Despite his brief flirtation with the mainstream, DeVille was probably too strong a brew for the bland tastes of the average MTV-viewing record buyer in the late 1980s. Throughout a lengthy career that began in the early 1970s with his NYC-based band Mink DeVille, and a solo career that began in earnest under his own name with Miracle, DeVille was a true American musical renegade. Pursuing a unique vision that blended rock and soul with blues, R&B, Latin, and Cajun music, DeVille was never happy sitting in one stylistic groove for too long, and once he wrapped his magnificent voice around a style, he owned it.
Willy DeVille’s Come A Little Bit Closer
While he never built a stateside audience beyond a loyal cult following, DeVille remained popular in Europe until his untimely death from cancer in 2009. He continued to tour and record through the years, releasing his final album Pistola in 2008, and he remained curious about exploring various roots-music styles until the end. Come A Little Bit Closer: The Best of Willy DeVille Live is exactly that, a compilation of some of the singer’s best songs and live performances, culled from throughout his career.
DeVille was a powerful and charismatic live performer, pouring his heart and song into every live performance, regardless of the venue or audience. Come A Little Bit Closer begins with “Venus of Avenue D,” documenting one of the best-known songs from an early incarnation of Mink DeVille, captured live in Amsterdam in 1977. Displaying just a little of the diversity that would grace DeVille’s later recordings, “Venus of Avenue D” is a punkish rocker with a heart full of soul, offering R&B tinged hornplay and muted vocals that up the amperage and electricity as the song slowly ascends. The Brill Building pop gem “Little Girl” comes from the same show, the song a mid-tempo ballad that DeVille imbues with an emotional fervor.
The Evolution of Mink DeVille
A handful of songs, from a 1984 show in the Netherlands, illustrate the evolution of Mink DeVille, the band, into Willy DeVille, the singular performer. Injecting his performances with greater R&B influences and elegant vocal nuances, DeVille’s performance of “This Must Be the Night” crosses the playfulness of Gary “U.S.” Bonds with the earnest blues-eyed soul sound of Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes. Ditto for “Love and Emotion,” a lovely love song with a Philly soul sound and a European heartbeat, while “Savoir Faire” is just an all-out rocker with raging vocals and blazing guitars, blasts of horn, and shards of honky-tonk piano.
DeVille was a masterful interpreter of other songwriter’s material as well, from the aforementioned “Little Girl” to a gorgeous cover of Bryan Ferry’s hauntingly beautiful “Slave To Love,” the singer wringing every bit of heartbreak out of the song. The garage-rock standard “Hey Joe” is gleefully re-imagined with a jaunty Spanish rhythm and exotic instrumentation dancing lively behind DeVille’s playful vocals. No “best of” compilation would be complete without “Storybook Love,” and this 2002 version, recorded in Berlin with the Willy DeVille Acoustic Trio, is met with enthusiastic response from the German audience, the singer accompanied by a lone piano as he pure magic out of the yearning, heartworn lyrics.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Willy DeVille was an American musical treasure, a gifted songwriter and vocalist that reveled in obscurity for over 30 years, yet continued to create powerful, exciting music throughout, without the benefit of major labels or radio airplay. DeVille suffered from addictions during much of his career, and it could be argued that his personal demons held him back, career-wise, although it did little to slow the impressive pace of his songwriting or performing.
Come A Little Bit Closer: The Best of Willy DeVille live is not only a wonderful introduction to this talented artist’s rich and diverse milieu, it also serves as a gateway to a lot of great music still available from one of the greatest and most underrated of American musicians, Willy DeVille. With a love for indigenous musical forms that informed his sound, roots music never sounded better than when sung by DeVille. (Eagle Records, released May 24, 2011)
