As Stevie Wonder's world tour heads for New Zealand, John Walsh analyses the soul legend's long career and how it intersects with American politics
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It takes a person of unusual candour to confess, late in his career, that his mother helped him to write one of his most successful songs. A month ago, on an early-morning TV show, Stevie Wonder explained how he was at home one day in 1969 (aged 19) when inspiration struck. As was his habit, he began with a melody line in search of a lyric. "And she was downstairs," he recalled, "and she said, 'You should write, like, about something Ooh baby, I'm yours. I'm signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours; kind of thing like that.'"
Instead of giving his mother a look of pity, Wonder used the line, had a monster hit with it in 1970, and still reaps the dividends. He's still a mummy's boy. It was her death in 2006 that prompted him to go back on the road, and the Motown superman will play two New Zealand concerts in October. It will be his first world tour for 10 years.
Wonder has been part of the musical landscape for 45 years in a variety of incarnations: as infant phenomenon, teen sensation, crooner, multi-instrumentalist, corn-row-haired sage, producer, arranger, duettist and spokesman on black rights. He has also become perhaps the most famous blind person in the world.
Websites are devoted to jokes about his disability ("What did Stevie Wonder say when he was given a cheese grater for Christmas? He said, 'Man, that was the most violent book I ever read.'") People born too late to know of his heyday in the 1960s and 70s know him as the famous blind black guy. Now the jokes take on a new dimension: politics.
In March 2002, the Washington Post reported from a presidential gala at the Ford Theatre, where George Bush sat in the front row and gave Wonder a cheery wave when he appeared on stage. The story of the President waving at a blind man delighted the nation. Did Wonder mind? Evidently not. Six years later, he appeared beside another presidential figure and made a little joke about blindness. He was in Los Angeles in February, appearing at a rally in support of Barack Obama. Obama's wife Michelle took Wonder's arm to escort him on stage, but they both publicly stumbled on the stairs. "I was so busy looking at the next First Lady", Wonder told the crowd, "that I lost my way."
Who knows how far this relationship will go? When (and if) America's first black president takes his seat in Pennsylvania Avenue, how will he deploy his court of high-profile black acolytes? Obama and Wonder are friends; the latter has supported the former at several rallies. Obama says Wonder is his wife's favourite performer.
Announcing his return to international touring last month, Wonder said of Obama, "He's a combination of JFK and Martin Luther King. With that [combination] he can't lose." But if he wins, will there be a role in his administration? National songwriter? Poet laureate? Only a cynic would speculate that the rise of Obama lies behind Wonder's return to touring.
Wonder says he was inspired by a dream after his mother's death. His impulse, it seems, is gratitude. "I want to thank everyone for the contribution you've made over my life," he told the press conference. "Had it not been for you, I would never have had the chance to get the support for my music." One's response is: don't mention it. Happy to have helped make such an extraordinary career.
He was born Steveland Hardaway Judkins in May 1950 in Saginaw, Michigan. Because he was premature, the blood vessels at the back of his eyes hadn't yet reached the front, and their aborted growth caused the retinas to detach. The family moved to Detroit when he was four. He started playing the piano at seven, taught himself the harmonica, drums and bass, and sang in the church choir. At 11, he was introduced to Ronnie White of the Miracles who, a little stunned by his talent, brought him to Berry Gordy, the Motown mogul, who signed him up instantly. Stevie's surname proved a problem until Clarence Paul, a songwriter, suggested "Wonder", reasoning that, "We can't keep introducing him as The Eighth Wonder of the World."'
Paul became his producer all through his teens. Wonder's early records had terrible titles such as I Call It Pretty Music, but the Old People Call It the Blues, and didn't trouble the charts. But he got a chance to display his multi-instrumental brilliance in the company's Motor Town Revue. In 1963, part of a live recording of the Revue was cut as a single. It was Fingertips Part 2 featuring Little Stevie Wonder on vocals, bongos and harmonica, with a juvenile Marvin Gaye playing drums. The hyperactive blind kid was an instant smash hit: the song went to No 1 in the pop and R&B charts.
