Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: What up, y'all?
Speaker 3: This is Liaiah and this week's Quest Love Supreme classic
Speaker 3: is all about a true legend.
Speaker 2: Her name was Ali Willis.
Speaker 3: We lost her a couple of years ago, but before that,
Speaker 3: she sat down with the Quest and Team Supreme September nineteenth,
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, as she was also being honored as Songwriter
Speaker 3: of the Year. Yeah, who is this person who has
Speaker 3: the color purple, friends, and earth, wind and fire in common.
Speaker 2: It's Ali Willis and we break it all down this.
Speaker 3: Episode, So listen, learn and celebrate the life of a
Speaker 3: really cool lady.
Speaker 4: Suprema Supreme, Suprema Supremo.
Speaker 5: Roll Call Supremo, Roll Call Supreme, Suprema roll Call.
Speaker 1: I'm slightly out of it. Yeah, I'm a little sick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my favorite of all time.
Speaker 4: Yeah. This September my ten was Swift Supreme.
Speaker 5: Suprema, roll Call, Supreme, So Supreme.
Speaker 4: Roll my name is Sugar.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always wanted to ask how high were you when
Speaker 1: you wrote Neutron Dance, Hi.
Speaker 5: Supreme So SUPREMEA role called Suprema son Son, Suprema roll call.
Speaker 2: Yeah your up. Yeah, I'm so hyped. Yeah, we're about
Speaker 2: to steer it up.
Speaker 5: Supreme son Son Supreme roll Call, Supreme so SUPREMEO roll.
Speaker 4: Called high a Mali. Yeah from the valley.
Speaker 6: Oay, I used to land in New York.
Speaker 4: I'll take that.
Speaker 7: Supreme, Supreme Choice, Supreme, Supreme Roll Supreme, Supreme roll.
Speaker 4: Wow. Okay.
Speaker 1: We were a little scared when we started the theme
Speaker 1: because it was only normally it's like nineteen billion of
Speaker 1: us h ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to a very anemic
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme. I'm your host, quest Love. The show
Speaker 1: must always go on.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 4: We're here today with it's Laya and Sugar Steve, hellot
Speaker 4: of people.
Speaker 1: I will say that if you know me or if
Speaker 1: you know us well at the Quest Love Supreme, we've
Speaker 1: been here for a year and some change. Uh, then
Speaker 1: you know that we're all about looking under the hood
Speaker 1: to see what's under the surface, and today is no different.
Speaker 1: Uh quick quick backdrop story. So back in March, when
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift pulled a uh a Master three Michelin star
Speaker 1: troll move off with their with their where there with
Speaker 1: their cover of the uh the cousin Pete Family Reunion
Speaker 1: barbecue Prouve rendition of September.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 1: Most of us called the uh the raisin Potatoes salt remix,
Speaker 1: you know, Uh as expected. Uh, black Twitter was up
Speaker 1: in arms because that's what Taylor Swift does well. But
Speaker 1: little did we know that we had a lesson coming
Speaker 1: to us, and so we were most of us were
Speaker 1: beyond certain that all the authors of that song, yes, uh,
Speaker 1: were the blackest of the black. We just we just
Speaker 1: knew we were spinning up all of our facts and everything,
Speaker 1: and I mean we just, yeah, that's that's the barbecue.
Speaker 1: Like to me, that's the blackest song since coming up
Speaker 1: the rough side of the Mountain in my opinion. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we just naturally assumed that the authors of the song
Speaker 1: where the members of Earth went and fire, and that
Speaker 1: theory was extinguished quick fast, and uh with the help
Speaker 1: of the University of Google, we quickly discovered that our
Speaker 1: guest today has indeed earned her pH D her lifetime
Speaker 1: barbecue pass by writing and I don't I don't even
Speaker 1: say like classics or hits like she's she's damn near
Speaker 1: written half my memories and some of that. And I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about like the outright hit I'm talking about
Speaker 1: like I've never played the game of oh crap.
Speaker 4: She wrote that too.
Speaker 1: I've never had more fun discovering her, her legacy, and
Speaker 1: and and her her songcraft and her life more than
Speaker 1: our guest today. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the
Speaker 1: quest Lip Supreme.
Speaker 4: Ali Willis. He's white Willis, but.
Speaker 6: The right Alley Willis.
Speaker 8: Plus everyone thinks I'm a black man. When I meet anyone,
Speaker 8: they go, shit, you're a woman and you're white.
Speaker 1: So hey, you know, uh so I should note that
Speaker 1: you are getting inducted into the Songwriters.
Speaker 4: Hall of Fame, yes tonight. Why can I ask what
Speaker 4: took so long?
Speaker 8: Because you're exactly exactly talk about it. Which is why
Speaker 8: I never gave a shit about being in the Songwriters
Speaker 8: Hall of Fame, because there were a lot of people,
Speaker 8: you know, who were in there who had hits, definitely
Speaker 8: not necessarily ones that you might know fifty years from
Speaker 8: to day. So I just assumed, you know, I was
Speaker 8: passed over. Didn't mean a lot to me, And then
Speaker 8: when I got it, I was so excited I couldn't
Speaker 8: stand it. So it doesn't mean a lot, and I'm elated.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm elated for you because you know, well one,
Speaker 1: you know, as as a person that lives for uh
Speaker 1: liner notes and credits.
Speaker 4: I mean, maybe it's just easy to overlook a name
Speaker 4: or something.
Speaker 1: You know you've been, You're ubiquitous, yet you're under the
Speaker 1: surface in the eyes of many a liner note rat.
Speaker 1: But once we discovered what he did, it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, I'm the world's best kept secret.
Speaker 4: So well hopefully hopefully not for long.
Speaker 1: So I want to go back to your beginnings you
Speaker 1: were now even though you said from the valley and well.
Speaker 4: Half of that I was.
Speaker 6: I was born in Detroit, the greatest city in the world.
Speaker 4: What part of the east west?
Speaker 6: Northwest? I went to Mumford.
Speaker 4: I've never had a Northwest on the show.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Northwest. A lot of people came out of my
Speaker 8: high school. The Winings went there, the Clark sisters went there.
Speaker 8: Earl Klue Jerry Bruckheimer, Oh yeah, yeah, wow yeah.
Speaker 4: So what was what was your entry into music? Because
Speaker 4: I know that you had a history as a copywriter
Speaker 4: at Sony Columbia.
Speaker 8: At Columbia, I was a journalism major with a minor
Speaker 8: in advertising at the University Wisconsin and someone told me
Speaker 8: that they had advertising departments at record companies.
Speaker 4: So I got a job as.
Speaker 8: A secretary at Columbia and epic almost didn't get the
Speaker 8: job because they sent me upstairs when I interviewed for
Speaker 8: a typing test, and I literally was on my eleventh
Speaker 8: time of failing and the uh, what was the test?
Speaker 4: Typing?
Speaker 3: You have to do?
Speaker 6: You know, like you have to do like one hundred
Speaker 6: words a minute.
Speaker 8: I was even money, so they'd like dictaate something to
Speaker 8: you and you, yeah, you're actually reading something and you
Speaker 8: have to type, oh and just I wasn't getting it.
Speaker 8: But then the head of the advertising department called upstairs
Speaker 8: where I was taking the test and said send her
Speaker 8: down because they just found out that day that the
Speaker 8: secretary was quitting. So I got the job, but then
Speaker 8: within a month I was bumped up to junior copywriters,
Speaker 8: so my I was in charge of all the minorities,
Speaker 8: which were blacks and women. That's all I cared about anyway,
Speaker 8: And so sometimes I wrote the liner notes, but usually
Speaker 8: I was writing print ads for like rolling Stone cream.
Speaker 4: Uh, it's for all those Columbia records, so.
Speaker 8: Like, well, no, it was up to me to actually
Speaker 8: get the assetates as soon as the artist finished the record,
Speaker 8: and then write all the advertising for it. So that
Speaker 8: was radio commercials print ads, some cases TV, but not
Speaker 8: so my main people that I well, I met Jannis
Speaker 8: Joplin the first day that I was actually a secretary.
Speaker 8: She passed away five days later, but I got in
Speaker 8: there and then I eventually moved into her apartment. So yeah,
Speaker 8: I have a lot of stuff like like I saw
Speaker 8: Otis Redding's plane crash.
Speaker 6: I mean, I have a lot of stuff like this.
Speaker 4: Tell us well about it Otis?
Speaker 3: Well, wait, did we start with Janet, because like you said,
Speaker 3: you met her Janis.
Speaker 8: Jane Jane Well, and then I was writing promo for Pearl,
Speaker 8: the album that came out actually right after she died,
Speaker 8: but of course we didn't know she was going to die.
Speaker 8: So Johnny Cash, I did early stuff for my main
Speaker 8: artist that I was in charge of. The Loura Nero, Uh,
Speaker 8: Barbara Strays and Blood, Sweat and.
Speaker 4: Tears the Stone. Were they considered an urban act?
Speaker 9: Yeah, they were put in with the black acts because
Speaker 9: they had horns. I guess, yeah, I'm not well, explain
Speaker 9: to me. I'm glad you're here it because well, it's
Speaker 9: not like we have Clive on the show.
Speaker 4: Ever.
Speaker 1: He was like, I know, yeah, so this is the
Speaker 1: closest I'm gonna get to it. Do you remember what
Speaker 1: the atmosphere was like when you guys were given the
Speaker 1: final master to there's a riot going on because I
Speaker 1: figured that on the heels of stand and Woodstock and
Speaker 1: the Greatest Hits record.
Speaker 4: It's like, oh, this is gonna be the monster. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and you get it and it's a whole other thing. Yeah,
Speaker 4: what was the what was the room?
Speaker 8: Like? People who were diehard sly fans loved it and
Speaker 8: felt like he was progressing. But I think most of
Speaker 8: the record company they wanted, you know, dance to the
Speaker 8: music and everyday people and they were getting you know,
Speaker 8: thank you for letting me be myself or you know, yeah,
Speaker 8: so there it was a mix. I remember there was
Speaker 8: some like panic in the room that maybe this wasn't
Speaker 8: going to be a hit I think, but uh, you.
