“What’s the matter with you?” Usher looks at me as though I have just emerged the worse for wear from a fist fight in one of the downtown bars in his hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. One thing I’ve learned in 40 years of interviewing people is that YOU NEVER MAKE IT ABOUT YOU, but when I tell him I am recuperating from an operation on a meniscus in my left knee, he tells me that a while ago he’d had a similar, less dramatic thing.
“Some time after the last tour, it went. I’m a physical guy and it split,” he says, using the smile that I think he uses for every emotion. I’m not saying it’s not genuine, but it’s huge.
