Speaker 1: Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode
Speaker 1: was produced by the team at Pandora. Hey, what's up, y'all?
Speaker 1: This is Quest Love And as you noticed throughout June,
Speaker 1: we are celebrating black musical by releasing an episode every day.
Speaker 1: So every day you're even going to hear especially pick
Speaker 1: Ls Classic. And on Wednesdays we're dropping a new two
Speaker 1: part episodes with Wayne Brady and James Poyser, both of
Speaker 1: which were filmed in studio, so make sure you also
Speaker 1: watch this on YouTube. Here's a conversation with Philip Bailly
Speaker 1: of Earth, Wind and Fire. But don't don't screw up
Speaker 1: Philip Billy.
Speaker 2: Supreme Supremo, roll call, Suprema su su supreme O, roll call,
Speaker 2: Suprema Suprema roll call, Suprema Suprema roll call not confrontational.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I throw no shade. Yeah a Philip and I
Speaker 1: about to fight. Yeah for his opinions on race.
Speaker 2: Supreme Supreme, roll called, Suprema Son Son Suprema.
Speaker 1: Roll My name is Fante.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is how I ball. Yeah when I
Speaker 3: go walking. Yeah on the Chinese Wall.
Speaker 2: Suprema son Supremia, roll car, Suprema Suck soun Suprema role called.
Speaker 4: My name is Sugar, Yeah, Sugar, Steve, Yeah, before you
Speaker 4: know it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'll be on your knee.
Speaker 2: Suprema Supreme roll call.
Speaker 1: It was my name.
Speaker 5: Yeah, treats Russian as the bomb. Yeah, the Earth, Wind
Speaker 5: and Fire didn't play my prom Supreme.
Speaker 2: Much Supreme roll Supreme Supreme roll call.
Speaker 6: It's like yeah, and mister Bailly, yes please, yeah, I
Speaker 6: love you so much. Yeah, I'm just trying to make you.
Speaker 1: See roll Supreme Supreme roll call.
Speaker 7: Well I'm here, yeah, and you know yeah that I
Speaker 7: can go, yeah, and I can flow.
Speaker 1: Roll call Supreme Supremo role car.
Speaker 8: Supreme roll call, Supremo Supremo roll call, Suprema Suprema roll call,
Speaker 8: like real quick, Who's that?
Speaker 6: I totally I was trying to find some one of
Speaker 6: my favorite lyrics that he's loving, and you messed it up.
Speaker 6: Steve messed up, did the easy level reference and I
Speaker 6: was and I was just trying to make you see.
Speaker 1: All right, yeah Steve as basically, I mean, he's done
Speaker 1: everything but tattooed the forty five into his chest. You
Speaker 1: had to know that Steve was going to give so
Speaker 1: Phil Collins.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it was Yeah, this song changed my life, I'm sure, but.
Speaker 6: He did the whole album. You could have picked any song.
Speaker 1: Really. Yeah, but you know, I think you have a
Speaker 1: deeper well of Earth Wind and Fire and Philip Bailey
Speaker 1: Nowedge than Steve here. You should have left the easy
Speaker 1: level to me. Yeah, like the consensus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you had to beat with that was my song
Speaker 3: you got with the I'm with you on the raid.
Speaker 3: I'm ready, I'm ready for the Raise to beat.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Because yeah, yeah this anyway, uh raise heat? Yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, my tied my entire goals and dreams
Speaker 1: of this plot. Yes, is basically to educate and enlighten
Speaker 1: you all as listeners, But mostly it is basically for
Speaker 1: the five of us to just nerd out a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of questions that only a few of y'all going
Speaker 1: to get when we ask them, as you see during
Speaker 1: the Jimmy Jam episode, in the Ray Parker episode and
Speaker 1: Babyface and Greg fill and gains. But the time has
Speaker 1: come upon us to make our dreams come true. Here
Speaker 1: at QLs. We are truly blessed to be of the
Speaker 1: presence of Royalty bar None. I believe that our guest
Speaker 1: today is one of the most skilled vocalists of his generations.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talented, not gifted, but skilled, absolutely skilled
Speaker 1: of all the silky falsetto vocal gods of seventies funk
Speaker 1: soul outfits. Our guest today resides personally and my number
Speaker 1: one slot in my personal list. He's a seven time
Speaker 1: Grammy Award winner, a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame,
Speaker 1: and a member of one of the most sharis beloved
Speaker 1: supergroups and the entire history of music. Yes, even my
Speaker 1: hyperbolegue is understated this particular episode. Uh, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: please give flowers and respect and love to our guest today.
Speaker 1: We've been dying to get on the show since its inception,
Speaker 1: the one and only Philip Bailey. Yes, yeah, wow, Well
Speaker 1: that was amazing. That was a great interest that I've
Speaker 1: been waiting for this moment.
Speaker 7: Whenever my self esteem is low, I'll just play Oh man,
Speaker 7: thank you, thank you for doing this. Okay, so why
Speaker 7: do you hate raise? No, let's just go ahead and
Speaker 7: get No. No, no, please, I gotta start now. I'm
Speaker 7: want to make sure I do this the right way. Well,
Speaker 7: thank you for coming on the show man. I'm honored
Speaker 7: to be here. Really, this this is like you. This
Speaker 7: show was tailing me.
Speaker 1: Just for you to be straight up and down very cool,
Speaker 1: very cool. All right, So I'm quickly started at your beginnings. Yes,
Speaker 1: you have a history that we got to get through everything.
Speaker 1: So Denver, Denver, Colorado. What is life like in Denver
Speaker 1: when you're in your formative years? My high city?
Speaker 7: Now, you know, amazingly, there was so much talent in
Speaker 7: the Denver area, you know. You know, Diane Reeves is
Speaker 7: from from Denver too. I actually brought brought her out
Speaker 7: to Los Angeles. She was in a group that I
Speaker 7: was producing called Free Free Life, Okay, And I had
Speaker 7: to talk to her mother and tell her mother, don't worry.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna take care of her. Everything's gonna be cool.
Speaker 7: She had just gotten out of high school. Really yeah,
Speaker 7: but there's like, there was so much talent. I always
Speaker 7: tell people that basically I was just wanted to pack,
Speaker 7: you know, and I got an opportunity. Uh but you know,
Speaker 7: I played drums through school, you know, from the fourth
Speaker 7: grade through through college because I was gonna be per
Speaker 7: and so I was doing gigs and stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, you know that scene.
Speaker 7: The regular gigs and then the late night stuff, you know,
Speaker 7: and I would sing on one gig and I would
Speaker 7: play or sing on another.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, so wait wait you mentioned something and just
Speaker 1: set off many a rabbit hole that's about to happen
Speaker 1: on this show. Does dian Reeves still live in Denver? Yes,
Speaker 1: she does. You want to know something, Okay, the very
Speaker 1: first time, the first day that the Roots recorded at
Speaker 1: Battery Studio, a tripod quest was in Studio B and
Speaker 1: they were doing a version of Grant Greens down here
Speaker 1: on the ground. They were it was that blue right.
Speaker 1: But the thing was, I never knew, like the technology
Speaker 1: was so new at the time to have someone in
Speaker 1: a whole nother state singing their vocals. So they made it.
Speaker 1: There was something wrong with the whatever communication they were
Speaker 1: using for Diane Reeves to sing her right, this is
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, though, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: like she was singing in Denver, like we were like amazed,
Speaker 1: like wow, Trackwalk Questions producing Donna Reeves live at Denver
Speaker 1: and you know that that whole thing. So okay, So
Speaker 1: was this the time you you had this group when
Speaker 1: you were already established phil a Billy or now that
Speaker 1: she's like up here like you.
Speaker 7: No, yeah, I was already established. I was already out
Speaker 7: in Los Angeles, you know, with the band and every Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, I'll say that Denver isn't the spot
Speaker 1: I think of when I think of usually a lot
Speaker 1: of our our great singers, and especially in the era
Speaker 1: of soul, their experience is down south or sometimes Midwest Chicago,
Speaker 1: that right, that sort of thing. But how does soul
Speaker 1: reach the Mile High City?
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, you know, everybody everybody from the south some
Speaker 7: kind of way, right, right, So basically, you know, all
Speaker 7: the blues and jazz and and uh, you know, we
Speaker 7: didn't we didn't have no R and B or jazz
Speaker 7: radio stations and stuff.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 7: Like so I grew up listening to the country and
Speaker 7: you know, middle middle country, you know, rock and all
Speaker 7: that kind of stuff. Love me some bluegrass and all
Speaker 7: that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Because I was about to say, because usually people, uh,
Speaker 1: usually earth wind and Fire is the answer for people
Speaker 1: when they're in the middle of nowhere America, and earth
Speaker 1: wind and Fire is usually like the one group that
Speaker 1: somehow seeps through the system of of you know, radio
Speaker 1: or whatever reaches people. But it's like what does a
Speaker 1: member of Earth Wind and Fire listen to when Earth
Speaker 1: Wind and Fire doesn't exist. I'm dousing to you. I'm
Speaker 1: listening to all kind of stuff that you're doing. And no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I just met when you were when you were a
Speaker 1: kid growing up, do you remember the first album purchased?
Speaker 7: Well, you know, everybody was listening to Jackie Wilson and
Speaker 7: and people like that. But I grew up in rummaging
Speaker 7: through my friend's mother's music music selections, so, uh, she
Speaker 7: was a jazzer and her boyfriend was a jazz bassist,
Speaker 7: So I grew up listening to you know, straight up jazz,
Speaker 7: you know, straight ahead. Was there a black church experience
Speaker 7: in oh yeah, oh yeah, I know. I was raised Catholic,
Speaker 7: but I did. I sang with a group called Echoes
Speaker 7: of Youth and uh in Denver, and uh, you know
Speaker 7: there there was a lot of talented singers, but also
Speaker 7: the choir director, Mss Joanne Ryan. She also would have
Speaker 7: different entertainers to come and teach us how to sell
Speaker 7: a song and you know, just give us input on,
Speaker 7: you know, how to perform and all that stuff. So
Speaker 7: you know, actually Pam Greer was in that group with me. Really, yeah,
Speaker 7: what other notable dim rights do we not know that?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 7: Bill Bill Fazelle okay, oh really yeah, he was, he was,
Speaker 7: he was in We were in the same orchestra, and
Speaker 7: he was the first clear clarinet player. I didn't even
Speaker 7: know he played guitar until until I was out gone
Speaker 7: and famous and Natives talking about Bill Fazelle and he's
Speaker 7: on guitar and I said, you mean clarinet player first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So how does now I'm thinking, like again,
Speaker 1: the way we are today with technology, you know, I
Speaker 1: can know of a soulful singer in Indian like two seconds.
Speaker 1: But how does word how does word even spread about
Speaker 1: who or what you do that gets the attention of
Speaker 1: I assume that your was earth winder Fire, your first
Speaker 1: professional group.
Speaker 7: Or well first recording professional group, because you know, like
Speaker 7: back then there were clubs. So I started playing at
Speaker 7: clubs when I was like fifteen and stuff. So you know,
Speaker 7: I was performing and all that kind of stuff and
Speaker 7: traveling and you know, not extensive traveling going to Kansas City,
Speaker 7: you know. But a guy named Perry Jones, who yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: Perry Jones was the one that got that that that
Speaker 7: was kind of mentoring our group that that Larry Dunn
Speaker 7: was in Friends of Love and Andrew wolf Folk and
Speaker 7: he went out to be the first promotion man for
Speaker 7: Warner Brothers. And when he he came back and with
Speaker 7: a with an album that was just white and he
Speaker 7: gave it to us, to me and Carl and the
Speaker 7: rest of a bunch of guys, and it was earth
Speaker 7: wind Fires first record.
Speaker 1: So you were not there for the Warner period. I
Speaker 1: wasn't there for the Warner period or the Sweet Sweet
Speaker 1: No can you can you settle the rumor that Bill
Speaker 1: Cosby was the one that No, okay, I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: Charles Stephane, Bill. No, no, no, Bill. Now, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Bill Cosby for a little while. He had a
Speaker 1: history before his history anyway. No, it was Bill express
Speaker 1: yourself Charles all right, but uh, Sweet Sweetback is uh
Speaker 1: Melvin he was, and that's what they said, right, So
Speaker 1: was connected to Charles, okay, and he was connected to
Speaker 1: Sweet Sweet Back right somewhere. I'm getting it all mixed up.
Speaker 7: So well, you know, Jim Brown is part of the
Speaker 7: history of the Fire really because he was actually managing
Speaker 7: the band for a minute before before I got in
Speaker 7: it Jim Brown, Yeah, Jim and and then Bill Uh
Speaker 7: Ruffalo and Cavallo, you know kind of they they actually
Speaker 7: paid him a little bit to you know, get the band.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Yeah, So Rufblo and Cavallo were a thing
Speaker 1: even in the early seventies.
Speaker 7: Yeah, because they you know, they used to run clubs
Speaker 7: and all that kind of stuff together before they actually
Speaker 7: moved out to Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: I always wanted to know what their story was, right,
Speaker 3: and Ruffalo Cavallo they were princes managers.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they were our managers. And that that was the
Speaker 7: Perry Jones Hoo hook up because Perry Jones was actually
Speaker 7: what you know, was introduced to Prince. Prince is the
Speaker 7: one that that turned him on him on to Cavala
Speaker 7: Ruffalo because Prince wanted to do what Earth onony Fire
Speaker 7: was doing, and so he said, I want to meet
Speaker 7: those guys that managed Earth onony Fire.
Speaker 1: I had heard that that Verdin was supposed to produce
Speaker 1: Princess Ars. Was that had you ever heard anything about Like, No,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't hear that. His name came up
Speaker 1: in like a wishless for the uh for the label.
Speaker 1: So Perry Junes, like I always from Renowlum credits always
Speaker 1: wondered would he always introduce your shows for something?
Speaker 7: You know, one thing is just leading into the other.
Speaker 7: And uh, Perry did that and and it happened to
Speaker 7: be on that Gratitude album. Okay, so that's what actually
Speaker 7: just gave him that that fame. Okay, yeah, because he
Speaker 7: didn't do it all the time.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I see. So so you said that Larry
Speaker 1: Done and Andrew Wolfolk was there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were in bed Yeah, in my band, right,
Speaker 3: So Larry's also from Denver or Denver yep.
Speaker 1: Oh, I never knew that. I never knew that. So
Speaker 1: how did you guys?
Speaker 7: Okay, well, we were we were in school together, you know,
Speaker 7: and Larry was in the ninth grade and I was
Speaker 7: in the eleventh grade. We were playing in the band together,
Speaker 7: and uh, andrew family moved to Denver there he was
Speaker 7: a service brat. So we had we had a group
Speaker 7: that was playing in clubs and colleges and all that
Speaker 7: kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: What type of music we would do everything?
Speaker 7: Actually, we would do Top forty, but then we'd also
Speaker 7: do Carol Kinge. We'd do Three Dog Night, Rare Earth.
