Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: My name is Quest Love and this is QLs classic
Speaker 2: and we go back with our how Randy Jackson, you know,
Speaker 2: not American idol Randy Jackson, but the original.
Speaker 3: Randy Jackson of the Jackson five of the Jacksons. Yes,
Speaker 3: the youngest Jackson, well next to Janet. You know, we
Speaker 3: get into it. We talk a lot about his career,
Speaker 3: him joining his brothers at such a young age, his
Speaker 3: life as a producer and as a songwriter, the memories
Speaker 3: of the family.
Speaker 1: So this is all the way from.
Speaker 3: Halloween, October thirty first, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Randy Jackson Quest.
Speaker 4: Loves Supreme, Suprema son, so supreme role called supreme son
Speaker 4: son supremea role called subdremer some suprema role called supreme son,
Speaker 4: so SUPREMEA.
Speaker 5: My name is Questlove. This is my show. I cannot
Speaker 5: think of a rhyme scheme.
Speaker 1: To go with.
Speaker 4: Supremer suprema role called Suprema son, Suprema role.
Speaker 1: Car her name is Sugar. Yeah, I love to dance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh ship right, just give me that one more chance.
Speaker 4: Son Son Supremo.
Speaker 1: Role called Supreme Son something Supreme role came.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Rome Supreme Supreme to your mind subprime
Speaker 4: roll call.
Speaker 6: My name is Randy. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Yeah,
Speaker 6: folks and Hendrix. Yeah, We're gonna have a party.
Speaker 4: Ro call Supreme Son Sun SUPREMEA roll call Supreme Suprema,
Speaker 4: roll call Supreme SUPREMEA roll call.
Speaker 1: Sun Suppreme Mo roll call Damn he lives. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Q TIP should be a stand to himself, Randy de Sondam.
Speaker 5: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to UH. I always say it's
Speaker 5: a special. Every every episode is a special. QLs.
Speaker 1: Once again, I call you all anemic Supreme. Shout out.
Speaker 5: No, but y'all here, you know, shout out to UH
Speaker 5: fan Ticicolo and his countertops, his countertops and you know
Speaker 5: I'm being Bill's is like living on Sesame Street now right, So.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't you shout out to people who are actually here? Yes?
Speaker 2: Here?
Speaker 5: Okay, hello, light Yeah, you two. We got Sugar Steve
Speaker 5: and your network and UH boss Bill. Yeah all right, So,
Speaker 5: ladies and gentlemen, I.
Speaker 1: Interest for us. By the way, you guys always do this.
Speaker 1: Here's these two schmuts. Yeah, it depends, it depends, it depends. Uh.
Speaker 5: We we travel all over to various studios, but you know,
Speaker 5: Electric Ladies like our home home. Oh yeah, I should
Speaker 5: let you guys know that we're here at Electric Lady Studios,
Speaker 5: House of Hendricks, House of Whodoo, House of Wonder and
Speaker 5: Roy Airs. And I didn't even until I walked in
Speaker 5: the until yeah so and shout out to Electric Lady
Speaker 5: for finally pulling the roots record up.
Speaker 1: I kind of forgot that, you know, I didn't know
Speaker 1: if they knew that I recorded here as well.
Speaker 5: So anyway, ladies and gentlemen, I'll say that I've you know,
Speaker 5: I've mean many a brew haha over the musical influences
Speaker 5: of my childhood, you know, like Stevievis and Prints that,
Speaker 5: and Dyla This and Michael This and Quincy Vet and
Speaker 5: Steve Rohn whatever. But I'll say that in prepping for
Speaker 5: this episode, I slowly kind of realized that our guest
Speaker 5: today is probably more influential to me personally than I
Speaker 5: give them credit for. And you know, basically because of
Speaker 5: the timing and the influence of what we know as
Speaker 5: the Jackson five of the Jacksons was absolutely inescapable in
Speaker 5: the seventies if you were growing up black in the seventies,
Speaker 5: and they were pretty much more than entertainers or even superheroes.
Speaker 5: They were damn near like an occupation because I probably
Speaker 5: asked more times as a kid, you want to be
Speaker 5: a little Randy Jackson when you grow up, So you know,
Speaker 5: Randy Jackson to me was more an occupation than an
Speaker 5: actual personality. And I guess that sort of planned to seed.
Speaker 5: And I'll say that you know his influence all my life.
Speaker 5: I'll share stories of his influence on my life throughout
Speaker 5: the show. Stories for me, wanted to be a percussionist
Speaker 5: to various punishments I received as a child.
Speaker 1: In the name of trying to stunt like Randy Jackson.
Speaker 5: Anyway, even on the low of me joining the Rock
Speaker 5: and Roll Hall of Fame Committee to right the wrong
Speaker 5: of his omission in that institution, I personally believe he
Speaker 5: should be alongside his five brothers in the Rock and
Speaker 5: Roll Hall of Fame. And I'm actually trying like hell
Speaker 5: to make that happen and to write that wrong, because
Speaker 5: in my opinion, it was his contributions that was key
Speaker 5: to taking them, you know, to adults and us taking
Speaker 5: them seriously. This is I feel like it's like a.
Speaker 1: Memorial my father. He's like snoring. Anyway, I'm just saying welcome.
Speaker 1: We want to welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Singer, percussionist, producer, arranger, superhero and I'm putting out their
Speaker 5: future Hall of Famer Stephen Randall Jackson to.
Speaker 1: Quest Lip Supreme.
Speaker 6: Thank you think you think of anything?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, the show's over, so thank you. How
Speaker 1: how are you today, I'm good.
Speaker 6: I'm good. I just got in uh last night from England.
Speaker 6: I'm good. What part of London are you living in?
Speaker 6: Central Belgravey Central? I can walk everywhere. It's to walk, yeah,
Speaker 6: I uh.
Speaker 5: Shortly before, at the beginning of the Roots career, we
Speaker 5: actually we quote speaking of hendricks we pulled a hendricks
Speaker 5: By I'll say, creatively, exiling to London and living there
Speaker 5: for about I loved it because I mean, at least
Speaker 5: in ninety four, you know, we we felt like there
Speaker 5: was a space for us creatively as a band, because
Speaker 5: you know, the idea of a band was becoming extinct
Speaker 5: in the United States, and you know, so we lived
Speaker 5: in Kennistown, in the northern part of London, like in
Speaker 5: the Canadam market, right, yeah, for like five years. But
Speaker 5: how long have you been living in there? I mean
Speaker 5: we kept our flat there from like ninety three. We
Speaker 5: needed an apartment there, so that way it wouldn't be expensive,
Speaker 5: like to go to Switzerland, come.
Speaker 1: Back to Philly and come back to Philly. Yeah. If
Speaker 1: we had a hub over in Europe, then we could
Speaker 1: just stay in Europe and work over there.
Speaker 6: It's about three years now. Yeah, man, yeah, you know,
Speaker 6: it's interesting when you're there. They asked us. Had a
Speaker 6: great appreciation from me music in the history of music.
Speaker 6: It's like that's all I love about Lendon. It's like
Speaker 6: they love music, jazz.
Speaker 1: Ronnie Scott's yeah, oh yeah Scott. Yeah.
Speaker 6: And then like every weekend.
Speaker 5: Damn Square in Leicester Square and yeah Ronnie Scott's, man,
Speaker 5: what is is that a jazz club? It's a jazz club.
Speaker 5: I think I last saw when did like two weeks there. Uh,
Speaker 5: and I was, well, I saw these four of those shows,
Speaker 5: and I was kind of amazed at the fact that
Speaker 5: he was just going off the cup for each show.
Speaker 5: So for him to be such anti Miles, you know,
Speaker 5: I was shocked that he kept it spontaneous.
Speaker 1: So, so you you like it over there? I do.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 6: You know, I like the music scene. It's something different,
Speaker 6: you know, it's nice, cool cool. Yeah, and they love
Speaker 6: American music of course, you know it's it's no secret,
Speaker 6: but it's nice cool.
Speaker 5: I'll see, So I will say that, uh you of
Speaker 5: course you're you're in New York right now, yes, because
Speaker 5: I am. You're you're kind of the helm of your
Speaker 5: or partnering with your sister.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm yeah, I'm here in New York and Bay Area, LA.
Speaker 6: So I'm traveling between like four places all the time.
Speaker 5: Oh, you got helps all over the place. That's the dream,
Speaker 5: that's the absolute dream. So I want to start from
Speaker 5: the beginning. So what were your earliest memories of growing up?
Speaker 5: And I assume that you were born in Gary and yeah,
Speaker 5: I was, I was fella.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, what was really? We used to go up
Speaker 6: to South Bend. I got all the bitch folks up there.
Speaker 1: You were.
Speaker 6: We were poor, So you go from South Bend. So
Speaker 6: I wish I had that car. You know, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 6: that's my car.
Speaker 1: Everyone plays that's my car.
Speaker 6: That's right, everybody plays that.
Speaker 1: So what were your earliest memories of what you were
Speaker 1: growing up in.
Speaker 6: But Gary was an interesting place because it's like growing
Speaker 6: up there's like gang violence and it's pretty serious, pretty bad.
Speaker 6: But we had a father who was like, the gangs
Speaker 6: were scared of our father, Like, those are Joe's boys,
Speaker 6: you know, their daddy crazy, don't mess with them. It
Speaker 6: was like, so you know, he he did his best
Speaker 6: to keep us out of the streets, right. So you know,
Speaker 6: we were just in the house playing instruments. But Gary
Speaker 6: was a great experience. It's a home is always home. Actually,
Speaker 6: I've been spending a lot of time there lately, so
Speaker 6: it's nice Yoh yeah, in fact, I'm going back on
Speaker 6: after year.
Speaker 1: Wait what home?
Speaker 6: Back to Gary? So you guys, you're still on the
Speaker 6: home there. That's twenty three hundred Jackson. That's six hundred
Speaker 6: and fifty Squire House. We still have it. Really, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Is it a museum piece now or is it just
Speaker 1: like is it open for the public to see you?
Speaker 6: Yeah, they want to make a museum, mane, But we
Speaker 6: just want to make it for people to see, but
Speaker 6: keep it home. Like this room is much the house
Speaker 6: can fit in this room.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So we had two bedrooms. My parents slept in
Speaker 6: the master bedroom, and Mean Marlon Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Michael Jackie,
Speaker 6: we slept in the other bedroom. In the Toya Ribi
Speaker 6: and Janet slept on the so for in a living room.
Speaker 6: Mean Marlin and Michael slept in the middle bunk. Jackie
Speaker 6: had the bottom bunk by himself and Tito had the
Speaker 6: top top. Tito and jermainicas have I slept in between
Speaker 6: Michael and marnin they both would pee on me.
Speaker 1: Like it was gross. It was it was gross, you know,
Speaker 1: but uh littally sounded like a wou teen childhood.
Speaker 5: Yeah, hey man, wow, hold up, I see got a
Speaker 5: living Hey, so it's it's for me, like I know
Speaker 5: that you were, I mean assuming that the idea of
Speaker 5: the Jackson five started in sixty five. You're sixty one,
Speaker 5: sixty I was born in sixty one, all right, so
Speaker 5: you were four?
Speaker 1: Yeah when they started, did you feel like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is me too?
Speaker 6: Or was it like it's funny my brothers started. Yeah,
Speaker 6: like sixty five, and I remember when I went you
Speaker 6: back became like a hit. They had a local hit,
Speaker 6: a big boy. Yeah, you know it was hit Chicago hit.
Speaker 6: It some other places. But when I went you back
Speaker 6: became a hit. I was stelling Gary and uh my
Speaker 6: mother came to the room and woke me up. Just
Speaker 6: listen to this was on the radio. I'm like, is
Speaker 6: that them? Because yes, we ought to sight and we
Speaker 6: were going out to La. A few days later we
Speaker 6: went to La. It was like culture shock. Man, I'd
Speaker 6: seen I had never seen like homes in the hills.
Speaker 1: That's what I was flat, Like, what was it like
Speaker 1: for you to it was?
Speaker 6: It was? It was overwhelming, like and I was like
Speaker 6: my eyes were I mean, I don't know what the
Speaker 6: thing was it was. It was scary in a way
Speaker 6: because all the things I had seen on the view master.
Speaker 1: Wow, the view master.
Speaker 6: Yea, so all the things I looked at them right right,
Speaker 6: So all the things I seen on the view master
Speaker 6: at home, dreaming one day I'm gonna go here. Maybe
Speaker 6: now I'm seeing it in person and these big homes
Speaker 6: and Disneyland and you know the one thing that was
Speaker 6: really freaked me out with school buses. Really, I'm from
Speaker 6: We walked in school and I was eight years old
Speaker 6: walking to school and Snow taller than me, you know,
Speaker 6: but but right, but school bus is coming to pick
Speaker 6: you up in front of your house. I was like, what,
Speaker 6: this is great, this is awesome. But it was a
Speaker 6: great experience. Man, it was like changed me up a lot.
Speaker 1: When did you move? When did you officially move? Della?
Speaker 6: It was nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, so you were ten years old?
Speaker 6: Ten years old? Yeah, it's ten.
Speaker 5: So I know about the first concert with Well, first
Speaker 5: of all, how did you finally convince.
Speaker 6: Your family like, okay, begetting the music thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, to get.
Speaker 6: They weren't with it because at the time of the
Speaker 6: true story and some people might not want to hear
Speaker 6: the story. But my dad always wanted me to be
Speaker 6: in the band. But I think Motown thought that add
Speaker 6: a six brother it would confuse everybody. So we're gonna
Speaker 6: see Jackson six. It's just confused. So I said, okay,
Speaker 6: I got to figure out I'd get my way into this.
