The Isley Brothers - Disc of the day

The Isley Brothers
Givin’ it Back

(T-Neck, 1971)

Soul family reworks songs of the hippy generation for new decade.

Given the recent news that Ronald Isley's appeal against his 37-month prison sentence for “pathological” tax evasion has been upheld, and that he won’t be getting out of Indiana’s Terre Haute Federal Corrections Institution before 2010, perhaps it’s time to remind news editors that the Isley Brothers did more than just record This Old Heart Of Mine. When the brothers reactivated their own T-Neck label in 1969 following their departure from Motown, they found themselves freed from Berry Gordy’s formulaic production regime. Their new clear, open sound, epic song structures and union of hard’n’sweet gospel vocals with Ernest Isley’s expansive psych guitar pretty much created the blueprint for the conceptual soul sound of the early ’70s. Here, covering Dylan, Neil Young, James Taylor and Stephen Stills they give masterclasses in the art of the soul cover of the white pop hit. Their ennobling of Young’s Ohio turns a local (white) subject into a global cry; bleeding into Hendrix’s Machine Gun, Ronnie Isley’s fiery tenor echoes both the crying of Jimi’s guitar and the dead souls of Vietnam. In reworking Fire And Rain they transform James Taylor’s self-pity into a disorientating swirl of empowering psych-gospel while the hippy solipsism and misogyny of Lay Lady Lay and Love The One You’re With are elevated into something spiritual, pure and giving. They were givin’ it back, for sure, but with interest. If only Ronald Isley had adopted the same approach with the IRS. Oh well.

Andrew Male

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 21/02/2008

Further Listening

Bobby Womack – Communication (UA, 1972)

Isaac Hayes – Hot Buttered Soul (Stax, 1969)

The Isley Brothers – The Brothers: Isley (T-Neck 1969)

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