When Saved Stars Turn Back
Secular “stars” who find Jesus tend to burn hot and then burn out. The high of applause and lure of stage lights is a tough addiction to get past. Becoming a Christian is a journey, young Christians need time and patience and nurturing. But these stars run out and open a church. Start pastoring. They’ve been saved five minutes, can barely find Genesis in the table of contents. And people flock to their church because, well, they’re a star. What the unchurched person sees is a pattern of inconsistency among these conversions, which undermines the credibility of the conversion experience itself. Which, if you think about it, gives Lay It Down a whole new meaning.
Little Richard. Stephanie Mills. Donna Summer.
But, likely most famously, Al Green. All top performers who
turned away from thriving careers in R&B music when they had a
conversion experience with Jesus Christ. Richard Penniman, an
evangelist and bible publisher rep, was quoted in an early-90’s
60 Minutes interview as saying that when he got saved, Long Tall
Sally, Miss Molly and all the rest got save right along with
him. He’d never sing those songs again. Donna Summer became born
again around 1980, saying in interviews she’d never sing
salacious mega-hits Love To Love You, Baby, Bad Girls, etc.
again. Summer became almost irritatingly fanatical about her
faith, eschewing the disco-era styles that had own her her fame
and conducting invitations to discipleship at her concerts.
Legend has it Al Green found the Lord after a violent encounter
with a girlfriend who threw hot grits on him. Green left his
still-hot R&B career behind, giving himself over totally to God,
becoming an ordained pastor of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in
Memphis in 1976. Wikipedia reports, in 1979, Green was injured
while performing, and interpreted this accident as a message
from God. He then concentrated his energies towards pastoring
his church and gospel singing, also appearing in 1982 with Patti
Labelle in the Broadway musical Your Arms Too Short to Box with
God. His first gospel album was The Lord Will Make a Way. From
1981 to 1989 Green recorded a series of gospel recordings,
garnering eight "soul gospel performance" Grammys in that
period. In 1984, director Robert Mugge released a documentary
film, Gospel According to Al Green, including interviews about
his life and footage from his church.
Despite what I’d consider to be tremendously lackluster Gospel
fare (Gospel music requires a special anointing to write it.
Lots of R&B folk cut the occasional Gospel track, but few seem
to appreciate the fact a song is not just a song), Green was
nonetheless inducted into the Gospel Music Association’s Hall of
Fame in 2004. I have to believe Green’s moderate success as a
Gospel singer owes more to simple name recognition than actual
good music; I thought his Gospel stuff was pretty lame.
Summer’s post-conversion stuff, for Geffen records, was also
pretty weak, rootless new-wave stuff for the Blondie crowd. She
seemed to miss the mark both creatively and spiritually, while
giving unique insight into who she was as a person. I mean,
nobody records an entire album of material they don’t like. It’s
quite possible Summer actually was a closet new waver, that the
Disco Queen era was imposed on her rather than an organic
product of her artistic sensibilities.
She found her way back with the near-perfect eponymously-titled
Donna Summer, which I urge you to go find on eBay or something
(it can’t cost more than a few bucks). Most of us church folk
may have skipped this record, seeing as how lame Donna Summer’s
post-conversion work had theretofore been. But Donna Summer was
actually part of a pantheon of R&B recordings made by Quincy
Jones at the height of his Off The Wall-Thriller era albums that
included George Benson’s Give Me The Night, The Dude, Patti
Austin’s brilliant Every Home Should Have One (featuring James
Ingram duet Baby Come To Me), and James Ingram’s It's Your
Night. This was Jones at his prime, with his posse of
writer/keyboardist Rod Temperton, who wrote most of the
successful cuts here, Leon “N’dugu” Chancellor (that massive
drum beat at the start of Billie Jean), and the brilliant Bruce
Swedien, who defined the massive, thick Jones sound by recording
over 100 tracks per song and painstakingly syncing several
multi-track recorders together (remember, this was all
pre-digital) into what he called the “Acusonic” recording
process. These albums constitute a powerful legacy of the latter
days of analog recording and actual musicians playing actual
instruments, and Summers’ Donna Summer is routinely forgotten
when this prime Jones/Temperton/Swedien Thriller period is
mentioned.
What made Donna Summer magic, though, was Summer seemed more at
peace with herself and with her faith than on previous efforts.
