Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome.
Speaker 1: To QLs classic George lighting Lys Johnson, formerly a legendary
Speaker 1: of Brothers Johnson Funk Unit. We talked to him about
Speaker 1: his days with Billy Preston, pairing up with Quincy Jones,
Speaker 1: eyewitnessing Sly Stone make the legendary album There's a Riot
Speaker 1: going On, and also his brother in the late Green
Speaker 1: Lewis thunder Thumbs Johnson from October twenty fourth, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: This is the George Johnson episode of Questlam.
Speaker 3: Supreme Suprema Supremo, Roll Call Supremo, Roll Call, Suprema Supremo,
Speaker 3: Roll Call, Suprema Sun Sun Supremo Roll Call.
Speaker 2: This is the show. Yeah, my name's Questlove.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I want to welcome you, yeah to the club.
Speaker 3: Supreme Supremo, Roll Call, Supremo Supremo.
Speaker 2: Roll My name is Fante.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Check out my flow. Yeah. One of my favorite jams. Yeah, Tokyo.
Speaker 3: Suprema Son Supremo, Roll Call, Supremo Supreme, Roll Call.
Speaker 4: My name is Sugar. Yeah, I get my kicks.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: From thunder Thumbs Yeah, and light lips.
Speaker 3: Son Supremo, Roll Call Supreme So Supreme.
Speaker 2: Roll still is riding. Yeah in the new Mercedes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: down the highway. Yeah to the ladies.
Speaker 3: Suprema Suck souprem Suprema Son Son Supremo.
Speaker 2: Roll calls em.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know the deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I want to know, George, Yeah, is what
Speaker 2: you feel really real?
Speaker 3: Roll call Suprema Son Son Supremo, Roll car Suprema Son
Speaker 3: Son Suprema roll Call.
Speaker 5: My name is Troy, Yeah, pop Sisdom Man. Yeah, are
Speaker 5: y'all already Yeah for a little bit of blame.
Speaker 3: Roll Supremo Sun Sun Supremo, Roll Call Suprema Son Son Supremo,
Speaker 3: Roll called.
Speaker 2: This is GJ.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'd like to say, yeah, get the funk out in
Speaker 4: my face. Yeah, I'm doing my.
Speaker 3: Roll Suprema So Supremo, Roll car Suprema So Soun Supremo,
Speaker 3: Roll Call Suprema Son Son So Frema roll call SA.
Speaker 2: Way better. That was it.
Speaker 6: Is?
Speaker 2: Uh. Many people have asked, but I gotta be honest
Speaker 2: with you. We've had our first role call train wreck
Speaker 2: and to never ever do a role call twice with
Speaker 2: the guests, but we actually that was our second take.
Speaker 2: Maybe at the fate of the of this episode, we
Speaker 2: can play the wreck. This is hilarious because once again
Speaker 2: Fonte has drink Steve's milk. Wow, man, that's crazy. Is
Speaker 2: this our This is our first father son edition of
Speaker 2: It is cost love supreme? This is compliment. We are
Speaker 2: live at the illustrious Capitol Records building. Uh, the house
Speaker 2: that Nat built in the Beatless, the Beach Boys and
Speaker 2: Gillian Frank What what the studio we're in right now?
Speaker 2: What studio is the studio A? Is the studio A?
Speaker 2: And Neck and Cole is really the headliner in here?
Speaker 2: And I guess Frank Sinatra as well. Okay, all right,
Speaker 2: so we're in a room with history. I will say
Speaker 2: that our special guest today, one of our two guests today,
Speaker 2: is probably one of the most legendary guitarists in funk
Speaker 2: soul history, having contributed to projects for Billy Preston, Liningless Smith,
Speaker 2: Bill Withers, Quincy Jones, Steve Arrington. That I didn't know
Speaker 2: George Duke, David Williams, the legendary guitarist David Williams. You
Speaker 2: gotta tell me about that.
Speaker 4: He used to come over my house. I will teach
Speaker 4: him some things.
Speaker 2: It's going to be so good. Renee and Joyce Kennedy,
Speaker 2: formerly of a Mother's Finest The Silvers, but of course
Speaker 2: he's better known by his his non de plume UH
Speaker 2: Lightning Licks who along with his brother, the late Great
Speaker 2: Lewis Johnson, UH, he's one half of the legendary monster
Speaker 2: duo the Brothers Johnson. Also not not not not to
Speaker 2: be outdone. His offspring is as an impressive uh resume
Speaker 2: as well. You can name it from j Lo to solangdo.
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, a lot of a bunch of stuff. Work
Speaker 7: with a few people, yes.
Speaker 2: Shory Radio Johnson also, but please welcome the legendary George
Speaker 2: Johnson and.
Speaker 4: Right Quest of Supreme.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you for coming man, thank you, thanks
Speaker 2: for having us the stunt like my Daddy edition. So
Speaker 2: how are you to do?
Speaker 4: Oh? I'm doing good.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I don't come out to many interviews. I'm actually working
Speaker 4: on a book and thinking about doing some new music
Speaker 4: with my son. So when I heard that you came
Speaker 4: through and want to interview, I had the Okay, I'm
Speaker 4: going to do this.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Yes, thank you. We're excited about this.
Speaker 2: We're excited. Okay, So I want to get right into it. Okay,
Speaker 2: where were you born?
Speaker 4: I was born in Los Angeles, California, in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 4: I'm currently sixty five years old. Just turned May seventeenth graduation. Yeah,
Speaker 4: still kicking up. Basically, have been enjoying the aftermath of
Speaker 4: where God took me through the whole livelihood of learning music.
Speaker 4: I started playing at five years old bb King, but
Speaker 4: he wound up covering one of my songs that I
Speaker 4: wrote for Billy Preston, a song called I Wonder Why,
Speaker 4: and I had a chance to meet him. And it's
Speaker 4: funny because every artist who I've met was seen abound
Speaker 4: a meeting from the Beatles, James Brown, you know, through
Speaker 4: my track in my career, really slid Stone, Larry Graham,
Speaker 4: you know, these were people who personally hands on taught
Speaker 4: me or everything about funk. But I knew as far
Speaker 4: as guitar. That was probably about eleven. I had a
Speaker 4: choice to whether I to play bass or if I
Speaker 4: wanted to play guitar. But I was already playing guitar,
Speaker 4: and I knew its playing guitar had the six strings
Speaker 4: and you could play chords as opposed to notes. I
Speaker 4: was actually teaching my brother Lewis, when I play a
Speaker 4: C chord, you should play a C note. So actually
Speaker 4: I knew I could get further in writing and watching
Speaker 4: the Beatles performers three guitars and drums, which is the
Speaker 4: same instrumentation we had as kids. The Johnson three plus one,
Speaker 4: and you know, I just loved it. You know, the
Speaker 4: motown thing that hit, what you do, the things you do,
Speaker 4: all the Smokey Robinson and it was the Funk Brothers
Speaker 4: who I really learned a lot because at one time
Speaker 4: I thought it was different bands. I didn't think it.
Speaker 2: Was one band.
Speaker 4: Exactly, so you know, these were legends. Unfortunately they didn't
Speaker 4: get stock in the company, but you know, these were
Speaker 4: people who I most admired. You know, sixth seventh grade,
Speaker 4: I'm going to school humming hits and you know I can't.
Speaker 2: I would.
Speaker 4: I was really creative, so I got good grades. I'm
Speaker 4: sitting there writing lyrics and history and you know, or
Speaker 4: or geography, and I pulled that into I wanted to
Speaker 4: pull all that into my world through through history. I
Speaker 4: wanted to know a lot of things, which is a
Speaker 4: lot of things I know on a black issue that
Speaker 4: you guys would never know from doctor Francis Creswell saying
Speaker 4: to ny Mock Barr, you know, travel the world, and
Speaker 4: you know, dove into being a Christian into Islam at
Speaker 4: a very early age, and had chanced to meet Minnesulta's
Speaker 4: fery Khan and Mustafa Muhammad who's a very close friend
Speaker 4: of mine and kind of balanced the unbalanced for me.
Speaker 4: What kept the focus going and in the right direction
Speaker 4: was the music, because the music could teach me the most.
Speaker 4: And we had prejudices and all that stuff back in
Speaker 4: the early sixties and backing up into the fifties, so
Speaker 4: as kids, we weren't really given the right to have
Speaker 4: an opinion. It was up to the parents, you know,
Speaker 4: and they came from old school, like my family came
Speaker 4: from Mississippi, New Orleans, you know, down south. They were
Speaker 4: never taught the right things, you know, even as far
Speaker 4: as we were when we grew up, you know, nons
Speaker 4: wouldn't teach us the truth. We'd gone to church and
Speaker 4: see all these pictures of white folks, you know, which
Speaker 4: there were black saints. Later on after find Saint Peter,
Speaker 4: who's supposed to hold the keys to heaven. Okay, he's
Speaker 4: in the mill. He's at the Vatican as a statue
Speaker 4: which the Pope gets up, and you have the Quran,
Speaker 4: I mean the Bible, the Quran and the Torah, and
Speaker 4: in front of all that is a black statue of
Speaker 4: Saint Peter, which he gets up at five o'clock in
Speaker 4: the morning kiss his feet. Had we had known that
Speaker 4: it would inspire us more as the as youth to
Speaker 4: feel better about ourselves as far as being, you know,
Speaker 4: sitting in the back of the classroom, which I always
Speaker 4: wanted to be, first row, second rope. I need glasses.
Speaker 4: I can't see the board. So in my travels it's
Speaker 4: like I used all of that, you know, in geography.
Speaker 4: I want to go everywhere I see on this map.
Speaker 4: You know, they have the big old picture, you know.
Speaker 4: And we never went out of la and I wound
Speaker 4: up traveling the world probably about over a dozen times.
Speaker 4: And I'd get on the plane read Okay Idaho with
Speaker 4: their famous for potatoes. This, you know, it would really
Speaker 4: prepare myself to know and ask questions. And went over
Speaker 4: to Africa in eighty four, checked into the lobby, and
Speaker 4: this African king and a prince which was his son,
Speaker 4: were there. I had no idea, so he looked at
Speaker 4: me and said, oh, my brother. He said, when you
Speaker 4: get through, could you come over and have a drink
Speaker 4: with it? And I'm like, who the hell is this?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: So I went upstairs and came back down and he
Speaker 4: told me he was a king and he had seventeen
Speaker 4: wives and thirty five kids.
Speaker 2: Busy king.
Speaker 4: I said, how do you do that? Very slowly?
Speaker 2: What a part of la were you born in?
Speaker 4: Well, actually we went to Okay, I went to Catholic school.
Speaker 4: It was called Transfiguration. It was right off of Vernon
Speaker 4: and we lived on Samarron. That's where we grew up.
Speaker 4: Street called Samarron and Transfiguration was off of which King
Speaker 4: now it was on King and Fourth Avenue. Did eight
Speaker 4: years there learn to speak Latin? I wasn't all to
Speaker 4: boy sally, Yeah, I mean, I was like all over
Speaker 4: the place, but I figured that it would be a
Speaker 4: great opportunity to get out of school when I wanted. Okay,
Speaker 4: So they always would leave the doors open in the front.
Speaker 4: Would you come in through the church?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 4: If I'm like, would go over to where the priests
Speaker 4: were or where they dressed and all that. Directory I
Speaker 4: had reason to be in the area because I was
Speaker 4: an ultim boy. So I'd go creep through the church,
Speaker 4: go through the front doors, go down to Taketo place
Speaker 4: you have lunch, and coming back through the doors. A
Speaker 4: couple of times I got caught. So there was a
Speaker 4: middle light and uh, the confession. So if I jumped
Speaker 4: in that, like the priests are doing that, all the
Speaker 4: moves down so if you step in it, they figured
Speaker 4: the priest was in there. So I was hearing confessions
Speaker 4: and all that. Your father helped me my daughters, this
Speaker 4: is pregnant, and oh yeah. I was like, hey, you know,
Speaker 4: say three our fathers three held marriages when our father
Speaker 4: acting contrition and you good.
Speaker 2: The original, so we're your were your parents into music?
Speaker 4: My mom played uh keyboards. She wasn't really you know,
Speaker 4: she'd learned little music and would play. I never saw
Speaker 4: her play. Well it was having around the piano. She
Speaker 4: can just get on it and play a little bit.
Speaker 4: My dad was a hell of a whistler. He could
Speaker 4: out whistle to tell me.
Speaker 2: We get the car on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well you know right right. My dad could whistle
Speaker 4: like that really yeah, So it was he would whistle
Speaker 4: melodies if he couldn't sing. I know, all the lyrics.
Speaker 4: He's showing that he could whistle it. He'd whistle out
Speaker 4: a song. Well, he cutting a lawn whatever, cutting the hair,
Speaker 4: you know, helping us with the stuff. But we got
Speaker 4: music from both sides, you know, and we had some
Speaker 4: aunts and uncles that could play, you know, damn anything.
Speaker 4: They wanted to just go to the keyboard, from gospel
Speaker 4: music to rock and roll. You know, they can just improvise.
Speaker 4: How old were you when you got your first guitar? Well,
Speaker 4: this is a very good story because this Okay, I
Speaker 4: was watching at some of it, and I was watching
Speaker 4: Elvis Presley Joe House Rock came out. I probably was
Speaker 4: about five six, and we had a couch and us
Speaker 4: sitting on the floor between my dad's legs, just watching.
Speaker 4: They had about eight of the grand kids running around.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to get to the move out the way.
Speaker 4: He saw my interest in this man who was playing
Speaker 4: this box guitar and shaking his legs, and all the
Speaker 4: girls were fighting their nails and crying, which is the
Speaker 4: only thing I could not interpretate why there were crying, okay,
Speaker 4: but they were just excited. There was an emotion, you know.
Speaker 4: So he gets up during the commercial goes into the
Speaker 4: kitchen and it was like a half gallon of milk,
Speaker 4: pours what was left out, washes it out, cuts a
Speaker 4: hole in the middle, takes a stick, staple it to
Speaker 4: it where the pouring part was. He takes four rubber
Speaker 4: bands and put the pins at the bottom. So he
Speaker 4: made a simulated guitar. By the time they say came
Speaker 4: back on, he stepped back over me and he waited
Speaker 4: to and he just handed me the milk cart. Yeah,
Speaker 4: simulated guitar. That was like the most important thing in
Speaker 4: my life. He saw me actually just focusing in on
Speaker 4: this person, you know, more so than any of all
Speaker 4: the other grandkids. So it's like he just knew, So
Speaker 4: I'm gonna get put this in this boy's hand. She
Speaker 4: gonna become that and from you know, he couldn't. Later on,
Speaker 4: he and his brother because his brother Buster, my dad's
Speaker 4: name was Joseph. He they're both so creative and two
Speaker 4: black men from Mississippi who have the original blueprints for
Speaker 4: the airplanean's landing. When first the parachute would come out,
Speaker 4: they had reverse reverse whatever it is that reverse thrust.
Speaker 4: That was their idea. But it was two Yeah, they
Speaker 4: have the original blueprint we should have on the airline.
Speaker 4: But because yeah, they had the original blueprints of turning
Speaker 4: one engine on going this way because they only had
Speaker 4: one engine going that way. So that's why when planes
Speaker 4: landing kind of makes you know, and it helps planes
Speaker 4: lands and next time y'all going back to New York.
Speaker 4: Exactly two black men. So those two black men who
Speaker 4: came up with that built our first guitar. Wow, that's
Speaker 4: how my dad's brother came over. You got a busted
Speaker 4: water heater. I can make that. He was a welder,
Speaker 4: you know, and he got some sheep metal Bennett round.
Speaker 4: He had all the two he made that and that
Speaker 4: lasted until we moved. So we had we had great
Speaker 4: black men in our family. Everywhere we would look outside
Speaker 4: of music, somebody knew something about that. Also had an
Speaker 4: uncle who used to come by and check. His name
Speaker 4: was Arthur and he played a three thirty five guitar
Speaker 4: and he used to play backup guitar for West Montgomery Man.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know.
Speaker 4: So and then we have an uncle who actually played
Speaker 4: saxophone and he come over and check on us how
Speaker 4: the boys doing it. We had basically the same story
Speaker 4: like the Jackson you know, my mom was, don't buy it.
Speaker 4: Why are you buying all? They said, these boys are
Speaker 4: gonna be bad. They let him. Let me just do
Speaker 4: what I'm gonna do. And he brought us all instruments. Oh,
Speaker 4: we should be paying bills and blood, which you know,
Speaker 4: it worked out. I'm thankful he went that way. He
Speaker 4: had more faith than my mom. She wanted us to
Speaker 4: be scholars like she was and getting master's degrees and
Speaker 4: all that kind of stuff, and that wasn't I got
Speaker 4: my master master's degree through Quincy eight years. Takes four
Speaker 4: years to get your degree and another four to get
Speaker 4: your masters. I did eight years with Clincy Jones.
Speaker 2: In your family, is it just as far as your
Speaker 2: siblings are concerned.
Speaker 4: Now, we have an older brother, Tommy, who played drums.
Speaker 4: He was like Buddy Miles. He played drums and sang.
Speaker 4: His path was too. Well say, we had our group.
Speaker 4: We had two guitars, me and Alex Swear who wanted
Speaker 4: to play with talking Heads.
