| Soul Jones Words: For One Night Only - Brenda Russell Interview May 27th 2012, 22:37  "I haven't performed in the UK in over 20 years … since the eighties." Says Brenda Russell; speaking on the phone from her LA pad. "I am truly looking forward to seeing old friends and my UK fans, because nobody's a fan like the UK people: if they love a song you will know about it for thirty years, I swear to you. I can play anywhere in the world and I'll know if there's someone from the UK in the audience because they'll yell out, 'In The Thick Of It!'" (Brenda immediately apologises for her dodgy British accent.) It's so bloody typical of us Limey's that we'd shout out for the obscure fan favourite – not the obvious classics, such as the 1988 released, multi-platinum, Grammy winning Piano In The Dark (aka Oh-No-Caught-Up-In-The-Middle-I -Criiiiiiiiiied-Just-A-Little) or the heart-breaking ballads, made famous by other artists, Get Here (Oleta Adams) & If Only For One Night (Luther Vandross). That's just how we British soul fans roll. And gems such as Way Back When, A Little Bit Of Love & the hit So Good, So Right (all three from Brenda's self-titled solo debut on A&M subsidiary Horizon) will be anticipated by a packed out crowd at Islington's Union Chapel venue later this year. Booked for the show by former label, UK independent Dome Records (2004's Between The Sun & The Moon plus a couple of Greatest Hit collections have been released by Dome) to help celebrate their 20 year anniversary. "As fate would have it I first met Peter (Peter Robinson, Dome Records label head and then International A&R Director at Chrysalis) on a plane from New York to LA; we were seated next to each other. He had the window seat … it was cool though (laughs), so we started talking and found out we were both in the music industry. I had just written Get Here and played it for him on my Walkman…" This was before Get Here became an international smash via the throat of Oleta Adams, when Headphones we're bigger than ears. Begs the question, why wasn't Get Here - the original of which appeared on an album that not only bore the same title, but also featured Brenda's biggest selling song (Piano In The Dark) – a hit with Russell first? "That's the unanswerable question," says Brenda, who clearly once wondered the same thing. "I think promotion is a very big part of hits. The average layperson just thinks: you make a record, it goes on the radio, and it becomes a hit or it doesn't. But it's not that easy. You have to spend a lot of money to make some people hear the record. And in that case, with the song Get Here, they spent a little, but not enough. It was very frustrating, because I knew it was a hit song. An artist can't make that song a hit by themselves—they can only create it. It's up to these other guys to make sure it gets marketed. But when something is meant to be, though, it'll find its way. And that's why I love music, because that song was meant to be heard and Oleta Adams was the person it was meant to be heard through." Besides, Oleta and her label Fontana would not have been consulted by General Schwarzkopf and co prior to the Allied Forces waging war in the Gulf. The lyrics to Get Here ("you can reach me by caravan, cross the desert like an Arab man") striking a chord with the families of US Troops. "There was no conflict at the time when I wrote Get Here. And "Arab man" was not a controversial thing to say. It was just a beautiful visual and people loved the song, mainly because of that line. Flip to twenty years later and people are like, 'I would love to record that song but could you change that line about the Arab man?' I'm like, 'Could you remove one of the eyes from the Madonna painting? Like, uh, no.'" Not that Brenda is comparing her song to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci. In fact at first, she wasn't all that sure about it. "The first person that heard Get Here was the engineer, Jan Ugand, who was in Stockholm, Sweden working on the record with me. I was terrified because I thought, 'This song is so corny.' I was worried about what people would think so I sang it and he went, 'That's wonderful.' Luckily it was a positive response; because I've had it happen where the first person to hear a song of mine called Le Restaurant was like, 'Eh, its okay.' And then I put it in a drawer for seven years. We're very sensitive, us writers and if someone doesn't give you a good response you may just turn it off, shelve the song or the project. So I've learned to get a second opinion before I throw it away. Thankfully Joe Sample was there too, he was playing at a wonderful club in Stockholm called Café Opera – so I dragged him into the studio to play piano. Sometimes the words may sound corny, but it's not always about that. It's about the actual pain… because I had pain in my shoulder - I had torn my rotator cuff! It's really funny because people say to me, 'We really feel your pain in that song,' and I'm like, 'Yes, that's because my shoulder was falling off!'" Joe Sample is not the only famous name to have either worked with Brenda Russell or recorded her material. In 2002 Brenda's friend Stevie Wonder called her up. "He said 'Brenda … don't say anything, just listen.' And he just started playing music. With the phone at my ear I was running around my room trying to find a recording instrument of some kind to get Stevie Wonder playing this music to me over the phone. It was an extraordinary experience to hear him do that." Titled Justice Of The Heart (a baroque melancholy Stevie ballad alá They Won't Go When I Go) the song, as yet unreleased, only appears in a scene of the Denzel Washington film John Q. Russell has also placed songs with Earth, Wind & Fire (I've Had Enough), Donna Summer (Dinner With Gershwin), Sting (She Walks This Earth), Lalah Hathaway (It's Something) & Roberta Flack (My Love For You). But arguably the finest interpretation of a Russell is original, was by the late, great Luther Vandross. "If Only For One Night was written out of true heartbreak," Brenda laughs "and those make the best songs, when you write about real life. People relate to it because they've been there themselves. That's why it's good to write about what you know and feel. It was such a hard situation that I could hardly play the song without crying. But I'm over it now [laughs]. I would call my mum sometimes when my heart was breaking and she'd say, 'Write about it.' That's always what she would say: 'Write about it.'" Though the Brenda Russell of 2012 wouldn't pen those lyrics now - "It's a different time now and I'm a different woman. You grow and you learn and you write new thought processes. Like now, I would never be so distraught… I was pretty distraught in that song, but now I want to be uplifting rather than make people feel bad or write about my misery. It was good in that moment, but now you just can't go to bed with someone for one night—it's just not the thing to do anymore!" Brenda laughs, adding "Everyone's had a secret love, let's face it, that you never told anyone about. It may be just a fantasy, but its reality. And there are men who would say to me, 'That's so embarrassing to say that,' but I just couldn't understand why. Then they'd go 'How can you say that?' You know? I'm like, 'It's easy.'  | |