Speaker 6: So I started just playing everything I could. Like in
Speaker 6: our house in La we had a recording studio that
Speaker 6: had like this place had drums, guitars, piano, So I
Speaker 6: would go around the room. I would come home from school,
Speaker 6: do my homework. I'd be in the studio until I
Speaker 6: went to bed, my brother's be touring whatever. But that
Speaker 6: was my every day. But I didn't know that I
Speaker 6: was developing skills at the time that would you know,
Speaker 6: you know, pay off for me later. But I was
Speaker 6: at home playing the piano. Then I turned on the
Speaker 6: board and started making songs and tracks and playing all
Speaker 6: the parts on the tracks, and playing the guitar part
Speaker 6: and playing the bass part. And then I paid a
Speaker 6: little trumpet and I try to do everything. So as
Speaker 6: time went on, things got a little bit better, a
Speaker 6: little bit better.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 6: We went to CBS Records where we were where we
Speaker 6: started writing our own songs. So by that time, my writing,
Speaker 6: that's what came through. But I meant for the appearance
Speaker 6: where you came out to do ah, I think a
Speaker 6: brand new thing or what happened was yeah, So what
Speaker 6: happened even before I was officially a part of the band,
Speaker 6: I had sang on songs like a dance machine get
Speaker 6: it Together. I was singing on all the songs. So
Speaker 6: I would go in the students sing on the songs,
Speaker 6: but they wouldn't put my face on the album because
Speaker 6: it was just confusing.
Speaker 1: It's rather so yeah, So I was already.
Speaker 6: Involved in singing and touring, yeah, and touring for years,
Speaker 6: playing percussion touring, but I wasn't officially involved because the
Speaker 6: sixth brother was going to be confusingly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, so at the time when you guys were performing,
Speaker 5: it was still Ronnie on keyboards and John Johnny so
Speaker 5: that was definitely your brother Jermaine on bass.
Speaker 6: And yeah yeah yeah yo he Jamaine Jamaine Jamainic can play. Yo.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, like on that Indiana concert, Uh,
Speaker 1: you can play. Yeah. He was kind of killing on
Speaker 1: some James Jamison.
Speaker 5: So yeah, So at least back then as far as
Speaker 5: because I want to compare or at least.
Speaker 1: Find out the difference between.
Speaker 5: Touring life in seventy two, seventy three, seventy four versus
Speaker 5: ten years later the Victory Tour, which I'm sure as
Speaker 5: like apples and oranges, but at least for back then, Uh,
Speaker 5: Like I'm noticing that, uh, your brother's microphones sometimes it'd
Speaker 5: be two or three of them taped together. As far
Speaker 5: as technology is concerned, how were what would the could
Speaker 5: you recall back then with like what the what the
Speaker 5: as far as the the placement of speakers and all
Speaker 5: those things.
Speaker 6: Like that's that's a good question in terms of recording, well.
Speaker 5: Not recording, just live because I know that the standard
Speaker 5: for the standard for what what back line is today
Speaker 5: versus back then. And you guys were playing stadiums, Like
Speaker 5: if I was in the nosebleed, could I physically hear
Speaker 5: what you guys were doing or it was just just
Speaker 5: there to see physically what But back then, you know,
Speaker 5: we didn't have like pro tools or technology and things
Speaker 5: like that, so yeah, monitors or any of them. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so everything was like real time, hands on, like as
Speaker 5: you see it. And I remember like.
Speaker 6: Choco was doing our sound. But we had our guy
Speaker 6: named uh name Rusty Okay, that song guy back then
Speaker 6: we use the same guy from Texas and be tour.
Speaker 6: He was he was amazing. He's just he just had
Speaker 6: a nice touching me. And during the show, I would somehow,
Speaker 6: you know, figure out how to go out out in
Speaker 6: the audience and in the disguise because I had to
Speaker 6: hear the sound like what. Yeah, Like I'm the one,
Speaker 6: I like my brothers, I'm the one who like pays
Speaker 6: attention to all that stuff. It's like some of your
Speaker 6: technically Yeah, I'm like I'm at every sound check I mean,
Speaker 6: I got to hear the sound. It's got to sound right.
Speaker 6: So I would sneak out there and hear a sound,
Speaker 6: you know, doing a break and somebody's doing the solo.
Speaker 6: I mean, like check it out.
Speaker 1: We need the drums, you know.
Speaker 6: So because you got a song. Even though we listened
Speaker 6: to tapes afterwards, it's still not the same because the
Speaker 6: tapes are just direct, but you're not hearing the way
Speaker 6: it sounds out there. But you know, in those days,
Speaker 6: I think there was a a naturalness to it because
Speaker 6: of the the analog and just everything in real time
Speaker 6: that's missing today. You know, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 6: It's missing today, and that those things that a little
Speaker 6: bit out of sync or made a little bit of
Speaker 6: flat all ads to making it sound great. It's all
Speaker 6: part of the great. And you know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 6: it's like it makes it human. It gives it a
Speaker 6: human element that's missing today. Everything's kind of too perfect
Speaker 6: in a sense, and I feel that music loses its
Speaker 6: dynamics now today. Sometimes I can put on a song
Speaker 6: today and I can't tell if it's the beginning, middle
Speaker 6: of the end, because it sounds the same straight through.
Speaker 6: But in those days, you can tell what the beginning
Speaker 6: of the middle of the end buss because it had
Speaker 6: Beene dynamics and sometimes the temple would change from the
Speaker 6: beginning of the song to the end song. Even that
Speaker 6: was kind of a cool thing, you know.
Speaker 1: Fluctuation. Yeah, it breathes, yes too.
Speaker 5: I'll say that, at least for you guys. In my eyes,
Speaker 5: you guys are like the first people to really benefit
Speaker 5: the post civil rights era glory or the post dream
Speaker 5: of what Martin was talking about, as far as like
Speaker 5: you arriving in la and being of age and really
Speaker 5: just benefiting, not saying that you guys haven't gone through
Speaker 5: what most of Black America goes through in life. If anything,
Speaker 5: you probably have business stories of double standards, and we'll
Speaker 5: get into that, but.
Speaker 1: Just on the.
Speaker 5: Just on the offset of of of what was it
Speaker 5: like to I mean, I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 5: say black Beatlemania, but just the idea of, yeah, what
Speaker 5: was that actually like to be in a situation where
Speaker 5: you're pretty much having to run for your life, run
Speaker 5: every day?
Speaker 1: And was it just like one Bill Braid trying to
Speaker 1: protect the six of you guys or what?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was at one time and you know, it's
Speaker 6: like it was interesting because I mean, yeah, it was
Speaker 6: literally running for your life.
Speaker 1: There was a few.
Speaker 6: Times we were actually really scared and we got pretty dangerous.
Speaker 6: I mean, in those days, we could never finish a
Speaker 6: full show because they would actually rush the stage and
Speaker 6: the stage would actually collapsed because all of the pressure
Speaker 6: and the weight against the stage, it would fall. So
Speaker 6: we Bill would be on the stage looking at the stage,
Speaker 6: and we'd be looking at him. He's had his he'd
Speaker 6: have his hand up, a signal, a signal. As soon
Speaker 6: as he put his hand down, and he's dropped your
Speaker 6: instrument to run. He's watching, he's watching, and we're still playing.
Speaker 6: We're looking at him. As soon as he goes like this,
Speaker 6: it means go because the stage is clapping, fans are
Speaker 6: rushing stage, and we got to get out of.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 5: I'm just you know, did you guys actually invent like
Speaker 5: the idea of entourages and because I mean, there's no
Speaker 5: one parallel to that in black music at least, like
Speaker 5: you know, I don't see girls chasing Parliament Funkadelic that
Speaker 5: way or yeah, exactly, so.
Speaker 1: Just the.
Speaker 5: Just a trial, I mean, things that we take advantage
Speaker 5: of now you know. I mean, I'm explaining to people
Speaker 5: what the idea of a greeter at the airport means,
Speaker 5: or a back durance or that sort of thing. But
Speaker 5: you guys have to kind of find out the hard way.
Speaker 5: And I'm certain that there weren't five star hotels at
Speaker 5: the beginning, so.
Speaker 6: Ends and the Hilton's, and Hilton was the five star, right,
Speaker 6: but a lot of Ramona ends.
Speaker 5: And did it ever get tired of? Did it ever
Speaker 5: get tired? Like were you at one point? Were you
Speaker 5: just over it? Like Okay, this is not fun anymore?
Speaker 5: Like where's my wallet? Or someone broke my room again?
Speaker 6: You know, we had touring. It's like, you know, you
Speaker 6: have fun on tours, like everybody becomes one family. It's
Speaker 6: a lot of jokes, a lot of laughing. You make
Speaker 6: it fun. And right around the middle of the tour
Speaker 6: you can get a little stale. Then towards the end
Speaker 6: it starts getting fun. Everybody knows getting going home, but
Speaker 6: it starts getting fun. But man, it's it's a lot
Speaker 6: of fun. Was it more of the grasses green? On
Speaker 6: the other side though, Like I wish I was home
Speaker 6: playing with my car collection on my court, and you
Speaker 6: probably had rule like a tyco he probably had. Like yeah,
Speaker 6: so I mean was it more like, ah, man, we
Speaker 6: could to spend what places? Didn't you like to travel?
Speaker 5: Like even now I'm starting to appreciate Europe, but in
Speaker 5: the midst of it, like I couldn't stand, like we
Speaker 5: got to do three months in Europe and.
Speaker 1: I hate this really well.
Speaker 5: I mean, first of all, like you know, we I'll say,
Speaker 5: the roots were at least like the money wasn't rolling
Speaker 5: in for the first ten years. So for me, Europe
Speaker 5: was just like the worst hotels and living off of
Speaker 5: this you know, twenty four hour McDonald's and back line
Speaker 5: like that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But for you it was like you enjoyed it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean there are some places that we didn't
Speaker 6: like going to too much, you know, you know, not
Speaker 6: because based on the crowd. Like yeah, not because of
Speaker 6: the crowd. I mean once we hit the stage and
Speaker 6: and the people and the fans were there, it was
Speaker 6: all love. But some of these racist towns it was
Speaker 6: pretty roughs experienced that even as the Jackson fine walking
Speaker 6: down the street, where was I and this guy was
Speaker 6: able to laune a watermelon at me? Was able laughing
Speaker 6: and man walking down the street in South Carolina or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Oh for real, Yeah, keep me in the back of
Speaker 6: the head with it. Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 6: It was rough some places.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 6: We're always get threats from the from the KKK all
Speaker 6: the time.
Speaker 1: Seriously, Yes, this is the stuff we never heard of.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, there'd be threats a few times. I had
Speaker 6: to walk on stage with a bulletproof vest Yeah what
Speaker 6: underneath my custom I had a bulletproof vesta.
Speaker 5: Threats Triumph era, Destiny era era Yeah seriously yeah, yeah, Yo,
Speaker 5: Victory Tour, we had a we had a really bad threat.
Speaker 6: The FBI came out. They they were in the trees.
Speaker 6: We had a feat there was bombs. It was some
Speaker 6: hate organizations and uh and that was the first one
Speaker 6: on stage and victortorre I had that whole thing on. Yeah,
Speaker 6: the armor, yeah, and then the bulletproof vest on into that,
Speaker 6: and I was like, it's crazy. Seriously, we did the show.
Speaker 6: We didn't stop y'all.
Speaker 1: Never let that out.
Speaker 6: No, that's crazy because we didn't know. You let that out,
Speaker 6: you may get more people copycats. So we're going to
Speaker 6: keep this quiet.
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine, like the Jackson's in the era
Speaker 1: of social media, Like if that were a thing, it
Speaker 1: would have been they were social media. There's one particular.
Speaker 5: Show that I see a lot of, or at least
Speaker 5: like small shots of, but there's no clips of what
Speaker 5: was the experience of. Do you remember anything about you
Speaker 5: guys's trip to Jamaica?
Speaker 1: Yes, because I see that photo of you guys hanging
Speaker 1: with Bob Marley and that's all I see.
Speaker 6: But what was Yeah, we went to his house and
Speaker 6: stay there before he passed away, and I remember it
Speaker 6: was cool. It was a cool experience. In fact, they
Speaker 6: did the documentary and when there's one part of the
Speaker 6: really yeah, the most recent one I think has came out.
Speaker 1: But so you guys were hip to who he was
Speaker 1: because I feel like.
Speaker 6: He was nice. He was He invited us over.
Speaker 1: We we uh we did.
Speaker 6: We did a show there Jamaica, some shows there. He
Speaker 6: invited us over and we had a good time. It
Speaker 6: was cool.
Speaker 5: There's the period that I particularly enjoyed, and I'm sure
Speaker 5: a lot of it has to do with like my
Speaker 5: age and finally seeing you guys, which you know, I've
Speaker 5: read various brothers like either roll their eyes at the
Speaker 5: period or whatever. But for me, like you know, uh,
Speaker 5: the Variety Show era Jackson's, the Vegas era Jackson's, Like,
Speaker 5: I particularly like that stuff because it's well.
Speaker 6: What people don't know about those things, like even the
Speaker 6: Vegas stuff even excuse me, and even the Variety Show.
Speaker 6: We that show was really successful. Yeah, but we we
Speaker 6: limited to just ten shows and we didn't want to
Speaker 6: do any more than that. And the same thing with Vegas.
Speaker 6: We don't want to go back to Vegas because we
Speaker 6: wanted to do more music. We wanted to make it
Speaker 6: more musical, not just like for us, it wasn't just
Speaker 6: about going to Vegas, you know, doing the show and
Speaker 6: making good money. We wanted to keep your musical at
Speaker 6: the time. We went to going to the studio, make
Speaker 6: more albums, record and take it to our next level.
Speaker 5: But your brother said that, you know, to do Vegas
Speaker 5: or at least to do the Variety Show was more
Speaker 5: like old hat.
Speaker 6: And yeah, we didn't. We only did ten ten shows.
Speaker 5: So even in doing the show, it was sort of
Speaker 5: like this is corny, like we rather we enjoyed it,
Speaker 5: but we didn't want that to be our brand.
Speaker 6: We didn't want to be rep you know, variety Show. No,
Speaker 6: we said we want to make great albums, perform in
Speaker 6: some large stadiums, and make people happy.
Speaker 5: So by the mid seventies especially, we know that you guys,
Speaker 5: uh exit it for Motown in seventy five, and part
Speaker 5: of the reason was that, you know, you wanted your
Speaker 5: independence and.
Speaker 1: Doing production and writing.