Speaker 2: Well, Alex, he also played with that's my cousin. Yes, okay, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 4: He was the plus one. It was a Johnson three
Speaker 4: plus one and exactly. So you know, I was like
Speaker 4: the Quincy Jones then back then being the Arrangers. Since well,
Speaker 4: I knew I had to be brilliant in the school
Speaker 4: because my parents didn't want us to do anything until
Speaker 4: after if we had good grades, and after you do
Speaker 4: your homework then you could chill. So I would do
Speaker 4: my homework by the time school was out home the
Speaker 4: right and leave to go to forgot the name of
Speaker 4: the record store and that of Normandy and pick up
Speaker 4: new singles. So you know, it could have been four
Speaker 4: top songs standing in the Shadow, Loves or Temptations or Smoky.
Speaker 4: The first thing I'd do is go home. I'd buy
Speaker 4: five singles out of my pocket because we was doing gigs,
Speaker 4: making about two hundred bucks for one, you know, set
Speaker 4: of three hours and it was only four of us. So,
Speaker 4: I mean, from sixth grade on, you know, I had money.
Speaker 4: I didn't have a bank. I put my money under
Speaker 4: the mattress. Anybody who needs money.
Speaker 2: Go, you know, go under here and pick it up
Speaker 2: the mattress of the crown.
Speaker 4: Well, I never had a bank account, and I didn't
Speaker 4: know if I wanted to trust banks.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're giving you my money and then what so
Speaker 2: in all your years of playing. Did you ever take
Speaker 2: formal lessons or was it all just kind of self?
Speaker 4: Yeah. Once I got into high school and my guitarist
Speaker 4: teacher got in touch with my parents and told them
Speaker 4: that they're wasting their money because I'm teaching them motown ship.
Speaker 4: You know, he's teaching us one that we're teaching them.
Speaker 4: You know, because I would pick up really quick. They
Speaker 4: showed me the basics of C chord and you know
Speaker 4: minor chord, and you know one, three, five, and then
Speaker 4: take out the third and you get a minor and
Speaker 4: which a lot of stuff and people don't realize and
Speaker 4: the sound and rappers later got it mixed up and
Speaker 4: they added the third with a note that don't match
Speaker 4: text your record, you know, things like that. But I would,
Speaker 4: as a child pick up singles, and I was the
Speaker 4: only one out of the group who would put on
Speaker 4: the record. The first thing I would do is write
Speaker 4: the lyrics.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 4: I was telling my son Troy this probably about a
Speaker 4: couple of months ago. I would write the lyrics and
Speaker 4: then I would pick out the part I wasn't gonna
Speaker 4: play and sang first of all, to pick out the
Speaker 4: hit I want so all we played is hits. We
Speaker 4: had a catalog of about two hundred songs that we
Speaker 4: could play and where jazz to R and B. Because
Speaker 4: we also came from Led Zeppelin, Deep, Purple three Dollar Night, Chicago,
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of those groups. We would play
Speaker 4: their music. So we was all over the place musically.
Speaker 4: That's why Quincy loved the style of where I came from.
Speaker 4: I always want to turn my brother Lewis on the
Speaker 4: funk with sliding the family stone. He later didn't got
Speaker 4: me watch it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do.
Speaker 4: Like watch what I'm gonna do later, you know. And
Speaker 4: it was cool. And that's the only problem I would
Speaker 4: have because sometimes he would kind of lie being honest, Well,
Speaker 4: who taught you to do that? I didn't had nothing.
Speaker 4: I was going to touch you how to put the
Speaker 4: bass in your hand? Hey dad, we needed the bass.
Speaker 4: And he did learn on his own and James Jamieson
Speaker 4: and Automotile, he picked it up. He was as bad
Speaker 4: as I was, but he just wouldn't do more than that.
Speaker 4: Like Quincy said, he's a hell of a bass player,
Speaker 4: you know, and he was that.
Speaker 2: So he didn't have the ability to play guitar, but
Speaker 2: you could play guitar.
Speaker 4: No, he could play, but he couldn't play play guitar.
Speaker 4: He'd played guitars on some of our records. Okay, his style.
Speaker 4: He just played, as you know, and a lot of
Speaker 4: things that I would play. George, you play bass. You
Speaker 4: could play bass because I was using his bass upside
Speaker 4: down and he'd get pissed from writing something too funky,
Speaker 4: and we go to the studio and Larryot's I mean
Speaker 4: and Quincy play it like George, I'm like, oh ship
Speaker 4: say that. Because on the demo I would play the bass,
Speaker 4: the guitars. I used to lay about seven eight guitars,
Speaker 4: like when you first got I'd be good to you.
Speaker 4: That was all guitars bassed, and the drum machine asked,
Speaker 4: still have still have that? I'm gonna give the trouble
Speaker 4: I heard those. I have all of it. Plus so
Speaker 4: Quincy would listen to everything we had and he would pick,
Speaker 4: so he's like picking all these songs could out more
Speaker 4: or less complete mind more so my brother and he'd
Speaker 4: have like grooves. So we're like on two different levels.
Speaker 4: But it's like I was saying earlier, because I would
Speaker 4: write and there's something to think about to go with
Speaker 4: your history animals. Okay, when you have a person who
Speaker 4: comes I'm young like I was, and I would write
Speaker 4: lyrics to like BB King's Thrillers, you know, and then
Speaker 4: noticed the difference just not a major chord, the third
Speaker 4: is out as a minor, Okay, so that's that to
Speaker 4: put that there for every song in lyric, I would write,
Speaker 4: whether it was a Smokey Robinson song, you're actually going
Speaker 4: through the emotions of that writer for you to write
Speaker 4: the lyrics down, and you're reading it, it's like wow,
Speaker 4: and he made it to perfection. So I'm writing some
Speaker 4: finished perfection of how someone felt. And I'm writing over
Speaker 4: two hundred some songs. So it's like I got bits
Speaker 4: and pieces of everybody from Chicago, Zeppelin, the Motown, you know.
Speaker 4: It all became the cake with the candles lit.
Speaker 2: So it was part of your writing, DNA, and it
Speaker 2: helped you.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean a lot of people wouldn't look at
Speaker 4: it because they just stay in one area of one song.
Speaker 4: But if you're writing all these different songs, including Supremes,
Speaker 4: you know, all the other Motown acts, David Ruffin songs,
Speaker 4: and even I had to find on later they weren't
Speaker 4: writing in Smoker Robinson.
Speaker 2: Robinson.
Speaker 4: So I'm going through a lot of emotions and oh baby, baby,
Speaker 4: and it's like some of this stuff down and make
Speaker 4: me cry just reading it.
Speaker 2: So that's a good that's a good exercise. I never
Speaker 2: thought that you actually internalize.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what if you write? If you write the lyrics
Speaker 4: and get all the lyrics correct, then pick out the
Speaker 4: guitar part. Who's gonna play this? Play the bass? Now
Speaker 4: I'm getting into James Jamieson's head, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Then you get the drummer's head and you and you're
Speaker 4: listening and giving the parts out, you know what, And
Speaker 4: you're young.
Speaker 2: Here's something that's actually kind of sort of connected to you.
Speaker 2: This explains that Prince poster, oh the Star is Born poster. Yeah,
Speaker 2: well no, no, no, the dude so oh yeah. For
Speaker 2: some reason, Okay, so in light of Princess passing, they
Speaker 2: found a concert poster in which Prince wrote the lyrics
Speaker 2: to to Quincy's The Dude the Rat And for some
Speaker 2: reason I was trying to they gave some back history
Speaker 2: to it, and I guess like that intrigued them, and
Speaker 2: I guess writing it out physically helped. What you were explaining, well, you.
Speaker 4: Can look up in the archives, because Prince was a
Speaker 4: fan of ours. The first interview he's done ever did well,
Speaker 4: you know where'd you get your music from? And he
Speaker 4: mentioned brothers Johnson's Slide and family Stone, which I had
Speaker 4: Me and Sly wound up getting very close. As far
Speaker 4: as Larry Graham too. After that interview, he never mentioned anything.
Speaker 4: Everything was Prince and I went. I went to Vegas
Speaker 4: to see him perform, and he called my room. Had
Speaker 4: this guy called it room and they did there like
Speaker 4: two o'clock in the morning, sound check. Have George come down,
Speaker 4: and I had a guest with me. I brought my guest.
Speaker 4: I didn't tell her where we're going.
Speaker 2: We just went in.
Speaker 4: We had the whole MGN. We were sitting on the side.
Speaker 4: Larry Graham was supposed to do a sound check. He
Speaker 4: bumped Larry off and did his sound check because he
Speaker 4: wanted to, you know, meet me and see me. He
Speaker 4: played for us for about two hours straight. It was
Speaker 4: better than the kind of you know check. You know,
Speaker 4: he played songs that wasn't his repertoire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he came yeah yeah, and you know he
Speaker 2: used to do that with some of his fan club members,
Speaker 2: like in the early two thousands, he would invite them
Speaker 2: into the sound check right and would just play for
Speaker 2: them and talk.
Speaker 4: And then we played Club fifty four. He asked me
Speaker 4: to come on stage, and I played with him and
Speaker 4: Lry Graham, but I actually went played on the wrong songs.
Speaker 4: They did a whole slide thing. I was still up
Speaker 4: in the top with my girl was checking him out.
Speaker 4: I said I should be down there for that, but
Speaker 4: I guess he thought I'd come down when I heard
Speaker 4: something I liked. So when he called me on stage,
Speaker 4: they got to this Elvis little groove. But I mean
Speaker 4: it was cool, but it wasn't what IU to prefer.
Speaker 4: But you know, we walked in the club. They were
Speaker 4: playing Get the Funk out of My Face, Strawberry Letter,
Speaker 4: Get to You. I told, I said, man, they handed
Speaker 4: me this guitar. They were so fucked up and out
Speaker 4: of turn. Who did Let's go get on? Let's go
Speaker 4: get on, Jordan, And I was like, don't ask me that,
Speaker 4: because the fans are going getting people.
Speaker 2: What is the age difference between you and your brother.
Speaker 4: Lewis two years? Okay, we were all two years apart.
Speaker 4: It was Lewis's two years apart from me was two
Speaker 4: years and my older brother.
Speaker 2: So your first professional gig outside of the Johnson Brothers
Speaker 2: plus one or the Johnson three plus one.
Speaker 4: Right, I got tired of that. We did win the
Speaker 4: contest and all that in nineteen sixty eight k f
Speaker 4: j's concert. We won everything. We won box instruments like
Speaker 4: the Beatles, box guitars, and we got a record contract
Speaker 4: with I just did a documentary portion with Gina Gena
Speaker 4: Ray Mac Bobby Dog.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: She he produced our first record as John's three plus.
Speaker 4: I wanted to testify it will sounded just like tighten
Speaker 4: up with the maked mellow part, but it's like make
Speaker 4: it sweeter, make it.
Speaker 2: Sweeter, right, another breakdown exactly.
Speaker 4: So that was the first time we had, you know,
Speaker 4: met Bobby wo Max Label Venture Records, this guy named
Speaker 4: Mickey Stevenson.
Speaker 2: I think, are you looking at it right now? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Of course, I'm like, are you looking at it right now?
Speaker 2: How much is it goes? Y?
Speaker 4: Well, they only made a thousand records. They sold about
Speaker 4: I don't think it's around. I'm googled and all that stuff,
Speaker 4: but uh, they saw just a single. It was just
Speaker 4: a single. Before that, we did our own demo. We
Speaker 4: used to go up to Rachel's enterprise and we would
Speaker 4: cut demos, which I met a lot of people. Actually,
Speaker 4: my girl friend now she used to work for Rachel's enterprise. Okay,
Speaker 4: and and uh her name is Joy Randall. She also
Speaker 4: she works for Disney now.
Speaker 2: And is this how you started interacting with Billy Preston,
Speaker 2: because I know that no, no, no no.
Speaker 4: With Billy Preston. We were looking for a keyboard player.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, And you mentioned earlier Renee and Angela. Renee
Speaker 4: was the same class with Lewis my younger brother. Oh okay,
Speaker 4: age Renee used to come over quite a bit and
Speaker 4: I met him, and you know, he's a he's a
Speaker 4: hell of a keyboard player. And I thought if we
Speaker 4: had a keyboard player to the group, he would be
Speaker 4: the one because he was, you know, two years young.
Speaker 4: He was bad and like he played me some of
Speaker 4: the stuff he had written and he but only where
Speaker 4: the keyboard was was at Billy Preston's duplex he had
Speaker 4: up off of Olympic. So we took the group and
Speaker 4: we went over to Billy's house where he had an
Speaker 4: organ and a Fender Road downstairs at his mother's place.
Speaker 4: He happened to just come off the road. I think
Speaker 4: he did some work with the Beatles. He's always hanging
Speaker 4: with the Beatles and make Jagger, you know. And he
Speaker 4: came in and I had on this flag shirt like
Speaker 4: I took with my high school picture at Prinshall High.
Speaker 4: By the way, they putting me the fiftieth anniversary of
Speaker 4: Princeville High. And they put me in the Hall of
Speaker 4: Fame October fourteenth. Yeah, Jersey, So I walk in, he
Speaker 4: walks in, See limo pulls up and his Billy he
Speaker 4: gets that was this big wig looking like sly.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: I met Slye through him too, because they used to
Speaker 4: come over. Billy Preston was one of the baddest motherfucking
Speaker 4: keyboard players on Earth period.
Speaker 2: What is it about his technic is people always speak
Speaker 2: of But since you played with them? What made him
Speaker 2: such so in demand with all these groups?
Speaker 4: And well number one groups would call him for him
Speaker 4: to make them. Yeah, like the Beatles, you know. I
Speaker 4: went over there well finishing that story, I mean I
Speaker 4: met the Beatles through Billy. I met sly and family
Speaker 4: Stone through Billy Preston. He was connected which one I
Speaker 4: was when you when you met sly Oh, I was like,
Speaker 4: so goddamn nervous.
Speaker 2: What year was?
Speaker 4: This just had to be in around seventy because he did.
Speaker 4: I was there when Poet went down.
Speaker 2: Wow, I was there.
Speaker 4: But I'll tell this pre story real quick, okay. And
Speaker 4: Billy had asked me to join the group. He walked
Speaker 4: in and saw a big afro and I was in
Speaker 4: my I was like, I was like Jimmy Hendrix and
Speaker 4: Freddy Stone combined and having more time. Things back. So
Speaker 4: I was playing some guitar you would have been probably, yeah,
Speaker 4: I would prefer to be Barry Gordy's the original one.
Speaker 4: So when Billy asked me, and it's like I was
Speaker 4: kind of getting tired of just like we ran our
Speaker 4: gambit as a johnst One and I kept telling my
Speaker 4: brothers that, you know, it's like somebody got to leave.
Speaker 4: We had to go do something else. They didn't want
Speaker 4: me to go, but they wasn't telling me not to go.
Speaker 4: So I went to audition a keyboard player. He comes
Speaker 4: Billy and he's gonna pull me out of our group.
Speaker 4: I want you to play with me. So that was
Speaker 4: a decision I had to make sure we continue on
Speaker 4: with this new keyboard pro, which he probably would have
Speaker 4: been bad. It probably could have worked out. And as
Speaker 4: he pulled me aside and he asked me, how long
Speaker 4: have you been playing? He said, love the way you play?
Speaker 4: Who were some people that you love? And I was
Speaker 4: telling him sly and he just start smiling. He knew them.
Speaker 4: That was his best friends. I like Freddie Stone, I
Speaker 4: like Jimmy Hendrix. Is he needed that ingredient he did
Speaker 4: not have me before? He asked me. He did have
Speaker 4: some other great people, Tony Maid and Bobby Watson. Yes,
Speaker 4: right right, yeah, I mean they were before us, and uh,
Speaker 4: I was also listening to them because we are on
Speaker 4: the same We had played clubs and we'd see Rufus
Speaker 4: and Shack Account. That's how I new about them, and
Speaker 4: as far as a lot of other groups too, but
Speaker 4: they kind of stood out. We wound up having some history,
Speaker 4: uh later in life, touring together. So I decided to myself,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go out with Billy. So Billy called. He said, man,
Speaker 4: we're getting ready to do what like six months old
Speaker 4: in Europe. So I said, well, I said I'll go.
Speaker 4: So it's having dinner and to mention to my mom.
Speaker 4: I said, well, by the way, by the way, I'm
Speaker 4: leaving in the morning, just like that. I'm that's how it.
Speaker 4: What said, I'm leaving in the morning to go to Europe.
Speaker 4: I've been going to Germany.
Speaker 2: You ain't going, No, damn Johnny you.
Speaker 4: I asked to getting up and going to school because
Speaker 4: I was in junior high school, junior college and West
Speaker 4: l A's Junior College, and I had set up all
Speaker 4: these musical courses. And I asked my teacher. He was
Speaker 4: the only one I respected. So if you had the
Speaker 4: chance to go out with Billy Preston and go to
Speaker 4: Europe and you know, do music. But I had like
Speaker 4: harmony theory. I had like a handful of different types
Speaker 4: of music because I wanted to finish do to learn
Speaker 4: the music. And he said, what yours. Let me tell
Speaker 4: you this, you only have one chance to go to Europe.
Speaker 4: You can always come back to school. So I would
Speaker 4: clean out your lock her. So I just went took
Speaker 4: all my shit out, cleaned it up, put it in
Speaker 4: my bag, went home and decided to I was going
Speaker 4: to Europe. So I called my girlfriend.
Speaker 2: I served my mom right now, boy, you ain't decide not.
Speaker 4: I'm your decision making. So I told her to come.
Speaker 4: I was goa come get her and go to the airport.
