Darlene Love
SHE’S A REBEL
What music are you currently grooving to?
Earth, Wind & Fire, doesn’t matter which one. Also, music that keeps me calm, what we call meditation music, and I love Adele, she’s gorgeous. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Well, my music that I listened to was mostly on 45. But one song that I can listen to, if it’s 20 years from now or the next minute, is Sam Cooke’s You Send Me. I was acquainted with him when he was singing gospel music, but when he started singing secular music, he brought that same spirit. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? Sings, “Darling, you send me...” That was the first! From Sam’s record store on Central Avenue in Los Angeles, in a predominantly black neighbourhood, where we hung out. Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be?
Barbra Streisand. I saw her one time in Central Park and I never saw anything like it in my life, how she acted and how she portrayed herself, how she performed.
What do you sing in the shower?
I don’t, I hum in the shower, melodies from my head. It’s good for warming the throat up.
What is your favourite Saturday night record?
Lionel Richie, Can’t Slow Down. One of the very few albums where I liked every song. I still have two copies! And your Sunday morning record? I’m getting ready to go to church. The gospel group of Richard Smallwood, they are the greatest. He is un-believable. I also listen to Elvis Presley’s gospel albums, they’re all songs that we love to sing, the hymns of the church. It wakes up the spirit.
Darlene Love’s Live 1982 is available on DVD, CD and digital debut via Liberation Hall on April 7.
David Bowie in 1973. We’re chronically aware of the demands on our time in 2023, but consider Bowie’s schedule for that year, starting with 84 Ziggy Stardust dates in the UK, the USA and Japan. Another classic album, Aladdin Sane, written and recorded between shows and released in April. The denouement of the Ziggy era at Hammersmith Odeon in July. Then straight back into the studio to constr uct Pin Ups, in the shops only six months after Aladdin Sane. “We moved at such intensity, such speed,” Bowie told Melody Maker in May, as if it was all over, as if a few days on the Trans-Siberian Express constituted a major retreat from fame. There were collaborations to pursue, too, a US TV special, and a rock opera that would soon reconfigure itself into Diamond Dogs. It all remains dizzying to even contemplate: meticulous, high-concept masterpieces seemingly put together on the fly; nuanced personae that most sane artists would lean into for years, rinsed and disposed of in a matter of months.
Is half a century long enough for everyone involved to get their breath back? This month in MOJO, Tom Doyle reconvenes the musicians, confidants and managers who spent 1973 with Bowie, and tries to take stock of “what the hell happened”, 50 years on. “It was pretty manic,” Bowie’s friend Geoff MacCormack tells us, unsurprisingly. “He was in a hurry. But he had the talent to do it. The output was unbelievable.”