1992
Wilson Pickett
Thebarton Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It would have been interesting to know how many people who bought tickets for the Wilson Pickett show thought he was Irish. Certainly his fortunes have received some word-of-mouth resuscitation from Alan Parker’s 2-D movie about a Dublin pub band. Much mentioned but never seen, Mr Pickett served as a grail hero for the Commitments, a retro-soul tribute band playing note-for-note Stax and Atlantic hits from the mid sixties.
The fact is, that in its day, soul music, while piling up sales in the US and Europe, was pretty much eclipsed by the shift in rock taste led by the Beatles, the Stones and the Good Vibrations period Beach Boys. 1966 may have been the year that Mustang Sally went gold, but so did The Last Train to Clarksville, Revolver, Friday on my Mind, Aftermath and Wild Thing.
A quarter of a century on, the dues are being paid and the music is being recognised. Now we can also see that Plato was wrong. When the mode of the music changes the walls don’t crumble at all. In 1968 there was no radical social change despite the millennial preoccupations of song writers. Instead, a different bunch of opportunists got to make the money.
Invariably, a black commercial idea becomes a white commercial success. Jazz, blues, rock`n’ roll, soul, disco, rap, it’s a long list. Even Alan Parker’s Commitments, despite their proletarian lack of couth, are essentially in the lucrative tradition of the Monkees. It’s hard to hang on to the patent – as Willie Dixon knew when, for a long time, the Stones, Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin pillaged without so much as a thank-you. Dixon eventually set up a trust for black musicians ripped off by white `composers’. Chuck Berry undoubtedly felt the same about Brian Wilson’s Surfin’ USA and the Beatles’ Back in the USSR. No wonder he wanted everything COD. When he was forever getting caught with his luggage full of banknotes he was trying to get even. Whatever he owed the IRS was nothing to what the music industry already owed him.
And it’s probably the same for Wilson Pickett. He had some nice successes in the late sixties working with Bobby Womack and white soul gutarist Steve Cropper . Like Otis Redding, Pickett also made some cross-over to white audiences attuned to soul of the rubber variety. In an curious reverse-flip both he and Redding sang Beatles songs in the style of Joe Cocker. But the salad days were soon over for Pickett. Except maybe for Bryan Ferry’s arty revival of Midnight Hour, he became just another lost soul playing the lounges with all those songs which had been very good to him.
No doubt Wilson Pickett is only too pleased to be mistaken for an Irishman if it means that he can still play the circuit at the age of fifty-one. With his seven-piece band he worked the Thebarton crowd like a steak knife salesman. First of all, the showband- led by Curtis Pope on trumpet- got us hyped up with riffs from The Land of a Thousand Dances, home of those anthropological curiosities the madison and the watusi. Then second trumpeter David Akers, in a heritage-listed frilly shirt, sang My Girl- momentarily confusing us into thinking this was Wilson Himself. It wasn’t. But the band plunged on in their diversity. The young fry- guitarist Ronald Hinton, bassist Gail Parrish and Terry Scott on keyboards -looked like the Partridge family in dreadlocks. Up front, Curtis Pope led the push with his anabolic shoulderpads while Vernon McDonald, excellent but under-represented on tenor sax, could have passed for Malcolm X.
After what must have been twenty minutes of overture and will- you-please-welcomes Wilson Pickett appeared in a suit with oroton lapels. In the Midnight Hour. The voice is unmistakable. A high grainy tenor, not as sweet as Otis Redding, not as dangerous as James Brown. Pickett serenaded the audience like a singles bar lothario, a wall of brass behind him, tight rhythm from Gail Parrish and drummer Tyrone Green, Terry Scott- Booker to a T on keyboard- and Ronald Hinton on guitar looking like he’d like to get into some Metallica.
Dragging the folks on stage -under the benign gaze of a minder the size of a Toyota landcruiser- Wilson Pickett sang his greatest. Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You, Don’t Knock My Love, Mustang Sally- ricocheting off into a medley with 634-5789, Steve Cropper’s famous phone number. With the crowd on its feet and twenty-odd people of all sizes and proclivities partying on stage, the joint was undeniably jumping. On went the hit list -Funky Broadway, Hey Jude, and a lewd, boppy version of Everybody Needs Somebody. The band was nimble as a wrestling troupe and Terry Scott hinted at hidden depths on the Roland.
Then after just under an hour Wilson Pickett was whisked from the stage. Like a Vice-President ,maybe -or a short-punch middleweight or a corrupt evangelist. The landcruiser steered the on-stage invitees back into the crowd and, after the audience bellowed long enough, Pickett returned for a reprise of In the Midnight Hour and some shrieks, mercies and na-na-na-nas from the land of dances. I want to hear it for my hard-working band, he roared- and the brass sent out another salvo. Pickett hauled another dozen devotees on stage and, towel over his shoulder, was swept back into the wings. The band left- but encouraged by the pandemonium, Scott, Hinton and Gail Parrish returned. They sounded like they were ready to start a palace revolution but Wilson and the other old guys were already heading back to the hotel. Tomorrow, after all, was another day for a hard-working band.
It was a short gig- vulgar and full of horseshit. It was also a golden hour and a bit of glitzy, exhilarating, soul-shaking music. I hope Wilson Pickett filled his suitcase with used notes, he deserved them. He may not be the King of Soul but he’s serious royalty -and he makes the Commitments sound like a pale imitation.
The Adelaide Review, No.104, July, 1992, p.40.