Speaker 4: I was leaving the cars to my low riding Malibu
Speaker 4: about sixty five Malabou Orange with GJ on the side
Speaker 4: of white in terrier. And it wasn't dropped. I just
Speaker 4: cut the strings. So the hell it had a rock
Speaker 4: to it, you know. So and I left. My mom
Speaker 4: came down, but she had told me get up, it's
Speaker 4: time to go to school. I said, all I said, well,
Speaker 4: I told you I am going to Gymany. So she
Speaker 4: didn't believe me. All right, So I leave and probably
Speaker 4: was gone for about a good month because I was
Speaker 4: known for getting up leaving because you know, the girlfriend
Speaker 4: at least I had called checked. I didn't call because
Speaker 4: I didn't want to hear right.
Speaker 2: Oh man.
Speaker 4: So we were in London and I decided to call.
Speaker 4: And this is in seventy one. So I said, look,
Speaker 4: I'm in London, England, and we're leaving here. We're going
Speaker 4: to Paris. And you know, I'm fine, I'm good. I'm
Speaker 4: making some good money making like probably about seven hundred
Speaker 4: per gig, which wasn't bad. Yeah, And I told her
Speaker 4: I will send money. So then she kind of chilled out.
Speaker 4: Then I want I sent money, and even though I
Speaker 4: had no bills, I just sent money and she didn't
Speaker 4: said another you know, she's like knew. And I was
Speaker 4: the only son who would do anything like that, including
Speaker 4: when his bass player Grady quit and Billy he quit
Speaker 4: at the airport. I used to go home and teach
Speaker 4: Lewis the show. We'd sit on the side of the
Speaker 4: bed he had. We had double beds, and my guitar
Speaker 4: this way and his guitar that way. Easy to follow,
Speaker 4: so I taught him every song he had done. So
Speaker 4: my brother Lewis literally new Billy show after the first
Speaker 4: tour after the year, goes by at the airport and
Speaker 4: I think they had red Devils available, yellow jackets, Kwai ludes,
Speaker 4: all that ship was out his bass players. These are pills.
Speaker 4: I never really got into them. I had girls, they
Speaker 4: come over and they bring it to the parties and
Speaker 4: whole bag of yellow jackets, and what the hell are
Speaker 4: you gonna do with this? You know, there was no
Speaker 4: sealem you know, I don't know. People at the party
Speaker 4: they'd take one, and you know, my dad would find
Speaker 4: what was this ship. He always was taken. He flushed
Speaker 4: down the toilet and it was funny. I'm gonna tell
Speaker 4: you this story. This is kind of my personal business.
Speaker 4: But you know, I had sampled, uh some lines of cocaine.
Speaker 4: I had a friend of mine who always had it,
Speaker 4: and he kind of I'd tell that other people I knew,
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna mention they were doing it. So he
Speaker 4: brought it and he had like a whole mountain of
Speaker 4: cocaine out in the bedroom. My dad saw the weed
Speaker 4: experiment with weed cocaine, but in that pills. He said,
Speaker 4: I'll tell you one thing, you better flush that down
Speaker 4: a toilet. About the weed.
Speaker 2: Was the biggest concern.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he he didn't know what blow was.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Right now, so you know, he he couldn't He didn't.
Speaker 4: He couldn't say anything about that because he didn't know
Speaker 4: what it was. So I'm looking at my boy who
Speaker 4: brought it, and We're both like glad he said flush
Speaker 4: the weed, and I was both. I mean, I had
Speaker 4: just got into too cocaine and I didn't really know
Speaker 4: how I was supposed to feel, you know. And UH
Speaker 4: got around a few huge people that they were known
Speaker 4: for that ship.
Speaker 2: Speaking of which, can you tell that police went? All? Right?
Speaker 4: So I get back home from the trip. I didn't
Speaker 4: mean to go off. Please, like Troy would say, we talked.
Speaker 2: That's what this show is for.
Speaker 4: Just bring me back to Okay. So anyway, I go
Speaker 4: back to Billy Preston and it's so ironic and I
Speaker 4: don't know if I should mention this, but I probably will.
Speaker 2: I will.
Speaker 4: A friend of mine who was Billy's engineer, took me
Speaker 4: over to this girl he was dating, and it was
Speaker 4: April and her sister happened to be Kathy, who was
Speaker 4: married Kathy Silver. Yeah, okay, So he goes into the
Speaker 4: bedroom with with April and he leaves me with Kathy.
Speaker 4: So we're down. So this first time I met her,
Speaker 4: and you know, I wasn't married, and everything was cool,
Speaker 4: and I thought she was so beautiful and nice and sweet.
Speaker 4: But back then, I mean, I had so much experience
Speaker 4: with a bunch of different gorgeous women. I had three
Speaker 4: of them living with me at one time. Three they
Speaker 4: were all girlfriends and they never left. So I had
Speaker 4: to put him to work. All right, You comed up
Speaker 4: the kitchen and you cut clean. All I know is
Speaker 4: I'm writing good.
Speaker 2: To you, legends.
Speaker 4: Are you listening to this episode.
Speaker 2: Special?
Speaker 4: I'm me to tell the truth. Like I mentioned, it
Speaker 4: was probably be the most truthful interview, and it's gonna
Speaker 4: take you in a lot of different areas y'all have
Speaker 4: done because I'm just being me. A lot of this
Speaker 4: stuff I'm putting in my book, which is gonna be
Speaker 4: off the change, incredible, and it'll be more informative that
Speaker 4: I can dig into right now. But this year, well
Speaker 4: I got it seventy percent done, so I left off
Speaker 4: actually sixty percent. I left off twenty percent off the back,
Speaker 4: twenty off the front, so and nobody could do it. Okay,
Speaker 4: it goes back when I was like a baby.
Speaker 2: That stuff.
Speaker 4: I remember the first time it rained.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: But me hooking up with Kathy was like he put
Speaker 4: me with Kathy because he was with April. And then
Speaker 4: they disappeared and left us in the room. So we
Speaker 4: laid by the fireplace, and you know, I had no
Speaker 4: idea that was gonna be sliced on wife, So you know,
Speaker 4: the most furthest I went with her. We kissed a
Speaker 4: little bit, and you know it's like, shit, I'm not
Speaker 4: gonna lay out here and let him walk into us.
Speaker 2: We can't walk into him.
Speaker 4: So and we were there for probably for a couple
Speaker 4: of hours, and her older sister, April wanted us to
Speaker 4: hook up because Michael and I kind of had a
Speaker 4: look alike with big afros, light skin, very cool, you know,
Speaker 4: on chill. You know, I never really wanted for anything
Speaker 4: as far as out of a woman than that my
Speaker 4: grandmother or mother aunts could give. So I've been used
Speaker 4: to that, so I wasn't used to a lot of
Speaker 4: the benefits of a woman. Just like we wing not
Speaker 4: have my guitar. I said, this is the only thing
Speaker 4: you can't come in between me and my guitar, or
Speaker 4: my guitar or my music. And it kind of rolled
Speaker 4: from that. That's why the woman who I picked was
Speaker 4: Troy's mom. You know, she was my soulmate and nobody
Speaker 4: comes close to that. She passed in two thousand, but
Speaker 4: you know she was the only one I let into
Speaker 4: my world and inspired me to continue writing. Okay, So anyway, afterwards,
Speaker 4: you know, Sly played the Palladium and I took my
Speaker 4: wife to be there and we went backstage and I
Speaker 4: saw Kathy and Sly coming down the hallway. They're getting
Speaker 4: ready to go on because I said I want to go.
Speaker 4: You know, see Sly. I didn't know him yet, so
Speaker 4: I see him walking.
Speaker 2: This is when.
Speaker 4: He was they were doing if you want me to stay?
Speaker 4: It came out. Yeah, but I had met him before.
Speaker 4: We'll get back to that. But I saw her coming
Speaker 4: and he turned his head and he end on his
Speaker 4: big hat and a selver outfit, and she like looked
Speaker 4: at me and her and she said, so I totally
Speaker 4: got it. I understood it. There's like a lot of
Speaker 4: Sly attitude personality. It just came into me just from watching, listening,
Speaker 4: telling stories. Because Troy will tell you it's not to me.
Speaker 4: People he'd trust to this day except for me. And
Speaker 4: I can truly say that, Oh will sit down and
Speaker 4: you know slides man, I mean Troy's mane.
Speaker 5: Then email will be encrypted though they got a special
Speaker 5: funk language that the emails Emil.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is probably about four years ago and we
Speaker 4: still talk. He'd send me like eighty five emails.
Speaker 2: In a day, Sylvester. No, he does.
Speaker 4: He has a laptop and you know he'd learn and
Speaker 4: when he'd get bored, he would text people that he trusts,
Speaker 4: not everybody. So we would when I wasn't around him,
Speaker 4: and I don't go around him a lot, he'd have
Speaker 4: a questions, a g I got some songs. I got
Speaker 4: some new songs because he would give me songs. He'd
Speaker 4: come over to my house and I was out to
Speaker 4: Dina when I was with Patrise. That's why Patrice come by.
Speaker 4: They all would love to meet him, but he wouldn't
Speaker 4: let a lot of people meet him period.
Speaker 2: Why was he such a recluse because I know that
Speaker 2: once he well, that's because people that he trusted and
Speaker 2: he opens up and he's regular and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Because he's a prophet, and a prophet is one who
Speaker 4: only God is spoken to. Wow, you know, yeah, then
Speaker 4: that's the true fact. Like Abraham was a prophet. Those
Speaker 4: are who God speaks to somebody who's been on the
Speaker 4: journey and who accepts themselves and who could still do
Speaker 4: what they want to do regardless. And he has leadership,
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden he doesn't have any leadership,
Speaker 4: then he has someone he wants to trust. The two
Speaker 4: it's like a God speaking to Jesus. And you know
Speaker 4: it gets so deep as far he don't doesn't spread
Speaker 4: himself out. If you want no slide. Just listen to
Speaker 4: all of his songs. You caught me smiling all that
Speaker 4: and listened stand because he politically in the sixties was
Speaker 4: like the only Malcolm X that would bring truth and
Speaker 4: put it in your face.
Speaker 2: So with poet, like when you were there of him,
Speaker 2: what was that?
Speaker 4: Well when we after I met him, and this is
Speaker 4: the scary part for me because I heard him before
Speaker 4: I met him. He Kathy was in the house with Billy, okay,
Speaker 4: because Billy's sisters knew her or something, and that's how
Speaker 4: that hooked up. I'm trying to look at her. This
Speaker 4: is before we hooked up, checking her out. Then he
Speaker 4: said slides here. I'm like what I looked out the window.
Speaker 4: I knew he had a mobile home that he record
Speaker 4: with and he would he came to Billy had wooden stairs,
Speaker 4: so I'm hearing Sly's voice her and just walk Sevesters here, Sevester.
Speaker 4: So I'm like sitting by the on the seat of
Speaker 4: the keyboard player right where the doorway, getting ready to
Speaker 4: see this man for the first time in my life.
Speaker 4: But I knew him, like you know, and they see
Speaker 4: him he walks in. Then they had this thing with
Speaker 4: that like stomp and laugh.
Speaker 2: Which you know how to do.
Speaker 4: They're talking right exactly, and I looked at him. It
Speaker 4: was like my mouth dropped because it was like seeing
Speaker 4: Jimmy Hendrix. But I was concerned, and you know, we
Speaker 4: got a chance to talk about all that kind of
Speaker 4: stuff because we became very close and Billy pointed at
Speaker 4: me first said this is George Johnson, this is my
Speaker 4: new guitarist. And Billy was so proud of me. Sly
Speaker 4: knew what that meant. He knew exactly what that meant.
Speaker 4: So Sly out of Billy's whole band, I was the
Speaker 4: only one who opened up that He opened up too,
Speaker 4: And that's how I got to get into bell Air
Speaker 4: with Poet and uh. Well, after he visited, he went
Speaker 4: to the room with Suet Billy, and I'm like sitting
Speaker 4: in the in the living room kind of shaking thinking
Speaker 4: what I wanted to ask him, or if I should
Speaker 4: ask him anything at all, because he had that vibe
Speaker 4: first of all, and held get out. He always want
Speaker 4: a leather he had this way he was sliced out.
Speaker 2: You have his dog with him?
Speaker 4: Gun? Yeah, no he didn't, he told me shot gun
Speaker 4: in the head.
Speaker 2: Oh, Okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: No, he said, this is how that happened. He was
Speaker 4: Kathy was at home. He was in the studio. This
Speaker 4: is right before I started kind of following to the
Speaker 4: studios and he'd let me come in and uh, same
Speaker 4: thing like with Stevie Wonder and out there when he
Speaker 4: did creeping on Oh wow wow. Uh Billy got a
Speaker 4: call Kathy and she said, she said, Sylvester, you have
Speaker 4: to come home. Gun just bit your son.
Speaker 2: Yeah wait, Gun, just what bit the baby?
Speaker 4: So, just like I told me this story, I said,
Speaker 4: so what did you do and how did you do it?
Speaker 4: He said, Man, he said, I went went home and
Speaker 4: I went outside and sat down because he had a
Speaker 4: baboon and a pit bull.
Speaker 2: What I didn't know about the baboon.
Speaker 4: He had a baboon. I can't tell you what the
Speaker 4: pit did to the baboon, but he'd have him in
Speaker 4: the cage and he'd always stick. It's all my trying
Speaker 4: to get the pit. But he said, I went outside
Speaker 4: and I looked at Gun and uh Sly was like,
Speaker 4: this is the personality.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 4: I just asked him one time, he said, Gun said,
Speaker 4: did you bite little Sylvester? So the dog he didn't
Speaker 4: put his head down, and he knew Sly Slide had
Speaker 4: him train really well, and he had his gun for gun,
Speaker 4: his tail didn't go down. I said, don't tell me.
Speaker 4: He said no, he didn't submit when I asked him
Speaker 4: that question. So he took the gun and me had
Speaker 4: just shot him in the head. That told me a
Speaker 4: whole lot about it. Jesus, Christ shot the damn dog
Speaker 4: in the head because he didn't at least he didn't
Speaker 4: submit to what he did. Is that what happened?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: That was That was Sly hunt. These are things that
Speaker 4: I never really told in public. This is one reason
Speaker 4: why him and I are so. I can't tell you
Speaker 4: too too much about him because but he wouldn't be
Speaker 4: listening though, right, somebody, somebody could somebody, Man, you hit
Speaker 4: that great story, George Johnson.
Speaker 2: You're out there listening. We would love, would love to
Speaker 2: have you on the show. Slide.
Speaker 4: This is I can get him on the show.
Speaker 2: Jesus, that was. Does he still I had running with
Speaker 2: him maybe five six years ago? Does he still have this?
Speaker 2: It looks like the speed racer kind of audio death bike.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I heard it just like after.
Speaker 4: It looks like it looks like the Adams family.
Speaker 2: It was so hot, and it was like it was me.
Speaker 2: Chappelle and I were headed to the Grammys in the
Speaker 2: year that the Sliding family Stone reunited, and like just
Speaker 2: at our feet, Slide stopped and Dave and I just
Speaker 2: looked at each other and then he just went off,
Speaker 2: and it was like it was one of the things,
Speaker 2: like no one's ever going to believe what just happened.
Speaker 4: Well, I had a lot of those kind of stories,
Speaker 4: and I just kept to myself, and what is that
Speaker 4: vehicle called? Well, it actually was a tricycle because they
Speaker 4: had one wheel and the motorized and it was two
Speaker 4: in the back. But it was built like if somebody
Speaker 4: tried to build a Harley and extended it. And they
Speaker 4: had the two wheels in the back, and they had
Speaker 4: almost like a seat for two. One of them had
Speaker 4: a seat for two, and one of them just just
Speaker 4: a seat for one. And I would always touch a
Speaker 4: man too scared because I'd call it the death trap.
Speaker 2: Take it on the highway, right onto one on one freeway.
Speaker 4: He had a friend of mine who lived up north
Speaker 4: drive it down to him, and he had about two
Speaker 4: or three of them, but he was you know, Slide
Speaker 4: was so into everything right and left and was and
Speaker 4: who was that group that had the motorcycles, the gang
Speaker 4: group Angel, Well, yeah, he knew them, you know, And
Speaker 4: I think that's when he started biking back back then.
Speaker 4: But you know, he come over to the house. He
Speaker 4: came over for two three years straight. Troy was little,
Speaker 4: and you know.
Speaker 5: He used to call the house before cell phones at
Speaker 5: like three in the morning, and me and my sister
Speaker 5: would be sleep ready to go to school. My mom
Speaker 5: answered the phone and it was not.
Speaker 2: It wasn't too pleasant. He was he was gangster.
Speaker 5: He was gangster as all hell. But he was definitely
Speaker 5: scared of my mom. You call it the damn house
Speaker 5: at three in the morning. My kids got school in
Speaker 5: the morning.
Speaker 2: A song.
Speaker 5: I don't give a fuck about sly Stone.
Speaker 7: I don't about the song.
Speaker 4: That I tell you to anything ideas he had just
Speaker 4: when the answer phone would come on to just put it,
Speaker 4: yeah and leave it and I'll listen to it, you know,
Speaker 4: later on. But we're gonna get back the poet. But anyway, we.
Speaker 2: Kind of jumping in front of it and back and
Speaker 2: in front.
Speaker 4: But like I was saying, a lot of his personality
Speaker 4: and you know, that's how I wound up going out
Speaker 4: to him. You know, because Sly was as brilliant as
Speaker 4: a motherfucker period. He could deal with anybody on any level,
Speaker 4: and if you weren't chosen to be spoken to, you
Speaker 4: just won't never get it. That's the kind of person
Speaker 4: he was, you know. So when he did call, he
Speaker 4: would call it four or five in the morning, and
Speaker 4: he thought it was okay, and then he told me,
Speaker 4: he said, man, he said, I'm scared of DeBie, your wife.