Speaker 7: We you know, we would you know, we could do
Speaker 7: pretty much anything that was on the radio. Okay, so
Speaker 7: pretty much early seventies, well sixties stuff, you know. Oh
Speaker 7: and then I had a you know, i'd do quartet
Speaker 7: stuff where you know, it was Jimmy Smith kind of stuff,
Speaker 7: you know, because we'd have bands where you know, this
Speaker 7: guy named al Hammond Moore who would play, you know,
Speaker 7: play the bass with you know, with his feet, you know,
Speaker 7: right right on on the V three and I was
Speaker 7: either playing drums or or singing in it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I was gonna wait till you guys got
Speaker 1: to Columbia, but I might as well ask, now, how
Speaker 1: many octaves is your voice? Because of course you're you're
Speaker 1: your golden gift is in your fellow stuff. Right.
Speaker 7: Actually, I'm a baritone. I studied operatic baritone in school. Yeah,
Speaker 7: in German and stuff. I remember that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So, but I grew up listening to you know, uh
Speaker 7: Seavon and dining in Washington off because you hear that
Speaker 7: stuff at the house, and I kind of mimicked those
Speaker 7: voices because of the passion, you know, the lyrical sense.
Speaker 7: But then growing up, I would, you know, I would
Speaker 7: I could sing, you know, whatever genre I was. We
Speaker 7: were doing on stage and stuff. So I was playing
Speaker 7: a gig and a teacher from one of the colleges
Speaker 7: was there and said, wow, you have an amazing falsetto.
Speaker 1: I said, huh, that's what that is. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know what a falsetto was. So what what is your
Speaker 1: daily routine? Is this one of those like, oh, national
Speaker 1: gift from God? Or are you Seth Riggs? You know
Speaker 1: I did study with Seth? Really yeah, I did study
Speaker 1: with Seth. And you know, Seth can only he can
Speaker 1: only teach what's there, you know, but you know everyone
Speaker 1: that has taught with study with him gets get something.
Speaker 1: You know, how long is this average session? How long
Speaker 1: does it do you just go with you?
Speaker 7: You wouldn't go probably past two hours, but he would
Speaker 7: just go with you until you you know, until you
Speaker 7: know there was a real breakthrough. I remember when Stevie
Speaker 7: was studying with him and then that song came out
Speaker 7: and he goes, oh, I am saying for tomorrow. I
Speaker 7: was like this, like what oh, But that was like
Speaker 7: right around the time he was studying with with Seth.
Speaker 1: How how does word about Seth Riggs get around because
Speaker 1: for listeners that study with them really so seth riggs. Uh.
Speaker 1: For you q l US listeners out there, it's pretty
Speaker 1: much the ve go to standard of vocal vocal culture,
Speaker 1: probably most famously his his Michael Jackson warm up sessions
Speaker 1: are on YouTube just a Google Michael Jackson Sethwriggs, of
Speaker 1: which there are various exercises. No no no no no
Speaker 1: no no no no no, Like what what what's what
Speaker 1: is the purpose of doing those scales? But with different annunciations,
Speaker 1: Well you could, well you can hear you know, where
Speaker 1: you're speaking, where your voice is speaking from, you know,
Speaker 1: and he just connects you know that with singing. You know,
Speaker 1: it just shows you where where to place different things
Speaker 1: and the that goes, it's showing you how to get
Speaker 1: it to your head, your head voice, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you gotta. If you do that, you have to
Speaker 1: you have to go. There's no way other you can't go.
Speaker 1: If you're you can't do anything but go to your head. Okay,
Speaker 1: So they're very various. So for various ranges, you have
Speaker 1: to pick up a certain body. Part two because I
Speaker 1: always heard, like teachers in my school say, like sing
Speaker 1: from your diet, right, But I always find myself when
Speaker 1: I'm naturally singing what I always sing from my throat
Speaker 1: and they always say that's wrong.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but how you hear your talk? You're speaking voice?
Speaker 7: Like what you just right there? You spoke from down here.
Speaker 3: So but is it natural instinct for you to do
Speaker 3: the right thing or like it's it's natural. It's very
Speaker 3: natural now, but back then you were.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but you know, back then, if you if you
Speaker 7: lose your voice a few times and all that kind
Speaker 7: of stuff, obviously you know you're you're you're singing from
Speaker 7: the wrong place or you know, or straining the door
Speaker 7: doing certain things.
Speaker 1: For Jesus Christ, I didn't even ask, like what if
Speaker 1: your horse were night and you can't do reasons or
Speaker 1: just can't do it.
Speaker 7: That happened last year, Yeah, in Vegas, man, for I
Speaker 7: was like, there was you know, there was this curtain
Speaker 7: on the stage that they hadn't taken down for eons
Speaker 7: and they and they they lowered it and brought it
Speaker 7: back up, and they said there was dust all over
Speaker 7: the instruments and stuff. You know, that's really fine, got
Speaker 7: into my my you know, my voice, and man, three nights,
Speaker 7: really man, I couldn't sing. I couldn't sing too much
Speaker 7: in nothing at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, so is I'm so glad we have a singer.
Speaker 1: Singer on the show always okay, I always kind of side.
Speaker 1: I'm a straight up musician. I'd never consider myself a
Speaker 1: singer or whatever. So I mean, I'm respecting the fact
Speaker 1: that singing is an instrument, but having dealt having dealt
Speaker 1: with the demands of Wreatha Franklin and Luther vandros REITHA.
Speaker 1: Franklin famously, she can't go into any building that's under yeah,
Speaker 1: under seventy eight degrees. So whenever she would visit late
Speaker 1: night because we had a universal uh no, she would
Speaker 1: have these like these four dudes that pretty much Steve
Speaker 1: Harvey Detroit pimp dress looking cats, but they would have
Speaker 1: like secrets service, like earpieces and everything. They would come
Speaker 1: in around ten pm the night before and they would
Speaker 1: rotate sitting by the master thermometer thing like one in
Speaker 1: the basement, literally so that if someone comes in like
Speaker 1: it's not as hell you can't do it. So literally,
Speaker 1: anytime Aretha Franklin was everyone on the Tonight Show, a
Speaker 1: guy would come in and do three hours sitting by
Speaker 1: wherever the master thermostat is for the entire six flour
Speaker 1: to make sure that no one touches it. Trinity, I
Speaker 1: want that happening for me. But this is what I'm
Speaker 1: really asking. And Luther Vangels also famously like would make
Speaker 1: all air conditioning off in any stadium that he's ever
Speaker 1: been in. I just want to know. It's part of
Speaker 1: that psychosomatic No, it's definitely not. That's real. It's definitely not.
Speaker 1: It's like I try, you know, I try.
Speaker 7: But I laid down, like on a couch like that
Speaker 7: at a gig and stuff, and the air conditioning was on,
Speaker 7: you know, and I started to tell him, y'all, you
Speaker 7: should probably turn it off and stuff. And I laid
Speaker 7: down and putting my jacket over my head and I
Speaker 7: did go to sleep. I couldn't sing for three days.
Speaker 7: It's the it's the free on, you know that that
Speaker 7: messes with the vocal with vocals, some vocal cords, some
Speaker 7: people some people can you know, can do it. But
Speaker 7: it's the same with me. Like when you get on
Speaker 7: that tour bus or whatever. My my the back bay
Speaker 7: is a it's it's a sauna, all right.
Speaker 1: That's also the real reason why there was a Griffin
Speaker 1: Doordan slndering bus between Tarika and I because Tarka's doctor Africa.
Speaker 6: Like and a smoke box and hot box. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's it's like, you know, it has to
Speaker 1: be one hundred degrees to do that, so that that
Speaker 1: is not psychosomatic. That's why.
Speaker 6: So let me ask this question, and do you have
Speaker 6: a daily routine of maintenance for you?
Speaker 1: Not really? Not really?
Speaker 6: Do you the dairy?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you know none of that stuff.
Speaker 7: I tell you what I cannot do, and and I
Speaker 7: tried it a couple of times. Coca Cola. No, it's
Speaker 7: kryptonite for me.
Speaker 1: I can't I can't even I can't say any I
Speaker 1: can't sing a note. I can't sing. Ah. Really, it
Speaker 1: just goes no soda, nothing, no soda, just Coca cola.
Speaker 1: Did they know that at the time commercials?
Speaker 7: You know, I was doing this gig outside and it
Speaker 7: was hot, and you know, somebody was drinking co cola
Speaker 7: and I just needed something to drink and I grabbed some.
Speaker 1: Man. It was done. There was no singing whatsoever not
Speaker 1: that night.
Speaker 7: And so it happened again, and I just thought, okay
Speaker 7: that you know what the heck, same thing happened.
Speaker 1: Couldn't sing a word. Well, since we're here already, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna just skip two two reasons. Do you regret that
Speaker 1: the live version of reasons is our standard for what
Speaker 1: we expect you to do to the day you die,
Speaker 1: Like if you don't do those exact andrew together everything right,
Speaker 1: Like is there a night where you don't reach that?
Speaker 1: And it's like the audience is kind of side eye
Speaker 1: and you like before your answers.
Speaker 5: Can I tell you when I was probably like maybe
Speaker 5: twelve or thirteen when I first heard that, and I
Speaker 5: could hit those notes then, and then when my voice cracked,
Speaker 5: I was so upset I could not It was like
Speaker 5: it was that song in Prints on the Most Beautiful
Speaker 5: Girl in the World when he hits that high note
Speaker 5: at the end.
Speaker 1: I used to be able to hit both of those notes.
Speaker 1: Not no more. I was so upset, up, so upset.
Speaker 1: So you set such a high goal for yourself that
Speaker 1: you now want to have to live up to.
Speaker 7: Uh, you know, you know what people come to hear,
Speaker 7: so you know I always do that, even if I'm
Speaker 7: just gonna go off and then at live do some
Speaker 7: other stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll do that, all right, all right?
Speaker 6: Got a dumb question somebody told me to ask you this,
Speaker 6: and I'm gonna ask the room, what are the reasons.
Speaker 1: Interesting enough that song?
Speaker 7: Let's let's talk about that song yourself bit because you
Speaker 7: know that, you know the lifestyle of you know, the
Speaker 7: road dogs and all that kind of stuff. Memory used
Speaker 7: to have a conversation about, you know, infidelity and stuff,
Speaker 7: and so you know, well, I'm gonna go all the
Speaker 7: way back gets a little bit. We go into we Land,
Speaker 7: I think it was in Philly, yay, and and there's
Speaker 7: this there's this really really fine female. Okay, that that
Speaker 7: that is like everybody's looking at when we come off
Speaker 7: the plane. Now, at that time, we would take a
Speaker 7: whole floor in a hotel and stuff and have security
Speaker 7: and all that kind of stuff. So we go to
Speaker 7: the and we would just you know, like if you
Speaker 7: wanted to see somebody, you would just give our road
Speaker 7: manager an eye.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: You know, I do not know, so I do not
Speaker 7: get to the hotel. I get to the hotel. The
Speaker 7: ladies at the hotel all right, and you know the
Speaker 7: next day, you know, she makes his phone call and
Speaker 7: she's talking to her guy.
Speaker 1: You know, just like.
Speaker 6: Just like.
Speaker 1: So Marisa having this conversation. So I felt like.
Speaker 7: A deflated and stuff was like, oh so I was
Speaker 7: talking to Maurice. So we had this conversation. So that's
Speaker 7: how we started to write Reasons. Okay, now writing that
Speaker 7: song and then Charles Debney came in with the music
Speaker 7: and stuff. People say that they used that song for
Speaker 7: their wed You're saying you wrote that song without a melody? No, no,
Speaker 7: that's that was we'd already had. We had the music.
Speaker 7: We had the music.
Speaker 1: So you just how do you and Maurice's collaborating on?
Speaker 1: So do you talk?
Speaker 6: It was?
Speaker 7: It was, you know, different all the time. You know,
Speaker 7: it was different all the time, you know, whatever resonated
Speaker 7: with you at that time. But that's how Reason was,
Speaker 7: you know, was was was crafted. But basically, you know,
Speaker 7: the song says that you know, your reasons were a lie,
Speaker 7: reasons had no pride, you know, love was left aside
Speaker 7: and all this stuff. And people said, are you that
Speaker 7: song reasons for my wedding?
Speaker 1: Oh? My goodness not what did I hear a rumor
Speaker 1: once that someone offered you guys to come perform the
Speaker 1: song at a wedding, and one of you had to reveal, like,
Speaker 1: it's a song about unfair like why, well, you know
Speaker 1: what we do.
Speaker 7: We do some very expensive corporate dates, you know, you know,
Speaker 7: and if someone says to do reasons, I will decline.
Speaker 1: Been specifically for like a love.
Speaker 7: Yeah, if it's for a wedding, if you know, if
Speaker 7: it's if it's your wedding night and you know we're
Speaker 7: doing the music after it, and I won't do I
Speaker 7: probably I don't want to do after the lover is
Speaker 7: gone either.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, you know.
Speaker 7: Your wedding night, wedding night, your wedding night, and you know,
Speaker 7: like this is your big party.
Speaker 1: No, you know, I'm not on singing all that. Ye wait,
Speaker 1: why is it that all of our quote, our songs,
Speaker 1: our side chicks, sweet thing? I just someone just hit
Speaker 1: me saving all my love? Did I know? Yeah? She
Speaker 1: say it.
Speaker 6: And now.
Speaker 1: But what's the world You got your family? Oh? No, God,
Speaker 1: and they need you to she knows you know what
Speaker 1: it is, dude. Black people listen to the lyrics.
Speaker 6: No, no, I think we translate them differently in our head,
Speaker 6: Like we listened because we sing along, But then somewhere
Speaker 6: in the translation is the feeling.
Speaker 3: The feeling feeling Maxwell said had the same thing with
Speaker 3: pretty Wings, where people were saying they wanted him to
Speaker 3: like do that at his wedding and so many people
Speaker 3: come and say, that's our wedding song. And he was
Speaker 3: just like, yo, this is a song about a breakup,
Speaker 3: but wait it is. Yeah, pretty Wings is totally about
Speaker 3: the break See. I thought, you're pretty wings so you
Speaker 3: can fly away, you're about to get out of here,
Speaker 3: something like pretty slow, Yeah, pretty means.
Speaker 1: The breakup song. I did not know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I played it all the time and part deal
Speaker 3: like it's it's a feeling, and he was just like, listen,
Speaker 3: if that's what it means to that person.
Speaker 1: You know, it's pretty arrogant of you to say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's not with it, but if that's how they feel
Speaker 1: about it, I didn't do it because I want I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to jinx your relationship. Wow, I thought, I.
Speaker 6: Just want to say, we still don't know the reasons,
Speaker 6: but the conversation I'm looking I'm sitting here reading the lyrics,
Speaker 6: like the reasons that we feared that Even.
Speaker 1: Then, I was gonna say, most Earth Wind and Fire
Speaker 1: slow songs really don't deal with besides be ever wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful man, I'm thinking like all, even like I would
Speaker 1: consider Devotion a slow song even though it has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with a romantic relationship.
