There are thresholds you can cross in the arms of a lover that you can only access through music. Not just any lover. Not just any music. The pairing has to be chosen deliberately, instinctively, and with conviction. Throw yourself into the experience and let it take you where you need to go. If one fails the other will usually step up.
Do you remember the record that was playing the first time you had sex? I do. I chose it, and it was absolutely right, so right that it made up for the wrongness of the boy. The act itself was merely a vehicle for the real experience, the thing I was there to do. Once the record started I entered the world of the singer, the hushed but urgent keening of his indigo voice. I already knew that the magic he sang about can only be understood through bodily delirium, falling in trances as the current roars you down the crazy river.
“Whispercore” is what I call Robbie’s solo records. Everything inside them is happening in the ether, atmospheric and mercurial, but deadly serious. The stakes are high in his songs, because love is always fragile, always on the line. He reminds you that the full power of love is beyond what humans can perceive except in loss, or the threat of it. We have no real control of how love moves through our lives, unless we decide to wake up and become its devotees. This is that music.
Everyone came to play on his songs. Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry. Some Neville brothers. Tony Levin. Terry Bozio. Maria McKee, The BoDeans and Peter Fucking Gabriel sang backup. Daniel Lanois produced, which gets any record halfway home. But Robbie was the shaman whose magic drew them in and through. Only someone with genuine vision can build a world that you believe in, that you want to uphold and protect, the way lovers feel about each other when the threshold has been fully crossed.
Good sex, and good music, are spiritual, and if you don’t know that I can’t help you. But Robbie can. Start with his first record. Turn it up loud and take off your clothes. Pray with your whole body, and feel yourself dissolve until there’s nothing left but faith. Trust me, son: you like it now, but you’ll learn to love it later.
Beautiful words about a beautiful artist. I loved his words and music immediately, at age 10. I still love them now. Thanks for sharing this tribute.
Oh... whispercore... Imma use that!