Speaker 4: I'll be laying right there. I just left the studio
Speaker 4: with him, you know, because we worked for like two
Speaker 4: years straight just cutting stuff and I seeing what he had.
Speaker 2: He had me.
Speaker 4: He gave me all of his quarter and a half
Speaker 4: inch eight track reels, which was probably about a dozen
Speaker 4: that he wanted me to go through and pick out
Speaker 4: what was good and what was not good. That was
Speaker 4: my job for probably about four years, because I mean,
Speaker 4: that's what I'm saying, the trust he would never give nobody.
Speaker 4: That last thing he did ask me to do, which
Speaker 4: was a couple of years ago, was to go up
Speaker 4: to the Frisco house and go up to the attic
Speaker 4: and get all of his ship including the songs, you know, pictures, clothes,
Speaker 4: and I said, that's kind of a too big of
Speaker 4: a risk. And I had one guy who would do it.
Speaker 4: But if you ask anybody, he probably know what was missing.
Speaker 2: You want me to get.
Speaker 4: Right exactly, So I wasn't trying to putting into that.
Speaker 2: You know, that's crazy.
Speaker 4: When we went to his house the first time is
Speaker 4: after he came up the stairs and I met him,
Speaker 4: Billy and man, we're gonna go with sales house incurse.
Speaker 4: I knew all the name slides, sevest seals. I wouldn't
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. I would adapt to nicknames
Speaker 4: and stuff like that and would never say no because
Speaker 4: I knew whatever it was gonna be, it was gonna
Speaker 4: be crazy. Just how I met little Richard one night
Speaker 4: he came into the studios for and I was scared
Speaker 4: of death of him because it's like a pass gate.
Speaker 2: But he was big.
Speaker 4: Gate at Billy and he's looking, man, I said, what's
Speaker 4: up with your boy or your Billy said you leave
Speaker 4: on the law, you will get his ass kicked. I
Speaker 4: had to. I had to jout Billy in the neck
Speaker 4: a couple of times, you know, knocking him back and
Speaker 4: don't mess with my brother when he gets on the set.
Speaker 2: You know. But how how long was your duration with
Speaker 2: Billy before? Three years?
Speaker 4: Well those three years, Well I get to the poet
Speaker 4: thing real quickly.
Speaker 2: This is before.
Speaker 4: So anyway we go. We get to the bel Air House.
Speaker 4: It was like this cold blooded, sinking sunken stone house.
Speaker 4: Which across the street from that was the Beverly Hill
Speaker 4: Billy's mansion that they on TV. So I'm like looking
Speaker 4: at that, looking at Slides house. And then next door
Speaker 4: to him, Doris Date lived, which people thought he right.
Speaker 4: So we going to the crib and we're all sitting
Speaker 4: you know, and uh now this is another time. The
Speaker 4: first time he did the palladium out here, and and
Speaker 4: he got into the mobile home. We beat him there
Speaker 4: because bullying him new.
Speaker 2: You know, he traveled in a mobile home.
Speaker 4: No, he's like he always had a mobile home because
Speaker 4: he would have cats. Like I'm gonna get ready to
Speaker 4: get to move the studio from upstairs into the mobile
Speaker 4: home so he could drive and keep recording then or
Speaker 4: change his mind, He's like, okay, mobile all the stuff
Speaker 4: into the mobile. He did like three guys and they
Speaker 4: would take everything from up in the studio that's recordable
Speaker 4: down into the mobile home and he hook it all up,
Speaker 4: which could have it took three hours to do. Then
Speaker 4: the one time I was over there and I see
Speaker 4: he just told him to do it and then he
Speaker 4: didn't never mind put it all back.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: It's worked exactly. But you know, he when we were
Speaker 4: there the second time, I saw him and he walked
Speaker 4: in and he had these little bells on and red leather,
Speaker 4: so you can hear him coming up to the door.
Speaker 4: So he came up to the door because he knew
Speaker 4: Billy was there. People could have been in the house,
Speaker 4: like if he just walked off stage. So he was
Speaker 4: like you just said percussion and ship and bloom, that's
Speaker 4: the kind of stuff he'd say, kicked the door, bloom,
Speaker 4: make his own sound effect like Batman.
Speaker 2: Bloom.
Speaker 4: And then he come and look, he had a certain thing.
Speaker 4: I guess when you got your wig on and your
Speaker 4: leather suit and you slide stone, you know, you the king.
Speaker 4: You know, ain't nobody as funky as you are. He
Speaker 4: had an aura, you know, and that's where Prince got
Speaker 4: his thing from, whichly made him tell me where did
Speaker 4: he get his vibe from a lot of people don't know.
Speaker 4: He got his walk from Bob Dylan. And that's a slide.
Speaker 4: Prince did that too. You walked your shoulders side to side,
Speaker 4: you know, as you walk in. Bob Dylan was the
Speaker 4: coolest white boy I was in. I used to look
Speaker 4: at videotapes. You go back and see videotapes of Bob Dylan,
Speaker 4: you know, slide and he told me, he tell me shit.
Speaker 4: He wouldn't tell people like that. Man you crack up
Speaker 4: with and you find out. So I got there from
Speaker 4: Bob Dylan, and that's of course you came up through
Speaker 4: the same era. And then I noticed, I say, well,
Speaker 4: Prince got that from you. He didn't like Prince at all.
Speaker 4: Prince ain't as funky as you. I was on to
Speaker 4: tell him to go to Prince. I said, man, I
Speaker 4: ain't got to. I had to leverage Prince had.
Speaker 2: George George Clinton once said that his favorite slid quote
Speaker 2: about Prince was its sly used to tell George that
Speaker 2: man he should he tastes like spinach when he needed
Speaker 2: to be tasting like Cola greens.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna tell you something. And George Clinton and I
Speaker 4: are very close George Clinton well with his band and
Speaker 4: everybody who was involved with including Born and Burning War,
Speaker 4: all the other cats. They was like the funkest cats
Speaker 4: on the planet because they had more funk than anybody
Speaker 4: had on stage, you know, Bob Gun and we was
Speaker 4: out there on touring them with him. So it's like
Speaker 4: a lot of them had the equal it was more
Speaker 4: more equal. When I was in the Slide in the
Speaker 4: family Stone, of course I loved the drummer and Greg Erica.
Speaker 4: Of course I loved Larry Graham and Larry Graham and
Speaker 4: I got very close and then there was a competition
Speaker 4: or Slide knew I was hanging with Larry. Larry know
Speaker 4: I was hanging with Slide. You know, they wanted to
Speaker 4: They wanted to deceive me to make a decision.
Speaker 2: Bring together.
Speaker 4: We just wouldn't hang out. We just you know, from touring.
Speaker 4: Larry Graham was like my older brother and he taught
Speaker 4: me a lot about He taught me more about funk
Speaker 4: than Slide could on base. Larry didn't because Larry could
Speaker 4: execute that stuff. Slide we could execute it. But he
Speaker 4: played with a pick a pick and there was more
Speaker 4: melody until rus Day Allen came on the scene and
Speaker 4: turned it out within time. I'm yeah, and Rusty and
Speaker 4: I met, and well, you know, we're clos It's like
Speaker 4: I had to know everybody who was in the House
Speaker 4: of Funk, you know, and we all kind of knew
Speaker 4: and you know a lot of people. That's why even
Speaker 4: nowadays you hear rappers and singers, it's like not enough, Okay,
Speaker 4: somebody produced you, somebody wrote the record, so it's not
Speaker 4: it's not coming out of you. Somebody helped develop, you know,
Speaker 4: that kind of thing. But when I was there and
Speaker 4: I went up, he went, let nobody come up. And
Speaker 4: I went upstairs, and they had eight monitors on the
Speaker 4: bed for all the rooms in certain areas of the house.
Speaker 4: So I'm like, what are y'all doing? They were having fun,
Speaker 4: having their little milk and cookies. Yeah, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: what are y'all doing? He said, all were looking at everybody,
Speaker 4: but Sly was looking at Billy's girlfriend's breast and she
Speaker 4: had this little cut thus looking at her Cleaveland, and
Speaker 4: he just said that I'm looking at what's the names?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: He said, you could tell her to come up because
Speaker 4: the waistly is if you don't make your way there.
Speaker 4: You ain't coming up. Well, the whole band was a
Speaker 4: Billy was sitting downstairs. I got tired of waiting. He
Speaker 4: had this bodyguard named Jay R who had a cut
Speaker 4: across his knife cut and he was like looking at
Speaker 4: all of this, like beating on his chair and just
Speaker 4: waiting for him.
Speaker 2: Damn you motherfucker to get up. Sit there now, you
Speaker 2: can't leave.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I mean, people were stuck. So I decided
Speaker 4: I said, look, Billy's upstairs, it's my friend. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: go see what's up. He didn't say a word. He'd
Speaker 4: let me go up when I opened the door, and
Speaker 4: he had this egg chairs you could sit in. They
Speaker 4: had the music come through. You could sit down and
Speaker 4: listen to music. Sly looked over at me and he
Speaker 4: remembered Billy said, Man, this is George. They don't fuck
Speaker 4: with him, this motherfucker. Because we had in our family,
Speaker 4: to be honest, some inside on some brutal kind of
Speaker 4: shit with motherfuckers been in prison. So we had our
Speaker 4: own mafia thing that runs in the family, and including
Speaker 4: certain people that came to assistance of FOI who who
Speaker 4: they worked and went and got some of them in
Speaker 4: an organization, So I never really talked about that. And
Speaker 4: you know, we grew up with gangsters living in our block.
Speaker 4: The leader of the Slossons, leader the Gladiators back then
Speaker 4: the next door to us and down the street, so
Speaker 4: and we had all to find his babysitters. So they came,
Speaker 4: so they were trying to get with them, and then
Speaker 4: they protected us. And since we had just three puzzling
Speaker 4: and played music and went around to all the high
Speaker 4: schools and colleges, we brought people together. And if it
Speaker 4: wasn't for you and your group, me and my wife
Speaker 4: wouldn't have got you know, it was it was.
Speaker 2: It was like that.
Speaker 4: So I kind of felt every move of emotions that
Speaker 4: people would describe, and you know, I didn't take anything
Speaker 4: for granted. That just kept my ears open wide, knowing
Speaker 4: that'd be a great opportunity to jump or go to
Speaker 4: different places that no one else could take me. Everywhere
Speaker 4: I have been, no one else but the next great
Speaker 4: person took me to, like Billy Preston, you know, And
Speaker 4: when after after I was up in the bedroom and
Speaker 4: there were Billy was on the cloud and that and
Speaker 4: Sli was on the Fender Roads playing on Billy payed
Speaker 4: a lot of backwards stuff, just.
Speaker 2: Like in so do.
Speaker 4: Wow, you know, I think, but I can't yeh. Billy
Speaker 4: would here would slively playing and he'd just do a
Speaker 4: he he knew where his place would be. And I
Speaker 4: heard poet and I'm like, it gets no funky, you know?
Speaker 2: Can I ask you something? So because normally I talk
Speaker 2: to people about their reaction to there's a ride going
Speaker 2: on once it's the finished product, but what they're creating
Speaker 2: it's nothing like the raw ra cheer leader vibe of
Speaker 2: what Stand represented or the dance of the music album.
Speaker 4: Every day people, You're totally right, like.
Speaker 2: Was this not a foreign thing to you? For you
Speaker 2: to be hearing like this is literally the first funk I.
Speaker 4: Was in to the original stuff that you're talking about.
Speaker 4: And I was all in a political movement, so for
Speaker 4: us to see a black man just how we had
Speaker 4: other people knocking, like Muhammad Ali. But he has his
Speaker 4: wig on a long collar looking like a clown. But
Speaker 4: that was just his look.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: At the same time, he's like, you know, how black.
Speaker 2: Can you be?
Speaker 4: And you're gonna go there and disgrace Islam wearing a wig?
Speaker 4: He was on one David caviage show or something like.
Speaker 4: You know, he talked about it, and I could see
Speaker 4: Muhammad at Lee's point and I could see Sly's point.
Speaker 4: He told me how he made the band. You know,
Speaker 4: we have different colors, different textures, a whole bunch of colors,
Speaker 4: and that's where George Clinton got his whole idea from,
Speaker 4: and you know, different sounds, and he even was different,
Speaker 4: but he was the leader of the group. So he said,
Speaker 4: you have all that, all those colors, all that creativity
Speaker 4: of all that sound. So he didn't admit to so
Speaker 4: after hearing Dance to the Music was the first one
Speaker 4: that I heard, even though we heard I was down
Speaker 4: with them when they were in contests with the Chambers
Speaker 4: brothers who time was up other than Chaga's brothers too.
Speaker 4: But the line that we're gonna win, and all his
Speaker 4: greatest hits, like you had mentioned, even from Don't Call
Speaker 4: Me Nigger Whitey, you know, he made statements that were
Speaker 4: vital for those times, and he spoke his mind. I
Speaker 4: think he was probably one of ten groups that were
Speaker 4: just you know, he wasn't afraid of it, putting it
Speaker 4: on the record that the record states that boom. This
Speaker 4: is how I feel this is where we're coming from.
Speaker 4: So he was like the warrior gangster on record.
Speaker 2: But did it not feel or foreign to you? Like
Speaker 2: very un.
Speaker 4: It was because he was in his world with the
Speaker 4: Riot album. He didn't have a lot of input with
Speaker 4: the group okay, and or the Fresh album. He might
Speaker 4: would pull Freddie in, Larry in, you know, he might
Speaker 4: would call in uh, Cynthia or Rose you know. Rolls
Speaker 4: and I became very close because she was like, I
Speaker 4: told her, letting me know anytime there was a problem.
Speaker 4: So she was watching My Watchman and I was telling
Speaker 4: him everything from what he ate, well, he likes a
Speaker 4: couple of newdles, said that all. Doesn't y'all give him some.
Speaker 2: Vegetables.
Speaker 4: He liked cheese, which is you know, he told me
Speaker 4: that weird day. If you got a packet of cheese
Speaker 4: in the back of your pocket, then you got something
Speaker 4: else you don't need that goes with it, that it
Speaker 4: clogs you up. Yeah, because of lactose.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so a lot of stuff like that. He I
Speaker 4: didn't know. He just tell me in the studio you
Speaker 4: got it now that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you told me stories about Hendrix, which he knew
Speaker 4: Hendrix was my know, which I did have a chance
Speaker 4: to meet Hendrik Sai or his dad.
Speaker 2: Can I ask a question? Was Betty Davis around at
Speaker 2: any part of this?
Speaker 4: I never saw her? Damn, I never saw her. But
Speaker 4: I liked this the baseline Larry did with with a
Speaker 4: lot of her stuff. Oh for yeah, oh yeah, that
Speaker 4: was that was the ship. But it was you know,
Speaker 4: when you talk about funk, there was really no other
Speaker 4: person that you can go to outside of when George
Speaker 4: Clinton came up. His funk was different. So everybody had
Speaker 4: that little different type of funk. And that's why him
Speaker 4: and George won. I knew they were gonna hook up.
Speaker 4: First the egos came in, and once that settled down
Speaker 4: and they're both together, then George would call me up
Speaker 4: versus about ten years ago and man, you his slie
Speaker 4: new stuff. He's done so and now I really hadn't
Speaker 4: heard it because you know, I would be the one
Speaker 4: who would talk about him from his face, right, I said, Man,
Speaker 4: you know, first of all, you ain't gonna be doing
Speaker 4: that ship in my house. Second of all, maybe I
Speaker 4: think I'm gonna wait to after you die to little
Speaker 4: sell more records. His eyes got this, man ain't nobody
Speaker 4: told me no ship like that. I said, Jimmy Hendrix
Speaker 4: died and his record sales boost. You know, if you
Speaker 4: want to start acting ignorant, you know, I'm even going
Speaker 4: through all this music you letting me go through, and
Speaker 4: if you're gonna put something together, I just might wait
Speaker 4: till you're gone and it'll be worth more money. So
Speaker 4: he knew I would like talking to him like himself
Speaker 4: talking to himself. I said, you taught me everything about
Speaker 4: you that I know. When he first care said man
Speaker 4: gj Used called me, gedg. You got more on my
Speaker 4: records than I have thought existed. And I would cut
Speaker 4: some stuff, recut it, like singing a simple song and
Speaker 4: playing my version and like totally tweak it out.
Speaker 2: That'd be STEPHF.
Speaker 4: Troy would get, you know, add some stuff, and you know,
Speaker 4: he could tell things I was into and have it.
Speaker 4: Could I play and learned to play a lot like
Speaker 4: Larry Graham, But I also learned a lot and playing
Speaker 4: bass like Sly. Both of them knew that. And I
Speaker 4: played the guitars like he was unsynthesized, said, man, you
Speaker 4: got to get back to these telecaster guitars. Tankling. You
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying, like on the slow version of
Speaker 4: Thank You, you know that was a sound you're not
Speaker 4: doing that you're trying to incorporate, and you're putting three
Speaker 4: things on one track, which shouldn't be doing anyway, because
Speaker 4: you know that's how he would record play a certain
Speaker 4: amount of you know, guitar or something on there I was,
Speaker 4: and it switched to a loud mood bass to make
Speaker 4: the meters go up.
Speaker 2: And I said, was he his own engineer?
