00:00:00 Speaker 1: Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Hey, what's up y'all? This is Questlove And as you've noticed throughout June, we are celebrating Black Music Month by releasing an episode every day, So every day you're either going to hear a specially pick QLs classic. Now we're part one, Part two, and part three of my all time favorite QLs episode. This is the legendary Jimmy Jam. What's up, y'all? This is Questlove and this is QLs Classic. And this is the second of our three part series with producer Jimmy Jam. Last episode we explored his life in Minnesota and enjoining the Group of Time and getting fired by Prince. And now this episode we talk about working with artists like Charelle, Alexander O'Neil, An Austin, New Edition, the SOS Band, the Human Lead, and also Janet Jackson, all Top ten artists. We also discussed the creative process in songwriting and producing and becoming businessman. 00:01:13 Speaker 2: This is a really, really great episode. I hope you enjoyed. 00:01:15 Speaker 1: All Right, let's go, so obviously, you guys go to get Alex back but how did Charelle? 00:01:26 Speaker 2: We do? So yeah, so actually, yeah, so Charrell's the next one. So Charrelle. You know, after sost band jumped off, Clarence had signed Charrell. She was from Detroit. He said, I signed this girl from Detroit. So she's kind of young and raw, but I think you guys can do something with or whatever whatever. I remember we met her and we hung out with her, loved her, you know, and I remember it was a reason we moved back. Charrel was the reason we moved back to Minneapolis. We were working in a studio. I don't remember what studio was, but she had always done backup singing, not a lot of lead singing, and it was just a very nervous thing. We're always watching the clock, I can, you know, conckness and of the of the budget, and it was just this kind of pressure thing. So we knew these guys in Minneapolis had a studio down their basement, and we said, maybe we'll go back to Minneapolis and record. It'll be like a less pressure and whatever whatever whatever. And I remember the very first day we walked in the studio. It was called Creation Audio and it was down the basement of a little house. First song we did was didn't mean to turn you on? Wow, And when that happened, we were like, Terry just said, we need to just move back to Minneapolis, because we can make music anywhere, but we should just do it this kind of environment where we can just create and not worry about the high pressure, you know, the high prices of l a you. 00:02:42 Speaker 1: Recorded in that basement. Yeah, okay, now I'm gonna start with the creative process. 00:02:47 Speaker 2: Okay, how does Jimmy jam on that synthesizer by the way, on this various yeah that is that's didn't mean to turn you on? 00:02:57 Speaker 1: How does Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis construct a song? Who does the lyrics, who does. 00:03:07 Speaker 2: The There's a lot of different ways that it happened. 00:03:10 Speaker 1: Okay, So let's take I didn't mean because what I really want to get into is that's the point. That's the song that I felt that you really started coming on your own as a drum programmer, especially assuming that did you guys do your own remix edits and all that stuff? Yes, okay, which also qlis listeners continues the theory that all really masterful, great producers, awesome DJs. So this is the doctor dre theory all over again? So, because you're doing a lot of intricate stuff there, and I was kind of saving this question for the Control album. But who's teaching you? I mean, who's teaching you these patches and these programming stuff? I mean I still barely get past page three on the Drummer's Manual of any drum machine I ever get, and there's no pro tols and stuff. Are you editing and cutting tape? Or like, what are you? How are you doing this stuff? 00:04:14 Speaker 2: Well, a little bit of everything. So didn't mean to turn you on though, is real simple. So the DMX, that's a DMX drum machine, Yes he was, And so I learned the DMX drum machine really from Leon Silvers. He had one. He was He was one of the people that just there was always a drum machine laying around the studio. And he met a certain point he made a transition where he would cut things with the drum machine. But then the drummer from Lakeside and I can't remember his name, was amazing. He would come back in and play real drums because Leon still liked the idea of real drums. But he had a metronome and he could just lock right in. Not all drummers could do that, could play with a drum machine, but he could. But he always had one around. So I just would always mess around with it. And so, uh, same thing with the lin drum. Prince always had a line drummer around, So I just would always mess My whole thing was I would just pick up stuff and just start messing around with it. And I think because I was a drummer, it all just made sense to me. But I never but and it's funny, you said you don't get past uh page three. I never picked a manual up. I've never read a drum machine manual in my life. Man bragged. I'm not bragging. I just I just it doesn't make sense. It's just kind of trial and errors. Just you just kind of mess around and until you come up with stuff that did make sense to me. 00:05:31 Speaker 1: Well, I'm asking because like even like in the bridge of that song, like these these roles that you're programming, yeah, and the various handclaps yeah yeah, the s billets and all that stuff towards the end, I'm assuming that that stuff has to be pre programmed, as in your thinking, in your head. Okay, four bars from the beginning or even the beginning before this song starts again? And is this without prote in the age of pro tools, now, I could just punch anything in yes, one, and then copy and paste and do whatever I please. But you didn't have it then, So are you sitting there with the map of the format of the song? 00:06:15 Speaker 2: No? No, My thing was always I would always put the drum beat down. That would always be the first thing. And I knew that sometimes there was a format, like I knew on that particular song. I kind of knew what the format was in my mind. So but I wouldn't ever program a song from start to finish on the drum machine. I would physically put in a pattern like the beginning of that song, which is just a handclaps. I think that would be one pattern. Then i'd put the next pattern in, which was the main you know, whatever that was. Then the change was the booduct That would be another thing. So turn the tape on, press play, go to my thing. Then as the song's playing, I'm thinking in my head, okay, now it sounds like it's change here, and I just go to the change, and then I go back to the main part and I go to the change. Now. Most of the time it worked pretty good because I kind of simpty, no, not locked a simpty at all. I used to drive people. No, I used to drive people crazy with that because me crazy, because because engineers would get get it. 00:07:34 Speaker 1: I'm looking at Steve right now, like see I'm not alone, Steve. 00:07:38 Speaker 2: Now. We'd send stuff out to get remixed, and they'd always say, what's the simpty start time? And we go, we don't know. You didn't lock the simpty, were just just playing. You turned the tape on and you play, and that that was the way we always did it didn't mean to turn you out. Was interesting because that song was very heavily influenced by the system. I can see that the systems. The system did a lot of that and that kind of stuff. The difference was they hooked everything together so that it was sequenced, and I didn't do that because I didn't know how to do that. So I never sequenced. There was never a sequenced keyboard, not even. 00:08:12 Speaker 1: If you synthesize it work in your base work. No, they're doing that by hand, by hand. It sounds like eight minutes. Yeah, so song like innocent yo, Yeah, the whole Innocent suite twelve minutes long. 00:08:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, Dallas twelve minutes playing for twelve minutes. And also and that's and that's an interesting and and and Innocent is an interesting one too, because that's one where we put the drum part down first and then we had to figure out what we were going to put on top of it. You know, that made sense, but that I got from Prince, because Prince would do that. 00:08:48 Speaker 1: Okay, can you answer a question for me, even though I don't know if you were, were you ever physically there for time recordings no other than they or anything? 00:08:59 Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, because that's the thing. 00:09:01 Speaker 1: Like a song like the Walk, which is nine minutes, how does he know and bar one seventy six? Mayris we mother like that part? Like does he map out even the dialogue? And no, you put the groove down. So like literally on the Walk, it would basically be him on the bass and Morris on the drums, and they would just play for nine minutes. And so Prince would kind of in his mind think, well, this might be a verse, this might be a chorus, whatever, this might be just a jam session whatever. Then there'll be you listen to it. 00:09:39 Speaker 2: Back, you put the chords over the top of it, and then the little horn stabs and stuff you do based on the breaks and some of that other stuff. Like he knew, he didn't know what everything was gonna be. You just kind of create it as it's going along and let the drums and the bass line dictate what you then put on top of it. So it's very spot that's whether it's so spontaneous, because it literally was spontaneous. Now you could go back and do it like if you like, if there's a lick that Morris would do a ko on the drums and then you'd hear it and you'd go, oh, let's put a horn line on it. 00:10:13 Speaker 1: Clin okay, okay, right. 00:10:16 Speaker 2: But you just kind of took each piece of the song until it was filled, until it was a full song. So we kind of took See that's the thing, if you think about it. We took a lot of lessons from what Leon did, what Leon Silvers did, We took a lot of lessons from what Prince did, and then we took a lot of lessons from just listening to records that were out and things that we liked and just applied them to the way we record, you know, but we had great teachers. I mean, we had great teachers. There were great records. Not to mention all the records growing up we listened to, you know, so you know that to me is kind of the thing and so for us. But I couldn't sequence. And that's the thing. I never opened up a manual, so I didn't know. I had a DM drum machine in ob eight. Okay, they're supposed to talk to each other through the d SX, which was the right segmen, we have a d s X. 00:11:07 Speaker 1: Has never been never. 00:11:08 Speaker 2: Been touched because I know how to hook it. 00:11:11 Speaker 1: I don't know. 00:11:11 Speaker 2: I never knew how to hook it up. I I and to that and tell you the only reason I ever even started sequencing at all was one I had a drum programmer, uh uh, or just a programmer in general named Alex Richberg was from New York originally. 00:11:29 Speaker 1: And wait, how do you know he. 00:11:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And he was the one that got me into well he was he was the one that really started putting. We were talking earlier before we started the interview. We were talking about how hip hop influenced R and B. But he was a true hip hop head. That was incorporated into our camp, which really he had the whole kind of hip hop sensibility from the MPC. It's he introduced me to the n PC drum machine and all those things and the idea of that type of sampling because I never sampled in a drum machine. I usually just use like a little AMS sample or something like that. So he was the one that really opened my mind up to the incorporating hip hop into you know art the way we did R and B records, particularly with Janet, but with a lot of other you know acts too. So he was a really important part. But up until I met him, and that was, like you said, velvet rop era so ninety seven, I guess or something like that, I never And even after that, I remember he would hook stuff up so it would be like ready for a sequence, like what was the one that we did? Oh, god till it's gone, God till it's gone. He hooked, He hooked everything up together, and he said, make a record, and don't do it in this box, don't do it outside of the thing. And the reason the record sounds the way it sounds is because I did the simplest thing I could possibly do, which was called blunt blunt, blunt bloom, right, because that's all I knew how to do. And it was like okay, and I said, okay, here, I got some men, Now what do we do now? And it's like, okay, now we'll we'll make the song. Yeah, but you know what I'm saying. But that's why that turned out like that. And literally, when that song was done, I unplugged all that stuff and said, I'm not making records like that no more. 00:13:16 Speaker 1: I couldn't. 00:13:17 Speaker 2: I couldn't do it. You got a hit out of it, got a hit out of it, and and and and the only thing after that, and and and when I discovered logic. See when when garage band came out, I thought, oh, this is cute. But then when somebody said, oh logic, it's like do you know how to we're garage band? Yeah, but yeah, that's when I said, oh, wait, okay, I can do this. This is this makes sense to me because he always used logic back in the day when it was hard to use. So I said, oh, I can figure this out. I know the theory of this. But no, all of those records were all just played by hand. Like I remember what was one we did. Oh uh, I just heard it the other day. Tell me Houston used to hotels. Yeah, but that's all right, that's by hand, by hand, whole record. Just be good to me. 00:14:10 Speaker 1: That's not everything. 00:14:11 Speaker 2: No no, no, no, that's all played, every all of that stuff. Borrow. 00:14:17 Speaker 1: That's a long that's long to be. 00:14:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, but I had but I had great chops then because that stuff compared to what Prince had us going through and rehearsal. See, Prince prepared me for all that stuff. You know, Prince would have me uh like seven seven seven that's famous. Well, I don't know if that's a famous story. I told it to a bunch of people though. You know, we're doing seven seven seven ninety three eleven and my part was just doubling Terry's bassline, uh, with this kind of ob eight sound right, and then I do like a little string part and that was it. 00:14:51 Speaker 1: Right. 00:14:51 Speaker 2: So I remember we were rehearsing a song and Prince goes, Jimmy, jam, what are you doing with your left hand? And I said nothing, Prince, I was doing the baseline. He said, he said you should done. He says, do the bassline, but then you should do the chords with Monty oh, and I said, well, it's not like that on the record, and he says, it's got to be better than the record that was always his Thing's got to be better than the record. It's like, okay, cool. So now I'm like, right, I'm cool, like cool. So we finished the song. He says, what note are you singing on the course? And I said, I'm not singing a note on the chorus. I said, Monty singing, and Terry singing, and Jesse's singing, and then Morris got the main note. Whatever, find a note? Like okay. He says, got to be bigger than the record. It's like, okay, bigger than the record. Okay, cool. Right, So now I'm playing through the seven seven seven ninety three eleven. So I'm singing, right, I'm good. We finish. He goes, why aren't you doing the choreography? Jimmy, damn not gonna dance, I said, Prince, I'm standing at the keyboard when I'm supposed to. It's simple choreography. You should be able to do it. So I'm like, okay, cool. So I'm like doing so now I'm trying to do the like the little four corner step was like, and I'm trying to do my hands and I'm trying to sing the note, and I'm frustrated. I'm just so pissed off. I cannot do it right, and I'm just I'm pissed off. And I think about it all night and I'm just pissed off. So the next day we come back to rehearsal, he says seven seven, seven ninety three eleven, and I'm just like, oh, here we go. I start playing perfect by about the fourth run through of it. Now I'm tipping my hat, I'm taking my hand, my face. It became so easy. And that taught me work ethic. That that was the thing that taught me that he had a belief, like a good coach, you can always do more. You can always do more. You can't settle, you know. But he saw that I could do more and push me to do it. So from that moment on, all the stuff in the studio where you can make a mistake and who you know, whatever, But no, I mean that was simple to play. To play ten minutes out of the song was easy because forget about the rehearsals work. 00:16:58 Speaker 1: Gad question, since you brought it up, has jelly Bean ever played it proper once in these shows. 