Stevie Wonder
and Friends, Here and Gone
Written by Ben Ratliff as
published on NewYorkTimes.com
Stevie Wonder has asked some unanswerable
questions in his songs, but he
deals mostly in optimistic certainty;
the ideas of eternity and unconditional
love don’t vex him.
Enlarge This Image
Photographs by Michael Nagle for
The New York Times
Repetitious images captured Stevie
Wonder's Madison Square Garden
concert on Saturday because photographers
were allowed only minutes to take
pictures of Mr. Wonder, who performed
with his daughter, Aisha Morris,
and others.
Related
Capturing the Moment With Fewer
Minutes (November 19, 2007)
This is why so many of his songs
are played at weddings or anniversary
parties, and his show at Madison
Square Garden on Saturday was full
of these promises of constancy: “Ribbon
in the Sky,” “Overjoyed,” “How
Will I Know,” “Don’t
You Worry ’Bout a Thing.” When
the men in his songs think of their
women, they don’t do half-measures.
They speak, backed with the forces
of history and nature. They say
things like, “I feel like
this is the beginning/Though I’ve
loved you for a million years.”
It’s secular music with
gospel rhetoric, though on Saturday
Mr. Wonder filled in the blanks
here and there by chanting “God
is good” during “Master
Blaster” and in other, more
indirect ways too.
His mother, Lula Mae Hardaway,
died last year. During the show
he talked about her and to her;
he explained that she gave him
a push from beyond, telling him
to start touring again. (He’s
been touring the United States
since August, his first American
tour in more than 10 years.) The
presence of one of his guests,
Tony Bennett — they alternated
verses on “For Once in My
Life” — functioned
as another tribute to her memory:
Mr. Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald
were her favorite singers.
Mr. Wonder started the concert
with a moment of silence for the
victims of Sept. 11, 2001, and
then began with “Love’s
in Need of Love Today” from
his record “Songs in the
Key of Life.” Next came two
songs from the album “Innervisions”: “Too
High” and “Visions.” Over
a vamp in “Visions,” he
opened up a long monologue, bellowing
at the top of his pitch range. “I
can’t believe it,” he
shouted. “Here we are in
2007, and we’re still practicing
the same bad habits that we had
centuries ago. We love the God
that we serve, whether we are Christian,
Muslim, Jewish or whatever we might
be, and we still ask our God to
give us the right to kill in his
name. It’s unacceptable.
I can’t believe it.”
He returned to this theme at the
end of the show with equal conviction. “Hate
is unacceptable,” he said. “If
you can’t do nothing but
hate, why don’t you go on
and die and go to hell?”
This thundering shared the same
two-hour space with transcendent
goofiness.
Mr. Wonder is an excellent mimic.
He told a story from his teenage
years when his minder thwarted
a date with the girl for whom he
wrote “My Cherie Amour.” Toward
the end of that story he imitated
the low, businesslike voice of
the minder talking to the girl
and her mother, as he heard it
through a glass against a hotel
wall; to that end he held the microphone
to his neck to get the perfect
muted effect.
He also imitated instruments.
For about 15 minutes he used that
scrappy invention of which he is
probably the supreme master, the
talk box, which enables a performer
to sound as if the instrument is
inside his mouth. He went on and
on with it, singing little bits
of other people’s songs: “New
York, New York,” “Ain’t
No Stoppin’ Us Now,” “We
Are Family,” “What’s
Going On” and Parliament’s “We
want the funk” chant. And
later Mr. Wonder performed a comical
but impressive harmonica-solo showdown
with Frederic Yonnet, another exceptional
musician.
Oh, and Prince showed up, but
here he was just another musician.
In “Superstition” he
played chicken-scratch rhythm guitar
on a borrowed Stratocaster against
Mr. Wonder’s stuttering clavinet.
Mr. Wonder’s band, with three
keyboardists, two percussionists,
three backup singers, a drummer,
two guitarists and Nathan Watts’s
driving, band-leading bass, was
fully engaged, pushing out funk
on all fronts. Yet a half-hour
more of the talk box would have
been just as good.
Correction: November 22, 2007
A music review on Monday about
Stevie Wonder, at Madison Square
Garden, misidentified the first
song he performed. It was “Love’s
in Need of Love Today” — not “Too
High,” which was his second
song.
Ben Ratliff
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