women, though, look to be feeling Green (without envy) even as he pledges himself to Judy. I’m reminded just now of Jelly Roll Morton’s sister’s quip that quashed rumor-mongers targeting her handsome husband: “Mighty po’ rat don’t have more than one hole.” I came across her come-back in Alan Lomax’s biography of Morton—a book that serves as a reminder Green, like all R&B Love Men, was in the tradition of the original “win’ing boy.” But unlike Jelly and so many other midnight movers, Green avoided boasts about his sexual prowess. When it comes to precursors for Green’s lover’s discourse, Bobby Bland’s courtly example might be relevant. Bland’s singing was rangey too. Per Charles Keil: “Smooth as a baby’s bottom/rough as Mr. E. Muhammad’s whisper, ‘The white man is the devil!’” Green himself cites Sam Cooke in his interview with Soul’s host. Then he goes on to mimic Claude Jeter’s falsetto before bowing to the great Swan Silvertone: “He was fantastic.”
Green’s gospel roots ran deep. But he once explained how hearing Elvis and Jackie Wilson—“those hip-shaking boys”—made him travel. And then Willie Mitchell came to guide him on less obvious cross-over trips. Their common sense of form, freedom and precedent is apparent on Soul when Green treats opening bars of The Carpenters’ white-bread “We’ve Only Just Begun” as an intro to his closer, “Let’s Stay Together,” which was already on its way to becoming an anthem of the black pop nation. (I’m guessing it was Mitchell who steered Green to the Carpenters. After all he had the late Solomon Burke cover an Anne Murray track on Burke’s last CD.)
Green has heirs today. Frank Ocean’s mindful “Pink Matter” amounts to an update of Green’s “Simply Beautiful” (“possibly the loveliest song in American popular music,” per O’Brien). The-Dream is an artful “urban” Love Man, though his last CD IV Play traduces his own “sex-intelligence”: “Fuck the foreplay: I’m talking straight sex…” A dick-brained line that hints at the wack influence of porn on mannish boys coming of age in the oughts. Their generation’s pop genius, Kanye West, has given up the ghost of romanticism. “I’m in love with a porn star,” he confesses. And he’s being real. First time ever he saw his wife naked may have been in her sex tape. Tracks like West’s “Turn on the Lights” (written by The-Dream) or the pop Proustian auto-critique “Blame Game” tell how much he’s in the dark when it comes to what women want. “Yeezy [i.e. Kanye] taught me” says the fem-bot sex machine in West’s “Game.” And when comic Chris Rock spells out what she learned—“You never used to talk dirty, but now you, you god damn disgusting” etc.—you know West has nada secret knowledge to impart. Given how much there was to be learned from Al Green about playing well with lovers, it’s sad to think how little growing boys might intuit on that score from West’s XXX-y raps. Back after the release of West’s Graduation CD, he did an interview with a lady DJ aired on a NYC radio station. While they were talking, she noted a bunch of porn tapes had spilled from West’s bag on to the table in the studio. She didn’t sound prudish but her tone implied West might be a little more careful about putting his sheets in the street. West’s unabashed response made him sound as anti-social as Travis Bickle. His Q&A with that DJ was a millennium away from more innocent revelations in Al Green’s Soul interview: “I’m a lone-a in a way…Like at lunchtime when I was little kid in school. You know how kids get together and exchange sandwiches. You know…I’ll take a piece of your peanut butter sandwich. You know, we trade. I never did do this.”
II
My other favorite YouTube vid in this season of World Cup soccer is a 10 minute highlight reel of Zinedine Zidane’s most elegant moves: Zinedine Zidane: Maestro of the Decade. This vid isn’t a down low phenomenon. It’s been viewed over 15,000,000 times. Still, millions of soccer fans haven’t seen it. And it’s worth checking even if the beautiful game is lost on you. Zidane’s mastery is irresistible. Though it’s about anticipation and superior touch, not physical force. Zidane is the antithesis of (Brasil’s) Hulk. And, while I’m making sporty comparisons, his style is pretty far gone from LeBron James’ too.
