LOS ANGELES, CA- At some point during Al Green’s performance at the Hollywood Bowl, my guest leaned over and made an observation that stuck with me for the rest of the night.
“His music has been in so many movies.”
She was right. In fact, Al Green’s music has become so intertwined with film that sometimes hearing those opening notes can summon images that have nothing to do with Green himself. “Let’s Stay Together” is forever embedded in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, playing beneath one of the film’s most memorable exchanges. “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” has found its way into Notting Hill and The Book of Eli.
That is an extraordinary second life for a body of work.
Filmmakers have repeatedly returned to Green because his songs can communicate something that dialogue often cannot. Desire. Heartbreak. Devotion. Loneliness. Reconciliation. His voice can become the emotional subtext of a scene before a character says a word.
But on Friday night at the Hollywood Bowl, there was no movie screen and no actor through whom those emotions needed to be filtered.
There was just Al Green.
And at 80 years old, the man whose music has spent decades providing the soundtrack to other people’s stories was standing in front of us telling his own.
A FAMILY TREE OF SOUL
Before Green took the stage, The Womack Sisters provided an opening set that felt particularly appropriate for the evening.
BG, Zeimani and Kucha Womack carry an almost intimidating musical lineage. They are the daughters of Cecil and Linda Womack, the duo known as Womack & Womack, and the granddaughters of Sam Cooke. They grew up singing with their family before eventually stepping forward as their own group.
But lineage only gets you so far. You still have to sing.
And these women can sing.
From the beginning, what struck me was the richness of their voices. The first featured lead came with a powerful alto that immediately established the retro soul character of the set, while the sisters’ relatively similar registers gave their three-part harmonies an especially natural blend.
They also looked the part. Sparkling dresses, oversized white collars and cuffs gave their presentation a glamorous throwback quality, somewhere within the visual lineage of the great female soul groups that came before them.
Each sister eventually received an opportunity to take the lead.
“I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye)” brought out the bluesier side of the group, with the kind of R&B yearning suggested by the title itself. “You Went Away Too Long” added horns, something I found myself wishing the arrangements employed even more frequently throughout the performance. When the horns disappeared, the music could lean toward gospel; when they returned, even in a subdued role, they added another layer to the vintage soul atmosphere.
Then came “Teardrops.”
That song carries particular significance for this group. It was originally a Womack & Womack hit, recorded by their parents, making the sisters’ performance of it less a conventional cover than a continuation of their own family’s musical history.
“My Sisters and Me” was perhaps a little sentimental for my taste, but the introduction gave it meaning. The sisters encouraged the audience to tell the people they love that they love them. In the context of an evening that would increasingly become about time, family, memory and music surviving generations, even that simple sentiment landed differently.
By the time their set ended, The Womack Sisters had done more than warm up the Bowl.
They had established the lineage.
Then one of soul music’s living monuments walked onto the stage.
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ROSES FOR L.A.
Al Green arrived with roses.
As his band vamped behind him, Green began giving flowers to people near the stage. There was something wonderfully appropriate about the image. Al Green, roses in hand, still playing the romantic before he had sung a note.
The opening number, “I Can’t Stop,” was temporarily undermined by a rough sound mix. Green didn’t seem particularly bothered. He stood center stage clutching his roses and waited for things to get sorted out.
Afterward, he greeted the Bowl.
The response from the distant sections was especially loud.
“I hear you back there,” he said.
And there it was.
The charm.
At 80, Green may move differently than he once did, but the attitude hasn’t gone anywhere. Neither has the humor. Neither has that unmistakable sense that he knows exactly how much charisma he possesses.
During “I Can’t Get Next to You,” the old swagger surfaced immediately. At one point he joked about being tired, laughed, and kept going.
There would be several acknowledgments of age during the evening. They never felt self-pitying. Green seemed amused by the entire proposition.
Paul Taylor, whom Green proudly introduced as being from Memphis, Tennessee, received an organ spotlight during “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.” Then Green’s radiant smile appeared as he prepared for something different.
“I’m going to try to sing this, if that’s all right with you,” he said.
“Amazing Grace.”
It was a reminder that the Reverend Al Green and the secular soul singer have long occupied the same body. Friday night didn’t require choosing between them.
Then came one of those songs.
A SONG EVERYBODY KNOWS
“Let’s Stay Together” is more than an Al Green hit at this point.
It belongs to everybody.
That became apparent almost immediately as voices around the Hollywood Bowl joined his.
There is something equally wonderful about hearing those famous words come directly from the mouth of the man who made them immortal and hearing thousands of people around you enthusiastically sing what they think the words are.
Because everyone knows “Let’s Stay Together.”