00:17:04 Speaker 2: No, he can't, he can't play it. I've never heard a drummer play it correctly. The drummer that plays that the closest is is Morse. Wow. Really because yeah, because Morris is a David Garibaldi fanatic guy and that yeah. 00:17:16 Speaker 1: For our listeners that I haven't seen any other interviews, we won't mention David Garibaldi. I guess principulled a Swiss beat and just broke our hearts by using the stock program. Do you know what number it was in the in the drum? No? 00:17:36 Speaker 2: I heard it was like it's one of the high ones, like seventy seven or eighty something. 00:17:40 Speaker 1: Or hero. 00:17:43 Speaker 2: Do you still But it wasn't. No, it was different different drummers. When different drummers had different beats in that drum machine. Oh, that was That was part of the whole kind of selling point of it was they gave it to different drummers and different drummers programmed their own beats. 00:17:56 Speaker 1: Do you still have the lin drum with those programs in there? 00:18:01 Speaker 2: It exists. I'm sure it exists, but we never had it. That was always that was always Princess Okay, that was always Princess, yeah one, but yeah, I know David Garabaldi, but but but yeah, that was Morris's. Dude. If you ever hear Morris play the drums, that's he can do all of that tower of power stuff, like just crazy, that's amazing. Yeah. 00:18:22 Speaker 1: I didn't know what a drum machine was at the time, so I spent like all of eighty two doing the hand claps and the drum machine. And someone told me that's a drum machine. That was heartbroken because I thought all that stuff was real. So you came back for Alex. Was he happy to see you guys? Or was it like it's about town? Well? No, it was actually working at this Perkins restaurant. 00:18:50 Speaker 2: Okay, so the Alex thing was so after Charrell. After we did Charrell and Charrell was successful. The next artist that uh Clarence brought us was a guy named Jeffrey Robinson. And this guy was he's been stumped. Yeah, I don't think. I don't think. I don't think anybody ever heard of him again, But and I don't even know where he came from. We were in Minneapolis now at this point because we'd kind of moved up and we were working at this creation audio place we talked about earlier. So, uh, anyway, Jeffrey comes to town. Nice looking guy. I remember he had an ascot. He was very sophisticated in the whole thing and whatever. Now we had already done the tracks. We had already done, you know, if you were here tonight and I think we had done that look at us now and another track I can't remember. Do you want to like I do? We had done those three tracks with Montyextre more So we showed him the songs and we said, okay, come on, there's what we're gonna do. Now. We figure he's gonna come in and kill it, right. So he comes in and his voice kind of he had one of those voices with there's a real fast vibrido. So everything was like everything, yeah, exactly, and it was a little weird and we were like, okay, well whatever, and he said, yeah, my voice is skipping. He said, you know, we'll do it to anybody, have tea anybody, you know whatever. So it's like, okay, tee. Whatever came back the next day is the same thing came back the next day, it was the same thing. So we called Clarence and we said, Okay, this dude you sent up here, I'm not sure. 00:20:32 Speaker 1: Man. 00:20:33 Speaker 2: He's a nice looking dude, nice enough cat. I said, I'm not really sure. 00:20:37 Speaker 1: And so what do you want to do? 00:20:38 Speaker 2: And we said, there's this guy named Alexander O'Neil and he said, Alexander Neil was he irish? He said, no, Clarence, he's a black dude. Man, I said, but you know what kind of name was O'Neil for a black man? I said, I don't know, Clarence, I said, but I said, can we put him on the songs? And he said, yeah, yeah, put him on there. I said, okay, cool. So he went over to Alex's gig and Alex was finishing up like one in the morning or whatever it was. And we said, Alex, I said, we got these songs. I said, can you come over and sing them? 00:21:08 Speaker 3: Like? 00:21:08 Speaker 2: I can't remember when we did it that night or the next day, but we like literally did the three songs the next day. Like he sang them all the way, just like that, like just sang them right. We sent him to Clarence. Clarence said, who's this mother, brother, said Alexander Neil. He said, man, he said bring him out here. So we did. We brought it, got a plane, went to l A. Clarence signed him on the spot. 00:21:33 Speaker 1: Did you talk to Alex Versus and said, don't. 00:21:37 Speaker 2: You know, I think I think he knew that. I think he knew. We didn't have to say a thing. But anyway, Yeah, but anyway, he got he got signed off of that, and I don't know to this day what happened to Jeffrey Robinson, but he was perfectly nice guy, but he just he just didn't have it. So we took those same songs, we added uh, you know, broken heart can Mend and and and then we figured out we knew from working with perfect album opener. 00:22:00 Speaker 1: By the way, I love the nerve of you guys starting out records albums with mid tempo stuff like I would never thought to. Were you guys also sequencing the records once you were. 00:22:13 Speaker 2: Totally totally yeah. That was one of the great things about doing records for Clarence because he totally let us. 00:22:19 Speaker 1: We did the album opens out, really all the space, we. 00:22:22 Speaker 2: Did all the we did all of the yeah, we did all the all the that cover with the diner and the whole thing. We did the video like we conceptualized all of that stuff. I mean, obviously we had people do it. I think a guy named Craig Rice did the video. Who's does a bunch of stuff for stuff? 00:22:37 Speaker 3: Now? 00:22:37 Speaker 1: Right? 00:22:37 Speaker 2: Okay, he did the actually shot the video, but it was all our concepts. I mean he basically just let us do and so we got really got spoiled. I mean Clarence was amazing, you know, just because we told him. Clarence had gone in a whole bunch of different things. He was doing oil Company and he was doing all these other different things, and we said, Clarence, you need to be doing music and we're gonna make music fun for you again, you know, because at a certain point he wasn't having fun doing music, and we said, we're gonna make music fun for you again. And I think we did that well. 00:23:05 Speaker 1: Who who opens an album with mid tempo stuff? Because like even with SLS Band, I think no one's going to love you opens up sands of time, sands the time. Yeah, like that's a risk. 00:23:18 Speaker 4: That was a jam though, because we kind of did it with with what do you call it? 00:23:25 Speaker 1: What's the string? Yeah, hanging on the string contemplating. Yeah, but it's like. 00:23:29 Speaker 2: Loos Ends totally by Nick Martinelli, biggest bier of all time. 00:23:36 Speaker 1: No love los. 00:23:44 Speaker 2: No my thing, my thing, my thing with Nick because actually, you know, I've never met Nick Martinelli in my life. He's just a name on a lighter note to me. And I love hanging on a string and I love Loosens. It was the fact that I remember I read they were asked about it and they were like, oh, it sounds nothing like, it doesn't have anything to do with it. And I just was like, oh, come on, really, yeah, that was the thing to me. It's like, come on, now, I'm an admit that at least if I was influenced by some I'm gonna throw it out like we just like we just said, you're talking about the kick trom I'm like, no, the system man's. 00:24:19 Speaker 1: I mean, but I'm saying, I mean, you know, you could your lawyers just could have been stand by. 00:24:26 Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I just I mean to me that that was the thing with that. But no, the Lucien's records were amazing, the fifty second Street records, I mean a lot of that, I mean, and that's when we knew that our influence wasn't just in America that it was to the UK and it was like a whole bunch of different places. 00:24:42 Speaker 1: Wait, you didn't do tell me how you feel? 00:24:45 Speaker 2: No, Nick Martinelli did that. 00:24:52 Speaker 3: Did the BBQ bands Genie it's not hyr wish Is. 00:24:58 Speaker 4: I don't know who did it. I mean they were I think they were self produced. 00:25:02 Speaker 3: I think bbqban bbn q ban because that always when I first heard, I thought it was you guys. 00:25:07 Speaker 2: Well the first see the first I don't know which record, but the first ones were done by the guys that did the Change record, which was the first ones, which was a guy named Mario Malavesi and Jacques fred Petres. They did the BBQ ban so because to me it sounded like the Change record when I heard it. But yeah, they were. 00:25:26 Speaker 3: We got to get the change too at some point. 00:25:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, change was that was an interesting what was it? 00:25:34 Speaker 1: Oh? 00:25:34 Speaker 2: No, because we was. I heard you guys never got paid for those times? That is that is correct? Well, we did eventually it came out of somebody else's budget though which I don't know remember who it was. But but no, we did. We went over to Italy to do the Change record. We were asked, you know, would we like to produce the Change album and we said, yeah, we'd. 00:25:52 Speaker 1: Love to from Italy. 00:25:54 Speaker 2: The the No, the musicians are actually from America, from the most New York musicians as a matter of fact. But the guys that produced it, it was this Jacques fred Petris and Mario MALAVESI. Uh, they were I don't know whether they were Italian. I think we're French or Italian or whatever. But the studio they recorded at was in Italy. It was actually in Modina in Italy, home of Ferrari, which I did. I didn't know back then. I saw I saw we would pass by this place it said Ferrari, and it didn't even dawn on me. That's like the actual Ferrari place, because you know, one hundred fifty dollars a week. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't thinking about it Ferrari, but it was. It was a great experience where there was a villa. I remember the first day we got there, they had you know, they cooked everything for you, they did everything right. So the first day they brought out pasta right, and we're grubbing and we kept saying yeah, more and more, and they're like looking at me more and like yeah, yeah, yeah, and we'd get done and we're like sitting back and then they bring chicken and we're like aha. We didn't know about the whole courses and the whole thing anyway, but the change record it was cool and we did it. It was like a farm in the middle of nowhere in this villa. We were totally bored to death. We would have really appreciated and I wish it would have happened when were a little older, and we really would have appreciated how cool of a situation it was. But what it did is it introduced us to Otari tape machines because they had Otari tape machines. Everybody had student tape machines. Right this place had Otari and we loved the machine and we thought, wow, this is a great machine. So there's all kind of a little It's funny because every story there's some little thing that has influenced or something that we've done that's been significant, and that was a significant thing for us to find those tape machines because we couldn't afford a student tape machine. And when we found those tape machines, we got a great relationship with them and it turned out really well. There was a guy in Change though named Timmy Allen who later on Today and Our for Jive Records, but he was the bass player. He wrote the song true Love and he wrote on that album and a couple other things. Could have been more talented guy, nicer guy, and uh. That was a great experience making that record. And then we mixed with Michael Brower in New York. And we were always used to mixing like one song over a day or two with Steve Hodge. Michael Brower was banging out three songs a day. We were like, oh man, I mean it was amazing. Yeah, but he was doing all the Luther Vandraws mixes, and we wanted that Luther Van Draws sound for the Change. 00:28:26 Speaker 1: Oh my god, Okay, Mike, were you did you see the snare drum? He has Yogi's drum set from Never Too Much. I'm trying to purchase it. Yeah he yeah, he knocks him out. He also did Holler notes Private Eye album and yeah, I'm trying to buy that the Never Too Much. Matter of fact, I think searching, I believe he said that everything that Luther's ever seen one. 00:29:01 Speaker 2: That was that was a snare dr Yeah, that would make sense, Yeah, trying to get it. That would make sense, trying to get it. 00:29:07 Speaker 1: So he knocked it out in three days. 00:29:10 Speaker 2: Yeah, three days. 00:29:10 Speaker 1: We said, We said that these songs, three. 00:29:13 Speaker 2: Songs a day, and I think there was nine songs on the album and you were satisfied what it mixes? Yeah, the mixes were great. I thought they were great. I was. I was. We were just shocked because we we didn't know. And that's when we kind of learned. The pace in la versus the pace in New York. You know, it's a whole different thing, and that that was one of the ways we. 00:29:30 Speaker 1: But can you trust it? I mean, have you how many times do you have to recall a mix as in in that day? 00:29:38 Speaker 2: None, we'd recalled it none, No times that the that was the mix. We very rarely recalled mixes. I mean we once we got it to where we liked it, we liked it. We very rarely recalled mixes. Okay, very rarely. We would leave mistakes in there, and we would leave you know, we'd get it to a certain point and we just kind of feel like, you know, we'd always joke, we go, okay, what five people aren't gonna buy the record because of this thing that only we hear. It's like does it feel good? And is it? Yeah, it's it's good. And back then, mixing was very collaborative because you know, you had to have four guys with their fingers on the board and they weren't automated. 00:30:19 Speaker 1: No, not the way there. 