Speaking on the impact and influence of our greatest musicians can feel like a fruitless endeavor. Some artists, like R&B legend Luther Vandross, shine a light so bright that attempts to measure its luminance through text amount to little more than waving a small flashlight around in the dark.
It’s impossible not to fall for someone so brazenly dedicated to a life in song, destined to exist in the shimmering glow of stage lighting.
It’s impossible not to fall for someone so brazenly dedicated to a life in song, destined to exist in the shimmering glow of stage lighting. In the documentary “Luther: Never Too Much,” there’s a particularly humorous anecdote about him forcing the collaborators from his first group, Shades of Jade, to wear matching green leather shoes. When they couldn’t convince their mothers to aid in the $23 expenditure, Luther successfully pleaded on their behalf. In his own words, his origin hinges on attending a fateful Dionne Warwick show in his youth. He devoted his life to making people feel how she made him feel that day.
Director Dawn Porter (2020’s “John Lewis: Good Trouble”) reminds us how thoroughly Luther succeeded at that goal. Her film succeeds where most fictional or otherwise films fail when tackling insurmountably superlative icons. Rather than getting caught up in the rigors of hyperbole or the quicksand trap of cliche, she has arranged the telling of a life mainly through the artist’s words and enduring art.
Though this doc takes the same cradle-to-the-grave approach most musical biopics follow, there is a sense you’re moving through history without taking the same tired route every episode of “Behind the Music” once subjected us to. The film employs the usual use of talking heads, but rather than heavily relying on cultural critics and historians, most of the people interviewed are Luther’s longtime friends and collaborators. They all do a much more intimate and entertaining job of making the viewer feel closer to the subject.
If you are, like me, something of a Luther neophyte, you may have a pretty thin understanding of the scope and breadth of his work. Perhaps you’ll recognize most of his ’80s output as the soundtrack to your mother cleaning on Sundays. Through pop cultural osmosis, you’ll know about his extreme weight fluctuations (Cedric The Entertainer’s infamous “I don’t do Lil Luther”) or his alleged penchant for eating hamburgers with donuts for buns (“The Boondocks” and Grandpa’s Luther Burger.) But “Never Too Much” provides much welcome context, detail and texture.
The early segments that focus on Luther’s youth as a Patti LaBelle superfan growing up in the ’60s are perhaps the most charming. As presented, his dedication to his favorite singers feels like the nontoxic precursor to modern-day pop stan culture.
The early segments that focus on Luther’s youth as a Patti LaBelle superfan growing up in the ’60s are perhaps the most charming. As presented, his dedication to his favorite singers feels like the nontoxic precursor to modern-day pop stan culture. Where listeners of the present fall into cancerous idolatry, Luther and his contemporaries obsessed over the music itself, with multiple friends quoted as saying their relationships began while watching The Supremes together on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
In his youth, Luther embarked on a strange but glorious journey to superstardom. Dropping out of college before Kanye, he decided he didn’t want a plan B. If he failed, he would keep at it, resigned to being 80 years old and still trying to make it if fate awaited him. Instead of toiling, his unique gifts as a vocalist, arranger, writer and producer gave him multiple avenues into the public consciousness.
Throughout the ’70s, he appeared on the first season of “Sesame Street” with his group Listen My Brother, worked with David Bowie on his seminal “Young Americans” album, cut his teeth opening for Bette Midler, wrote music for “The Wiz,” and simultaneously became the industry’s most sought-after back-up singer and its most illustrious writer of jingles. This man sang tunes promoting Miller High Life, Juicy Fruit gum, and Gino’s Pizza that were catchier, more tactile, and more affecting than some artists’ entire discographies!
But that expansive time in varied background capacities collapsed into the singularity of “Never Too Much,” the first official single and title of Luther’s first solo album. From the moment we hear that quirky but unmistakable bassline and the glittering string arrangements, it is clear we’re hearing not only one of the greatest songs of all time in any genre but the birth of a bona fide star who will no longer be denied or relegated to the periphery.
Like any story outlining the arc of a famous career, there’s a passage where Luther Vandross becomes an indestructible entity. Back-to-back platinum albums, writing and producing songs for his idols like Aretha Franklin and Warwick, headlining sold-out shows that are the product of his own inimitable vision.
We get to see backstage footage of him rehearsing with his tight-knit crew of collaborators. We see how he arranges the backing vocalists so effortlessly, with one former bandmate saying his gifts made him “like a film director for your ears.” The matching, hand-beaded garments, the opulent regalia, inspired staging and choreographed movements were all above and beyond what most of his listeners, in their own words, required — but Luther, having grown up on television performances, wasn’t content to stand around and croon.
Then, what most would consider his height begins to feel like a cage he’s trapped in. Luther was desperate to cross into the mainstream as some Black artists often endure. The world of Quiet Storm radio and R&B became a racial albatross around Luther’s neck. Similarly, the doc has us watch him lose Grammys to the likes of Terence Trent D’Arby, endlessly iced out of that full acceptance he so craved. By the time he finally won, he was still fighting to reach wider audiences. Though his earlier career saw him cross genres and explore a variety of sounds, being the “love song” guy became an impediment. There’s a scene where Jamie Foxx recounts putting his phone up to the radio when a Luther song came on so the music could woo whatever girl he was pursuing.
But by all accounts, so much of the love Luther’s music inspired among his listeners seemed to elude him throughout his life. Early on, the doc takes time to allow his closest confidants to point out that he was too Black and too heavy to take center stage in his youth. Once out front, he had a difficult relationship with food, and he saw his size careen between extremes throughout his public life. Eddie Murphy famously called Luther a “Kentucky Fried Chicken-eating MF” in “Delirious.” Seeing Murphy’s name on the guest list for one of his shows, Luther responded by bringing out a human-size KFC bucket and serenading jingles to it. Initially, he seems in good humor about it, but it’s clear he’s frustrated with even needing to acknowledge the comedian’s needling.
He was notoriously private about his sexuality, something the documentary covers but, respectfully, chooses not to labor over. But it does come back to one point repeatedly that makes even the rapturous togetherness of his funeral, where countless contemporaries came together in song to grieve his loss, feel so very tragic.
Luther, in archival footage from an appearance on Oprah’s old show, tells a fan that his favorite song of his is “Any Love.” The film blends him lightly cooing it to her on the show with other performances of the song, allowing the viewer to get caught up in what a dulcet and touching ballad it ultimately is. Then it cuts to Luther’s former assistant saying how it used to be his favorite song too, until he got to know Luther and realized what an aching, pleading ode to seeking connection it was for him.
In an interview, Luther’s niece says that her uncle had an obligation on this Earth and fulfilled it, as if performing a cosmic task you never asked for should be, in itself, a great triumph. But now that I know more about him than ever before, I find it so hard to listen to songs I once adored and not feel a deep sense of frustration that someone could be such a boundless fountain of love for others and still find themselves dying of thirst.
“Luther: Never Too Much” is currently streaming on Max and CNN+.
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