Speaker 3: Know, because like on your coming up from Detroit, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I want to ask you at this point how your
Speaker 3: parents felt about your journey, because we know that Joe
Speaker 3: Daddy wasn't really.
Speaker 2: Messive with the Blakes.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we can thank him for my career though, because
Speaker 8: the more resistant, the more it pushed me. He was
Speaker 8: not a bigot though he really wasn't a bigot. He
Speaker 8: did it more to push my buttons, you.
Speaker 4: Know, and he knew that the black thing was going
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 6: He was like the thing that put me over the y.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Archie Bunker though, I think believed it a little
Speaker 8: more than my dad.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: My thing is growing up in Detroit.
Speaker 8: I grew up right when Motown was like formed and
Speaker 8: coming up, So I used to go down there every
Speaker 8: time I could. Started when I was twelve, i think,
Speaker 8: and I would sit out on the front lawn because
Speaker 8: you could just watch people, you know, walking in and out.
Speaker 6: But most importantly you could hear.
Speaker 4: Through the walls.
Speaker 8: Really so yeah, certain instruments. You could hear bass, you
Speaker 8: could hear drums. Sometimes you could hear background vola from
Speaker 8: the law. Yeah, because it was just in a little house.
Speaker 8: So you know, if you were sitting close enough to
Speaker 8: the house, which is how the Supremes got discovered, they
Speaker 8: were also sitting out in front, and I think Mickey Stevenson,
Speaker 8: who was head of A and R, came out on
Speaker 8: the front porch and said, can anyone sing, I mean
Speaker 8: I wasn't there for that.
Speaker 3: How many people are sitting on the lawn on the deck.
Speaker 8: Had to be really dedicated. There were always like tourists around, but.
Speaker 6: There were a few people who were like planted there.
Speaker 4: Was it a twenty four hour operation?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm thinking of the safety, like okay, well not
Speaker 1: to really blow up the spot. But like in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: the the the Daptone headquarters, which was Sharon Jones's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like their operation is very similar. Where it's in a neighborhood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not quite certain or where if the
Speaker 1: neighborhood knows what goes on in that house. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: always wonder, like with Motown, like was it a twenty
Speaker 1: four hour operation?
Speaker 4: Was it secure?
Speaker 8: It's you know what I mean, were like I was
Speaker 8: never I was never there at night. But my understanding
Speaker 8: is yes, twenty four hours. Oh okay, yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 8: but you know during the day there'd always be tourists
Speaker 8: there and then there would be you know, the lawn sitter.
Speaker 8: There's actually a little patch of dirt now you know
Speaker 8: today right in front of the big you know those
Speaker 8: big historical landmark, those green and gold they're not plaques.
Speaker 8: They're big, they're like five feet tall, and it says
Speaker 8: Motown Studios and it gives the history. So there's a
Speaker 8: little patch of dirt because people stand there to read
Speaker 8: the plaque. But I'm really friendly with everyone running Motown now,
Speaker 8: which is headed by Barry Gordy's niece Rob and Terry.
Speaker 8: So there's talk of naming that patch of dirt for
Speaker 8: my ass based yes, yes, which would be my proudest
Speaker 8: moment ever.
Speaker 3: So when did the Motown people, whether it be Berry
Speaker 3: or whoever the artist is, when did they discover that
Speaker 3: you were.
Speaker 2: Who you were?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 8: Not until Motown the musical O really yeah, because I
Speaker 8: never got inside.
Speaker 6: I was always outside.
Speaker 8: And then when September first came out and then Boogie Wonderland,
Speaker 8: the Detroit Free Press did a thing, you know, like
Speaker 8: the Local Girl Makes Good and that was the first
Speaker 8: time I was ever in the studio because they did
Speaker 8: the story in the studio. Then I never ever went
Speaker 8: back in until I did this project that I worked
Speaker 8: on for five years, and this would have been maybe
Speaker 8: twenty fourteen that I actually got into Motown and we
Speaker 8: recorded a piece of this project there, which was a
Speaker 8: five thousand detroiters as lead singers doing a song about Detroit.
Speaker 6: Five thousand lead singers.
Speaker 4: Yeah and.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was crazy. It took five years. There's also
Speaker 8: a visual component to it.
Speaker 5: All.
Speaker 8: Self funded, nearly killed me. But I love that city
Speaker 8: and I'll do anything. And then only within this last
Speaker 8: year was I introduced to Rob and Terry. They heard
Speaker 8: about my collection because I have a very vast uh
Speaker 8: pop culture, kitch kitch pop culture, kind of off the
Speaker 8: center line. So they came out to see it because
Speaker 8: they have a lot of Motown stuff, like really obscure stuff.
Speaker 6: And then I became inseparable from them.
Speaker 2: They came to your house, they flew out.
Speaker 8: For a day, and then just in Detroit, like three
Speaker 8: weeks ago, they threw me a party and I had
Speaker 8: my birthday at Motown. That was a surprise party that
Speaker 8: happened there. So everyone that was on the tour her,
Speaker 8: you know, they stopped. They played this little film when
Speaker 8: you start the tour. It's the have you ever seen
Speaker 8: that film? Oh my god, Oh you'll have a heart attack.
Speaker 8: It's like classic Motown footage, but not that you usually see.
Speaker 8: And it's the first thing that they show you when
Speaker 8: you take the tour. So then they stopped the tour
Speaker 8: and they said, uh, you know, ladies and gentlemen, we
Speaker 8: know how much Motown means to you know, everyone, but
Speaker 8: there's a certain person that you know is here today
Speaker 8: because you know, I never learned how to play. I
Speaker 8: write the music too, but I don't know how to play,
Speaker 8: and it's I write the exact same way that I
Speaker 8: did when I sat out on the lawn, because I'd
Speaker 8: learned bass parts because that's what you could hear, or
Speaker 8: I'd learned like drum patterns, and I still write that way.
Speaker 8: I'd like kind of hear something and you know, then
Speaker 8: it it goes down anyway. So they said, you know,
Speaker 8: I meant more to this person than anyone, and then
Speaker 8: the whole place saying the happy Birthday was pretty unbelievable.
Speaker 4: That is amazing. Yeah, that is amazing.
Speaker 8: So my Motown thing, though, is new, and I never
Speaker 8: met Barry Gordy, which was a quest of mine forever.
Speaker 8: And when Motown the Musical opened in Detroit, it's at
Speaker 8: a theater that is literally.
Speaker 6: Right down the block from Motown.
Speaker 8: And but one of my friends directed Motown the Musical,
Speaker 8: Charles Randoff Right, and he said.
Speaker 6: You're meeting Barry Gordy.
Speaker 8: And I had had a camera because I have video
Speaker 8: on my life since nineteen seventy eight. So really, yes,
Speaker 8: literally every significant moment and trillions of the insignificant.
Speaker 2: Ones, but nothing rated.
Speaker 8: Are everything there, everything's out of there and anyway, So
Speaker 8: I saw Charles go off to Barry Gordy, and I
Speaker 8: could hear Barry Gordy going she wrote what she wrote? What?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: And then I got to meet him.
Speaker 8: I have all of this on film, and you know,
Speaker 8: as I'm giving him kind of my final hug, I
Speaker 8: thanked him and he said no, thank you, which to
Speaker 8: me were the greatest words ever uttered to me in
Speaker 8: my life, because I idolized him forever.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're still thinking you so thank you. That
Speaker 4: that is crazy. Wait, so how old were you when
Speaker 4: you left Detroit?
Speaker 8: How old did you see? I went when I went
Speaker 8: to college, which was seventeen. Then I would come home
Speaker 8: for vacations, and then once I was twenty one, I
Speaker 8: went to New York.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I went to New York and that was it.
Speaker 4: So what was the did you have any twenty grand
Speaker 4: experiences up in Detroit?
Speaker 6: Only in that I was always nine to go there,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 8: I mean I went a couple times, but that Baker's
Speaker 8: Keyboard lounge, do you know? But Baker's, Uh, I not
Speaker 8: heard of it. Bakers is really where the Funk Brothers
Speaker 8: came from. It's still in existence. It's a jazz club,
Speaker 8: and you know the Motown, the Funk Brothers, they were
Speaker 8: all jazz players, right, so most.
Speaker 6: Of them came out of there. But it was you know,
Speaker 6: my father did not like me.
Speaker 4: Having the these.
Speaker 8: Tastes that I had for black culture, so I wasn't
Speaker 8: really allowed to go out. He couldn't stop me from
Speaker 8: going to Motown, especially once I got my driver's license.
Speaker 6: But I always like to.
Speaker 8: Say I did get the last word with My father
Speaker 8: passed away in two thousand and two, and the very
Speaker 8: very last words that I said to him, I leaned
Speaker 8: down and I whispered in his ear.
Speaker 4: I just got the gig to write the color purple.
Speaker 8: And he was gone within the hour, gone gone. So
Speaker 8: whatever he put me through, I got him good.
Speaker 4: Oh God, sibling wise, are you the only sibling or no?
Speaker 8: I have an older brother and sister, one still in Detroit.
Speaker 8: My sister lives in Omaha. But they did not have
Speaker 8: a fascination with Detroit the way that I did. Were
Speaker 8: you the middle child, youngest? Oh you were the young yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, explain yeah, So back to so when you left
Speaker 1: Detroit and uh college and whatnot? When did you did
Speaker 1: you go to La A X And.
Speaker 8: I, well, I have the job at the record company
Speaker 8: from sixty nine actually to seventy four. But in nineteen
Speaker 8: seventy two I wrote my first song okay, and I
Speaker 8: took it to my boss at the record company, the
Speaker 8: head of the advertising department. Actually I took the first
Speaker 8: three that I wrote, and he took those to a
Speaker 8: guy named Ron Alexenburg. He was head of Ever at
Speaker 8: the time, and then Alexembourg not knowing it was me
Speaker 8: because it was a conflict of interest to work there
Speaker 8: and be an arm to.
Speaker 4: An artistry and I didn't want to lose my job.
Speaker 8: Alexembourg liked it and then took it to Clive, so
Speaker 8: Clive had to sign off on and then I got
Speaker 8: a deal, so I had to quit.