Or at least everyone thinks they do.
Released more than half a century ago, the recording has somehow escaped being confined to its era. One reason may be the countless times popular culture has introduced it to another audience. Its inclusion in Pulp Fiction is perhaps the most famous example, with Green’s impossibly warm recording playing underneath a decidedly less warm conversation.
That contrast demonstrates something filmmakers have understood about Green for decades.
His music doesn’t have to describe what we’re watching.
It can tell us what we’re supposed to feel.
My guest’s comment about movies suddenly made perfect sense.
Al Green’s recordings have become emotional shorthand.
And then he shushed us.
“How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?”
The Bowl quieted.
Green’s version of the Bee Gees composition has enjoyed an especially remarkable cinematic existence. It appears on the soundtracks to Good Will Hunting and Notting Hill, among several other films. In Notting Hill, it accompanies William’s heartbreak after discovering that Anna has a boyfriend.
The song knows what heartbreak sounds like.
Apparently Hollywood knows that too.
“I’VE BEEN SINGING THESE SONGS FOR 57 YEARS”
Eventually Green addressed the obvious.
“I’ve been singing these songs for 57 years.”
Then came the line that may have best captured the entire evening.
“I’ve got to sit down every now and then to remind myself that I’m 80 years old.”
The crowd laughed.
So did Green.
“I haven’t forgot all the good times.”
Then he launched into “Take Me to the River.”
This is where writing about an aging performer can become uncomfortable. There is always a temptation either to pretend that time hasn’t passed or to make age the story.
Neither would accurately describe what happened at the Bowl.
Age has caught up with Al Green.
Of course it has.
But his spirit remains remarkably young.
Before the next section, Green announced that he had “a special something” for Los Angeles and began rifling through the great American soul songbook.
“I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” … “Bring It On Home to Me” … “My Girl” … “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” …. “You Are Everything.”
They arrived as snippets rather than full performances, Green wandering through the music of his era as if leafing through an old photo album. For a few minutes, his concert became a celebration not simply of Al Green but of the musical world that produced him.
Then came “Tired of Being Alone.”
And reality intervened in the realist possible way. There were high notes Green wasn’t going to hit that night. He knew it. So he turned them over to us. The problem was that most of us couldn’t hit them either. Maybe we had all underestimated just how difficult being Al Green actually was.
THE MAN AGES. THE MUSIC DOESN’T
By “I’m Still in Love With You,” Green had made his way to a chair. Watching him sit while singing a song that has existed in the public consciousness for more than five decades crystallized something for me.
The person ages. The recording doesn’t.
Put on the original “I’m Still in Love With You” tomorrow and Green is young again. Put “Let’s Stay Together” into another movie twenty years from now and some kid who wasn’t alive Friday night may discover that voice for the first time. Records create a strange kind of immortality. Concerts remind us of the human being behind them.
Green introduced “Simply Beautiful” by telling us he doesn’t usually perform it, but would that night because we were “so beautiful.”
Earlier he had asked the audience to pray for him.
That prompted my guest to tell me something her grandmother always used to say: when someone asks you to pray for them, she worried that it meant something bad was going to happen. It was one of those strange little conversations that happens during concerts, where somebody else’s words suddenly attach themselves to the music.
Nothing ominous followed. Instead, when the horns came in, Green rose from his chair.
That seemed about right.
There was one more song.
“I’m a little hoarse, but I’m going to get through it,” Green told us.
Then came “Love and Happiness.”
He stood. He sang. And once again, he handed out his flowers.
Maybe that’s why filmmakers keep reaching for Al Green.
There is an emotional generosity in these songs. They deal with enormous subjects using remarkably direct language. Love. Happiness. Loneliness. Staying. Leaving. Broken hearts. Wanting someone back.
You don’t need to explain much more than that.
Cinema has spent decades borrowing those emotions. Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Notting Hill and many others have allowed Green’s voice to inhabit other people’s stories, sometimes introducing his music to audiences generations removed from the Memphis soul world from which it emerged.
But Friday night at the Hollywood Bowl offered something a movie never could.
The voice had a body again. A very human one.
An 80-year-old body that occasionally needed a chair. A voice that sometimes needed the audience to supply a high note. A throat that was getting hoarse. A performer who could joke about all of it because after nearly six decades of singing these songs, there wasn’t much left to prove.
The recordings will always preserve Al Green as he was.
The Hollywood Bowl gave us Al Green as he is.
Still smiling.
Still flirting.
Still handing out roses.
Still in love.
And, somehow, the soundtrack hasn’t gotten old.
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LIVE CLIPS
Al Green at the Hollywood Bowl: The Soundtrack Never Gets Old
