In the early morning hours of October 18, 1974, an ex-girlfriend of soul singer Al Green bursts in on him in while he is taking a bath in his Memphis, Tennessee, home and pours a pot of scalding-hot grits on his back. She then retreats to a bedroom and shoots herself dead with Green's own gun.
The shocking attack and suicide by his former companion Mary Woodson prompted a personal reckoning for the singer. Believing he had strayed from the righteous musical and spiritual course intended for him, Green had already become a born-again Christian one year earlier. But after the attack, he began a process that would eventually lead him to renounce pop superstardom and all that it stood for. Two years later, in 1976, he bought a church in Memphis and became a fully ordained pastor.
Widely renowned as one of the greatest voices in soul music history, Green was at the absolute height of his powers in 1974. He had seven critically and commercially successful major-label albums behind him that included such timeless hits as "Tired Of Being Alone" (1971), "Let's Stay Together" (1971) and "I'm Still In Love With You" (1972). He also, in the words of Davin Seay, who collaborated with Green on his 2000 autobiography, Take Me To The River, had a "basic animal appeal to women" that attracted many admirers, including Mary Woodson.
Woodson first made Green's acquaintance after leaving her husband and children behind in New Jersey and attending one of his concerts in upstate New York. On the night of the attack, Woodson had shown up unexpectedly at Green's Memphis home after he returned from a concert appearance in San Francisco. What exactly prompted her to act is unclear, but her actions not only left Al Green with severe burns that would require months of hospitalization, they also left him severely shaken emotionally and spiritually. "He likes to distance the facts of his [religious] conversion from the terrible events of that night," says Seay, "but I think the Woodson incident kind of crystallized his need to move on, to sort of shut down one part of his life and open up another.''
