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发信人: kEitH (i wOuLD n^e^ver make u CrY aGain.......), 信区: Music
标 题: Aaron Neville 2
发信站: 荔园晨风BBS站 (Mon Sep 29 11:02:11 2003), 站内信件
some more info from officalsite:
Ask Aaron Neville when he first knew that his voice was something
special, and he has a ready answer. "It was the day I was born" he
says with a little grin. "The doctor slapped me, and I said
"Ah-aaaah!"
What follows is one of those classic, tremulous Aaron Neville
falsettos - it may be impossible to capture on the printed page, but
you've heard it before. You heard it on his classic 1966 ballad, "Tell
It Like It Is," on his acclaimed records with his brothers in New
Orleans first family of rock n'funk, The Neville Brothers, on his
Grammy-winning hit duets with Linda Ronstadt and Trisha Yearwood; and on
his A&M Records solo albums WARM YOUR HEART, THE GRAND TOUR, and
AARON NEVILLE'S SOULFUL CHRISTMAS. And now you'll hear it once more on
THE TATTOOED HEART, the latest chapter in one of the hardest-fought,
most triumphant success stories in popular music.
As one of the great distinctive singers of the past four decades,
Aaron Neville's contradictions have long been noted: the body of a
linebacker and the voice of an angel; the arms that look as if they
could snap a microphone in half, coupled with the voice of an angel; the
arms that look as if they could snap a microphone stand in half,
coupled with a voice of startling purity, grace and even innocence.
Aaron calls it "the perfect package," and even he's not immune to the
spell his music can cast. "When people tell me that my voice helped them
through their rough times, I know what they're talking about," he
says quietly. "Because it helped me through my rough times, too."
Aaron might well be singing about that bond in "Everyday Of My Life,"
a gorgeous, doo-wop influenced ballad on THE TATTOOED HEART. "I want
to have and to hold you, inspire and console you," he sings with his
usual delicacy, and it sounds as if he's aiming the words partly at a
woman, partly at his audience.
I wanted to make a record that would be real soulful, with a little more
of an R&Bedge," says Steve Lindsey, who has now produced three of
Aaron's albums as well as working with the likes of Peter Gabriel and
Leonard Cohen. "Not a modern R&B edge - more on the level of early
Aretha or Wilson Pickett." As for Aaron, his mission is, as always,
simpler and purer: "I just wanted to make a good record," he says. "I
don't want to just sing songs, you know? I want to sing thinks that
people can feel, and to let them know that I feel it too."
If THE TATTOOED HEART is full of music that Aaron feels deeply, it's
because this is the kind of music he's been listening to since he was
a child growing up in the Calliope housing project in New Orleans.
Living in that city was its own musical education, of course: Keeping
its own lazy pace in a bend of the Mississippi River, the Big Easy has
long absorbed the music of the American South, of the Caribbean, and
of Africa; everything eventually makes its way down the river or
across the sea to New Orleans, where jazz, blues, country, reggae and
many other styles are simmered into a gumbo of astonishing riches. But
music was also inescapable inside the Neville home: Aaron's mother and
uncle were once a song and dance team, his uncle George Landry ("Uncle
Jolly") led a band of Mardi Gras Indians, his father collected Nat
"King" Cole records. And Aaron, who was born on January 24, 1941 as
the third of the four Neville Brothers, also had the influence of
older siblings Art and Charles.
He loved it all, which is why he still sings it all. Take the three
country songs on THE TATTOOED HEART, songs recorded in Nashville and
co-produced by Keith Stegall. An anomaly? Not at all. There's a reason.
Aaron was embraced by Nashville when he made George Jones' "The Grand
Tour" the title song to his second A&M album. "I grew up going to the
movies watching Roy Rogers and Gene Autry," admits Aaron. I was a big
Hank Williams fan, and later on I loved Patsy Cline. I was a cowboy. I
used to yodel and everything."
There are no outright yodels on the new album, though. Instead Aaron
(assisted by Kelly Willis) applies the lightest of touches to the gentle
wisdom of Kris Kristofferson's "For the Good Times," a favorite of
Aaron's since he heard Ray Price's original version. The Nashville
tracks also include "Why Should I Fall in Love," which he calls "an
old Freddy Fender-type song," and "In Your Eyes", a tune Aaron wrote
close to fifteen years ago and then recently revised with Pamela Hayes.
