
(Tamla)
!!! A+ RECORDING !!!
Following the release of the masterful Innervisions, Stevie Wonder earned the right to rest on his laurels; to begin with, that album was brilliant enough to linger permanently as the definitive statement of a fully developed artist. But then came the day, just after its release, when Wonder sat dozing in the passenger seat of a car whizzing down I-85 when the driver smashed into a flatbed truck, impact focused squarely on Stevland Morris' forehead. Wonder was in a coma, had to be medicated, had to gradually gain back his faculties. The pop world's adoration of him was vocally affirmed as though it hadn't been already. He showed up to his first gig afterward pointing proudly at his scar and sending the enormous crowd into utter jubilation.
Did he slum it, then? Some have regarded Fulfillingness' First Finale as an indulgent, monochromatic affair. It's dominated by ballads and subtleties and explodes into action really only twice, both times with adult emotions -- sexual urge and political rage -- hard to imagine emanating from the 12 year-old genius or even as of Talking Book. Some also see it as a stopgap, sandwiched between two masterpieces, and of course it earns poignance from being part of a larger story and a longer run of superlative works. Yet the album's comparatively off-the-cuff nature and comfortably sparse production managed to seal it, for all its contemporary popularity, as a product ahead of its time. And as with Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, it bears noting that its supposed uncommercial nature is only by a matter of degrees -- it is Stevie Wonder, it is accessible and deeply moving and very plainly glorious.
If there's less momentum, if the ballads are subtler and more troubled than usual, it's merely because Fulfillingness is an unblinking representation of Wonder's mind in the months after his by all accounts life-changing accident. Wonder has never before exhibited so much frank sorrow or cynicism; the genius grows up. "Heaven Is Ten Zillion Light Years Away" argues with but also struggles over its title's implication; hook-filled as ever but mournful, it comes about its moving climax bit by bit, as though a catharsis like that of the prior record's religious anthem "Higher Ground" can now only come with hard work, uncompromised faith and pleading.
Wonder's musical preoccupations evolve less on Fulfillingness than on any of his past three albums or the next one; this is much more an exploration of established methods, an attempt as though in real time to determine if all of the artist's gifts remain, and then how far he can go with his own expertise at harnessing our bodies, hearts carefully, quietly (hell, "Bird of Beauty" is really just a seductive, surrendered variant on "Too High"). The only other mainstream soul record of the '70s that achieves so much under such dark, careful, unflashy circumstances is Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear. Yet Wonder never presents anything that resembles a dirge; the closest he comes is the classical piano-inspired, mournful and frightened "They Won't Go When I Go," as stark and hopeless a creation as Big Star's "Holocaust," but even it can't stay wallowed in the mire for its duration -- bursting finally and redeemed.
The record offers no "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing," no "You Are the Sunshine of My Life," certainly no "For Once in My Life," yet it immediately envelops us in its uniquely reluctant spirit and mood. In short, Wonder is troubled, and not troubled in the conscious but swaggering manner of Talking Book and Innervisions at their darkest. Even the latter's saddest moment, "All Is Fair in Love," was suffused with sheepish wit. Wonder's accident-related revelation doesn't lead him all that far from his prior concerns or personality. Nixon terrifies him just like racism toremented him on "Living for the City"; the result is the outrageously funky, ferocious clavinet-driven "You Haven't Done Nothin'," boasting the great man's best-ever lyric and the propulsive vocal contributions of the Jackson Five, who visited Wonder in the North Carolina hospital where he lay nearly dying and now fight alongside him.
Indeed, one is reminded of Frank Capra, who once alleged that after the release of It Happened One Night he was struck by a godly revelation of sorts -- that his duty was to let the people who saw his films know that he loved them. Capra's work thereafter was deeply populist and humane... but so was nearly everything he had already made up to that point. Perhaps his focus was simply tightened. It's by this line of reasoning that FFF opens softly, assuredly, warm-heartedly with "Smile Please" -- a jazzy and casual saunter of catchy optimism only mildly tempered by its chorus' slight desperation. It's a giving, caring setting of the stage for what's to follow, yet it also withholds -- what it builds to isn't quite a peak, only a vague allowance of joy that's more or less brought to fruition by the even more complex "Heaven Is Ten Zillion Light Years Away."