Speaker 4: Yep? Right, So you know when I hooked up with him,
Speaker 4: I was trying to teach him a couple of things
Speaker 4: that I learned from Bruce Woodine. So you know, certain
Speaker 4: things that you know, minus three dB for like a
Speaker 4: high hat or anything that bright comes back at you
Speaker 4: how has laid down. You know, I never would have
Speaker 4: known that I learned a lot from Bruce.
Speaker 2: Say, I forgot that Bruce Woodine actually engineered your records.
Speaker 4: Yes, we were the reasons why this is gonna trip
Speaker 4: you up off the wall happened thriller blooprint and bad
Speaker 4: Michael introduced I could show you a picture us at
Speaker 4: Carnegie Hall, and he was following seventy nine and he
Speaker 4: was following the brothers Johnson down to my little bow
Speaker 4: tie I had on when he did the covers for
Speaker 4: because yeah, I used to work, you know, I used
Speaker 4: to He was studying, studying me and my brother, and
Speaker 4: he loved the sound. He was complaining about whether you
Speaker 4: should go the qu at that time they had just
Speaker 4: started working on but had eight months into Off the Wall,
Speaker 4: and I knew then, you know, it was my job
Speaker 4: and it was nothing I could do to step back
Speaker 4: and just let them float as long as.
Speaker 2: They could go. How did you guys end up getting
Speaker 2: with Quincy?
Speaker 4: Well, with Quincy, I had hooked up actually with Stevie
Speaker 4: Wonder because I was going to join Wonderlove auditioning for
Speaker 4: me and my brother before that.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, and I was on or like after like
Speaker 2: what period?
Speaker 4: This was around right before he recorded the song Creeping,
Speaker 4: because I was in the studio with them all night. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I had been kind of because we were at the
Speaker 4: record plant and he was a studio B okay okay,
Speaker 4: and we were in the Studio A or Studio C,
Speaker 4: which is the biggest studio where Quincy was. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: I think I was in the Chacuzie hanging out a
Speaker 4: couple of times.
Speaker 2: It was in the studio.
Speaker 5: Plan right when you walk in that door to the left,
Speaker 5: the left, they turned into a gym. It's a gym now.
Speaker 5: I think they got some exercise equipment.
Speaker 4: Initially it was a jacuzie, which is cool because if
Speaker 4: you work in one, just chill out and go on
Speaker 4: jaczie and get you.
Speaker 7: Some food and hang out, amongst other reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I might want to man.
Speaker 4: Well, they was keeping it pretty clean. It was all
Speaker 4: It always has been pretty clean.
Speaker 2: But we.
Speaker 4: Was in there, and Quincy will tell you this, and
Speaker 4: he mentioned in his interviews too, that took me and
Speaker 4: Lewis and we were in the studio with with Stevie.
Speaker 4: It's like, okay, this now, this is my brother because
Speaker 4: I always initiate the initial hook up. Say I hung
Speaker 4: there without Lewis when I was caring creeping. Now, I
Speaker 4: don't know if it had a lot, because Stevie used
Speaker 4: to always call me Turan brother. This my Turian brother.
Speaker 4: I knew when he would record his birth My birthday
Speaker 4: is like seventeenth, think his was the fourteenth.
Speaker 2: Or fifteen, thirteenth, thirteenth.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I would creep into the studio two three
Speaker 4: o'clock in the morning, and he knew my footsteps, he.
Speaker 2: Knew the rhythm in the pattern of it.
Speaker 4: He knew how he knew my walk. Just George Johnson,
Speaker 4: just George Johnson's it okay, was rocking his head, say
Speaker 4: what you doing man? He pressed the button. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: start this new track, finishing one thing, which was I
Speaker 4: forgot the last song. He did his song that too.
Speaker 4: It was so fun of him, Like, man, he had
Speaker 4: too much funky things in the can. Now this is
Speaker 4: after I met Sly, So it's like now all was
Speaker 4: and I'm gravitating. I had Billy pressed in his slice.
Speaker 4: I'm gravitating just two keyboard players.
Speaker 2: M hm.
Speaker 4: So I spent all night with his mom and first
Speaker 4: time she met Stevie and creeping unfolded from the tambourine
Speaker 4: the first thing he later.
Speaker 2: That was the first thing.
Speaker 4: The first thing on the track was the tambourine, right right,
Speaker 4: and then that's all you heard. Then he added everything
Speaker 4: else and we were there till about eight in the morning,
Speaker 4: and the whole damn song was done. And I'm like,
Speaker 4: you see how bad this matterfuck is without a that's crazy, yeah,
Speaker 4: without the click.
Speaker 2: He just be the last night.
Speaker 4: And he did that, you know, probably maybe as a
Speaker 4: test store because we're sitting up there, I wonder what
Speaker 4: he's gonna do next, you know, And he did everything
Speaker 4: to the drums, synthesizes all the parts and you put
Speaker 4: a basic vocal and that that's why we were there
Speaker 4: from like two in the morning, probably about ten thirty
Speaker 4: in the morning. But a couple of my close friends
Speaker 4: knew because I'd be up at a and them in
Speaker 4: the studio late at night between him and Line of Richie,
Speaker 4: and we passed it. Hey, Line was up. He was
Speaker 4: a night out too. Some of them don't make a
Speaker 4: move until after twelve, and you can't call them before
Speaker 4: three in the afternoon because they're sleep right, so you know,
Speaker 4: then they'd call me. Steve would give me a heads up.
Speaker 4: I bet studio, George, okay, I'll be at the studio.
Speaker 4: I said, all right, I might come down. Well, you know,
Speaker 4: to look up in line. On one time, I called
Speaker 4: it two thirty s it's not three o'clock yet, I said,
Speaker 4: all right, all right now, but Tommy back coming back,
Speaker 4: Man coming back. And you know, just they knew who
Speaker 4: I had hung over and who I've been hanging out with,
Speaker 4: because after that I went to George Duke, so it
Speaker 4: was Billy Preston, Stevie Wonder, George Duke's the Education.
Speaker 2: Yeah for real.
Speaker 4: And then I went to uh, George Duke, Bill Withers.
Speaker 4: This was before Billy Preston.
Speaker 2: I forgot because you're on the back cover.
Speaker 4: Of Bill right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me and my wife and my dad who was sitting.
Speaker 4: On the ground.
Speaker 2: So was that a real?
Speaker 4: Like what was the concept behind Ray Parker Jr.
Speaker 2: Was that a real because he on Sultan.
Speaker 4: He was to the left with his wife. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: was like it was a whole. It was on Bill's property,
Speaker 4: in his backyard. We just took like we was over
Speaker 4: there for barbecue and hanging out. Just took a musician
Speaker 4: family picture. And you know it's like heavy hitters are there.
Speaker 4: They were, they were on set. And even back then,
Speaker 4: somebody like maybe Ray Parker is like he just recently
Speaker 4: hooked up with Sly. A lot of people wanted they
Speaker 4: knew I was there. I could easily invite him to
Speaker 4: but I never take anybody. Oh this The only person
Speaker 4: that took over his place was Irene care because she
Speaker 4: was my neighbor and Patrise Russian and to be honest
Speaker 4: with you, I think she was a little bit envious.
Speaker 4: So I know she was a Michael Jackson because she
Speaker 4: she wanted me to be just the only one. She didn't,
Speaker 4: you know, want too particular about said to Garrett would
Speaker 4: come over right, you know, and you remember side, so
Speaker 4: you two were next door neighbors. That next door she
Speaker 4: lived the street that explains to the curve, right. That's how, yeah,
Speaker 4: we hooked up.
Speaker 2: And that was the weirdest. Whenever I saw the credits
Speaker 2: on the album, I'm like, I didn't care.
Speaker 4: And she was a great right and she wor lyrics.
Speaker 4: She really had nothing to do with the music. Uh.
Speaker 4: Back then, I was experimenting with basslines on keyboards and
Speaker 4: it's like a Bobby Brown thing. Don't don't down, don't
Speaker 4: don't don't you know.
Speaker 2: And that was way before then. We are the ticket
Speaker 2: to the.
Speaker 4: Irene lived probably like three blocks away Patrise. Russian lived
Speaker 4: about four blocks away and around the corner.
Speaker 2: So I used to.
Speaker 4: I used to always before Irene moved out to where
Speaker 4: I am, and she moved twice near me. You know,
Speaker 4: I guess a lot of people's like if you hang
Speaker 4: out with somebody, because I always wanted to meet her.
Speaker 4: That's how Fame tour manager said, so I want to
Speaker 4: meet her, said you're gonna work with her one day,
Speaker 4: and that happened without his help. We just gravitated. Actually
Speaker 4: the fifth member of Toto who did a lot of
Speaker 4: movie scores.
Speaker 2: DA. No, it's never total.
Speaker 4: No, they're all members of the group, James Newton, Howard
Speaker 4: Howard and I because we was working in the studio
Speaker 4: and he's the one to introduce me to Irene.
Speaker 2: Do you still speak to her? I was just I
Speaker 2: was like, I haven't heard from her in a while.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we talked, but it's you know, it's we're still cool.
Speaker 4: It's like I kind of let things lie where they lie.
Speaker 4: If you get pissed off about something I hurt. She
Speaker 4: was very hard to get along with the time. I
Speaker 4: wasn't like forcing anything, and it's like, if you are
Speaker 4: a true person who you are, you kind of let
Speaker 4: things go. But I think it boiled down too all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, we're together working and you saying, oh,
Speaker 4: I can't work with you today, Casid Garrett's coming over
Speaker 4: attitude or you know, I can't work digging Irene. I
Speaker 4: mean Patrese's coming over. Patrice came over and she heard
Speaker 4: this one song I did call I Fresh and sly
Speaker 4: I wanted to play on it too, and I didn't
Speaker 4: let him. But so if you pass some time to
Speaker 4: pull up, you pull up I Fresh, and you're gonna
Speaker 4: hear some similarity or sly Stone, which he was the
Speaker 4: one that got me playing keyboard. Okay, So Patrese came over.
Speaker 4: That was her favorite gen. She used to come over
Speaker 4: just to hear that. So when Irene Carrer would see
Speaker 4: her coming up, all ship's gonna get you know, it's
Speaker 4: over because he might be working with Irene. You know,
Speaker 4: he might be where it wasn't might be I was
Speaker 4: working with you know, side Garrett. We cut a lot
Speaker 4: of demos together.
Speaker 2: And how did you guys end up signing with? Like
Speaker 2: and M and story?
Speaker 4: Okay, okay. At when we're at the record plant and
Speaker 4: I was working with Q, I had told him the
Speaker 4: story because before and then I would go up to
Speaker 4: A and M because I was working with Billy Preston.
Speaker 4: He was on A and this would be the first
Speaker 4: good place to go on. I took and them basically
Speaker 4: the same kind of song that I took Quincy.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know, and.
Speaker 4: They basically, you know, didn't pay attention because you had
Speaker 4: a black door to go through a white door. And
Speaker 4: that was funny because we were the only group in
Speaker 4: the history of May and Them who covered all genres
Speaker 4: of music, not just funk, jazz, blues pop.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: So Michael was paying attention to back then, and we
Speaker 4: started paying most of the bills, you know, from Styx.
Speaker 4: I was the one who had picked Human that was
Speaker 4: on the charts for twenty seven weeks, the song Human
Speaker 4: by Human Nature, Human League. Yeah. I did a lot
Speaker 4: of stuff, ghost stuff that a lot of people don't
Speaker 4: realize and wait, yeah, and it brought Jimmy jam and
Speaker 4: Terry Lewis on the scene.
Speaker 2: So how did.
Speaker 4: Well, John McLean and I are very close and I
Speaker 4: was like helping him out. Yes, everybody else, Yeah, well
Speaker 4: this is probably before a lot of other things that happened.
Speaker 4: But you know, we were just about ready to leave
Speaker 4: a and m and I was doing my job. I
Speaker 4: just kind of got bored and didn't have my parking
Speaker 4: space there, and I told him, I said, I help
Speaker 4: you out there. The guards and everybody knew what George
Speaker 4: Johnson's here, He's probably back there helping another motherfucker out.
Speaker 4: John McLean had given me first this cassette and told
Speaker 4: me to listen to it. Tell me what I thought.
Speaker 4: He was originally working in the mailroom, think making about
Speaker 4: five hundred bucks a week or something like that at
Speaker 4: a and him became before he came, so he went
Speaker 4: to the Power Moves. It's just how I got Sly
Speaker 4: on Jesse Johnson's record video.
Speaker 2: You did that? Yeah, wow, I was the only one
Speaker 2: that makes sense, the only one but never had sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, never got credit for a lot of stuff. That's
Speaker 4: what I'm saying, a lot of truth. Crazy crazy, And
Speaker 4: Sly wasn't interested. You told me, man, I don't want
Speaker 4: to do this, and they give you some money, you
Speaker 4: could do what you like to do, all.
Speaker 2: Right, you can do what you like. Jesse. Jesse did
Speaker 2: our episode and he explained to us that, yeah, he
Speaker 2: just sent the two inches too. Yeah. They never met
Speaker 2: before the video.
Speaker 4: It's like he wasn't interested in meeting him. He said,
Speaker 4: you're the funcust why he want interested in meeting Prince?
Speaker 4: I said, man, you got to go hang with Prince,
Speaker 4: and he did. Prince came out to his place and
Speaker 4: he was in the Palisades, and Slide told me he
Speaker 4: knocked on the door, came out. I said, what did
Speaker 4: you do? Just looked at him on the monitor. I
Speaker 4: didn't let him in.
Speaker 2: Now why Prince gravitated to Larry.
Speaker 4: But Prince Prince had Larry and focus. He was trying
Speaker 4: to bring back Sly to him, and Slid and Sly
Speaker 4: and Freddy who at it not to go with Prince.
Speaker 4: They're the only two that held out. Slide told me,
Speaker 4: a prince just trying to be like me. I said, well,
Speaker 4: let him be like you and he the new you,
Speaker 4: you know, let him. You know, if he got all
Speaker 4: this money could help you. Prince Sly one out there
Speaker 4: and saw his complex and I think very you know,
Speaker 4: could be jealous or at least about it. And you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. But he's been to the right
Speaker 4: and he's been to the left, being up and down
Speaker 4: with his financial status. And you know, when you see
Speaker 4: another person coming and want to be you, they wouldn't
Speaker 4: even let him. Send At the Hard Rock, Rock and
Speaker 4: Roll Hall of Fame, Prince asked to sit at the table.
Speaker 4: They wouldn't want. They didn't let him come sit at
Speaker 4: the table. Would Sly in the family Stone, So, I
Speaker 4: mean he was trying to be you know. That's why
Speaker 4: he was very cordial to me, you know, and do
Speaker 4: you give me a private show. I could have probably
Speaker 4: went with them, but I wasn't too into their you know,
Speaker 4: I knew he was gonna be prince after that. You know,
Speaker 4: I wasn't gonna be too much more of you know,
Speaker 4: the time happened, like I said, when Jimmy, jam and
Speaker 4: Lewis because they did the drum tracks and all that
Speaker 4: on Human and that was bringing them in. But John
Speaker 4: McClean asked me to listen to this cassette and tell
Speaker 4: me what you think. So I probably would wait till
Speaker 4: along the way good to lunch for the next day,
Speaker 4: and I would listen to it when I leave my house.
Speaker 4: So I listened to it, turned it out, got the
Speaker 4: side too, and Human came up.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like I had to keep rewinding. I didn't even
Speaker 4: know it was Jimmy and Terry.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: So I said, okay, got to the I was gonna
Speaker 4: kept listening to us. I couldn't go no further than that.
Speaker 4: I said, you know what A and them, It just
Speaker 4: goes to show you show you about these companies, a
Speaker 4: lot of people that ain't got the right ears. I said,
Speaker 4: this is totally fucked up because they got this hit
Speaker 4: out of see Quince's side to second song on side too.
Speaker 4: It should be on side one the first record. Oh.
Speaker 4: Man said, that's cool. I'm bringing in my boys Jimmy
Speaker 4: and Terry. I said, who Jimmy, Jammy Taylor. I said,
Speaker 4: whoever did it needs to be I didn't even know
Speaker 4: that they were from the time, right, okay, okay? And
Speaker 4: I said, you need the next board, meaning because I
Speaker 4: was actually on the Board of Governors with the Grammys
Speaker 4: from the seventh ninety two ninety four. They wanted me
Speaker 4: to become the president of NARS and at that time
Speaker 4: I chose not to us. I said, I got an
Speaker 4: mc hammer came up. Oh wow, I got bored on
Speaker 4: board of the board.
Speaker 7: So it was a lot of things that sometimes I like, damn,
Speaker 7: I wish you would have did it.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it was cool. I mean I was in.
Speaker 4: I was on the head of the producer committee because
Speaker 4: Irene Carry's husbands will encourage me to get on the board.
Speaker 4: He said, man, yeah, well all the stuff you know
Speaker 4: and have been through. He said, you need to be
Speaker 4: signing off on some stuff. And you know, I was
Speaker 4: on the producer committee for two years and picking up is.
Speaker 2: It like to be at that level because like right now,
Speaker 2: Jimmy jim is also Yeah, really I was on the he's.
Speaker 7: Like one of the heads of the producer committee.
Speaker 2: How important is it? Like what's the end games being at?
Speaker 4: Well, say number one was they all thought I was
Speaker 4: the plant of Quincy's. Ah Okay, they were scared, so
Speaker 4: they and this is after Thriller, Okay, I was there.
Speaker 4: That was in eighty four, I mean at eighty four. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so after that, I was there from ninety two to
Speaker 4: ninety four. So they thought I came with the master
Speaker 4: map of the plant, okay, and it was cool, and
Speaker 4: I just didn't want to be on the border ground
Speaker 4: and I wanted to go.