Speaker 3: But it's really slow, so it is not really slow.
Speaker 3: That's I don't consider that. It's not a ballot.
Speaker 1: Well it's yeah, it's it's not required about the album
Speaker 1: version of Devotion I consider a slow song, whereas I'll
Speaker 1: DJ the live for it, like as a jam. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so weird. Okay, so can you how are you officially?
Speaker 1: Uh well wait, what what were your impressions of Earth
Speaker 1: Wind and Fire when you handed that record?
Speaker 7: I was blown away, first of all, because we didn't
Speaker 7: didn't have any pictures of them, so I couldn't conceive
Speaker 7: of them being an African American group. Yeah, because I
Speaker 7: had never heard anything like that ever before. And this
Speaker 7: is the first this is their Warner Brothers, this is
Speaker 7: the Warner Brothers stuff, and uh, you know, like I'm gonna,
Speaker 7: I couldn't have I couldn't imagine what they looked like
Speaker 7: because I'd never been introduced to afrocentric you know, music
Speaker 7: and all that kind of stuff, and and you know,
Speaker 7: it was no very much so very much so, I mean,
Speaker 7: and it was esoteric and you know, I was like, whoa,
Speaker 7: what is this? And then there was a merge of
Speaker 7: all of of the different genres in the music, and
Speaker 7: I'm like, what these guys look like?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 7: And then Perry brought them to Denver on a promotional
Speaker 7: tour and that's when Verdin came down to the club,
Speaker 7: saw me and and Carl play and stuff, and we
Speaker 7: actually opened the show for them, and on their promotional tour,
Speaker 7: and I met Maurice on the elevator. Okay, yeah, he
Speaker 7: had coconut oil. That's the first time I never knew.
Speaker 1: I never heard. I never smelled no oils, and I
Speaker 1: just I smelled coconuts. You know. It's like yeah, and
Speaker 1: he had a cowboy hat on. You know. Wow, So your.
Speaker 6: First tour or whatever you went on, your first tour
Speaker 6: must have been pretty mind blowing. To see how the
Speaker 6: rest of.
Speaker 1: Like mind blowing? Wait before it. See, the thing is
Speaker 1: that if you're not involved with Warner era Earth, when
Speaker 1: and fired who was like a moment of truth.
Speaker 7: I swore that was you singing no, No, that was
Speaker 7: that was That was the first group. All the first
Speaker 7: group was around Maurice's age, ten years older than us.
Speaker 7: So come a Columbia time, he totally got the whole band.
Speaker 1: The whole band.
Speaker 7: It was only they left, and it was only him
Speaker 7: and Verdein and and so. In that time period they
Speaker 7: had met me through the Denver experience and I was
Speaker 7: out in Los Angeles. I was a musical director of
Speaker 7: percussions for a band called the Stove All Sisters, which
Speaker 7: was yeah, and so I would play and rehearse the
Speaker 7: band and stuff, so they knew I could sing and stuff.
Speaker 7: They broke up and I was going to send, you know,
Speaker 7: my wife at the time, Janet, and my first son, Sir,
Speaker 7: back to Denver he had just been born. And Maurice
Speaker 7: and Vernein came over and said, do you want to
Speaker 7: be in the band? And I said, on one condition.
Speaker 7: They said what I said, I want to be in
Speaker 7: the best band in.
Speaker 1: The whole world.
Speaker 10: Wow.
Speaker 1: And they looked at each other and they said, you're
Speaker 1: that's a mighty demand. Then we ate oatmeal for next Wait.
Speaker 7: Every time we thought we was going on the road,
Speaker 7: we'd get ready to get we'd get in the car
Speaker 7: and be on the way and some of them somebody
Speaker 7: would call and they'd go, yeah, it's counselor. I was
Speaker 7: gonna God, So I was thinking, I was, I was,
Speaker 7: I was debating on if I should go to you know,
Speaker 7: to some training school or whatever. And the guy I
Speaker 7: was living with said, look, either you're gonna, you know,
Speaker 7: do that. Are you gonna do this. If you're gonna
Speaker 7: do this, go back in there and you know, practice
Speaker 7: your music and stuff.
Speaker 1: But that happened. That was our testing grounds. And then
Speaker 1: you know, once we got on.
Speaker 7: The road, we got out here, we got to Philly,
Speaker 7: and then is that the infamous booing night yep staring
Speaker 7: out to Philly got to Philly.
Speaker 1: The story.
Speaker 7: We got to Philly uptown and all the do wop
Speaker 7: groups and stuff, and we had on you know, we
Speaker 7: had on tights and all that kind of stuff different
Speaker 7: And so then we had that colimba and and Rilly
Speaker 7: Loss playing the soprano saxophone.
Speaker 1: He ain't never seen none of that.
Speaker 7: And so we got on the stage and the whoo
Speaker 7: y'all stink, you know, it's you know, throwing little stuff
Speaker 7: up there. More he told us all to sit down
Speaker 7: on the ground and the lotus position, so we all, yeah,
Speaker 7: oh yeah in Philly after uptown, So we just sat,
Speaker 7: he said, and just be still and so just and
Speaker 7: just stare at him.
Speaker 1: So so we did.
Speaker 7: We in Philly after uptown, sitting in the lotus position
Speaker 7: with you know, with tights on, you know, you know,
Speaker 7: and staring at the ordinance as they curse at us.
Speaker 7: And they kept on and they kept only kept on,
Speaker 7: and then they calmed down a little bit and Maury
Speaker 7: started playing that colimba.
Speaker 1: How did y'all at them? Man?
Speaker 7: We at least ten minutes they they Then then he
Speaker 7: started playing the colimber and Ronnie Larve started improvising over
Speaker 7: that colimber. Larry Dunn went to that keyboard started playing
Speaker 7: them chords and we run into a rhythm. When we
Speaker 7: got finished with that show, it was nothing like it
Speaker 7: gives me chills to this day.
Speaker 1: Really we were so it.
Speaker 7: Was like Philly Love, Earth Wind and Fire. They was
Speaker 7: the It was the first that was and we got
Speaker 7: it was so monumental that when we got done, we
Speaker 7: went back to the hotel where he said, we're gonna
Speaker 7: have a meeting, you know, and we all got together
Speaker 7: and he's and we all recognized something special had happened
Speaker 7: that night. You know, we all recognize it and we
Speaker 7: just have to affirm it. You know, he said they're
Speaker 7: gonna eat either love you or hate you, but they
Speaker 7: can't be.
Speaker 1: In the middle. Wow. Side note, I am trying to
Speaker 1: buy the town. Really yeah, I've been you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's one of my life goals with Sirah Live Nation.
Speaker 1: Shout out to Sorgy.
Speaker 6: Oh before they get it, don't partner, just take it off.
Speaker 3: It's not the man he is, but he's the man
Speaker 3: the company. No, it's still there, control on the rock.
Speaker 3: It's still it's still, it's still there. It's still a shell.
Speaker 3: And you know it's it's been The Uptown has been
Speaker 3: closed since eighty nine. I think, oh yeah, like thirty
Speaker 3: years now, that's a full I.
Speaker 6: Was just thinking I was a full circle moment. I
Speaker 6: remember Fourth of July what was that ten years ago
Speaker 6: when earth went and fire came to Philly and you
Speaker 6: guys did the curation for the welcome American things. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and it was just like a full circle moment of
Speaker 6: seeing them after.
Speaker 1: So okay with the first record, First of all, can
Speaker 1: you please tell us about Charles.
Speaker 3: Stephanie and we had emotions on the show like a
Speaker 3: while back, and they were kind of really yeah, we
Speaker 3: had them in La.
Speaker 7: But the closest thing thing I could say about Charles
Speaker 7: is Quincy Jones. You know that type of person. But
Speaker 7: he was also like just such a humble he was.
Speaker 7: He was an orchestrator and the ranger, vibist, pianist, ah,
Speaker 7: and you know, a songwriter and and a lover of
Speaker 7: his family, you know, and a teacher and a very
Speaker 7: very humble, understated person. And uh, all he did was
Speaker 7: just make music and and all those sounds and stuff
Speaker 7: before everything got multi tamborled and stuff.
Speaker 1: He would record note for note.
Speaker 7: Then you know, do the octaves change him, harmonize him,
Speaker 7: all that harmony stuff that that was on since before
Speaker 7: you know they got they got multi times.
Speaker 1: Say you have to play one at the time. I
Speaker 1: have one of my life goals was try to find
Speaker 1: the all about love stems to see how he crafted
Speaker 1: the interlude that comes at the end, all right, that's
Speaker 1: eventually celebrate. Can you speak on that for a second.
Speaker 1: How the the ending of right? So basically that's his
Speaker 1: plate backwards right. I realized that now because on the
Speaker 1: Master rel when I heard it, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is celebrate And then I realized that, Okay, you
Speaker 1: guys must have just played it, but it still sounds
Speaker 1: the same, like back and forth. Okay, So initially he
Speaker 1: was demoing what would have been Celebrate, which is on
Speaker 1: the Gratitude album. Can you describe what the what's the
Speaker 1: jamming process or how does a seed of a song
Speaker 1: or an idea form into Like do you guys take
Speaker 1: rough ideas to Charles and then he'll stretch it out
Speaker 1: because I've heard I mean, in the reissues of a
Speaker 1: lot of these albums, you'll hear super rough demos of
Speaker 1: of Shining Star and various earth Wind and Fire songs
Speaker 1: when they're just like jamming ideas.
Speaker 7: Right well, like on that song Charles had really if
Speaker 7: I remember right, there was a lot of that song
Speaker 7: that was already there before me and Maurice started writing
Speaker 7: lyrics and stuff and everything that that he would bring
Speaker 7: Maurice and Charles had. They they worked really really well together,
Speaker 7: and al McKay was the key was a lot really Yeah,
Speaker 7: It's just like I could take a complicated whatever, complicated
Speaker 7: musical you know, piece or passage and make it groove
Speaker 7: really whatever whatever, because you know, that's a lot of
Speaker 7: music going on right there. You know, all those changes
Speaker 7: and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But you can so you feel that album. Ka is
Speaker 1: a guitar player, was the he was someone of the
Speaker 1: epicenter or you know, he's the lock. He was. He
Speaker 1: was a lock because he he played with you know,
Speaker 1: watch hundred and third Street, and he was an R
Speaker 1: and B keing. He just.
Speaker 7: Out even wanted to be complicated, you know. He he
Speaker 7: was about the funk and so whatever idea that Maurice
Speaker 7: would have filters through him, filtered through him and he
Speaker 7: would lock it up with with with Verdein and the drummer.
Speaker 7: You know, if Maurice wasn't playing, because if Maurice is playing,
Speaker 7: it was a lot simple, simpler because Maurice pocket had
Speaker 7: a pocket, you know, so in.
Speaker 1: The studio, Maurice would play drums most of the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Maurice is playing on that okay, wow. Yeah. He played
Speaker 1: on most of the stuff until until fred Eddy, until
Speaker 1: Ralph was initially in the Last Days in Time, was
Speaker 1: Ralph drumming on that album. Then Freddy came along.
Speaker 7: For Maurice on the on the records, it was Maurice
Speaker 7: until Freddy came. Ralph did play on That's the Way
Speaker 7: of the World. Okay, Okay, what was the relationship with
Speaker 7: Clive Davis, Like just very supportive and and unlike his
Speaker 7: experience with under like unlike a lot of the experiences
Speaker 7: that I've heard with other artists.
Speaker 1: He never we didn't have those basically the only thing
Speaker 1: you're talking about blessed wat.
Speaker 7: And he didn't he didn't and he didn't get into
Speaker 7: the artistic thing. He didn't get into the art.
Speaker 1: But you guys were the blueprint of art, right, that's the.
Speaker 7: Thing like get into you know, like he likes this
Speaker 7: song and getting this da da da da. He was
Speaker 7: just you know, Marris's give him the record when he
Speaker 7: got finished.
Speaker 1: But how okay. But the thing is is that the
Speaker 1: legacy of Clive Davis is okay, quote the greatest ears
Speaker 1: in music or whatever. His his mantra is like I
Speaker 1: have the best ears of music. You guys, though, were
Speaker 1: so artsy, like literally reintroducing or establishing afrocentristic afro jazz,
Speaker 1: but fil but still with the pop sens like you
Speaker 1: guys were so pop but so black at the money
Speaker 1: ass hooks. Cause yeah, so like what you know, would
Speaker 1: like the whole idea of like don't boris gets the
Speaker 1: course and all that stuff like, who's the disciplinarian that
Speaker 1: knew Oh.
Speaker 7: Okay, we're going all over the place. Really yeah, he
Speaker 7: had total a time me. He just you know he
Speaker 7: because he his background too was we worked at Chess
Speaker 7: Records in the in the in the advertisement, uh commercial department,
Speaker 7: and so like they would have contests with all the
Speaker 7: different writers, and Charles Stepney was arranger and he named
Speaker 7: Maurice Rooney tunes. That's how we you know, that's what
Speaker 7: we all call him Maurice Rooney because Maurice had this
Speaker 7: sense of getting getting a hook. So he was the
Speaker 7: hook man definitely. And he also believed that the hooks
Speaker 7: shouldn't just be in the choruses, but they should be
Speaker 7: in the music itself, you know, and in the grooves
Speaker 7: and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So so how did you guys avoid not that I
Speaker 1: thought that there was cliche one on one and sold
Speaker 1: music in the early seventies, Like you're on my mind
Speaker 1: all the time. I can't stop thinking about you, like
Speaker 1: this just the typical rhyme scheme that is in every
Speaker 1: I mean, Motown basically wrote the book on that. But
Speaker 1: how like you guys are talking about mysticism and spirituality
Speaker 1: and and things that aren't necessarily you know, day to
Speaker 1: day conversation. Yeah, what were you smoking?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 1: But like how would you is it books that you
Speaker 1: guys would read. And then Maurice was reading a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. He was reading a lot of stuff. And because.
Speaker 7: He had traveled with Ramsey Lewis and they had traveled
Speaker 7: to the Orient, different things like that, you know, and
Speaker 7: he was reading he changed his whole his whole lifestyle,
Speaker 7: diet and all the cast because I went to I
Speaker 7: went to Ramsey's house and saw a picture of Reese
Speaker 7: where he was thirty pounds thirty five pounds, bigger and
Speaker 7: stuff and looked, you know, looked a lot older. And
Speaker 7: I'll resiute, you know, really, yeah, that's when I used
Speaker 7: to drink, you know, oh wow, you know, but since
Speaker 7: when some from the time that I knew Maries, he
Speaker 7: never he didn't drink and stuff or smoke or anything
Speaker 7: like that.