Speaker 6: And I had one album that came out. First ten
Speaker 6: songs I Ever.
Speaker 8: Wrote did not make it. Actually got great reviews, but
Speaker 8: it had zero sales, so.
Speaker 4: I was doing four.
Speaker 8: I only did four live appearances. I was terrified of
Speaker 8: performing the first performance they put me opening for a
Speaker 8: folk singer. I had an all black band dressed as
Speaker 8: sequin vegetables, and everyone.
Speaker 6: In my band like went on to do something great.
Speaker 3: Put it in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well Bob Babbitt, who was yeah, yeah, they liked me.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 8: The greatest thing is that tonight at the Songwriters Hall
Speaker 8: of Fame induction, the background singer is the very very
Speaker 8: first singer that I ever hired to be in my
Speaker 8: band at the time, Phonsie Thorn Frozzie Thornton.
Speaker 4: Yes he's getting inducted to no, no, he's.
Speaker 6: Singing backgrounds on Neutron Dance in September.
Speaker 4: Which the Phronsie's like Luther, like just name it, like
Speaker 4: well yeah, like.
Speaker 6: Best favorite Luther since Kindergarten.
Speaker 8: But the amazing thing is Luther was Phonsie's piano player,
Speaker 8: and Phonsie actually had a group. There were three of them,
Speaker 8: and so I ended up hiring the three of them
Speaker 8: and leaving Luther behind.
Speaker 4: Luther was pissed off.
Speaker 6: But Luther, that was my very first music click.
Speaker 4: That was like family to me. Speak.
Speaker 1: Wait now that you're here, all right, I gotta ask
Speaker 1: you quasi personal. Does the name Billy Jackson mean anything
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 6: I mean, I know.
Speaker 4: Formerly other times.
Speaker 1: I know he wrote so in Love for the Times,
Speaker 1: but he was also a staff producer at Columbia.
Speaker 8: No, I don't think I know the same Billy Jackson.
Speaker 8: But So in Love is absolutely my favorite all time records. Anyway, So,
Speaker 8: so what happened was, so I go out on tour.
Speaker 6: It was disastrous.
Speaker 8: I never relaxed one second on stage, and I didn't
Speaker 8: want a tour anymore, and then I lost my deal
Speaker 8: like four months after the album came out. That night,
Speaker 8: one of my my best friends were the Harlottes. They
Speaker 8: sang you know, Bette Midler and one of them Sharon Red,
Speaker 8: who went on to have like a bunch of like
Speaker 8: disco things. Sharon Red, that was my best best Wait,
Speaker 8: she was a heartlet Sharon Red. Yes, and as Charlotte
Speaker 8: Crossley Charlot do you know Charloh I don't know that name,
Speaker 8: but yeah, Sharon Sharon Read?
Speaker 4: Yeah, who was Sharon Ray?
Speaker 2: Why should we know her?
Speaker 8: Well, she had a bunch of disco Yeah the name
Speaker 8: that you know, yeah that you just but as a DJ,
Speaker 8: I know that name, so I lost my record deal.
Speaker 8: She said, you shouldn't be alone come to this recording
Speaker 8: session I'm doing. I don't want to fucking be at
Speaker 8: a recording session if I've just lost my deal, you know.
Speaker 8: But she was like adamant about it, and I went
Speaker 8: and it was another one of these unbelievable things that
Speaker 8: I am blessed to have happened to me.
Speaker 4: We opened the.
Speaker 8: Door to the studio was the Hit Factory, which is
Speaker 8: where I also recorded my one album that came out
Speaker 8: and produced by Jerry Ragavoy, by the way, and opened
Speaker 8: the door and the singer who I didn't know, took
Speaker 8: one look at me, and she literally ran over to
Speaker 8: me and got on her knees and started bowing and said,
Speaker 8: what are you doing here? You should go home and
Speaker 8: write me a song, And it was Bonnie Ray wo whoa.
Speaker 8: I got my very first cover the next day and
Speaker 8: went on the road with her for a short while,
Speaker 8: singing backgrounds. And then you figure, well it's going to roll,
Speaker 8: but it didn't roll. I'd get a couple things cut
Speaker 8: a year, but nothing significant, and then Patty LaBelle in
Speaker 8: nineteen seventy eight, same person, Sharon red I had my
Speaker 8: songs because the Harlot's got a record deal and it
Speaker 8: was with the same producers doing Patty LaBelle. Patty heard
Speaker 8: the songs and then flew me up to San Francisco.
Speaker 8: I was living in LA by that time, and flew
Speaker 8: me to San Francisco to make demos because they didn't
Speaker 8: have any money to make demos. She was just hearing
Speaker 8: like piano vocals, and then Patty became the first one
Speaker 8: to regularly cut the songs.
Speaker 6: She said, I have a friend who's also up here recording.
Speaker 6: Go into Studio B. He needs lyrics.
Speaker 8: I hated just writing lyrics and I didn't want to
Speaker 8: be with the friend. I'm finally with the big cheese,
Speaker 8: so what do I want to be with the friend for?
Speaker 8: So for two days I avoid going into this studio.
Speaker 4: She was in Studio A. He was in Studio B, way.
Speaker 8: Down the hall, and I was going walking down the
Speaker 8: hall and the door to Studio B open and I go, shit,
Speaker 8: that's the guy. And I head into the bathroom. So
Speaker 8: I'm in the bathroom. I had to pee anyway, So well,
Speaker 8: I wanted to be with Patty. Yeah, So anyway, I'm
Speaker 8: like sitting on the toilet and the door to the
Speaker 8: bathroom my fence, and I hear clump, clump, clump, and
Speaker 8: these two male feet slide under the bathroom door.
Speaker 4: Sure, and all he he in.
Speaker 8: This like deep voices, like Patty says a really good writer,
Speaker 8: you know, come into Studio B.
Speaker 6: So I go into Studio B, and I figure, I'm trapped.
Speaker 4: I'm like a speed.
Speaker 2: Writer, and now you to cuss HI out with coming
Speaker 2: in the bathroom.
Speaker 6: No, no, no, it was no because I knew I
Speaker 6: was messing up by not going in.
Speaker 8: I mean, I'm, you know, I finally meet like a
Speaker 8: star and I'm already not doing what she, you know,
Speaker 8: said overwhelming. Yeah, well this was overwhelming because we had
Speaker 8: he had all these tracks, and so I'm sitting across
Speaker 8: from him and We're just firing these lyrics off. And
Speaker 8: it was not until the middle of the second song
Speaker 8: Swear to God that he had a phone call, and
Speaker 8: I really started staring at him, you know, and I went,
Speaker 8: oh my god, it's Herbie Handcot.
Speaker 4: Wait, do not tell me this is out. Just come
Speaker 4: run into me.
Speaker 6: Got written, Yes, exactly exactly.
Speaker 8: That was the first one IoT that before I realized
Speaker 8: it was Herbie Hancock.
Speaker 4: Shyeah, see this is what you don't know. And I
Speaker 4: can't even believe you know that song. No you with
Speaker 4: this is what you don't know.
Speaker 1: That song is a very significant song to my, my generation,
Speaker 1: my clique. Another detroiter that you might not be aware
Speaker 1: of a producer.
Speaker 4: Named Jay Dilla. Oh I mean yeah, yeah. He his
Speaker 4: gift if you heard the term like oh, musicians, musician
Speaker 4: or song song. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Usually he's like an obscure person that the regular people
Speaker 1: don't get, but only the special people get.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was the producer's producers producers. Wow.
Speaker 1: So and not even to put myself in that category,
Speaker 1: like only the special people got this guy. But what
Speaker 1: he managed to do, of course, you know hip hop works.
Speaker 1: A lot of work is derivative off of other people,
Speaker 1: you know, sampling and all that stuff. So, uh, which
Speaker 1: is weird. I'm saying this as of this date, eighteen
Speaker 1: years ago. Uh, Fantastic Volume two came out today as
Speaker 1: of this speaking. I'm sure that this will go.
Speaker 4: Away, yes, this right right right? Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, normally in an album like Sunlight wouldn't
Speaker 1: have necessarily gotten a second look. I mean it, there's
Speaker 1: some classics on it. But it wasn't until Jay Dillon
Speaker 1: made us pay attention to it and especially just come
Speaker 1: running to me. That means that's almost like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're tired of people telling you like how much the
Speaker 1: friends theme means to them. I never get tired of
Speaker 1: it myself right now.
Speaker 4: That's like for the Neil Soul generation. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 4: that means everything, like of all you like, of all
Speaker 4: the things you've done. Yeah, that song means the most
Speaker 4: of me.
Speaker 8: That is so shocking because I couldn't even sing it
Speaker 8: to you. Now, that's like how little.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's the reason why I'm like I hired
Speaker 1: vocoder players and stuff. Even when when Hermie comes around,
Speaker 1: I was like, really like that's what you Wantdow, I
Speaker 1: got everything else, Like why that song is amazing?
Speaker 8: Well, we we wrote like three or four songs like
Speaker 8: that day, of which that was, you know, one of them,
Speaker 8: and then it was the Feat Down Failed Now.
Speaker 4: The next album.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was almost like the sequel to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's yo, dog Wow. The fact that that almost
Speaker 1: didn't happen and you were avoid it only.
Speaker 6: Happened because he had nerve to come into the bathroom.
Speaker 4: I wish Bill was here man. Yes, okay, so basically,
Speaker 4: uh uh okay, play the original teach us. I haven't
Speaker 4: done this in so long because you know, I haven't
Speaker 4: heard it since then. So basically, literally I.
Speaker 6: Have Maybe the last time I heard this was nineteen eighty.
Speaker 4: I listened to this about ten times a week. Wow.
Speaker 3: I don't understand how you write something like this without
Speaker 3: knowing how to just falllng.
Speaker 8: I mean because I didn't. I didn't know how to play,
Speaker 8: so I had to like teach myself.
Speaker 4: So he wrote the music person and told you to
Speaker 4: come with lyrics, yeah.
Speaker 6: Music, well yeah, and then I sat with him and
Speaker 6: we wrote the lyrics.
Speaker 4: Yeah. That's It's crazy to me because I don't even
Speaker 4: is this the first time that he sang lyrics to Yeah?