Speaker 2: To find out.
Speaker 4: Okay, what's the highest position, you said, producer committee. So
Speaker 4: I got on that like instantly. I was getting all
Speaker 4: free music. They'd send me the box and I wouldn't
Speaker 4: have to pass it on to nobody else that kept
Speaker 4: all the CDs.
Speaker 7: That was the first time I heard the chronic.
Speaker 2: For those committees.
Speaker 4: You just get everything, okay, Yeah, I mean, well, the
Speaker 4: other ones you share except for the producer committee, because
Speaker 4: you got these different categories of music. So you may
Speaker 4: have two and three people. Oafter you get through the box,
Speaker 4: send it to sell it. You know, sometime they may
Speaker 4: take out a few things, but you have to deliver
Speaker 4: the whole box.
Speaker 2: And what's the whole purpose of that committee to well?
Speaker 4: With that committee? You eventually before that, if you're just
Speaker 4: going to be a member of the board, they're going
Speaker 4: to get your briefcase and have a lot of applications
Speaker 4: that you sign people on to the Grammys from September.
Speaker 4: After September it is too late, okay, so you actually
Speaker 4: will see a group. There's a lot of people now
Speaker 4: say oh, would you like to get go for a nomination?
Speaker 4: I make sure for the Grammy their application. Right, you're
Speaker 4: not gonna say no. You know, you fill out the application.
Speaker 4: You have the right to submit to fruit. Yeah right, okay,
Speaker 4: so you know what I mean. I didn't get paid.
Speaker 4: I brought intellect and experience and what I know about music.
Speaker 4: Since I hooked up and had all these other people
Speaker 4: from Billy Preston.
Speaker 7: You brough an opportunity basically, right.
Speaker 4: I could hear something Now when it's a hit. Just
Speaker 4: how I picked the song Human When I told John McClean,
Speaker 4: I said, you go up to the board meeting next week.
Speaker 4: I know it was the second week of every month,
Speaker 4: and you tell her Bible and Jerry Moss because they
Speaker 4: had sticks out thing in Human League. I said, this
Speaker 4: is the hit that's on side too, and I don't
Speaker 4: think they ever changed it, but then they did try
Speaker 4: it and it wound up on charts number one for
Speaker 4: twenty seven weeks. That was the first time people at
Speaker 4: A and M news. I think John mintioned George told you.
Speaker 4: He said that that was the one. So I was
Speaker 4: like the ghost of music there picking hits.
Speaker 8: When did you guys first start recording your first album?
Speaker 8: Form with Quincy producing seventy five And that was on
Speaker 8: his album is It Love that We're Missing? Wrote four
Speaker 8: songs trying to find out about you just listening listen.
Speaker 5: And he has those writing sessions. He would like a
Speaker 5: little dictaphone, he would like record when he like play
Speaker 5: the songs, yeah with Quincy, like in the in his apartment.
Speaker 5: He like has all of that stuff. He used to
Speaker 5: play that stuff for me when I was on the
Speaker 5: way to school. I was like five years old listening
Speaker 5: to these like session tapes of them writing these growing.
Speaker 2: Up, Like, at what point do you realize, Okay, he's
Speaker 2: not just dad, but he's sort of might kind of
Speaker 2: be a big deal, A big deal.
Speaker 7: Well, I always knew he was like a superhero.
Speaker 4: And I was at two years old.
Speaker 7: My first word was tape.
Speaker 5: And it's funny he passed down the same so it
Speaker 5: was kind of like how how my grandfather gave hold on.
Speaker 4: He would also say, ready, cassette go.
Speaker 5: So yeah, he he did the same thing with me
Speaker 5: where he because I was like, I didn't know what
Speaker 5: capacity I was going to do, uh music, I just
Speaker 5: was into it and I was into the technology side
Speaker 5: of it, and so like I love the tape machine.
Speaker 5: Because I would see him in his studio and you know,
Speaker 5: he'd be laying down the guitar part. So he teached
Speaker 5: me how to punch him in because he didn't he
Speaker 5: couldn't punched men, and like you know certain things, and
Speaker 5: so I was all, you know, he'd bring me to
Speaker 5: the studio and I meet all these amazing great people.
Speaker 4: Wasn't paying attention to nobody Like this is Quincy Jones, uh.
Speaker 2: Who is on the cover or the inside of Blam.
Speaker 7: That's uh that Cody my cousin.
Speaker 2: Son.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, they still hang out. He's trying to do music.
Speaker 7: But yeah, that's none of them.
Speaker 2: I like Troy Okay, Well.
Speaker 7: Sound pretty okay.
Speaker 2: So I have I have questions about the production techniques
Speaker 2: of the brother Johnson the Brothers Johnson sound, but I
Speaker 2: have to get this question out the way. Well, first
Speaker 2: of all, we look out for number one, right, uh,
Speaker 2: like many other uh songs done by black artists. Of course,
Speaker 2: that was always my exposure to the Beatles before. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I thought that I didn't know. Yeah, I didn't. That
Speaker 2: was my first time hearing that, right, And you know,
Speaker 2: my art teacher trying to tell me, like, no, that's
Speaker 2: not the Beatles did this verse. We did, but I'm
Speaker 2: in first grade, so I didn't know the.
Speaker 4: First Well, yeah, I got that was the crimination of
Speaker 4: the Funkadelic and Brothers Johnson and Beatles.
Speaker 9: I see, Well it worked because I always thought that
Speaker 9: that was your song.
Speaker 4: Yeah no, there wasn't. You know, everything I would approach
Speaker 4: it would have to have a signature on it. A
Speaker 4: lot of the first album that you were talking about
Speaker 4: mostly was one bass a drum machine and probably about
Speaker 4: eight guitars. That's how I learned about arrangement. Quincy would
Speaker 4: take all the guitar parts and put different and it's yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean we our keyboard players be like George Duke
Speaker 4: and Herbie Hancock, Harvey Mason on drums, so our band
Speaker 4: were people that he could get and come into the studio.
Speaker 4: Harvey Mason was playing with headphones on pull out the
Speaker 4: drum track on songs like trying to find out about
Speaker 4: you if you you know it would just go for
Speaker 4: it and we you know, so that was like the
Speaker 4: only the first band outside the little band we had
Speaker 4: and these are like you walking in you saying Herbie
Speaker 4: Hancock walking the floor, like playing notes on and tell
Speaker 4: me bedtime story now, uh you know all that kind
Speaker 4: of stuck in my head that Herbie wrote that they had.
Speaker 2: You guys with the rhythm section on sounds and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. I played on a few things.
Speaker 4: They took me out the mix purposely when Michael Jackson
Speaker 4: hit and Lewis had a lot to do with that.
Speaker 4: That's when we started. I was about to chew his
Speaker 4: head up.
Speaker 2: I was going to sort of come, I was going
Speaker 2: to get there wait wait, I have one specific question.
Speaker 2: The Devil that was my jam. It's okay, but I
Speaker 2: just want to know. Did y'all everythink like a seven
Speaker 2: year old with hear the songs?
Speaker 4: J well actually didn't work because I wrote that song
Speaker 4: after The Exorcist came up.
Speaker 2: Come on, man, it's like, okay with song, I would always.
Speaker 4: Skip it with Billy Preston and by him being Christian
Speaker 4: and all that, and they had the gospel music. It's
Speaker 4: certainly I would step out of the zone. And it
Speaker 4: makes songs like make the Devil man, you know, so
Speaker 4: I gotta make me a devil song?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You did? You did?
Speaker 4: And I used the stand and I took a pencil.
Speaker 4: That's when it starts. You got yeah yeah, And I
Speaker 4: used Hendricks. I got my watch Hendrix here.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is what I'm telling you. Yeah, as
Speaker 2: an adult, let's see the technique. I see the technique.
Speaker 4: Let it get to the fun really quick.
Speaker 2: This ain't the fall.
Speaker 4: Slid No, no, no, no song o cakes. Wow, that's
Speaker 4: the suit. I said the stuff huddle, don't make hair
Speaker 4: like that's my bass line?
Speaker 2: And was that you singing on singing?
Speaker 4: They gonna be born guitars coming, all of the counterpoints like.
Speaker 2: All right, we're about to hitting the ass, burning party,
Speaker 2: run under the covers and from.
Speaker 4: You will take your down. You're going to be a snoop.
Speaker 2: He will have your ass. I think in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 2: I accept what Jesus questions.
Speaker 4: Like, and you know what, I probably wrote it because
Speaker 4: I was raised and wasn't ultimboy.
Speaker 2: They were like a mirror again, like that song, that song,
Speaker 2: It did it literally like I never saw you to
Speaker 2: the same ever again. And even with y'all, even the
Speaker 2: shutter open uh for the back cover of Right on Time,
Speaker 2: I was still thinking like, oh man, I would bury
Speaker 2: your albums like and then like bottom last of my
Speaker 2: dad's pole, I had to do that with my dad
Speaker 2: was just giving. Some covers were scarier, should you bury
Speaker 2: them under?
Speaker 4: I'd give. I would give acknowledgment to certain things that
Speaker 4: kids should know, an adult should know. The devil was
Speaker 4: like I wasn't scared of him. I even ran my
Speaker 4: vocal thing backwards.
Speaker 2: That's how I got that sound.
Speaker 4: And I used your.
Speaker 2: Mother sucks cocks and how yeah I did.
Speaker 4: Play and you hear it.
Speaker 2: That'd be a whole nother fung. I'm sorry, man, I
Speaker 2: wasn't listening to.
Speaker 4: And the thing.
Speaker 2: But but aside from that, Blake, Aside from that, I
Speaker 2: always wanted to know you guys had a very weird
Speaker 2: Greek course technique that I can only described as like
Speaker 2: this animated muppet sound like for yourself, be yourself right exactly,
Speaker 2: or even right on time, or even like very speeding
Speaker 2: Serena's voice on get the funk out of my face? Like,
Speaker 2: how come you guys never.
Speaker 4: Just did me get the funk out of my face?
Speaker 2: I've always thought that that was me. But how come
Speaker 2: none of the vocal techniques, besides your lead vocal, how
Speaker 2: come they were never just dry and natural like you
Speaker 2: guys were either, like even with Stump, It's like the
Speaker 2: muppets were singing. No.
Speaker 4: It basically came from things that were going on TV shows,
Speaker 4: you know. I mean you're walking in with Q. You
Speaker 4: got to have like various types of you know, uh,
Speaker 4: like characters. Yeah, they were like characters.
Speaker 2: It's just like.
Speaker 4: The brother who sang the parts you sounded like. I
Speaker 4: can't think of his name right now, but he got
Speaker 4: that stuff because he knew in the sly.
Speaker 2: Right, right, I get it.
Speaker 4: So he was a wonderful person coming in to do that.
Speaker 4: It's like I wanted to take No, I wasn't Richard,
Speaker 4: he was one. He did a high vocal too. Why
Speaker 4: in the hell can he came out and see that's
Speaker 4: when you get old Alex Bob.
Speaker 2: No, uh, I didn't know that Ricky was playing with
Speaker 2: you guys. Ricky Lawson.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I found him in Detroit in a basement. Really yep,
Speaker 4: just in Detroit in a basement that one of my
Speaker 4: musicians mentioned him and said he needed to be looked at.
Speaker 4: So I went and looked at him. You know, he
Speaker 4: went from there to heights, you know, and you know,
Speaker 4: that's what it's about. And that's what I love about
Speaker 4: Prince because he a lot of moneies he gave away
Speaker 4: and went to kids who you know, had to do
Speaker 4: with music or needed help. You know. He drop off
Speaker 4: monies to different schools and different communities. He only would
Speaker 4: take a certain amount and he'd leave the whole rest
Speaker 4: of it and wind them given to the mayor, which
Speaker 4: is something you know, It's kind of the attitude, the
Speaker 4: ultimate attitude Slide would have wanted. You know, I don't
Speaker 4: need any monthy monthy.
Speaker 2: People. Got in the Sugary Otis way later, yes, in life,
Speaker 2: but you were there for round one. Yeah.
Speaker 4: He was actually a neighbor to his parents lived around
Speaker 4: the corner. I used to go visit. I used to
Speaker 4: visit them before I met him because I remember seeing
Speaker 4: the Johnny Oda Show and Three Tons of Joy when
Speaker 4: I was a kid, and I mentioned to my mom
Speaker 4: and one of my cousins had me meet one of
Speaker 4: Sugary's cousins who I almost started to date. I did
Speaker 4: go over to her house. I think she passed away,
Speaker 4: but I saw this album and it looked like this
Speaker 4: Mexican dude on it, and I said, who's that. Oh,
Speaker 4: this is my cousin. This is Sugar Yoldison. Before I
Speaker 4: played that record run Across the Ice Cold Daydream and
Speaker 4: all that stuff on there and Strawberry Letter Letter, I
Speaker 4: went straight to Q and told him this is we
Speaker 4: need to cut this song. And it was never a single.
Speaker 4: Lewis used it at his wedding. Quin's the original one,
Speaker 4: Sugar Yoldis is and when we got to the vampa
Speaker 4: the guitar and yeah, it's it's all over and we.
Speaker 2: Have to do this this song. So it was your
Speaker 2: idea to cover Strawberry Letter.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I brought some ship to the picture.
Speaker 2: No, your version to me is all we did.
Speaker 4: Was added, Yeah, because you don't do nothing, he created.
Speaker 4: You do something and beef it up. Otherwise it's not
Speaker 4: worth doing all the time. You know, what do you
Speaker 4: think that song is about? I know what it's about.
Speaker 4: And that song basically is as shugy. He was almost
Speaker 4: had that slide like attitude, and he'd have a girlfriend
Speaker 4: who he never really respond to because he was a musician.
Speaker 4: He kind of reminded me of me too. Don't come
Speaker 4: between me right exactly. So she had written these Strawberry
Speaker 4: letter sent it letters to him, oh wow, and he
Speaker 4: never opened one, and he told me he went back
Speaker 4: he had a break, and all of a sudden he
Speaker 4: opened them and still had the scent. You know, I
Speaker 4: missed you, baby.
Speaker 2: When you're coming home, it.
Speaker 4: Be Strawberry Letter one, Strawberry two, all the way to
Speaker 4: twenty two. That's why a present from you, Strawberry Letter
Speaker 4: twenty three two twenty two. The music plays I said
Speaker 4: that a few so the song is actually twenty three,
Speaker 4: But the people say why is it twenty three? And
Speaker 4: you always say twenty two. All those letters A president
Speaker 4: from you Strawberry letter twenty two. Right, that's where it ends,
Speaker 4: and the song begins as twenty three The Mystery unlocked. Yeah, difficult.
Speaker 2: Did you ever get his initial reaction to it when
Speaker 2: when he heard it?
Speaker 4: Or Sugar and I was tight as me and fly
Speaker 4: because Sugar could sometimes be very hard to get along
Speaker 4: with and deal with. I knew his parents two years
Speaker 4: before I even met him. When I met him and
Speaker 4: then he heard, you know, because Quincy had got him
Speaker 4: to come into the studio. We were out of town
Speaker 4: to do the guitar solo, and he couldn't play it
Speaker 4: because it was in a different key. It's like I played,
Speaker 4: It's a whole different stretch. I didn't actually play on it.
Speaker 2: He got to leave Ris why and.
Speaker 4: That's the reason he plays because I wasn't available. I
Speaker 4: left the road to come home, did a little mix
Speaker 4: on it, and then pulled up the two guitar parts
Speaker 4: and showed my cousin the other part and went back
Speaker 4: out on the road till Quincy finished it.
Speaker 2: So and then could put it up.
Speaker 4: So a lot of things. I mean, they had my
Speaker 4: ass so busy that I should have got credit for
Speaker 4: even the way it went down with Michael Jackson, because
Speaker 4: he wanted both of us, and they told Quincy, you know,
Speaker 4: I want George and Lewis. Michael was filing the shit
Speaker 4: and he was very disappointed. My brother Lewis said, George
Speaker 4: doesn't write for anybody. He's working on Brothers Johnson's stuff.
Speaker 4: He doesn't do sessions. So you told him. My guitar
Speaker 4: person was in the room. He's the one that told
Speaker 4: me that. Lewis said that. I said, what did Quincy do?
Speaker 4: He said, he kind of looked up. He didn't have
Speaker 4: too much to say because and I said, Okay, I
Speaker 4: see the whole scenario. Because Quincy thow ahead A and
Speaker 4: them didn't want us to do shit. They was trying
Speaker 4: to keep me like locked because back then and even
Speaker 4: Quincy had done interviews.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 4: Is it Quincy Jones?
Speaker 2: Is it Michael Jackson?
Speaker 4: To me, it was all but at that time when
Speaker 4: he when Michael came out with Off the Wall, Stump
Speaker 4: was number one. So people would have gradued what we
Speaker 4: would have automatically went to, Okay, it's the Brothers Johnson
Speaker 4: who's making that shit happen. It ain't Quincy and you know,
Speaker 4: the music is the vibe is you know, so if
Speaker 4: they left me off, they what they didn't have to
Speaker 4: put brother john sony okay, and then they just took
Speaker 4: Lewis and he became, Uh.
Speaker 2: That's crazy though, So is that just him on Get
Speaker 2: on the Floor.
Speaker 4: Lewis played bass on Billy Jeans Everything.
Speaker 2: A lot of what Get on the Floor is initially
Speaker 2: the song he wrote.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, no, no, I mean it could have been
Speaker 4: one that was developed that I didn't even put the
Speaker 4: guitar on yet because it wasn't approved by me, okay
Speaker 4: to be totally honest, So you know, I got left
Speaker 4: out the mix. And you know, Michael did call me.