Speaker 5: How like, how frustrating was it to watch Marvin and
Speaker 5: especially Stevie, who was at the apex of his you know,
Speaker 5: of the peak of his powers by that period, for
Speaker 5: you guys not to be able to get the trust
Speaker 5: to do the same thing. And were you even developing
Speaker 5: songs where you play them songs like here this is Motown. Yeah, no,
Speaker 5: we weren't playing And so it was. It was still
Speaker 5: very new in the Motown days in the sense and
Speaker 5: we were all very young, and so the songs were
Speaker 5: written produced. But Stevie and Marvin they were like family.
Speaker 5: They would always be around at the house. Stevie is
Speaker 5: like a third cousin of our Did you know that?
Speaker 1: Oh? Literally?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Literally, yeah, I didn't know. A lot of people
Speaker 6: don't know that. I don't know. We never talked about.
Speaker 6: I was talking to him the other day. We were
Speaker 6: talking about nobody knows that to us, But he's related
Speaker 6: to us through our mother, so but it was like
Speaker 6: they're always around. It's like we're just kind of family.
Speaker 6: And and what greater experience can you have than to
Speaker 6: be playing basketball with Marvin then going to the studio
Speaker 6: and just just you know what I mean. So h
Speaker 6: I look at I look back at those days, and
Speaker 6: it's like, how could you not learn? You know, how
Speaker 6: could you not learn by being by such great, iconic,
Speaker 6: you know, musical people.
Speaker 5: So was it officially put to you that we want
Speaker 5: you officially in the group circa seventy five seventy six
Speaker 5: or was it just assumed like, okay, you now feel
Speaker 5: in the spot?
Speaker 6: And no, it was it was officially. I was already
Speaker 6: in the group, but it wasn't publicly right, okay exposed.
Speaker 6: It was when we left Motown. I think because of
Speaker 6: the writing and the songs I'd written that it became
Speaker 6: public And the first song on well, first we went,
Speaker 6: we did the Gamble and Hof stuff and that was
Speaker 6: another great experience with Kenny Gamble Leon How those guys
Speaker 6: are amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the first time I got to see you guys
Speaker 1: in person.
Speaker 5: Philly International was literally next door to my elementary school,
Speaker 5: so usually.
Speaker 1: During recess. Uh, I wouldn't.
Speaker 5: I've seen you guys maybe like once or twice run
Speaker 5: through Philly International. Yeah, there's on Broad Street three thirteen.
Speaker 5: A lot of times you'd see Pendergrass and his voice
Speaker 5: just yeah, yeah, yeah, posted out front and you're a girl,
Speaker 5: yeah yeah, and then it's like, oh, Teddy must be outside.
Speaker 5: But that was pretty much like my first second third
Speaker 5: grade experiences were just seeing that.
Speaker 1: I know that.
Speaker 5: I want to know what the songwriting process was like
Speaker 5: once you guys got your chance, because uh, I think
Speaker 5: on the first album you get, there's two songs, correct,
Speaker 5: there's blues Away and there is a style of life.
Speaker 1: I think the last song on Inside No no No,
Speaker 1: that's go in places.
Speaker 6: So you're talking about the first the first album, the album, yeah,
Speaker 6: blues Away and style.
Speaker 1: So you're going to epic where you guys sing.
Speaker 5: Initially to Ron and those guys like yo, we want
Speaker 5: to produce this entire album was just like a baby steps.
Speaker 5: I think we'll give you one of two songs and
Speaker 5: see what happens. But nowadays, like artists have a lot
Speaker 5: more freedom to do what they want, you know, right,
Speaker 5: you know, but in those days, it's all about developing
Speaker 5: artists and recordly it was actually spending money on developing artists.
Speaker 5: So you have to prove yourself as a writer. You
Speaker 5: could come in like they wouldn't let you come in
Speaker 5: and just write and produce and everything you did. So
Speaker 5: they I think they wanted to. They let us do
Speaker 5: two songs and see how that worked. That was like
Speaker 5: kind of a trial. So how many to get to
Speaker 5: those two songs? How many songs did you guys have
Speaker 5: to prepare through just to get to Okay, we like
Speaker 5: these two.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was it was for us writing. There's always
Speaker 6: been like I've never sat down and say, Okay, I
Speaker 6: need to write this song. It always just it's kind
Speaker 6: of a fun thing and it always comes out of fun. Okay,
Speaker 6: and this happens we always as brothers. We would always
Speaker 6: get in the room. That's funny becausehen we get in
Speaker 6: the room, like when we work in those songs, we
Speaker 6: get in the room for the first I would say
Speaker 6: two three days we just talked. It could be about anything.
Speaker 6: It could be about the Lakers, could it could be
Speaker 6: But we were also writing, were also developing because we
Speaker 6: hadn't seen each other while getting comfortable with each other,
Speaker 6: so that natural thing can come out, you know. So
Speaker 6: we talk all day, we played laugh, then we go
Speaker 6: play a little basketball, you know, and then we eat.
Speaker 6: Then we go home, never writing, never, never picked up instrument,
Speaker 6: do the same thing. Then about the third day, you know,
Speaker 6: we start writing. Okay, that sounds good. You know, let's
Speaker 6: do that.
Speaker 5: So as far as the division of labor is concerned,
Speaker 5: like are you at the piano or yeah? Do you
Speaker 5: your other brothers play instruments as well? You know, Jermaine plays,
Speaker 5: and that it always kind of starts with the piano.
Speaker 5: As music today, the rest things start with the piano.
Speaker 1: So I'm.
Speaker 6: I'm at the piano playing some some core progressions and
Speaker 6: structures and things and and creating some grooves and you know,
Speaker 6: maybe this brother at that, their brother at that, and
Speaker 6: it comes together.
Speaker 5: Okay, and then you presented the gamble on huff and
Speaker 5: then yeah, that sort of thing. So the transition that
Speaker 5: leads to the Destiny album, which is weird because I
Speaker 5: guess me as a kid, I didn't see whether or not,
Speaker 5: you know, if Going Places was a commercial disappointment or not.
Speaker 5: I mean, I liked that record, but again, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm six years old, so I don't know any better,
Speaker 5: But what was the what was your general feeling with
Speaker 5: going places that led to kind of the do or
Speaker 5: die perception of what Destiny represented for you guys.
Speaker 6: Well, Sony it was it was Bibby Colombia. What recall
Speaker 6: that Sony was like the anti guy.
Speaker 1: From Blood, Sweat and Tears by Columbia, but.
Speaker 6: You know the drummer, Yeah, and he and they he
Speaker 6: and CBS at the time, Sony CBS trusted us to
Speaker 6: write and produce our own album, Destiny.
Speaker 5: But what was the meeting that said, look, guys, we
Speaker 5: really have an album in us that we want to
Speaker 5: do ourselves without.
Speaker 6: Okay, well, we always wanted to do that, so we
Speaker 6: always felt that we were ready, but they didn't know.
Speaker 6: Said what you asking. We felt that we were ready,
Speaker 6: but they didn't know if we were ready. And after
Speaker 6: we had done the the the two albums with Gambling
Speaker 6: Huff and for the third album, we submitted these some
Speaker 6: songs and they liked all of them.
Speaker 5: So they're demos for all the songs that are on
Speaker 5: Destiny before. Yes, and was that the mosut operanti back then?
Speaker 5: Like you had to make a full scale demo before that?
Speaker 5: Even Yeah, can you imagine that, Steve, that's my life. Yes,
Speaker 5: I can't imagine it. Actually, I don't have to imagine it.
Speaker 6: And and and you know these are demos without computers
Speaker 6: and the full skulled demo.
Speaker 5: And so how full scale was the Ensino studio, which
Speaker 5: I assume that you guys did all of your was
Speaker 5: it just was it full scale enough for you to
Speaker 5: actually record there?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 6: Oh yes, absolutely. There was a drum booth. Everything was there,
Speaker 6: so we could do a full called demo. And so
Speaker 6: here we thinking they're gonna pick one or two tracks
Speaker 6: or whatever like that, but they like everything. They're like, wow,
Speaker 6: this is this is nice. So we were happy about
Speaker 6: that of course, and UH just grateful to have the
Speaker 6: opportunity to do it ourselves. And Bobby also uh and
Speaker 6: Akison also produced it with us.
Speaker 5: I recall, so, can you tell the story or or
Speaker 5: the genesis of how shake your Body that?
Speaker 1: Like from start to finish? How how that song got written?
Speaker 6: It's funny because.
Speaker 1: Like, like that.
Speaker 6: That groove was a grou that I played. I started
Speaker 6: playing the crew like thirteen or fourteen, So.
Speaker 1: You've had those those piano chords in your head.
Speaker 6: For the longest. The baseline. Mm hmm, you know the
Speaker 6: bass line. I was influenced by Teddy's.
Speaker 1: What did I tell you? You don't get that, don't
Speaker 1: get fun, get loose? All right? I told this a
Speaker 1: feeling games right, And he's like, I don't think so, but.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was in the baseline that I
Speaker 6: was influenced by the baseline.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like most songs are derivative of other ideas you hear, and.
Speaker 6: Yeah, just more because I was around Teddy and the
Speaker 6: whole Philadelphia International, it just came out that way and.
Speaker 1: Okay, shows over now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you're right.
Speaker 5: And only say that because, as as a watcher of
Speaker 5: what's happening, whenever Rerun would dance on that show, they
Speaker 5: would do and you know, like when when when people
Speaker 5: score and place music on on TV shows, of course
Speaker 5: they don't license the real song. They get somebody to
Speaker 5: do a sound alike of it, and their version of
Speaker 5: it was somewhere the thin line between Teddy's song and
Speaker 5: what would shake your body down to the ground. So
Speaker 5: whenever I think of Rerun dancing, I'm thinking of both songs.
Speaker 5: And I was like, I wonder if their experiences in
Speaker 5: Philly sort of.
Speaker 1: Brought that on. Yeah, I always said that shake was
Speaker 1: the sort of somewhere between got to Give it Up
Speaker 1: and and and Teddy's song. So the song is eight
Speaker 1: minutes and it's.
Speaker 5: It's it's linear and goes ahead without a bridge without yeah,
Speaker 5: but yet it works. So as far as structuring the
Speaker 5: song is concerned, how did you guys.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, and and that was wasn't it like
Speaker 6: the disco the dance era, everybody just want to dance,
Speaker 6: So we want to have that write one song. And
Speaker 6: it's funny because before we even before we even recorded
Speaker 6: that song, we knew that that would be the song
Speaker 6: from that album. You know, we knew it that that
Speaker 6: that would be the track. And it started with with
Speaker 6: a groove and and melody, but then we had Tom
Speaker 6: Tom eighty four, the all these great people just to
Speaker 6: add all these layers to to give it structure and.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, and.
Speaker 6: Just so it wasn't too repetitive and boring.
Speaker 5: To jump off that real quick because you just mentioned strings,
Speaker 5: How did you guys enlist Claire Fisher to do?
Speaker 6: Uh, push me away? That's interesting. We always like Claire's work.
Speaker 6: Were you a fan of ask Rufus? Yeah? A man
Speaker 6: you read everything about the credits.
Speaker 5: No, well, yeah, I mean I know Claire like where
Speaker 5: clear stands, So oh no, no stands stands meaning we're yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: shout out to eminem stand as in the Eminem terms.
Speaker 5: It's a nice way of saying fanatic word near stalker.
Speaker 5: But uh no any from that, ask rufus. Record means
Speaker 5: everything does, and thus you know that influenced Prince. That's
Speaker 5: why Prince used Claire on his record and stuff. So
Speaker 5: ask Rufus hearing that, yes, really yes, who was? So
Speaker 5: were you the one that who was who was the
Speaker 5: taste maker of the group, the one that listened to
Speaker 5: the most records? And you know you gotta check this out.
Speaker 5: We all do, we all did.
Speaker 1: What was your record collection? Like, nks for stealing my question,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry one question.
Speaker 6: But for us, it was just like our house was
Speaker 6: just musical.
Speaker 1: I mean it was.
Speaker 6: Not a record but we just always it was like
Speaker 6: we just liked music a lot. And my mom is
Speaker 6: like everybody was. We just we just loved music and
Speaker 6: it was part of life. It wasn't like, hey, it
Speaker 6: wasn't business to us. It was it was a life.
Speaker 6: It's a life. So with something good came out. I
Speaker 6: don't care what it was. We liked it, from country
Speaker 6: music to to R and B to rock, whatever it was.
Speaker 6: I mean, we liked and we appreciated it.
Speaker 1: So in general, now I got okay, goohd. In my family,
Speaker 1: it was always.
Speaker 6: I mean, I mean yeah, yeah, I mean Jackie was
Speaker 6: all green. Okay, everything our green, like he was like,
Speaker 6: I mean, he was like al green was it? So
Speaker 6: we always heard we had enough, we had a.
Speaker 1: Lot of our green. Wait was there just one stereo
Speaker 1: in the house. Yeah, and then see you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Marn's Morn's table and uh so Jackie was out
Speaker 6: all green. Michael was like Sylvan Croft, uh the motown stuff.
Speaker 6: And I was always like the grooves, Seals and Croft.
Speaker 6: Ye wait a second, go back.
Speaker 1: That was the first. That's the first name that came
Speaker 1: to mind. Yeah, I mean name cover.
Speaker 7: No, it's no summer Breeze, They're not okay, I'm sorry, yeah,
Speaker 7: it makes okay wow.
Speaker 6: And I always like more grooves. But because Michael and
Speaker 6: my room together, uh, he would always take authority over
Speaker 6: what music would be playing because I was younger than him, right,
Speaker 6: So so it was like Silsan Croft bread.
Speaker 7: Stuff like that. And rock, So I started to appreciate
Speaker 7: that stuff. Okay, what was it about, uh, seals and
Speaker 7: crofts and bread? It was like harmonies, that was.
Speaker 6: Harmonies and melodies. Wow Ah, in America, we all liked America. Okay,
Speaker 6: America was moody blues. I used to like, I like,
Speaker 6: I like moody blues growing up. Yeah. Yeah, and then
Speaker 6: I love Joni Mitchell. I was a kid in school.
Speaker 6: List the Summer Ones or which? Okay, so well that's
Speaker 6: one question I forgot. What is your what's your.
