extracted from "Totally Shuffled -A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"
December 9th
Stevie Wonder- If You Really Love Me-At the
Close of A Century
Stevie Wonder
has seemingly been around forever, but he’s only 62 years old. Not 63 until May
2013. If you are in your early twenties, then 62 seems a long way off, but as I
write this he’s only eleven years older than I am. Actually he’ll always be 11
years older than me, but that’s beside the point. Bob Dylan is 71, and there’s
nearly as much of an age gap between him and Wonder as there is between me and
Wonder. Mick Jagger is 69, Paul McCartney is 70, Smokey Robinson is 72. All
those who I’d consider as contemporaries of Wonder-in the matter of age- are
considerably older than he is. It’s staggering.
I can’t remember
a time when Stevie Wonder wasn’t having hit records and being a massive star.
“Fingertips”, his debut single reached number 1 on the Billboard charts when he
was 13 years old and I was barely 18 months. I could map significant events in
my life alongside what Stevie Wonder was doing at the time. Starting at school: “A Place in the Sun”.
Primary school years: “For Once in My
Life”, “My Cherie Amour”. Starting secondary school: “Superstition”. O levels and leaving school; “Sir Duke”. College
years: “Sir Duke”, “Happy
Birthday”. Getting married: “My Eyes Don’t Cry”. Birth of my children: “For Your Love”.
It’s got to be said that hit-wise it’s got a
bit quiet for Stevie in the past couple of decades, but he’s been there or
thereabouts literally all of my life i.e. he is the embodiment of “when I was
knee-high to a grasshopper” and “before I could walk”. Not only do I feel as if
he’s always been around, but it also seems like I’ve grown up with him.
Spiritually, Steveland Hardaway Morris is the black, blind, American genius
musician brother I never had.
This came home
to me really when I saw him play at Glastonbury in 2010. I’d obviously known
all of his hits and more-I had the classic albums and seen countless videos,
but nothing could have prepared me for what was, without a word of a lie, one
of the greatest live performances that I have ever seen. I remembered reading a
review of one of his shows in the NME at the height of post-punk fervour and
being surprised at how effusive the whole piece was. At the time, Stevie Wonder
didn’t seem especially relevant and the writer who wrote the review was much
more associated with the more obscure offerings from the hippest labels at the
time. For some reason this review had
remained something that I was been vaguely aware of and I’d always thought that
if I had the chance to see Wonder then I should do. The fact that he was
headlining Glastonbury was purely co-incidental but, as it turned out, very
fortuitous.
I expected a bit
of a Las Vegas type turn from Wonder and although I was quite looking forward
to it, nothing at all could have prepared me for what I saw. There was hit
after hit. The set list was fantastic-from “My Eyes Don’t Cry” opening it to
the brilliant conclusion of “Happy Birthday”. I have never been at a gig where
on so many occasions I’ve ended up with a lump in my throat, a tear in my eye
and the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. It was a total hour and a
half of sheer brilliance.
From that moment on I’d crawl over broken glass to
see Stevie Wonder play live once again.
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