Speaker 4: He took the kids out to Disneyland one day and
Speaker 4: I had three messages sound like he was crying or
Speaker 4: he was That's why him and Quincy was on the
Speaker 4: way out to divide. But he knew between me and
Speaker 4: James Ingram, we were the only two people that ever
Speaker 4: you know, went back on Q's face. And because I
Speaker 4: would look at him like a teacher and I also
Speaker 4: look at him as a dad, that I also look
Speaker 4: at him as a kid because I had to teach him.
Speaker 4: He said, okay, Jordan I had to hold Louis's hand.
Speaker 4: But you're going to be all right. I said, well,
Speaker 4: don't get too much any knowledge, and that Lewis boys
Speaker 4: shit because he's young, he's on the Divideuse to be
Speaker 4: totally honest. He you know, there's a lot of good
Speaker 4: things about him. There's a lot of things that he
Speaker 4: didn't play into correctly. He never really looked at himself
Speaker 4: as being a part of Brothers Johnson because the Brothers
Speaker 4: Incent was me and he'd picked nine or eight of
Speaker 4: my songs out of the eleven they got on the
Speaker 4: first album, Get the Funk Out in My Face. Lewis
Speaker 4: wrote the track, I laid the guitar, I wrote the lyrics.
Speaker 4: He did Land the Ladies and as all the rest
Speaker 4: of those songs were mine. Quincy just said in a
Speaker 4: meeting with George, you're gonna make all the money. I
Speaker 4: just said, we'll give Louis give my brother half without thinking.
Speaker 2: So for songs like love Is and Running for You
Speaker 2: and all that, well, the songs that he said.
Speaker 4: My signature running for eleven, I did that a lot
Speaker 4: of songs I would do, and I knew he would
Speaker 4: get pissed off because Quincy at first didn't know he
Speaker 4: had learned Lewis. It's like, play the accidental Who's that
Speaker 4: on bass? He says, George, play it like George. I'm like,
Speaker 4: why the fuck he said that?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: I mean? And I could put myself in Lewis's shoes too.
Speaker 4: So a lot of my songs got favored and picked
Speaker 4: and had my signature guitar. That's why when I stepped
Speaker 4: up off on purpose on Blam, didn't write nothing in
Speaker 4: Quincy's Call, and I said, man, give me a song,
Speaker 4: Just give me one song, and I wrote Blam and uh,
Speaker 4: that was a tie of the album, never a single
Speaker 4: with all the other stuff.
Speaker 2: That's and they brought in Simpson, who wrote and ain't
Speaker 2: We Funking? Now?
Speaker 4: That was between me, probably Alex Lewis. You know a
Speaker 4: few people in the band, Ricky Heath.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know. I always wanted to know why on Treasure, Ricky,
Speaker 2: why did Ricky sing Treasure or not?
Speaker 4: Because I needed a break. I was singing too much,
Speaker 4: and I like and I liked all about the Heaven,
Speaker 4: which is typically that's my little He wrote both. But
Speaker 4: it's like, damn, you know, I'm up here, And I
Speaker 4: was like I'm the only one working, working, working. Lewis
Speaker 4: back played the bass chill.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I had to like make him sing because somebody please
Speaker 4: sing a song where I could just chill and this
Speaker 4: is funn come treasure, right, And I loved that because
Speaker 4: when he'd sing it, all that had to do the
Speaker 4: same background part.
Speaker 2: So I was like, so, I like, you're singing background
Speaker 2: in your own right, right.
Speaker 4: I mean I didn't sing lead. And I'm back there saying,
Speaker 4: you know, I felt like I'm hanging out with Aggie
Speaker 4: Johnson side effecting, you know, and the cleaners, yeah, and
Speaker 4: the cleaners on Crimp. We grew up together. Aggie knew
Speaker 4: so much about me than that anybody knew because he
Speaker 4: was coming to the house and he watched it firsthand.
Speaker 2: Is that cleaner still on Prinshaw?
Speaker 4: I think it is okay, okay, but he's like, this
Speaker 4: is Georgia's ship. And he would tell the band and
Speaker 4: he said from from Lewis he was there. He come
Speaker 4: over to the house. He said, you think that's something
Speaker 4: you ought to hit the original rass ship. Quincy polished
Speaker 4: it and taught me how to do it. But you know,
Speaker 4: you go with the white noise on four track and
Speaker 4: triple it to the eight track, and you know you
Speaker 4: get all these different type sounds and textures. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: Then you record the bass again to keep that fatter.
Speaker 4: And I'm playing upside down bass left handed with a
Speaker 4: pick and with my thumbs. And you know, Lewis was
Speaker 4: good at he could take cany of my stuff. The
Speaker 4: difference was it would sound like Graham Central Station in
Speaker 4: me okay, because Larry Graham taught me how to play bass.
Speaker 2: Did Lewis actually have the ability to play like James
Speaker 2: Jafferson use his two fingers or would.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he would play and he got his come up
Speaker 4: and as they would say when he was in the
Speaker 4: studio with Stanley Clark and the engineer hit record and
Speaker 4: Louis was always like a warrior that saw he was
Speaker 4: in Japanese and all this stuff, and you know he
Speaker 4: would challenge and you know, everything was about a challenge.
Speaker 4: And don't let him get on stage and Larry call
Speaker 4: you up. He gonna come out there and fuck you up.
Speaker 4: But that's what he ultimately went to and stayed there
Speaker 4: because he really didn't have a lot of friends. Bass
Speaker 4: players like Stanley Clark, they got stuff on tape with
Speaker 4: him at George Duke when Stanley would get ready to
Speaker 4: come out and he turned back on Now I ain't
Speaker 4: gonna start that ship, and he'd go back in this spot.
Speaker 4: But he was when I first saw them. It's like
Speaker 4: I actually liked it because I saw Louis got his
Speaker 4: ass whooped so bad. I'm gonna tell you how and why,
Speaker 4: because they were in the studio one't a lot of
Speaker 4: people around. But then you know, after he kind of
Speaker 4: got established and you know, Quincy had called both of
Speaker 4: them in. Louis couldn't read as fluent as Stanley Lewis,
Speaker 4: couldn't two fingers fluent as Stanley Lewis is doing that
Speaker 4: that stuff with thumping and all that, and then all Stanley,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm like, second, here, good, somebody showed his ass,
Speaker 4: you know, without saying nothing. He needed to be to
Speaker 4: be put down, knockdown.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So how did you guys work together on the Winners album,
Speaker 2: which was the first album without Quincy? Like what was?
Speaker 4: It was very hard? I mean I worked more. It's
Speaker 4: like you from the very first album. I picked the
Speaker 4: album covered see quence the songs, mixed it.
Speaker 2: And the commercial.
Speaker 4: And use it took a lot to you know, Quincy
Speaker 4: was just our producer. We were signed to the label.
Speaker 4: Lewis didn't want to do anything a lot of stuff
Speaker 4: asked George, asked George, That's what I'm saying. He never
Speaker 4: felt it was our group. M hm, you know, and
Speaker 4: even into the Winners album, he didn't feel cool until
Speaker 4: he did Passage album, which was the Christian album. I
Speaker 4: had nothing to do with it. And leading up to
Speaker 4: all that was even with the story with Michael, because
Speaker 4: he didn't want me to be a part of that
Speaker 4: because he'd feel like right, so he could take me
Speaker 4: out the mix. And since I'm not on it saved
Speaker 4: a lot of questions about was he Quincy Brothers Johnson?
Speaker 2: You know, why do you think it was important for
Speaker 2: him to establish his or for him to have agency
Speaker 2: as in this is mine and.
Speaker 4: Because this is ours? Well it wasn't. It wasn't. But
Speaker 4: you know, unfortunately that's the way he grew up. He
Speaker 4: grew up at home under my mother's apron Well, if
Speaker 4: you picture stuff like me and my older brother and
Speaker 4: I had to split my time. Louis would stay home.
Speaker 4: He would never go out and run and hang and
Speaker 4: you almost like get shot at sometime a jumper fence
Speaker 4: and ride your bikes. And you know, he never experienced that.
Speaker 4: He was always a homeboy. He was afraid he was
Speaker 4: hanging out with gangs and you know, not in them,
Speaker 4: but around him knew him. So he was very shielded.
Speaker 4: And that's another reason why him and his first wife
Speaker 4: split up. I'm more in short, because she would tell me, George,
Speaker 4: I don't have three kids. I get four, which is
Speaker 4: you know, and when you're protected like that. She would
Speaker 4: talk to him and we'd be in the airport and
Speaker 4: I had to tell her chill on her responses to
Speaker 4: him when he'd make a comment, and in front of
Speaker 4: the whole band, it's like she wouldn't you know, Oh,
Speaker 4: Louis could acting like a child, saying please, don't talk
Speaker 4: to him like that. You know, he has the same
Speaker 4: amount of respect the band has for me. When you
Speaker 4: talk to him like that, you know, it doesn't work
Speaker 4: for me. So he was a different you know, That's
Speaker 4: why he was so bad. A lot of people who
Speaker 4: are on the borderline of being a genius, there's something
Speaker 4: a lot of things they can do and a lot
Speaker 4: of things they can't relate to. Right but they have
Speaker 4: fucking genius, you know.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: He was very like to himself kind of person in general,
Speaker 5: like you didn't really like he wasn't like very outgoing
Speaker 5: only to certain people. One of the last things I
Speaker 5: talked to him about on the email I was working
Speaker 5: on the project. I was like, y'all, I'll do some
Speaker 5: play a little bit too, a little bit bass, guitar, keys,
Speaker 5: every little bit of everything. And I was like, Yo,
Speaker 5: you know uncle, I want to, like, you know, do
Speaker 5: some throwback sound. I want to kind of like get
Speaker 5: your your tone. You're like, what you know, what did
Speaker 5: you you know what how'd you get that sound? How
Speaker 5: did you like in your bass and all that? He
Speaker 5: was like, oh yeah, like I'll tell you. He was
Speaker 5: like let me Uh. I was like, so, you know,
Speaker 5: do I need to go buy a vintage music?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 7: I was trying to plan to see, like let me
Speaker 7: have one of your basses, but he know, I was like, man,
Speaker 7: I'm trying to get this sound.
Speaker 5: How can I do I need to buy a vintage
Speaker 5: He's like, Nope, don't buy advantage, you just get you know,
Speaker 5: just buy you a Mexican Uh.
Speaker 7: What the p bass?
Speaker 2: What would he use?
Speaker 7: He used the music man uh uh sting Ray and
Speaker 7: what he what what he told.
Speaker 5: So the whole secret was is when Fender Leo Fender
Speaker 5: stopped working for Fender and started music Man, he uh
Speaker 5: kind of uncle uncle Lewis was a part in developing
Speaker 5: the Stingray bass and so the one that he had
Speaker 5: was like specifically created for his style of playing, and
Speaker 5: so they moded the it was too expensive to mass
Speaker 5: produce and that was a part of his sound. So
Speaker 5: it was like in the it was in the design
Speaker 5: of the bass to kind of fit his style, and
Speaker 5: that's why his tone was so specific and at that
Speaker 5: time nobody could get it because it was all it
Speaker 5: not only didn't have to do with his playing, but
Speaker 5: it was in the actual pickups, in the way that
Speaker 5: the bass was designed.
Speaker 7: And that's what he told me.
Speaker 5: He was like, you know, you know, just get a
Speaker 5: just get a Mexican p bass, you know, cheap and
Speaker 5: hot rot it, and this is how you do it.
Speaker 7: And then told me the whole thing, and it was like,
Speaker 7: don't tell you that.
Speaker 5: I was like why, Like it's like eight hundred years later,
Speaker 5: like but you know, people asked me that question a lot,
Speaker 5: like about them and the dynamic, and you know, when
Speaker 5: I think about it, it's like, yes, it's you know,
Speaker 5: everything my pop said. But also you just got to
Speaker 5: think about it like they're just brothers, like if you
Speaker 5: could just like from there from the beginning, like they
Speaker 5: literally had an entire career together as brothers, like you know,
Speaker 5: if I don't know if any of you guys have siblings, like.
Speaker 7: A whole career.
Speaker 5: Not only that, but it's like the whole world is
Speaker 5: looking at you and y'all like y'all supposed to just.
Speaker 7: Like but that's the thing.
Speaker 2: I never saw it as like George's group and the
Speaker 2: other guy in the background, right. The thing is to
Speaker 2: me the brothers Johnson is, which is weird because I
Speaker 2: know that, you know, for for them, and his guitar
Speaker 2: playing is well documented on those records, but for me,
Speaker 2: it's like his voice and Lewis's thumb, and to me,
Speaker 2: like that thumb and your father's voice are equal.
Speaker 5: Right, and also like part of like some of the
Speaker 5: even though my dad was like you know, on some
Speaker 5: a lot of the records, like writing the parts guitar
Speaker 5: parts and and some of the bass parts. Even like
Speaker 5: we talked about this recently, the reason why it worked
Speaker 5: it was and it was such a specific and exclusive
Speaker 5: sound was because of the two elements coming together. And
Speaker 5: so even though my dad had an approach and perspective
Speaker 5: and like he said, like he would he would bring
Speaker 5: the Larry Graham element on if he would demo a bass,
Speaker 5: And even though everybody, yeah, I play more like that,
Speaker 5: you know, my uncle would still take it and do
Speaker 5: his own thing and make it his own, you know,
Speaker 5: and and use that as a blueprint. But eventually it
Speaker 5: would just turn into his thing. And it was the
Speaker 5: combination of all of that that made it do this.
Speaker 7: It was a balance.
Speaker 2: It was like this thing.
Speaker 7: It was like, yeah, it was. It was crazy.
Speaker 5: And I and I looked at it the same way too.
Speaker 5: Like growing I always thought it was just like, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's the two of them that they are part of it.
Speaker 5: But when I when I look back, like growing up
Speaker 5: in it, you know, they were. They were my superheroes,
Speaker 5: you know. Growing up I looked up to them obviously.
Speaker 2: And asking how are you.
Speaker 5: I'm thirty five, yeah, so uh, you know, I kind
Speaker 5: of I was born in eighty three, So it's like
Speaker 5: towards the end, I remember never doing the kicking album.
Speaker 5: I was there for a lot of the sessions, and
Speaker 5: like he started a lot of those demos at the
Speaker 5: house and stuff, and that's when he like taught me
Speaker 5: how to punch in and all that stuff.
Speaker 7: But yeah, like I it was, it was.
Speaker 5: It was crazy to watch it all like unfold. And
Speaker 5: I knew my dad would kind of like take the
Speaker 5: lead on certain things, but I don't think it was
Speaker 5: ever like he said. It wasn't like he just was
Speaker 5: just so hungry to take the lead. He just was
Speaker 5: just like ever since the Johnson's three plus one, he
Speaker 5: just do it because nobody else would want to sit
Speaker 5: there and write the lyrics out. But they was out
Speaker 5: playing and ship like it had to get done somehow,
Speaker 5: you know. And and with my uncle, you know, he
Speaker 5: was the he was the youngest sibling. So like he said,
Speaker 5: like he he wasn't able to go out and run
Speaker 5: the streets because he was too young.
Speaker 7: He just couldn't do it.
Speaker 5: And you know, my dad was like a little bit older,
Speaker 5: so it was okay for him to be out with
Speaker 5: the older brother. They're getting into trouble and ship and
Speaker 5: so you know, I think it was just that you know,
Speaker 5: them being yeah, that whole thing, you know, that that
Speaker 5: whole thing. And it's interesting because my dad is like
Speaker 5: the middle sibling, and so there's that, and then my
Speaker 5: other uncle, the oldest, he's definitely the big brother, and
Speaker 5: so they clashed a lot of times and bump heads.
Speaker 5: But I think at the end of the day they
Speaker 5: all still had a mutual respect for each other and
Speaker 5: they were bump heads. And even like till right before
Speaker 5: my uncle passed away, you know, they got together and
Speaker 5: did the thing with Quincy at the Hollywood Bowl, and
Speaker 5: you know, whenever it was, that magic never left. That's
Speaker 5: the crazy thing about music, is like when once you
Speaker 5: have that chemistry and that connection, no matter what you
Speaker 5: go through and how you know, crazy it gets like
Speaker 5: every time they would get in the room, when when
Speaker 5: they would start, it was just like nothing ever wouldn't happen.
Speaker 2: Can I ask a question, No, Mari, I gotta ask
Speaker 2: a question on street wave? How the one is? Really?
Speaker 2: I always this feels like a weird course. Stop laughing
Speaker 2: at secause, don't doom doom, doom doom. I feel like
Speaker 2: your brother. Your brother emphasizes the two as the one,
Speaker 2: but you guys are as the rhythm section or following
Speaker 2: the traditional one two, three four, but his the way
Speaker 2: he starts at dude, I always feel like his pick
Speaker 2: up in his mind was the one. It's just because
Speaker 2: the symbol is emphasizing. It's just like I feel like
Speaker 2: it's a it's a dog chasing his taille. Who is
Speaker 2: the architect of street wave.
Speaker 4: Well, it's basically you're basically right because this on people
Speaker 4: like Harvey Mason be on the set of John Robinson
Speaker 4: and they would use their influence and they'll beat. They
Speaker 4: know exactly what to do with Lewis drum wise, Okay,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, we've had lots of drummers and
Speaker 4: and a lot of ones that stuck well, like Harvey
Speaker 4: Mason and uh Jr. Who I really loved. Harvey Mason Jr.
