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You'd open his cabinets and all you saw was Campbell's soup. He'd have lines on his face from his bedsheets-he'd just be getting up, three o'clock in the afternoon. You'd talk and vapor would be pouring out your mouth. He didn't want to cut on the heat in his apartment, so he'd come to the door wearing about twelve sweaters and mittens and one of those wool hats with the ball on top. So I started going down to Ninety-Sixth Street to see about him, see if he wanted to rehearse or let me try out any new songs he might have.

Naturally my instinct was just to keep moving, moving, moving like I always had, but my partner had gone quiet on me. That the regular people like to beat back what's different, because it scares them half to death.

Nev used to play at being different, but I don't know if he ever understood what being different really means. He expected to drop this record and immediately be huge-he wanted the love and the money and a big stamp of approval right across the forehead. He flapped his gums all the time about being proud to be different, but in his heart of hearts, ooh, that man is cocky. The only reason it got to me is because of how it was affecting Nev. Of course it was painful, but it was a pain I already knew-I never managed to fit in anywhere but the freak bin. But in this excerpt, Opal, Nev, their producer Bob Hize, and Opal's best friend/stylist Virgil LaFleur recount for Sunny a moment just before that time: the flop of the duo's first rock & roll album together, 1970's Polychrome - another in a string of failures for the struggling label Rivington Records. Sunny Shelton compiles the story of how British singer-songwriter Neville Charles and his musical partner, Detroit-bred vocalist Opal Jewel, rocket to fame in the wake of the headline-grabbing New York City concert that killed Sunny's father (drummer Jimmy Curtis). In THE FINAL REVIVAL OF OPAL & NEV, journalist S.