It's tempting to cast Green's conversion to the Right Reverend as the result of a lightning bolt from above - in his case, the scalding hot grits poured on him by a jealous, suicidal girlfriend in 1974. The rutting desire of "I'm a Ram" - hard funk dressed in Old Testament imagery - was soon replaced by the ecstatic submission of "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)" and the grateful thanks of "Look What You've Done for Me." More than, say, Marvin Gaye, Green endures as a romantic icon because he was capable not just of lust but also of surrender and devotion. But some of the most potent revelations found on "Anthology" come from lesser known tracks like "Simply Beautiful" and the astonishingly lovely "Have You Been Making Out OK?" On the latter, Green consoles an ex-lover going through a bad breakup with someone else - "Did he make you happy, did he make you whole?" - with enough tenderness to remind us that sometimes the most telling expression of love arrives after it supposedly has ended. They're all collected here and they sound as good as ever. Between 19, Green was an unavoidable presence, producing one smooth soul hit after another: "Let's Stay Together," "I'm Still in Love With You," "Call Me (Come Back Home)" and "Love and Happiness" to name a few. He found his own voice with help from Mitchell and the Hi studio band, musicians who seemed to complete him like a sympathetic lover. There's certainly some truth to this, but after listening to "Anthology," a four-CD retrospective of Green's work from the '70s, I'm convinced that the miracle of his best music comes from its easy union of heaven and earth.Īrkansas-born but raised in gospel, Green was still imitating Sam Cooke and James Brown when he met producer Willie Mitchell in 1969.
"I don't know where that come from!" Al Green testifies in a 1978 concert recording, just after releasing a falsetto swoon in the middle of "You Ought to Be With Me." The prevailing view is that Green's life has been a running battle between physical desire and spiritual salvation, with God winning for good sometime around 1980. 14 roses and Victoria's hard-to-miss Secrets, true romance is rooted in the shiver of unexpected pleasure.
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