'You OK?', says Mr Fullen, finger pressed to his own throat, for Womack has his voice, that precious, fragile instrument, to protect.
'Ah'm cool ...' Womack is in the midst of a remarkable renaissance. His album, The Bravest Man In The Universe, produced by Damon Albarn and Richard Russell and released last year, has been his greatest commercial success in America since the 1980s, and his greatest commercial success in the UK ever. One might almost call it a resurrection, for shortly after the album's completion Womack entered a long period of multiple hospitalisations, for cancer of the colon and pneumonia, going into a coma which left his doctors fearing that he would die.
Miraculously, he is back on the road. Three weeks ago he was on stage at Glastonbury, this weekend he performs at Latitude.
Life is strange,' he muses. 'I know it's strange, because I ask the question, why am I still here? I've been as crazy as anybody could have been; what particular reason do you lose the Marvin Gayes and the Sam Cookes, the Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix - the list goes on; I say it never stops, the world keeps bouncing and those other artists go underneath. But I'm still here ...' Womack acknowledges that his career was all but spent when Damon Albarn first contacted him in 2009 to sing on the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach.
Monkey magic: Damon Albarn and Bobby Womack performing with Gorillaz in 2010
'Nobody was knocking down doors to get to me. It was like they were walking over me. I just didn't know how to get back, even if I wanted to.
But Damon said just come out and sing a couple of songs; there's something in you that I still see, and I think the world deserves to know what the REAL is.
'He gave me a lot to make me want to come back. My soul is intact as it was, I just wasn't telling the world.' 'The Bravest Man In The Universe' is unlike any of the 26 other albums that Bobby Womack has recorded. Wrapped in contemporary beats and samples, infused with a mood of sultry melancholia, Womack's voice sounds like an instrument of defiance railing against the march of time and mortality. Who could have imagined that a combination of Womack, Lana Del Ray (making a guest appearance) a synth programme and a sample of Sam Cooke could sound so majestic, so haunting.
'Everything that's on there is electronic except my voice; so my voice is carrying everything. So I guess everything don't have to be real live. What I'm saying is the message is important and people can feel what I'm saying in their heart.' Womack is the last of a generation of testifiers and broken-hearted tear-jerkers - strong men made weak by love - that dominated soul music in the 1960s and 70s.
Can you feel it: Bobby Womack in the 1960s
Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, James Carr, OV Wright - 'Man, you REALLY hitting home ...', he laughs - Womack carries the torch, the greatest of them all. 'But now people don't know how to deal with that because they say that's old school, so they bring in rap and other things for a new generation. People can't understand an Otis Redding.' He shakes his head. 'I don't see that.' His singing style was based on two models, the dulcet, seductive crooning of his mentor Sam Cooke, and the impassioned testifying of Archie Brownlee, the singer with the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, the gospel group for whom Womack was playing guitar when he was just 13 years old.
'I modelled my screams on Archie,' he once recalled, 'but I could never get them as clear as he did because he'd mellow it in gin. He'd lie down on stage to sing because the drink had eaten the lining of his stomach so much. They'd kneel down there and put a microphone up close. He always said he waned to die right there, wailing his head off, and he did, singing Leave Me In The Hands of the Lord.' It was Cooke who discovered Womack singing in a gospel group with his three brothers, and rechristened them as the Valentinos; and Cooke who, in 1964, brokered Womack's composition, 'It's All Over Now' to the Rolling Stones, giving them their first British number one.
Bobby Womack (top left) with his brothers and father Friendly Womack in the 1950s
When Cooke died that same year year, shot dead by the clerk in a motel where he had been enjoying a tryst with a prostitute, Womack married his widow Barbara - an act which led to him being castigated for exploiting a grieving widow, despite his insistence that it was her idea. But the marriage was to end catastrophically when she discovered that he had slept with her teenage daughter, Linda, obliging Womack to beat a hasty retreat from the family home at the end of the barrel of a gun. (Linda would subsequently marry Womack's brother Cecil, the pair enjoying considerable success in the 1980s with the singles 'Love Wars' and 'Teardrops'.)