"I messed around with it a few times after I wrote it, but we put it
back the way it was originally, he says. "A pure country song." For
the most part, though, THE TATTOOED HEART is a soul album in the
tradition of past greats. The songs run the gamut from the elegant
ballad, "Some Days Are Made for Rain" to the driving
Dixie-bred-funk-rock of "Down Into Muddy Water" (written by Dennis
"Burning Love" Linde), from the classic Southern soul of "Beautiful
Night" to the slinky grooves of "Try (A Little Harder)" and "My Precious
Star"
("Beautiful Night", "Try (A Little Harder)" and "Show Some Emotion"
all feature typically earthy guitar from the legendary Steve Cropper)
Dianne Warren who wrote Aaron's 1993 hit "Don't Take Away my Heaven"
returns with the first single, the lifting, reggae styled, "Can't Stop
My Heart From Loving You (The Rain Song)."
There's also a tip of the hat to an old favorite of Aaron's, Bill
Withers. In the early Seventies, when Bill Withers had his biggest hits,
Aaron was at a low point in his career: He'd been making records
since the early sixties, and had a couple of hits including "Over You"
and of course, "Tell It Like It Is." But like virtually every other
great New Orleans musician of the time, he wasn't the one making money
off his success; instead he had to work on the docks, in the steel
mills, wherever else he could get a job that paid the bills. But he
still sang when he had the chance - and in the small clubs where he
appeared, he would perform Withers' classic hits "Ain't No Sunshine" and
"Use Me." For THE TATTOOED HEART, Aaron dug out the later song; drummer
Ed Greene and bassist Freddie Washington locked into its sinuous
rhythm, while Aaron's brothers Charles and Cyril added saxophone and
backing vocals, respectively. And when they needed a copy of the lyrics,
those words were hand delivered to the recording studio
by none other than Withers himself.
Naturally, the album also includes one spiritual song; this after all is
a man who used prayers to St. Jude - the patron saint of lost causes
- to get him through the years when it seemed as if his vocal gifts
might not be enough to rescue him from the dead- end life of many of his
friends. Faith sustained Aaron when his musical and personal fortunes
were at their lowest, and it sustained him after he rejoined his three
brothers on the infectious WILD TCHOUPITOULAS album in 1976. It would be
thirteen more years, several acclaimed but unsuccessful albums as the
Neville Brothers, and countless prayers before the breakthrough: first
the Neville Brothers masterful 1989 album YELLOW MOON, then Aaron's four
duets with longtime fan Linda Ronstadt on her double platinum CRY
LIKE A RAINSTORM, HOWL LIKE THE WIND, then his first solo album on A&M
records, WARM YOUR HEART.
Two albums, four Grammy Awards and a couple Rolling Stone magazine
critics' poll victories later, Aaron remembers what it took to get him
here - and so he ends each of his albums with some sort of hymn. This
time its the pop-gospel standard "Crying in the Chapel." The best
known version may have come from Elvis Presley, but when Aaron sings it,
he's thinking back further. "I first heard it by Sonny Til and the
Orioles back when I was about eleven years old," he says, "and that's
when I fell in love with it . He was one of the great singers"
THE TATTOOED HEART you might say, is the work of another of the great
singers. With every new album, Aaron Neville carries on the legacy of
the greats who influenced him, and sings for the friends and relatives
who didn't make it through the obstacles and the family that has stood
behind him. The open, generous, heart, at the core of his music is
indeed tattooed - tattooed with the names, emblems, and dreams of
those who came before, those who didn't make it this far, those who
needed his music in the past and will need it in the future.
"They've been with me almost all my life, since I was a teenager," he
says of his visible tattoos, the ones that adorn his face his arms,
his body. "And they'll be there forever." So will his music.
--
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L O v E d k E i T h
※ 来源:·荔园晨风BBS站 bbs.szu.edu.cn·[FROM: 192.168.1.4]
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