Speaker 8: And it's why I never put together, really that it
Speaker 8: was Herbie Hancock, because what does he need lyrics for?
Speaker 6: But he had just gotten the vote co order.
Speaker 3: Wait, I never feel like I heard Herbie sing before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's have a question. Still unbelievable. I haven't heard
Speaker 4: that in so long, so for us at least hang
Speaker 4: on a second.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, of course, what was your singing voice?
Speaker 8: Like my singing voice is as high as my speaking
Speaker 8: voice is low, like like in the oh zone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's likely.
Speaker 1: Well wait that's the thing I want to know. Well,
Speaker 1: I really want to get to Boogie wonder Lamb. But
Speaker 1: you're the imagery, like what all your subject matters and
Speaker 1: yourlyrics are just on some next level Like as far
Speaker 1: as the the imagery.
Speaker 8: Is, if I'm left to my own devices, they it is,
Speaker 8: but certain like I was very upset writing September, even
Speaker 8: though I was so excited, I couldn't stand it. But
Speaker 8: it was such a song lyric lyric, and you know,
Speaker 8: I was this journalism major. I wanted to write this
Speaker 8: you know, incredible poetry or uh you know, story and
Speaker 8: not have lines be as common as do you remember
Speaker 8: the twenty first ninety September Love was changing the minds
Speaker 8: of pretenders while chasing.
Speaker 6: The clouds away that cloud line.
Speaker 8: I was ready to slip my wrists, but you know
Speaker 8: you're writing in that case with Maurice and and al
Speaker 8: McKay also, who's unbelievably fantastic.
Speaker 4: But the lyric end of it was just with Maurice.
Speaker 4: It was so dark though, but for such a happy song.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well dark as Boogie Wonderland that's the one that's
Speaker 8: really dark, well in the verses. But but I learned
Speaker 8: an incredible lesson, the single most important lesson in my
Speaker 8: songwriting career, from Maurice during September.
Speaker 6: Because I was very.
Speaker 4: He always used the term or.
Speaker 8: The nonsensical word body e when he would write anything.
Speaker 6: So if it was like he was doing that's the
Speaker 6: way of the world, you know, he would have gone.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So that came right at the top of the chorus
Speaker 8: is September. You know, body a sadie. Remember body dancing
Speaker 8: in September? Body yad never was a cloudy day. So
Speaker 8: I kept saying throughout the writing because we wrote September
Speaker 8: to be the only the new single on the Greatest Hits,
Speaker 8: and at the same time we were writing the whole
Speaker 8: I Am album, so it took, you know, months to
Speaker 8: actually complete any of the songs because they were all
Speaker 8: being written at once. So for September, I kept saying,
Speaker 8: oh my god, this is such a hit. We can't
Speaker 8: leave body oah, it's got to be like real words.
Speaker 8: And at first he was kind of humoring me. It's like, okay, well,
Speaker 8: like replace them, but we don't need to do it
Speaker 8: now because we know this section works, so we aren't
Speaker 8: at the at midnight.
Speaker 6: We were at Sunset Sound in LA and.
Speaker 8: The whole album was due, plus September had to be
Speaker 8: out of the studio at midnight. It was like ten
Speaker 8: minutes to midnight, and I went into the studio and
Speaker 8: I did literally get on my knees and I'm clutching
Speaker 8: his thighs. The man had the best thighs in the
Speaker 8: music industry, I gotta tell you, and yeah, probably and
Speaker 8: begging like we have to change body out of real words.
Speaker 8: In his biography, he actually says I was crying while
Speaker 8: I did this. So I was very emotional about this
Speaker 8: because I think, oh my god, this song is gonna
Speaker 8: go in the toilet because no one's who's gonna know
Speaker 8: what body I means?
Speaker 4: But by then body I was in the earth would
Speaker 4: a fire Alexicon.
Speaker 8: They yeah, had done yeah nas prominently, but yes, yeah,
Speaker 8: and uh like sun Goddess or something like that right
Speaker 8: in your head what would have fit those That was
Speaker 8: part of the problem. Everything was corny, you know, because
Speaker 8: you only have three syllables.
Speaker 4: Give me examples like what was.
Speaker 8: Well when we did try in white words, it was
Speaker 8: still stuff that nauseated me, like, you know, oh my
Speaker 8: love or you know yeah, yeah, no, no, it was hit, yes,
Speaker 8: it was hideous. So anyway, but I'm still begging him,
Speaker 8: and you know.
Speaker 4: He was calm. It took a lot to like rile him.
Speaker 8: I to this day, like never saw him angry or
Speaker 8: anything or lift his voice to it, you know, to anyone,
Speaker 8: just this serene being. And so I finally said, I
Speaker 8: like scream, what the fuck does body on mean? And
Speaker 8: he just said, who the fuck cares?
Speaker 4: And that was it. That was the end of it.
Speaker 4: And then the record was out in three weeks, and
Speaker 4: my life changed, tell me changed, because that was the barbecue.
Speaker 8: Yeah no, it still is. It's the song that wouldn't die.
Speaker 8: It's it literally gets bigger every year.
Speaker 3: I need to know more about body like we did, Maurice.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's just a random sound.
Speaker 4: They've just always you know, since that's the way the
Speaker 4: world since opened our eyes. They just I could I
Speaker 4: could tell you about.
Speaker 8: Do you know, I know you'll know it hot dog
Speaker 8: it because that, to me is one of my favorite
Speaker 8: Maurice vocals. And that's all. Uh, I can't actually remember
Speaker 8: who's that dogging around is? The only actual vocal in there.
Speaker 6: Otherwise it's all by type, just phrases and sounds.
Speaker 1: All right, we majorly skipped went straight to Earthwork Fire.
Speaker 1: I want to get to Can't Let Go, But let's
Speaker 1: let's go back.
Speaker 8: To be another one that I thought insignificant, and that
Speaker 8: song no Let Go, Yeah, that.
Speaker 4: Is I still that's still my DJs like that to me,
Speaker 4: that should have been that.
Speaker 6: I think it was a B side of something it was, yeah, but.
Speaker 4: It should have it should have been hit like that
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 8: Wow, that's incredible that it's my obscure more obscure ones.
Speaker 4: That you like, which I love. That's not incredible that wait,
Speaker 4: get to Angela Bluefield anyway, Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 4: I don't know which one the title track to the
Speaker 4: one album that really didn't make it something about You.
Speaker 4: It's in between Two Tough and Angel of the Night,
Speaker 4: but the Angel of the Night. Here's the funny story
Speaker 4: is that even though that didn't get much more.
Speaker 1: I mean, i've her first four records, like my dad
Speaker 1: was the biggest Angela Bluefield, that album didn't get that
Speaker 1: much played. But here's the funny thing, Uh, growing up
Speaker 1: and the Don't Touch my don't touch the stereo household.
Speaker 4: There was a scratch on side one of that Angela
Speaker 4: Bluefield record, So you are.
Speaker 8: And so.
Speaker 1: You know, the way that our stereo was position was
Speaker 1: like far away from We had speakers all over the house,
Speaker 1: universal speakers, but the stereo was in the living room,
Speaker 1: so like, if you want to change it, you gotta
Speaker 1: go downstairs. Like you can listen to it in any
Speaker 1: room in the house, but you still had to. And
Speaker 1: so because of the way that the wax culture is,
Speaker 1: I think it's the first line of the second verse of.
Speaker 4: Something about you, which I think is you've been hungry
Speaker 4: too long? It always skips.
Speaker 1: My cousins were dirty, whereas since you've been hugd me too,
Speaker 1: you've been huked me too long, since you've been hooking.
Speaker 4: Ship used to always skip. And that memory that is
Speaker 4: etched in my brain I can't even remember. Was the
Speaker 4: churuse like kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, okay, that's all
Speaker 4: I remember, though, Yeah, but it's just like yeah. But
Speaker 4: the thing is is that I used the word hungry
Speaker 4: all the time in lyrics though, so I know that
Speaker 4: it's me.
Speaker 6: All the time. So what was you hungry for everything?
Speaker 6: All the time.
Speaker 1: Okay, so as a songwriter, Okay, I'm taking back to
Speaker 1: her seventy seven You're in the bath, so seventy eight,
Speaker 1: well seventy eight, Yeah, how how terrifying was it living
Speaker 1: check to check?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: And how does a songwriter make a living in LA?
Speaker 1: Like this is like you just wait for the quarter
Speaker 1: to come? Did you get a publishing deal?
Speaker 4: Did you? Like? How does that work?
Speaker 8: I know I was pretty starving to death when I
Speaker 8: first lost the job at Columbia Epic. I became a
Speaker 8: hat check girl at comedy clubs, so at Catcherizing Star,
Speaker 8: and then there was a club called Reno Sweeney, which
Speaker 8: was a cabaret that Bet Melissa Manchester, Barry Manilow Manhattan Transfer.
Speaker 4: Came out of there. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So I.
Speaker 8: Was hanging coats at Reno Sweeney and well at both
Speaker 8: of the clubs. Yeah, And I was also hanging posters.
Speaker 8: I was going around the city with like glue and shit.
Speaker 8: But I moved to California because it was if I'm
Speaker 8: going to starve death, I'm doing it in the sun.
Speaker 8: So I actually moved in seventy six, and no, I
Speaker 8: was getting I was on unemployment, really not making money
Speaker 8: at all. I did get one publishing deal with like
Speaker 8: a five thousand dollars advance, which to me was like
Speaker 8: a million dollars.
Speaker 4: Right was going home, back home?
Speaker 8: Ever an option like I got a little bit never
Speaker 8: no because of my father situation, and I.
Speaker 4: Write letters like hey Dad, I'm doing fine. It was
Speaker 4: like yeah no.
Speaker 8: And every time I got a record cut, it was
Speaker 8: by a black artist, and then I'd have to go
Speaker 8: through the whole like conversation again. So not I only
Speaker 8: got reat hatched to Detroit seven or eight years ago,
Speaker 8: and then I became obsessive about it.
Speaker 6: I always loved it in my heart, but I wasn't
Speaker 6: going back constantly.
Speaker 4: So he wasn't impressed with September and.