Speaker 5: Your Desert Island five albums like your go to even now,
Speaker 5: like you're.
Speaker 1: Hm hmm, that's such an unfair question. It's like like
Speaker 1: a week.
Speaker 6: Nowadays because music's yeah, it's overwhelming. It's because like, and
Speaker 6: I still listen to a lot of Monk, like Thelonious Monk.
Speaker 6: I'm just like, this is like a genius to me.
Speaker 6: And I mean sometimes I stay like three or four
Speaker 6: in the mornings just on YouTube just watching them because
Speaker 6: i mean, just he was doing something in the style
Speaker 6: of doing it with so unorthodox and with some rings
Speaker 6: on it, you know. So I'm like, I mean, I
Speaker 6: appreciate a lot of Stevie.
Speaker 5: Those albums, Monk's studio attitude to his engineer Teo is
Speaker 5: one of my favorite.
Speaker 1: Moving on Stevie Stevie. You're gonna tell him about Stevie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so that that that roads back there is actually
Speaker 5: Stevie's uh the Roads from Music of My Mind and
Speaker 5: Talking Book and was intervisions here as well. No, I
Speaker 5: think just two yeah, talking Book of musical Yeah, he
Speaker 5: recorded Musical my Mind and Talking Book here. Steve is
Speaker 5: all right for I'll say twenty years ago, we've been
Speaker 5: uh in the studio, starting with d'angelo's Voodoo album.
Speaker 1: So we will watch that. That the loone, this.
Speaker 5: Monk documentary where uh, Felonius would be at the piano,
Speaker 5: and then he tell Teo his his engineer, all right,
Speaker 5: play the tape back, and then t was like, I
Speaker 5: didn't record that. Then Tolio said, all right, I want
Speaker 5: to hear it, and he's like, no, I didn't record it.
Speaker 5: All right, just play it back for me. I didn't
Speaker 5: record it. So that's our relationship Teo and Felonious. Hey question, uh,
Speaker 5: I I don't know who I asked this, uh about
Speaker 5: the Doobie Brothers incident, but who was it? Doobies were
Speaker 5: always good. Doubies are good friends of ours.
Speaker 1: Michael, that's right, Michael was on the Okay, I forgot
Speaker 1: who's on the show.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I read no, no, no, what I was reading
Speaker 5: there's a there's an old press photo of the Jackson's
Speaker 5: and the Doobies on stage and it says like a
Speaker 5: there was a long, long, long train run and shake
Speaker 5: your body down to the gri around mess performance. What
Speaker 5: was the connection between the two. Were you the same
Speaker 5: manager of publicists? Now, we had mutual friends, and the
Speaker 5: guy that we went to school with, we grew up
Speaker 5: with became like their publicists.
Speaker 1: Okay, So.
Speaker 6: So we would go to their shows and the Doobies, man,
Speaker 6: they're just a bunch of nice guys, extremely talented. Like
Speaker 6: I like all their music. Blackwater it's one of my
Speaker 6: favorite songs of theirs. But yeah, that's how it happened.
Speaker 6: And so when they would perform sometimes I remember, I
Speaker 6: think that photo you may have seen was could have
Speaker 6: been at the form Okay, it seemed like.
Speaker 1: It was at a smaller club. Yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: a small I don't know.
Speaker 6: We had been on stage a few times together. Yeah,
Speaker 6: but that's just friends.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 5: So speaking of concerts. Oh hell yeah, because I got
Speaker 5: on punishment for this thing. This is one of this
Speaker 5: is one of two Randy.
Speaker 1: U punishments for me. Who's idea was it for you
Speaker 1: to be the daredevil of the group?
Speaker 5: Me?
Speaker 6: It was an idea. It was who I was.
Speaker 1: Okay, for our listeners that don't know.
Speaker 6: I've come, I've changed a lot lately, thanks to God.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I've just been daredevil.
Speaker 5: In terms of any time that pyrotechniques or any explosion
Speaker 5: was introduced in any Jackson show, it's usually at the
Speaker 5: hands of Randy, And so I'm wondering, like, is there okay?
Speaker 1: Like how is it conceptualized?
Speaker 5: Like, Okay, after I do this solo, then I'm gonna
Speaker 5: throw this flash paper down and this explosion is going
Speaker 5: to happen because the seven year old's watching this, right,
Speaker 5: and then he sees his grandmom's speed stick in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: And damn near such a South Philadelphia house with fire.
Speaker 1: I think we're almost Thanks Randy, I appreciate that. Where'd
Speaker 1: you get this idea from?
Speaker 6: I think we were putting a other those shows.
Speaker 1: I mean, was it dug hitting?
Speaker 6: Like who's the that stuff? Like duck hitting stuff? The
Speaker 6: power technics all that. We were doing that back in
Speaker 6: the seventies exactly.
Speaker 5: So even when you do yourself in the like did
Speaker 5: you see where you going to kiss shows? Or like
Speaker 5: what was the what was the genesis of.
Speaker 1: It's it's just I think that.
Speaker 6: As band in the seventies right back then you want
Speaker 6: to kind of open things up. It's a little bit
Speaker 6: more exciting, you know. And Puss was also relative. Like
Speaker 6: I had a lab. I had a lab at home,
Speaker 6: chemistry lab. I tried to blow stuff and try.
Speaker 1: To make what, wow, Randy Jackson the unibomber.
Speaker 6: You know, you know those little chimstry laps for you
Speaker 6: right you're talking about right, So I had one of those,
Speaker 6: and you used to have one of those. Yeah, they
Speaker 6: don't have those anymore house they're too dangerous now. But
Speaker 6: back in those days you get a chemistry lab and
Speaker 6: make bombs and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
Speaker 6: You know, yeah, that's all that stuff just we just
Speaker 6: wanted to do something different, excitement, a little bit more fun.
Speaker 6: And and uh when you think about like play a
Speaker 6: solo than throw blow up a bomb.
Speaker 1: And but I'm saying physically it doesn't make sense. But no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's the thing.
Speaker 5: Seeing it, it was exciting as hell because even when
Speaker 5: like I didn't get to see the first two Destiny runs,
Speaker 5: so usually it's someone in my class come back explain it.
Speaker 1: Like then the next thing, you know, this explosion goes.
Speaker 5: Off and you're just trying to imagine, like what is
Speaker 5: happening on The Jackson Show. But then again it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, earth Wind and Fire is introducing lasers and
Speaker 5: levitation and this stuff, and parliaments doing theatrics. Like between
Speaker 5: the three camps, between the Jackson's, the p Funk and
Speaker 5: the the Earth Wind and Fire camp, there was like
Speaker 5: a rush to hoo can out theatrics each other.
Speaker 1: And so was that a thing where you guys like
Speaker 1: going to peep.
Speaker 6: Did you ever go to p Funk shows and be
Speaker 6: like yo, Space and earth Wind and Fire they had
Speaker 6: the theatrics and we were huge Earth Winding Fire fans,
Speaker 6: just the musicianship Larry Down, just huge fans of theirs.
Speaker 6: And I would just go in the studio just watch them,
Speaker 6: just watch watch, watch watch, like the original eighty eight Keys.
Speaker 5: Just stop to wait too soon. I'm sorry, idiot, I
Speaker 5: don't mean that, I'm sorry. You would just show up
Speaker 5: with people like it's weird, like albums that you know
Speaker 5: that are landmark or whatever. You're just hey, I'll show
Speaker 5: up in and yeah and visit Like how many what
Speaker 5: what Landmark sessions have you or witnessed too that you
Speaker 5: didn't know at the time, Like.
Speaker 6: I was there when another other friends of ours for
Speaker 6: total when they were making South Africa, right, yeah, mixing
Speaker 6: it up us there. Those dudes are like so talented,
Speaker 6: great people, great guys. They went to receive a high
Speaker 6: school which was like right around the corner from the
Speaker 6: school we went to. But they were just very talented people.
Speaker 5: Okay, this is the fourth time eged in school, so
Speaker 5: even after moving to La you guys were still in
Speaker 5: a regular high school experience.
Speaker 6: Yes, how does that happen because or not? How does
Speaker 6: it happen? Like when we were off a tour, we
Speaker 6: went to regular school. When we toured, we had teachers
Speaker 6: that traveled with us tutors. It was an issue. It
Speaker 6: was a little bit of an issue, but we'll be
Speaker 6: able to get it down.
Speaker 5: So it wasn't a thing Like I mean, did it
Speaker 5: feel awkward? Like okay, now we're going to try normally
Speaker 5: for a second.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it was an issue, you know, the girls
Speaker 6: with the girls.
Speaker 1: I didn't even get to that part.
Speaker 7: Yeah, were there like bullies in your I'm going to
Speaker 7: beat up a Jackson today?
Speaker 6: Yes? Yes, the jealousy and this and that.
Speaker 5: So how do you how how do you navigate I
Speaker 5: mean just general safety? How do you navigate safety and
Speaker 5: be normal? Because it's like you're either going to just
Speaker 5: stay behind the gates of haven herths.
Speaker 6: Right or that's what it was.
Speaker 5: I really want to go see Rocky too at the
Speaker 5: movie theater. And is it like you have to wear
Speaker 5: a hat or yeah? I think do I call you Stephen?
Speaker 5: In the high school and in.
Speaker 6: The beginning, like we kind of didn't realize the enormity
Speaker 6: of the success and until we came home and you
Speaker 6: go to the market and you go to the stores
Speaker 6: and people look at you, following and taking pictures and
Speaker 6: all that, and then you start to realize, you know,
Speaker 6: even in your private life, you know, it's it's still
Speaker 6: that you started to think, Wow, it's kind of weird,
Speaker 6: but but yeah, it was that element was there. But
Speaker 6: that's all part of it, though, is like.
Speaker 1: That's what it is. You know, this is what you
Speaker 1: signed up for.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I get it what you signed up for?
Speaker 1: All right, quick second punishment? All right, go ahead.
Speaker 4: So I have to ask this question.
Speaker 1: This episode.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yes, every time. Yes, I remember, I'll never forget
Speaker 6: this story. And my brothers they were here. If our
Speaker 6: brothers were in this room, I wasn't they tell you
Speaker 6: this story because I love it. We had done it
Speaker 6: a couple of nights at the forum, I think it was,
Speaker 6: and I was what year I was ten years old?
Speaker 6: I think I was very young, nine ten so.
Speaker 1: Looking through the windows period, Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 6: Came home. My mom says, okay, Rannie, it's your turn
Speaker 6: to take out the cabbage. Then I'm just I've been
Speaker 6: on stage fromt of eighteen thousand people. I'm coming home
Speaker 6: and she's telling me to take out the garbage. So
Speaker 6: I said, I said, Mom, I have fans right right.
Speaker 6: You know where this is going. You know how your
Speaker 6: parents just give you that look?
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 6: And my father's eating, he stops eating, you know, and
Speaker 6: they just gave you that look. I said, Mom, I
Speaker 6: have fans. Now, I said, why don't I just call
Speaker 6: my fan club? Yeah, my mom, she said, she says,
Speaker 6: are you serious? One of those looks I'm like okay, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: so we did them. We did them after a huge
Speaker 6: ex hour. We come home, rake the leagues, take out
Speaker 6: the garbage, and do the dishes.
Speaker 1: That was it. So the division of domestic labor was
Speaker 1: still in effect.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, man, okay, all right, speaking of parents and punishments.
Speaker 1: The second one, okay, so, uh watching.
Speaker 5: Soul Trained tenth anniversary show, Randy's playing what I believe
Speaker 5: is the fine line between what a key tar is
Speaker 5: and a very miniature roads on a guitar strap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I get the bright idea.
Speaker 6: That's before they had keyboards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I know. And so I was like, yo,
Speaker 1: that's I wanted to play that. And so.
Speaker 5: I go to my dad's keyboard players Wolitzer no, yeah,
Speaker 5: and I take the lakes off the waltzer.
Speaker 6: Was that heavy?
Speaker 5: Well I was eight at the time, so yeah, it
Speaker 5: was kind of heavy, and uh yeah, I dropped that
Speaker 5: walletzer and.
Speaker 1: That was the one, Yeah that that was a bad punishment.
Speaker 5: All I remember was the day I tried to discott,
Speaker 5: like I dropped the wallets because I couldn't figure out
Speaker 5: like how to put the guitar struck, Like there was
Speaker 5: nothing on the side.
Speaker 1: So I was like, all right, I'll just carry it,
Speaker 1: and I dropped it, and uh.
Speaker 5: I just remember like my punishments were, you know, were
Speaker 5: besides no, besides the belt, Yeah, there was there. There
Speaker 5: was carpar punishment, but then we're really hit at home
Speaker 5: was either no soul train or music, and central heating
Speaker 5: was out there year like I just got central heating
Speaker 5: by heat wave and they took my average white band
Speaker 5: and my central heating away from me.
Speaker 1: And so thanks for Randy. I appreciate that.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: That's not his fault.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, He's made it look so cool.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: I was just like, okay, wait, so what was it?
Speaker 1: Because that wasn't a key tar? No? Was it a roads?
Speaker 1: What was it?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 6: That was that?
Speaker 1: What was that?
Speaker 4: That?
Speaker 6: That was? I remember that because because I also used
Speaker 6: it on Dick Clark bandstand.
Speaker 1: All all the dustinies or like that was your Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a stand up.
Speaker 6: Roads, you know, we we we have these techies. That
Speaker 6: that one particularly was something that was made for me
Speaker 6: and uh yeah, I play about it. But what I
Speaker 6: liked about that that one was was the was the
Speaker 6: bottom portion the baseline right right right? That's cool?
Speaker 1: Uh I see, I see now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was like that it must have been heavy
Speaker 5: to play and dance to, but you made a little
Speaker 5: effortless and it wasn't effortless at all. We got to
Speaker 5: ask about how can I be sure and love song
Speaker 5: for kids?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 5: So you made a single right before Dance Destiny in
Speaker 5: seventy eight. So what was what was the initial plan?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 5: As far as were you actively trying to pursue a
Speaker 5: full recording album or I think.
