About the Book
This first collection of my soulful poetry, as I like to call it, serves very much as an homage to the amazing musical creators who have so impacted my life and who I have had the privilege and honor to know over these many years. I can’t imagine what my life would have been without them and their rich contribution they have made, not just to me but to millions the world over.
For sure, some of the poems are deeply personal and there is a sense of being vulnerable in sharing certain experiences and references, in particular in pieces like “The Muse Was Heavy On Me Yesterday” and “A Waterfall Of Words” – and yet I know that taking on the mantle of being a poet has required me to be authentic and real.
The thread through all the poems contained in this collection is music, the wonderful, glorious, passionate, satisfying, joy-and-pain, love-and-happiness that is soul music. I have used song titles, lyric lines, words from soul music classic and personal favourites throughout the poems, with acknowledgements for those specific songs at the end of each poem: I have never been ‘academic’ about soul music: for me it is and always will be an ‘as lived’ experience and all of the poems included here reflect my real ‘as lived’ incarnation as David Nathan.
About the Author
Established as a renowned expert, historian and award-winning music journalist and writer in the world of soul music with almost five decades of accomplishment, London-born global communicator David Nathan has consistently reinvented himself, ever-expanding and expressing his multi-faceted creativity through new and exciting possibilities.
David began his writing career in 1965, forming the first ever appreciation society/fan club for the iconic Nina Simone in the UK the same year. At the age of eighteen, David co-owned the groundbreaking Soul City record store in 1966, with the record label following in 1968. Beginning in 1967, David became a regular contributor to Blues & Soul magazine in London before relocating to the U.S. in 1975 where he served as U.S. editor for the publication for several decades.
From the Preface by David Nathan:
This first collection of my soulful poetry, as I like to call it, serves very much as an homage to the amazing musical creators who have so impacted my life and who I have had the privilege and honor to know over these many years. I can’t imagine what my life would have been without them and their rich contribution they have made, not just to me but to millions the world over.
For sure, some of the poems are deeply personal and there is a sense of being vulnerable in sharing certain experiences and references, in particular in pieces like “The Muse Was Heavy On Me Yesterday” and “A Waterfall Of Words” – and yet I know that taking on the mantle of being a poet has required me to be authentic and real.
The thread through all the poems contained in this collection is music, the wonderful, glorious, passionate, satisfying, joy-and-pain, love-and-happiness that is soul music. I have used song titles, lyric lines, words from soul music classic and personal favourites throughout the poems, with acknowledgements for those specific songs at the end of each poem: I have never been ‘academic’ about soul music: for me it is and always will be an ‘as lived’ experience and all of the poems included here reflect my real ‘as lived’ incarnation as David Nathan.
- PINK SKIN MASK…OR TEENA MARIE IN A MAN’S BODY…
AND THANK YOU MS. FRANKLIN… R-E-S-P-E-C-T!
(Dedicated to Jeff F and Hassan)
(Inspired by phone conversation with my L.A. neighbour and friend Forrest,
October 4, 2007, 12:45pm Pacific Standard Time (PST)
“Who The Fuck Is This….Who Is This White Person…
Who Is This White Man…Who Is This White Motherfucker…
Who The Fuck Is He? Why’s He Talkin’ ‘Black’…? “
(Overheard, when some dude named Hassan was responding to one of his crew to my presence at a Hollywood listening party when I was one of two Cauc-Asian attendees)
Like…am I Teena Marie in a man’s body?…You don’t question where she’s coming from so don’t question me….spent forty years in the world of R&B…That don’t give me no rights to a culture that I was NOT born into…But it does give me the reason to get some R-E-S-PE-C-T
R-ES-P-E-C-T… Yes. Thank you my beloved Aretha who has given me more starts as in interviews and stories and stuff than anyone, who has said yes more times to me than almost any other writer cause she knows I knew her music.
Like…when she wrote “Little Miss Raggedy Ann” in 1964 and when she sang “(No No) I’m Losing You” in 1965 and when I heard “All Night Long,” not the Lionel Richie song, but a so-blue ballad on her first album on Columbia when she was eighteen.
Can you understand? She was eighteen, singing rings around the rest, phrasing from a place only she knows, playing piano, being so brilliant I had to Stop, Look, Listen.
Yeah, Aretha knew I knew her music when peeps were saying Barbra Streisand was ‘The Thing’ and I said no, Aretha is ‘The Thing’ And two years later the world knew what she and I knew – she was is and will always be The Queen Of Soul…Ask me how I know….R-E-S-P-E-C-T
But back to motivation and hidden agendas cause guys like Hassan at the Hollywood listening party (and likely more than a few peeps in the black music biz) think I must be so deep in soul music because I’m Looking For A New Love, who they assume would be black…
Because, like I told my cool dude friend and my LA neighbor at the time Mr. Forrest (aka 4 To The S From The Midwestside) a straight up guy who raps and sings his own way, always kind, always there, back in the day, ‘I’m Uni-Vers-All!’ As in, I don’t look for lovers or others to ‘do the do’ with because they’re black, or white, or brown, or whatever skin color… Because well, you know, a hard on is a hard on….
*******************************************************************************
I began doing interviews with Teena Marie sometime in the mid-‘80s and we met over the years I lived in Los Angeles (1984-2008). I vividly recall going to her home in Pasadena in the early ‘90s to do an in person interview with her and we bonded over our shared love for classic soul and R&B, as well as our mutual interest in reincarnation. I had the honour to assist in bringing her to London in January 2010 for her first show in Britain in many years; she was due to return in January 2011 and passed away just weeks before. A kindred spirit.