The Motown bosses held their breath while their protege's voice broke; the maturer 15-year-old who resumed recording in 1965 had a proper Motown delivery but it was too deep for anyone to call him "Little" any more.
He became a product of the Gordy factory: the label's executives chose what songs he'd sing, and alternated undemanding new soul songs with covers of pop standards. His Uptight (Everything's Alright) was a hit worldwide. He covered Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind and began writing his own songs: Smokey Robinson's Tears of a Clown was one of his triumphs.
Wonder hit his stride from 1965 to 1970: I Was Made to Love Her, For Once in My Life, My Cherie Amour, Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday and Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours were all hits. But he was tiring of Motown's stranglehold over its talents, and Gordy's determination to keep absolute control over what they wrote and performed. So Stevie Wonder did something astonishing. He allowed his contract to expire and left Motown on his 21st birthday.
There followed his most creative period, when he paid for the recording of two albums, on which he played all the instruments (including the synthesiser, seldom heard in black music), and brought a new seriousness to his lyrics.
Little Stevie had grown up. His songs now dealt with race issues and spiritual growth. He started his own publishing company, Black Bull Music, and went back to Motown to offer Gordy a deal; they could release the records, if Wonder kept total control over his own output, and the publishing rights. He got his way.
Music of My Mind came out in March 1972, a concept album rather than a collection of songs, and the first of five classics in as many years: the others were Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness First Finale and Songs in the Key of Life.
Talking Book brought the world the irresistibly funky Superstition. Wonder performed it on Sesame Street - a brilliant storm of noise with its chunking guitars and snarling horns, and Wonder singing through his huge trademark grin, waggling his head in ecstacy. He was on the biggest roll of his life. He had become the most important exponent (and innovator) of black music. He married Syreeta, his fellow Motown star, who had sung backing vocals on Signed, Sealed ... ". He opened for the Rolling Stones on their 1972 tour. A series of singles topped the charts including You Are the Sunshine of My Life, Higher Ground and Living for the City. Innervisions and Fulfillingness won Best Album Grammys in 1974 and 1975, and Songs ... picked up another in 1977. He was seemingly unstoppable.
But after that, things were never quite the same. There was the instrumental soundtrack to a documentary called The Secret Life of Plants which garnered reviews bordering on the homicidal.
There were popular singles from the platinum Hotter than July including the most successful hit of his career - but to watch the video of I Just Called to Say I Love you with Wonder singing the dull ballad, a telephone receiver clamped to his ear, was painful. So too was his duet with Paul McCartney, Ebony and Ivory, a cloyingly simplistic plea for racial harmony.
In the early 1980s, Wonder successfully campaigned to have Martin Luther King's birthday, 15 January, celebrated as an annual public holiday. He has collaborated with artists ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Andrea Bocelli and played harmonica on scores of soundtracks.
He has become a monument, a titanic figure in popular music over four decades. A large, ebullient, charismatic man of 58 - several years younger than the Dylans, Jaggers and McCartneys with whom he defined the sound of the 1960s - he is still routinely cited as a major influence.
His return to public performance will be the occasion of celebration and dancing in the streets, as his fans recall precisely what it used to do to the mellow backdrop of Talking Book and Innervisions.
LOWDOWN
Who: Stevie Wonder
Born: Steveland Judkins, May 13, 1950, Saginaw, Michigan.
Early life: Born prematurely, which resulted in his blindness. A fine harmonica, drum and piano player by the age of 10, but it was his voice that got him signed to Motown a year later. As Little Stevie Wonder, he had his first major hit, Fingertips (Part 2), in 1963 at the age of 13.
Career: A string of hits in the late 1960s made him a star. In the 1970s he released a run of five classic albums, including Talking Book and Songs in the Key of Life, that cemented his status as a major artist. Wonder continued to be immensely popular, selling more than 150 million albums worldwide. He went on tour in September 2007 for the first time in 10 years, and is now working on a gospel album dedicated to his mother.
Dates: Westpac Arena, Christchurch, Tuesday October 28; Vector Arena, Auckland Thursday October 30.
- INDEPENDENT