Speaker 1: And so you know, you know that that kind of
Speaker 1: discipline was it hard doing that in the seventies, Like
Speaker 1: now food is more like science has made food very
Speaker 1: easy to you know, for a kind of not a
Speaker 1: connoisse or a kind of war like me to follow
Speaker 1: It is way easier now in today's society. But you know,
Speaker 1: back then a diet soda might taste like the worst
Speaker 1: thing in the world. But you know, how how hard
Speaker 1: was it to really maintain that discipline? Then he want
Speaker 1: the whole entire band to also follow the diet, and well, no,
Speaker 1: that's not true. He wasn't.
Speaker 7: He wasn't like controlling like that, you know, like you know,
Speaker 7: it's like what's good for him? You know, it was
Speaker 7: just more example kind of situation. You know, you you
Speaker 7: try different things, or you watch somebody doing something, you
Speaker 7: see how it's working for them or whatever, and you know,
Speaker 7: if it's cool, you know, you might try it.
Speaker 1: I mean even today, like if I go to Alabama,
Speaker 1: like I doubt, I mean only recently. It's so, how
Speaker 1: does one survive a healthy he wants lifestyle in you
Speaker 1: know areas making choices, you know, just just making choices.
Speaker 1: He wasn't you know, at certain points he did have
Speaker 1: you know, different people cooking for him or whatever. Okay, but.
Speaker 6: I'm more, I'm more I'm confused to how you guys were.
Speaker 6: It sounds like you were a drug free band in
Speaker 6: the seventies. Not really, ok, But you said he wasn't
Speaker 6: that much of a discipline.
Speaker 1: He wasn't he wasn't speaking about him, all right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so open our Eyes man, Now here's the thing, Open
Speaker 1: our Eyes. I believe it was written by Yeah because
Speaker 1: Eddie sings you mean that song? Yes, it's it's a
Speaker 1: no good go you go. No, No, I don't want
Speaker 1: to mess it up. No.
Speaker 7: Open Our Eyes was a song that Maurice Uh this
Speaker 7: this uh guy used to play in Chicago on his
Speaker 7: going off. He used to you know all the time,
Speaker 7: and the and I want to I forget the actual
Speaker 7: artists who actually had it first. You might can look
Speaker 7: that up. No, you mean father, but that not the No,
Speaker 7: it wasn't No, that wasn't them. That was I forget
Speaker 7: the guy's name, but you could probably look it up
Speaker 7: father father Opened our Eyes. And so Maurice decided, you
Speaker 7: know how much I'm gonna do that song because it
Speaker 7: was just in his head because he heard it all
Speaker 7: the time.
Speaker 1: See, I thought that funkin Delic also covered that song
Speaker 1: on I was basically trying to lead into the fact
Speaker 1: that they do they do Okay, So okay, I knew
Speaker 1: Yeah Funkadelic also covered I thought they wrote it, but
Speaker 1: most most most most soul historians have made once on
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, Earth Wind and Fire versus
Speaker 1: p Funk is sort of Beatles versus Rolling Stones. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you guys the Beatles in that is clearly
Speaker 1: the Beatles. Yeah, yeah, Okay, like you guys were never
Speaker 1: seen as the bad boys of soul music.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know, I was thinking Funkadelic is sort of.
Speaker 3: But the thing is is that both of them have
Speaker 3: the same ideology, Like you guys have your version of
Speaker 3: spiritualism and afro futurism as far as the concepts.
Speaker 1: That you'll later explore, at least with the you know,
Speaker 1: with pyramid technology and future technology. Were you guys aware
Speaker 1: of each other's existence in the early period before you
Speaker 1: guys became superpowers. Were you guys even aware of what
Speaker 1: was happening in Detroit Ends seventy two to seventy four?
Speaker 1: I would assume that seventy four is kind of the
Speaker 1: year where both acts finally got their engines waring. But
Speaker 1: like in the Buzziers seventy two seventy three, were you
Speaker 1: guys even aware of each other at all? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: were aware of each.
Speaker 7: Other, and you know, both bands were so busy trying
Speaker 7: to really carve out their own destinies and be true
Speaker 7: to their identity. You know that we didn't take a
Speaker 7: lot of time.
Speaker 1: But I know.
Speaker 7: The one experience that we always talked about to this
Speaker 7: day is we played with the funk Cacadelics at the Armory.
Speaker 7: And it's not New York car, no no d C
Speaker 7: in d C at the Armory and we that was
Speaker 7: before we we we hadn't found no funk yet, and
Speaker 7: so we went on there talking about you know, I
Speaker 7: think about love, right, and so we had our little
Speaker 7: we had our little polite applause, and then the funk Aadelics.
Speaker 7: First you saw the smoke come out of the room,
Speaker 7: open the door, and you saw because they were smoking
Speaker 7: right right, and then you hear it.
Speaker 1: Right right, man.
Speaker 7: They funked us out of there so bad until Maurice said,
Speaker 7: we going back to l A. We're gonna rehearse, you
Speaker 7: know really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we went.
Speaker 7: We we went from there wherever we were on the road,
Speaker 7: we checked into wherever we were, and we had a rehearsal.
Speaker 1: We gotta find the one, you know, really really wow,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, And then we went.
Speaker 7: Back to Los Angeles and we rehearsed and stuff, and
Speaker 7: that's when Reese changed and went and got al McKay. Okay, okay,
Speaker 7: he said, you know because Johnny was just there Johnny Graham, yep,
Speaker 7: cousin of Larry Graham.
Speaker 1: I didn't know if his cousin. Yeah, I didn't. Wait,
Speaker 1: how do you not know that I know that Larry
Speaker 1: Graham discuss it?
Speaker 3: I never knew that really, never Johnny double check that
Speaker 3: I've read many never talked It's book.
Speaker 1: He never talked very much to anybody. Okay, So it
Speaker 1: is a lot of you, and I know, to make it,
Speaker 1: to make life work, you kind of have to be friends.
Speaker 1: Or who are the clicks in the group? Like who
Speaker 1: do you who's your running buddy versus? You know, did
Speaker 1: the Horns just hanging with each other? That Maurice and
Speaker 1: Verdin just like who well, you know, like if you say,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking classic lineup, okay.
Speaker 7: Clicks, you would say the Phoenix Horns. You definitely they
Speaker 7: hung together because they were crazy.
Speaker 1: Boy oh boy? And who who are those guys? Who
Speaker 1: are the.
Speaker 7: Michael Harris, Don Myrick and lou Sadderfield.
Speaker 1: Okay, Steve is waking up because of course Phoenix horns Phoenix. Also, yes,
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. Reese was a loner.
Speaker 7: Unless he was he'd hang with me, he'd hang with
Speaker 7: with Verdein. I think my my my hanging buddies were
Speaker 7: probably Ralph and Larry Dunn because I grew up with
Speaker 7: him and Andrew, you know, and they Me and Ralph
Speaker 7: had to meet room together too, you know, back in
Speaker 7: the day when you have to.
Speaker 1: Back in the day two two in the motel. Ok. Wow,
Speaker 1: how Also, this is what I really want to know.
Speaker 1: What is standard for survival when you're in such a
Speaker 1: large scale group. The reason why so many AXCO solo
Speaker 1: course is to get the biggest piece of the pie,
Speaker 1: their own pie. But when you are one ninth of
Speaker 1: a superpower and you're not touring twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: or making your own direct money, like when touring stops
Speaker 1: and it's like I gotta go home and pay these
Speaker 1: bills and you still got responsibilities, right. So if I'm
Speaker 1: I know what it takes to survive like that in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen because I'm oh shit, I'm in my own
Speaker 1: earth room and fire with eleven eleven, you know, when
Speaker 1: the roots this out, like four members ye yeah, why
Speaker 1: how do we get to eleven? So I know what
Speaker 1: it takes for you know, eleven people to make a
Speaker 1: good living out of this. But if it's nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: seventy four, seventy five, what is good living? What is it?
Speaker 1: What is a good living weekly pay? Is it making
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars a week or well? And you guys
Speaker 1: did that baller mentality, So it wasn't like you had
Speaker 1: rap videos to look at to be like I need that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you figure that was a different time.
Speaker 7: Diff you know, we weren't we weren't balling, We weren't
Speaker 7: trying to buy you know, a thousand dollars pairs of
Speaker 7: shoes and all that kind of stuff, you know, And
Speaker 7: you figure that everybody that was there at that time,
Speaker 7: except for maybe Al McKay, we're coming straight from their
Speaker 7: collective environments. Me from Denver, Johnny Graham from Kentucky, Ralph
Speaker 7: from Los Angeles. You know, So what impressed us then
Speaker 7: didn't take a whole lot, you know, it didn't take
Speaker 7: a whole lot.
Speaker 1: And so you know, it was years you know before
Speaker 1: you know, we really.
Speaker 7: Had any kind of understanding of really how much money
Speaker 7: was being made.
Speaker 1: What was okay? But what was the dream? I'll say,
Speaker 1: like in ninety four, my version of the dream was,
Speaker 1: you know, if I could do this for a living,
Speaker 1: have all my bills paid, move out my parents' crib,
Speaker 1: and move in a nicer you know. I was doing
Speaker 1: that nice, humble thing, and that lasted me good until
Speaker 1: all right, I started making role money like maybe like
Speaker 1: twenty ten, and then I was like, oh, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be corrupt like the rest of rich America because
Speaker 1: now I you know, I never thought I'd get to
Speaker 1: this level of, Oh, let me burn this one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars bill with a cigar like that sort of you
Speaker 1: did what? No, I'm just I always had I always
Speaker 1: imagine a fat cat lighting up a cigar with one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars bill. But I'm just saying that in the
Speaker 1: in the seventies, what was just the dream? And was
Speaker 1: it easy to make make a weekly living as a
Speaker 1: full time singer? Because we know based on some of
Speaker 1: these like unsung episodes, and from what I heard, pimping
Speaker 1: was actually the DJ gig of the seventies. Really, Harold
Speaker 1: Melvin James Brown, like I can name.
Speaker 6: At least ten to I'm sorry, did you say pimping
Speaker 6: just like just like.
Speaker 1: With rappers taking your money and investing it in the cocaine?
Speaker 6: Okay, I don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean my version of that is the DJ gig.
Speaker 1: For the longest, the roots was like my my, no money,
Speaker 1: like whatever, like that's the prestige thing and that's that's
Speaker 1: his legacy. But you know, I make a real living
Speaker 1: off of DJ gigs because one and I don't have
Speaker 1: to share it with eleven people. So true. So I'm
Speaker 1: just asking what was just the life goals of like
Speaker 1: I'm satisfied.
Speaker 7: And well, yeah, you have to remember that we were
Speaker 7: just coming out the Peace of Love era and we
Speaker 7: were very idealistic. So for us, we we we believed
Speaker 7: the whole spiell. We we really believed that we were family, okay,
Speaker 7: you know, and we really believed that, you know, where
Speaker 7: everything that Marias was doing was taking care of all
Speaker 7: of us, and we really did believe that we were
Speaker 7: you know that, Oh it's just gonna because you know,
Speaker 7: we were living our dream I see what you're saying,
Speaker 7: We're living our dreams. So it's like, you know, if
Speaker 7: anybody did raise up to say what you know, everybody
Speaker 7: would have to remind him of how blessed we really were,
Speaker 7: you know, to be you know, doing what we were doing.
Speaker 1: So I guess it's it's it's financially impossible to have
Speaker 1: a unit that size and not come out the gate
Speaker 1: making millions. Because even for us, we did that. We did,
Speaker 1: we did, we did community thing like for the least
Speaker 1: the first fifteen years of the roots, like me and
Speaker 1: Tury didn't start taking salaries until super late, like two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight.
Speaker 6: But see, there was a point when everything changed. That's
Speaker 6: why I'm wondering how that worked.
Speaker 1: Well, we started making more money, but I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that in the beginning, when we get a check, it
Speaker 1: goes to everyone's rent, everyone's gas, everyone's that sort of thing.
Speaker 7: So well, that wasn't what was happening, though, I don't
Speaker 7: want during the period, I don't want you to think
Speaker 7: that because that's not true. See what, See, the first
Speaker 7: group left because they knew that they would never be
Speaker 7: an equal part or take an equal share in the
Speaker 7: ban earth, Wind and Fire. They they they left, Okay,
Speaker 7: they knew because they had you know, they were older,
Speaker 7: they had more experience, they knew, Okay, we came in,
Speaker 7: we ain't know nothing.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we were it was years before we knew that.
Speaker 1: Basically we were just employees, you know, and the Lion's
Speaker 1: share of everything was more.
Speaker 6: So you guys didn't notice as you were going to
Speaker 6: his house to visit and things of that nature like that,
Speaker 6: like this was huge.
Speaker 1: And I'm no, we didn't. We didn't know that. But
Speaker 1: I have to say, though we all had houses, we
Speaker 1: you know, we weren't like I wasn't trying to comfort
Speaker 1: the angle. It wasn't the money, but I just wanted
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it wasn't like it wasn't like we you know,
Speaker 7: we were in the apartments and he was you know,
Speaker 7: you know his his his mansions were bigger than our houses.
Speaker 7: But you know, yeah, we all had houses, and that
Speaker 7: was something that we never thought that we would have.
Speaker 1: But growing up, I would I would think growing up, like,
Speaker 1: all right, let's take a group like Mandrel, even though
Speaker 1: I know there's blue collar musicians and people that work
Speaker 1: for a living. But in my five year old head,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at Mandrail and I'm like, yeah, they're on
Speaker 1: soul Tree. Yeah those guys are millionaires, and that that's
Speaker 1: the and that's the impression that everyone has about who
Speaker 1: whatever they see on TV or here on the radio.
Speaker 1: So what I'm just saying is like, in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: could a trombone player just make fifty to seventy five
Speaker 1: thousand a year and be cool for that period?
Speaker 7: Back in those days, a trouble player if he made
Speaker 7: fifteen thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Fifteen thousand year, Wow, whoa whoa?
Speaker 7: Back then, if he made fifteen thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 7: he could be cool. You gotta gotta look it up.
Speaker 7: So that's a hand of mount thing. Like still even
Speaker 7: with all and on stuff on the radio.
Speaker 1: Like, it's still like you guys were blue collar musicians
Speaker 1: having to go to work every day. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know that.
Speaker 7: I didn't know that that musicians made the kind of
Speaker 7: money that they made until I was talking to the
Speaker 7: Mouse one time, to the who feeling games?
Speaker 1: Filling games?
Speaker 6: Oh that's not a physical thing, is it?
Speaker 10: No?
Speaker 1: No, that's that's that's that's his nickname. Kay. You know
Speaker 1: Quincy called everybody called him mouse. He put you on
Speaker 1: the game Wow.
Speaker 7: Look where I was at at at A and M
Speaker 7: and he was at a and m and we were talking.
Speaker 7: See we used to go to the same church and
Speaker 7: stuff giving me and Mouse and so like, Mouse told
Speaker 7: me that he was making ten thousand dollars a week
Speaker 7: with Michael back then.
