Certain songs take hold in my head, sometimes old, sometimes new, for reasons which may or may not be obvious. So, I’ll write stuff about them.
The bass, presumably played by Marcus Miller, starts with a high note than slides down the frets. Five thick keyboard chords played staccato introduce the song. Then comes the guitar lick, similar to but slicker than the chicken scratch playing in funk bands. This is set against piano chords and a thumb slapping bass line. Oh, yeah, and one rock solid, cymbal, snare, and kick-based drum pattern. After a little bit, a synthesizer holds court behind all this, setting another layer to the mix.
It's almost 40 seconds of introduction before Luther Vandross starts singing the first track on his first solo album back in 1981. “I can’t fool myself, I don’t want nobody else to ever love me.” Vandross was a male singer heavily influenced by women vocalists. In fact, his phrasing on this song reminds me as much as anything of Dionne Warwick. Part of that is the extensive number of syllables, each given one note in the syncopated long lyrical lines of the melody. You know, the way Burt Bacharach gave Warwick to sing in songs like “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”. I’m not saying Vandross’s melodic invention is as complicated as that of Bacharach, but the way he negotiates the rhythm of his lyric is as tricky as that of Warwick.
Vandross’s vocal, along with the dance groove in the rhythm track, lets the strings enter the track without being noticed. They actually enter in the middle of the first line of the second verse – “I still remember in the days when I was scared to touch you.” But they swell into a more prominent role as the chorus comes up: “Oh my love,” with a single woodblock in the middle of the elongated “love,” then “A thousand kisses from you is never enough,” and as he stretches out that “enough,” there’s another wood block. Everything combines here to let us feel the urgent joy Vandross wants us to share as he tells of his love.
Soon comes the most dramatic point of the whole record. “I just don’t want to stop!” Quickly, overdubbed Vandrosses chant in a much higher register “Too much, never too much, never too much, never too much.” Vandross had spent most of the seventies singing background vocals for the likes of Roberta Flack, David Bowie, Donna Summer, and Chic. He knew how to make this part sharp, intimate, irresistible.
The third verse is playful. Vandross wakes up, sees a photo of his beloved, calls to find no answer, goes to work where he is surprised by the loved one. “Who needs to go to work to hustle for another dollar,” he sings, and “hustle” is echoed by a sweetened chorus of female voices, the only time in the song he doesn’t provide all the vocals. I find this an interesting choice that adds poignancy, though I can’t really explain it. Sometimes, it’s just a good idea to put something different in a song without making obvious sense.
Luther Vandross never oversang anything. He always trusted the song, delivered the melody, made sure the words were clear. He liked to arrange the music to keep things interesting, but he didn’t go for melismatic extensions. His vocals were so controlled, so smooth, so elegantly delivered. I saw him live twice – once in 1984, when he had put on a huge amount of weight, and again in 1986, just after he had lost 85 pounds. He was charismatic both times, and he made women in the audience swoon.
There is a reason I didn’t use gendered pronouns in describing “Never Too Much.” Luther Vandross was gay, but he never came out in his lifetime, and he made his living singing of love for women. He was a huge sex symbol in the 80s and into the 90s. It’s not hard to read “Never Too Much” as the cries of a man in the closet dreaming of finding and showing his true love. “I still remember in the days when I was scared to touch you / How I spent my day dreamin’ plannin’ how to say I love you.” That’s hiding in plain sight, but only if you want to see it.
At any rate, this first solo single was, as far as I was concerned, the best thing Vandross ever did, though he never made any records less than quite good. He was a consummate professional singer who could deliver anything and make it seem real. But here, he may have come closer to revealing his true self, and it’s easy to hear the love that inspired it.