The “three things” you need for a platinum hit, according to Al Green
Before he became one of the living legends of American soul and R&B, Al Green was just an ambitious kid from Arkansas—a sharecropper’s son with a pipe dream of becoming the next Sam Cooke or Jackie Wilson. After scuffling for a few years to find his own voice, he notched his first mainstream hit single as a solo artist at 25, with 1971’s ‘Tired of Being Alone’.
That song sold over a million copies in the US, and by the time his follow-up hit ‘Let’s Stay Together’ pulled off the same feat a few months later, Green had become something of an expert on the subject of going platinum.
“You need three things for a million seller,” Green told the Associated Press in 1972, “A story, good music, and a good rhythm. But I don’t think I should tell that now. Everybody will be running up on Al Green’s secret.”
It’s a bit adorable that Green thought any old schmo could replicate something as iconic as ‘Let’s Stay Together’ just by following this three-step formula, but with the amount of success he was having at the time, the process but did seem almost like a reliable assembly line, with Willie Mitchell writing the music, Al Jackson creating the rhythm, and Green focusing on the “story” of each song. Sometimes the lyrics were inspired by experiences from his own life, but in other cases, such as ‘Tired of Being Alone’, the sentiment was almost in opposition to Green’s actual feelings.
“I’m kind of self-contained,” he told the AP. “I like to be on my own a lot”.
Therein lies another bit of young Al’s early advice to aspiring chart-toppers: don’t be afraid to be alone with your thoughts.
“I like to get away for a few days,” he said, “I go fishing or go horseback-riding. I kind of let all other business filter out of my mind… Your ideas are much fresher and newer then”.
Green seemed to have everything figured out, and his continued dominance of the charts backed up his sage advice. Between 1971 and 1975, he scored six consecutive number one albums on the US R&B charts, along with seven top ten singles on the Billboard Hot 100.
By the mid ‘70s, however, his skyrocketing career was suddenly cratered by personal tragedies, including a 1974 incident in which his then-girlfriend, Mary Woodson, attacked him with a boiling pot of water before taking her own life with a handgun. Green suffered serious burns in the attack, and later learned that Woodson had secretly been married to another man and had three children. The horrific series of events was a wake-up call for Al, and it eventually led him down a new path in his life and career, as he focused more on gospel music and opened his own church in Memphis.
Green didn’t completely turn over a new leaf—charges of domestic violence and other acts of cruelty tarnished his image and mostly derailed his mainstream career. Another effort to rebuild his life led to better results in the 1980s, however, as ‘The Reverend’ Al Green was able to overcome some of his demons and eventually was embraced again by the music business. He was honoured with a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement as well as induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
