![]() ![]() The fragile power of Charles Bradley’s voice – like a trumpet lined with sandpaper – is really unlike anything else recorded this century.Ģ. I didn’t really have to ‘learn’ it it just stuck to my brain.”ġ. “The verse that really stuck to me was, ‘It took so long to realize / That I can still hear her last goodbyes / Now all my days are filled with tears / Wish I could go back and change these years.’ Because it was like my mom saying she was sick and she was leaving me and something about that song … I just took the last lyrics and wow. His version of “Changes” was recorded for his third – and final – record, and it was while he was in the process of recording it that his mother died. Bradley took care of her through her later years, and she lived to see her son’s unlikely career in music take off with the release of his first album (when he was sixty-two!) in 2011. After years of homelessness and struggle and intermittent contact between the two, she crossed the country on a Greyhound bus to reconnect with him in the late 1990s. When Bradley was eight, his mother reappeared, and they lived together until he ran away at age 14. She abandoned him when he was an infant, leaving his grandmother to raise him. I won’t get into the details of Charles Bradley’s difficult, heartbreaking, and ultimately triumphant life – there is a documentary that can do that nicely for you – but the part of his life most relevant here is his relationship with his mother. Bradley injects into “Changes” the pain and love of a truly extraordinary life. The first line sounds like it’s lifted directly from a thesaurus: “I feel unhappy / I feel so sad.”Īfter the song’s release, Ozzy Osbourne had to appease fans by stating that Sabbath was “certainly not going to get any less heavy” or start bringing string sections on stage in their live shows.Īnd like any good cover song, Charles Bradley’s interpretation takes the best ingredients from the original and pulls them into their potential. ![]() ![]() Then there are the lyrics which aren’t exactly the peak of poetry. Which makes sense, because it was written…by the band’s guitarist, who was experimenting with a keyboard. With all respect to Black Sabbath (whom we featured way back in week 46) the piano part sounds childishly simple, as if it was written by a guitarist who was experimenting with a keyboard. Ultimately the Screaming Eagle of Soul continues to soar, and despite all of the changes, the reasons to fall for Charles Bradley remain constant.The original version of this song, in the context of Black Sabbath’s catalogue of guitar-driven riff-rock anthems, is a bit of an oddball. Swaying love letter "Nobody But You", Motown lullaby "You Think I’m in Love" and the dreamy croon "Slow Love" offer some gentle relief, but Bradley really hits his stride when he turns the intensity up, sweat starts dripping from that furrowed brow and those mighty, impassioned bawls of agony are unleashed. The mood turns more badass on the funk freak out "Aint it a Sin", as Bradley indulges in a range of his favourite grunts, whoops and “huhs” and lets out righteous threats over swaggering licks stolen from a myriad of Blaxploitation soundtracks. The bare intimacy builds to a climax of Hammond organs and brass howls, with Bradley recalling the death of mother and all those years of pain, and letting out the cry - “It took so long to realise/I can still hear her last goodbyes/And now all my days are filled with tears/Wish I could go back and change these years.” Bradley turns Ozzy’s stark, elegiac despair into a gospel slow jam full of pit-of-the-stomach heartache and tear-stained memories. The records’ stand-out moment comes on the title-track, "Changes", a cover of Black Sabbath’s 1972 strung-out ballad. You can picture him strutting around his old neighbourhood to it, clad in flared strides, fur coat and shiny medallions, every inch the 70s soul throwback. “The land where I was born/Sometimes it hurts so bad, sometimes so good/It’s good to be back,” he informs us on the R&B rumble "Good to be Back at Home". You still get plenty of those moments of raw pain on third album Changes, but Bradley is now the returning hero, triumphant and grateful, after charming audiences across the globe and establishing himself as a leading voice of the soul revival. His travails gave even greater weight to his giant, wailing voice and expressive performances, and in a world of hipster posturing Bradley’s authenticity and sincerity shone. ![]() It was the tear-jerking 2011 documentary Soul of America that first brought him to wider attention, showing Bradley caring for his elderly mother and telling the story of his years of struggle and heartbreak. ![]()
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