Al Green – I’m Still in Love with You

 

  

It would be entirely understandable if all the little essays collected here would interpreted as a big, long protest that, no, I was only temporarily at an impressionable age a 'rock' fan. I didn't have much choice about the company I kept at school in the 70's and they were fine people but I didn't buy many records by long-haired white boys in denim (partly because I couldn't afford to) before I seriously acquired Al Green's Greatest Hits and then bought Exodus by Bob Marley & the Wailers in Boots on Northgate Street, Gloucester.

I suspect that the friends I have now that still profess adherence to Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd or Wishbone Ash, for examples, do so mainly through nostalgia and allegiance rather than even now regularly listening to their records. I don't know how much one even listens to pop records at our age. I don't actually play David Bowie records these days but I hardly need to because they are in my head. But there are some things you can't quite do for oneself and hearing over and again how good it sounds is the only thing for it.

Maybe Al Green's biggest and best record was Tired of Being Alone but I’m Still in Love with You says,

Heaven knows that I’m still in love,

Sho' 'nuff  in love with you,

according to the internet, except I prefer my version,

Shut up, ain't over you

but either way I'm still in love with those records in a way I don't think it's possible to still be with ELP.

As with the Motown Hit Factory, it's every aspect of it. Not just the greatest male voice in pop history, smoother than Otis Redding, but the band and the backbeat and maybe, dare one say, 'the production is amazing' - I did once actually hear somebody say that about another record in real life.

Of course, he was borderline crazy, taking up Born Again Christianity with a zeal that makes Cliff Richard look agmostic and maybe even foregoing his 'ladies man' image which quite probably was a lifestyle but if this whole day of pop radio had to be reduced to one programme or even less than that there wouldn't be much left of it by the time Al Green had to be left out.