00:30:21 Speaker 2: Well some of them were, but the one we were working on in New York was not automated. So we literally did the mixes and the one that we uh even the ones that like we did at Creation Audio in Minneapolis, so Alexander O'Neil and Charrell and Shane well with the recording of Change, although we mixed in New York, but those records, no, it was all done people on faders and everybody. Man, you know, somebody would be in charge of the mutes and somebody would be in charge of whatever. So it was a performance and it was just about getting the best performance. It wasn't even about recalling the mix. It was just making a great performance. And I missed that that that was actually fun. I enjoyed that part of it. 00:30:59 Speaker 3: Okay, talk about your early forais into hip hop. Okay, let's talk about Captain Bad Times and the iced Teas Cold. 00:31:08 Speaker 2: Yeah. So those records were basically because we would hang out at a studio in l A called Studio Masters, and that was where Leon Silvers did a lot of his records. And I remember there's this guy named Cletus Robinson and he owned a record company called Saturn Records as the exactly and this dude looks like lives like his name sounds is how this. 00:31:32 Speaker 1: Dude and. 00:31:35 Speaker 2: This dude had I don't know he had this record and he just said, man, you know, the track ain't happening on you know, we need a track for this you know, record and stuff. And we were like, okay, cool, and we just moved into the ob eight and the and the lin drum and just got down and you know, once again, Bad Times is another perfect example of just I just played that start to finish, the baseline, there's nothing say quinst and just played it from start to finish, and we didn't hear the singing and all that stuff and the rap, which nobody really used the rap. Everybody flipped it over to the right. But the girl's name was Kim Ball and she was who was her story? She was signed to a group that was signed to United Artists. Remember the group Enchantment. Yes, okay, so she was in Gloria, Yeah, Gloria, right, So she was involved with somebody there, Mike maybe Michael Stokes, maybe his girlfriend or or something. And uh, anyway, so they said this girl kim Ball is gonna sing. We said, okay, great, and we didn't hear it until it was actually done. All we did was go in and put the little track together for it, and we loved it. We were like, oh man, this is funky. And we were trying to make I was trying to make a D Trained record, quite honestly, because because Hubert Eves was from Minnesota. 00:32:51 Speaker 1: And I know. 00:32:53 Speaker 4: What, Yeah, it makes sense now that you say it, but I hear it from Chicago, but. 00:33:00 Speaker 2: I don't know. 00:33:01 Speaker 1: That's amazing. 00:33:01 Speaker 2: Well, we knew him from Minneapolis because I remember we got a D Train record. I have no idea to this day where it showed up, but it was on our time tour bus and I remember seeing the record and it said D Train and we all looked at it and it was a white label, and we were like, D Train, what the heck is D Train? And then we started hearing the record, and I said, oh, this is the record we got and I looked at it and it was Hubert Eves and I said, oh, this is Hubert E's record. And we just knew him from Minneapolis. We were like, oh, there's Minneapolis boys. So we were always you know, like happy and proud of the stuff he did. So yeah, so I don't know, man, but yeah, that was that. And and the same thing with the Coldest Rap and that we didn't know we did the track. It was one of those things where you know, we just kind of went in and did it. I think we got five hundred bucks for it or something. And that was and that was you didn't know they were going to be a rap record. We didn't know what they were going to be. It was just gonna be it's just gonna be put put a track together, and you know, it is what it is. I think we knew, yes, I actually I do think we knew they were going to be rap records, but we didn't know, you know, iced Tea. We knew the names sort of Captain Rap. I knew because he had done some other stuff. I think I used to play one of his records even before that. If I'm not mistaken. So I ran into him by the way at the New Edition star ceremony. He came up to me and he said we worked together before, and I said we did. He said, yeah, he said on that on that Bad Times, I was the rapper on that. I said, oh, nice to meet you. It's very funny, man. So yeah, but no, that that was kind of our first, our first foray into hip hop, and I had it as interesting. I remember I was coming from American Music Awards or something, and uh it was when Kid Rock was really jumping off huge and I remember we were walking into a door at the same time and Kit and he runs into me. Kid Rock runs into me and he said, oh, Man, sorry, sorry man. I said no, no, I'm sorry, man, after you? After you? And he said, hey, man, Jimmy Jam And I said, hey, what's up man? He goes, I can't stand he. 00:35:06 Speaker 1: Said. 00:35:07 Speaker 2: I said, Man, you know that song? He said, Man, I'm from Detroit, I know all of y'all shit. I said, okay, cool, you know. So it was very cool man. But that record to this day, Man, we were just in Japan and Korea and they were talking about that record over there. 00:35:21 Speaker 3: Where did those two records come in the timeline, like, were those before. 00:35:25 Speaker 2: We were Yeah, they're probably before SOSH, Yeah, before before SOOS because it's probably we were still working like real to real first climax stuff, Dynasty stuff. So this is more of an eighty two type of thing, and SOS was. 00:35:42 Speaker 1: More of a drum machine time. 00:35:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a distorted Oh you know, No, it wasn't a lin drum. What the heck was that thing? That's a great question question. I can't remember what the heck it was. It was something so distorted and wrong. 00:36:00 Speaker 1: No, it's right, right, right, I take it through that record, but you're trying to figure out how you trying to figure out what drummer scene you used for that? 00:36:11 Speaker 2: Yeah? What was that thing? It was whatever was laying around that day at the studio. It wasn't anything that we brought. It was whatever was laying around. 00:36:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, I brought it. Now can I jump in nineteen eighty six? Thank you? 00:36:36 Speaker 2: It's a big Jim. 00:36:38 Speaker 1: So, how's the idea even come up that Janet Jackson wants to work with you guys? 00:36:45 Speaker 2: Okay, so the story there is there was Okay, so John McLean, who was an R guy at at m Records. He had called us to work on Howard Johnson and yep so, which so fine is one of the best records of all time to me. I mean, this wasn't quite an amazing record, but anyway, so this was like the follow up album and they he called us and said, you want to do some stuff on our Johns and we said, yeah, yeah, that'd be cool. So anyway, we did a couple of things on him. It didn't jump off big or anything, but it was great working with him. Very talented dude. And I remember we were really into Steve Arrington at that point, and so we did this record, called me yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it worked. So anyway, so then the next thing he asked us did we want to do? He said, hey, the girl an Atlantic Star is going to make a solo album. Do you want to work with Aaron Bryan Do you want to work with her? And I said, oh, yeah, we love Sharon Bryant. Yeah that was cool. So we you know, we were like, okay, we're excited, We're ready to go. So then we get a phone call and he goes and we started working on tracks for her and stuff. So he got a phone call and he just said, hey, you know, I don't know how to say this, but you know, she doesn't really want to work with y' all. She's got yeah, she's got another producer she wants to work with her whatever. I guess her boyfriend or whoever was at the time, right, So we were like so we were like, okay, cool, you know, that's that's cool whatever, And he said, man, he's not embarrassed, man, he said. So, he said, what is it? Is there something else on it? You know that that you would like to work on for us, you know whatever? And we said, well, send a roster. So they sent a roster and me and Terry looked at the roster and we're going down the names, and then Janet Jackson. We both stopped on Jana Jackson, looked at each other and said Janet Jackson. So we called John and we said, John, we want to do Janet And he says, oh, okay, yeah, that's cool. How many songs you want to do? Three? Four songs? I said, no, we want to do the whole album? You do? Yeah? 00:38:42 Speaker 1: Was that an even option back then? Because as far as I know, we're illmatic esque productions A thing on R and B records back then there are different producers, I mean, the first two Jet albums. Okay, you're right, you're right, you're right. 00:38:59 Speaker 3: Speaking of uh, did you guys, did you guys choose Janet because of Jesse working with her on the previous Jesse. 00:39:06 Speaker 2: Jesse had yes, because what happened was we actually went we're in a session with her on the first album that Renee and Angela did half of it, and I think Leon Silvers at the other half, and we were actually in the session with her and actually, don't give up this good thing. Yeah, don't give up this good thing. And the one I loved was come, Come give your love to me. Yeah, that was the one I loved. And so we knew she was cool. She was big fans of the time. She sat front row when we played Long Beach when we couldn't play the form and played Long but she sat front row with her mom, and she came back after and met us and stuff. She was so sweet and all that. So anyway, so we knew already, we felt like we already kind of had a little bit of a relationship with her. But when Jesse did Fast Girls and that, we just thought, wow, Okay, that's more, she's got like a little attitude to her because we knew young she had an attitude because when she was doing the whole May West thing and doing the variety show stuff, she always had such a personality and sassly right, So we were like, that's what needs to be happening with her. To me, is that kind of thing. So that's me and Terry were both thinking that same thing. So that was kind of the idea. So we said, Okay, cool, that's that's what we're gonna do. That's what we'll do. And uh so we had a meeting and I remember at the meeting it was her dad and her and John and I remember they played Heat of Heat by Patty Austin, which was the current record we had just done. 00:40:37 Speaker 5: And she because she has such the craziest as you I wouldn't know. 00:40:51 Speaker 2: That level, you know what though she it was funny. We didn't know her well enough to know her sense of humor. She did. She did those three songs in like a day. Oh my god, we were sitting there. She's because we booked three days. We figured we'll do a song a day, and she tore through whatever. The first song we did she tore through it that leads in the background so fast, and me and Terry are sitting there looking at each other, going, is there something else to do? Patty? You want to do the next song? Yeah, let's do it. Okay cool? And then we did it, and then we were like, uh, okay, well we'll do the next one tomorrow. I guess it's because we read unbelievable. I never heard somebody sing that fast, But so we didn't really get to know her, like, she had a great personality, she was very nice. We were just too young, nervous doing something for Quincy Jones. Oh my god, we're trying to do string arrangements and we're trying to like, oh, we got to impress Quincy because he's trusting us with this at this point. Oh my god, yes, oh that's Quincy Jones. 00:41:53 Speaker 1: Man, Come on man, But y'all, mus I mean, at what point we all like, yeah, like, what point were you like all right kiss my ass princes? Uh? Control? No? 00:42:08 Speaker 2: Never, really, I don't I don't think we. I don't think we've ever felt that way. 00:42:13 Speaker 1: Because to me, were you in the audience the night that he was telling you guys about I want to hear this on your records. Yes, I mean I never took it as a real insult. I just like, Okay, he's giving you guys props, Like what did you. 00:42:28 Speaker 2: I took it as an insult because, yeah, because he he came by. He came by. I remember he drove by my house right after the Control album came out, and uh, he like threw the CD out the window or did something you yeah. 00:42:45 Speaker 4: You yeah, legendary. 00:42:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was. It was weird. And I remember thinking that because right well, I realized my mom told me. My mom was the one that would always say, you know, when people do that, it means that they're really they're jealous of you for something. And I'm going because I'm always thinking to myself, how the hell is Prince jealous of me? I said that dude is the most talented dude ever in the history of people period. How is he jealous of me? I can't even I nowhere near him. 00:43:18 Speaker 1: Cause you're you're inside the bubble and couldn't be outside to see it. But yeah, well that literally took over black music. 00:43:25 Speaker 2: No get I get the result of what it was, but I never I never felt like I just felt like we did our job like we like we set out to do, like what the Control album, our whole thing was and I think I've been quoting on this a few times. In our neighborhood that we lived in at the time there was in l because we were we had still had a place in la and we would drive up the street and you'd hear music blasting out of everybody's homes, right, and we just wanted to be that record that everybody was blasting out their home, and so it had to be funky, it had to be aggressive, it had to be loud. There was already, I mean, females weren't really making those kinds of records. Those records were all rap records or whatever, and we wanted to make that kind of record because we felt she had the attitude to pull it off. And so that was the whole thing. And that so the one of the best days of my life was actually when the album came out, and I remember driving up that same street and hearing that record blasting out of everybody's house. And at that point, forget whether where we're at the charts or where we're at it sales, I felt like we did what we accomplished. I mean, we accomplished what we set out to do, and I hadn't really felt that way honestly as a producer. I never felt like we The first record we did that actually turned out in real life the way we heard it in our heads was The Finest by the soos Man. Oh wow, that record. We heard it in our heads because we said we got to switch up from the eight h eight thing. We did browed Love on that album, right, because they said, because the record company is like, well, you got to have another one that sounds like. We said, okay, fine, we do, we'll do that, but we got yeah, but asked for like a yes, yes they did. They did, Yes they did. They said yeah, no they did. It was and and so we were like, okay, yeah, we'll do that, but that's not what we really hear for them. And when we did The Finest, it was like in our heads we were like, this is the cut for them, like good boom boom boom. 00:45:44 Speaker 4: It was about the space of that song. My favorite part of that song is just the fact that it stops right. That stops right, Well, that's the finest. 00:45:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's something about because that song is sophisticated, And I always thought the saw the span was really sophisticated, because even from taking your time to do it right, you do not hearing songs that have Glockenspiel in it, you know what I'm saying. So that was the thing. But that record actually came out the way we thought it would. We wanted it to come out. What is it about? 00:46:12 Speaker 1: I think this is one of the first questions I asked you on Twitter when I realized that that was actually you. 00:46:20 Speaker 2: Hey, I finally got verified by the way, Yeah, I saw you. We did that. 00:46:25 Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, okay, daun damn fun who. 00:46:31 Speaker 2: Uh? 00:46:33 Speaker 1: What is it about E flat? I know you said, like, you know, whatever the song calls for in my head, that's what I make it. But I mean a lot of your is there by design. Do you feel that that that E flat minor is like the black the black black key, like that experience? 