The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

how did I not just let life run me over? I’m sorry, I don’t usually use this word, but it’s because fuck that. I believe in myself above all.

I got a better question for you. Why are you so deeply invested in proving I'm scared? Does a Black person showing they're scared make you feel safer? I suggest you sit back and interrogate that.

Well, that’s all right, because trust me: It can be learned. You just have to copy the right people, and the rest falls in place.

I felt pride, of course, but something more, something better: freedom. freedom to trust my tastes, take my own counsel, make bold moves.

That’s what the South was like for me. Sweet on the first taste, but something gone sour underneath. It’ll try to trick you, now—the sugarberries and the quiet and those lovely spread-out houses. But after that day with Auntie Rose, I could smell the rotten too.

Disclosure: My father, a drummer named Jimmy Curtis, fell in love with Opal Jewel in the summer of 1970.

- I have no argument with faith, understand, so long as it helps one to cope with the slings and arrows of life while keeping its hands outside of my pockets - Virgil LaFleur

I'd like to think that we couldn't help but get famous just because we were that good. I'd like to think that folks didn't have to end up destroyed for Opal and Nev to have made a name.

The key is that you never take the piss out of them. You approach them with overwhelming respect, and then you do what you need to get done, and then you must be humble enough to say it was their brilliant idea all along. Understand: This has been half my talent, working with rock stars.

A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.” That’s Proverbs 14:30,

I wanted to feel morose and romantic; I wanted to do penance at the altar of greatness.

I don't know if he ever understood what being different really means. That the regular people like to beat back what's different, because it scares them half to death.

But my personal definition of success is that you don’t do a goddamn thing you don’t want to. If you ain’t feeling it, you ain’t gotta do it.

I had an inner voice, and for a good portion of my life that voice was a lot smarter than me. It was more mature, and it was patient, and it was brave enough to tell me that despite what anybody else was saying, there was more for me out in the world and I deserved every single drop of it.

There was no intention on our parts to end up that way, stuck forever in a moment of great distress. And people think time gives them the right to switch up the lens, to romanticize a thing and make up meaning from it.

He saw me as I was, and still he seemed to be choosing me. It was a basic thing, but I had never in my life been chosen before. You understand what that means? I'm saying here was this stranger, clearly as crazy as I was, this person who dropped into my life out of nowhere, and he was reaching out his hand. What could I do but take it? What could I do but choose him back?

From this point on, I knew, I wanted to curate this story standing on the premise that the lives and legacies of Black men, like my father, cannot be reduced to the awful shit white men do to them. That the voices of Black women like Opal should not be discounted or diminished in deference to those who have hijacked our shine whenever it suits.

And that right there is very typical of white people - won't do what's right till they're directly affected.

See this is what I say about America - we always gotta be assigning shit, always labeling it and stuffing it into a box. Always dictating who's allowed to own what. But end of the day, that don't have anything to do with music, you dig? The music is fire and passions and soul and however you express it is how you express it.

But my personal definition of success is that you don't do a goddamn thing you don't want to. If you ain't feeling it you ain't gotta do it

See, this is what I say about America—we always gotta be assigning shit, always labeling it and stuffing it in a box. Always dictating who’s allowed to own what.

from the grit New York City must have shoved underneath his fingernails….

Do you remember “Black Coffee”? Do you realize I wrote that just for you? Not the lyrics—I know that you hated those—but the heavy sound, the big drums, and the bass. I’d hoped you’d love it. I hate I never told you.

Howie was outside warming up the Camaro,

That's when I decided it was time for me to start cooking up some luck - meeting that miracle halfway.

You must speak to me please, or I won't remember where I am. Where we are, who we've been. They'll let me out, but I'll fall right back in. Waiting, and so very sorry... Once again, I am: Your Nev