Speaker 1: Wow, way back then, way back then. And I said,
Speaker 1: that's good. Whoa ten dollars a week? She said, yeah,
Speaker 1: what you make? Oh Lord, before you answer this question,
Speaker 1: I thought it was gonna be a sound of frek
Speaker 1: Fee show all right with me?
Speaker 7: I said, what, I had no idea that, because look, man,
Speaker 7: we're playing five nights sellouts at the Forum by ourself.
Speaker 7: We're playing you know, Whimley five nights, you know, by ourselves.
Speaker 7: Come on, come on, do the math.
Speaker 1: I am you know.
Speaker 3: It's like we we got we got plaques for for
Speaker 3: the for the Massive Square Garden, you know now now
Speaker 3: by you know, by ourselves, we got three four double
Speaker 3: double triple platinum albums.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm like, what, So, how do you have
Speaker 6: that conversation with the man who's kind of like your brother?
Speaker 1: Now? How do you how do you how do you
Speaker 1: Maurice talk about that? Or do you You don't? Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I understand the.
Speaker 6: Why do you rectify?
Speaker 1: Sometimes? Sometimes you do sometimes you don't, you know, hopefully
Speaker 1: now is the you know, the glory period or whatever.
Speaker 7: Like it was one of those kinds of situations where
Speaker 7: you know, like because like you was if you read
Speaker 7: the book, it was one of those kind of situations
Speaker 7: where you know, like, oh, and you were gonna ask
Speaker 7: me why I didn't like.
Speaker 1: Raise Okay, okay, because it was no because it was
Speaker 1: it was in that period where you.
Speaker 7: Know, everybody was coming of age and their eyes were
Speaker 7: open and their eyes were being open, and you know,
Speaker 7: the the chemistry was terrible, and he was using other
Speaker 7: musicians to do the pretty much do the record, you know,
Speaker 7: except for you know, me and him. We were doing
Speaker 7: and we were like session musicians to come in and
Speaker 7: do it. So it's like power light and all that.
Speaker 7: Oh my god. I was like, I could not I
Speaker 7: could not listen to that record.
Speaker 1: I remember.
Speaker 3: The first time I mentioned and that's the first record
Speaker 3: you said, you like, I looked at you and you said,
Speaker 3: you mean you don't like that record.
Speaker 1: Dude, about yesterdamn one record.
Speaker 7: I mean I probably could, you know, I could listen
Speaker 7: to it now, you know, But I think it was
Speaker 7: just a matter of you know, you can't listen to
Speaker 7: it without you know, taking you back into you know,
Speaker 7: all the craziness that was going on.
Speaker 1: All right, before I get deep in in financial hole,
Speaker 1: there's still more I gotta ask. Can you talk about
Speaker 1: Caribou Wrench. You guys chose Caribou Wrench to record.
Speaker 7: Your records because they were ghosts in the in the
Speaker 7: in the in the place. For reals, really, man, and
Speaker 7: I no joke, there were ghosts and they told us
Speaker 7: there were ghosts there, and you know, I didn't believe
Speaker 7: it until I saw one.
Speaker 1: Did you bring it up? Because it was in Colorado? Like,
Speaker 1: how did you guys up? Yeah, you know, the Colorado
Speaker 1: has a great connection.
Speaker 7: But it was a place where there were like about
Speaker 7: five or six different cabins. All the cabins had you know,
Speaker 7: three bedrooms in them with the kitchens and it was
Speaker 7: really a fabulous place, horses everything, you know, it was
Speaker 7: like a you know, it was large enough for it
Speaker 7: to be a little city.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And the groups would go up there, and we were
Speaker 7: the only you know, African American band that you know,
Speaker 7: ever worked up there.
Speaker 1: You know, we did two records up there. Open our
Speaker 1: eyes and that's the way of the world. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: can you talk about the uh that's the way in
Speaker 1: the world with the Harvey Hotel. Oh yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: that terrible. I thought it was enjoyable. Man. What you
Speaker 1: guys had distant so much really that when I finally
Speaker 1: got the DVD and watched it, Man, we went to
Speaker 1: the opening was a high standards.
Speaker 7: Were always all excited. We went to the opening and
Speaker 7: stuff because we thought, oh man, we're on the move.
Speaker 7: We're going to the opening. We got there, man, nobody
Speaker 7: was there first of all, and then we saw it
Speaker 7: and we was like, so, how how did you guys
Speaker 7: manage to But it was a catalyst for some great writing,
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 1: But the thing was is that because the fonts the
Speaker 1: print was so small, that was where he said, look,
Speaker 1: that's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 7: He called Bob and Joe and he said, I want
Speaker 7: that writing on there to be so little really from
Speaker 7: the movie.
Speaker 1: From the movie. That's the way I wanted them to
Speaker 1: have to look for it to see that. I thought
Speaker 1: you guys were just being clever, like you made up of.
Speaker 7: Like he he did that once we saw it, because
Speaker 7: he's like, man, that's what that's what he said.
Speaker 1: So the album was released way in advance before the
Speaker 1: movie came out.
Speaker 7: I'm not I don't, yeah, I think it was released before. Okay,
Speaker 7: so he was already a hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what was the what was the feeling of finally,
Speaker 1: I mean, being as though that was the breakthrough album?
Speaker 1: What was the feeling? Well, I mean you slowly heard
Speaker 1: Evil and Mighty Mighty and all that stuff on the
Speaker 1: radio or whatnot. But was it?
Speaker 3: Was it?
Speaker 1: What was the main difference between Shining Star success as
Speaker 1: opposed to hearing Mighty Mighty.
Speaker 7: And and well by the time we got the charity
Speaker 7: start because we had like about five number one records
Speaker 7: on that record.
Speaker 1: But we.
Speaker 7: We were we were then, we were we were doing
Speaker 7: you know, big gigs. You know, we're doing we're doing
Speaker 7: big gigs. And we had started to add you know,
Speaker 7: the production and all that kind of stuff to to
Speaker 7: our our presentation and stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, the the inner Sleeve of Gratitude where it's this
Speaker 1: bird's eye view, it's a bird's eye view shot of
Speaker 1: you can see the band on stage, but it looks
Speaker 1: like you're performing for at least one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 1: M h. Was that a music festival or was that
Speaker 1: a typical earthwinind fire show. I'm assuming there's a lot
Speaker 1: of white faces there, Like how I was thinking that
Speaker 1: I was I could be wrong. I was thinking that
Speaker 1: was Oakland, but I could be wrong. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 7: It was just that was a very unfair. I know
Speaker 7: we did several we did. We recorded Oakland, we recorded Atlanta,
Speaker 7: and I think we might have recorded Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: So you guys went from relative underground favorite to like
Speaker 1: it looked like a festival, like it was outdoors. It
Speaker 1: had to been somewhere between seventy five to one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people all packed in this photo right what happened?
Speaker 1: Like is is that the magic of Clive Davison the
Speaker 1: radio system we're doing.
Speaker 7: You know, it was a different time, different day when
Speaker 7: everything everything collides together, you know everything the record company
Speaker 7: was probably you know, at their at the top of
Speaker 7: their game, advertisement and publishing radio every when everything goes right,
Speaker 7: everything the music, that product, and people were you know,
Speaker 7: that's when music was very, very valuable to people. You know,
Speaker 7: they didn't have all these other entertainment situations that buying
Speaker 7: for their attention and stuff. So you know, a record
Speaker 7: came out, man, people were around the corner around the
Speaker 7: block to get your record when it came out, and
Speaker 7: David Foster was one of them out there.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to ask about spirit versus songs in
Speaker 1: the kid Life battle. Well I'm gonna get to do that.
Speaker 1: Just one thing about gratitude. How set my mind of
Speaker 1: these how much live how many? How much? How much
Speaker 1: background overdubbing was done on gratitude? Because I refuse to
Speaker 1: believe that you guys were that perfect in your harmony
Speaker 1: game end concert without breaking the sweat, like, well, we didn't.
Speaker 1: We we didn't mess with the with the leads.
Speaker 7: But me and Maurice he had a you know, clause
Speaker 7: and all the stuff that we if we did something
Speaker 7: on television, because we we did all the vocals on
Speaker 7: the on all the records.
Speaker 1: It was just me and him.
Speaker 7: So we just you know, molten doubled, you know, all
Speaker 7: the harmonies, all the different stuff. One question about your harmonies, man, well,
Speaker 7: just your vocals. Would y'all sing them together? We were
Speaker 7: singing together, We were singing. It was it was very
Speaker 7: very easy, you know, we you know, and we would
Speaker 7: sing all the up stuff, you know, all the vocals
Speaker 7: we would do so like it was hard for us
Speaker 7: to duplicate on the on the road. So if we
Speaker 7: did something, we did a recording, uh of something, me
Speaker 7: and him would go and fix the backgrounds. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 7: Wait a minute, Wada mentioned Justica Cleves oh man?
Speaker 1: Was she MV? How did she join the the Last
Speaker 1: Days and Times? Right? And then when did she leave
Speaker 1: for Friends?
Speaker 10: Have you?
Speaker 1: No? Friends of Stinction was before? Yeah?
Speaker 7: That was before she was in She was Friends of Distinction.
Speaker 7: That's how we discovered her. I mean we found her. Yeah,
Speaker 7: it's Lynny Smith.
Speaker 1: And did she go to the Funkadelic Empire after she.
Speaker 7: Went to Funkadelics after after she left Earth Wind Fire?
Speaker 1: Okay, well all right, speaking of it is one thing
Speaker 1: I forgot. Did you guys have any response to Let's
Speaker 1: take It to the stage or you just took it
Speaker 1: as playful ribbing? You say, what, did you guys have
Speaker 1: any any response or or feelings about the song Let's
Speaker 1: take It to the stage? Or did you consider that
Speaker 1: just playful ribbing of Funkadelic calling out all the soul
Speaker 1: bands of the I don't, I don't, I'm not familiar.
Speaker 1: It's does he call them again? Earth No? Like he
Speaker 1: you know slipping the family brick snoofs tell me something good.
Speaker 1: He's basically saying, let's take it to the stage, let's battle. Uh,
Speaker 1: and names like you know, six or seven acts. But
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, where was that seventy six, seventy four,
Speaker 1: seventy four on the Let's Take It to the Stage album?
Speaker 6: Was never too late for a battle though George is.
Speaker 1: About to retire, Yeah, it is too late for late before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I always wanted to know if if you guys,
Speaker 1: like ever you know, took serious offense to that or
Speaker 1: you know, was it just but you didn't know until
Speaker 1: right now this No one ever mentioned that scene. No, wow,
Speaker 1: Johnny Graham, Let's take it into stage. It's just weird
Speaker 1: that nobody's ever mentioned that because I remember the first
Speaker 1: time I heard Let's take it the Stage, I was like,
Speaker 1: WHOA called him out? I was like, I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, what did everybody think about this?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always wanted to know if there were Well,
Speaker 1: how did you guys feel about other bands in the day, Like, say,
Speaker 1: did you name a band name, a band that you
Speaker 1: felt some sort of way about, Like, man, we gotta
Speaker 1: we just didn't that was we just didn't beef like
Speaker 1: that back, you know, like like nobody guys kept you
Speaker 1: guys on your toes.
Speaker 7: Everybody, you know, everyone wanted to be original, you know,
Speaker 7: we were kind of being out of shape when Ohio
Speaker 7: players been on on our music a lot, you know,
Speaker 7: really yeah, you know, like just like almost verbatim, you know, like,
Speaker 7: but but up from that to that point, there were
Speaker 7: like very few bands that wanted to sound.
Speaker 1: Like the other band. You know, you would we would
Speaker 1: do it ribbing each other, you know, or something. You know,
Speaker 1: I would say Barka's more than but literally in every
Speaker 1: bar case. But they admitted that they were by the
Speaker 1: forty five of whatever band it was, and then switched,
Speaker 1: which is why Shine sounds like on your face or whatever.
Speaker 1: So the battle of Spirit versus Songs in the Key
Speaker 1: of Life, of course, uh, I think one of the
Speaker 1: first event moments in black music. I remember because I
Speaker 1: was five at the time, but a lot of my
Speaker 1: dad's bandmates were speaking of this. Of course. Both I
Speaker 1: think Spirit and Songs in the Cay of Life were
Speaker 1: released within a week of each other. Wow, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: right of each other. Wow. And I think you guys
Speaker 1: came out the the day before. I'm not certain, but
Speaker 1: were you were you at all? Did you have any
Speaker 1: investment whatsoever, like expectation investments to debut at number one.
Speaker 1: The end result, of course, the songs in the Kiev
Speaker 1: Life debut at number one. You guys debuted at number two.
Speaker 1: But I mean, was there a feeling of competition at
Speaker 1: the time, Like the most important artists in the history
Speaker 1: of black music is releasing their their definitive statement. No,
Speaker 1: there's just another day to you.
Speaker 7: You know, you got to remember that it's a different time.
Speaker 7: You know, a lot of a lot of the things
Speaker 7: that you're talking about right now have kind of been
Speaker 7: ingrained in culture as culture has moved a longiness, you know.
Speaker 7: But for for us, I mean, Stevie has always been beloved,
Speaker 7: you know, as an artist, and I'm sure that he
Speaker 7: feels the exact same way about us, you know, And
Speaker 7: so you know, we were inspired by one another, you know,
Speaker 7: because like when he said, when he heard shine a Star,
Speaker 7: then he went home and wrote, Sir Duke, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: the thing oh I wish, Yeah, he went home and
Speaker 7: wrote I wish, you know. But yeah, it was just
Speaker 7: one of those kinds of situations where we know, it
Speaker 7: was like we we had admiration society. You know, we're
Speaker 7: happy for him, and I'm sure he was happy for us.
Speaker 1: Okay, is there a particular reason why, Uh, this is
Speaker 1: a nerd question, a serious nerd question. Uh, why you
Speaker 1: guys dropped the original intro off of Getaway the Do
Speaker 1: you remember the fifteen second No, there's uh it's a man.
Speaker 1: When I heard that, I was like, yo, and we
Speaker 1: play that, we play that now, you still do it? Now?
Speaker 1: We do it now in our show. They took it
Speaker 1: off for radio, and I always wanted to know why
Speaker 1: you guys never kept that on the album. I'll actually
Speaker 1: say that imagination. Listen, man, let me tell you something, man,
Speaker 1: what was you on that day? Because I feel like
Speaker 1: that look, even that.
Speaker 3: Angels mix, it's like the mix there's like an a
Speaker 3: cappella mix of it that it was on the reissue
Speaker 3: re issue?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god, man, y'all vocals. That's what I
Speaker 1: was asking. What do you feel? Yeah? What do you
Speaker 1: feel your best performances?
Speaker 7: I think that probably was one of my best, you know,
Speaker 7: even more than I write a song for you probably
Speaker 7: just be thinking about it, you know, like cause you
Speaker 7: know how you know you're still all the time, and
Speaker 7: so you think you remember how you felt in different
Speaker 7: situations and stuff, and uh, you know, I do remember
Speaker 7: the imagination vamp.