00:46:59 Speaker 2: No? 00:46:59 Speaker 1: I mean some of you, your your best funk songs. For what have you done for me lately? To the finest two? You know a lot of your grittier, funkier songs are done in that key, which I mean that it allows you to just hit all the black keys and not. It's never a wrong key, that's right. But what what D minor was for James Brown? Almost feel like E flat Well that I used to identify as Stevie Wonder's key, but now that's the jam and Lewis key to me, Like, is it something about or is it just the singing as you pick their range is strictly in that that particular or am I overthinking it? 00:47:50 Speaker 2: Let's go with that. No, you're not over you're not overthinking it. But the simple, the simple answer is because it's a funky ass key. It's it's it's funky because E traditionally was always the lowest note on a bass, on a traditional bass, if you go one half step lower, it's even funkier because it's all about just the lowness of it. And it was something that a as a keyboard player, say, bass player couldn't do that they could tune down, I guess if they wanted to. But no, the bass player couldn't go to E flat, but a keyboard player could so because most of our stuff was that's right. 00:48:30 Speaker 1: All your E flat joints are a keyboard. 00:48:32 Speaker 2: They're all key. 00:48:32 Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, that makes sense. I don't know I I have a personal disdain for for week E minor songs like you know, because basically it's like, Okay, thank you for letting me be myself. I'm taking Rhythm Nation for this. I'm not trying to insult. I'm just saying that that's such a mountain climb. I feel like everybody that does anything in an E minors like that, they're they're they're the mountain Fiji. The mount Fiji to them is thank you for letting me be myself. Okay, I'm in here from get the Funk out in my Face to all those songs yes in that key, yes, which I mean there's some cool ones like maybe Glide by Pleasure or that sort of thing, but I don't know. I'm not a fan of funk bands that that do songs in that key, right, And I know it's supposed to be in that. 00:49:38 Speaker 2: Key because it's easy to play, it's the lowest, but it's also the lowest, it's the lowest, so it's just it's kind of turns out to be the funkiest key. But so the idea of going a half step lower was always just something about it fakes an E flat and I think fakes right, Yeah, and uh, I think Encore is in E flat too. Ye, sure, they are, Like a lot of your dance classics are in that key, which I just think it's a funky key. 00:50:04 Speaker 1: It is. 00:50:05 Speaker 3: Before we get back to Janet and this is going to circle back around, can we talk about the Secret? 00:50:10 Speaker 2: Sure? 00:50:11 Speaker 3: What was the secret? And where did all those songs end up that we're going to be on that project? 00:50:15 Speaker 2: Hah okay. So so when we were booted from the time, the thing that people always ask were I was when are you guys going to put another band together? And our answer always was never, because we've already played with the best band we could ever play with, So we're never going to put a band together. However, we will do a project and it'll be me and Terry and we'll probably add Our fantasy at that time was to add a guitar player girl, and we were going to be called the Secret and we did. We started recording tracks for what we thought was going to be a secret album, probably around eighty four five something like that. Some of those tracks have seen the light of day. What have you done for Me lately? Was a secret track? WHOA, there's another song on that same album called You Could Be Mine. Yeah, that was a secret track and h and as a matter of fact, I'll tell you, I'll tell you that what have you done for me lately? In our story? So, we had done the album. The album was totally done. We sent it in. John McLain listened to it and as all in our people always say, I just need one more. And I'm like, going, John, you got control, you got nasty, you got When I think of you, I mean, you got your singles? Man, what do you need? I just need there's something more. I need one more. So anyway, you. 00:51:47 Speaker 1: Planned on a four to four eight song? 00:51:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we were done. We thought we were good. 00:51:53 Speaker 1: In your mind? What was the fourth song on Satday? 00:51:58 Speaker 2: That I don't know because we didn't know because we hadn't at that point, we hadn't sequenced it. It was not sequenced. It was just that we just felt we were done. We got enough songs, were good. 00:52:09 Speaker 1: Okay, So did you record any extra or were those nine songs it? 00:52:15 Speaker 2: We did record? Actually extra? We recorded a song. Actually there was a guy named Hammy Uh that played with Yeah, it was with Real to Reel. He played with Real to Reel and He actually did a song called the Hungry for Your Love that we recorded with Janet's really good. It's it's very come give your love to me. It's kind of in that vain because we said, can we get a song that has that kind of you know, that kind of new wave pop type of thing. 00:52:46 Speaker 1: Yeah, did he get replaced by he doesn't even know I'm alive? 00:52:52 Speaker 2: No, he doesn't even know I'm a live? 00:52:54 Speaker 1: Wait? Can I ask if we mentioned yeah? Can I guess? Was that the first song you guys worked? Yes, fucking I'm a genius. I gus, okay, thing you have a radio? Shut up, Steve, Okay, that's all I wanted to know. Steveson ship for three hours? How do you tell that was the first one? Like it just so so different. 00:53:24 Speaker 4: It just felt like but the thing I still feeling each other out, Like. 00:53:29 Speaker 1: He doesn't even know I'm alive is probably the only thing that's really close to like Bookie, Oh okay, Like that felt like it could be released in eighty three, like it could have been on one of the first two hours. I almost didn't believe you guys did it? And all right to slight confession. When I was working at music land at sam Goodies in high school, this cat named Spencer. Yeah, have me believe that he was the Spencer Bernard that that song? 00:54:00 Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's great. 00:54:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, but you just havn't worked with me. Yeah, I was gollable in high school. Okay, but yeah, it it fit for a reason. It's a like he doesn't even know I'm alive. Was I felt that was the blackest record as far as the two step barbecue boogie, like it felt like on the beat by the bb Q ban or that sort of thing. Whereas even though the other songs were relentlessly funky, Yeah, it was class and polished, and I felt that you guys are really planting your flag in Minneapolis and saying now we're the standard. 00:54:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a great bridge between you know, the songs and then the two songs and end the record too. 00:54:48 Speaker 2: Yeah well okay, so yeah, so you're absolutely right. It was the first song we did. And what and how it happened was when we knew we were going to record Janet Spencer Bernard and Lisa Keith were married. Ah, and uh so Spencer did production and writing and stuff for us. He had his own band called King's English that never ever saw the light of day, but was great, very title, very duran duranish, uh type type of stuff they were doing. Black dudes, White dudes is white white. Spencer's white making love. 00:55:29 Speaker 1: That's wow. Yeah, wait you completely her super Nerds? Yes you you finally I didn't know that. 00:55:41 Speaker 2: Yeah you should. Actually, her solo album is very good. It's very good. She's an amazing singer in the first time. I know. 00:55:50 Speaker 6: I'm just happy I know who she is. And she sounds so black when she sings. 00:55:53 Speaker 1: That's hell yeah, because Janet is singing backgrounds on that, right. 00:55:57 Speaker 2: Lisa, they're singing, Yeah, that's Lisa's lead. Yeah, they're singing together on the background. 00:56:01 Speaker 1: Damn. 00:56:02 Speaker 2: Thought Lisa was like, so Lisa was like our backgrounds our background, secret weapon. Like she was on a ton of records if you remember the record, yes, yeah and she yeah she's white. 00:56:18 Speaker 6: Yeah, like Bobby call well. 00:56:22 Speaker 2: Yeah people records. Why should I cry known to him? That's her on that and uh, trying to think there's another one that she's pretty really prominent on too. Uh She's I'm blanking now, but no, she she was like the secret weapon. 00:56:38 Speaker 1: She used to that Heroin was that heroine Pillow as well on her album. Was on that one. 00:56:43 Speaker 7: Yes, yeah Pillow, yep record, yep, Jesus Christ. Okay, so thank you very much. We only made eighty six. 00:56:54 Speaker 2: Yeah, so he doesn't know him alive. Just to just wrap it up. Yes, So we said to them we're going to be doing Janna Jackson and if you guys got a song, do it. So they wrote it, she demoed it, and for us it was it became the song that when Janet came to town and we you know, the story is that we didn't do anything in the studio for like four or five days. It's absolutely true. She came, hung out, got to know her, talked, so that's important. 00:57:26 Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, research, research. 00:57:30 Speaker 6: Wasnner tonight. 00:57:32 Speaker 2: That was no, that was that was that was the key to that, and and and and so so truly she came. I mean, we went to movies, we went we hung out at the lakes because the lakes and Minnesota are amazing and in the summertime and this was like June, and uh, we just kind of hung out. And then after about three or four days, she said, what are we going to start working? And we said, uh, well, we've already been working and we showed her the lyrics to Control Wow, and she said, oh wait, this is what we've been talking about, because she told us a whole story about leaving home and she's going to get her own place and this whole thing. And we just worked making mental notes and then Terry would go home and like jot notes down and stuff, and we started like, okay, let's figure this out. And so when once we said that to her and she says, well, wait, so the album's going to be like whatever we're thinking about, and like whatever, I think that's what the album's going to be. And it's like yeah. It was like a light bulb win in her head. She was like, okay, well I want to talk about this and. 00:58:34 Speaker 1: I want to do this. 00:58:34 Speaker 2: I want to do I mean, it's like it was like, because think about her albums before. If we're all, Leon did a bunch of songs going and sing them, you know, Jesse did some songs going and singing. Jorgio Moroder did some, or people a lot of or whoever was going and sing them. I mean, that was it. We were actually asking her input and she and it was at a point where she really had something to say, and she didn't think of herself as a songwriter, and technically she probably wasn't technically a songwriter. But the idea is and what we talked about were what became the records? 00:59:03 Speaker 1: I mean the credit on the record. 00:59:05 Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, because the records wouldn't exist without her. We wouldn't write, we wouldn't write control without her. 00:59:10 Speaker 1: So what point are you guys actually in a room together as you three and writing songs on that album? 00:59:17 Speaker 2: Not at all? 00:59:18 Speaker 1: Okay? 00:59:19 Speaker 2: No, No, that album was sitting in a room like this, telling stories and like you would say something and we go, that's cool, and we write it down and then our wordsmiths sometimes who tell Terry is Terry's I call him lyric masters. See the rhyming dictionary up there. 00:59:42 Speaker 1: Oh my god, you're right. 00:59:44 Speaker 6: Okay, So did Nasty come from like a funny story, because I'm trying to figure out these are okay. 00:59:48 Speaker 2: Yes, okay, nasty. Nasty came from one of the first days we were hanging around. So there there. 00:59:53 Speaker 1: Was a club James Debart's story. 00:59:55 Speaker 2: There there was a there was a club downtown Minneapolis. I can't remember what it was called, and we were all hanging out and we were actually we weren't even in the club. We were just kind of it was kind of in a building that was like an office building, so that you could just hang in the lobby. You never had to really go in the club. You could just hang out, right, So we were all just kind of hanging out, and these guys came up and started talking to Janet and they were kind of saying some kind of interesting things to her. Right, so we're kind of watching, We're you know, we're just kind of watching. We're just not doing anything right, and she keeps looking over at us, like with the come over and help me look, and we just kind of stand there and we're just kind of looking at her. And then people start saying to us, I think those guys are bothering her, why don't you you're gonna go over and say something. We're like, well, we ain't gonna let nothing that we got an eye on it. We're all good. So after about ten minutes or so, she comes over to us and she goes and she's funny because you got to remember it. She's like eight, I think, just a turn eighteen. At that time, it was still very sheltered, very like this little girl, and she said, did you see what those guys were doing? And we were like, well, they were talking to you, Oh my god, but the things they were saying, and oh my god, why didn't. 01:01:10 Speaker 1: You come over and help me? 01:01:11 Speaker 2: And Terry said, well, obviously you didn't need any help. You're standing right here right now, and she said, oh yeah, I guess that's right. So those kind of moments needed to happen for her to get to that. But she said, I don't like nasty boys. I don't like nasty something something, and Terry's like, okay, and that's it. I mean. So that was the way. So the hanging out part where we weren't working, we said to her, you know, we're already working. 01:01:40 Speaker 1: So we need a life experience for you to sing, to sing about it exactly, because that's what that was, what's gonna make the album. It's good and it's her, yeah, And and that was the whole thing. So he doesn't know. 01:01:52 Speaker 2: I'm alive was basically because it was already done when we went into the studio. We said, okay, we got a song for you, and we just went in and sang it. It was already demoed, it was already done, and that gave us our insight on what notes she could hit, what couldn't she hit, just all kinds of things. It's kind of right kind of mic to use on her. It was almost like the test ground for her, but also a song that we all liked. So from that point then everything else kind of jumped off from that. 01:02:22 Speaker 4: How did you Oh, I was gonna say my question for you about Janet her background vocals. You talked about how you were a big fan of American and all that stuff. To me, that was always her superpower, most so than even the dancing and all of that. Like, her background vocals was always amazing, Right, So did you guys did you arrange it? Was it just by ear or as a keyboard player? Did you like actually play it out and say, okay, this is your note Janet? 