Country Music Association male vocalist of the year Vince Gill has won that title a record five consecutive times because he possesses one of Nashville’s finest voices–and is perceived as one of its nicest people.
It pains Gill, however, to hear the latter.
“I’ve read where people say those kinds of things, and it hurts my feelings a little that they think people vote for me because it’s a popularity contest and not because they think I sing better,” the singer says.
“When I’ve won, I don’t think I was picked too much to win, and I’ve always kind of felt like the underdog. When I had the really big year (winning both entertainer of the year and male vocalist with the CMA’s 1993 Song of the Year) `I Still Believe in You,’ everybody said it was going to be Alan (Jackson)’s big year. They said the same thing about it in 1994 (when Gill won the entertainer and male titles again). And before that it was Garth (Brooks), and so on.
“But I certainly don’t go out and do all the stuff that I do for folks, charity work and whatnot, to help me win awards. I’m just out there living my life doing what feels right.”
Which is probably the reason people inside and outside the music industry view Gill the way they do. In a business:
–Where people live and die by imaging strategies and excessive concern with their personal appearance, Gill woke up one day three months ago, considered radically cutting his hair, and on the spur of the moment did so.
–Where people are notoriously frugal with the gratis time they share with others, Gill is extraordinarily unselfish with his, consenting to aid many causes and singing on the records of peers and even competitors at seemingly every available moment.
–Where people do almost everything by “political” rules laid down by record executives, personal managers and other business types, Gill ignores these rules in the interest of doing the decent rather than the political thing.
Concerning the decision to cut his hair, a spokesperson for Fitzgerald/Hartley, which manages his career, asserts that Gill “is his own man” when it comes to image. With a laugh, the spokesperson added that Fitzgerald/Hartley has yet to receive its first call complaining about the new look.
An example of Gill’s breaking of Nashville’s “political” rules, by contrast, is the recent hit duet with Dolly Parton, “I Will Always Love You,” which competed in the marketplace with his own solo hit single, “Go Rest High on That Mountain.” This competition wasn’t supposed to happen, he discloses, adding that it also could have been an instance in which his penchant for helping people “jumped up and bit me hard.
“One part of me feels like I got taken advantage of, but my record turned around and began to be stronger than the duet,” he notes.
He did the duet, he recalls, after his record company, MCA, agreed to it on the condition that it would be only a Parton album cut, not a single. Parton’s record company, Sony Music, “knew that going in,” he says. But after the recording was done, he loved it, he says, and didn’t “feel comfortable with the arrogance of telling someone I respect that much that they can’t use” such a striking collaborative effort.
So he went to MCA and persuaded its executives to give Parton permission to use the duet as a single after his own album’s final single had run its course in the hit charts. That plan went by the boards, however, when Parton’s “Something Special” album came out. Country radio stations quickly started playing the duet cut despite the fact that Gill’s own single was coming out, too.
Gill thus was forced to decide whether to take legal action to force Parton’s record company to withdraw a song that country radio stations obviously wanted. He says he decided against doing that (despite the fact that the same record company, which was called CBS Records then, did that to him in 1983, forcing him to withdraw his first Nashville single, a Rosanne Cash duet titled “If It Weren’t for Him”) because he “didn’t want it to get ugly and have a big battle and cause a rift and all that.”
Then, however, he was faced with still another thorny decision: whether to consent to perform the duet alongside his solo single last fall on the most-watched country music event on national television.
“Everybody was telling me, `You shouldn’t perform it on the CMA awards show; it’s just going to draw more attention to it,’ ” he remembers.
“Well, once again my hands were tied. I can’t be a bad guy; that’s not me. I’m going to do the right thing musically. I want my record to do well, but I want Dolly’s duet to do well, too. So I said, `Let’s just ask everybody to live in a perfect world for three months and see if both records can be hits. There’s no reason they can’t, because they’re different and they’re both great songs.’
“I think most people were of the mindset that `If you do both songs, one of ’em’s going to lose, and the duet’s going to blow your song away.’ That didn’t happen.”
What did happen was that “Go Rest High on That Mountain” topped out on the Billboard hit charts one notch above “I Will Always Love You.” Gill says he believes his single outstripped the duet because he deserved for that to happen: “Through the whole deal I tried to do the right thing, the honorable thing, the musical thing, and not let politics, (record) label egos and all the things that unfortunately go on in our business dictate what should happen to creativity.”
It appears likely that the duet did rob “Go Rest High on That Mountain” of some of its momentum. The peak chart position it attained was No. 15, whereas most Gill hits reach the Top 5.
A tune with gospel overtones reputedly inspired by the death of a Gill older brother as well as that of singer-songwriter Keith Whitley, it was an intensely personal song of wrenching emotion. Since both deaths were related to alcohol abuse and Gill sometimes jokes about the boring extent of his own sobriety, he is asked how he regards the substance problems of some of the people around him in the music business and why, with all the stresses of that business, he has never seemed to have those problems himself.
“I feel pretty good right now, and I can’t imagine trying to alter that,” he replies. “I never could understand the fascination, and I think part of that was not having any interest in it. Fear was a big factor, because I knew I’d get my butt kicked if I got into trouble. My dad and mom were strict.
“At the same time, it’s not my job to sit in judgment of anybody else in this world. So if my friends do drugs or choose to drink or do whatever else they do, that’s their business and not mine, and far be it from me to go in and start harping on my thoughts on what you should and shouldn’t do.
“I certainly know people who have abused (their bodies), and I, too, for a period of time had a . . . I don’t think I ever had a problem with it, but I did drink some. I think it’s unfortunate that alcohol is permissible in our society. An awful lot of people get hurt and a lot of problems are caused because of it.
For his next album, Gill says he already has written “eight to 10” songs on his own and now is starting to work with collaborators on others. He also indicates that his hairstyle may not be his only high-profile change.
He says although he’d like to say his next album would be “more of the same,” there are times “musically” when a performer should “kind of reinvent” himself. He should see that he has completed one chapter of his career and needs to explore other creative avenues.
“I don’t mean I’m going to go out and hire and all-Jamaican show band and become a reggae singer,” he says with a laugh, “but I want to push the envelope again. I want to create some different musical feels, especially on the songs with tempo. Not that there are any new feels, but there are new ones for me. Like not being afraid to play a song that has a real Little Feat-ish groove, or a New Orleans feel, or anything like that. I love all that stuff.
“Instead of being Vince Gill the country guitar player, I wouldn’t mind going a little further and being Mark Knopfler (of the international rock group Dire Straits) or Eric Clapton and experiment that way and at the same time, instead of being Vince Gill the country guy, maybe be Ray Price the country guy or Webb Pierce the country guy and take the traditional stuff even farther than it’s been.
“I really enjoy seeing my records be extreme–like on the last album, where there’s something as pop-ish as `When Love Finds You’ and then something as hardcore (country) as `Which Bridge to Cross.’ For some reason, which is a lucky reason for me, they both work.”
