Band Continues To ‘Take It To The Bridge’
Only the purple crushed velvet suits remain but the ‘Godfather of Soul’ James Brown will continue to pack in the audiences for the next few years if an audacious plan to be revealed in his will goes ahead.
Brown died on Monday and has been rightly mourned around the globe as one of the seminal influences on the popular music of the twentieth century. Yet as crippling alimony payments made retirement impossible for the singer, audiences grew use to an evening with James Brown involving increasingly less James Brown and more input from his growing ranks of backing singers. Now it would seem that the singer’s band will continue ‘taking it to the bridge’ for the foreseeable future.
‘This is a logical move from the people in marketing,’ explained music critic Hector ‘Dizzy’ Rodriguez of San Francisco’s Soul Bugle. ‘The last time I saw James Brown perform, he was helped onto stage to shout “get down” part way through Living in America before he was back in his cape and being helped to his trailer. I know of at least one occasion when he didn’t turn up at all to a gig and screamed “Hit me!” down the telephone as his band filled in the rest of the programme.’
It would not be the first time a dead performer has taken top billing and managed to pack in the crowds. Though many people claim every performance by Ozzie Osbourne amounts to the same thing, the last occasion took place only last month when an audience of 10,000 filled a Berlin concert hall to hear a orchestra led by Ludwig van Beethoven who was represented in the hall by a lock of hair sitting on the lid of a piano. One concert goer said (though in German): ‘Old Ludwig van might have slowed down a bit, grown a little more deaf, and couldn’t reach every note on the piano, but the old magic was certainly there.’