01:02:48 Speaker 2: That with Janet I would always do. I would always have her sing the notes in the chord, which isn't the normal way to stack vocals, because what happens the course, when you're playing some amount of keyboard, you have notes that are dissonant to each other where they're right next to yeah, and it always singers are they can't hear that? Most of the time it throws them off to hear that, and so but we worked up over time. We worked up a thing where she would just trust me, like I'd give her a note and it would totally sound so wrong, but. 01:03:22 Speaker 1: Without using great example, a great example, that's a great example, loves you as well. Yeah, oh Jesus Christ. Yeah yeah. 01:03:30 Speaker 2: So so that was the thing. But she would she would just do it, and I got a certain point she would quit going. She wouldn't even say that doesn't sound right. I would just go trust me, and she goes, oh, I trust you, I know, and I'd be okay. And she also had the stamina where she would stay in there for hours and hours and hours, and we'd stack every note at least four times, so if it was a you know, four times that note at least yeah wait, there's no pro tools though, well okay, so no, because we didn't start with forty we only had twenty four. So what we would do is you would make we would take the vocals, but everything would always get bounced down on the spot, so we would and it was it was always strategic, like you you could you could have we'd make a work, we'd make a work tape. Remember we're not going off of we're not using Simpty, all right, so we so you can. So you could do that. You could do the track and let's say you used I don't know, nineteen tracks or whatever. You could take those two tracks, bounce them to two, bounce them to two tracks, right, put them on to a half inch tape or whatever. Play the half inch tape back to the twenty four track, and now you have two tracks. Now that leaves you with twenty two tracks to work with technically twenty one because you couldn't go on the Simpty track and you weren't supposed to go to the track next to the Sempty twenty three. But we always he still did that rule. Yeah, we broke that rule. So anyway, so that would give us a thing. So if we did a harmony, so let's say we did sixteen tracks of a four part harmony four times sixteen tracks, we'd take that harm and he bounced it too, two tracks, so now it would just be a stereo mix. We couldn't change it, and we would always trust that it was good, that it was okay yea. And so it was great though, because you couldn't go back and do stuff, and normally the decision you made on the spot was always the best decision. It wasn't about going back and tweaking it and oh we should have done it. 01:05:21 Speaker 1: You know it has a song bit you in the ass during the mix down like a damn like h. 01:05:26 Speaker 2: No, actually not really. We had we had an engineer back in the day. We had an engine named Tavy Motet back when we were doing a song called Heartbreaker with Climax, which I'm not even sure of that song actually, yeah, I did come out. I think it did, but it was on one of those twenty four hour sessions. And he decided that he could spot RaSE something on the on the tape, on the master tape of a vocal thing, and we were like, no, it's okay, Tovy, we can just mute it on the board. No, no, I can do it. I can do it. And so normally on tape what you do is you put the tape into the position and then you'd hit record, but you wouldn't go play the tape. You just hit record and just get rid of that one little spot. He said, no, I can do it on the fly. So it's like okay, And the word was the word was fresh. 01:06:17 Speaker 1: Let me get this ready. 01:06:21 Speaker 2: So the lyric was a heartbreaker, so fresh right, and then there was like a fresh click, so he said, I get rid of it. So he goes, we do it a heartbreaker, so fresh clicks. I missed it. It's okay, man, we can just mute it. No, no, I got it a heartbreaker, so fresh click. Oh man, I missed it again. Now it's okay, Tobby, really now I got it this time a heartbreaker. So I think I got it, and we're like, yeah, you got. 01:06:58 Speaker 1: It half of down. 01:07:01 Speaker 2: And it made us change the song so that instead of instead of it's saying that, it would say it every other time. Well, so we would just go U, I'm so good, I'm such a mess, and then we'd leave it blank. So I mean so no, but but you know that was a crazy mistake and that never happened again, and we never worked with Tabby again. 01:07:25 Speaker 1: Wait a minute, wait, you just said something though, So if you really didn't believe in Sempty and weren't lining up stuff, then how did those cool summer mixes turn out so perfect? 01:07:40 Speaker 2: Because we would wild sync. 01:07:42 Speaker 4: I'm a DJ. I could hate you right now, man. So so it was Clive. 01:07:48 Speaker 2: The Cool Summer mix Yeah, the Cool Summer Mixes were fun. 01:07:50 Speaker 1: So hell yeah, they were fun. 01:07:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, so we would so we would just take I usually would take like the eight oh eight or something and I would just sink it. Like so, I would just have the eight o eight on a track or two tracks or whatever. I'd play the original tape right and then I'd uh, and then I turned the drum machine on at the same time, I'd kind of adjust the speed. When it locked up, I'd hit record. When it drilled, i'd stop, and then we'd started up again, and when it hit and then I'd go in. So it just it just was a process. We had it. We had it down a DJ. Yeah, I was I can't do any of that stuff anymore, but but no, I can match. 01:08:33 Speaker 1: I can match. 01:08:33 Speaker 2: I can match that kind of stuff. And then we go back and then and then you know, just re record the keyboards and stuff on that. I'll tell you an interesting uh, I'm sorry, every story veers off. The Cool Summer Mixes is the reason we ended up working with George Michael. So when we did Monkey Monkey, if you remember, he had Monkey on the album record right right, and he called us, and he said, hey, I want you guys to do a remix a monkey and we said okay, cool, and we said, well what do you want? What are you looking for exactly? He said? He said, Okay, you know those cool summer mixes you do, He says, you know how you put chords on it, but it still stays funky. He said, that's what I was trying to do on that record, and every time I tried to put chords on it, it wouldn't be funky. And we were like, okay, yeah, cool summer xs. Okay, yeah, yeah, we got it. We can do that, right. So then when he heard what we were doing, he said, oh no, I got to re sing it now. And so that's how it turned from a remix to a production, and that's how it ended up going. If you have the version of the album that was made after I don't know a million copies or however, they yeah, it had our version on it, because that was what he always envisioned the song as being. 01:09:44 Speaker 1: And have you heard the Nasty Cool Summer mix they released it on the on the talking about the Herbal remix, and I was talking about the diamond diamonds. Yeah, the twelve. Okay, I'll totally like, yeah, yeah, anyway, yeah, damn this cool summer mix. Are there mixes that didn't see. 01:10:13 Speaker 2: The light of day that you guys did, No, I don't. I don't think so, so I think I mean we pretty much did them. We always do. I mean, I love doing it. It was always a lot of fun, and I always liked the idea of it was really two chains of thought, because sometimes remixes back in the day, your remix was just you know, the drums would be fatter or would it would literally be a remix where you wouldn't really be changing a lot, but just more the sounds echo here you do that. 01:10:43 Speaker 1: But I felt that was the best lesson you guys learned from Prince, because the first time I heard someone totally like that little Corvette remix that totally, I was like, Oh, you put something in the relative minor and make it a whole new song, and that's sort of thing. And that's what you guys were doing to like those songs, like totally making them new again, right, which I thought, Okay, now, maybe she'll do this in concert that way and that sort of thing. 01:11:09 Speaker 2: Sometimes she did, Actually sometimes she did, which was kind of cool, but no, I I enjoyed doing that. It was just a cool creative way of doing it. I remember we did, like one of my favorite ones was Crucial Edition. 01:11:24 Speaker 4: Yes, Yes, Yes remix, Yes, EDI re released, they just put out yep. 01:11:32 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:11:32 Speaker 2: See, I like that kind of stuff. Was always really cool. 01:11:35 Speaker 1: That one where Ll wrote Mike Bivens rhyme and he gave him a shout out for the Okay, I have. 01:11:39 Speaker 3: Two things we need to talk about really quick. One, uh, my favorite remix you guys ever did was twelve inches Schrelle's Fragile Handle with Care with the extended percussion out, which is a gift from God, Thank you very much. 01:11:53 Speaker 2: Second New Edition Heartbreak album. 01:11:55 Speaker 3: The interlude, what is what is Ralph saying your jam hit the button? 01:12:01 Speaker 1: Now? 01:12:02 Speaker 2: Okay, So what. 01:12:04 Speaker 1: He's saying is. 01:12:08 Speaker 2: He's saying the ALPS button, the Alps button, right, But what it actually is is the OX But that because they never called it the OX button. They just knew in the APPS button, so they knew in the middle of the board there was the button that you pressed when you wanted to hear it loud over the speakers whatever we were mixing, and there was this button and it said OX on it, and that was what it was. You pressed that button and then everything came back loud and on the big speakers. So that was the whole thing. So every record when we got done, they would say and it just turned into this kind of running thing. And we just said, oh, let's put that on on that on the record because it's just kind of funny. 01:12:57 Speaker 1: But you tops, but wait now, okay, okay, okay, I see now, I gotta hear. 01:13:06 Speaker 6: Jill Mike, don't even sweat it. Jim hit the button, No hit the album. 01:13:16 Speaker 2: So that's funny. But no, we we we love doing once again. That was an album. The great thing about that album we talked about Hearsaying. We didn't talk about it, but we talked about it offline. Those records. We controlled those records, the sequencing of the records, all of the songs, even if we didn't do them. We were like the executive producers. And so the ability to put to humanize those records by putting little things like that into it, or the interludes on Hearsay where they're at a party, and the whole thing. You know what I hate, Yes, I hate to be the bear bad news exactly. So I mean that to me was why those albums they were actual albums to me, and that I was always like a running concept exactly, and that was that was always the goal, and the sequencing was always really really important. And at a certain point when everything became very piecemeal and you did your one song and you really had no say so. I I never liked the idea of that, but I mean it is what it is. You just do what you're You're asked to do two songs, so you do your two songs. 01:14:20 Speaker 1: But I like the idea of I always wanted to know why with the Human Leagues record, was it that concept not allowed to fly? Like? Was that more of a tug of war situation or just. 01:14:32 Speaker 2: Human League was interesting because there was a lot of uh, well okay, So first of all, Human League was aw, you guys get the swing. They were they were up for anything. I mean that that. They were very cool, I must say, uh and phil Oki, particularly the lead singer, was amazing. Dude, amazing dude. You guys were there to do it or no, they flew to us. So it was weird. So you got these guys coming from England, not even London, England, but Sheffield, England, which is you know, small town coming to Minneapolis and the dead of Winner to work with you know, two blokes, two black blokes, I guess. 01:15:17 Speaker 1: You know. 01:15:17 Speaker 2: It was a bit of a culture shock, I guess, I would say. And the underlying kind of elephant in the room that whole record was that Phil, the lead singer, was going out with one of the girls in the group and so I think it was Joe Anne, I think the darkhaired girl. Okay, So it set up this interesting thing because they had already written a bunch of the songs themselves and they just wanted us to produce them and that was great, but then they wanted us to add our own songs to them, so it was like, okay, cool. And that was the first album that Steve Hodge actually engineered for us, because we engineered the Control album basically ourselves, and Steve kind of fixed it because we recorded it totally wrong when we did it, but he fixed it. But he said, I'm gonna come up and show you guys how to record. So that Human League is actually sonically is probably one of our best stubs because it's really done well. But the idea of creating was interesting because you know, we had the songs. They were down with the songs, but in particular Human. Terry did the vocal on that song, produced a vocal on it, and it was like a week at least a week of every day because think about you almost have to unteach Phil how to sing, because Phil was always very robotic and always very stiff. 01:16:39 Speaker 1: And I'm saying you made them sound human, yeah, human. 01:16:45 Speaker 2: But that took It took a lot of so Terry, that was a Terry Lewis masterpiece to me. And I remember hearing the finished vocal and just going, man, that's amazing. And I remember watching his face as he listened to because after he did vocal, than Terry comped the vocal and everything, and I remember watching his face and he just was like amazed how we sounded right. And so we went and and when we did the backgrounds, actually the backgrounds on the song is Lisa Keith and Terry. They're the ones that are doing the ooh human. It's a combination of those guys. Because Terry used to also be mister background. We used to call him mister background. So anyway, I remember we played it and film was like, Wow, that's really good. We were all like, wow, that's great. That sounds great. And I remember the girls being like, who's that other girl singing on the track and we said, oh, it's h Yeah. We said, oh that's Lisa Keith. 01:17:43 Speaker 1: Hmm. 01:17:43 Speaker 2: Not sure. We like that. 01:17:45 Speaker 1: Not sure, we. 01:17:46 Speaker 2: Fancy that such and such and such and such what you know, we we didn't get a chance to sing, and you know, whatever whatever whatever, and we were like, okay, well, you know, we'll figure it out tomorrow or whatever whatever whatever. So they left and Terry was like, they can't sing this so and we're like, yeah, we know. I mean it's not that they couldn't sing, but for this particular song that texting them we're trying to do, it didn't fit. So that's when Terry came up with the idea, is I'm going to give him a spoken part. That was the Olive Branch. So we're gonna do this. We're gonna do the spoken part. But before the Olive branch happened, Oh, the next day, Phil. The next day, Phil came back to the studio and everybody was with him, but only he came in the room and he kind of walks in the room and he has this look on his face and we said, what's up, Phil, how's it going. He says good, good, and uh, we said what's going on? And he goes, I just have to say that we're against the other girl being on the track. And Terry and I said huh, and he says, I just have to say we're against that other girl being on the track. So me and Terry look at each other and he says it again. And then we said, oh, oh, okay, you just have to say you're against the girl being on the track. And he says, yes, I have to say. I mean, we said we got you, we got you. Don't worry about it. We got it because we know what went home. He went home with the girl, you know, to the hotel and she was in his year all night or whatever the heck it was. 01:19:47 Speaker 1: They didn't get they didn't get smoking mirrors. Back then I would have known. I would have not known any different than you know. 01:19:56 Speaker 2: So it was. It was very funny. So he did his thing. It's like, okay, fill your off the hook. You told us what you needed to tell us, what she said, you tell that's great. We came in, Uh we did you know, Terry showed the girl joeanned I think did the part, and she said, here you go, this is the part you're doing right, We're done with the song. Song's totally done. I don't know at that point whether they beefed to the record company or whoever it was, and we just said okay, and we've I don't think to this. I don't remember us ever ever doing this on any other project, certainly not to that point. But we just said, here's our thing. The songs that they brought that they did, they can mix them however the heck they want to do it. They got it. The songs that we did were mixing exactly the way we want them. And as far as human goes, if we don't get to do it the way we want to do it, we're just taking it off the record. And they were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you really did hit the But but that might have been the only time that that happened. And it was interesting because I've read some articles where Phil has talked about making the record now and he says we were puppets and whatever. He has a whole different kind of recollection of it than we do. And you know, Hey, that's the way, you know. But it's like you hired us to make your record. You had made your record basically as demos, and you wanted us to do it our way. So basically it was like taking what they did and then I would play the parts or I would have them play the parts or whatever it was. But it was just you hired us. We did what you hired us to do. There was no puppet anything to me, and that was the only. 01:21:41 Speaker 1: So I can assume that they didn't write I Need You Love It? Oh no, no, no, But did they write the last song, the song that closes the record nothing else even matters. 