Speaker 6: The vision of my father with all of us, even
Speaker 6: with Janet, he was always trying to get us to
Speaker 6: do things on our own solo career and Janet and that,
Speaker 6: and so you wanted me to make a song how
Speaker 6: can I be sure? And that's how that happened.
Speaker 5: Do you want to do solo stuff or were you comfortable?
Speaker 5: Because I know that I've always been. I've always been like,
Speaker 5: I like being in the back, I like writing and creating.
Speaker 5: I'm all about music. I just want to do the music,
Speaker 5: you know, And I love performing. Mean the camera part
Speaker 5: of it. I like the cameras. It's okay, but I
Speaker 5: mean I don't hate it. But it's all about where
Speaker 5: we are right now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, man, So you prefer studios because because I can
Speaker 6: enjoy music at home as much as I could for me,
Speaker 6: I can enjoy music at home, playing it, writing it
Speaker 6: almost as much as big on the stage. I mean,
Speaker 6: I I just like it. You know, by the time
Speaker 6: I wake up, I go to bed. I mean still
Speaker 6: a fan of music.
Speaker 1: Okay you.
Speaker 5: Speaking of which, the Triumph album question number one. Who
Speaker 5: engineered that record?
Speaker 6: A guy named Bill.
Speaker 4: He was.
Speaker 6: I'm telling you he engineered earthmen and fire. That's why
Speaker 6: we chose him. I'm trying to get it full name.
Speaker 6: I gotta look at the credits. I've never thought of
Speaker 6: it from that. Yeah why Okay, So because engineers are great.
Speaker 1: Shout outs to Rusty. Shout outs to Bill.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: No, only because okay thee So I'm his engineer. Yeah?
Speaker 1: So in.
Speaker 5: Am I am I pursuit of I collect stems now
Speaker 5: m and well previously, when I was teaching at n
Speaker 5: y U, I use stems to demonstrate for the class.
Speaker 5: So the thing is, when I got the Triumph stems
Speaker 5: and started doing my rough mixes, I don't know, I
Speaker 5: feel like the equuing that I did brought more life
Speaker 5: to it, made it more fuller sounding and whatnot. And
Speaker 5: then when I was listening to the originals, I was like,
Speaker 5: why does this sound so compressed? And so I always
Speaker 5: wanted to know what the process was in making the
Speaker 5: Triumph record. Now I also realized that one thing I
Speaker 5: didn't take into consideration is that you're only given sixteen
Speaker 5: minutes aside of a record because there's a lot of edits.
Speaker 6: I didn't even know that was an API console. I remember,
Speaker 6: so you had those five fifty a's eqs on those
Speaker 6: very punchy signing console, the old APIs and uh but
Speaker 6: also can be a little mid rangeye, also in the middle,
Speaker 6: not really after the mid range in Bottomy, not on
Speaker 6: the highs.
Speaker 1: So but hm.
Speaker 7: So mix dan tract on on API. Okay, I see,
Speaker 7: So it's not necessarily overcompressed. It's just maybe just dark, right,
Speaker 7: it's dark definitely Actually with both of those records.
Speaker 6: The same engineer on both of the records, as recall
Speaker 6: Desty and Triumph. Yeah, the same engineer.
Speaker 1: So speak of Greg filling games and how he was
Speaker 1: brought into the fold.
Speaker 6: How was it.
Speaker 1: You guys pursuing him with the label saying hey we want.
Speaker 6: To be Okay, it's funny because like the songs I wrote,
Speaker 6: Greg Greg can play them than me, which is great.
Speaker 6: He made he made him sound great.
Speaker 1: I was like, cool, I'm with it, but uh, were
Speaker 1: you tracking your songs.
Speaker 6: And something like something and stuff on like don't stop,
Speaker 6: you get enough, Like we tracked that stuff just like that,
Speaker 6: those demos. There's demos for the other stuff up if.
Speaker 1: You worked on Off the Wall as well. Okay, so.
Speaker 6: I'll get to some of those demos and stuff you
Speaker 6: want to hear. Definitely, Yeah, we would always track it
Speaker 6: like that.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 6: We wanted to bring someone like Gregan two. Greg was
Speaker 6: played with Stevie and all that kind of stuff, but
Speaker 6: he had just he hadn't he hadn't been with Stevie
Speaker 6: a long time. And well we brought him in and
Speaker 6: uh he's been he's been with our family ever since then.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 5: I was going to say the the unorthodox rhythm nature
Speaker 5: of Shaky Body Down to the Ground was such a risk,
Speaker 5: and it was a risk in nineteen seventy eight, seventy
Speaker 5: nine in the era disco where it was just like
Speaker 5: four on the floor and one hundred and twenty nine bpms,
Speaker 5: whereas Shaky Body Down, in my opinion, is more of
Speaker 5: a high powered funk song than a disco song, and
Speaker 5: because there's no definite one as far as the drums,
Speaker 5: like for some reason, like history is showing that the
Speaker 5: drums are supposed to establish where the one was.
Speaker 1: Were there any concerns like, yo, we're putting our eggs
Speaker 1: in this basket.
Speaker 5: And because when and on the on the on the stems,
Speaker 5: Ed Green is drumming, right, yeah, Barry White drummer.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I had that sound at that right.
Speaker 1: But here's the funny thing.
Speaker 5: So at the very beginning, there's there's in the in
Speaker 5: the pre roll of of of those stems for twenty seconds,
Speaker 5: I hear you and your brother Michael at ed Greens
Speaker 5: bruth saying don't do any feels, just keep it straight,
Speaker 5: no feels, and you hear him say got it, no feels,
Speaker 5: and I was like, whoa, that's that's that's weird to hear.
Speaker 5: And the thing is that his track alone made it,
Speaker 5: made it disco. And this is without hearing the overdubs
Speaker 5: of the tom toms in the in the high at
Speaker 5: So in the final mix when it turns out to
Speaker 5: be what it was and it's a revolutionary ass ship,
Speaker 5: were there any concerns or was just like the ajournaline
Speaker 5: of the song, like, yo, there's nothing like this, and.
Speaker 1: And let's go with it. Let's over the risk. You know.
Speaker 6: It's interesting because we always felt special about that song.
Speaker 6: It's like it just had that thing on it. And
Speaker 6: I remember putting ad on that song when we when
Speaker 6: we did the track, because and he he has he
Speaker 6: has a signature sound, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 6: This He is with a kick, you know, and it's
Speaker 6: kind of a lazy kick. But it's but but it's
Speaker 6: but it's but it worked. And but that drum beat
Speaker 6: was was was a little bit awkward to just say yeah.
Speaker 6: And but now I know, like a lot of drummers
Speaker 6: appreciate that. They always say, man, that drum beat. Now
Speaker 6: all the drummers play that beat.
Speaker 1: But at the time where you can earn when it
Speaker 1: was formulated.
Speaker 6: Too much of a risk.
Speaker 1: We thought about that a little bit because it was
Speaker 1: it wasn't it was it was right, it wasn't defined
Speaker 1: right right, it was it wasn't for.
Speaker 6: On the floor and I had them I'm two and
Speaker 6: four but yeah, but uh it's too and four.
Speaker 1: But it.
Speaker 6: It was a little bit of a risk, but we
Speaker 6: were confident in the song of it, like like like
Speaker 6: the song and it.
Speaker 1: Was just a groove to us. It was just it
Speaker 1: was just a groove.
Speaker 5: What was Sony's reaction to it when you played it
Speaker 5: to them, where they're like, okay, this is it? Or
Speaker 5: were they too like, hey, this needs to be three
Speaker 5: minutes and there's no hook. I mean there's no bridge
Speaker 5: and the drums are all over the place like where
Speaker 5: they initially was Bobby like, we don't know.
Speaker 6: No, they they they liked that song a lot and
Speaker 6: they and they we like things I Do for you.
Speaker 6: That was a groove to us. And uh, a quick question,
Speaker 6: how much of influence was Jupiter on that song Things
Speaker 6: that You Yes, Jupiter by earth Wooden Fire. That's interesting
Speaker 6: because I wanted to know, you know why the five
Speaker 6: minutes later in the fifteen seconds later correlation between the
Speaker 6: two songs. But you know, it's funny because it's like
Speaker 6: for me, all right, wonder Fire, Like at the time,
Speaker 6: I didn't realize it would just come out of me
Speaker 6: that way. Like even like so like all Night Dancing
Speaker 6: if you listen to the Icy Brothers, but I was listening.
Speaker 6: I was listening to a lot of Icy then, so
Speaker 6: you like like dud.
Speaker 1: That is ok I never never thought that till right now.
Speaker 6: Harvest for the world, right ship, it is.
Speaker 1: All right now, I'm gonna listen to it a whole
Speaker 1: different right right right.
Speaker 6: So all those things are like influences.
Speaker 5: Oh shit, I never all right forty years later now
Speaker 5: now I'm just kidding forty years lay now I get it.
Speaker 5: Oh damn, this is literally why he started this show
Speaker 5: to find out something exactly like that.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, that's crazy. Okay, I have more Destiny questions. Okay.
Speaker 5: Another thing, speaking of the title track of Destiny, whenever
Speaker 5: these songs are performed on shows, when you guys are
Speaker 5: promoting them, there's always that slow motion moment, which, again
Speaker 5: in post production when you're watching it is like the
Speaker 5: crazy shit ever, But I can only imagine how much
Speaker 5: leeway are you guys given to before you make these
Speaker 5: appearances on Midnight Special on Soldier and on American Bandstand.
Speaker 1: Or Sunny and Share or whatever the production techniques of
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 5: Like for me, just to just to control our mix
Speaker 5: on Letterman was like a nightmare, like can we please
Speaker 5: eq our things?
Speaker 1: And can we do that?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 5: You guys are doing actual production like jumping in slow
Speaker 5: motion and all these things that.
Speaker 6: It wasn't easy.
Speaker 1: I know this, How did you guy?
Speaker 6: I get your question? It wasn't easy. It's like fighting
Speaker 6: for what we want to do and a lot of times,
Speaker 6: you know, they didn't want to do it, but we
Speaker 6: fought hard.
Speaker 5: We fought hard for it, yo, because it was happening
Speaker 5: out of the time where I'm not saying that you
Speaker 5: guys didn't have leverage, but you know, these these even
Speaker 5: when we're watching on YouTube now, these things like videos,
Speaker 5: and I always wanted to know what was the conversation
Speaker 5: that granted you the open door to Okay, this particular part, you're.
Speaker 1: Gonna slow it down and we're all gonna jump. It's
Speaker 1: gonna look silly now, but when you do it in
Speaker 1: slow motion, it's gonna look crazy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, even like the video was one of the first
Speaker 6: music videos made was can you feel it right?
Speaker 5: Well, actually blame it on the boogie yeah with a
Speaker 5: reflection thing? Right, that's scared of shit out of me
Speaker 5: as a kid like you literally scared? Whose concept was that?
Speaker 1: Did they come to you? Guys?
Speaker 5: Look, we have this new reflective sometimes how long did
Speaker 5: it take to shoot that?
Speaker 1: A day?
Speaker 6: But a lot of times Mike, what have these crazy
Speaker 6: ideas they want to do? And then we talk about it,
Speaker 6: you know, he sell us on it and we were like,
Speaker 6: that's really cool. Then we all fight for but they didn't.
Speaker 6: But a lot of these guys didn't want to do that,
Speaker 6: you know, And but we fight for it. We didn't
Speaker 6: have to fight for it. And sometimes you've had to
Speaker 6: fight for a lot sometimes just to what's normal to
Speaker 6: us now. Exactly it's normal now, but back in those days,
Speaker 6: you had to fight for it. But keep in mind
Speaker 6: back in those days, like there is no relationship between
Speaker 6: television and music. In those days, it was separate. Now
Speaker 6: it's all kind of together. You want to watch the show,
Speaker 6: you watch it. Everyone was on YouTube or something like that.
Speaker 6: It's like everything is. It's all social media, it's all communicating,
Speaker 6: so some of them in those days things it's more compartmentalized,
Speaker 6: a little bit separate.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because I feel as though if I would have
Speaker 5: done that, I would have been talked out of it, like, look, man,
Speaker 5: we don't got a budget. You're asking for a lot.
Speaker 5: Just go in there and performing and get it out
Speaker 5: of there. Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 4: So with.
Speaker 5: With the Triumph record, uh you Yeah, you're you're you're
Speaker 5: sharing lead with Mike on on can you Feel It?
Speaker 6: You know that song who says she was talking about
Speaker 6: songs let me know drop the Bond. I love the
Speaker 6: song the Beads made called Tragedy. And if you listen
Speaker 6: to tragedy, m ding ding ching ching ding ding ding
Speaker 6: ding ding ding.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's how it came to be you. Mike wrote
Speaker 1: that together and Jackie. Damn. Okay, I see, I see now,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry people, I'm I'm I'm like my poor brain
Speaker 1: right yeah, man, I'm just.
Speaker 6: Like at the time when you're creating that, I'm not
Speaker 6: thinking tragedy now and now that I'm older.
Speaker 1: I think it back. Well, that sounds like harvest for
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 6: I wasn't thinking about it then it just came out
Speaker 6: of me naturally because those were my influences, you know, dude.
Speaker 5: I mean that's how it is. I mean, hip hop
Speaker 5: is more blatant about it because you literally sample it.
Speaker 5: But I mean, like most songs are the ideas of
Speaker 5: other songs. I mean, James Brown just did the ideas
Speaker 5: of his own songs. He was his own source. But
Speaker 5: pretty much Jesus Christ, that is mind blowing to me
Speaker 5: because yeah, I now see because tragedy in my mind,
Speaker 5: tragedy is like.
Speaker 1: Three horses running in the wild, but.
Speaker 6: It's like very triumphant.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: So was this creat Was this created thinking that, okay,
Speaker 5: when we do this in concert, this is going to
Speaker 5: be our flag Plannet, Yeah, this is going to be
Speaker 5: our our opening.
Speaker 6: Can you feel it? That was the opening? And the
Speaker 6: closes always shake your body.
Speaker 1: I see, I see, yeah man, And we'll be right
Speaker 1: back after quest. Those brain recollaculates.
