Who says religion and rock don't mix? St Jude plays a key role in the life of Aaron Neville, singer with New Orleans legends The Neville Brothers who play in Dublin this Sunday, writes Joe Breen
Aaron Neville is a big man. But he is a big man with a difference. And that difference is his voice. Aaron Neville has the voice of an angel. That is if you believe in angels. Aaron Neville does. Indeed, you will walk many a mile before you come up against a rock legend who puts much of his success down to St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.
The way Aaron Neville tells it in his shy New Orleans drawl over a telephone line to his native city, the young Aaron was not the Gospel-singing good-living 64-year-old he is today. "Yes, I went out and searched and found. I was inquisitive, got hooked up and it ran me for a while. But I was lucky in that I got married at an early age so that kinda pulled the reins back on me 'cause I had a responsibility. And then my mother turned me on to St Jude who is the saint of the hopeless cases and I was looking for help - I'd pray all the time. I went to a Catholic school and it was embedded in me. I believe in God and I know God made me because he loved me so I had to seek help from him."
It worked for him, and American music gained as well. The young man heading for a life of crime turned instead to singing. Playing around with many bands, he, among other things, indulged his love of doo-wop, the style of pop music marked by the use of close harmony vocals using nonsense phrases, originating in the US in the 1950s, before forming a band with his equally talented brothers, Charles, Cyril and Art. The year was 1977 and the Neville Brothers debut album, with its dramatic mix of Aaron's sensual vocals and a rhythmic confection that reflected the deliciously varied strains of New Orleans music, put the family firmly in the spotlight.
"At the time, Art and Cyril were with the Meters (another notable New Orleans funk band), Charles was living in New York and I was living in New Orleans." Their music was a product of all that New Orleans had to offer. "We'd started out with the doo-wop, then all the stuff we'd hear on the radio - Professor Longhair (the legendary pianist), the brass bands, the jazz bands, Fats Domino - Art used to sing like Fats Domino, you couldn't tell the difference. And me? Well, I was into Sam Cooke, Nat King Cole, the doo-wop groups. Charles was always into Charlie Parker and Cyril was listening to James Brown and all the soul singers. So it all took its time."
What took its time was the creation of a distinctive Neville Brothers sound that was a fluid synthesis of all the above. It has been like that on and off since then with the four brothers keeping the family project alive with albums such as the classic Yellow Moon in 1989 and the current Walkin' in the Shadow of Life while taking time out for solo projects. In Aaron's case he has become a very successful Gospel singer which, given his connections with his mentor, was not exactly a surprise.
THE CURRENT FAMILY album puts Aaron's Gospel on hold and is a powerful statement about the state of the streets in America today. Produced by Aaron's son Ivan and featuring all four brothers and various offspring - "the Neville nation", quips Aaron - the album is both a restating of the ageless virtues of the band's playing and a nod to the new generation of the family. Songs such as the title track and the graphic Junkie Child also point to the major theme of the album - the plight of people on the streets.
"If you are looking at the paper or watching the news there is so much going on with our youth - the youth are lost. I wouldn't want to be growing up today because the kids have too much thrown at them from an early age. When I was growing up, if I wanted to do something I had to go out and look for it, but today they only have to look outside their front door and it's out there waiting for them. It's bad. And it's bad everywhere - a lot of drug crime, dealers fighting over turf, they're killing each other . . . The kids out of the streets are trying this new heroin and it's so strong it's like it grabs them and they don't know which way to go - there is nowhere to go because they don't have no rehab or nothing. They are either dying or going to jail. They need more places where they can go without costing an arm and a leg. If you go to rehab it's $50,000 or something. The kid out there on drugs can barely find the money to buy his drugs - he can't afford to go somewhere to find help . . ."
It was a different world when he was growing up in 1950s New Orleans. "Back then the only thing we really had to worry about was the Jim Crow stuff that was going on in the south. On the buses they had a screen and blacks sat behind the screen and the whites sat in front of it. That's where Cyril came up with the song Sister Rosa. We didn't let none of that bother us at the time. We just lived with it and we were doing what we loved to do - singing and playing music. So that was our salvation, really."
Whatever about his brothers, Aaron's salvation is tied to matters spiritual. "When people tell me I have a wonderful voice, I say: "Thank you and thank God". A lot of people write me letters and tell me that my voice helped them through some adversity or whatever and all I can say is that it's not me, it's the God in me helping the God in them. I don't take the responsibility. I'm glad to be the instrument."
AND DOES SINGING take him closer to God?
"Most definitely. My grandmother used sit me down on her knee when I was small and we'd listen to the Gospel stations - Mahalia Jackson, the Blind Boys of Alabama, the Dixie Hummingbirds and then I heard Sam Cooke. That was it. I wanted to sing. A lot of the groups used to belt out songs but Sam Cooke sang it smooth. And I just said: "Yeah, man, I could do this." And so when we were walking down the street we might have been going to rob a car or something but we'd be singing spirituals."
Thankfully, the spirituals and St Jude won out. Today Aaron Neville is a happy man, happy with the music he has made in his Neville Nevilleland studio in New Orleans, happy with his family and happy with his God. But do the brothers, a diverse lot it must be said, really get on?
"We sure do. We all respect each other and respect where we came from and where we are today." And then he adds, totally unselfconsciously: "It's a love thing."
Walkin' in the Shadow of Life is released on Virgin. The Neville Brothers play the Ambassador, Dublin, on Sunday, Mar 6. www.aaronneville.com