We Did It. But You Were The Only Ones To Do It! We Did It!: “You’re The First, The Last, My Everything” by Barry White

I vividly remember my excitement upon first hearing Pulp’s “My Legendary Girlfriend.” It came out as a 12-inch single in 1991 – having been recorded some two years previously – and was the first definite indication of that band’s generous stride towards greatness, setting in place all the templates which were, half a decade hence, to become commercially and artistically omnipresent in ambitious British pop. It was also, if you are that way inclined, sexy as hell; Cocker’s mutters and comforting cajoles against what was essentially a variation on the intro and outro to “You’re The First, The Last, My Everything.”

Radio stations miss out so many crucial things by doggedly adhering to inadequate radio single edits, particularly since the original seven-inch single featured the track in its four-and-a-half minute entirety. And the build-up and comedown of the song is crucial, as it was to Barry White’s art in general.

White’s music always struck me more instantly than that of Isaac Hayes, with whom he was regularly and drearily compared at this time. This is not to devalue Hayes’ work – his 18-minute improvisation on “By The Time I Get To Phoenix,” for instance, almost makes you regret the eventual appearance of the song itself – but I was somehow able to swim more readily in the gargantuan, purple landscapes which White, if you mind, erected. The devastating “I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little Bit More, Baby,” his first hit from 1973, in its full, near-eight minute length, seems to me one of the most actively creative developments of psychedelia, maybe even a more fruitful road than that laid by Whitfield’s Temptations; flutes and harpsichords drip all over the song like tangerines in a newly wet midsummer orchard, coming at the listener from improbable angles. The same can be said of his earlier 1974 hit “Never, Never Gonna Give You Up” which tantalised and perhaps even scared me a little when played on Radio Luxembourg (or those radio ads, with Greg Edwards’ voice going even deeper than White’s). Again, seven-and-a-half minutes are required for its seduction to encase the listener in sheets of vermillion vastness. “Love’s Theme,” written and produced by White (with Gene Page) under the Love Unlimited Orchestra banner, was inescapable from 1974 radio, and its parent album Rhapsody In White underlined the post-’67 blueprints from which White was working.

What is perhaps most remarkable about Barry White is that, along with Marvin Gaye and Al Green, he is one of the few singers able to seduce and tempt the listener into their bed without coming across like a macho meathead. White’s miracle is his immediate willingness to lose himself, to devote himself to the perpetuation of a love equally profound in spiritual and carnal dimensions. He offers his own being rather than clumsily and thoughtlessly imposing it on his Other. Listen to the long, languid lapping of side two of his 1974 album Stone Gon’ and you could on occasion be listening to the Cocteau Twins.

He did do uptempo tracks as well, of course, and if confined to its familiar oldies radio format, “You’re The First, The Last, My Everything” would be a pleasant but unremarkable detour from the kind of thing White did best. But hear it in its full intended format; that introduction with the ‘cello and bass rhythm which Pulp would later appropriate and modify, and White’s beneficent words (sounding almost like Orson Welles in places): “We got it together, didn’t we?” he says, with genuine joy rather than smugness. “We definitely got our thing together, don’t we, baby?” he adds. Then he muses for a while before adding: “Isn’t that nice? I mean, really, when you really sit and think about it…isn’t it really, really nice?” Note how a guitar quivers downward behind that latter phrase, like the delicate tracery of fingertips working their Miro magic on your shoulders and back. Then the strings make a discreet entry: “I can easily feel myself slipping, more and more away to that simple world of our own… Nobody but you and me...” as the strings and rhythm complete their climactic build-up, and then, a final, wonderful “We got it together, baby.”

Four downward upper register piano rushes herald the song itself, in which White ecstatically extols his Other’s virtues: “I know there’s only, only one like you/There’s no way they could have made two,” “In you I’ve found so many things/A love so new only you could bring.” Structurally, the song is one Ben E King or Clyde McPhatter could have sung fifteen years previously, but it is the new radiance which White brings to both arrangement and delivery which makes it matter, especially now; look at when his basso profundo peaks in wondrous welcome: “I see so many ways that I/Can love you ‘til the day I die!”

Then the song returns to decelerate what its introduction had accelerated; again, the singer is satisfied, content and warm: “You and me baby,” he whispers. “Just you…and me…you are the first…the last…my everything”…and it is about as far away from a certain disgraced glam-rocker burping those same words as you could imagine. It is the sound and joyous expression of something achieved, attained…and, yes, consummated.

Date Record Made Number Two: 4 January 1975
Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 2
Record At Number One: “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” by Elton John
UK Chart Position: 1