Speaker 8: Dad, I got a number one hit, not to my face,
Speaker 8: but I always heard from all my friends like, you know,
Speaker 8: if we see your dad walking down the street, we
Speaker 8: got to go to the other side because he'll talk
Speaker 8: about you for two hours and he'll show us clip,
Speaker 8: he'll show them clippings and all of this.
Speaker 4: But not not to me.
Speaker 8: Really didn't give it up until right at the end,
Speaker 8: and then I sent him out with the color purple.
Speaker 1: So even so, how do songwriters get paid is the artist, like, okay,
Speaker 1: i'd see your starving.
Speaker 4: Here's here's a couple hundred bucks just to.
Speaker 8: It was really, you know, all my friends were songwriters,
Speaker 8: my whole little click.
Speaker 6: Some became performers.
Speaker 8: Those people we're making money, but the ones who were
Speaker 8: just songwriters, we were basically just starving together. It was
Speaker 8: quite an illustrious group. Everyone went on to like have
Speaker 8: hits and all pretty much around the same time. We
Speaker 8: all kind of hit at the same time. But no,
Speaker 8: we were collecting unemployment and.
Speaker 4: Really that's it. Like when Patty.
Speaker 8: LaBelle paid for me to go to San Francisco, that
Speaker 8: was it. It's you know, the Harlot's were up there,
Speaker 8: you know, which is how she heard it. So they
Speaker 8: were like giving me money for food and she paid
Speaker 8: for the tickets.
Speaker 1: So that tasty album. Yeah, Patty, was that the only
Speaker 1: time you worked with her before you got to Stir
Speaker 1: It Up.
Speaker 8: I was on a couple albums of her. I had
Speaker 8: a couple songs per album, okay, for two or three albums. Yeah,
Speaker 8: Stirred Up was like way aft, well relatively way.
Speaker 1: Aft, okay, Okay, So with uh, I know that you also, okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta get to it's it's a big na bs.
Speaker 4: No, it's a lot. But how what was on your
Speaker 4: mind with Bookie Wonderland.
Speaker 6: I can tell you exactly.
Speaker 4: I've been waiting for this movie.
Speaker 3: I can tell you the other jewels she hold of
Speaker 3: for you two. I forget about the other one with great.
Speaker 8: Oh oh oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. So Bookie
Speaker 8: Wonderland I wrote with John Lynn. John Lynn had written
Speaker 8: Sun Goddess for Earth Wind and Fire, and he was
Speaker 8: kind of he was managed by the same Cavallo Ruffalo
Speaker 8: who you know managed Earth Wind and Fire. Denise Williams
Speaker 8: like Prince Yeah, friends, yeah, oh, that's the story I
Speaker 8: need to tell you.
Speaker 6: So remember Prince.
Speaker 8: Yes, and uh so, Maurice kept saying you two should
Speaker 8: write together. So this would have been in March, I
Speaker 8: think in nineteen seventy eight, so I already knew I
Speaker 8: had a whole bunch of Earth Wind and Fire stuff
Speaker 8: coming out, but nothing had come out yet.
Speaker 6: John had had something out, and.
Speaker 8: We wanted to use the word boogie, because every song
Speaker 8: had boogie in it at that time, but we didn't
Speaker 8: want to use it in the normal sense of the word,
Speaker 8: which you know, to dance. And I the night before
Speaker 8: had seen the movie Looking for Mister Goodbar.
Speaker 4: Diane Keaton movie.
Speaker 8: She goes out to disco's every night like her life
Speaker 8: is completely falling apart, but she gets into the club
Speaker 8: and you know, her life is all of a sudden magical,
Speaker 8: and she brings home a different guy every night to
Speaker 8: sleep with, and the audience has led to believe that
Speaker 8: one of these guys is a serial killer.
Speaker 6: Not what you thought you were going to hear for
Speaker 6: Boogie Wonderland.
Speaker 4: So we wanted to write.
Speaker 8: A song about someone who's life was falling apart but
Speaker 8: would escape into this world of dance every night where
Speaker 8: everything would be okay.
Speaker 4: So we knew we.
Speaker 8: Wanted a really dark verse and we wanted a really
Speaker 8: sparkling happy chorus.
Speaker 6: So the h and we wrote the song actually in order.
Speaker 8: So the you know the verse which people always come
Speaker 8: up to me and they say, book you Wonderland. It's
Speaker 8: such a happy song, And I always say, have you
Speaker 8: listen to the lyric? So but people sing it like
Speaker 8: you know, you sing it phonetically. People sing along with it,
Speaker 8: but they don't know what they're singing. So the verse is, uh,
Speaker 8: midnight creeps so slowly into hearts of men who need
Speaker 8: more than they get. Daylight deals a bad hand to
Speaker 8: a woman who's laid too many bets. The mirror stares
Speaker 8: you in the face and says, a baby, it don't work.
Speaker 8: You say your prayers though you don't care. You dance
Speaker 8: to shake the hurt.
Speaker 4: Then we wanted to.
Speaker 8: The song was actually written in a different structure than
Speaker 8: they recorded it in because they go from that, they
Speaker 8: do the little dance boogie Wonderland chant, and then they
Speaker 8: go right back into sounds fly through the night, I
Speaker 8: chase my vinyl dreams, the boogie Wonderland.
Speaker 6: I find romance when I start to dance in Boogie Wonderland.
Speaker 8: But we inserted the chorus in between the verses, so
Speaker 8: it went from this dark, depressing you're looking in the
Speaker 8: mirror and feeling like shit, to all of the love
Speaker 8: in the world can't be gone, all the need to
Speaker 8: be loved, can't be wrong. All the records are playing
Speaker 8: in my heart keep saying boogie Wonderland, And we wanted
Speaker 8: that to sound almost Broadway ish, and how happy that
Speaker 8: that music was. It was supposed to be like a
Speaker 8: bipolar mood swing.
Speaker 4: Yes it was. To the chorus, Yeah, and would you
Speaker 4: write these lyrics? Do you just come out with the
Speaker 4: complete prose or like, are you thinking of a rhythmic structure?
Speaker 4: Are you thinking of.
Speaker 1: Because that's a lot you're You're placing a lot of
Speaker 1: poetic thought into the imagery. Yeah, but in my head,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, well, how's this going to fit in
Speaker 1: this line and this line and that line, and how
Speaker 1: can we.
Speaker 8: Well we were we we definitely wrote the music. We
Speaker 8: wrote the music to the verse verse, and then put
Speaker 8: the words to that. Then we jumped to the chorus
Speaker 8: music and lyrics. I mean, every song is different. I
Speaker 8: knew we were actually trying to write for Earth Wind
Speaker 8: and Fire, but you know, so we knew it had
Speaker 8: to have, like, you know, a certain rhythmic thing to it,
Speaker 8: and because the chords were so dark in the in
Speaker 8: the verse, that seemed to fit.
Speaker 6: And the first few lines of the chorus came easy.
Speaker 8: But we still didn't have boogie in it, and we
Speaker 8: we didn't know how to work it in and we
Speaker 8: didn't really know what to call the song. And the
Speaker 8: course was last, yes, and the words Bookie Wonderland War
Speaker 8: was the very last thing that we got.
Speaker 4: So what was the it was.
Speaker 8: Originally called Johnny's Casino Lounge. So and we, yeah, we
Speaker 8: got the phone book out because we said, well, let's
Speaker 8: look up names of clubs. So we looked up clubs
Speaker 8: and we looked up bars, and one we liked Johnny's,
Speaker 8: and then there was another one called the Casino Lounge.
Speaker 6: So the original chorus started out, come.
Speaker 4: To Johnny's cassine no lounge.
Speaker 6: That was the original things became all time favor.
Speaker 8: Instead of you know, and then then we went, no, no,
Speaker 8: it doesn't sound important enough. Earth Wind and Fire is
Speaker 8: not going to sing Johnny's Casino Lounge. So then we
Speaker 8: came to, uh, you know, all the Love in the
Speaker 8: Wood can't be Gone, And when we got to all
Speaker 8: the records are playing and mock keep saying when we
Speaker 8: got there, it was we wanted Broadway, we wanted Cinderella,
Speaker 8: we wanted you know something. So that just felt like
Speaker 8: it was this incredibly broadwayish line. Neither one of us
Speaker 8: like Feeder at all, but it was you know, what,
Speaker 8: is like my fair lady or something. It just felt
Speaker 8: like that kind of melody to us. So once we
Speaker 8: got rid of Johnny's Casino Lounge, we tried to fit
Speaker 8: it in the end.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: Johnny's Cassine No Lounge.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: When you're writing these songs, are you thinking, first, let's
Speaker 1: write a hit or you just trying to express an idea?
Speaker 4: Well, in my head, I always wanted hits. So because
Speaker 4: I love layered It's so complex, it was like.
Speaker 8: It didn't dawn on me that anything was different about it,
Speaker 8: which it was, seriously yeah, because my whole thing was
Speaker 8: there used to be this massive discussion between what is
Speaker 8: art and what is commercial.
Speaker 6: And I grew up on Top forty radio.
Speaker 8: I loved Top forty, so to me, the greatest songs
Speaker 8: were when you could mesh those two things together as
Speaker 8: opposed to making a decision between going one way or
Speaker 8: the other.
Speaker 6: So I was always trying to shove that in.
Speaker 8: That song felt the whole way through like, Okay, that
Speaker 8: is exactly what we're doing. So I But Boogie Wonderland
Speaker 8: only came about because we realized that even though we
Speaker 8: set out to write a song using that word, we
Speaker 8: hadn't used it. So we went, okay, screw it. Instead
Speaker 8: of the club name, boogie Wonderland is.
Speaker 5: Going to be.
Speaker 8: What this needs to be is the state of mind
Speaker 8: that this person is in when they go into the club.
Speaker 6: So that state of mind became Boogie Wonderland.
Speaker 4: So are you having these philosophical discussions as you're doing it? Yes?
Speaker 1: And I love writing that way. So is there like
Speaker 1: a vision board or something like? Okay, so what do
Speaker 1: you want to write about?
Speaker 6: And I mean, you know, I I have written with
Speaker 6: thousands of stupid people.
Speaker 4: Thousands.