Speaker 4: Was cool, He did the trick. Harvey Mason was like
Speaker 4: one of the cats who was like a drum god
Speaker 4: to me because he could pick up. He would play
Speaker 4: to something of our tracks and we had the drum
Speaker 4: machine already in it. We wouldn't be playing with him
Speaker 4: except for in the headphones, okay, because we would cut
Speaker 4: it with a drum machine. Then all of a sudden
Speaker 4: he'd come in set and would play it and I
Speaker 4: just watch him just how we'd be in a room.
Speaker 4: And this studio reminds me of Studio A and A
Speaker 4: and M. They have all the big stuff where they
Speaker 4: do strings and the whole illustrated stuff, but.
Speaker 2: We're the world room.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, and uh it's something funny speaking of that,
Speaker 4: how we get left out of that when we were
Speaker 4: part of the world.
Speaker 2: That was good.
Speaker 4: Even had James Browton, I mean Ray Charles in Sight
Speaker 4: and Shaka Khan saying I'll be good to you yes,
Speaker 4: and then me and it was like four people that
Speaker 4: should be in the world with Guinness Records, Quincy Jones, myself,
Speaker 4: Chakakan and rachels On one song I'll be good to
Speaker 4: You that.
Speaker 2: I wrote, Oh that's right for back on the Block.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I came right, and so I was like, I
Speaker 4: would look how you look just well, you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: I hope you did half of half of it. I hope, yeah,
Speaker 4: but you know a certain things. Wasn't surprised because I
Speaker 4: knew how the music industry was and you can't come out.
Speaker 4: See we were signed to a contract. That's why I
Speaker 4: want to believe in A and M that you initially
Speaker 4: signed They had no idea who you are, what you're
Speaker 4: going to be. They were so jealous of Quincy because
Speaker 4: he until we came, brought him out of jazz and
Speaker 4: all of a sudden you hear his the love that
Speaker 4: were missing that was GJ sound, and brought him.
Speaker 2: You guys, definitely brought him into the modern era, modern
Speaker 2: music era.
Speaker 4: And then and his closure would be and work for
Speaker 4: him as a hit on Michael Jackson and do it
Speaker 4: because Sony didn't want him to do it. They figured
Speaker 4: he was just a jazz artist, even though he produced us,
Speaker 4: and he couldn't do the job. Quincy was like the
Speaker 4: perfect camp in music. Have you have you because if
Speaker 4: you think about it, you get, you know, Ry Templeton
Speaker 4: to write some songs, great songs. You got Greg Felling Games,
Speaker 4: You get all these great musicians. And I didn't notice that.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm not talking about the brother or anything.
Speaker 4: But every time he would get used, just more they
Speaker 4: would get used. If anybody's getting used, they wouldn't really
Speaker 4: never get the credit they deserved. I'd say, great filling
Speaker 4: Games put in about the certain the same amount of
Speaker 4: work that I have done on projects, which then they
Speaker 4: going to eventually give him an oscar for something, But
Speaker 4: what about all the other shit that you did that
Speaker 4: was you know, even more crucial. Michael Jackson, you know Michael.
Speaker 2: And then if you notice when we discussed that, yeah,
Speaker 2: we had film games on the show last year, earlier this.
Speaker 4: Year when he went on his own, a lot of
Speaker 4: his stuff wasn't that impressive. You know when he didn't
Speaker 4: sell to men records he was trying to get. He
Speaker 4: couldn't do that back when he first started without being
Speaker 4: validated by someone who had ears like Mike Quinty and
Speaker 4: his crew. I was doing that alone with me and
Speaker 4: Quincy Seor Lewis played the bass and eat the sishy
Speaker 4: and go to sleep on the couch. But I was
Speaker 4: the one who had to finish above Quincy. And he knew.
Speaker 4: I knew, Okay, you hired you're you are the producer.
Speaker 4: You are my brother, you are my father. I respect
Speaker 4: you the highest because you could teach me more than
Speaker 4: anybody has taught me, from sly Stone to Billy Preston.
Speaker 4: And you know, we were just grooving with our friends.
Speaker 4: With them, they just played me ship and look at
Speaker 4: me and smile. I'm like, damn, you don't play some
Speaker 4: moret you know this. I was like, man, if this
Speaker 4: ain't funky, I eat concrete.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute. Speaking of which, ah damn. I forgot
Speaker 2: to ask what was the situation behind this? Had to
Speaker 2: be like how you technically did get to work with
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson on one? So yeah, was a track, which
Speaker 2: is weird because Black Radio used to pip like this
Speaker 2: is the duet with Michael Jackson and brothers Johnson, and
Speaker 2: they would debut it and play it and then I
Speaker 2: just hear, like one mouseie.
Speaker 4: What he's doing like that, which my daughter would love
Speaker 4: because she knew his voice and took her around and
Speaker 4: he was doing thriller Billy Jean to the studio. But
Speaker 4: that song happened. That was a B track that wasn't
Speaker 4: even supposed to be included in any of our stuff.
Speaker 4: We were out on tour. Michael s to write get Quincy,
Speaker 4: you know, one of our songs. He wanted to write
Speaker 4: with us, but the way he chose to write, he said,
Speaker 4: go in and see what he did. What they recorded
Speaker 4: that they weren't using. I never did like this had
Speaker 4: to be because it was a base. It was it's
Speaker 4: like that don't even sound like you I dug it,
Speaker 4: you know, And it wasn't Lewis because the one time
Speaker 4: he went on a scent based in the tangent you know,
Speaker 4: play it on stage. Was just saying, man, how could
Speaker 4: you not play your bass?
Speaker 2: You know? Did you not?
Speaker 4: You weren't known for keyboard.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: What was the decision to not have him played that
Speaker 2: bass line?
Speaker 4: Well, it was no decision. What happened was It's like
Speaker 4: when it got to that point, I didn't give a
Speaker 4: ship or a fuck about nothing, to be honest, It's
Speaker 4: like you couldn't hurt me no more and you already
Speaker 4: hurt me and I still had knocked you up the
Speaker 4: bottom line. Now, if Michael got the track, he wrote
Speaker 4: the lyrics, it was all about Michael Jackson's I don't.
Speaker 4: I didn't even play guitar on it. That's how pissed
Speaker 4: I was. I didn't. There's no guitar on the damn okay.
Speaker 4: So it's like Michael got the leftovers. Only thing I
Speaker 4: did was sing lead okay. And you know I didn't
Speaker 4: plan for it to be a single nothing, because it's
Speaker 4: like I wouldn't. Well at that point, we hadn't used
Speaker 4: that for an album to be put on an album.
Speaker 4: So I was like, all right, Michael came up with
Speaker 4: this stupid ass. If he wasn't checked, it would have
Speaker 4: checked with me on you know, which tune? Could I
Speaker 4: have gave him one of mine or written one? Right,
Speaker 4: So he like took a B tune wrote on it
Speaker 4: just because of his name. It went forward and A
Speaker 4: and M already did they quota or only going to
Speaker 4: release one? We never gotten more than two songs a
Speaker 4: hit off of a record. That's it. That's why Quincy
Speaker 4: and enrolled with Thriller and they got eight off of that.
Speaker 4: That's kind of one of the teachings. But A and
Speaker 4: M did not want to recognize truth even though they
Speaker 4: were Herbalt and Jerry Moss, and we got sold off
Speaker 4: to PolyGram for two hundred and fifty million, along with
Speaker 4: the rest of all the other groups, you know, real
Speaker 4: like that. I just went into the office with her
Speaker 4: Abell and Jeremi. I said, look, we are men, I'm done.
Speaker 4: I walked away from at least two point through million
Speaker 4: on my next album that I could have done as
Speaker 4: a single, but I said, okay, that'll just be sounding
Speaker 4: like another Brothers Chohnson record. So I didn't want to
Speaker 4: even acknowledge. It wasn't that I needed the money, but
Speaker 4: that was in my contract. My lawyer said, they could
Speaker 4: have paid you your two point three million you just
Speaker 4: walked away from.
Speaker 2: Back in.
Speaker 4: Or the eighties. So, I mean it was a lot,
Speaker 4: you know, I had to deal with politics that I
Speaker 4: was very frustrated. I kind of knew that we were
Speaker 4: locked in. That's why I was kind of teaching them
Speaker 4: and showing them back in what I had, picking singles
Speaker 4: Janet Jackson, whatever you've done lately, nasty. You know, the
Speaker 4: Human League thing. I got Slide for John McClean, and
Speaker 4: Slide didn't want to do it. I twisted his arm
Speaker 4: to do it. So it was a lot of things
Speaker 4: where I was the person that could get the job
Speaker 4: done even without Quincy. But Quincy, uh what's his name
Speaker 4: over at Warner Brothers had bought Quincy's contract from A
Speaker 4: and M because he ain't even have a million dollars
Speaker 4: in Boston, and he gave Quincy put up two million
Speaker 4: dollars to get out of the deal with A and M. Okay, okay,
Speaker 4: when he left A and M. Then they told us
Speaker 4: that we were going to get sued if we talked
Speaker 4: to Quincy, you know, any of that go down, I
Speaker 4: called Quincy said, what the hell is you know? A
Speaker 4: and M fuck A and M records, you know, and
Speaker 4: the damn attorney who I couldn't stand, you know, melt
Speaker 4: Old melt Old Olton Olin something like that, and you
Speaker 4: can tell him, I said that still it can kiss
Speaker 4: my ass.
Speaker 2: That is a quote for you, melt melt Olin. So
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, with all of these
Speaker 2: demos and ideas lying around, like what this phase of
Speaker 2: your life, like, what do you want your.
Speaker 4: Legacy? Well, it is what it is. And when I
Speaker 4: put out my book, which maybe we'll talk because I
Speaker 4: might go through you through make it an audible thing,
Speaker 4: see what I'm saying, And would be would love for
Speaker 4: you to do to do that as basically a starter
Speaker 4: for this interview, and you know.
Speaker 2: I could.
Speaker 4: I could split it with you, yes, because you're you're
Speaker 4: getting stuff that people really want to hear from us
Speaker 4: because they haven't and you are getting it. So that
Speaker 4: actually would cut the chase through me writing, which I
Speaker 4: was gonna do anyway. And since it is audible, you
Speaker 4: already have it, Mike, So I would definitely give you
Speaker 4: the pronounce. So I mean to make it. We can
Speaker 4: deal with it, and you know, I give you my
Speaker 4: numbers and stuff and well, yeah we're family now. Yeah,
Speaker 4: to make it an audible book.
Speaker 2: So try what what what's next for the down the
Speaker 2: pike for you.
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 7: Just uh continuing to create. I've been doing a lot
Speaker 7: of artists develop.
Speaker 5: One of the recent things I did was this boy
Speaker 5: band called why Don't We who just signed the Atlantic
Speaker 5: Records last summer, developed them all last year and just
Speaker 5: kind of you know, I think it's just one of
Speaker 5: the things I picked up from being around it because
Speaker 5: it was real like as you you know, just heard
Speaker 5: a lot of development going on and to to kind
Speaker 5: of create this uh legacy. It wasn't just like you know,
Speaker 5: throwing stuff against the wall, see was stick. It was
Speaker 5: like work, real work, real work.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I've seen what he could do and heard his
Speaker 4: shows and share things with me, and I give him
Speaker 4: the best advice of you know that I can. And
Speaker 4: we haven't even begun because I still have some teachings.
Speaker 4: I told him, you know, I want to just layer
Speaker 4: it on him that I've learned from Quincy and Bruce,
Speaker 4: and we haven't begun that we're going to start that
Speaker 4: today or tomorrow. Wow, Like I just let him grow
Speaker 4: and I tell him, you know, we'd work on projects together.
Speaker 7: Yeah, actually did a I did a record.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 5: This is one of the early records I wrote with
Speaker 5: Solange for Kelly Rowland's first album, simply Deepest Joint called Obsession,
Speaker 5: and uh my dad came and play guitar on it.
Speaker 4: It's fun Yeah, but I'll do that and I do
Speaker 4: nothing else for somebody else.
Speaker 2: It could be bigger.
Speaker 5: It's funny because he like it's crazy, like he actually
Speaker 5: like it's true, like they got this especially like with
Speaker 5: a lot of the old school cats.
Speaker 7: It's just this camaraderie that's just like unrivaled.
Speaker 5: Like I remember when you know, even though I've known
Speaker 5: you know, the Knowles and you know all them like
Speaker 5: for some time now, and work quite a bit with Solange,
Speaker 5: like I never really you know.
Speaker 7: Obviously, Beyonce is like a huge star.
Speaker 5: I remember one time one morning, like met her in
Speaker 5: passing one morning, Like I get this call from the
Speaker 5: eight three to two number, and I'm like, what you
Speaker 5: know whatever before three o'clock in the afternoon, the hell
Speaker 5: must speak to Troy, Like who is this this is B.
Speaker 5: Who the hell is B Beyoncey? What's what's going on?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: You know, and she it was crazy, she was that
Speaker 4: just before you knew we were almost possibly related.
Speaker 2: On my mom's side.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so she she wanted to uh, this was for
Speaker 5: her first solo album. She needed to do to clear sugar. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: no one could get in touch with like, no one
Speaker 5: knew where the hell he was, but they.
Speaker 7: Knew that that you know, got yeah, you know, and
Speaker 7: I was like, okay, cool, Like, well is this your number?
Speaker 7: Can I call you?
Speaker 2: Could we work?
Speaker 7: Mission was already accomplished.
Speaker 2: Done. You talked to her on the phone. You did
Speaker 2: more than most. Well, we would like to think y'all
Speaker 2: coming on the show man.
Speaker 7: Thanks education given us the time, Thank you for having.
Speaker 2: Thank you for coming so much. No, thank you both,
Speaker 2: Thank you both. So on behalf. Oh wait, I think
Speaker 2: we should also play the initial Dibaco come so far. Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: we might as well. Go ahead. We're going to fade
Speaker 2: out on the original Dibacco Roll call for you, roll
Speaker 2: call stands out there anyway on Behalf of the team,
Speaker 2: Supreme Fan take a little unpaid Bill Boss, Bill Sugar,
Speaker 2: Steve or the Sugar Steve Network CEO and his own
Speaker 2: brother Sugar Steve appears courtesy of the Sugar and like, yeah,
Speaker 2: oh wait, you know what I didn't tell Wait? Can
Speaker 2: you hold up the cover real quick? Yeah? I always
Speaker 2: share a quest love childhood punishment. So usually as a kid,
Speaker 2: each year I picked a designated album cover. Right, but
Speaker 2: I'm just wanted to show. I want to just show you.
Speaker 2: All right, ladies, gentlemen, go google right on time for
Speaker 2: the Brothers of Johnson album covering. So each year I
Speaker 2: would nat an album covered that I would emulate for
Speaker 2: every picture taken of me, you know, like I was
Speaker 2: in seventy four it was all the Chris Jasper poses
Speaker 2: from Living Up that was my thing. Or seventy eight
Speaker 2: was me making a Tommy DeBarge face from the Switch album.
Speaker 2: So seventy seven I decided, okay, all airborne jumping shots
Speaker 2: holding various pieces of furniture because I didn't have a
Speaker 2: base in seventy seven and somehow at my father's rehearsal,
Speaker 2: I saw my father's bass players base there and I thought,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do what Louis Johnson does. So I grabbed
Speaker 2: the bass, I jumped and I dropped the bass nice
Speaker 2: and it was Tito Jackson time wait Joe Jackson. Anyway,
Speaker 2: ladies and gentlemen, I'll see you later. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: This has been quest up Supreme only on Pandora. We'll
Speaker 2: see you. Let me add this too.
Speaker 4: The album cover was shot out in the desert and
Speaker 4: it was around the time where the UFO start. Oh
Speaker 4: you know, the UFO era for us in the seventies
Speaker 4: was highlighted a lot. And that guitar right now is
Speaker 4: currently hanging a glass case in Troy's studio in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy one, one Stelly Fender stratocast.
Speaker 2: Wow. Great, now we know who to rob. Thank you.
Speaker 7: If it comes up, it is locked though.
Speaker 2: Well, see you, ladies and gentlemen. We'll see you on
Speaker 2: the next go round.
Speaker 10: Suprema Supremo, Roll Call, Suprema Supremo, roll Call, Suprema Sun Supremo,
Speaker 10: Roll Call, Suprema Sound Supremo.
Speaker 6: Roll Call, Get on the ball, Yeah, get on the case, Yeah,
Speaker 6: get the funk, Yeah, Supreme Supremo.
Speaker 2: Rose my name is Prante.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm in the mix with thunder Thumbs Yeah and
Speaker 8: Lightning Licks.
Speaker 2: Are you? Are you? Roll car Suprema Supreme roll best
Speaker 2: arrest my case. Yeah, if you don't agree with the
Speaker 2: boss Bill, Yeah, get the funk out of my face.
Speaker 3: Spre Supreme Supreme Road. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah it's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: George Johnson is here. Yeah, I'll be good to you.
Speaker 3: Roll Suprema shut Supreme, roll call Supreme SUPREMEO.
Speaker 2: Roll call this sugar.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The reason I write the ship ahead of time
Speaker 3: because I can't improvise. Fuck you again, Supreme roll Call
Speaker 3: Supremo Role.
Speaker 4: My name is Yea Troy.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we both like to talk, So hit us up tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Supreme Supreme roll Yeah, Supreme so Supreme roll call sup.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, I know this is a b we
Speaker 2: gott to redo it.
Speaker 3: We got to.
Speaker 2: What's Love?
Speaker 1: Supreme is a production iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced
Speaker 1: by the team at Pandora. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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