Speaker 1: How do you charte out your ad libs? Because they're
Speaker 1: so well, no, they're just so nuanced and so I mean,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're they're there their own universe that even
Speaker 1: in listening to it, like I feel as though you
Speaker 1: really mastered. That's why I said skilled, you mastered the
Speaker 1: the perfect pacing of an ad lib, because I mean
Speaker 1: people would think like, oh, yeah, just do you know?
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm guilty of that a lot where I'd
Speaker 1: tell singers like, okay, just ad lib at the end
Speaker 1: and see what happens, and no magic ever happens, but
Speaker 1: you like, you know, raise it and then lowered? Lais
Speaker 1: it lowered? And how do you do you take?
Speaker 7: I'm a musician too, you know, so, and yeah, you know,
Speaker 7: loving the a musician part of you know, a musician
Speaker 7: part of me. You know, it's just like it's a solo,
Speaker 7: you know. So like when you're taking a solo, there's
Speaker 7: a beginning, a middle, and then end.
Speaker 1: You know. So I'm you know, I'm not thinking that way.
Speaker 7: But you know, just the the artistic arc is, you
Speaker 7: know the energy I say, you know it's you know
Speaker 7: you ain't gonna start, you know, just.
Speaker 1: Nowhere to go? You know, nowhere to go? You know
Speaker 1: it's the thing a lesser, a lesser singer normally, like
Speaker 1: today cats go zero to sixty instantly giving themselves like
Speaker 1: no room to to build up to that point. And
Speaker 1: yet you know, I mean you're given sixteen bars to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get a point aid to Z
Speaker 1: and a very skillful like Navin gation. So how long
Speaker 1: does is the recording of like do you do your
Speaker 1: main vocals versus you don't lose your voice? And then
Speaker 1: do you come back to do the at limbs because
Speaker 1: that's some hard singing you're doing, or imagination on some songs.
Speaker 7: We would I would sing it and then go home
Speaker 7: and listen to it and know that, Okay, I was
Speaker 7: gonna have to you know, do do the vamp MH.
Speaker 7: I remember, because doing, I mean, the vamps are the
Speaker 7: art is there's an art of doing in doing the vamps.
Speaker 7: I remember, you know some of the emotions we have conversations,
Speaker 7: they call and I got to do my vamp tomorrow
Speaker 7: on this or that, you know, and we might you know,
Speaker 7: tell me, you know, listen to it, you know, give
Speaker 7: them some points, you know, you know, because at the
Speaker 7: end of a song, Jackson, Michael Jackson is the king
Speaker 7: of at libin. At the end of a song, I
Speaker 7: mean you know, you know the rhythm, the rhythm, you know, yes,
Speaker 7: that's the rhythm, the rhythm and how he builds you know,
Speaker 7: those songs.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that Mike, Mike will tend to
Speaker 1: get locked into a thing like the end of the
Speaker 1: things I do for you could also be the end
Speaker 1: of working day and night. Like he has this default
Speaker 1: go to thing where people and that's the thing. You
Speaker 1: don't have a default, That's what I'm saying, skilled, because
Speaker 1: you are one of the few at livers that now
Speaker 1: when Felipe won first, the only reason why I feel
Speaker 1: as though he's so masterful is because half the time
Speaker 1: that's the only part of the song he's allowed to sing.
Speaker 1: Because we I'm just slowly discovered, especially now having all
Speaker 1: the Soul Train episodes that ain't singing the lyrics. They
Speaker 1: just like, all right, Felipe, go and clean up. And
Speaker 1: you know, if you're giving like thirty seconds a sign
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna go for it, say any and everything,
Speaker 1: but you never have a a route where it's like
Speaker 1: you repeat yourself or have a line. Actually, wait, can
Speaker 1: you explain to me what is the genesis of the
Speaker 1: body eye?
Speaker 6: I was waiting for you to ask that.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not talking about Bio the song, because I
Speaker 1: also want to know how that song did not make
Speaker 1: it and yet you guys found that little thirty second
Speaker 1: gem that, of course now everyone's favorite interlude of all time.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying in general, the earth wind and
Speaker 1: Fire at lib is always a body out. Oh why
Speaker 1: why that specific.
Speaker 7: Memblee love Brazil sixty six? Oh we love we love,
Speaker 7: we love us some Brazil six six and we and
Speaker 7: we love Brazilian music.
Speaker 1: And we studied, you know, we studied that stuff, you
Speaker 1: know a lot.
Speaker 7: And you know in research, like you know, if if
Speaker 7: it's grooving, you know, he wouldn't wouldn't mess with it,
Speaker 7: you know, and it sings, you know it, you know
Speaker 7: it sings you know like you know, like a phrase
Speaker 7: on a horn or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know. Wow, So the actual song behl or how
Speaker 1: did you bayo b e I j bo? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta find it. That was Milton, not some mental
Speaker 1: you know, because we were we were.
Speaker 7: He actually played with us when we were in in Brazil,
Speaker 7: you know, we played the stadium and stuff. We were
Speaker 7: big fans of his and stuff. But with the song
Speaker 7: and we did it, we did that song was with him.
Speaker 7: We did a song, but we didn't use a song. Yeah,
Speaker 7: why did that song make it? It goes all over
Speaker 7: the place. I could probably see why it made the
Speaker 7: cutting room floor.
Speaker 1: But more importantly is whose idea was it to find
Speaker 1: the right elements that led to the interlude of what
Speaker 1: we now know as the Wow Phil.
Speaker 3: How did y'all decide which songs will go to other
Speaker 3: artists and which will stand in the band?
Speaker 7: One song that didn't go to another to the artist
Speaker 7: who they had cut it for. Was it was it
Speaker 7: the Chambers Brothers or something? What was was Bookie Wonderland?
Speaker 7: It was like it was our had produced it on
Speaker 7: another group and Maurice heard it, you like come here, yeah,
Speaker 7: and you know that's how that's how we ended up doing.
Speaker 1: Charles also dies during the did he die before the
Speaker 1: spirit we were in it? M yeah? Midwait, so what
Speaker 1: did that do to the band's chemistry and hm hmm.
Speaker 1: What pressure was that on you guys to now take
Speaker 1: over the car now that you had no more driver.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean it was immant really because Maurice was
Speaker 7: so much in his zone with Charles, because see, he
Speaker 7: could think, he could think as far as he wanted
Speaker 7: to think, as fast as he wanted to think, and
Speaker 7: Charles musically was able to galvanize things and and then
Speaker 7: make it help and and Al McKay could put make
Speaker 7: a groove, so it was it was a team, you know,
Speaker 7: and Larry Dunn could make it sweet, you know, me
Speaker 7: do the vocals.
Speaker 1: So it was a great team. You know.
Speaker 7: When Charles left, there was a serious void because the
Speaker 7: only other person that that we found that he really
Speaker 7: respected like that, that we had success with was was
Speaker 7: David Foster.
Speaker 1: So it's essentially David Foster Charles's replacement. Like no Maurice
Speaker 1: figure or just an equal. He didn't need.
Speaker 7: He really the issue was, you know, really didn't respect
Speaker 7: a lot of different a lot of people, Okay, you know,
Speaker 7: definitely didn't need no father figure, you know, but he needed.
Speaker 1: So Charles wasn't the father figure, well, but he was
Speaker 1: the only one.
Speaker 7: He was the only you can say, really, get that
Speaker 7: ship out of here, you know, that's how you talk,
Speaker 7: you know, you know he could. He's the only one
Speaker 7: that talked how Reese talked to us. That's how the
Speaker 7: Charles talked to Rees. Really really get this shut out
Speaker 7: of here, you know, no, you know, but because he
Speaker 7: really respected Charles in that in that kind of way,
Speaker 7: so nobody ever replaced him.
Speaker 1: You know, no one ever replaced him.
Speaker 7: But David did have that same musical ability, not the same,
Speaker 7: but he had you know, had had a creditible music.
Speaker 3: Ability that Maurice respected. So we were able to besides
Speaker 3: besides wild was it.
Speaker 1: For new birth? Uh? Wild flower? Besides Wildflower? What? What
Speaker 1: did David have that at least got his rap out
Speaker 1: there with people like, yo, I'm gonna mess with him?
Speaker 7: Or well he you know, he has a really good
Speaker 7: sense of songs and you know, like and he was
Speaker 7: accomplished as a as a as a pianist. So him
Speaker 7: and Marie were able to you know, to craft you know,
Speaker 7: like in the Stone and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 7: and Maurice was able to make it commercial.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, but David didn't come for all and nod
Speaker 1: he what is the serpentine fire. Serpentine fire is the
Speaker 1: is the male sex drive?
Speaker 6: Viagrap No, that's something you take for the drive.
Speaker 1: Was how is passion? You know? You know LUs okay
Speaker 1: on the on the male side, serpentine.
Speaker 6: That's what you'reposed to have naturally.
Speaker 7: Word Okay, thank you anyway, But then all those lyrics
Speaker 7: will make sense to you now and you go read
Speaker 7: the lyrics now well.
Speaker 1: No, just seeing the commercial again with the with the
Speaker 1: whole you know, pyramids and stuff. I just thought you
Speaker 1: guys are just on because I had to ask for
Speaker 1: you the same thing what he certain fire? Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: a sing this, but so in seventy seven with the
Speaker 1: dawning of disco and you guys absolutely at your your
Speaker 1: your the highest heights of of your creativity. Serpentine Fire
Speaker 1: was such a risky song to uh put out. First
Speaker 1: of all, it's I mean it's half speed, so it's
Speaker 1: like seventy two bpms. I mean it's a hard funk song.
Speaker 1: But are you guys even aware of four on the
Speaker 1: floor culture and we hated it? Oh wow, so you
Speaker 1: made a because this we hated it. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: to this day, I can't even play. Yeah, what do
Speaker 1: you you don't like? Well, you can missing with trap rap.
Speaker 7: Like it wasn't going to where we we hated it,
Speaker 7: but wasn't going to place, so Reese we had to
Speaker 7: you know, there was nothing we could do, you know.
Speaker 1: You know Donna Summers had all those hits and.
Speaker 7: Maroder with his name, yeah Joe, and so our answer
Speaker 7: to uh disco was Boogie Wonderland.
Speaker 1: But that's seventy nine. But I'm saying in seventy seven,
Speaker 1: like was Walter Yetnakoff saying likes record? Yeah, like I
Speaker 1: gotta no one ever, no one ever.
Speaker 7: Executives didn't ever get in Maurice's artistic thing. You know,
Speaker 7: they never you know that to my knowledge, no one
Speaker 7: ever came and said, you know, okay, yeah, you know
Speaker 7: you should do.
Speaker 1: This that or the other.
Speaker 7: You know, I don't know who talked him in. I
Speaker 7: was probably bobbing caval and Ruffalo talked him into the
Speaker 7: power like though.
Speaker 1: I didn't even wasn't talking, wasn't talking to me. Do
Speaker 1: you remember do you remember recording running? Do you remember
Speaker 1: what that was like? Yes? Yeah, yep. What was the
Speaker 1: vibe like in that? Who was it supposed to be lyrics. No, okay,
Speaker 1: that would have messed that song totally, man too much.
Speaker 1: I would assume that Body Eye songs are songs that
Speaker 1: will later be added lyrics. Well, hence what's your name?
Speaker 1: Telling me? Ali willis telling that about well, no, when
Speaker 1: she grows September September, that's right. She said that Body
Speaker 1: Eye was just a placement and then they were going
Speaker 1: to think of something later and it never got to it,
Speaker 1: so they just left it, right. I just okay, So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Running is one of my favors. I love that song. Man,
Speaker 3: y'all sounded that. I love that record.
Speaker 1: How did you guys get a relationship with Doug Henning
Speaker 1: because I'm totally forgetting that. You guys damn near invented
Speaker 1: black theater and Doug Henning is Doug Henning the magician.
Speaker 1: He would have been the David Blaine of his day.
Speaker 1: So a big part of black music culture is taking
Speaker 1: the Chitlin Circuit or Motown. I guess the Motown Review
Speaker 1: was the height of black excellence in concert and what
Speaker 1: many will credit Earth Would and Fire to do that
Speaker 1: will later inspire Parliament, Funk, Cadelic and then further inspire
Speaker 1: the Jacksons is introducing theater. So the idea of verdein
Speaker 1: levitating during his bass silo or explosions and the drums,
Speaker 1: we did the drums where the spinning drums. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: Philly wants my aunt cried, you're I guess doing that
Speaker 1: all the Yeah, you remember this.
Speaker 7: Night where we go into that pyramid thing and then
Speaker 7: you know, it disappears and then the the androids or
Speaker 7: whatever come up to the state that put us in
Speaker 7: there and they take their hats.
Speaker 1: Off and us. But I think during the intro of
Speaker 1: the All and altour, you guys came down these tubes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're on the same.
Speaker 7: Or so it's on the same that's on the same
Speaker 7: concert the tubes and the pyramid disappearing and right, well.
Speaker 1: I guess in the Philly show your tube they can
Speaker 1: go up, so like guys had to run and manually
Speaker 1: lift you out or whatever, like the smoking, you know,
Speaker 1: added exaggeration. I guess you thought you were gonna die
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. But who, like, how do
Speaker 1: you guys rehearse that stuff or who conceptualizes is that
Speaker 1: all duck inning or.
Speaker 7: Now you know Vernon with no exactly because he's the
Speaker 7: totally historian. I don't remember if Doug did that particular
Speaker 7: show because we were working with several people at that time,
Speaker 7: all right, but I mean we was working with Doug Henny,
Speaker 7: David Copperfield.
Speaker 1: Really right, right, And so did you feel a certain
Speaker 1: way did you guys feel a certain way when other
Speaker 1: acts the Jacksons.
Speaker 3: Were starting to levint eight as well and explode and
Speaker 3: h let me you think, yeah, would you go see shows? Okay, yo,
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 1: So if you're watching the Jackson's like, oh yeah, because I.
Speaker 7: Went to kans I flew to Kansas City to watch
Speaker 7: the Jackson's and all that stuff. Yeah, man, but and
Speaker 7: it was that was one of the best shows I've
Speaker 7: ever seen, you know, just timing the production, performances and
Speaker 7: all this stuff.
Speaker 1: It was like crazy. But did you guys feel like
Speaker 1: that this is your thing and suddenly everyone else is
Speaker 1: taken a cue?
Speaker 7: Like, well, it really wasn't our thing though, to be
Speaker 7: quite honest about we were maybe we're the first African
Speaker 7: American band to start doing it, but you got to
Speaker 7: remember that the rock groups were doing.
Speaker 1: I forgot doing it. They were doing stuff all right. Now,
Speaker 1: I am what are your feelings on I am. If anything,
Speaker 1: I figure you have a feeling about I AM more
Speaker 1: than Race. No, I am was still everybody was steal
Speaker 1: in pocket. The team was still together pretty much. I am.
