Soul Man Reconciles Angels And Demons.

The Reverend Al Green’s road leads him not into temptation but to Brisbane   for the first time in January, writes Michael Dwyer.

Salvation is a stone’s throw from the home of rock’n’roll in Memphis, Tennessee. Take a left out of Graceland, head south on Elvis Presley Boulevard, then hang a right into Hale Road. Within minutes, you’re parking the Cadillac at the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church.

The resident reverend, 11-times Grammy winner Al Green, picks up the guided tour. "The office complex, the studio complex and the church complex are all here together," he says. "That makes it convenient, doesn’t it?

"You don’t have to run all over the world tryin’ to get something done. You can just run to the studio and " he hits a full-throttle falsetto note " then you run to the office " his voice dives about five octaves " ’Oh no, that won’t be possible this afternoon’, then you run back to the church and ’Praaaaise the Lord!’"

The pulpit-rattling belly laugh comes easy these days, but the three hats didn’t always sit smoothly on the soul man’s head. When he bought this place, a year before Elvis’s last exit in 1977, it was a necessary pit stop on a long and bumpy road from ‘Let’s Stay Together’ to ‘Take Me To The River’.

"Cleanse my soul, put my feet on the ground," the Reverend intones meaningfully. "Now my feet, at the time I wrote that song, were not on the ground, trust me. My feet were in the sky. But I’m glad today I can consciously, soberly, say that I mean it."

Today is a good day for Al Green. His Lay It Down album was one of last year’s most acclaimed and convincing comebacks. He’s about to tour Australia for the first time, after decades of slowly grooving back from his self-imposed exile on the American gospel charts.

By the time he sought refuge in the church, Green had well and truly proven his vocation as an heir to the ’60s soul giants of Stax and Motown. But the pressures of touring half a dozen classic albums took their toll on the son of a gospel-singing Arkansas sharecropper.

"The whole lifestyle is a rough one," he says. "My mother told me to always think of the positives and keep positive people around me. Now, when I was looking at the people around me, God from Glory! I mean, they were doing everything! So I had to refocus there a little bit."

Green’s years in purgatory included an infamous incident in 1974 when a female friend scarred him with boiling grits before committing suicide. It was the wife of country music legend Hank Williams who helped him back from the brink.

"Audrey Williams came to me and said, ’You are really messed up in the head. You can’t go on like this’," he recalls. "She left me in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, up where you stay in these little chalets in the mountains, and I stayed up there until I got some type of an answer from the people upstairs. ’What is this you’re doing to me? I’m confused here!’"

Green sacrificed his chart-topping pop career by parting ways with Hi-Records hitmaker Willie Mitchell and diving back into the gospel tradition of his childhood. But as the ’90s loomed, album titles such as ‘Trust in God and ‘He is the Light’ slowly gave way to ‘Soul Survivor’ and ‘I Get Joy’.

Lay It Down was co-produced by ?uestlove and James Poyser from Philadelphia hip-hop group, The Roots, with guests John Legend, Corinne Bailey Rae and the Dap-Kings’ horn section.

"In the studio, they were talking about just keeping Al the way he was," the Reverend says. "’Don’t change him, don’t change the way he sings, but update the music. Make it as 2010 as you possibly can’.

"Now, I think they tried to do that at one time, but the more they played it the more it sounded like Willie Mitchell in 1974! It just kind of stuck onto them until they were saying to me, ’Al, this is the way it’s supposed to sound’."

The Reverend’s music hasn’t always sounded the way God intended since his 70s classics were picked up and sampled by a host of rap acts. But he’s reluctant to cast stones at Ghostface Killah, Mary J Blige, Nas or Everlast.

"I don’t know. I always stay in the light. I’ve seen dark areas, but I didn’t go in there because we were forbidden to go in there. Maybe some people don’t have any borders, but I do," he says.

Even at 63, the Reverend is no stranger to temptation. But these days, he says, he can hold up his righteous head and walk right by.

"I’ve seen the little girls in the hall, the night before last, tight jeans on with the big butt, expecting to get some compliments from us going down to our rooms. The only thing they heard was the key card in the lock and ’Good night, ladies’."

The Reverend Al Green and his 12-piece band play the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, on Tuesday 19 January 2010.

Lay It Down is out now.

ENDS