But let’s take it back to the top. I doubt it’s only synchronicity that makes me feel Zidane’s instinct for felicity has something in common with young Al Green’s. Both performers mount mortal threats to cultural hegemony of super-heroes. They don’t give off Olympian vibes. Green’s voice breaks for a moment on Soul: “I’m suffering from a cold caught in Chicago.” Zidane famously insisted: “I’m not the best player in the world.” Far from wannabe immortals, they come on like vulnerable Prometheans. And the records of their attempts to get lit in front of humankind are marked by a here and gone sense of possibility: “Magic is very close to nothing at all.” [1]
That maxim of Zindane’s is one of the grace notes in Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait—the 2006 documentary that used a battery of cameras in an effort to render his interiority on the pitch during one match. The cameras don’t manage to snatch Zidane’s soul (or fire), but when the documentary leans on his own narration, it dances close to intensities of genius. Turns out Zidane has an ear like Green’s:
When you’re immersed in the game, you can almost decide for yourself what you want to hear. You are never alone. I can hear someone shift in the seat. I can hear someone whisper in the ear of the person next to them. I imagine I can hear the ticking of a watch…
That last line is meant to be charged since Zidane got a rep for being a bit of a time-bomb due to his notorious head-butt during the 2006 World Cup. Portrait pumps up Zidane’s aggro—and may get on your last nerve—as it builds to a brawl that results in Zidane’s red-carded exit. On the real side, though, Zidane was a player not a fighter. While he came up hard in rough neighborhoods, he wasn’t gangsta. The fight near the end of Portrait isn’t much more than a pushing match. And, at risk of seeming overly exculpatory, I’d even claim Zidane’s World Cup head-butt was less than appalling. His blow-up then seems to have been over-determined. Back in 2006—after banlieues exploded and Zidane’s African immigrant homies acted out their estrangement from their adopted country—part of him must have been conflicted about the prospect of leading the French team to a World Cup. How could he have looked forward at that moment to becoming a folk hero in La France Profonde? What’s certain is Zidane’s choice to attack his teasing Italian tormentor amounted to a refusal of patriotic imperatives. Again I’m not excusing his assault—he should’ve kept his cool—but it matters he went for the chest of the mouthy defender, rather than driving his head up into the man’s jaw. Uruguayan striker Suarez’s sadistic bite during this year’s World Cup tournament seems much less defensible.
There was another dummy move this soccer season that was even more troubling than Suarez’s vampirism. A couple weeks before the World Cup, Ronaldo (widely regarded, along with Lionel Messi, as one of the sport’s two best players, ) capped off his team’s 4-1 victory in the European club championships by scoring the last goal on a penalty kick as the game wound down. He rushed away from his teammates, tore off his shirt to display ripped physique, flexed for a hidden camera, and emitted a cry of triumph. Which should’ve moved anyone watching the game to ask: huh? (Why was he going wild over a goal that meant little more than a foul shot in garbage time?) Yet no tv commentator dared to say Ronaldo’s punk strut was way over the top.
Ronaldo plays for Real Madrid—Zidane’s old team. Clips from the short tribute to (and from) Zidane following his final match for that club a few years back bring home the phoniness of Ronaldo’s self-promotion. (Maestro of the Decade ends with such a clip but you can find fuller versions of Zidane’s farewell on YouTube as well.) Zidane’s good-bye evokes authentic emotions. He’s surrounded by his family who display a range of reactions from tears to Hardyesque stolidity. When he waves to the stadium crowd, there’s something touching about the thinness of his pale arms, which look like a child’s. (Unlike Ronaldo’s “guns” or the limbs on your typical 21st Century superstar athlete.)
Zidane underscored the link between child’s play and the pro game when he mused on what he’d miss when his career was over: “When I retire I’ll miss the green of the field…The Green Square. [Le Carré Vert.]” That field in his mind’s eye is open to all children who equate landscapes with larking about.
Forgive me for thinking inside Le Carré Vert—can I blame Al Green?!—but I’m struck by the coincidence those boxes in which Zidane practiced his art are the same shape as beds where adults get lucky long after childhood.
Zidane’s greeny memory reminds me of Bob Cousy’s color commentary on Celtics games, which was bracing since Cousy’s easeful voice never let you forget you were watching men at play. His light tone implicitly rebuked cretins who talk like sports are moral equivalents of war. (Brasil could use a few Cousys as well as a Zidane right about now.)
Zidane’s sense of what abides in sporting life beats any winners’ calculus locked on stats or trophies. He comprehended what LeBron James may have begun to grasp lately: you can’t put a ring on it.
Note
1 Perlo knows as did Willie Mitchell: “Mickey Gregory, Isaac Hayes’ lead trumpeter, once said that when Mitchell played, you didn’t hear him, but you felt him.” (Pace O’Brien.)