She managed to find a mid-ground where she could explore her
artistry without offending or compromising her testimony,
proving the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Donna
Summer is an excellent model for artists struggling to reconcile
commercial music with personal salvation, as Summer (with the
help of Quincy Jones' Thriller team) effortlessly crafted her
best album in years. Donna Summer was a demonstrably R&B
departure from Summer's previous new wave stuff, with Georgio
Moroder (Flashdance)-style flourishes to, I suppose, please Ms.
Summer and/or her international fans. Summer followed this up
with her biggest hit to date, 1983’s She Works Hard For The
Money, a positive and uplifting pop album that efficiently and
pleasingly repositioned Summer as neither unprincipled harlot
nor Jesus freak. Landing smack in the center, she became, at
long last, a person. A person singing strong, fun, magical music
that doesn’t offend us, that doesn’t contradict who she claims
to be and in Whom she claims to believe.
Possibly as a result of is exposure on the 60 Minutes interview,
Richard Penniman became, once again, Little Richard. Performing,
first, Gospel songs without the makeup and outrageous hair,
Gospel fame may not have been lucrative or satisfying enough for
Penniman’s ego. He was soon making appearances again as Little
Richard, in full Maybelline and wig, howling away to Tuti Fruiti.
In subsequent interviews, Richard’s faith became increasingly
less well-defined, ultimately becoming a kind of vague universal
sense of something or another—a far cry from the specific and
heartfelt Christian conversion of the 60 Minutes interview.
So, too, did Al Green slowly lean back toward R&B, dipping his
toe in the water with a 1988 Annie Lennox duet for the film
Scrooged. While continuing to perform fairly lame Gospel
whenever I saw him on TV, and now pastoring Full Gospel
Tabernacle, Green nonetheless drifted back toward his R&B roots,
releasing Your Heart’s In Good Hands in 1995. His subsequent R&B
releases have been hit-and-miss, garnering the occasional notice
but otherwise forgettable. Al’s TV appearances began
incorporating more of his old hits, including the classic Let’s
Stay Together—which can be rightfully interpreted as a
family-affirming song.
Lay It Down, his new release, shows major promise. It features
painstaking production by the Roots’ Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
and features tracks with John Legend, Corrine Bailey Rae and
Anthony Hamilton. My initial exposure to the project, however,
wasn’t a good one. I caught what seemed to be an inebriated
Green (always hard to tell with someone that jolly) embarrassing
himself on The Late Show With David Letterman, warbling and
hollering the title track—which has extremely lame lyrics. I
mean, wow. Bad, phoned-in cliché lyrics. Green, heavier than
I’ve ever seen him, seemed to strain to make the lines rhyme,
with lots of gaps while the cliché music played on. The titular
refrain, “Lay It Down,” did not seem to connect to the lyrics in
any coherent way. The song seemed thrown together backstage
during a commercial, made up on the fly. Too much was left to my
imagination about what “Lay It Down” might possibly mean.
More troubling, the lyrics seemed to be about Al meeting a girl
in a bar and trying to convince her to go home with him. Now,
I’m probably getting that wrong because, hey, I’m old. But
another minister friend of mine was watching as well and he got
the same jolt: what on earth was Al doing? He’s, I mean, he’s a
pastor for goodness sake.
Or, is he? Wikipedia says he’s still the pastor of Full Gospel,
which leaves me stymied about the questionable morals of Lay It
Down’s lyrical content. I’m not mad about Christians (or even
pastors) singing R&B (check out Sunny Hawkin's brilliant Crazy
on our Media Player), and I realize art needs to be interpreted
as art. But the overall statement an artist makes should, at the
end of the day, be consistent with his testimony. I was confused
and disappointed by the sense I was left with, of an aging,
stoned Al Green desperately clinging to secular fame (or perhaps
needing the money). Though Letterman introduced him as “The
Reverend,” there was absolutely no spiritual context to Green’s
performance. Green himself was hidden behind dark aviators,
grinning and running back and forth and seeming, well, like he
was high on something. He, frankly, looked foolish. I felt so
sad for him.
Lay It Down may very well be a very good album. The title track,
at least Green’s live performance of it, didn’t seem to indicate
such. And, were this a John Legend album, I’m not sure I'd care.
But John legend doesn’t claim to be a church pastor. I might be
a guy who works too hard at this, but I tend to judge the music
I listen to by the character of the people singing it, Gospel
artists most especially.
The overwhelming majority of Gospel CD’s on the shelves right
now have severely inappropriate cover art—Gospel artists looking
vain and self-absorbed. At a glance, precious few of these CD’s
project a Christ like image or invoke a Christian sensibility.
