The Impressions I Got: Discovering Curtis Mayfield At The End of A World
Wednesday is about books. Or writing. Today, it's about when the music is about more than the music. Good music is always about more than just the music....
When I was lost – early 20s, no idea, never quite sure about what the plan was or where it was or if there even was one – I found the music of Curtis Mayfield. One of the greatest box-sets – a three-disc volume that goes through all the best of the Impressions material and on through the classic Superfly era and then to when he was cooking with doo-wop and those R’n’B roots and the funk was back on the back element. I could hear – straight away – what Prince and Lenny Kravitz and many others had taken from this music. How it must have flicked a switch or lit a fuse or whatever.
And I recognised, on the first listen, that I’d heard so much of this already – in the music of Bob Marley and particularly his early Wailing Wailer. And then in actual samples from the best Beastie Boys record. When I was a teenager, I loved Bob Marley. And The Beastie Boys. It’s been so long since I was a teenager and only a few things remain from that period – I’m back loving basketball and horror films but I’ll always and forever love Bob Marley and The Beastie Boys.
And that seems to me to sum up the span of Curtis Mayfield’s influence. To have been there ahead of Marley, to have sparked something for him, lit the path, provided one of the torches and to still be there for The Beasties too. I think about that Curtis Mayfield box-set all of the time. Think about it now, more than listen to it.
I might listen to Al Green and Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye and Bill Withers and James Brown more than Curtis – but that time when I found Mayfield was deep. It’s deep with all the other names too. Sure. Of course. But there’s something in that soul-cry with Curtis. In those perfect guitar lines. Great hooks. Such grooves. And the heart and soul of the man – and his people – in those lyrics. Oh my. You could just cry to stop and think about it.
My 21st was in the rearview mirror and I was so far from being in control of the wheel. And Curtis Mayfield was like a deity in my cruddy room. A lava lamp, incense, notebooks full of poems, ashtrays full of regrets. At the end of the 1990s Curtis Mayfield died. I was bereft. And no one in my immediate circle cared. We had a cheap version of the greatest hits, bought at the last minute for our New Year’s Eve party. So many of us were worried the computers would kill the world, the cars would stop, that life would end. There was a hell below. And we were all going to go. Bags packed. Time to Give It Up.
Future Shock indeed. Curtis was gone. I felt like I’d always known him and was still just getting to know him. A day or two into the new millennium I’d make a call to the police to “help them with their inquiries”.
We had a party that night after my fingerprints were put on file – I did some shots, we danced in the lounge, I slugged a few back, and shrugged it all off. When everyone left, I remember standing stunned in stillness. Listening over and over to I’m So Proud until the tears finally stopped.