Biography
9. So Glad He Let Him Try It Again
I'm so glad that he let me try it again
'Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole
world of sin.
I'm so glad that I know more than I knew then.
Gonna keep on tryin', 'til I reach my
Highest ground.
On August 6th, 1973 Stevie played concert in Greeneville, South
Carolina. It was on the way back just outside Durham, North Carolina
that Stevie's life almost taken from him. Stevie was asleep in the
front seat of a car being driven by his friend, John Harris . They
were snaking along the road, just behind a truck loaded high with
logs. Suddenly the trucker jammed on his brakes, and the two
vehicles collided. Logs went flying, and one smashed through the
wind shield, sailing squarely into Steve's forehead. He was bloody
and unconscious when he was pulled from the wrecked car. For ten
days he lay in a coma caused by severe brain contusion, as friends,
fans, and relatives prayed.
It
was his friend and tour director Ira Tucker who first elicited some
response from him: "I remember when I got to the hospital in
Winston-Salem. . .man, I couldn't even recognize him. His head was
swollen up about five times normal size. And nobody could get
through to him. I knew that he likes to listen to music really loud
and I thought maybe if I shouted in his ear it might reach him. The
doctor told me to go ahead and try, it couldn't hurt him. The first
time I didn't get any response, but the next day I went back and I
got right down in his ear and sang Higher Ground. His hand was
resting on my arm and after awhile his fingers started going in time
with the song. I said yeah! Yeeeeaaah! This dude is going to make it
!"
It
was still a long, slow climb back to health, though. When Stevie
regained consciousness, he discovered that he had lost his sense of
smell, perhaps permanently. And he was deeply afraid that he might
have lost his musical faculty too. Finally Ira Tucker said, "We
brought one of his instruments--I think it was the clavinet--to the
hospital. For a while, Stevie just looked at it, or didn't do
anything with it. You could see he was afraid to touch it, because
he didn't know if he still had it in him--he didn't know if he
could still play. And then, when he finally did touch it - man, you
could just see the happiness spreading all over him. I'll never
forget that."
Still, he had to take medication for a year, tired easily, and
suffered severe headaches. That he lived at all is miraculous. But
that he lived to reach higher and higher ground--personally,
musically, spiritually--at least in part because of the accident
makes you wonder. Steve's deep faith and spiritual vision make him
even doubt that it was an accident:
You can
never change anything that has already happened,
he once said, speaking of the incident.
Everything
is the way it's supposed to be . . . everything that ever happened
to me is the way it is supposed to have been. A confirmation of his
belief in destiny.
Michael Sembello, Wonderlove's lead guitarist at the time said,
"Well, I think he'd always had some awareness of the spiritual side
of life. But the accident really brought it to the surface. Like now
I know he really sees--and uses--every concert as the spiritual
opportunity it is, to reach people. . . The accident made him
recognize God, it changed him a lot. Some times he'd just drift off
in conversation, he'd just . . . be some place else. He got really
intense after the accident, his ESP got really strong." Steve told
the New York Times, The accident opened my ears up to many things
around me. Naturally, life is just more important to me now . . .
and what I do with my life.
The song Higher
Ground, written
a couple months before the accident, was truly uncanny. Stevie once
said,
I would like to believe in
reincarnation. I would like to believe that there is another life. I
think that sometimes your consciousness can happen on this earth a
second time around. For me, I wrote Higher Ground even before the
accident. But something must have been telling me that something was
going to happen to make me aware of a lot of things and to get
myself together. This is like my second chance for life, to do
something or to do more, and to value the fact that I am alive.
Before the accident. Steve had been scheduled to do a five-week,
twenty-city tour in March-April of 1974. It was postponed, with the
exception of one date in Madison Square Garden in late March. That
concert began with Stevie pointing to his scarred forehead, looking
up, grinning, and giving "thanks to God that I'm alive." The crowd,
21,000 strong, roared, and as a Post critic noted, "it was hard not
to be thrilled."
He gave himself about a month and a half of recuperation before
heading back to the studio to work on his next album. By
mid-November he was on stage again, for the homecoming benefit of
Shaw University, where he was a trustee. The university was facing
financial difficulties; the performers at the wildly successful
fundraising show included LaBelle, Wonderlove, Exhuma, and Pride of
the Ghetto, in addition to Steve himself. Later in the month, he was
a surprise guest at an Elton John concert in Boston. "A friend of
mine is here tonight, he was badly hurt in an accident some time
ago. . ." Elton John started to announce to the 18,000-strong
audience in the Boston Garden. But, according to Esquire's Burr
Snider, Elton never finished the sentence: "The immense cavern began
to rumble. It went on and on and it seemed as if it would never
subside. When it did, Elton John and Stevie Wonder jammed into Honky
Tonk Woman and when Stevie Wonder took a side-shot at Superstition,
it seemed as if the Garden would tumble down. I found to my surprise
that tears were tracking down my face."
Although he had originally planned to go to Africa that winter, that
trip too was postponed. Late January and February found him knocking
out audiences in Europe. He played at the annual MIDEM Convention in
Cannes, France, and then did two sellout performances at the Rainbow
Theatre in London in front of an audience comprising many stars of
British rock.
March brought the Grammy awards. The nominations list had been
announced in January, and Steve had been nominated in seven
categories. He won five awards: Best Pop Vocal Performance-Male (Sunshine
Of My Life),
Best Rhythm and Blues Vocal Performance--Male (Superstition),
Best Rhythm and Blues Song-Writer (Superstition),
Best Engineered Recording--Nonclassical (Innervisions),
and the most prestigious of the Grammys, Album of the Year--Innervisions.