01:21:49 Speaker 2: Or loves all the matter? Yea, we wrote did okay? Yeah? 01:21:53 Speaker 1: So yeah. But I was going to say, like, if you're given the Human League and you know their history, it's it's very telling that you really brought them to your side of the fence, brought them down to our world, as opposed to because I would have figured that you guys would have been like all right, announced, all right. So Prince's concept with the family was you wanna get some of that durand de Ram money, right, You didn't think at one point like yo, now's really time for us to show cash all the all the all the Middle America, like all the Middle America AM radio shit that we've learned, we can now use them as the calling card. 01:22:35 Speaker 2: But no, because we didn't feel that they that was what they necessarily were. I mean, they had obviously big records, but there was a reason that they had come to us anyway. To me, even with the big records that they had, because I remember Fascination was one of my I mean, Don't You Want Me was great, but Fascination was my record. 01:22:52 Speaker 1: I love that. 01:22:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, So to me, the fact that they were coming to us was You're coming to us for a reason, and it's not to make a pop radio it's to make I'm. 01:23:01 Speaker 1: Just saying, like a song like I Need You Loving. 01:23:05 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:23:06 Speaker 1: You don't think Alex would have tore the ship out of it? 01:23:09 Speaker 2: Of course he would have. Yeah, okay, yeah, I agree, I agree with that. But it was fun. They listen, they we played them stuff, and they picked the stuff they liked. They liked that song, they loved they loved that record, and we like the idea of doing a record like that on them because it's not the kind of record you would expect you know, to hear from them. 01:23:26 Speaker 4: Yeah, I did not expect that. 01:23:30 Speaker 1: Totally did not expect that. 01:23:31 Speaker 4: Me and Zoe we covered humans some years back on the on our eighties record because. 01:23:36 Speaker 1: That's right so with It's it's weird though, because it's like I felt like Control was your most important record, but I actually feel like Heartbreak was your make or break record, because what that allowed you to do was really crossed the bridge into what young people you know are into, which you know, not even I don't even consider it as like, oh can jamn't lowis handle new jack swing, but more or less like the standard of it, you know what I mean? Like it, I felt like that was a real make or break record for you that allowed you to then grab folks that are even younger, Like did you see that did you even see that as a challenge or was it just like, Okay, well we're just getting new addition, And. 01:24:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we just thought we'd just were just do a new addition. Like it's like in the moment, I don't think it's easy to look back historically and go and you know that that was some sort of turning point. I mean, it was the first time that we really it was probably the first time we really adopted a lot of hip hop into what we were doing, or at least a lot of that kind of sound and a lot of you know. 01:25:16 Speaker 1: Was it a discussion between you two, like, Okay, now our straight up funk might be dated by eighty eight, eighty nine. We gotta figure out what's going on in you Jack swing and that sort of thing, Like what was your impression like when you first heard the Guy record and the Key Sweat record and love at. 01:25:35 Speaker 2: First to listen, absolute love. Matter of fact, I remember having a conversation when the Key Sweat record came out. I remember having a conversation with Babyface about that. We were at a club somewhere, and I remember we were talking about I said, man, you heard this dude, Key Sweat Man, and he was like, oh yeah, yeah, I love that record. 01:25:57 Speaker 1: I love that record. 01:25:58 Speaker 2: That record sounds like y'all's record because it's because it was if you if you think about it. To me, the New Jack Swing record, now, I don't know the first New Jack Swing record, but the first for me, one of the first New Jack Swing records was actually nasty and the kind of fluty string sound on that to me, is what I won her was but they were using Teddy was using more kids. Yeah, but that was that same thing. And I remember we were talking about that and and I remember Facer might have been La said, well, you know, Keith's cool, but you know who the real dude on that record is. This is this kid, Teddy Riley. He's like the dude. And we're like, oh, really, who's it? He produced the record and we were like, oh shit, okay, So we went then out of Teddy Riley quest at that point and trying to find you know, other you know, more records that he had done because it was just still brand new. But that wasn't That was an amazing record, an amazing album two. I mean so yeah, No, we love that. We've always embraced pretty much what's out there. We've never really had the attitude of I mean, we certainly have things we personally like and don't like, but we've never had the attitude of. 01:27:14 Speaker 1: You didn't scoff at some of the patches, like some of those like Stanley Brown cheesy saxophone, like I think of the saxophone like the greatest love of all. Yeah, like like you weren't scoffing at some of the patches, like all right, it was a little amateurish, you know. 01:27:35 Speaker 2: No, well I don't think so. 01:27:37 Speaker 1: I think patches were always classy. 01:27:40 Speaker 2: Like you guys always use just presets though, right, Like, yeah, I was. I was a big preset guy. I said in an article a long time ago and Keyboard magazine that somebody would give me a keyboard because because companies would start was at that point where people would just give us keyboards, right, and they go, man, this one's this one's great, man. And the great thing about it, this, man, you can really tweak the sounds. And I said, I don't want to tweak sounds. Somebody's getting paid a bunch of money to put really great sounds in this. I shouldn't have to tweak it. I should go through the presets. And when I go through the presets and I don't come up with a song idea, that keyboard is going back. You know, so if I get so, if I get a keyboard, like so, we're you know. Uh. Probably one of my favorite all time was in Sonic. And you know, in Sonic's funny because in Sonic got no respect as a keyboard company. Anne, but control the horn hits the horn hits Son. When I think of you, mirage the sound on Nasty, the goong goom going all that, mirage the little flutie sound on Nasty, mirage the Janet Jackson's signature. 01:28:54 Speaker 1: Really because I was really. 01:28:58 Speaker 2: So, I said in an article I just mentioned, I said, oh, yeah, that's a mirage, like. 01:29:04 Speaker 1: I could have those noses. 01:29:05 Speaker 2: Yeah, they're actually floppy. This because they're samples. They're floppy. 01:29:09 Speaker 1: D'Angel probably got this. 01:29:13 Speaker 2: Just wait for that. 01:29:13 Speaker 1: They're not bag yeah, can't right. 01:29:15 Speaker 2: So I mean that was the thing. So that keyboard inspired there would be wouldn't be nasty without that sound. Okay, so these the keyboard inspired that sound. So I was a sonic keyboard fan just from that. I remember they sent us a whole bunch of other keyboards, but the one they sent us was this keyboard called it I think it was called a MR seventy six And not to skip around, but velvet rope. Ninety percent of that is MR seventy six keyboard. The drum loops, all the road sounds, all the the use, all the stock stuff. I use all the stock stuff, yes, because to me crazy, yeah, but the thing is to me is obviously and did not and I can't diminished it. I mean I can't not diminish it. I can't put enough importance on Steve Hodge mixed it. So Steve Hodge made it sound the best that could sound. But a lot of stuff we talked about, Uh, let's see body that loves You we mentioned earlier. I'm trying to think of another song anytime, any place. For instance. Part of it is the way that you play the patches. You know, a sax patch can sound totally cheesy if somebody plays it, if they don't play it like a sax player, like I'll tell you that one. I'll give you one. That's the way love goes. So the the guitar part that goes bank bank bink right, No, it's a S three. 01:30:47 Speaker 1: I don't even have a noise for that. 01:30:50 Speaker 2: I'm sorry. 01:30:50 Speaker 1: This is all I got. 01:30:54 Speaker 2: My really Yeah. So, but but the way you play it, if you played like it, yeah, but if you play it like a if you played like that's a keyboard, yeah yeah. And so if you somebody, if you play it like a guitar player would play it. And see that's where Terry would come in because Terry, if I did something like that, He'd say, guitar wouldn't play it like that, or bass player wouldn't play it like that. And so he always kept me so whenever I played him a track and I did like guitar, my little fake guitar stuff on it, if he said, oh man, who did you get to play guitar? I knew I had something. So anytime any places one where there's kind of sounds like a jazz guitar, this goes bl it sounds like a like a. 01:31:39 Speaker 1: H I was thinking of Ronnie he just passed away. Yeah, oh no, no, not even Ronnie Foster from London told me from Damn you got us. 01:32:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, Ronnie Jordan's. 01:32:13 Speaker 1: I don't know Ronnie Jordan's keep saying he passed away. Yeah. I thought, like, you guys have Ronnie Jordan or somebody that. 01:32:28 Speaker 2: Know every like on that particular song. If I'm not mistaken, I think every instrument on that song is from the same keyboard and it's all it's all uh, it's all stock sounds. I'll give you one more like that. 01:32:42 Speaker 4: If no guitars on it, Wow, just think of the opening. 01:32:52 Speaker 1: The guitar. Okay, I can put the whaling guitar guitar. Okay, so you kind of you you mentioned something which tells me that there's still a level of respect between you two. But what song have you two done and which it could have gone to humanly confrontational levels? Have you two ever. 01:33:15 Speaker 2: Argued Terry and I? Yes, No? 01:33:18 Speaker 6: What? 01:33:19 Speaker 1: No? Have you ever ever this fought? 01:33:21 Speaker 2: No, not even close. We haven't even raised We've never we've never even raised our voices at anything. 01:33:29 Speaker 1: At least passive aggressive, like we're passive aggressive, like POKEM in the eye or anything. 01:33:39 Speaker 2: No, we never have. It's you know, it's a it's a unique relationship because it's over the years it's just kind of evolved into. First of all, there's we're not joined at the hip. There's a thought that we're joined at the hip and we do everything together. And I think if we did, there would probably be more of a you know, a friction or something that could just happen just because of being in proximity to somebody so much. But we live different lives. We have you know for instance, uh I you know, well, here's a good example. I do an interview, although Terry's actually under under the weather today, but I like talking music in that and Terry does too, but not to the degree I do, you know, but it's what makes. 01:34:28 Speaker 1: Me be out after an hour have this. 01:34:31 Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, he would have been. He would have been long on long. He would have actually, he would he would probably enjoy. Well, no, he wouldn't, but he wouldn't no, no, but he he, he would enjoy. He would enjoy talking to you, Like if we were at dinner and we were just hanging out and having dinner and talking, you guys, you guys would have a great conversation with him. He because he's he's such an amazing mind, and also talking about his lyrics. See, the thing it's great about lyrics with him is that part of the beauty of a great lyricist is you can say what you need to say in a few words. And I'm very long winded. And so that's the reason I think I'm not necessarily that good at lyrics. I can say what I want to say, but it just takes me too many words to say it, Okay. And perfect example is the Janet record of Living in the World they didn't make and we had been watching it looks like the way CNN looks now pretty much honestly, but just all kinds of just craziness in the world and school shootings and just all kinds of stuff, and we just felt like we got to do a song that addresses that that it's not the kid's fault. It's the world that we've built as adults for the kids. Right, what does that song need to be? So we're like, we need Terry right is because it was just me and Janet talking about it, and Terry was actually at the time at our then our new studio, putting you know, we were building it at the time. So Terry walks in the door of our old play we're still at our old place. He walks in the door with like carpet samples and all kinds of stuff. We're like, jam, what do you think about the carpet sample and then whatever whatever? No, no, Terry, we need lyrics, man, we need lyrics. He said, okay, what's the concept? And I said, okay, because man, these kids, man, parents are making the bad decisions and the adults are making the bad decisions, and the kids pay for the mistakes that we make and such and such, and I go into this big long thing and Terry at the end of it, just goes living in the world they didn't make, walks into the room ten minutes later, hands Jenet the lyrics and goes here you go wow, so damn yeah, so that's and then he goes, no, which carpet stamps? And Terry's a really good multitasker too, so he could he could do that. His brain could work like that. But that was the thing. But because we're not joined at the hip, and we each have things that we do really well. Even in picking projects very much like picking uh, you know, what radio show to do for instance, or podcast or whatever, whatever the decision is, sometimes we if we neither of us feel it, then it's just the no. 01:37:17 Speaker 1: You know. 01:37:19 Speaker 2: If one of us feels it, then it's like, you know, we'll explain to the other why we feel good about it, and we just kind of know now, you know. I remember I mentioned your show to Terry, you know, three four or five months ago and stuff, and I said, you know, we should do quest Love show, you know whatever, whatever, whatever, what's the show about us? So it's just like it's really good, it's really in depth, and you know, it's kind of cool. He said, oh yeah, okay, yeah, it sounds okay, it's interesting. You know, it's like here he goes, but I love I love quest Love. Yeah, okay, but not I love. I'll do it. I just I love quest Love. Okay. So cool, Okay, So I know that going into it, it's like, okay, So then I'm like, okay, is that something? But no, I I really want to do it and and and I think it would be interesting to do, would be a great conversation whatever. Okay, So that's why. But we do projects the same way. And I swear to God, there's there's there's people that will swear to God that Terry does all the work and I don't do a thing. And there's and there's people that will swear that Terry doesn't do a thing. 