Speaker 5: So even even though even though triumph is quote produced
Speaker 5: by the Jacksons, like who's who's holding fifty one percent
Speaker 5: of the weight? Who's like, someone has to be the
Speaker 5: alpha to be like, okay, make these decisions or is
Speaker 5: it always and those five of you and I can't
Speaker 5: imagine that the five of you are just so damn agreeable.
Speaker 1: Someone has to be like, I don't like that idea.
Speaker 6: When we were when we were produced Michael's vocal and
Speaker 6: the rest of us in that studio producing this vocal,
Speaker 6: that's how it was really. Yeah, So it wasn't It
Speaker 6: wasn't like one or two of us because it's interesting
Speaker 6: because no, it was all of us in that room,
Speaker 6: and Jackie can hear a line, or I could hear something,
Speaker 6: or we hear something. Now a lot of times Michael
Speaker 6: and I would create the song. You write the song,
Speaker 6: but it's all of us collectively that made it magic.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 5: I got an exit, not exit from the studio. But
Speaker 5: I think we should mention what what is the the
Speaker 5: preparation period.
Speaker 1: Of your shows? And your performances?
Speaker 6: Can't touts me.
Speaker 1: Well in general? Like was there regular?
Speaker 6: Was it?
Speaker 5: Like? Okay, Thursday and Friday nights are five hours in
Speaker 5: the room rehearsing dance steps? Like how are you guys?
Speaker 5: How are house choreography? So when you guys are are
Speaker 5: prepping choreography and let's start with choreography first of all?
Speaker 1: Is that a long?
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, it's a long because the thing about it
Speaker 6: is like I didn't really want to dance and move,
Speaker 6: but Michael always wanted me to because I just wanted
Speaker 6: to play instruments and sing and play. No many you
Speaker 6: gotta move, Come on, you can dance, okay, But but
Speaker 6: like we like like to this day, like our work
Speaker 6: ethic hasn't changed, like Janet, when Janet and I think
Speaker 6: a lot a lot of her dancers always surprised, like
Speaker 6: when she gets ready to go on tour the way
Speaker 6: she works as the way we worked twenty something years ago.
Speaker 6: I mean it's like it hasn't changed. And I think
Speaker 6: that's that's like we you know, it's like we take
Speaker 6: it seriously and we break for lunch and dinner, but
Speaker 6: we it's every day, all day, and and tell us right,
Speaker 6: and we take it seriously so literally for our I mean,
Speaker 6: just give me a rough number all day the term
Speaker 6: you wake up, break for lunch, and break for dinner,
Speaker 6: and time you go to sleep the next.
Speaker 1: Day, even post I mean assuming that.
Speaker 5: Not childhood where you know, like Motown and your father
Speaker 5: whoever is watching rehearsals, but assuming that you guys were
Speaker 5: just doing this on your own as adults. Into the
Speaker 5: Destiny Triumphant, it was just yeah, straight rehearsals. And I
Speaker 5: would think would they be separated? I mean, would it
Speaker 5: be like, Okay, this for boreography and this is for
Speaker 5: music and.
Speaker 6: This is for harmony, Like how normally I would I
Speaker 6: would start with music first, and being in the band,
Speaker 6: we start going over with the music separately.
Speaker 1: So Jonathan Moffatt and Jonathan Mike mn and all those guys. Man,
Speaker 1: you know these are LA heavyweights. Man, y'all, y'all build.
Speaker 6: Jonathan Moffa was a kid who walked through the studio.
Speaker 6: He's seventeen years old. Was he sixteen? Seventeen? He was
Speaker 6: seventeen from Newton, from New Orleans?
Speaker 1: Okay, when did he join you guys? What year was that?
Speaker 1: What year was that?
Speaker 6: So sure you sure you know him?
Speaker 5: I met him twice in my life. But yeah, so
Speaker 5: he was seventeen when he first started.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, so.
Speaker 6: He walked in. He's you know, he's cool. He was
Speaker 6: real cool, and he wears pants are real high. He
Speaker 6: had some shining James browns and shoes and he was relaxed.
Speaker 6: Like this dude is too cool to play drums.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: He sat on the drums and it was like, yeah,
Speaker 6: this guy can play. He plays hard, right, Okay, he's solid, right,
Speaker 6: He's a great concert player.
Speaker 1: Also David Williams, David whom yes by him? Yeah, like
Speaker 1: where where did he come from? His David Williams with
Speaker 1: guitar players, just like he's like a machine. Where's he
Speaker 1: from Virginia? Anything about him?
Speaker 6: He's from Virginia. He's from uh uh West Virginia. David Williams.
Speaker 1: Okay, how long when did he join you guys, East Virginia?
Speaker 6: What is it like like Norfolk or something like that?
Speaker 6: Okay he started, David Williams. Was he had a hit
Speaker 6: song out what with Don't hold Back? If it fields good,
Speaker 6: too bad? Don't hold Back in a group or in
Speaker 6: Chanson the uh Chanson? Yeah, he had a.
Speaker 8: If it feels good damn anything bough So but David, Yeah,
Speaker 8: it's he can play.
Speaker 1: I mean, rhythm is so precise a one point.
Speaker 6: His playing adds a flavor to every track. It's like
Speaker 6: it's just at that little thing that that makes it right. Yes,
Speaker 6: and you notice he always had those guitar licks and
Speaker 6: all the tracks like amazing musician.
Speaker 1: So you too, I know that Wolf. Really what you
Speaker 1: want discuss right now? Should how much? How much?
Speaker 4: Is so?
Speaker 6: Am I right? On the song Don't hold Back? Is
Speaker 6: that it?
Speaker 1: Damn?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's there, yeah, chances.
Speaker 6: Chance and chance on Chang song. Yeah but they said
Speaker 6: chance chance song. We gotta get that, ye damn.
Speaker 1: So I know Bill Wolfer and uh wow, who was
Speaker 1: the the tech not uh ah? Greg mentioned him? What
Speaker 1: it was James James James jameson Junior. Wow, Wow, the
Speaker 1: one in eighty three is that we gotta peep that ship. Wait,
Speaker 1: I'm like cop one for me too. Thank you. We're
Speaker 1: records shopping, we're records stopping it and of Yourrandy right now. Sorry?
Speaker 4: So with.
Speaker 5: Uh with with the with the band and were you
Speaker 5: so you would conduct rehearsals and you're the okay.
Speaker 6: Music and then and then the brothers at the same
Speaker 6: time we would be singing and doing choreography and I
Speaker 6: go back and forth. So we have it right with
Speaker 6: the animals. We have it. We just put it together.
Speaker 1: There it is, I see, okay, good.
Speaker 7: I'm I'm I'm maybe going a little out of sequence here.
Speaker 7: Maybe I'm not the choices of the album titles. I'm sorry,
Speaker 7: I know your time about love, Triumph, Victory, destiny.
Speaker 1: That's very good.
Speaker 2: Was this uh?
Speaker 7: Was this some kind of a marketing scheme, like we're
Speaker 7: you know, we're gonna just call this thing victory and
Speaker 7: and it you know, hope it becomes number one or
Speaker 7: or was that just a.
Speaker 6: It's a very it's a very good. That's very good.
Speaker 6: We are sitting around and we wanted to make albums
Speaker 6: and that have to do with positive thinking and power
Speaker 6: and just accomplishment and things like that. So they're all like,
Speaker 6: we're going to stand on this one hundred foot stone
Speaker 6: who conceptualized the album covers and because it was like
Speaker 6: the black version of like Blue Oyster cult, Like, yeah,
Speaker 6: that's CBS Records, Okay, But you know it's funny because.
Speaker 1: What are.
Speaker 6: Motown influence? We all we also love rock music a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was gonna say, because even now you're just like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I went to Dosconda, I went to.
Speaker 6: Like you were just open to growing up in Hollywood heels,
Speaker 6: you know. You know, I used to walk home from
Speaker 6: school and George Harris living like abobb us at the time,
Speaker 6: and that seems big white rosewies and get me right
Speaker 6: up to the house where we lived below and up
Speaker 6: So and Bowie and all those guys. They were all
Speaker 6: in those days. Everybody was around the same area, you know,
Speaker 6: so it just how could you not be influenced about it?
Speaker 6: You know, how could that not happen?
Speaker 1: Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 5: This is something that just hit me right now that
Speaker 5: I totally missed. And the wave at Ebany and Jet
Speaker 5: covered this. It was like I remember seeing girls like
Speaker 5: crying to the knees. You gotta tell me what happened
Speaker 5: with the car accident in nineteen eighty what happened only
Speaker 5: the first time I've heard the jaws of life, like
Speaker 5: the way that Randy Jackson escapes the jaws of life.
Speaker 6: And like, yeah, they have these hydraulic scissors that cut
Speaker 6: the current. Hav got me out as I am like
Speaker 6: the Daredevil.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 6: And I moved out when I was seventeen o and
Speaker 6: that was like my brothers can believe that.
Speaker 1: I talked.
Speaker 6: My parents said to that you.
Speaker 1: Didn't have to get married or anything. You just moved out.
Speaker 6: And I moved out, and basically I told him my mom,
Speaker 6: I said, look, I want to move out. She's like
Speaker 6: what I said, my own place something I'm going to
Speaker 6: be at. I'm gonna do it anyway. It's like I
Speaker 6: want to live with my fan club.
Speaker 1: You got the last word on the garbage. So so.
Speaker 6: I did. I moved out right, and I stayed up
Speaker 6: standing in the oak Wood Garden. You know the oak
Speaker 6: Wood apartments on Bourbank. Every band has stayed there, Okay,
Speaker 6: in La, I know where Burbank is. Yeah, the garden
Speaker 6: apartments and I was staying there and I remember I
Speaker 6: was watching the Super Bowl and I want to see
Speaker 6: the Rims that just lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Speaker 1: Okay, and I was hungry. Yes, I'm sorry Pittsburgh fan,
Speaker 1: but good yeah, me too.
Speaker 6: The Swan I have his jersey or.
Speaker 1: Yeah damn. Okay.
Speaker 6: Then but then he didn't like it because I dated
Speaker 6: his ex wife later.
Speaker 5: But.
Speaker 6: At the time I didn't know it. I didn't know.
Speaker 6: He's a great guy.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 6: So anyway, I was hungry and it was raining like crazy,
Speaker 6: so I'm like, it's nothing in the house. I was
Speaker 6: going to go down to go over to the market
Speaker 6: and get something to eat. And I'm driving there's there's Mercedes,
Speaker 6: and it just hit this pothole, starts spinning, just crashed
Speaker 6: near the Hollywood Bowl, right there where the Hollywood Bowl is,
Speaker 6: and uh, cars on fire and YadA, YadA, YadA. And
Speaker 6: it's so funny because my parents had some friends over
Speaker 6: and they had been over late hanging out and they
Speaker 6: would driving home and my mom said, Okay, call us
Speaker 6: when you get home because it's raining out. I want
Speaker 6: to make sure you get home safe. To their friends,
Speaker 6: they said, okay, so he goes home. He calls my
Speaker 6: mom and he goes and so we made it home.
Speaker 6: He goes, God, we just saw the worst cards of it. Yeah,
Speaker 6: he's like, I hope that I hope that person's okay,
Speaker 6: but it doesn't. It doesn't look good. She my mother
Speaker 6: goes really, he goes, yeah, damn yo, man, when that
Speaker 6: news Wait, where were you born all?
Speaker 1: So you're like one dog?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was yeah the day that ship hit. It's
Speaker 6: one of those things can change your life. Because like
Speaker 6: I flat lined and stopped breathing. They had to put
Speaker 6: those those you Yeah, so it was that serious. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I was that serious.
Speaker 1: So how did you manage to walk?
Speaker 6: Because I think I had to learn how to walk
Speaker 6: all over again. I was paralyzed.
Speaker 1: I literally wheelchair bend or crutches, bew.
Speaker 6: Wheelchair and I had to start with the pickup. And
Speaker 6: I remember its Magic Johnson who just started with the
Speaker 6: Lakers at the time, and and I went to doctor Curlin,
Speaker 6: who was a trainer was for the Lakers, to the
Speaker 6: whole medical facility there and that's where IVER see a
Speaker 6: physical therapy and learned how to walk.
Speaker 5: So the time they're telling you you're pretty much not
Speaker 5: going to walk I never walk again. Wait the time
Speaker 5: lapse between eighty and the recording of the album, and yeah,
Speaker 5: it's funny because the tour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean wrestling with your brothers on stage before
Speaker 1: you explode them again.
Speaker 6: That's yeah, that's crazy. Like after each one of those shows,
Speaker 6: I was like taking an ice bath. So you were
Speaker 6: in pain doing the Trump show. Yeah it was painful,
Speaker 6: but you were dancing your ass off. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 6: it was it was painful. So I was like, yeah,
Speaker 6: I swollen ice in it respect Randy Jackson. I just
Speaker 6: thought Yeah. In my mind, I was just like, wow,
Speaker 6: it's a miracle, like he's back, but not knowing that yeah,
Speaker 6: oh man, hats off?
Speaker 1: Man? Is that is crazy? Wait? Did we just mean.
Speaker 6: There's no way I'll let my brothers leave me. That's
Speaker 6: like we're going to figure this out?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Was that even a question? Where is it just like, Okay, well,
Speaker 5: how bought the physical therapist with me on tour?
Speaker 1: Sor right?
Speaker 6: So we had them on tour and I was like,
Speaker 6: there's no way we make this happen.
Speaker 1: You made it happen.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I meant you're doing the In my mind, I'm
Speaker 5: playing like the working Day and Night, twisty thing and.
Speaker 6: The twisty piano.
Speaker 5: No, just the jumping thing, and I'm like, you're you're okay,
Speaker 5: you you did it. What was your of the tours
Speaker 5: that you've done with your brothers? What was your favorite.
Speaker 1: The tour.
Speaker 6: Before the Destiny tour.
Speaker 5: So there's a Victory, there's Triumph, there's Destiny part too,
Speaker 5: which sort of like kind of off the wall, and
Speaker 5: then there's the Destiny Tour that I yeah.