Herein lies the major artistic evolution of this LP, its most famous payoff to come two years later. Probably very few people would make an argument that Innervisions is an inferior record to this one; many of us find them nearly equal, but there's little question that the prior album is the signature achievement and very possibly Wonder's finest moment on record. But each song of Innervisions was a world unto itself; they may have complemented one another beautifully, but they did not necessitate one another. In a shattered, newly awake world and outlook like Wonder's circa 1974, it suddenly must have seemed obvious that the tempered sweetness of "Smile Please" necessitated the worshipful paean and questioning of "Heaven...", that therefore the tentative, virginal, slide guitar-ridden "Too Shy to Say" required the pure sex of "Boogie On Reggae Woman," that both needed the romantic dread and superstition of "Creepin'." Without exception, all of the fine songs here are stronger when heard together in proper sequence; the album furthers, enlivens itself and its sometimes morose, lost sensibility. It's partly because no sentiment here is simple, childlike, innocent.
"Boogie On Reggae Woman" is accomplishment enough to require some digression, and a speedy comparison to the romances of Talking Book or My Cherie Amour casts into stark light just how much Wonder's albums of the '60s and '70s are a narrative of boyhood fading into physical and emotional maturity -- more eloquently and musically than the output of any other teen idol. Masculine sexual identity in rock & roll has historically been turgid and superficial, a result both of gender roles and of the bounds of the form. But even if Stevie Wonder is a modern American hero on a level with few, he as a musical entity is hardly traditional. Somehow, his hot-sex song is different -- and hotter -- not only because of the stark vulnerability in his voice but also the passive androgyny of the lyric. The song cannot be denied musically, driving along with cosmic force in one of the rawest grooves of Wonder's career. As engaging as it is, it's still the composition and -- especially -- the vocal performance that makes the song so potent, even today in a pop music world swimming in innuendo. This is the real thing, with genuine feeling, genuine primal lust.
Like Brian Wilson's legendary take on the far less (but not entirely a-) sexual "Don't Worry Baby," Stevie's vocal here makes its mark with orgasmic mystery, with his teasing groans and the bashful secrecy of "I like to do it to you 'till you holler for more," the submissive thrill of "I like to make love to you 'till you make me scream." The song is an admission of sex not just in one of the three pop interpretive traditions -- as pornographic bliss or an expression of love or a political metaphor, all of which have some truth -- but as a function of the flesh and a feeling that marks true humanity. The line that grips every time is the one that reveals the most about Wonder and the beauty of sexual relationships in general -- "I like to reggae with you, but you dance too fast for me." There's no song better suited than this for such delightful interpersonal revelation.
Yet again, however, that split second of dancing bliss requires counterpoint, and therefore side one ends with the gorgeous but meacing "Creepin'"; his voice never better or truer, Wonder wraps it around a blackened tale of obsession and lust, no ordinary love song, more evocative and conflicted than even Gaye's work of the period. It's a strange, counterintuitively calming track that belies its secret heart on a record that very often isn't what it seems to be. Songs that begin as whispers routinely evolve into full-blown gospel revival.
If "Creepin'" alone doesn't make the case, if the melody and ache of something like "It Ain't No Use" can't render this as vital and grand as any of the outstanding achievements in Wonder's catalog, if its thematic sophistication does nothing for you, maybe it's wise to stick to something simple: Fulfillingness' First Finale features the artist's best, most nuanced singing ever, full of character, charm, sensuality like at no point in his career before this and honestly not often thereafter. Beyond just his own singing, it's the versatile use of the human voice he displays in his productions: the harmonic lushness, openness, the intimacy of the way he is himself recorded.
This might really be a finale of sorts; it's the definitive moment of Stevie Wonder as the artist he set out to become at the end of the '60s when he acquired control of his output. Conceptually it's virtually perfect, almost seemingly effortless, and consistently rewarding and revealing. But when he lets the facade break just a bit and starts to suggest a bit of joy and passion looking ahead on "Please Don't Go," it's the first evidence of the earth-shaking universal classic he would unearth just a few years hence. Fulfillingness can't help but sit in the shadow of two great records it sits next to on the shelf of every music collector with an ounce of taste in this country and many others, but it's a great record in its own right specifically because of what it slowly begins to imply: more than a decade after "Fingertips," the reality of growing up and becoming an individual is beginning to require the full force of Wonder's creativity and intellect. He'd grown up before our eyes, and now we would really see in full the man he had become.
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[A small portion of this essay incorporates material from a previously published piece about "Boogie On Reggae Woman," posted in 2004.]