01:38:27 Speaker 1: I feel like your pen and he's Teller, Like no, no, no, I think he doesn't work. But because we don't have a gauge for his personality that I'm just trying to figure out. Okay, Pennah, Teller is an interesting and now I thought you were the lyrics guy because you talk the most of the two. 01:38:50 Speaker 2: No, I'm not. I remember one of the songs I actually did a lot of the lyrics song was just be good to me. And I remember thinking the whole time I was writing it, this is way too long. 01:39:02 Speaker 1: And six minutes. 01:39:04 Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember that. I remember that, and and I remember. It's funny because I also remember like Saturday Love, like I came up with the hook on that, and I was like so embarrassed, like when I was at my house. And matter of fact, that the piano I wrote it on is the piano that's downstairs, which is also the Tenderlove piano, by the way, but I had it in my little apartment. You know, I had my first little apartment stuff, so I had the piano in there, right. So anyway, I write Saturday Love where I have the chords and stuff, and I got the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and I'm jamming. I don't think, oh man, this is cool. So I get to the studio and I'm like, Terry, I got the song man. He said, yeah, yeah, what is it? And I said, it's like it's like the days of the week. It's already sounded stupid now coming. 01:39:55 Speaker 8: Out of my mouth, well singing man, And I said, okay, well it's like Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and he starts laughing. 01:40:05 Speaker 2: He says, oh, that's funny. It's it's like Sesame Street. I said yeah. 01:40:09 Speaker 1: I said yeah, I. 01:40:10 Speaker 2: Said, forget it, forget it, forget it anyway. He said, no, no, no, it's cool. It's cool. I get it. I get it, I get it. So anyway, we do the song. Here's what we how much we really didn't think a lot of the song. The first and second lyrics. 01:40:26 Speaker 4: Exact same, exactly second verse, save the first. 01:40:31 Speaker 1: Second verse, save the first damn. 01:40:35 Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, why did you freaking say. 01:40:44 Speaker 1: It's the same it's lazy afternoon. Yeah, Well, we just didn't. We don't know how to write books. It's like, we gotta turn this record in tomorrow, just repeat it over again. 01:40:57 Speaker 2: So yeah, so that that was the thing. So that was what we thought of it. And even when we put it on the album, we were kind of like, and we remember we released I Think You Look Good to Me. It's the first single, and you Look Good to Me was doing well and it's moving up the charts, and it was everything was doing well. And I remember it got to about I don't know thirty or whatever, and it just kind of started slowing down and we were like going, what the hell is going on, and so we called the record company. We said, well, what are we what's going on with the record And they said, hey, man, everybody's jumping to this Saturday Love. 01:41:31 Speaker 6: And I'm told you because I remember too. The challenge was if you could really get it in the right cadence, like you felt good about yourself. I remember the time when I finally got I was like, yes, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. 01:41:42 Speaker 1: Wednesdayday, weren't you three? When that came didn't matter. 01:41:46 Speaker 6: I remember singing it up. 01:41:47 Speaker 2: It was accomplishment, which I've seen Cherrelle open up for new addition once. 01:41:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, Rick, Ran and Dan were like dog they were so freaking charismatic and their own Yes, how come Rick Rand and Dan were not their own group? 01:42:09 Speaker 2: They were who is? Rick Randon was like like you remember. 01:42:13 Speaker 1: When Prince had his Jerome and the two bodyguards, like as his pips. She had her own pips and they was like funky. They were like straight up like I wanted them to be a group. 01:42:26 Speaker 2: They were a group. Wait, Rick Rannon, Dan, they were a group. They were a group. Recorded them? Uh, well, we started recording them. You produce the song for yes, But tragically Ran Randy uh, died in a motorcycle accident. He was Chelle's husband's I don't think they were married, but certainly her boyfriend. 01:42:50 Speaker 1: Yeah, Randy ran Oh, Randy who wrote That's Been to Night for Jhanna. 01:42:55 Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so he was so how do you know that? 01:42:58 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one of my favorite album. 01:43:02 Speaker 2: That's my job. I'm supposed to know. That's why I got the redhead phones. But Randy, Randy was amazing. And I remember Charille introduced us. 01:43:14 Speaker 9: To him and uh, she said, yeah, I want you to meet my boyfriend. Uh, this is Randy and he's got this group Rick Randon, Dan and whatever. 01:43:25 Speaker 1: Whatever. 01:43:25 Speaker 2: We said, Okay, cool, well we'll check him out. We'll check him out. And then so when we did You Look Good to Me, we put him in the video. We put Rick Randon on the video of You Look Good to Me. And the plan was that, yeah, we were going to make a record with him like that was the next thing we were going to do. 01:43:41 Speaker 1: They were the first cats I ever seen do the snake. 01:43:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's right. 01:43:46 Speaker 1: The first time I seen that. Semo and Soul training we all started doing that ship. 01:43:51 Speaker 2: No, they were they were crazy talented. Uh, as a group and uh, but but Randy as a writer and producer, he did a lot of songs. 01:44:00 Speaker 1: He did h. 01:44:03 Speaker 2: I'm trying to think I'm totally blanking, but he produced a lot of a lot of songs for us back in the days. Very very talented, super nice dude. But he got a motorcycle man. He just was, you know, and just a motorcycle accident. 01:44:19 Speaker 4: I want to ask you about Perspective Records and like, how did when you guys first started, was Sounds of Blackness? 01:44:26 Speaker 1: Y'all very first as. 01:44:28 Speaker 2: Yes, that was the very first, very first act, and it Sounds of Blackness was the story with them? 01:44:32 Speaker 1: Was all forty of them signed that contract no a week? Yeah, yeah, that's right. 01:44:49 Speaker 2: You know. The ironic thing about that about that statement though, which is very true, and it's one of the reasons that we never criticized Prince's decision because you know, it's kind of like it's tough to criticize the boss if you've never been a boss. And so we didn't agree with a lot of things that Prince did, but we were in the position we were in because of the things he did do or you know or whatever. Those decisions were we looked at where we were at and realized we wouldn't have been there without those decisions, even the decision to kick us out the group, which was the best decision. Yeah, he could have made for us, because we wouldn't have left the group on our own. It's like, no, we love being with the group, so you never knows, but yeah, you're absolutely right. That was that, you know, sounds of Blackness, Like, that's an expensive group to get around, and we and we and we dug in our pocket to do it because we believed in what it was. Janet was. Actually, we took Janet to a show when we were working on Rhythm Nation, and we took her to a show, and the whole show she was nudging me because the whole thing about souns of Blackness, it was all celebrated all the different kinds of black music. It wasn't just it was gospel, but it was jazz, it was blues, it was everything. And every time they'd launch into a different thing, she nudged me and go, oh, they're doing a jazz song. Oh they're doing a gospel song. Oh they're you know, And it was like, yeah, Janet, that's what they do like we knew them because we would play like on the same gigs as them, as flight Time, we would play like they were around that long. Yeah oh they yeah, they were around their Yeah that's right. Yeah, same members, same members, same same director and Nesby and as Gary Hines. 01:46:35 Speaker 4: Yeah, the nice fro Yep, they were like, guys, it's kind of like Ladiesmith Flack Mombazzo like they were. 01:46:42 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So so they they were around forever. So when we started the label and and so Janet said, she said, wow, you should sign them, and we thought, yeah, we should. That's a good idea, we should sign it. And so I remember we talked to Gary after that show and we said, you know, we want to make a record. You guys were starting a label. And our theory was real simple to me, which was we wanted to build a big tall building. But in order to build a big tall building, you got to dig a foundation. And Sounds of Blackness was our foundation. And Terry would always say, you know, sometimes you got to give people not what they want, but what they need, and they don't know they need it until they hear it, and then they go, oh man, I needed this, Yes, and that's what Sounds of Blackness was. 01:47:30 Speaker 1: Now. 01:47:31 Speaker 2: It was funny because there were you know, the business always comes into it. So we were at A and M Records, and I remember A and M was still her Alpert and Jerry Moss the original to A and M guys, right, And I remember doing the record, and I remember the A and M, the guys that were kind of running it at the time. They said we had them. I just think Sounds of Blackness was in I want to say Philadelphia. I want to say for like like a conference or something. Maybe I am or something. Oh, yeah, I am, okay. So we had them there for the conference. So we said, and it wasn't the whole group. We had a touring group. Okay, we had a touring group of twenty of twenty. So we said, let's we want to take them to New York and uh, you know, take them to some radio and do some stuff. Optimistic had just come out as a single and they were like, oh, you don't have a budget for it. There's no budget for that. And we're like, well, we're already in Philadelphia. It's like, let's just go up to New York. No, it's no budget for it. So we're like okay. So we just went in our pockets and just said, here, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go to New York. And at the time, I can't remember. I think Frankie might have still been to beat BLS at the time, I can't remember, right, And we just called the radio stations. It's like, hey, it's Jam and Lewis. Can we bring them group by? And everybody was like, yeah, yeah, bring them, bring them by. And we'd bring them to the station and they'd sing and blow everybody away, and then we'd be like we think we'd be there for fifteen minutes, we'd be on there for two. Right, So we leave the station, the phones would all be lighting up and stuff, and then we go to like what Sylvia's I think was the place back then, right, So we'd go to Sylvia's and we'd eat, you know, we'd feed everybody, but then they treat everybody to a show the chefs. We'd have the chefs and everybody come out and stuff. And right, So when we left New York and went back to well to Minneapolis, actually not to LA. When we back to Minneapolis the next week, the record got to like I didn't know on both whatever the two outlets were at the time, We're both like sixty seventy spins a week, like huge, and they're all going, you know, all the marketing and all the people that they're going, what happened with this, what's going on with the Sounds of Blackness record? And I said, well, we took them to New York, like we said, and you know they had that kind of impact. We just need to get them out. So I remember Herb called me and he said, he said, hey, Jam, it's Herb. And I said, oh, Herb, I said, great news, man. I said, we're number one most added this Sounds a Blackness record and for this and that you know, we got this many spins and we got whatever whatever. And Herb says, I didn't call it here, that bullshit. He said, I called to tell you that I am so proud to be associated with this record and you guys that you brought this gift to us at A and M Records. And I was like wow, I said, okay, thanks man. He said that's it. So I called So. I called So. I called his girl, his assistant, who is still his assistant to this day, and I said, yeah, I just got a call from herb about the record. I said, is he is he there? I just forgot I was going to say something to him, and she said, well, you know, it's the funny, funniest thing. You know. He drove into work, and I kept thinking, why isn't he coming in, Like he's just sitting in his car and he was just listening to it. And then she said, and then when he came in, I could tell he had been crying, WHOA right? And I was like wow, I said, okay, I said, okay, well thanks, don't bother him, you know, I said, it's all good. We spoke already whatever. She said, okay. But the fact that that record had that impact on him, it said so much about to me that we were doing the right thing, but also that we were with the right partners who understood what it was we were trying to do in our vision of what we wanted to do and what we wanted the record company to be. Unfortunately, PolyGram came in and bought him out, cashed him out for I don't know, three hundred million or whatever the heck it was, and what I call the new A and M, which was Al Kafaro and Milt Olen came in, and honestly, Milt was just a numbers guy, business affairs guy, and everything was about how much something costs whatever. And al bless his heart, was just a he inherited us, and he looked at our deal and saw that our deal was against his bottom line because our deal was it was a huge deal because Herb and Jerry were like we At first they say, we can't afford you. But then when they knew the PolyGram money was coming, they called and said we can afford you now, right. So it was cool, and but it never was the same, right down to the Grammys. I remember that year at the Grammys, A and m Had they were in New York that year, and I remember A and m Had, I think the police are staying or whatever, and show Crow and they had all these records that were up for awards. The only one that won a Grammy that night was Sounds of Blackness. And I remember running into Milt Olin on the in the elevator, you know, coming down the stairs somewhere, and and I said, hey, Milt. I said great night, huh And he said yeah, yeah, great for you guys. And I said, what mean great for you. He said, oh great, it's great for you. Yeah you guys won, I said, well we want I thought we're partners. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah that's true. Yeah yeah, you're right. And I thought, man, I thought, okay, so here's where we're at now. We're from her calling me crying to this and it was doomed. It was doomed mid conditions. I mean, the records that were successful were successful despite you know, the folks that were there. 01:53:30 Speaker 6: As a Christmas record, this Sounds a Blackness? 