Speaker 7: It's probably the last great earth wind Fire records in
Speaker 7: your opinion, in my opinion, So in your mind, your
Speaker 7: classic cannon it ends with with I am, Yeah, because
Speaker 7: it's all in all before that, well, all in all
Speaker 7: I Am.
Speaker 1: Then Faces.
Speaker 7: Oh no, but Faces, no faces, I will say a
Speaker 7: couple of jam I think, you know, I thought I
Speaker 7: was just I was really disappointed that Faces didn't do
Speaker 7: better because I did think it was what happened.
Speaker 1: Because all the elements were there, like love goes on, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all the elements are there. Oh yeah, no pun intended,
Speaker 1: but yeah, all the elements were there. Do you thing
Speaker 1: go to that? Fair better if you guys just made
Speaker 1: it a single album or yeah?
Speaker 7: Probably for that, you know when you're thinking about it now.
Speaker 7: They still wren't gold. So it wasn't a failure and
Speaker 7: it was a double record. It might have been better
Speaker 7: if they had done it. Who knows, But I thought
Speaker 7: that I thought the record was was sound.
Speaker 1: It wasn't better. It had movement, They had moments to it.
Speaker 3: My first my first actual win. If I record that
Speaker 3: I own, I got for Christmas. My uncle brought me
Speaker 3: Touch the world, believe it or not.
Speaker 1: That was my first official A young buz fire to babies.
Speaker 1: But when you have the boys come out for heritage,
Speaker 1: come on, y'all, y'all official, y'allll official with me at
Speaker 1: that point, man, I'm glad you said that we got
Speaker 1: the work. We got dogs. Oh my god. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: works for me. It worked, It worked on me, It worked.
Speaker 1: You had me. I was like, because heritage was ninety
Speaker 1: age I was twelve. I definitely feel as though that
Speaker 1: album is responsible for why they are the sons of
Speaker 1: what are they now? Yeah? You know where they are now?
Speaker 1: Like they're they're they like fire.
Speaker 6: They moved Africa, they moved to the continent.
Speaker 1: They moved to Africa. They they're the suns of light.
Speaker 6: They have locks, long locks.
Speaker 1: And where did you guys had an effect on them
Speaker 1: with with the Herodage album?
Speaker 3: Because if somebody plays the flute, one of them, yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: one of uh talk about the Illumination album, the one
Speaker 3: because y'all worked with Brian McKnight on the record.
Speaker 1: Raphael, Yeah, what was that record, like and someone else record, No,
Speaker 1: just a Japan edition. I think it was right.
Speaker 3: Back before record labels realized there was only one internet,
Speaker 3: right the dude, this will be out by midnight. No,
Speaker 3: it's out everywhere. But talk about that record, that was
Speaker 3: for a lot of people considered like a quote unquote
Speaker 3: comeback record. But what was it like, what was the
Speaker 3: chemistry like with you and Maurice working.
Speaker 7: It was Our chemistry was okay, but that was it
Speaker 7: was a very tough time for us yet because he
Speaker 7: you know, his Parkinson's disease had really set set in
Speaker 7: and it taken the ability his ability to perform and sing,
Speaker 7: you know, so he wasn't singing nearly as strong or
Speaker 7: or you know, in the way that he would want to.
Speaker 1: You know, they had he had in the past.
Speaker 7: So you know, a lot of you know, I did
Speaker 7: a lot of singing on that record, and then we
Speaker 7: started you know, using other people to in in the
Speaker 7: in the backgrounds and stuff. So it was you know,
Speaker 7: it had mixed emotions about it, you know, but it
Speaker 7: was fun working with everybody that was on you know,
Speaker 7: we worked with on a project, especially Flowa Tree Floaty
Speaker 7: is on that project too, right, right, and music so
Speaker 7: child and yeah it was it was fun. That was fun.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now let's reach back just a little bit.
Speaker 1: We we definitely have to get to your solo career
Speaker 1: because there's a generation of people. You're also an MTV
Speaker 1: Award winner. I forgot he's the number one man walking
Speaker 1: on Chinese. Well that was the best of both fields.
Speaker 1: It was the best of both fields. What but you
Speaker 1: work with George Duke on continuation, right, I know that's
Speaker 1: my joint. Uh, that's my cut. Yes. So stepping away
Speaker 1: from the band, did you think at the time after
Speaker 1: Electric Universe did that Okay, well I'm leaving the band
Speaker 1: or it's just like what what? What took you so
Speaker 1: long to do a solo record?
Speaker 7: I didn't actually take me a long time because I
Speaker 7: was always doing other stuff, especially after the you know,
Speaker 7: the extensive touring and all that kind of stuff, just
Speaker 7: to have a different outlet to really, you know, just
Speaker 7: have my own autonomy.
Speaker 3: You were on a Polino da Costa album. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and then you know, I did three gospel albums and.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask because you got a lot
Speaker 1: of play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to grab me for one of them.
Speaker 3: For triumph on Philly Christian radio. You were a mainstay.
Speaker 1: But why weren't the Christian albums on CBS as well?
Speaker 7: It was subsidiary. Oh no, it was on their own
Speaker 7: word and one. Yeah they were saying, yeah, you know
Speaker 7: that was a different time, and the yeah, they gave
Speaker 7: me the right to go and do that on a
Speaker 7: Christian label.
Speaker 3: They didn't have a right marketing Christian distribution and all that.
Speaker 1: Okay, I see, So what in promoting those records, how
Speaker 1: was the the circuit different? Like, well, I toured with
Speaker 1: Amy Grant, you know that was that was that was fun.
Speaker 1: That was fun too. I got I got all, I
Speaker 1: got all my equipment.
Speaker 7: So stole the second data of the of the concert
Speaker 7: YEP in the in Florida, they backed, they backed to
Speaker 7: the truck up against the h the actual hotel and
Speaker 7: stuff and took the mission out.
Speaker 1: You know, because they because they knew that.
Speaker 7: They said, you know this in Florida they were notorious
Speaker 7: for stealing you know those you know those trucks and stuff. Man,
Speaker 7: they told that truck away. Wow, they told the whole
Speaker 7: truck away. And and I had to I was in
Speaker 7: debt for three four years. What had Yeah, because I
Speaker 7: had to pay for everybody's equipment. That was my fir
Speaker 7: of my first solo experience, no no touris.
Speaker 1: I think Michael W. Smith did it. He was so funny. Sorry, okay,
Speaker 1: Michael W. So you gotta tell like, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: her first husband. Oh I'm sorry first.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, cause she's married. Okayeah, she married to Vince somebody? Yeah,
Speaker 6: thank you? Whoa what Vince Gil You've ever been married
Speaker 6: for like over decades?
Speaker 1: What? I never knew that. Yo. As soon as they
Speaker 1: did that song House I Love you remember that, I
Speaker 1: was like, there's something going on between them two because
Speaker 1: that song was too good for just, you know, just
Speaker 1: to be a random question. Yeah yeah, oh, Amy grant Man.
Speaker 1: It was a period where only Christian radio was on
Speaker 1: my household, like my parents are just only did Christian radio.
Speaker 5: Same here, so same here, and let me back that.
Speaker 5: That introduced me to Bailey's voice by way of Andre Crouch,
Speaker 5: I've got the best, Come on, brother. I used to
Speaker 5: play that song to death when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: That's right. I forgot that. And Martins did something with
Speaker 1: the Hawkins family. Yeah, we both did on their anniversary record. Okay, Okay, Steve.
Speaker 9: Okay, I'm sure everybody here and there's the same amount
Speaker 9: as I do.
Speaker 1: But I know, but I feel horrible like all the
Speaker 1: Phil Collins. No, so.
Speaker 9: You and Phil Collins both have the same first name.
Speaker 9: Was that what's going on? That a coincidence or the
Speaker 9: marketing scheme?
Speaker 1: Why? Okay? Why did you want Why was he your
Speaker 1: chosen producer for Chinese Wall Wall?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 7: Okay, two questions, because actually the Phoenix Horns were playing
Speaker 7: with him on his you know, on his uh record
Speaker 7: and tour, and when they played in Los Angeles. I
Speaker 7: went to the show and and I wasn't really that
Speaker 7: familiar with Phil's music, but I was very impressed with
Speaker 7: the songs and stuff, and I was getting ready to
Speaker 7: do my second record, and so I said, man, it's
Speaker 7: crazy idea, but let's see if Phil has any songs
Speaker 7: that I could do on my second record. And the
Speaker 7: company and my manager says, well, why don't we talk
Speaker 7: to me about producing your you know, your second record?
Speaker 7: I know that was his dream, yeah, because so we Yeah,
Speaker 7: that always imagined a fun Time.
Speaker 1: That's the fifteenth member of house fun Time. Fun Time.
Speaker 7: From the video, it looked like it was fun. It
Speaker 7: was very it's very natural, I mean, and nothing, but
Speaker 7: none of that was staged. They picked me up and
Speaker 7: from in the helicopter and to the studio site. Cameras
Speaker 7: were running, cameras running everything, and you know everything. They
Speaker 7: just filmed everything and we got finished. We sang the
Speaker 7: song a couple times. They said, Okay, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 7: I said, well, we're gonna do the video. You just
Speaker 7: y'all just did it. You ever see the video.
Speaker 1: Line are you out of your.
Speaker 6: I'm not the y'all, but it's usually the dance moves,
Speaker 6: like I know, and then when they do believe it.
Speaker 5: Back in the day when HBO used to show music
Speaker 5: videos in between movies, they did, we want an MTV
Speaker 5: Award for that too. Yes, you're an MTV Award winner
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 3: No, I was saying that Phil Collins is notorious for
Speaker 3: making all of his videos videos about making videos.
Speaker 1: He's done it four times. I can't dance like video
Speaker 1: directors explained to him in the video what you should do, baby,
Speaker 1: don't you lose my number? The same thing where a
Speaker 1: video director trying to explain to him, well, let's do
Speaker 1: it like this, let's do it like that. An easy
Speaker 1: Lover is basically very like Candid just him and phil
Speaker 1: uh Philip, Wow, you're right, they both have the same name.
Speaker 6: It's like one of the best videos of our time
Speaker 6: Easy Lover.
Speaker 3: Like, man, I remember that song would come on and
Speaker 3: like when I realized it was both feels I lost
Speaker 3: my mother?
Speaker 1: Do you right give it up? Because that's one of
Speaker 1: the greatest song intros ever to Wait did we do it?
Speaker 1: We tried that once. Yeah, he sat in on this
Speaker 1: on the show. No, no, I'm talking about we uh
Speaker 1: samp or something. I think during Game Theory we tried
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to incorporate that intro best
Speaker 1: intro ever? Are you are? Are your songs allowed to ever?
Speaker 3: Be?
Speaker 1: Messing and earth Wind and fire shows are not, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you haven't contingency of people asking for easy
Speaker 1: Lover during fire You know, we we did for a
Speaker 1: little while. I mean, like a few shows or something
Speaker 1: like that, back when Morris Pleasure was in the band.
Speaker 7: Because Morris is a keyboardist and a bass player. Okay,
Speaker 7: so and on that he would play the bass. But yeah,
Speaker 7: there's so many songs to do until we haven't done it.
Speaker 10: So I have one more question about easy Lover. No, No,
Speaker 10: But were there other Phil Collins songs on Chinese Wall
Speaker 10: that you can contribute to them?
Speaker 7: No, that was the only That was the only one
Speaker 7: that we We wrote that at the end of the
Speaker 7: project because it was listening back to everything.
Speaker 1: Always the case.
Speaker 7: That's always a narrative always, you know, because you know
Speaker 7: what needs to happen. And so Nathan started that base
Speaker 7: thing and we just kind of figured it out.
Speaker 1: Who are the other musicians on that album set? Let
Speaker 1: me just look, it's right here in front of me.
Speaker 1: A special shout out to Children of the Ghetto. I
Speaker 1: love that record too. So yeah, well you have all
Speaker 1: the monsters on here. Well you have a lot of okay,
Speaker 1: of course you have the the Phoenix Orens, wait are
Speaker 1: Reef Martin? Digit strings? So now now that you're leader
Speaker 1: by default, right, how many shows do you and you
Speaker 1: do a lot of shows with Chicago.
Speaker 7: Yes, well we've done We've done a lot of tours,
Speaker 7: uh with them over the last.
Speaker 1: Fifteen years or so. Peter sa Terra still singing with it.
Speaker 5: No, guy who's singing singing with him now is kind
Speaker 5: of like a ringer. Though I saw the show in
Speaker 5: twenty fifteen it was a great show. I'm wearing the
Speaker 5: shirt I bought at the show. Wait, I do have
Speaker 5: a question. I saw something that was kind of crazy.
Speaker 5: I saw earth Winding Fire on ice. Wow, oh right,
Speaker 5: the production thing?
Speaker 1: How did that come to be?
Speaker 7: Like, let me see, I don't I don't even remember
Speaker 7: how how that actually, I don't remember how it came
Speaker 7: to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just crazy. I was turning the channel
Speaker 1: one day and at one point, when I think September
Speaker 1: is playing, I was like, wow, it's it's a weird
Speaker 1: backing track. And then I realized that earth Wind and
Speaker 1: Fire was actually a part of earth Wind and Fire
Speaker 1: were nice question about September. History is showing that that's
Speaker 1: probably the most loved earth Wind and Fire song. But
Speaker 1: at the time I wouldn't have called, oh, September is
Speaker 1: gonna be the.
Speaker 7: Well, we must be brothers of the same lives then,
Speaker 7: because when they got finished with it and they played
Speaker 7: it for me, I was like, crickets, crickets, Wow, okay,
Speaker 7: all right, I said, sounds so simple to me. That's
Speaker 7: the way, you know, because it was just that, you know,
Speaker 7: because we were so used to having all kinds of the.
Speaker 1: Formula by then, and but I was totally wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people were chosen. It's kind of a controversial question. Is
Speaker 1: there a fan favorite that you just don't like flat out?
Speaker 1: Not really besides reasons at weddings? Yeah, not really.
Speaker 3: Were any other records in y'all cat out that you
Speaker 3: thought would be bigger that like you really like but
Speaker 3: maybe they didn't do as as well as you thought.
Speaker 1: Hmm uh. You know a song I really like you
Speaker 1: should and Love Goes On? Yes, that was off of Faces.
Speaker 1: I love that song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now I thought that that was you know, I
Speaker 3: thought the energy on that was really it's really that
Speaker 3: to me is classic earth wind Fire.
Speaker 1: Actually, I have some questions from a friend of mine
Speaker 1: who's probably the biggest earth wind in Fire on the planet.
Speaker 1: Here's one. I'll give you the easiest question. First, how
Speaker 1: did Brenda Russell come into the picture to write song
Speaker 1: in my Heart for the Faces album? Oh? I got
Speaker 1: a song with my heart that one?
