GoLocal Interview: Darlene Love

GoLocal Interview: Darlene Love

Get ready – one of the greatest voices of all time is bringing her holiday show to Cranston’s Park Theatre next Friday December 9th. Darlene Love’s career goes back to the “Wall of Sound” days of the early 1960’s when she sang on hits like “He’s a Rebel” and "Da Doo Ron Ron." She’s a major figure in the music world past and present, notable recently for her annual visit to David Letterman’s "Late Show" to sing her classic “Christmas, Baby Please Come Home.”

Holiday Show

We spoke to the singer last week, as she was preparing for “A Darlene Love Christmas - Love for the Holidays,” a show that combines her radio friendly hits with traditional Christmas music. “I open and close the show with a Christmas song, and there are many in between. It’s a two-hour full band show. I want to make the audience a part of the show too. Sing along with us!” she urged.

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Love is remembered as a part of the 60’s girl group The Blossoms where she recorded #1 hits like “He’s a Rebel” and "He's Sure the Boy I Love." Through most of the 1960’s and into the 1970’s, she was mainly a background singer behind artists including The Righteous Brothers, Dionne Warwick, Marvin Gaye, and Elvis Presley. It made for a nice career in music, until it slowly slipped away.

Producer Phil Spector

She recalls working closing with legendary producer Phil Spector in the early 1960’s. Spector was universally acclaimed for his “Wall of Sound” recording technique, a cascade of instrumentation which he described as "a Wagnerian approach to rock & roll - little symphonies for the kids.” In addition to Love’s hits, he produced classics like “Be My Baby,” “Unchained Melody,” and John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

“In the early days, he was really great, really compassionate. He asked for input and he knew exactly what to do. In fact, ‘He’s a Rebel’ was his first #1 hit. But he changed along the way, and I had to move on. (Spector, who struggled with mental illness, later became estranged from friends and family and in 2003, was found guilty of murdering his girlfriend and sentenced to 18 years in prison.)

Comeback Kid

Love faced her share of career adversity, including a notable period in the 1980’s when she was forced to take a day job cleaning houses. It made for some awkward moments for the former star, one of which was her routine of parking her car (a Mercedes), far down the road from her job and walking the rest of the way. Driving to work in a Mercedes in a fancy neighborhood would raise too many eyebrows. In her autobiography, My Name is Love, she reports what happened next.

“Once, around Christmas, I thought I heard my own voice coming down the hall of the house I was cleaning singing ‘Christmas, Baby Please Come Home.’

“I knew I had a gift, but I couldn’t share it cleaning houses or just in church. People like Elton John and Stevie Wonder knew it. But I had to make producers believe it. You have to put butts in the seats,” she explained in our interview.

Around the same time, she bumped into two longtime fans, Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band guitar player Steven Van Zandt. It was Van Zandt who suggested that she move to New York, a move that revived her career.

“I met Stevie about 30 years ago, backstage at a show. He said, ‘Come to New York, I want to record you the way Phil Spector did back in the 60’s.’ Steve had his own engineers, knew the writers, and had them write songs specifically for me.”

Since her career resurgence, Love’s notoriety has only increased. In 2011, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, by Bette Midler no less. She was also a major part of the Academy Award winning film, “Twenty Feet From Stardom,” which celebrated the role of the background singer. Love accepted the award for "Best Documentary" at the 2014 award show.

Introducing Darlene Love

In 2015, Love released an album of mostly new material, produced by Van Zandt and featuring songs written and performed by artists including Bruce Springsteen (who wrote a song especially for Love), and Elvis Costello. The late career album Introducing Darlene Love also includes terrific remakes of songs like “Sweet Freedom,” and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High,” a tune she frequently plays live. Its a fine album which blends her early sound with modern recording practices.

Darlene Love’s career is an inspirational story of a great singer who never gave up. She's a selfless performer. “Being an entertainer is not about you, it’s about the people you're serving. You have to make them like you and then love you,” the singer noted. “Fan’s drew me back in!”

Check out Darlene Love at the Park Theatre on Friday December 9th at 7:30PM. Tickets are available here starting at $35.

Ken Abrams reviews Roots, Rock and more for GoLocal. E-mail him here.