01:53:34 Speaker 2: Did this? Yeah, sol Holiday? I mean, but once again, it's I mean, it was like all the things that we wanted to do, we just did them, but we just reached who j no, because this was after that. This was this was see we're talking Janet went di virgin in ninety three Sounds of Blackness. We're ninety one. Yeah right, yeah. So but but that was part of the problem is because we got asked why when we brought Sounds of Blackness. The question we were asked not by Herb and Jerry, who Herb obviously loved what we brought, right, but the al Cafaro milk Own regime ask we gave you all this money, why didn't you bring us another Janet Jackson record, or bring us an act like Janet Jackson. And it's like, well, because we have a plan of what we're gonna do, We're gonna build that. I mean, just watch what we do. Just let us do our thing. We know what we're doing, at least we think we do. But we're gonna create some great records for you. And so we did the we did the Sounds of Blackness record. We follow that up with the Men Condition record, the very first one, the very first one. Yeah, meant to be meant so all listen to that record, said there's no hits on this record. We said, wow, okay, So we said okay, So Sheila Eldridge, who you guys probably know, So Sheila. We went to Sheila and we said, Sheila, what can we do to drum up some support for we got this single coming out pretty Brown Eyes whatever, we're breaking my heart? And she said, oh, let's do a uh, let's go to the colleges in the DC area and stuff and we'll do like a video contest and whoever comes up with the best video remember that. 01:55:22 Speaker 6: Yes, And it was a Howard Girl, the Howard Girl one yes, but not for the second single. 01:55:29 Speaker 2: So that was the concept. So Terry went out with him in like a win of Bago, like he was staying at like hotels and didn't fax machines did didn't even have fax machines at the hotel. I'm like, hey, man, can I send the facts to you? Terry Man, I ain't no facts of this roach. 01:55:43 Speaker 1: Motel had the company, yeah, you know. 01:55:46 Speaker 2: So it was like one of those kinds of things. So all of a sudden, I remember we're sitting in a marketing meeting and uh, you know, everybody sitting around the table and everybody's talking about uh, you know, you name whatever Indie White act. You could sold one hundred copies somewhere. Oh we sold one hundred copies in Des Moines. Yeah that's awesome. Yeah. And then we got sticks and Stones over here and they sold fifty copies in in uh you know, min not North Dakota. Oh that's awesome. Yeah, that's great. What do you guys got? End of the meeting, What do you guys got? And we said, okay, well we have and the guy goes, oh my god, you guys got seventy five spins at the pop station in DC. 01:56:36 Speaker 1: What is this song? Who is this grel? 01:56:40 Speaker 2: We're like, oh yeah, men, condition oh my god, this record is How did that happen? And I said, well, Terry got in a Winnebago and we did a video contest and they were like, oh my god. And the next thing you know, we had a top five pop record on the album with no hits. Literally we had to prove ourselves over and over and open. No matter what we did, we came up with a low key record next straight to number one on the R and B charts. 01:57:09 Speaker 1: That's that I got a thing for you. 01:57:11 Speaker 2: I got a thing for you. 01:57:11 Speaker 1: You know something now that you mention it the first do you remember the first time we met? 01:57:17 Speaker 3: No? 01:57:18 Speaker 2: Oh, yes, at college at that college out door. 01:57:22 Speaker 1: Hey, I forgot yes, yes, yes, what was the name India a little red boot? Yes? 01:57:29 Speaker 2: Uh Angel Angel, that's right, Yeah, I forgot that, you guys. 01:57:34 Speaker 1: And that's a thing when someone when the college promoters said, hey, Jimmy, Jamme and Terry Lewis out there, they want to know if they can open for you guys real quick, and we like almost lost it life. Who that's like Jimmy, Jaime and Terry Lewis want to open for us, Like we totally didn't get the context that it was then, and I was just mind blowing that you guys were that accessible. You were like our idols, freaking promoting with your artists, Like I've never seen such a thing where it's like. 01:58:08 Speaker 2: You know, we were always big believers in that though, because even when we knew the perspective, we knew we were done in perspective, our deal was almost up. 01:58:18 Speaker 1: How was the deal? Was it like for a number of albums that tried to play with out. 01:58:22 Speaker 2: No, it was just it was just a number of years, and it kind of changed as it happened because when we first started, we went in just it was a joint venture and we went in and we basically were going to just release, you know, three records a year or whatever. That then turned in they were shutting the whole black music department down of A and M, there was a there was a whole thing where a lot of the companies started just losing the black music department. So what they said to us is, why don't you guys just take over the black music department, Which was great because we inherited the Berry White record, which nobody thought was a hit and yeah with a practice what you mention all that stuff right, And they said, oh, that's not a hit, and we like took it over. And the funny thing was we took the record over, but then when it record went number one, yeah it was a and m oh a and m yeah we did it and were going, okay, well we actually Champion didn't work that song, but okay. Anyway, So as we got toward the end of the deal, we had this group called Solo. I discovered discovered them on the street corner of New York, actually fell in love with him, made the record, and that was the only record probably I would say on an m that they really I remember Al Kafaro coming to town and saying, we want you guys to stay, and we're going to show you what we can do with this solo record. And I think we ended up doing like eight hundred thousand units on that record, so it was a very successful record. They actually got us our only time ever working with Hype Williams. We actually got a real video budget and you know all of those things. But what we knew we were leaving. So our whole thing was we had an an Nesby record, and we had had the Mint record with UH, what kind of man would I? 02:00:04 Speaker 1: Definition? Definition? 02:00:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, definition of the band. So we had those records and we wanted to make sure that when we left, those records were set up as good as possible, Like we can get you to the goal line. You guys got to get it over because we're not going to be there, but we're going to get it as far as we possibly can. And I remember we did. We wanted to go visit the branches, right because you know there's people that are working in these branches, because this is still in the the physical distribution, right, so you're taking records and stores, you're doing this right. Our whole thing was, man, let's go visit these people and we'll take mid Condition with us, and we'll take UH and Nesby with us. And well that's important. That was the it was the most important thing. Well they didn't think it was important. We thought it was important. So once again, we financed it ourselves. We just did it ourselves. So what we did is we went we called the brand and the branches were like, what do you mean you want to bring them by? We said, we just want to bring them by, Like what time do you guys do lunch. You guys have like a lunch hours, you have like a lunch room or something, and they're like yeah, and I was like, okay, we're coming. So the employees would all be in there eating lunch. We'd all bust in. We'd go hey, we're jam and Lewis and whatever, and everybody. 02:01:09 Speaker 6: Started because started of course, because it was. 02:01:16 Speaker 1: We did it too. 02:01:17 Speaker 2: It's important though to me it's important. It's like because how did you know? 02:01:21 Speaker 1: That was important? 02:01:22 Speaker 2: Because it was we were getting to the age of it was fax machines, the beginning of the internet was happening, the idea cell phones were beginning to happen. It was kind of the idea that you didn't you know, two way pages. It was the idea of personalization was out of it, you know, where you weren't really spending personal time with people, and to me, that was getting lost. Plus there was kind of this thing where the stars were here, but the people really in the trenches that were doing the work were getting no respect. And as people that we felt always felt, we started in the trend. I mean, I'm the guy remember at a beginning of our thing, I'm at the record store telling the guy order our thousand of these and we can I'm putting up my little playlist thing and I'm doing. 02:02:09 Speaker 1: I mean, that was my thing. 02:02:11 Speaker 2: And Terry the same way. We were like entrepreneurs. We were like no, no, no, no, we got It's about the personal interaction where if I tell somebody this record's going to be a great record, they trust me because I'm looking in the eye and I'm saying this. So if we actually bring the talent to them when they're out there fussing with an account about you know, well we can only stock this many of them, and then you've actually met the person me. Yeah, it's like no, no, no, we met these people. They actually came. And what we would do is we'd visit the branch during the day and then at night we would rent a club out and we'd have everybody come to the club and we'd invite you know, we'd say, bring your people right, and then we do like a full on performance. And we went to like about six or seven branches and we did that, and I remember the day or the week we left. I remember what kind of man would I be? Was at number two? It was already set to go number one. We already had the spins. We knew we were sat there Anne's record. I can't remember where we were at with Anne, but she was like getting ready to go top ten Urban like she was. She was there. So we were good, and I remember we left and I remember the next week when what kind of man would I be? When number one? I remember they called men because Stokely told me and they said, see what we can do now that jam and Lewis are out the way? Wow, I said so, and we were laughed and we were like because I mean, they were at a studio and we were laughing, and I said, okay, I said, well, just remember we were in the winnebego with y'all. So just just remember that when it came time to do their next video, they told him there was no budget for it. And they called us right up and they said, they just told us there's no budget for the video. And I said, yeah, they used to tell this that all the time. They said, well, our videos go made it. I said yeah, because we took the money out of our pocket of major videos. You know. So that's what we that's what we dealt with. And and you know, can I ask though? So we we did an episode with Babyface, and he explained that. 02:04:15 Speaker 1: The only way for the Face to really be successful was that those two had to separate, and you know, Antonio stopped producing and become full time CEO of the label. 02:04:31 Speaker 2: Yeah. 02:04:31 Speaker 1: Was there at any point where you thought, Okay, I'm gonna handle all the music, or you handle all the music and I'm gonna go be Barry Gordy or or Clarence yeah president. 02:04:45 Speaker 2: Never? Yeah, never, because that would have been Terry. Terry would have been the Barry Gordy and he didn't want to do it. He liked doing music too much. He has the business mind and all of that to do, and he would sit on the marketing calls and sit on the promotion calls. I mean, it was great because we learned, I mean, when we inherited the music department, we learned every facet of the record company business, which was fantastic. That was great. But we talked about it. It was about one of the shortest conversations we probably ever had, and it's like, Terry, would you ever think that you would want to know? That's it? That was basically it. I mean that literally, that was basically the conversation because yeah, No, he had no interest in doing that. He loved making music too much, and so no, we never really had that that that conversation and talking about perspective. The thing. The thing I remember too that I always thought, always felt very proud of and this includes La to this day when La talks about because the Face was very successful label, but La to this day says to me, like, man, y'all were like the label that everybody wanted to be because y'all had sounds of blackness, like you had like a real group that meant something, and you had, you know, men condition like a real band, like the last real band that was out there. And I remember that other companies would call for our stuff, like our promotion people and that, you know, would be like, hey, can you send me such and such and such a we go who's that? Oh that's so on so over at Atlantic or that's so and so over whatever, Like the other labels had more respect for our product than our own. Yeah exactly. So, I mean it was it was a crazy time, and you know, but but it's you know, it's about partnership. You know, there's a reason me and Terry get along and and and we've been together for five known Terry for forty five years, and there's a reason why. There's also a reason why a partnership with Herb and Jerry would have been great. We had a potent partnership that we thought we were gonna have with Doug Morris, and then Doug Morris got kicked way upstairs at Universal. But Doug Morris used to be like somebody we really vibed with. He had a piano in his office. He was great music music. 02:07:12 Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that's what I didn't. 02:07:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, no, he was, and that was the great that was cool. And when when when back when we mentioned a little red boat and when you talk about Angel Grant, that was when we did the label with Universal. That was the whole thing. That was Doug Morris's thing. And Doug loved Angel Grant and he said, I love this girl. I really get it. This is gonna be great. And he would fly when he was flying from LA to New York. He'd stop through Minneapolis along the way, listened to the sessions, that. 02:07:43 Speaker 1: Kind of thing. 02:07:44 Speaker 2: So he was into it. Around the time the record came out, he got kicked way upstairs to the head right, because this whole thing was Universal was just a little boutique label. And his whole thing was I'm gonna show people how to make a lo this is how you're going to do a label, and so we were part of that kind of master plan that he had. So when that happened, all of a sudden, now we're dealing once again with the business affairs guy. No, it wasn't Monty. He was like the attorney and stuff. He like ran stuff for a while and it was super nice guy, but just no offense. He just wasn't the music guy. Like we got into it to be like with another music guy and that didn't happen. So, you know, it's just trying to it's it's it's all about the partnerships and and and the relationships. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what the label is if if it's the right people in there. It's anywhere is a great home if it's the right people. But sometimes it's just not And then you find yourself, you know, you're just you just spinning your wheels basically because you're working really hard on something that you really believe in. But if the people aren't believing it with you, then nothing's going to happen with it doesn't really matter who you are. 02:08:56 Speaker 1: And that's it for part two of our Conversation with Jimmy. Jim thank you for tuning in. Guys. Join us next week for the third and final installment, Quest Love Supreme Flight Time Trilogy with Jimmy jam Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.