The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing

Only His Voice Made Us Feel This Way: IT IS LIKE CHURCH

startedanewband,PublicImageLtd.,whichwouldachievemiddlingsuccessover the next decade or so. Jones and Cook worked as sidemen in various projects. Vicioussankdeeperintojunkiedom,finallyoverdosingaboutayearlater—while out on bail for allegedly stabbing his girlfriend to death. It’s hard to say what might’ve happened if the Sex Pistols had toured the UnitedStatesasoriginallyplanned.Certainly,thebandwouldhavemetwithmore receptive crowds in the North. Perhaps the lower tension levels would have reducedthepotentialforvolatilebehavior.ThePistolsmighthavestayedtogether, and the group could have released a few more increasingly mediocre records beforefinallyfizzlingoutastiredself-parodies.Instead,thankslargelytothepressuresofthetour ,theywentoutinablaze.SidVicious’seventualdemisewassenseless and pathetic, but the Pistols, as a band, exited with rare style. They left the fans wanting more, they left a good-looking corpse, and they left their own nearmythicalstatusintact .Intheend,theSouth’smajorcontributiontopunkrock— excluding, of course, the fabulous Knobs—may have been, perversely, its role in destroying the most prominent punk group of the day, in forcing the Sex Pistols finallytoliveuptotheirowncryof“NoFuture.”And,really,howmuchmorepunk can you get? 256 THE OXFORD AMERICAN 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 256 R&B: Dept.of AlGreen 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 257 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 258 Raw and Born Again THE SOUND THAT PROMISES TO TAKE US HOME by Jeff Sharlet Let’s look at the facts about Al Green. Or rather, the fact, the biographical detail he does not discuss, the moment around which the whole story turns: at 4 A.M., October18,1974,whenthelast,great,sweetfalsettosoulsingeroftheSoutheased intoabathafteralongnightofrecordingandgotapanofboiling-hotgritspoured onhimbyaspurnedlover.Thewomanwhochosegritsasherrevengewastwentynine -year-old Mary Woodson, just another notch in a long line of ladies, and not even the one who occupied the greater portion of Al Green’s erotic imagination (that would have been Juanita, a whore he’d proudly pimped to white businessmen ),northeonewhotroubledhimmostatthetime(thatwouldhavebeenLinda Wells, a former “secretary,” who had charged him that summer with assaulting her with a bottle). In 1974, Al Green had behind him twenty million records sold and five consecutive hits. For two years, he’d been crooning and moaning the soundtrackofAmericanromance,withavoicelaterdescribedasthe“lovingest” ever to turn to the tradition of Southern soul. So? Mary Woodson snuck into his Memphis split-level home and found some grits boiling—or boiled them herself while he washed—and she snuck up on him just as he was getting out of the tub and dumped the whole pan on his skinny bones, that slinky S of biceps and pecs and stomach later pictured on the Greatest Hits album beneath his strange, uglybeautifulmug ,thehangdogeyesandthemissingchinandtheteenageboy’sbeard and the earnest, love-me smile so at odds with the seduction of his bare-chested glory. She scalded it all. Shoulders, back, belly. Burning grits probably dripped down into the crack of his ass. He must have bellowed, raw and deep, no falsetto 259 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 259 ...