July 26, 2013

Link



''People think you have to go through a lot of changes to become a soul singer’, Bobby Womack says, ‘You just have to go through life.’ It is early afternoon in Womack’s London hotel room. The bed is unmade, but Womack is reclining on the couch, hooded eyes half closed, stirring now as his factotum, Mr Fullen, a slim man elegantly attired in a suit and tie, arrives with lunch. It is takeout chow-mein. ‘Box or bowl?’ Mr Fullen asks, forking half of the food into a plastic container. Womack is 69, with sparse greying hair, a creased and careworn face, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He stirs himself into a sitting position and reaches for the box, and a bottle of Coke.

He has the most beautiful hands – a ‘gi-tar’ player’s hands, to borrow his enunciation – with long tapering fingers that he periodically spreads across his face as he talks, as if to shield his eyes and thoughts from whatever baleful forces may be abroad.

Read more here.