Ah, Steve! Oh, Wonder! You don’t miss much, do you? “Who’s eating that bread?” Stevie reaches over and gropes around for my hand and his fingers discover the piece of garlic bread I’ve just picked out of the basket on the bar. “Thought it was you,” he laughs. “You hungry? You want to eat now?”
No, no, I’m fine, Steve. Don’t let me interrupt. On his other side is Mike Sembello, Stevie’s guitarist, with an acoustic, and right here in the bar of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, amidst the cocktail-hour clamor, they are working out a tune which has been gestating in Steve’s head. “Um, Mike, let’s try it this way. Doo doo da doo... no, doo doo doo da doo... yeah, then a C-major seven, pom pom pompom, C-minor seven, then a D with a C in the bass.” He clears his throat and croons liquidly: “When I said love... each word... I meant... forever... But when I told you that... C-major seven... But when I told you that...”
Charlie Collins, Stevie's business manager, steals up holding a big Sony portable cassette recorder. You can never tell when Stevie Wonder is going to feel like working so they always try to have one of these cassette rigs handy in case that stray hit might pop out. Bar service comes to a screeching halt as the bartenders and the waiters crowd in to hear Stevie sing: “... each word I meant forever, uh, there it goes for four counts then on to F... I meant, duh, duh, duh, duh, forever. Okay?” Sembello plays it back as requested and an enormous grin spills over Stevie Wonder’s face. “Oh, that’s beautiful, that’s so beautiful.” He clutches my hand again. “I still got to work out the words.”
Tonight is an occasion. We are gathered here at the Fifth Avenue to celebrate Stevie Wonder’s return. Six weeks before he was nearly killed in an accident in North Carolina when the car in which he was riding ran into the rear of a lumber truck. A log from the truck’s payload had come smashing through the front windshield and had caught Steve squarely in the forehead. You can still see the great, raging pink splotch of a scar above his dark glasses. He was pulled from the wreck bloody and unconscious and remained in a coma for over a week. When he came to, his sense of smell was completely gone and it was thought at first that the damage might be permanent.
Steve responded well to treatment, however, and the smell returned. He wouldn’t be allowed to resume touring for a couple of months yet, or even to return to his normal rather frenetic work pace, but he’d improved sufficiently that a press conference had been held the previous week to announce to the rock cosmos that Stevie Wonder was back on the case.
I’ve just met Steve a little while ago here in the bar, but it is already clear that we are not to relate solely as writer and subject. Whatever objectivity I’ve brought into this is crumbling fast. My God, I’m thinking, I don’t want to write a press release on the guy, but I love him already. His time is my time, he says. All he has on tap for the week are a couple of rehearsals and some doctor’s appointments; for the rest we can do what we like, do the interviews, see some movies maybe, kick around Manhattan, or just lay back and screw off... whatever. Furthermore, he says, he doesn’t want to know anything about what I’m going to write. If somebody’s out to do him a job, they’re gonna do it, no matter what, he says.
And right now, anyway, it’s time to get down. Most of the members of Wonderlove, Stevie’s band, are gathered under one roof for the first time since the accident, and tomorrow rehearsals start for a new album. But tonight it’s party time—the juice is flowing, the music and the chatter are loud... folks are feeling good. These last six weeks have been tough on everybody but now Stevie’s out of the woods sure enough. And right now that boy is really cooking. He’s left off working on the new song, and with some of the Wonderlovers gathered round to chip in with the echoes and doo-wahs, he’s launched into a rollicking retrospective medley of wonderful Wonder goldies. Stevie’s head wobbles drunkenly around on his neck like a spent gyro and the whole place throbs as he slams into the prophetic finish of Higher Ground, his hit single currently dominating the AM airwaves: “I’m so glad he let me try it again/ ’Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin/ I’m so glad I know more than I knew then/ Gonna keep on tryin’/ Till I reach the highest ground... Whew!”
I’m telling you! Stevie, you are a piece of work. “Oh, this is fun!” he exults. “I’m having so much fun. Really. Everything cool with you, Burr? You having a good time?”
I can’t tell you, Steve, but I can’t help wondering what it is you’re cruising on. I mean nobody feels that good without a little help. “I don’t even drink, man,” Stevie laughs. “Not since the accident anyway. And never too much before that. I used to drink a little beer now and then, and sometimes a little Mateus. But I even cut the wine out when I heard what the Portuguese were doing in Angola. Drugs? I never did acid or anything like that, but I did try grass a couple of times. The first time was pretty nice, I got out there, but the next time was nothing but a lot of paranoia so I never went near it again. I love to hear people talking about all the junk I must be doing, though. You know, ‘There goes Stevie Wonder jivin’ around. Must be stoned again.’ Sometimes I’ll be sitting somewhere listening to tapes, like on a plane or something, and my head’ll get to going around like it does when I hear music, and I’ll hear somebody whisper, ‘Look at Stevie Wonder over there actin’ crazy. You reckon he on dope?’ That’s so funny. First of all, they figure that ’cause you’re blind you can’t hear them. And my moving my head around like that, that’s just what is called a ‘blindism.’ When you’re blind you build up a lot of excess energy that other people get rid of through their eyes. You got to work it off some way, you know, and it’s just an unconscious thing. Like a lot of blind people are always rubbing their eyes. Each person develops his own blindism.” From: https://classic.esquire.com/article/share/5fd27dfa-6495-4dda-8e1f-8d071414f6b7