Speaker 7: Well, and you know, Brenda's iconic as a lyric writer,
Speaker 7: and I was. I was so excited about I've worked
Speaker 7: with her quite a few times. Fact, have a little
Speaker 7: crush on it really, but no, she's very, very talented
Speaker 7: and uh uh Maurice, uh actually called her. That's how
Speaker 7: we begin, you know, to work together and stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 7: and now for the more more difficult questions. Astrology played
Speaker 7: a big part in the presentation in the name of
Speaker 7: the band, where the other members of the band as
Speaker 7: observant of the philosophy as as Maurice.
Speaker 1: Was, No, not at all, not at all, and just
Speaker 1: this must be deep. So let's roll with it. What
Speaker 1: do you ever like call you know, let's talk about
Speaker 1: you know, this and that, or like where their meetings,
Speaker 1: where he was, you know, kind of explain things that
Speaker 1: he was thinking, or you know, this is what the
Speaker 1: album cover means, or because there's a lot of symbolism
Speaker 1: going on on there. So no, no, he never he
Speaker 1: never did explain.
Speaker 3: Uh no, no, you just saw it after it was conceived,
Speaker 3: Like anytime did the band was like, you know, what
Speaker 3: the what's all this crap?
Speaker 1: You know? Or did it You guys were just used
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, we were.
Speaker 7: We were pretty much used to it because you got
Speaker 7: under you guys. You have to understand that Reese had
Speaker 7: he had the experience, and he had the tenure. You know,
Speaker 7: he'd been on the road, he had been touring, he
Speaker 7: had been successful as a writer, producer, recording with with
Speaker 7: Chess and performed with with with Ramsey. We were just
Speaker 7: coming from mama, you know what I'm saying. You know
Speaker 7: in college, you know, so you know, every day was
Speaker 7: a good day for us. You know, it's like, okay,
Speaker 7: which way we go now?
Speaker 1: You know, here's another easy one besides Milton Nacimento, is
Speaker 1: am I saying that? Right? Okay? Were there were there
Speaker 1: any other Afro Latin musicians that inspired you guys? Like
Speaker 1: what were you guys all listening to Phil? Yes?
Speaker 3: Were you guys aware of him in real time or like, no,
Speaker 3: we were just recent We know we were aware of
Speaker 3: him back in the seventies.
Speaker 1: How many did you guys go to Africa during the
Speaker 1: heyday of earth Wind and Fire. No, just to visit?
Speaker 1: Never right, never to play Wow. Wow, I imagine an
Speaker 1: earth Wind and show and Egypt Dude, dude, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: I saw you guys like went there so all those
Speaker 1: like interlusing and stuff that's just like visiting Marie's visiting
Speaker 1: or that sort of thing. And no, no, we went
Speaker 1: to to We went to Egypt, you know with all
Speaker 1: the stuff that in the pyramid stuff that you're talking
Speaker 1: freaking up. No, we were there. We went there just
Speaker 1: to visit. Wow, as you know, yeah, we went to visit.
Speaker 6: Is that the only country you guys visited in the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to visit. Okay, okay, So today you're you're working
Speaker 1: on Chilo uh material right now? You have a project
Speaker 1: coming up. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's it's called Love for Finding a Way and
Speaker 7: it's a collective project of some like great friends Chick
Speaker 7: Corea and Christian.
Speaker 1: McBride Christian went high school Christian.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, Camasi Washington, you know, Christian Scott More Jazz
Speaker 7: Leanings or well, you know, it's a it's a record
Speaker 7: that we took a couple of blouse on the record.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 7: We we took a couple of songs that kind of
Speaker 7: reflect at the times that we're that we were struggling,
Speaker 7: uh in the sixties and stuff because we did some
Speaker 7: uh Curtis Mayfield joints, but Robert Glasberg flipped him, so
Speaker 7: Roberts you know, on the project, and uh, it's a
Speaker 7: it's a hot it's a hot project, it really is.
Speaker 7: It's it's gonna come out on Verve when well we're
Speaker 7: trying to get a release date.
Speaker 1: We had. We were just with them today actually, but
Speaker 1: it's it was, it's a It's probably one of the projects.
Speaker 4: I've usually asked somebody about their new stuff and it's like,
Speaker 4: this sounds it sounds good.
Speaker 6: Who? Who? Who comes to mind after I stutter that
Speaker 6: impresses you vocally today? Like not not, they don't have
Speaker 6: to be a new artist. I just mean when you
Speaker 6: think presently of who's alive and who's still impressing you vocally.
Speaker 1: Shoot, you know a lot a lot of you.
Speaker 6: It's not new. I mean it could be you know
Speaker 6: you you you named some names on your album.
Speaker 1: Who are your go to? Like when you just want
Speaker 1: to hear some music? And you know I love Laylah
Speaker 1: Okay you and of course Balao and who else I
Speaker 1: listened to attorney. Shoot, it's.
Speaker 7: I'm trying to think of who just really sticks out
Speaker 7: that it's young Goss. Yeah, this is a lot of
Speaker 7: gospel and I and list allow of jazz stuff, all
Speaker 7: the young jazzer's.
Speaker 1: You're on Astro World. Uh, how did Travis Scott uh
Speaker 1: come to get you for the album? Well?
Speaker 7: It was very quick and really yeah, it it was
Speaker 7: just kind of one of one of those things that
Speaker 7: we have the same manager, and so Damien's been managing
Speaker 7: me for a long long time. In the fact, he
Speaker 7: was his best friend with my oldest son, you know,
Speaker 7: back in Denver. Huh sir, yes, sir, Yeah, he's doing well.
Speaker 1: Give give him hello, yeah, thank you all.
Speaker 7: So anyway, so yeah, you know that uh song stopped
Speaker 7: turning to be got that me and Stevie guessed on
Speaker 7: a little bit. That's that's how that came about actually,
Speaker 7: and uh, you know, rest is history.
Speaker 1: Really Wow, impressive, You're still going strong and hypothetical situation
Speaker 1: because I think as I was going to earlier, I forgot.
Speaker 1: I forgot I forgot about that. But this is a
Speaker 1: hypothetical situation. I am going to ask about that though.
Speaker 1: I'm giving you a blank check.
Speaker 5: You can do whatever you want with it, Like you
Speaker 5: can record whatever you want with whoever you want, wherever
Speaker 5: you want.
Speaker 1: What do you think you would do with that? Wow?
Speaker 1: That's so huge, Like what what is what is your
Speaker 1: dream project?
Speaker 7: I actually think that I just did it, you know,
Speaker 7: on this project that that we just did. I definitely
Speaker 7: think that I that I just did it. You know,
Speaker 7: to be able to to do what you want to
Speaker 7: do with the people that you've always respected and stuff,
Speaker 7: and and to finish it, and people that are listening
Speaker 7: or saying or having comments that you're hoping when in
Speaker 7: your in your creating the project, that they'll you'll have
Speaker 7: you know, it's very gratifying and stuff.
Speaker 3: So you know, yeah, I think we we just did it.
Speaker 3: I can save my money then, yeah, I'm checking that one.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I loved off the last from
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen Splashes.
Speaker 1: I really love that song. Oh yeah, are you going
Speaker 1: to ask the Twins question? No, I was.
Speaker 9: Any any chance of reuniting with the other Phil for
Speaker 9: a follow up?
Speaker 1: I can't believe you brought up Oh wow. Only bring
Speaker 1: it up because whenever a set of Twins comes on tonight,
Speaker 1: you guys play that. That's always the song we played.
Speaker 1: So we know Twins left and right. Man, how do
Speaker 1: you you know?
Speaker 7: Let me ask you this off cuff, but when I
Speaker 7: when I was came on the show, how do you
Speaker 7: guys just like look like you guys are going like
Speaker 7: one thousand miles a minute.
Speaker 1: In real time. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that you
Speaker 1: haven't with the band as well, but there's a point
Speaker 1: after maybe ten years where you guys, just you know,
Speaker 1: you know each other so well that you're talking like,
Speaker 1: we're to the point now, I would I would probably
Speaker 1: say that maybe in five years we get the roots
Speaker 1: the roots, and I can probably have a conversation without
Speaker 1: speaking a word. We're now to the point where we
Speaker 1: know how to communicate with each other with rhythm, like
Speaker 1: if someone if someone like real bad enters the room
Speaker 1: like whatever, like we have a rhythm for that, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it stands of attention like which
Speaker 1: one And then if it's a like I have to
Speaker 1: do a code to let you know, third row four
Speaker 1: ups and then no, no, literally, but it's it's we
Speaker 1: have a language, like we're just you do it. I
Speaker 1: think the whole point of the whole ten thousand hours
Speaker 1: of Eagles genius practice thing is that when you do
Speaker 1: it so much that you're able to do other things
Speaker 1: and have other forms of communications. Right, Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: it really seems like. Yeah, I mean, we have fun
Speaker 1: doing it, and you know, I guess this is the
Speaker 1: point where we're just in the zone with each other
Speaker 1: and we're actually friends. We're friends now more than we've
Speaker 1: ever been in the thirty years that we've known each
Speaker 1: other or I'm in a combination of we've all the
Speaker 1: configuration you see now has as somewhere between like ten
Speaker 1: to twenty years into it. Yeah, I think there's a
Speaker 1: point where you just you grow up and then you're
Speaker 1: you're just friends. So what was it like doing that
Speaker 1: thing with you that you did with us? You know? Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. I have two experiences. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: had the pleasure of working with the earth We're in
Speaker 1: fire back in two thousand, I think the Voodoo Tour
Speaker 1: was doing like a week in La so uh, and
Speaker 1: I had two experiences, one with you in sir, and
Speaker 1: then one with Maurice. Now, the thing is, is that
Speaker 1: really really being like green and wet behind the ears
Speaker 1: and still like new that sort of thing, and talking
Speaker 1: to Maurice and just like you know, going through our
Speaker 1: whole fan out thing, and of course I know like
Speaker 1: how many Columbus you got. It was like that sort
Speaker 1: of situation where you know, I was basically set myself
Speaker 1: up for a fall, but you know, Maurice has said that,
Speaker 1: you know, I want what's in the future, And now
Speaker 1: I was like talking about sound and everything. The first
Speaker 1: thing you mentioned was like your your your snare drum
Speaker 1: sound is real low, and in my mind I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: that's the sign of class. That's the sound of classic
Speaker 1: earth wind and fire like you know, deep snare. And
Speaker 1: he's like, oh man, I won't like give me to day,
Speaker 1: give me what you want. And I remember being just
Speaker 1: a little heartbroken the fact that he didn't trust the
Speaker 1: process that we today are looking to what you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: what y'all were doing, Like that's not what he over?
Speaker 5: That shit right, And then I did that. It'd be
Speaker 5: like if somebody asked you to, you know, get an
Speaker 5: upright base of roads.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing though, now, the difference between you
Speaker 1: tell me this now and maybe you tell me this
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and two. I almost feel as
Speaker 1: though when artists are likesh like I used to do
Speaker 1: that or that's the old Well, first of all, no
Speaker 1: one likes agism, you know what I mean, So no
Speaker 1: one wants to feel like, ah, man was my best
Speaker 1: work thirty years ago, and I just don't want to
Speaker 1: admit it. I feel as though maybe it's a fear
Speaker 1: of not matching up, you know, do I have a
Speaker 1: fear of not being twenty two year old a mirror
Speaker 1: that was working on do you want More? In Hiladelph
Speaker 1: Half Life. So a lot of times we just tend
Speaker 1: to go linear and go for it, but I feel
Speaker 1: as though you should go circular. So yes, now today
Speaker 1: I will totally get an upright bait, he said infinitive Rhodes.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I damn near work with the same equipment.
Speaker 1: So I'm lucky enough to one be cheap enough to
Speaker 1: not have upgraded. Y'all have an upgrade pro tools. Did
Speaker 1: y'all finally do that? No, it's see Steve one and
Speaker 1: a half. Steve has convinced me to not upgrade so
Speaker 1: that we don't lose the vibe. But what we've averaged
Speaker 1: for twenty years a digital vibe. So I'm saying with
Speaker 1: you and sir though y'all kind of gave me room
Speaker 1: to do my thing, so I you know, I'm still
Speaker 1: pleased with the song. I wish we we we could
Speaker 1: have fleshed out the song idea some more so, but
Speaker 1: you know it was enjoyable. I'm always gonna have a
Speaker 1: great story to tell and it's the Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: on the promised record. Yeah, So I will say that
Speaker 1: on behalf is there anything else before? No, no more,
Speaker 1: I'm trying. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I don't let mister Bailey go an see him again.
Speaker 1: Hey man, we want to give our heroes they flowers. Yes,
Speaker 1: no for we we appreciate you coming on the show
Speaker 1: and this is definitely one of them. No, man, this
Speaker 1: is the honor. Your music has been the soundtrack of
Speaker 1: my entire life.
Speaker 7: And just be thank you, well, thank you. Let me,
Speaker 7: I gotta say one thing for before we go to Mouse.
Speaker 7: That now I hear that Mouse was saying that Earth
Speaker 7: Wind and Fire don't play their music.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, let me no one's wondering was gonna get
Speaker 3: brought up? Let me say, let me say Mouse's ass. No,
Speaker 3: what I was saying I brought up. I brought up
Speaker 3: the difference between.
Speaker 6: What on a previous episode a quest.
Speaker 1: We were talking about. Okay, so he's talking about the
Speaker 1: drafting of Heartbreak Hotel by the Jackson and now initially
Speaker 1: the the base tones and the bass sounds of Fantasy
Speaker 1: like all those inflections. There have been rumors or whatnot
Speaker 1: that again that that Earth Wind and Fire was more
Speaker 1: like a Beach Boys situation where Maurice White, as as
Speaker 1: Brian Wilson using the recond crew, like using his house
Speaker 1: musicians to record Earth Wind and Fire records versus the
Speaker 1: people whom we saw on stage. So we were discussing
Speaker 1: that theory. But he he didn't say that you guys
Speaker 1: weren't playing on your records. But we did delve into
Speaker 1: that for at least five minutes on whether or not
Speaker 1: that was true or not. No, no, no, But I mean,
Speaker 1: for the most part, that's that's one of the biggest
Speaker 1: smoking mirror tricks that a lot of music fans don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, for this case in point, James Poyser might
Speaker 1: as well be an original Route member because he's been
Speaker 1: there since the beginning. He just finally, like you know,
Speaker 1: gave up. I wore him out and just like all right,
Speaker 1: well now you're in the group. But for the longest
Speaker 1: James Poyser has I was rereading.
Speaker 5: The Things Fall Apart liner on the other day and
Speaker 5: there was all these James, y'all gonna pay me this time, right.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, So that was it. Mouse. Mouse did not
Speaker 1: insinuate that, all right, Mouse, you're off the hook. Good,
Speaker 1: all right, well, thank you very much on be having
Speaker 1: Moon Ticcolo boss Bill unpaid Bilvison in Action and Sugar
Speaker 1: Steve and the Sugar Steve Network and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is quest Love. Thank you very much Philip Bill
Speaker 1: for coming on the show God and we will see
Speaker 1: you next week on Court Love Supreme only on Pandora.
Speaker 1: Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more
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