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