I'm gonna rock it up, I'm gonna rip it up,
I'm gonna shake it up, gonna ball it up,
I'm gonna rock it up, and ball tonight!
The announcement today of Little Richard's death is sad, but not a surprise. He had been reported in ill health for several years now, and was living as a veritable recluse in Nashville.
It might be easy for some to underestimate Richard Penniman's impact on popular music. So much about his personality and performance seemed cartoon-like, rather than the serious musicianship of a man who poured the pain and confusion of his own private life...poverty, an abusive father, struggles with his sexuality...into his blazing talent.
(Life in his hometown of Macon, Georgia was hard for most anyone born with black skin, but man, there must have been something in the water down there. Two of Richard's neighborhood pals were James Brown and Otis Redding. I don't know about you, but I'd be hard-pressed to name any other relatively small plot of geography that produced three such towering icons of music, all of whom achieved their fame entirely independent of one another.)
He was a part of the original triumvirate of Rock & Roll that not only revolutionized popular music, but sexualized it as well: Elvis was dark, smoldering and dangerous...Chuck Berry was handsome, charming and dangerous...and Little Richard was raw, unbridled sex, perhaps the most dangerous taboo-smasher of them all. The realization that millions of teenaged white girls were being driven into a frenzy by the likes of Little Richard did not sit well with many white American parents.
But he was so much more than just sexual energy. His songs were the high octane fuel that powered the first engine of rock, and they were timeless and profoundly influential. There's a reason why the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Elton John all loved and revered him.
(And he had a good eye for spotting musical talent. The young guy he hired to play guitar in his touring band in the early 1960s was named Jimi Hendrix.)
I got to see Little Richard perform live about twenty years ago. He was opening for Chuck Berry (who was terrible; he didn't even bother to tune his guitar, and his backup band...two locals the promoter probably hired in exchange for a case of cheap beer...played as if they had never held instruments in their hands before. You can read more about that debacle here), and Richard was magnificent. You wouldn't have believe he was a man nearing 70, as he pounded his keyboard, jumped around, and wailed his classic hits with savage joy.
I wish his life had been a happier one more of the time. For much of it, Richard seemed to wrestle with his homosexuality, at times proudly claiming it, at others condemning it as sinful, and arguing that being gay was a choice, not something one is born into. Likewise his relationship with God was fraught with peaks and valleys. In 1957 at the very pinnacle of his success, he had a vision of Armageddon and his own damnation, and he promptly quit music, got rid of his pompadour, and enrolled in Bible school. Throughout the rest of his life he would veer toward being the Reverend Penniman...recording gospel albums, preaching, and even presiding over celebrity weddings, such as that of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, as well as Tom Petty's. But then there would be the dark periods when he would be more inclined to worship cocaine than the Almighty.
But when times were good, when Little Richard made his piano sound like an orchestra, and that child-like smile broke out across his face,and when he unleashed A-WOMP BOMP A-LOO BOMP A-LOMP BOMP BOMP on the world, things could never be any better for us all.
Ordinarily I would wish for him that he may rest in peace. But let's be honest, peaceful was never Little Richard's speed. Right now, they are tearing it up inside the Pearly Gates!
