Soul Survivor

June 26, 2017
McDonough’s uneven biography of singer Al Green draws on interviews with Green’s friends, family, and fellow musicians, as well as on already published interviews with and stories about the singer. In great detail, journalist McDonough (Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography) traces Green’s career from singing in his childhood church in Grand Rapids, Mich. (and later in Memphis), his rise to fame at Hi Records, his adversarial relationship with his band, his spiritual reawakening, his difficult relationships with women, and his careers as a gospel singer and a preacher. While the narrative of Green’s life seems overlong, McDonough’s sharp critical insights into Green’s albums and songs energize the book: “ ‘The Love Sermon’ is plain wild, a third-level elevation of the Al Green mind, with its evocations of love, heaven, children, and carnivals.” The surprising highlight of the book, however, is Willie Mitchell, the owner and producer of Hi Records and the Hi Rhythm band, which backed Green on his early hit records; before Green hit the charts, Hi produced such soul sensations as Ann Peebles, Don Bryant, and O.V. Wright. Green emerges from McDonough’s biography as a gifted singer whose insecurities and inability to live comfortably between the secular and sacred worlds express themselves in his music and his sermons.

July 15, 2017
The dark and mysterious back story of a truly great singer.Biographer McDonough (Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen, 2010, etc.) specializes in tough cases: his revelatory book Shakey (2002) began as an authorized biography of Neil Young until dogged reporting caused the authorization to be rescinded. Here, there was never an issue of cooperation since there was little chance that Green (b. 1946) would cooperate and even less chance that he would be happy with the results. While the book gives the singer his due as one of the soul giants--largely crediting producer Willie Mitchell with helping the singer find himself--it otherwise depicts him as eccentric and erratic at best, a heartless skinflint to most and perhaps even culpable in the death of a suicidal woman who was one of his countless lovers. Yet McDonough's final verdict on his subject is that "his life had been so endlessly chaotic and strange" and that "Al remains inscrutable." Amid astute criticism of the artist's work, the author does his best to sustain a cohesive narrative and present a coherent subject. Yet the same artist who regularly cheated his musicians and collaborators also showed uncommon generosity toward a drummer who was down on his luck, and the man who seemed motivated by money and ego forsook his pop career for the pulpit after an epiphany at Disneyland. The whole process seems mysterious to McDonough and will likely to readers as well. Was this some sort of career move or a genuine spiritual conversion? How could a man of God continue to be so abusive to women? "You sound like everybody out on the street. I want to hear Al Green," Mitchell once said to his developing singer, who replied, "I don't know who Al Green is." The soul singer remains an enigma that not even this incisive biography can unravel.

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September 1, 2017

For much of the 20th-century, Albert Leorns "Al" Green has been the go-to guy for peerless, seductive, soul-stirring songs that seamlessly blend music, lyrics, and that smooth, emotive voice that is truly one of a kind. In much the same way, McDonough (Shakey: Neil Young's Biography) has his own seductive style that woos and delights the reader and does not disappoint. Packed with information regarding the background of some timeless recordings, this volume is a page-turner. The Rev. Al Green is far more complicated than his straightforward music would suggest. Through interviews with those closest to the singer/songwriter and exhaustive research, McDonough reveals an often conflicted, always unpredictable master of the music of love and happiness who calls himself "a loner" who is lonely "every day." Tired of being alone indeed. For the rest of us, we'd put on an Al Green record. While we've been doing that, McDonough's book tells you what the man himself has been up to. VERDICT Readers who love the music (and who doesn't?) will enjoy the book. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen. Come and take him.--Bill Baars, Lake Oswego P.L., OR

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