Speaker 8: It's a drag to write with someone stupid because you
Speaker 8: can't have these kind of discussions. I love having these
Speaker 8: kind of discussions because you really like break it down
Speaker 8: and you.
Speaker 4: Know, like what she has became my all time right now,
Speaker 4: this is amazing, this is.
Speaker 8: But John Lynn was someone you could have those kind
Speaker 8: of discussions with. So, uh, you know, that was really
Speaker 8: one of those songs where you're kind of intellectualizing it
Speaker 8: the whole way through.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 1: I just always felt that Boogie Wonderland was a I
Speaker 1: mean that to me was the when we talk about
Speaker 1: troll culture, uh, the the the especially like in today's
Speaker 1: Internet society, when you speak of troll culture, yeah, the
Speaker 1: the art of of of provoking someone whatever. Now usually
Speaker 1: in in the cannon in the songwriting canon of earth
Speaker 1: wind Fire. Yeah, Boogie Wonderland isn't necessarily in anyone's top ten,
Speaker 1: but I always surface Earth and Fire fans were like,
Speaker 1: they try to.
Speaker 4: Do a disco song, yeah, missed it. Yeah, And I
Speaker 4: always had to argue, I'm like, yo, like Boogie Wonderland
Speaker 4: and Hey.
Speaker 1: Yah are almost in the same Hey y'all is in
Speaker 1: the same category. Like Dre's actually making fun of the
Speaker 1: audience that's embracing it. Yeah, and he says like they're
Speaker 1: not even listening to the lyrics where it's like he's
Speaker 1: literally saying, you know, people just want to shake their ass,
Speaker 1: but they're not even peeping the darkness of the song.
Speaker 1: And I noticed always felt that Boogie Wonderland was done
Speaker 1: with a week. I thought it was let's make fun
Speaker 1: of disco. Well it was with a week.
Speaker 8: I need to get you the demo of Boogie Wonderland,
Speaker 8: Yes you do, which you could actually guess you right
Speaker 8: now because they do have it on my website. Yes,
Speaker 8: but it was we always felt like we wrote it
Speaker 8: as a song. They cut it as a groove, like
Speaker 8: it was never meant to be all orchestrated like that.
Speaker 8: Oh so once you had the demo with the lyrics,
Speaker 8: then they can do whatever they.
Speaker 4: So when you heard the final product, what'd you think? Well,
Speaker 4: I was at a bunch of the sessions.
Speaker 8: It took me to hear that song as an oldie
Speaker 8: to go, oh my god, it's really good. So at
Speaker 8: the time I thought they sucked it up. Yeah, really, yes,
Speaker 8: even though I was very excited, like we were at the.
Speaker 4: String and horn sessions that just in terms of being
Speaker 4: in the room with those kind.
Speaker 8: Of strings, those kind of horns was exciting, but it
Speaker 8: did not feel appropriate for the song that we had written.
Speaker 8: I mean, now, in hindsight, you know, I absolutely adore it,
Speaker 8: but at the time it's like, what is all this
Speaker 8: stuff doing on here?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 1: But even in your Broadway vision of it, because Earthword
Speaker 1: and Fire is theater, they are high, high theater, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we I don't think they knew it at the time.
Speaker 1: So I always felt this is a multi layered troll mastery,
Speaker 1: Like I.
Speaker 4: Can see that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But the the demo was was different.
Speaker 4: The demo.
Speaker 8: You would have to hear the demo, John singing the
Speaker 8: lead on that I will get you the demo.
Speaker 6: I think that would be really interest thing for.
Speaker 4: You to hear.
Speaker 1: Extremely also within in the stone. We can't ignore that
Speaker 1: you wrote in the stone? Yeah, what is that about?
Speaker 6: At the time, I had no idea.
Speaker 8: You know. The first thing he ever said to me, Maurice,
Speaker 8: literally the very first thing was do you what do
Speaker 8: you know about Eastern philosophies?
Speaker 6: And it was like I knew nothing. I didn't even
Speaker 6: know what he was talking about.
Speaker 4: That I always say I was as evolved as pop rocks.
Speaker 8: I was like, I was like strictly you know, pop culture,
Speaker 8: top forty radio, television, and you know, I knew he
Speaker 8: was into all this, you know, deep shit.
Speaker 4: So I said, I didn't know anything.
Speaker 8: So he gave me a list of books and sent
Speaker 8: me yes, and sent me to a store in La
Speaker 8: called the Body Tree, which was the Yeah, like just
Speaker 8: you could smell the incense.
Speaker 4: Like a mile away. It's still there. No it's not.
Speaker 6: There's a I meant the culture is still there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not physically still there, but yeah, there's someone
Speaker 1: that was associated with that place, that has another place
Speaker 1: similar to it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. So he gave me
Speaker 8: ten books and he said, the one you have to
Speaker 8: start with. It was called the Greatest Salesman in the World.
Speaker 8: And I thought oh, it's about advertising. I got this
Speaker 8: down and I opened it up and immediately it's not
Speaker 8: about advertising, it's you know, the profits in.
Speaker 6: There in the old Egypt.
Speaker 8: And I got so confused immediately immediately. But in the
Speaker 8: Stone on that album, and I Am was supposed to
Speaker 8: be the song that kind of really got all of
Speaker 8: their philosophy in there, So I.
Speaker 6: Never understood it.
Speaker 8: As we were writing, he would basically tell me what
Speaker 8: he wanted to say, and I would give him ten
Speaker 8: different lines that that said that. Now, of course I
Speaker 8: understand everything. It's very much let alone the phrase I am.
Speaker 8: He said, that's what I'm going to call the album.
Speaker 8: I said, what does I AM mean? Now, it's in
Speaker 8: every spiritual philosophy. You know that that there is, but
Speaker 8: you know very much about presence being in the now,
Speaker 8: in the Stone, the fact that that you know culturally
Speaker 8: that everything kind of is pre written, that man kind
Speaker 8: of there's this mindset for what man is and we
Speaker 8: have passed. And he very much believed in past lives
Speaker 8: and future lives. But that one I was flying by.
Speaker 6: The seat of my pants.
Speaker 1: Did you have a good report in friendship with Maurice White.
Speaker 1: I'm only asking because What makes I AM really significant
Speaker 1: is the fact that even though even though all right
Speaker 1: so uh like and Steve, even though Marie's Richard Nichols,
Speaker 1: which was Charles Stephanie yeah, passed away.
Speaker 4: Kind of leaving him to hold the ball and hold
Speaker 4: everything together, which I mean for the all in.
Speaker 1: All record, I felt like that just the sheer adrenaline
Speaker 1: of Okay, now I have to drive this car and
Speaker 1: made Charles proud of me. But I always felt like,
Speaker 1: because I mean, you come into play. But also David Foster,
Speaker 1: he brought us the same day.
Speaker 4: We were both brought in.
Speaker 1: You two were brought this. Did you guys work together
Speaker 1: per se or were you like separate camps on.
Speaker 6: Some songs together?
Speaker 8: And then I also did he had a solo album
Speaker 8: with Jay Grayden called The airplaye okay, oh yeah, uh yeah,
Speaker 8: so Graydon and Foster were kind of a team at
Speaker 8: that point.
Speaker 4: You know what, I've had an Airplayer album forever. I
Speaker 4: didn't know that was David Foster. Yeah, yeah, Okay sings
Speaker 4: on that record. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 8: Another I can't remember the single. I think could it
Speaker 8: be alright something like that.
Speaker 4: It's a yacht rock classic.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, Well I like it then, okay, yeah, well, I.
Speaker 4: Mean if you like did his Office Rock, Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: a smooth la not a class.
Speaker 1: Well no, no no, but I love like that cheesy
Speaker 1: Kidny Loggins. You like kitchen art, Yes, I love kitchen music.
Speaker 4: Yes I do too, Yeah, I do. The Airplay album
Speaker 4: is right up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: It was very nineteen eighty one, which is when it
Speaker 6: was yeah.
Speaker 4: All that la musician Toto. Yeah, I live for this stuff.
Speaker 2: Wait are you No?
Speaker 8: Toto was recording next door to us the whole way
Speaker 8: through I Am. We had both studios locked out for
Speaker 8: like a year at sound really er at Hollywood No, yeah,
Speaker 8: I Am was cut both at Hollywood Sound and at
Speaker 8: Sunset Sound. I have a good Hollywood Sound story because Verdein, well,
Speaker 8: Michael Jackson was recording next door to us a lot
Speaker 8: of the time. He would record during the day, total
Speaker 8: would come in at night, and uh, so Verdein kept saying,
Speaker 8: Michael Jackson wants to meet you, and it just we
Speaker 8: never coincided that we were there.
Speaker 4: At the same time. And I think it was eighty one.
Speaker 8: I guess finally we're there at the same time, and
Speaker 8: he said, let's go right now he's there.
Speaker 4: I go in.
Speaker 8: Michael Jackson stands up, he grabs my hand. We're shaking hands,
Speaker 8: and someone runs into the studio and says, Richard Pryor
Speaker 8: just set himself on fire. Well, and Michael Jackson's hand
Speaker 8: just like went limp in my hand and he like
Speaker 8: fell back, and I thought.
Speaker 4: I gotta go now.
Speaker 6: And that was the only time I met Michael Jackson.
Speaker 4: It was not the lamp at But I remember that,
Speaker 4: were you? Yes?
Speaker 2: Oh for the record, no, but yes, I remember.
Speaker 5: Yo.
Speaker 4: That was in April of eighty eighty, was it eighty Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: that that news hit My aunt like lost it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was something else anyway.
Speaker 3: Wait, so then, speaking of Michael Jackson, then we bring
Speaker 3: up Greg Phillip Gangs, who was one of her besties.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I'd go way back with him. He we
Speaker 4: love Greg. Yeah, great show.
Speaker 6: Yeah, No, I've heard the podcast.