Unable to find a recording contract, Womack worked as a session musician, playing on recordings by Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin and, most notably, Wilson Pickett, for whom he wrote a series of hits including 'Midnight Mover' and 'I'm In Love.' By now Womack was in the grip of a cocaine habit that would exercise him on and off for the best part of 20 years.
Bobby Womack in LA in 1974
'Pickett was a REAL soul singer. He had a lot of feeling ...' Womack's mind is turning. 'I remember he say to me 'Hey Bob, where you get your energy from to write all these songs. I say, [cocaine]. He say, hey man let me try that, so when I look and see him totally out of control, I couldn't stop him - how can I tell him it ain't no good when I told him it was?'
And does he feel guilty about that?
'Very guilty, because he gave me my first break. Actually, God gave me my first break ...' 'Yessir!', says Mr Fullen from across the room.
'But then somebody say if you hadn't gave it to him somebody else would have - he's in the business where that s--- just hangs around.' Through the 70s and 80s Womack recorded a series of sublime albums - 'Communication', 'Facts of Life', 'The Poet' - that established him in the vanguard of contemporary soul. As well as his own songs, he had a way of taking pop standards - 'Fly Me To The Moon', 'California Dreamin', 'The Look of Love', and making them his own. He even ventured into country music with 'BW Goes C&W' (his record company balked at Womack's original suggestion for a title, 'Step Aside Charley Pride And Give Another Nigger A Chance'.
'When I want to check out how my life's been I go through my albums', he says. 'They steps in my life. I might say, I was wasted all the time on that album; it was a GOOD album, but if you ask me what brought it on I couldn't tell you the truth.' He laughs. 'But, you know, it's a part of your life that you go through.' He quit drugs for good some time in the 90s; it was that, or die. 'Oh yeah, 'cos I looked around and I say everybody I know, the ones that taught me and the ones that were doing the same thing that I'm doing, none of these people are here no more.' All this pain. In 1974, his brother Harry was stabbed to death by a jealous girlfriend while staying at Womack's house. The girl found some women's clothes in the closet and assumed that Harry was cheating on her. The clothes belonged to a girlfriend of Bobby's.
Bobby Womack in New York in 1985
In 1978 his son, Truth, from his second marriage, to Regina Banks, died at the age of four months, suffocating in his bed. Another son, Vincent, from his first marriage, committed suicide in 1986 at the age of 21. Womack gives a deep sigh. 'All of that stuff ... it's either gonna make you weaker or make you stronger; and some people stronger than others.' He has two more children from his second marriage, Bobby Truth and Gina, who now tours and sings with him; and two sons by another relationship.
His marriage to Regina ended in divorce some 25 years ago, but they remained on amicable terms. When, last year, he awoke from his coma it was to find her at his bedside.
'That's when I found out what love really meant. So I told her, let's get married again, because whatever I leave I think you deserve it because you been there when nobody else was.
'So she say, OK if that's what you want to do.' They married for the second time three months ago.
Bobby Womack - Save The Children on MUZU.TV.
'You OK?' Mr Fullen has materialised at his side, and slides a pill across the table. Womack swallows it, and rakes his fingers across his head.
'People say, man you look good; you look the same way as 30 years ago. I say, come a bit closer ... I know yo' fixing me to feel good, but I don't feel good on bullshit.' His 'organisation', he says, tell him not to talk about his frailties.
'They say, tell them you're fine; you could do forty tours! I say, man I'm a human being. I can't.
'Once upon a time I could sing three hours. Now, when you see me say 'I'm done', I'm done; ain't nothing left till the next night.
' People know it's a lot to put out. I think people like it when I tell them, I'm lucky to be here, because they are too. Ain't nothing to do with age. There ain't nothing promised to you. Everybody's going to die.' He thinks on this.
' Music now, I don't feel it's as serious as it used to be, People ain't leaving the messages that they used to leave. So you start thinking, why am I growing up and others are going out? I say, maybe I still got a positive message to give, that I can motivate people spiritually, 'cos I feel blessed. REALLY feel blessed.'
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Post By http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/10174641/Bobby-Womack-interview-People-can-feel-what-Im-saying-in-their-heart.html
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