It’s all I’m The Joint. And most of these folks just look
ridiculous—first and foremost Tye Tribbett, the apparent heir to
the Kirk Franklin throne. Tribbet’s humble modesty on Life, his
breakthrough release, has been supplanted by images that, I
suppose, are intended to look playful but come across as creepy.
Both Victory, and the new release Stand Out, feature Tye looking
androgynously freaky. Stand Out’s cover makes the mistake of
blinging—it seems all “Gospel” artists, having attained even
modest success, shoot subsequent cover art displaying evidence
of that success and wealth, while missing the point Jesus Christ
had no wealth to flaunt, and would never—ever—shoot a photo like
that. These guys look arrogant, self-absorbed and, well, stupid.
Tribbett’s also got this Bugs Bunny thing going with his teeth
and needs to close his mouth.
Neither the cover art for Stand Out nor Victory invoke in any
way a mode of worship or a sensibility of Christian ethics. Both
records seem to celebrate The Wonder That Is Tye. Life, on the
other hand, seems to give the glory to God.
The big surprise, for me at least, is the involvement on Lay It
Down of brilliant keyboardist/producer James Poysner. Poysner,
so far as I can tell, is largely responsible for Tye Tribbett’s
career. Tribbett’s groundbreaking Life, a kind of Gospel
evolution of D’Angelo’s brilliant Brown Sugar, hit like the shot
heard ‘round the world. It’s brilliance was in its
unconventional structure and it’s simple, minimalist
arrangements. Tribbett’s writing and vision, combined with
Poysner’s soulfulness, created a rarity in urban Gospel music
these days—a masterpiece. And that’s not a word I toss around.
Tye Tribbett’s Life was one of the groundbreaking, cornerstone
recordings in Gospel music history. One of the most brilliant
Gospel recordings ever made.
Unfortunately, Tribbett has since devolved into a kind of poor
man’s Hezekiah Walker, his two subsequent releases becoming
increasingly shrill and increasingly about him. Noisy and
overblown, with clichéd, hacked-out horn charts and just too
much noise all over the place, Tribbett continues to miss the
entire point of the record that made him famous. Which lends
increasing suspicion to the distinct possibility the black
church has fallen in love with Tribbett, when it was Poysner’s
vision that actually made Life live.
Which brings us full circle back to Pastor Al. with Poysner and
the All-Star team on board, Lay It Down might actually be worth
a second chance (Al having blown his first with the freak-show
Letterman appearance). I’ll be giving it a spin and reporting
back, here, praying all the while that Al shows some small sense
of his faith somewhere between the lines.
Secular “stars” who find Jesus tend to burn hot and then burn
out. Donna Summer seems to not be discussing her faith at all
anymore. Little Richard’s spirituality seems to be about
universal yadda-yadda. So far as I know, Stephanie Mills is
still a believer, and Faith Evans has sung with my choir in the
past (and tends to include Gospel cuts on her albums). But, both
Evans and friendly rival Mary J. Blige seem to claim
Christianity while still recording songs about sleeping with men
they are not married to and so forth.
All of which is very confusing and, frankly, hurts the cause of
Christ more than it helps. What the unchurched person sees is a
pattern of inconsistency among these conversions. So much so
that I’d imagine the average non-believer, seeing a star confess
Christ, now scoffs, “Yeah. Wait and see.” And they’re often
right.
I’d have to imagine the high of applause and lure of stage
lights is a tough addiction to get past. Becoming a Christian is
a journey, not an instant-on thing. Nobody is perfect, and young
Christians need time and patience and nurturing. But these stars
run out and open a church. Start pastoring. They’ve been saved
five minutes and they’re pastoring. They can barely find Genesis
in the table of contents and they are appointing themselves
responsible for the souls of believers. And people flock to
their church because, well, they’re a star.
So, you have a young Christian, a new believer, finding his way
in the glare of the public eye and beneath the weight of the
pastorate. It is a recipe for failure. And, when these people
fail, when they end of up stumbling around on Letterman
embarrassing themselves, people around them question and even
lose their own faith.
I honestly have no idea if Al Green is a Christian or not. If he
is, if he’s still pastoring, well, shame on him. He looked
ridiculous. Worse, he made us, our faith, our Lord, look
ridiculous, too. Which, if you think about it, gives Lay It Down
a whole new meaning.
Christopher J. Priest
15 June 2008
editor@praisenet.org
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