MERRY CLAYTON
The Gimme Shelter belter talks serendipity, disability and redemption.
She’s the mighty backing voice on Gimme Shelter, Sweet Home Alabama and more. Now, rising above the most extraordinary challenges, she’s back in Confidential mood to help ease our burdens.
IN 2013’S OSCAR-winning documentary, 20 Feet From Stardom, Merry Clayton and a handful of top-flight backing singers from rock’n’soul’s golden age were finally thrust into the limelight, to huge acclaim. Following the movie’s release, its stars, who also included Darlene Love, Lisa Fischer and Gloria Jones, were planning a world tour when Clayton suffered a car accident in Los Angeles, and had to have both legs amputated at the knee. Incredibly, this battling spirit – palpable in her scorching contributions to The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama and Carole King’s Tapestry, among many other credits – now strikes back with her seventh solo album, Beautiful Scars.
But don’t dare to call hers a hard-luck story.
Is Beautiful Scars Merry Clayton taking it back to church? It’s just me wanting to do some music that’s gonna help people, and let them know they can make it, with all this pandemic madness we’re going through.
It must have been a long road back for you, to get singing again.
It was a bit of a long road, but I’m a very positive person, and I take everything with love, and with gratitude. Let me tell you something, honey, I was glad I could look in a mirror and see myself, that I wasn’t messed up in my face. Here I had some issues
(points downwards) but I was alive! When the doctor came to break the news to me in hospital, apparently I looked at him and asked, “Did anything happen to my voice?” He said, “No”, and I just started to sing. I knew that if my gift was still intact, I would be fine.
You discovered that gift in church, when you were growing up in New Orleans.
Yes, when I was four. My daddy was a preacher, and Mahalia Jackson was a family friend. When she was in town, she would come to church on Sunday morning, and I would nestle next to her. When she got up to sing, I’d stand up on the pew and mimic everything she did.
After serving in Ray Charles’ Raelettes, you were expecting your first child in November ’69 when the Stones called.
When Jack Nitzsche called, I was getting ready to go to bed, had rollers in my hair, with pink silk pyjamas on. I was stomping, not wanting to do it, a bunch of drama, but when we finally got to the studio, here comes Mick and Keith, (fruity Mockney) “Oooooh, hello darlin’!” We did the first pass together – Mick, Keith and I. Then they wanted me to sing, “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away…”. I said, “Look, I’m here by myself, I’m not gonna sing that!” Then, I’m telling you, something came over me. At that time, we had racism, police shootings – the same thing we have now – so I did the next pass screaming to the top of my voice, it was like I was screaming to my ancestors, “Please just give us shelter”, and I had tears coming down from my eyes.
I gave them one more for safety, then I was gone. Three passes.
Did you ever wish you could’ve sung it every night on-stage with the Stones, as did your 20 Feet co-star, Lisa Fischer?
You can only want a job that somebody wants you to have. Lisa is my dear friend, and I was fine with it. I was doing my own records, and I would guest-artist with Art Garfunkel, or Aretha. I was the star of the background singers, the one they called all the time, and I made a great living. I was able to put my sons through school and I still have a gorgeous, luxurious home, paid for, so to me, I was cool. Even after the accident, I’ve never said, “Woe is
me!” That’s not the way I roll.
Tell us something you’ve never told an interviewer before…
I am secretly a great actress! I did Cagney & Lacey. When I read for the part, my son Kevin, who went to the Strasberg school, said, “Mom, when you start, just treat it like the first verse of a song, and you’ll be fine.” I was the last one they saw, after 200 real actresses, and when I left, all the directors and producers were on the floor.
Beautiful Scars is out now via Motown Gospel.
“It was like I was screaming to my ancestors…” MERRY CLAYTON