Speaker 6: The Destiny Tour. I liked Stacey Lattisaws. I think opening
Speaker 6: up for us first one I saw you were there. Yeah,
Speaker 6: Philly h Triumph, Triumph Atie one was really nice. I
Speaker 6: enjoyed that tour. LTD was That's right. LTD was bad.
Speaker 5: Okay, So Jeffrey was on our show, and I always
Speaker 5: wanted to know, usually with opening acts and big production,
Speaker 5: it's problematic, especially with technology.
Speaker 1: Being the way it was and LTD being a damn
Speaker 1: near eleven member group. How nightmare?
Speaker 5: How much of a nightmare scenario is it when acts
Speaker 5: are opening for you guys and it's okay, we have
Speaker 5: to kill our set and bring there.
Speaker 6: You know, It's always been with my brothers, with us
Speaker 6: on tour. It's always like family, you know, so it
Speaker 6: was never an issue.
Speaker 1: And but l t D.
Speaker 6: They used to come to our house and hang out
Speaker 6: all the time anyway, So Osborne and his brother they
Speaker 6: would just say, come over the house, my mom makes
Speaker 6: food everybody.
Speaker 1: I'm like, were you guys school with the Osmond's Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have to.
Speaker 6: Come up to my mom make food for everybody. He
Speaker 6: was like family, all.
Speaker 5: Right, can you name one act that you guys were
Speaker 5: just like, I don't know, Tavars, y'all go back to
Speaker 5: Boston like ours too? Yeah, Actually, what what were there
Speaker 5: relations with any other other bands your your age? Because
Speaker 5: I think of the five Stairsteps or the Silvers.
Speaker 6: For friends come up with all the time back in
Speaker 6: the day. Silver's too glen to me. On the other day,
Speaker 6: they did our show great people, talented man, that's really good.
Speaker 6: Great humble guy.
Speaker 5: Huh yeah, absolutely absolutely so. Just you guys were switchling.
Speaker 5: I'm about to say Stockholmers, Uhva, Geneva. I'm sorry, thank you,
Speaker 5: You're welcome, thank you switching, thank you, Steve. See, you
Speaker 5: guys were just neutral zone.
Speaker 1: There was never a a competition, like no, we gotta.
Speaker 6: Know we you know, those are whenever we toured, like
Speaker 6: LaBelle opened up for us. We were kids, and even
Speaker 6: with Patty, it's like Patty used to braid our hair.
Speaker 6: Patty used to braid me and my hair. Really you
Speaker 6: can't before we were to stays those back in those days.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, maintaining Patty could do hair
Speaker 1: and she did. You know, she did it cook too.
Speaker 1: Wait what are you again? Great story? Bill? Thanks?
Speaker 5: No, Well, one has to braid hair to keep their
Speaker 5: afro full, right, so you guys might have to do
Speaker 5: that as well. This is one of the rare times
Speaker 5: where my afro's out normally, just so I can make
Speaker 5: it through.
Speaker 1: Life or whatever, Like I braid it, Okay, he braids it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so okay. So even so, there was corn Roll
Speaker 5: era Jackson. Yes, no, we have those big dookie braids.
Speaker 5: So you know, I see that's how that's how they Okay,
Speaker 5: that's good to know because I just thought, like, oh,
Speaker 5: you guys woke up like this, like like full afro
Speaker 5: every day, no BedHead, no, yeah, little did I know? Okay,
Speaker 5: I see that. So the period, the post the post
Speaker 5: UH triumph period that leads UH to the victory tour.
Speaker 6: That during that time. It was a really fun time,
Speaker 6: like from triumph to victory, that whole. So between eighty
Speaker 6: one and yeah, because you had that off the wall, right,
Speaker 6: were you.
Speaker 5: Part of any of the pre production of what will
Speaker 5: become thriller? Only because uh, what's his name?
Speaker 1: Steve Geneva? Shut up, Steve? What's his name? What's his name?
Speaker 1: All right? He used to have a like a like
Speaker 1: an urban report. Is it Steve Ivory?
Speaker 5: I think it's Steve Ivory, Steve Ivy now, but he
Speaker 5: was like an apprentice under lead Bareley. All right, so
Speaker 5: this Kathleen Steve Ivory does this?
Speaker 6: Uh? I know it's Steve Ivory.
Speaker 1: They one, Yeah, Well, okay, so he he's at Encino
Speaker 1: and in the studio with you guys. This is pre
Speaker 1: this is like what is this eighty one?
Speaker 5: So I'm assuming that this is what's leading to be
Speaker 5: well yeah, because he says specifically for Michael's new solo records,
Speaker 5: So thriller is not even a thought, but what will
Speaker 5: become that? And it's the article is more about the
Speaker 5: technology that they're discovering.
Speaker 1: And I believe that a lin drum first makes its
Speaker 1: appearance in this thing.
Speaker 5: And so he's like describing like you know, now a
Speaker 5: drummer is inside a machine and not needed for da
Speaker 5: da da da. Like reading this, I'm like, yo, like
Speaker 5: the Jacksons have some futuristic just naming these like synthesizers
Speaker 5: and someone I don't know if you or I don't
Speaker 5: know who the engineer was at Havenhurst at the time
Speaker 5: at was working. He was like, well, one day, you know,
Speaker 5: they'll invent machines that will correct your singing, and every.
Speaker 1: One in the rooms like, no, that'll be the end
Speaker 1: of music and da da da da da.
Speaker 5: But if I could find this article, it's almost like
Speaker 5: you guys are talking about what's going to happen in
Speaker 5: forty years in music, but joking like that will never happen.
Speaker 6: But you know those days, I mean yes, I mean
Speaker 6: like like I said, like, we didn't really think about
Speaker 6: like if I was doing something I needed based part Jamaine,
Speaker 6: what are you doing, come on and play this part
Speaker 6: real quick. It's like that's what it was like.
Speaker 5: So even after he left the group, he was still
Speaker 5: active and yeah, okay, that's how it was, and yeah, wow,
Speaker 5: we wouldn't really we just it's just.
Speaker 1: What it was.
Speaker 7: See, can you tell those of us who don't know
Speaker 7: every single thing about you already? Sorry what your contributions
Speaker 7: were to Off the Wall?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, credited, non credit, non credit? Come on, now we
Speaker 1: know what time is? Yeah? Either I want either want?
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, I mean you're there. We've heard
Speaker 5: the Working Day Night demo. That was hilarious, by the way.
Speaker 6: Yeah, was it always like that? Yeah? I see how
Speaker 6: it's my playing struggle m like, like I could hear these.
Speaker 1: Parts in my head. That's you playing that line.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but playing them it's like walking through and I
Speaker 6: can hear the base and the same thing with the
Speaker 6: don't stop teeing it enough?
Speaker 4: Do do?
Speaker 1: Do?
Speaker 4: Do?
Speaker 1: So this time? Can I assume that he's singing you
Speaker 1: what he hears in his head? Who Michael?
Speaker 6: Michael would sing? Michael didn't know chords.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he's uh singing to you.
Speaker 6: Singing singing the melody? What he would it be like?
Speaker 6: And I try to create the harm? Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: so that's how it happened.
Speaker 1: I see, Yeah we did the credit thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but but it was but it was like my
Speaker 6: whole thing is like percussion and were those coke bottles? Yeah? Percussion,
Speaker 6: And but I also played percussion on the keyboards like
Speaker 6: in those days, And I didn't realize it at the time,
Speaker 6: but it was very percussive in a way. It's just
Speaker 6: the grooves, right, Yeah, there were avion and coke bottles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks, okay.
Speaker 6: And I remember because when they went to record that
Speaker 6: song in the studio, for some reason, they couldn't recreate
Speaker 6: that saying groove. Even though demos aren't perfect, they often
Speaker 6: have a feel that you just can't can't recreate.
Speaker 1: Do you get demo artists? Yeah?
Speaker 6: So how how come I went to the studio and
Speaker 6: I brought in my bottles and and and and that's
Speaker 6: what we did on the song. And then it had
Speaker 6: that swing to it.
Speaker 1: So that's you doing it, not pulling into the constant. Okay,
Speaker 1: I see, I see. How of of all of your siblings,
Speaker 1: who are you the closest to, Like.
Speaker 6: Jenna and I have always been close.
Speaker 1: We're little.
Speaker 6: You're like, you'd be hard pressed to find a find
Speaker 6: a photograph a family chop that I'm in the Jena
Speaker 6: is not somewhere near me. She like followed me around. Yeah,
Speaker 6: we'd fight like cats and dogs, but couldn't stand to
Speaker 6: be away from each other at the same time. See me,
Speaker 6: Janet and Michael was pretty much a click because were
Speaker 6: three youngest. We hung out all together all the time.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 6: Jermaine and Tito clicks because they play guitars. There were clicks.
Speaker 6: Jackie kind of did his own thing, and Mona did
Speaker 6: his own thing, but he had Jermaine. Tito was kind
Speaker 6: of a clique because the whole guitar thing, and you know,
Speaker 6: went to Walton with John McClean at the same school
Speaker 6: and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: Another yeah, I got it, just like the night John
Speaker 5: McLean episode, All right, John, let me get you one day, pal,
Speaker 5: trust me.
Speaker 4: So for.
Speaker 5: I know that there weren't immediate plans after the Triumph album.
Speaker 5: So the preparation for Motown twenty five?
Speaker 1: What what was that into?
Speaker 4: What was that? Like?
Speaker 6: It's funny because.
Speaker 5: We did Motive Did you have a relationship with Susanna
Speaker 5: pez to that of yeah, your brothers?
Speaker 6: Like, but I didn't know I was going to be
Speaker 6: doing that show until the day of that show.
Speaker 1: Wait what wait? What ever? Wasn't expecting met I.
Speaker 6: Didn't know it to the day that show. Doing that show,
Speaker 6: I was wasted out of my mind from dental surgery
Speaker 6: and you can probably know them. Right after that, we
Speaker 6: did USA for Africa, and I was still recovering from
Speaker 6: dental surgery, like I had a serious operation and I
Speaker 6: was like, loopy, really yeah, And but I went and
Speaker 6: did that show, did the other so I see.
Speaker 1: The preparation.
Speaker 5: The Victory album for me feels more distorted, as in,
Speaker 5: here's our solo projects on this one album.
Speaker 1: So I'll ask about your song.
Speaker 5: And also Austin asked me to ask you about Phil
Speaker 5: collins reaction to One More Chance. He also said he
Speaker 5: probably won't tell you, but ask him anyway. He told
Speaker 5: me two questions to ask you he wanted to. He
Speaker 5: said that you were in the car with Michael when
Speaker 5: Michael first heard Win Doves Cry and the Rose Voice.
Speaker 5: He says, tell the Win Doves Cry Rose War story
Speaker 5: and the Phil Collins One More Chance story.
Speaker 6: No, let's cool, awesome, it's amazing. Yeah, when when you know,
Speaker 6: when One More Night came out, I got a phone
Speaker 6: call from then CBS and they wanted to sue Wait, wait,
Speaker 6: he was trying to come at you. No, CBS wanted
Speaker 6: to sue Collins. So one More Night because when Night
Speaker 6: came out after oh, I came out after ship. Okay,
Speaker 6: but I had heard from Nathan East. Yeah, Nathan told
Speaker 6: me something. As told me that Phil Collins really loved
Speaker 6: One More Chance.
Speaker 1: He loves that.
Speaker 6: That's like his favorite Sony plays it all the time.
Speaker 6: And one time I was in a.
Speaker 1: Long time.
Speaker 6: I was in rex Hall Pharmacy, you know, the one
Speaker 6: on the corner of Los Cienaga and Beverly. You've seen it, okay,
Speaker 6: I know, right across from the Beverly Center. And Phil
Speaker 6: Hollins walked in. We're in the same as, and he goes, hey, hey,
Speaker 6: you're in. I said, hey, yeah, you're Phil Collins. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and he goes, yeah, no, I'm sorry, that was me, sir.
Speaker 1: He looked at me.
Speaker 6: You guys are funny. That's so, she says, uh, he
Speaker 6: wrote that tune One More Chance. I go, yeah, here's yeah,
Speaker 6: it's nice tune because I like it. And then he
Speaker 6: said the other song coming up, that's that was influenced.
Speaker 6: He's he's a I mean that's that album Face Value.
Speaker 6: And I played that album. Yeah, man, I played that
Speaker 6: album forever. Its tonight. Yeah when First County, brilliantly talented guy.
Speaker 6: But I told no, you're not gonna suit. It's just music. Uh.
Speaker 7: First of all, there's major similarities in the in the music,
Speaker 7: but second of all, it's called one More Night. I
Speaker 7: mean I know, but if you're gonna steal something, change
Speaker 7: the fucking title.
Speaker 6: More than that, you know, like one more let me
Speaker 6: tell you some But for me, it's like, it's just music.
Speaker 6: It's not mine that came from.
Speaker 1: But he kept the.
Speaker 7: Production to like the background vocals in the reverb choice,
Speaker 7: it's it's very perspectives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very influenced, but I'm not saying just one
Speaker 1: more chances of favorite on on the victory album, what.
Speaker 6: Really thank You?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It should have been contender, Like what made her?
Speaker 1: What made her want to do that?
Speaker 6: That's always been your favorite song?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it should have been in Contender, man, it
Speaker 1: should have been contender. What uh were you? Why didn't
Speaker 1: you say that for your solo? I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's kind of weird because it's like when you're in
Speaker 5: the Jackson's you have to keep the legacy and the
Speaker 5: brand alive. But by that point, you guys are all stars,
Speaker 5: and even in my mind, I'm like, yo, this would
Speaker 5: have been this would have been a highlight on his
Speaker 5: solo record.
Speaker 7: I don't know, It's like it was the song I
Speaker 7: written at that particular time. How come I wasn't a single?
Speaker 6: It's a good question because because because when CBS, one
Speaker 6: of the Sue phil I said no, I said, I don't.
Speaker 6: I don't want to be involved with Sue and somebody
Speaker 6: over a song. You know, it should have been a single,
Speaker 6: So don't you know, should don't don't? Sue? Yeah, he
Speaker 6: recognized it was a good song, So all.