Speaker 8: But the question, no, I know, you asked him a
Speaker 8: question and I don't he either didn't know the answer
Speaker 8: didn't answer was whether Earth Wind and Fire played on
Speaker 8: their records. Oh, and Ali Willis knows the answer. Yeah,
Speaker 8: tell me, I have to say in my day, yes,
Speaker 8: they did. They played every instrument there were people like Paulino,
Speaker 8: you know, Da Costa was coming in, but they played
Speaker 8: all their stuff. Later it started changing up a few years,
Speaker 8: just a few years later, and I think Maurice was
Speaker 8: also getting conscious of hearing certain things and going what
Speaker 8: we want to sound like this right, which to me
Speaker 8: then really.
Speaker 4: Deadened the Uh. Yeah, I think it's impossible.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like Doctor Drake like it's I think
Speaker 1: it's impossible because by that point, I mean, after nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, they.
Speaker 4: Were such a force on the road.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll give it back an example like the Beach Boys,
Speaker 1: to the point where if as a unit, the Beach
Speaker 1: Boys were always touring on the road and kind of
Speaker 1: Brian was was at home, yeah, maintaining that.
Speaker 4: So I always felt that there were more.
Speaker 1: Whoever could deliver the greatest performance musically on their records
Speaker 1: after nineteen seventy eight could do it. I mean I
Speaker 1: definitely feel it, for I mean on the Raised album,
Speaker 1: on their eighty one Rais album, there's.
Speaker 8: Yeah, by that time it was shifting, but certainly before
Speaker 8: it was absolutely at least when I was.
Speaker 6: There, Yeah, it was all them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's always been a question. But Marie kind
Speaker 1: of talked about in this book as well. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I always felt that you were the spiritual whisper.
Speaker 4: You have to tell me about working with Narada Michael
Speaker 4: Walden and is he always like that? Four? Yes?
Speaker 6: Really him, He just cops me. Oh I was thinking
Speaker 6: the other way.
Speaker 4: Oh, he's hype so hyper. Yeah, he's hyper on bang
Speaker 4: bang bang. Every time he talks to me. It's like
Speaker 4: my science teacher from third grade.
Speaker 8: He is. I would say, he's fifty percent that way
Speaker 8: and fifty percent the other way.
Speaker 6: And there's no medal, no medal. He is an unbelievably
Speaker 6: great guy.
Speaker 4: I love him.
Speaker 8: I worked with him recently, but we started when he
Speaker 8: used to open for Patty LaBelle. So when I started
Speaker 8: getting my Patty stuff started, you know, hitting me up,
Speaker 8: let's write together, let's write together.
Speaker 4: And I almost immediately got.
Speaker 8: Sick of songwriting as soon as they started having hits.
Speaker 8: It was just because it was too much everyone and
Speaker 8: their mother.
Speaker 1: Yes, when something would hit, then people knock on your door. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then the pressure to like September.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think because I.
Speaker 8: Was so associated with earth, wind and fire, people assumed
Speaker 8: I was just a lyricist that drove me nuts and
Speaker 8: in a lot of earth wind and fire, I was,
Speaker 8: but with no one else was I and it never
Speaker 8: was as interesting for me just writing lyrics as you know,
Speaker 8: versus writing music and lyrics.
Speaker 4: So by the time Narda got to.
Speaker 8: Me, which was after September was out, I was trying
Speaker 8: to weed out who you know, I was writing. I
Speaker 8: was getting over one hundred songs cut a year, which
Speaker 8: so I was a machine. I would write five six
Speaker 8: hundred songs a year. I mean I was writing three
Speaker 8: four songs a day.
Speaker 4: Wow, So how do you not get numb from that process?
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 6: I stopped enjoying it almost as soon as I had hits.
Speaker 1: How do you know what's your creative process? Because the
Speaker 1: number for you to turn out that many a day,
Speaker 1: it's like, how do you not get it?
Speaker 8: It was mostly writing lyrics and I just started hating it.
Speaker 8: It was exciting at first because you get on everyone's album,
Speaker 8: but I didn't think musically most of the time. It's like,
Speaker 8: if I had been co writing the music, Bar five
Speaker 8: would have been somewhere else, you know.
Speaker 6: So it eventually led to it led to really me
Speaker 6: being kind of miserable. The more songs I got cut.
Speaker 8: Between eighty eighty one is when I really started feeling
Speaker 8: like I can't keep doing this.
Speaker 6: Is it's going to make me hate musical Yeah.
Speaker 8: And then eighty three it happened with a Manhattan Transfer song.
Speaker 8: They had me write lyrics. There was a spyro gyra
Speaker 8: song called Shaker Song, and so they had me and
Speaker 8: David Lasley, who was a frequent collaborator of mine incredible.
Speaker 4: Put lyrics to it.
Speaker 6: It's like, what are we going to do with with Shaker?
Speaker 4: You know, what what is that? And it took us forever,
Speaker 4: you know, we finally.
Speaker 8: Figured out, oh, he can't shaker as opposed to Shaker.
Speaker 8: But what they wanted was a jazz song where every
Speaker 8: single phrase had a lyric to it with very little repeat.
Speaker 6: So it was a four page, single space lyric.
Speaker 8: If it just was that went linear, you know, the
Speaker 8: four lines repeated where Shaker was it would repeat. Otherwise
Speaker 8: it constantly changed. Took forever to write, so they I
Speaker 8: was really good friends with all of them, and they
Speaker 8: called up nineteen eighty one. This was I was already
Speaker 8: at the point of like, I'm not interested in doing
Speaker 8: this anymore. It's just it's too much because we write
Speaker 8: that many songs, what is there to say? And I'm
Speaker 8: writing mostly to music that I didn't care about.
Speaker 6: But I was getting on these huge albums.
Speaker 8: So Tim Howse was the you know, his group, He
Speaker 8: called up and he said, now we want to do
Speaker 8: pick up the pieces Average White Band and so write
Speaker 8: a lyric to that, and we need it like on Monday,
Speaker 8: and it was my birthday that weekend. I'm a huge
Speaker 8: party thrower. That is my number one skills parties way
Speaker 8: above music, way above music. So I thought, oh god,
Speaker 8: now I have to do what I did to Shaker Song,
Speaker 8: which was nightmarish. Even though I loved the Shaker song,
Speaker 8: but it was a really hard song to write. So
Speaker 8: you think about Average White Band, you know, it's like,
Speaker 8: oh my god, I got to do this all the
Speaker 8: way through, and I know.
Speaker 6: There can be very few, you know, repeats.
Speaker 4: So it ruined my birthday weekend.
Speaker 8: I just you know, sat there writing around the clock
Speaker 8: and I handed it in and Tim said, oh, we
Speaker 8: just wanted the chorus. Oh yeah, And that was at
Speaker 8: the point where I went, I'm out, I can't do
Speaker 8: this because I also what I was doing is I
Speaker 8: would wipe with a group or you know, an artist,
Speaker 8: and I'd write seven or eight songs and then maybe
Speaker 8: they would do one.
Speaker 6: If you were lucky, they would do one.
Speaker 8: And I just felt like songwriters get so taken advantage of.
Speaker 8: It's not like you're getting Josh Wright and it's you know,
Speaker 8: don't make me do eight songs if you know you
Speaker 8: already got nine songs on the record, So what am
Speaker 8: what am I doing this for? And then pick up
Speaker 8: the pieces that like put it over the top. So
Speaker 8: I spent the next two years being completely miserable, but
Speaker 8: still getting a lot of songs cut, which is a
Speaker 8: lot of the reason why I don't know the Angela
Speaker 8: Beaufield song or you know, probably you know tons of
Speaker 8: them because there were so many in there.
Speaker 4: It's so an incredible burden a half because these words
Speaker 4: are just pouring out of you.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm presenting this romantic version of like the
Speaker 1: gods are just pouring words out of you, But.
Speaker 8: It's like, but words that you stop caring about between
Speaker 8: writing so much and not caring about some of the music,
Speaker 8: feeling that the music could have been so much better.
Speaker 4: So when something doesn't make it, where is it in
Speaker 4: the garbage?
Speaker 2: Can you didn't know somebody else?
Speaker 4: No, No, well yeah, oh no.
Speaker 8: I mean for every song I have out, there are
Speaker 8: ten others sitting there. Nothing happens with them, especially if
Speaker 8: it's not music that you thought was that great and
Speaker 8: you were writing with.
Speaker 4: A specific artist. So no, it was.
Speaker 6: There were hundreds of songs, just like you know, dead Fish,
Speaker 6: you know that.
Speaker 8: It was.
Speaker 4: It was literally like, where is that? Pick up the pieces?
Speaker 4: I'm I'm the world's biggest average white band. Fin Yeah,
Speaker 4: So just as a completist, where is that?
Speaker 6: I'm sure I've got it somewhere.
Speaker 8: You know I have it, but you know, And so
Speaker 8: I decided right there and then something has to change.
Speaker 8: Took me a couple years, but out of total frustration,
Speaker 8: I started to paint. And I was writing working with
Speaker 8: one of the go gos at the time, and Jane
Speaker 8: Weedling guitar, and she came in the very next day
Speaker 8: and bought my first painting. So I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 8: I have this built in you know, music audience. I'm
Speaker 8: going to keep doing this. So I just started painting.
Speaker 8: It led to a lot of like sculptural things and whatever,
Speaker 8: and that's what I mainly did in the eighties. I
Speaker 8: was still writing, but the art was the main thing,
Speaker 8: and I wanted to combine the art and the music.
Speaker 8: So Neutron Dance became the very first motorized piece that
Speaker 8: I did. So I had I wanted to get the kick, sure,
Speaker 8: I'm on the record to trigger the movement. Couldn't figure
Speaker 8: that out though, So it was mainly my interpretations of
Speaker 8: what the songs were and I would cut out you know,
Speaker 8: people and buildings and everything would be moving. I did
Speaker 8: Neutron Dance that way. I then went back. I did
Speaker 8: Boogie Wonderland. I did what have I done to deserve this?
Speaker 8: And the biggest fan of my motorized art was James Brown. Really, yeah,
Speaker 8: that was and I have video of every inch of
Speaker 8: him ever, like being in my house.
Speaker 3: Because she said you had a story, because he was
Speaker 3: the reason that you started.
Speaker 8: Well, James, you know, I always collected memorabilia, and I
Speaker 8: loved black memorabilia, specifically late sixties, early seventies, massive afros,
Speaker 8: the fashions.
