The Revered Al Green

Al Green has been described as the first great Soul singer of the 1970s, and the last great Southern soul singer . Though neither of these, Al Green was certainly one of the greatest of both. His appeal was widespread, his records crossing over into the pop mainstream. Yet he remained strongly rooted in the rhythm n blues idiom from which he sprang.
Like almost all Soul and rhythm n blues singers of his era, Al Green began his musical career in the church. At the age of nine, his family formed a Gospel group, the Green Brothers. He remained a member until his father caught him listening to a rhythm n blues record when he was 16 years old and threw the young Al out of the house. He next formed a rhythm n blues group called Creations, which then became Al Greene & the Soul mates. (The e on his surname was only dropped when he later signed to Hi Records.) Under this guise he had a large-ish R&B hit with Back Up Train in 1967, but the Soul Mates struggled to no avail to find a substantial follow-up.
A year later, Al met Hi Records producer and band leader Willie Mitchell at a gig in Midland, Texas. Mitchell fronted him $1,500 to sort out a solvency problem and to pay for a ticket to Memphis. Amazingly, it took Green so long to make the trip that Willie Mitchell had written off both the money and the young singer. But, two months late, Al eventually turned up at Willie s door early one morning, ready to go to work.
It was the best move of Al s career, and the best investment that Mitchell ever made. Willie Mitchell had been honing his Hi sound for some time, with Ann Peebles, Syl Johnson and Otis Clay. Though they had a more bluesy feel to their vocals, Mitchell s recordings with these artists featured the ultra-tight rhythm section and sharp horn punctuation that became the Hi trademark. (This was developed from the template set up by crosstown rival Stax Records indeed, many of the same musicians featured on both labels records.)
To this mix Mitchell added swirling strings, and laid Al Green s voice on top. He forced Al to sing in a higher register than he normally did, and the resultant falsetto-laden records were some of the most sensual, erotically-charged pieces of music ever put to wax.
This combination of Gospel-style melismatic stylings, softer tones that caressed the listener and love-struck lyrics proved irresistible, triggering a terrific chart run through the 1970s, including 15 Top Ten singles in five years. The Green/Mitchell recordings had a hard-edged undercurrent that rendered contemporaries like Barry White completely cartoonish, with only Marvin Gaye circa Let s Get It On rivalling the Memphis team in effectiveness.
Despite such secular success, the church was never far away for Al Green. Each successive album featured at least one Gospel or religious track, while in many cases he gospelised otherwise secular songs. This dichotomy between the sacred and secular coloured all of Green s R&B recordings; the resultant tension was the key to his best work.
But the peak of his recording success was punctuated with personal tragedy. In a widely reported incident in October, 1974, a former girlfriend broke into Al s house. She poured boiling grits onto the singer while he was bathing, inflicting second-degree burns on his back, stomach and arm. She then killed herself in another room using the singer s gun. Exactly one year later, his close friend and musical mentor Al Jackson Jr (the drummer with Booker T and the MGs and the Hi house band) was shot twice in the chest by his wife and then just two months later Jackson was murdered by an intruder. (This crime has never been solved, but some have linked it to the dark collapse of the Stax empire.)
Green took these incidents as a sign from God that he should enter the ministry. He split with Willie Mitchell, and bought his own church, the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis in the late 70s. He continued to record and perform rhythm n blues until he fell off the stage during a 1979 concert in Cincinnati, Ohio. He took this as another sign from God, this time that he should retire entirely from the rhythm n blues stage. Splitting with Willie Mitchell, the fracturing of the Hi house band and Green s increasing perfectionism (reportedly taking as many as 100 hours to lay down a vocal) meant his records became increasingly more stylised and less spontaneous and less successful too.
Since then he has concentrated on Gospel recordings, which, ironically, have not served the singer s voice especially well, though they have been successful on the US Gospel charts. But many of us hear more of God in the sensuality of Let s Stay Together , Tired of Being Alone or his dramatic take on the Bee Gees How Can You Mend a Broken Heart . His version of Lulu s To Sir With Love is a eulogy to God that is unrecognisable from the trite movie theme original. An astonishing duet with then-girlfriend Laura Lee on the Impressions People Get Ready is alone sufficient to reinforce Green s claim to a place in the pantheon of great Soul singers, even if you discount the magnificent back catalogue of his early Hi recordings.
In advance of his recent transcendental shows in Dublin, Al Green talked to me about his life and times.

Did you really get kicked out of the family Gospel group for listening to a Jackie Wilson record?
Absolutely! It was the Baby Workout album.
So did that start off your musical career?
That s what started me off getting kicked out of the house! I was 16 years old I thought I knew everything.
You had a hit with Back Up Train , and then there was a long dry spell. What happened?
It s like everyone else who has a hit at first, and they try to follow it up and it doesn t happen. And then you have to go and try and find yourself, which is what I was doing for the next three years. After Back Up Train , I had to go and find Al Green. I was blatantly ignorant of who Al Green was, of how Al Green sang.
Was meeting Willie Mitchell critical in that journey of discovery?
My God, yes! Willie Mitchell discovered me, he cultivated my style. He and Al Jackson really worked with me in the studio, day after day after day.
You first met Willie in Texas, and he fronted you some money to come up to Memphis but it took you several months to make the trip, and Willie had written off both the money and the young Al Green by the time you finally turned up. What on earth were you doing?
I went back to Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was my home town. There were some incidents that happened there that left me good reason to go and try something else in Memphis the singing thing with this guy who was the leader of this band who tried to tell me that I could become a great star. I said, I don t know what you re talking about! He said, you need to come down to Memphis and try some things out in the studio . I didn t take it seriously. And even when we started having hits I didn t take them seriously either, because we d cut so many songs. We didn t write them to be hits, we wrote them to be pretty songs.
In the late 70s, there seemed to be a lot of trouble in your personal life, while at the same time you were at the peak of your commercial success. Were you troubled at that time?
I wasn t troubled, really it was just the trouble that comes up as in that s life . Everybody has those troubles. But still, you have to keep it together and rise above the troubles and move on.
Would that have been hard without God and the Church?
My God, yes. I would have been swept away with the troubles. You ve got to have the Lord, even when you re singing pop music. I had the Lord even when I was singing rhythm n blues. Because that s your stabiliser. That keeps you grounded.
Have you found an equilibrium between Soul and Gospel, between rhythm n blues and Gospel? Can you move freely between them?
No. That s two different things. Soul music is telling a woman I love you, let s stay together, whether times are good or bad, happy or sad . The Church is saying, I love you Lord. God, I love you and you are my rock and my salvation . That s two very different things. So I can t move between them. What I can tell you is this: with the show that we have with all the Memphis people and singers and some of the horn players, we have some Gospel in the show, plus lots of the hits.
Your move into sacred music wasn t that much of a surprise, as even when you were doing rhythm n blues, there was a Gospel orientated track on each album and a lot of songs that weren t written that way became religious songs in your hands. The obvious example is To Sir with Love .
Yes, there was always a Gospel song on those albums even Let s Stay Together had My God is Real , and Jesus is Waiting is on I m Still In Love With You.
What is your own personal favourite from your own back catalogue, and what s your own favourite song recorded by someone else?
I think for us it would be Let s Stay Together , that s my personal song. For someone else, it would definitely be Ben E King s Stand By Me . Yeah! n