Speaker 5: Right, exactly how why weren't any of the songs ever
Speaker 5: performed on the tour? What song any of the songs
Speaker 5: on the Victory.
Speaker 6: You know what? That's a very good question because after
Speaker 6: that tour was over, I have the thought to myself,
Speaker 6: why don't we called any of the songs from Victory?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Not true or your Body? I mean it would
Speaker 1: have been you know Yeah.
Speaker 5: I thought maybe perhaps like you guys were translating the
Speaker 5: Triumph tour for the bigger audience that well, yeah, had
Speaker 5: come in to had come into play. When when prepping
Speaker 5: that tour, was it just an unspoken thing like this
Speaker 5: has to be the biggest thing ever, like we have
Speaker 5: to outdo literally anyone that's ever.
Speaker 6: It's funny because.
Speaker 5: And it's so weird because in hindsight, like at the
Speaker 5: time it was controversial and everybody's brew high.
Speaker 1: And thirty dollars a ticket, he back to thirty like thirty.
Speaker 1: I'll put it this way.
Speaker 5: I just Drake is charging three hundred dollars for Madison
Speaker 5: Square Garden and I gotta buy four of them things
Speaker 5: for my assistant. So twelve hundred dollars to see Drake
Speaker 5: at MSG versus thirty dollars victory tour. I know there's
Speaker 5: a difference between eighty four inflation and twenty and eighteen,
Speaker 5: but I'm just.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm just saying that.
Speaker 4: But for.
Speaker 5: The hell that you guys were put through to execute
Speaker 5: this tour, in hindsight, do you still.
Speaker 1: Do you have any regrets about it? Or no? In fact,
Speaker 1: because it literally said the standard for where we are now.
Speaker 6: A lot of people didn't want us to do that tour.
Speaker 6: A lot of people said it couldn't be done. No
Speaker 6: black acts were doing things like that, soning out like
Speaker 6: five stadium nights, So can you seven nights at Dodger Stadium?
Speaker 5: Can you speak on Because the thing is is that
Speaker 5: like watching young we just think like, oh, the Jacksons
Speaker 5: could do anything. And yeah, the constant narrative I hear
Speaker 5: is that we had to fight for it. We had
Speaker 5: to fight for it.
Speaker 1: We had to fight for it always that you know,
Speaker 1: it was just to get a seat at the table.
Speaker 6: Yeah. It wasn't that we thought. We didn't think we
Speaker 6: were better than everybody else. We never thought that, but
Speaker 6: just it was just our quest for always being the
Speaker 6: best that we could be and to do more. We
Speaker 6: were never satisfied with ourselves. We always wanted more. We
Speaker 6: always wanted to do better and do more, and and
Speaker 6: that's just how we grew up. But I remember specifically
Speaker 6: the Victory tour. In the meetings we had before the tour,
Speaker 6: we said what we wanted to do coming off of
Speaker 6: like five six straight multi platinum albums consecutively, from Destiny
Speaker 6: to Triumph, Off the Wall, you know, all these albums.
Speaker 6: Piller I said, Okay, that's what we want to do,
Speaker 6: and they said, so now were be able to do this.
Speaker 6: People are not going to come out.
Speaker 1: Wait, they said they're not going to come out. I
Speaker 1: said it seriously.
Speaker 6: My father said he said no, he said no, I'd
Speaker 6: be there, And I think don King at the time
Speaker 6: helped to make that happen, so with.
Speaker 5: His presence and again now now I'm realizing that can
Speaker 5: have happened without don King really yeah, so okay, So
Speaker 5: with that, so modern promoters and rock they were. Was
Speaker 5: there such thing as al Haman back in eighty four?
Speaker 6: And our Hayman was he small potatoes all him and
Speaker 6: got to start from my father, my father. Yeah, my
Speaker 6: father was always like, I'm going to make sure the
Speaker 6: black guys have a chance in promoting. So he'd always,
Speaker 6: you know, get a black guy as a shot, you know,
Speaker 6: because in those days they wouldn't they wouldn't let black
Speaker 6: promoters promoting them black acts. You still have that problem today, yeah, right, yeah,
Speaker 6: you do only yeah, so, and but he would always
Speaker 6: saw our Hyman was a young Harvard grad who right, Yeah, does.
Speaker 1: The name Shep Gordon mean anything to you? Chef's a
Speaker 1: good friend of Bars. Good for the show.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm going after this interview tonight, I'm going to
Speaker 5: Chep's house. Okay, Oh sorry, That's why I bank for this,
Speaker 5: That's why I bank for the interview. Twelve afternoon, I'm
Speaker 5: going straight to the airport. But in my mind he
Speaker 5: was the Black Whisper. Yeah, you know, got Teddy out
Speaker 5: of his situation and whatnot. And I mean at the time,
Speaker 5: what was it about demand?
Speaker 6: And where does she live now?
Speaker 1: In mal Okay?
Speaker 6: Wow, you're going to Hawaii?
Speaker 5: Huh yes, off for a few days and uh yeah, Look,
Speaker 5: if it were up to me, I'd work twenty four
Speaker 5: to seven.
Speaker 1: That's cool. Take a break, bro, go to Hawaii? All right?
Speaker 1: But wait, did you guys ever take vacations in the
Speaker 1: heyday of the Jacksons?
Speaker 6: No, yeah, it's you don't take vacations.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yo, because when you never know when it'll stop
Speaker 5: or whatever, like, you gotta keep going and rest. Was
Speaker 5: there ever any fear of Okay, I guess now I
Speaker 5: can bring up the princess you what what was the
Speaker 5: general feelings about princes?
Speaker 1: Wait? What was the prince story in the Rose Voice?
Speaker 6: I forget some of these things. I remember when Dove's Cry, like,
Speaker 6: your general feeling is okay, prince?
Speaker 1: Did you honestly his music? And I did?
Speaker 6: Okay, I wasn't that crazy about doves Cry when I
Speaker 6: first heard it.
Speaker 1: It was a risky song.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, it's a great song, but at the
Speaker 6: time I wasn't it just I mean, like I like
Speaker 6: the other stuff. First of all, genius, Prince an amazing talent,
Speaker 6: But Dove's cry wasn't one of my favorites. It was
Speaker 6: the other stuff that I like, Okay, soft and wet.
Speaker 1: But did he I mean it was his?
Speaker 5: Was he?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 6: But but to Michael it was exactly like I.
Speaker 5: Mean, pre MTV embracing Prince or like I'm talking about
Speaker 5: Prince just before empt because obviously, once your brother breaks
Speaker 5: the barriers at MTV, then MTV was like, oh, what
Speaker 5: other cool black people can Prince? And now okay, now
Speaker 5: the elevator's crowded. But before then was it even a thought?
Speaker 5: I mean, like, is your sister's even covered?
Speaker 1: M hm.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah yeah, Like I like, I love, I feel
Speaker 6: for you. Okay, but Dove's cry wasn't one of my favorites,
Speaker 6: but I love everything else. Were you at the house
Speaker 6: in Havenhurst when you visited?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 6: But he always used to call up and you would
Speaker 6: call up, yeah, like one of them talk to La
Speaker 6: Toya and I and I would always like hang up
Speaker 6: on people have a hard time. But because Princeville called
Speaker 6: up and be like yeah, La Toya, I'm like, who
Speaker 6: is this never say hello. He's like he was like, yeah, LaToya.
Speaker 6: He has a deep voice and it's like LaToya. I
Speaker 6: was like, okay, click real, yeah, LaToya get mad at me.
Speaker 1: I wasn't ready for that.
Speaker 6: She would get mad at me, but yeah, I wasn't
Speaker 6: ready for that. I have a hang up on many
Speaker 6: of her boyfriends.
Speaker 1: So I was I was that.
Speaker 6: Bobby too. Oh yeah, Bobby. I get him the worst time.
Speaker 1: Really, Oh damn? Okay. So you're family Pipo, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Okay, you do the same to your sisters. Oh no,
Speaker 1: you know, get my sisters out there are sucking and
Speaker 1: free reign that that was my so okay.
Speaker 5: So your moved to an m with Randy, the Randy
Speaker 5: and the Gypsy Project, the McClain side.
Speaker 1: Okay, So why did it take you wait? That came
Speaker 1: out in eighties eighty nine.
Speaker 6: At the time, and it was being sold to Universal.
Speaker 1: Okay, and.
Speaker 6: That whole project was done. But everybody like, you know,
Speaker 6: like when when when it in those days when the
Speaker 6: record label was being sold, people wouldn't didn't want to
Speaker 6: go to go in the office anymore.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: That meanings that they're going to consolidate and downsize a
Speaker 6: lot of people would lose their jobs. So a lot
Speaker 6: of people just didn't work and the record didn't get
Speaker 6: worked and it took a I'm surprised it even got done,
Speaker 6: but it was like at that time and it was
Speaker 6: basically had basically basically cashed out they moved to Universal,
Speaker 6: So because.
Speaker 5: It was a transitional period, they got lost in that
Speaker 5: interesting Yeah, yeah, really well we were on MC at
Speaker 5: the time when MCA had just gotten sold to the label,
Speaker 5: so it's too Geffen an inner scope. So we had
Speaker 5: an album that that suffered.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that happens in those transitional periods. People get
Speaker 6: laid off and people you know. All right, So before
Speaker 6: I wrap up the show, I would like to take
Speaker 6: a different angle, can we hear do you have a
Speaker 6: story of you and your brother Michael.
Speaker 1: Just a normal.
Speaker 5: Just something that we don't know, like you guys you know,
Speaker 5: have three point shootout contests or or.
Speaker 1: Just something that we don't know about you and your
Speaker 1: your brother's relationship.
Speaker 6: It was it was music, martial arts, believe it or not,
Speaker 6: martial arts, martial arts. We all we all wanted to
Speaker 6: be Bruce Lee. Actually, we actually have Bruce Lee's brother
Speaker 6: who was our trainer teaching us what so we had
Speaker 6: good training?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was going to say on the Soul Training episode, Uh,
Speaker 5: there's a clip of Randy on crutches and Joe actually
Speaker 5: says that. Don says, well, what happened to Randy? And
Speaker 5: Joe's like, Randy's a kung fu cat. So and it's
Speaker 5: where did you kick your foot through the windows?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Shower door? Oh m hm.
Speaker 5: So the future for you now in developing your label
Speaker 5: is this, This is will Circle down now your hotown.
Speaker 6: Well, it's funny because for me, I I try to
Speaker 6: keep it as organic as possible. And even with Janet
Speaker 6: because we we we we uh partnered on everything but
Speaker 6: the new song that on your show, and but for me,
Speaker 6: we just wanna be natural about it. There's for for
Speaker 6: the for Rhythm Nations label. We're not gonna sign a
Speaker 6: lot of people because we want to whoever we sign,
Speaker 6: we want to make sure it does it well. And
Speaker 6: there's a girl from Wells who's touring with Her name
Speaker 6: is Rebecca James. Okay, this girl can come in this room.
Speaker 6: She's twenty one, come in this room and make magic
Speaker 6: happen all by herself. Really, but she's but she writes
Speaker 6: and sings gospel.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 6: So when I first heard, I didn't believe it was her,
Speaker 6: and I said, well, come to my house. I'm gonna
Speaker 6: hear you play and sing and in person in life.
Speaker 6: So she did it and it says, okay, I played
Speaker 6: it for Janet and jenne Go's Brandy. We need that
Speaker 6: voice on stage and back up. So she's touring with
Speaker 6: Janet and we're working on her album right now. Wow,
Speaker 6: it's coming. She's really talented, an amazing songwriter. So you'll
Speaker 6: be hearing about her. Rebecca James, Yeah from Wells all right,
Speaker 6: but that's it. We're just you know, to me, music
Speaker 6: is a gift from God. We all have this gift.
Speaker 6: It's an amazing gift that God gives us to help
Speaker 6: bring the world together. And that's just not I'm not
Speaker 6: trying to be like, but it's true. It's like music
Speaker 6: makes you feel good, you know. It's like, right, it does. Yeah,
Speaker 6: It's like, I mean, I love drums, I love instruments.
Speaker 6: I still love going to the music store and playing
Speaker 6: the different drums. You like doing that too, It's like
Speaker 6: it's still fun. Yeah, right, it's like playing right, let's play.
Speaker 1: Time go to the store. Old say, do you still
Speaker 1: play drums? How come you never played drums as opposed.
Speaker 6: To Bond because I did play drums. I played drums
Speaker 6: like I trained foot in the beginning when it came
Speaker 6: to us. First I started playing drums. Then we played
Speaker 6: percussion because Johnny was playing drums, so I just went
Speaker 6: to percussion.
Speaker 1: Oh and keyboards.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you could have I played drums.
Speaker 1: Okay, now I know that. Yes, we forgot. And then
Speaker 1: when we're at Victory, mm hmm, what happened.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of things happened with the whole Victory album,
Speaker 6: the whole concept.
Speaker 5: I'm talking about literally the cover there was a double soldier.
Speaker 5: There was, and then in later pressings the dove is going.
Speaker 6: Really you guys notice everything talk about also, like like
Speaker 6: like the white glove thing that Michael. The way that
Speaker 6: happened was, that's an interesting story. So Bill Whitten, who
Speaker 6: does our wardrobe, and he had this white glove for
Speaker 6: Jackie to wear. Jackie said, man, I'm not wearing a
Speaker 6: white glove. Jackie took the glove off and throw the
Speaker 6: Micael He goes, man, you wear us, I'm not gonna
Speaker 6: wear it. That's how it happened. No one gloves one glove.
Speaker 6: Michael put the Jackie's away where you dance, you wear
Speaker 6: his glove, Michael, so I can put it on, said,
Speaker 6: I'm wearing it. So that's how it happened.
Speaker 5: That is the mic drop statement. Thank you, uh Randy,
Speaker 5: I appreciate it, Thank you, thank you. Another episode of
Speaker 5: Anemic Supreme with sugarst.
Speaker 4: Boss Bill.
Speaker 5: Shout out to Fontela, Liyah and uh on paid Bill.
Speaker 5: We will see you on the next go around. Thank
Speaker 5: you very much. This was Questlove Supreme only on Pandora.
Speaker 1: All Right, What's Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
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