When he speaks, you can hear a lifetime of hurt in Charles Bradley’s voice. So the shift is sudden and unmistakable. “I feel very good about this new record,” he says, clearly and decisively, his softer, faintly broken tone evaporating inside a puff of surging confidence. “‘Changes’?” he continues, referring to the title track of his new (and best) record, “Oh my God, ‘Changes’ is one of those songs that makes me really emotional. There’s something about it. I’m really glad I got the chance to get to know that song, and I got the chance to put that song in with my personal life. Now I can let it out very raw and dangerous.”

If you haven’t been following the story, “Changes” is the wildly unlikely Black Sabbath cover Bradley released for Record Store Day in 2013. Talking to the Straight from the offices of the Daptone label in Brooklyn only days after the Sabs played their last ever show in Vancouver, Bradley naturally wants to know if it was on their set-list. It wasn’t. Not that Ozzy has any claim on it anymore, not now. “Yeah, [bandleader and collaborator] Thomas Brennek told me they say I sung it better than they did,” he reports, without, it needs to be stated, a scintilla of arrogance. “I put a lot into that, and I’d like to meet them personally one day.” Sometime in the future, the singer adds, he’d maybe like to try a version of Bobby Womack’s swoony 1973 number “I’m Through Trying to Prove My Love to You”. And, of course, he’s still dreaming about a Bradley-ized version of the Eagles’ “Take It to the Limit”.

That last number will ring a bell with anyone who knows Bradley’s incredible bio. Abandonment; homelessness; jail time; illiteracy; violent family tragedy—Bradley’s life is a hair-raising indictment of the so-called American Century and its treatment of the poor, the dispossessed, almost everyone, basically. He was staring down his 63rd birthday when success finally came with the release of No Time Left for Dreaming in 2011. Long before that, as recounted in 2012's fine documentary, Soul of America, an itinerant Bradley was sitting in a pizza joint considering suicide when “Take It to the Limit” came on the jukebox and he decided, mercifully, to stick around. In the here and now, Bradley is touring a new album that expands on the muscular retro-soul of his last two releases, while adding a touch of acid to tracks like “Good to Be Back Home” and “Ain’t Gonna Give it Up”. But there’s no ignoring its opening statement: a gospel-riven version of “God Bless America” that sounds utterly sincere (it’s impossible for Charles Bradley to sound anything but sincere), but with a monologue that contains, possibly, a different kind of acid. “America,” Bradley states off the top, “you’ve been real, honest, hard, and sweet to me…”

“I didn’t say everything that I should have said,” Bradley now suggests. “I would have said America, I love you, but you’ve been very cold to me. All I asked you America was for an honest, equal opportunity. America, why you did this to me? Why you took so long? Why’d you take my good, youthful life away from me before you gave me a chance? I had to go to Europe to get an opportunity and now I’m back in the United States, and now America begins to accept me.” So what’s different? “It’s a new era,” Bradley offers. “A lot of new kids been born into the world and I think this generation is tired of seeing things just going on. I can’t see no black person trying to turn me against a white person, or a white person trying to turn me against a black person. I don’t feel all that. I feel character. If your character’s good, you got wisdom inside you, you’re looking to make the world a better place—then you can call me brother.”

If Bradley’s experience on the ground is better than it ever was, he’s under no illusions about the state of his country in general. Asked when America was at its best, he replies without hesitation: “When President Kennedy was alive.”

“When they killed Kennedy, my heart just broke,” he continues. “I cried like a little baby. But when they killed his brother, I said, ‘God, have mercy on this country.’ And I still say it. It seems like the world just don’t like beauty, don’t like good, they always kill the good ones. Why? I don’t know. If you want to be alive and be the president, you better shut up and say the things that aren’t gonna get you killed, cause if not, they’re gonna kill you, too. That’s the way I look at it.” After a beat, he adds, almost distracted, “Back in the day I was afraid to speak about what’s on my mind.” This is not the case anymore, praise be. 

Georgia Straight, May 2016