Speaker 4: Talk about what's what's in your Oh my god, it's
Speaker 4: unspeakable now.
Speaker 6: But yeah, on speaking, you need a trip to Willis Wonderland, that's.
Speaker 2: What you next.
Speaker 6: Elli, Uh, but you know, I wasn't originally, you know,
Speaker 6: I was.
Speaker 8: There were sambos in there, there were mammy's and James
Speaker 8: Brown went around my house. He asked me for a
Speaker 8: grocery bag. Oh yes, James gave him a Brown grocery bag.
Speaker 8: And now, but mostly my stuff was the massive afros,
Speaker 8: but there were Jemima's in there and other things. And
Speaker 8: he would go and he would pick it up and
Speaker 8: he'd hold it about four feet in the air, and
Speaker 8: then he'd go bing and he'd let.
Speaker 6: His hand go and you could hear it smashing in
Speaker 6: the bag. So I have the bag too. I have
Speaker 6: all the smashed pieces.
Speaker 2: So that's like an art piece you could make.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I know, I know. So uh.
Speaker 6: He was the one that really said this stuff is
Speaker 6: not cool.
Speaker 8: And but the rest of my stuff, he said, you
Speaker 8: have to keep collecting this because black people did not
Speaker 8: know these things were around. There wasn't enough money to
Speaker 8: distribute stuff. So if something was made in Detroit, it
Speaker 8: wasn't going to get past Cleveland. And very specifically a
Speaker 8: couple of games that I had, one called Slangling nineteen
Speaker 8: sixty nine made in Detroit. I think Irene Carter is
Speaker 8: the company at Black bingo. So instead of b I NGO,
Speaker 8: it's b L A C K and yeah. And instead
Speaker 8: of that middle free space, it's we are free people.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 8: And then instead of the numbers, it's Chitlin's Wo Funky
Speaker 8: Broadway Cadillac.
Speaker 4: Gold Tooth. I mean, amazing stuff it is. We're here
Speaker 4: right now from the Smithson.
Speaker 2: Have you talked to Smithsonian about some of your stuff?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: You know, You're like, you know, no, I'm I'm ready
Speaker 4: to talk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to make an introduction to Timothy and
Speaker 1: Burnside at the Smithsonian.
Speaker 4: Who.
Speaker 8: Well, wait, this is an unbelievable conversation because in twenty
Speaker 8: twenty I was supposed to have a pretty major exhibition
Speaker 8: of my collection and my work and how it worked together.
Speaker 4: And this morning before I came here.
Speaker 8: I got a thing that the CEO of the Childs
Speaker 8: Wright African American Museum, which is the second largest African
Speaker 8: American museum next to the Smithsonian now in Detroit.
Speaker 6: She resigned this morning. So there went the exhibition.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, yeah, as soon as we're done, have
Speaker 4: you been there?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 8: And I've got a couple of things because I know
Speaker 8: the color purple's there, earth wind and fires in there
Speaker 8: so I'm done.
Speaker 3: And they have a like mammy section and a sand
Speaker 3: boat explaining about this, so you would really yeah.
Speaker 6: Oh I would love it.
Speaker 8: But my stuff is all like one of my favorite
Speaker 8: things is it's a do it It's called the do
Speaker 8: it Yourself.
Speaker 4: Black Power coloring kit and.
Speaker 8: I love you, and all it is is a you know,
Speaker 8: you got a puple little paints and then you get
Speaker 8: a figure that starts out as a white.
Speaker 4: Man and you paint him black and.
Speaker 6: He's got his fist. That was sixty eight, I think
Speaker 6: sixty eight.
Speaker 4: I thought I was, Oh no, I.
Speaker 3: Mean and then like talk about the correlation between your
Speaker 3: house and Peewee's house.
Speaker 8: Well that people used to think that I did the set,
Speaker 8: which I didn't. We at that time were like inseparable.
Speaker 8: We were best friends, so we had very similar esthetic
Speaker 8: but I actually didn't have anything to do with that.
Speaker 8: I did, though, write the title song that we did
Speaker 8: as a duet to Big Adventure, But Danny.
Speaker 4: Elfman, who you know, did all the music.
Speaker 8: For that, said, ain't no one else doing the title song.
Speaker 8: But I do have that the duet between me and Pee.
Speaker 2: Wee, that's the circus one right, The second movie.
Speaker 4: Uh that No, that was Pee Wee's Big Top.
Speaker 2: I was a big Pee wee fan.
Speaker 4: It was Big Adventure was the first. Yeah, you wrote
Speaker 4: lyrics to that theme? Yes? And no no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: no no no that was Mark mothersbow all that because no,
Speaker 4: this music, it is awesome.
Speaker 6: Really yeah no, the only thing that came.
Speaker 4: I just figured you would wake up to that, but
Speaker 4: apparently you just unbelievable.
Speaker 6: That's Marks and Cydney Lauper singing.
Speaker 4: Okay, so no, you're talking about the theme to his television.
Speaker 6: Oh That's what I'm talking about about the theme to
Speaker 6: his movie.
Speaker 8: Okay, yeah, yeah, but the the duet did come out
Speaker 8: on Warner Brothers. They made five hundred picture discs and
Speaker 8: that's all. So So anyway, Greg filling games playing on
Speaker 8: it too.
Speaker 4: I have a question, since we're on your memorabilia, yeah stuff,
Speaker 4: what's your record collection?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 4: After all?
Speaker 8: You know, like I converted everything to digital because I
Speaker 8: couldn't stand schlepping everything around anymore. I still have my
Speaker 8: favorite favorite favorite albums, mostly Motown, but it's not I
Speaker 8: don't have it out though, but I have a lot.
Speaker 4: Of music memorabilia.
Speaker 8: So, but James Brown was the one who said to me,
Speaker 8: you have to keep collecting this stuff. You know, you
Speaker 8: could have a museum with the stuff that you have,
Speaker 8: because people don't know this.
Speaker 4: Stuff is in existence.
Speaker 6: So I you know, it was the Godfather saying collect act.
Speaker 6: So I just kept going.
Speaker 4: So you just collect any type of kitchen art or
Speaker 4: pop culture or everything.
Speaker 8: Well, it's very specifically the periods. I used to be
Speaker 8: most interested in the fifties. Now way more interested in sixties, seventies. Uh,
Speaker 8: kind of soul stuff, atomic stuff, Kitch stuff. The Kitch
Speaker 8: stuff didn't happen until later. I hated Kitch, but then
Speaker 8: I art directed.
Speaker 6: Why I just didn't it.
Speaker 8: Was too I was into like more like fantastic design,
Speaker 8: and Kitch kind of was open poker. No, I wasn't
Speaker 8: into that stuff, but then I art directed and production
Speaker 8: designed Julia Julie Brown, Yeahrown, Yeah, the Julie.
Speaker 4: Brown Show, which was the very first Downtown No the
Speaker 4: white one White there were ones. Yeah, yeah, I used
Speaker 4: to watch that show. No, she was good.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and it was it was the very first MTV
Speaker 8: clip show where someone was commenting on videos, so we
Speaker 8: would make fun you know of all the.
Speaker 6: The videos.
Speaker 8: Yes, yeah, and and and so that set had to
Speaker 8: be really kitchy and me and her, I remember we
Speaker 8: went to the Long Beach Swamp Meet and there was
Speaker 8: a painting of two clowns drinking a cup of coffee,
Speaker 8: and I thought, there's something hideous about this, but I
Speaker 8: knew it was right for her set and my deal
Speaker 8: because there was no budget. We would shoot ten shows
Speaker 8: in three days, and we did, like, you know, like
Speaker 8: every three months we would do another ten shows. And
Speaker 8: I we bought that painting and I just went I
Speaker 8: could feel it that I just had crossed a line.
Speaker 8: And then I went crazy because it became this whole
Speaker 8: new thing to collect, you know, so like I can
Speaker 8: hit her that black Power statuette part of my kitch collection,
Speaker 8: because they could have made him tan to start out with.
Speaker 8: They didn't need to make him like pure white.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: I see so a lot of stuff like that.
Speaker 8: Like I have the unbelievably great graphic on these pantyhose
Speaker 8: called Touch a Soul, and you know, it's this almost
Speaker 8: nude woman almost like she's praying and she's in the
Speaker 8: middle of like this you know, red green and black
Speaker 8: circle thing. But then the shade of the pantyhose is
Speaker 8: off black, which is not right right, you know. And
Speaker 8: the Supremes, you know, the Supremes had white bread out,
Speaker 8: so I've got the bread wrapper.
Speaker 4: White bread, and they got killed for it.
Speaker 8: I have Mary Wilson on film talking about how they
Speaker 8: just you know, it killed them because the pumpernickel raw.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't a choice they have made. They couldn't.
Speaker 6: I mean, I know, but literally Supremes white bread.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's un.
Speaker 3: Were you always the visual art piece? I want to
Speaker 3: say that we see today as far as wardrobe.
Speaker 8: Once I got on my own, once I started cutting
Speaker 8: my record in nineteen seventy two, is when the clothing,
Speaker 8: Oh so you were just I was yeah, before that,
Speaker 8: I was like, you know, what would a college girl wear?
Speaker 8: You know, like not expressive at all. And then someone
Speaker 8: took me to a thrift shop and my life changed.
Speaker 4: Wait for me forget understand what was the print story?
Speaker 8: So well, we've kind of ruined the impact of the
Speaker 8: story because we know who it is now. But there
Speaker 8: was this kid that always hung around earth Wind and
Speaker 8: Fire had their own label when I Am came out,
Speaker 8: called Arc, and there was this weird kid always hung
Speaker 8: around the office, didn't talk to anyone, but he was
Speaker 8: there one hundred percent of Yeah. And I.
Speaker 4: I had heard all of the I Am album complete,
Speaker 4: but I never.
Speaker 6: Heard it sequenced.
Speaker 8: So when I got the call come up Maurice's you
Speaker 8: know they're on the road. Go in Maurice's office, it
Speaker 8: was a.
Speaker 4: Reel to reel and you can hear the album sequence.
Speaker 8: I knew this was going to be an incredibly emotional
Speaker 8: thing for me because I knew this album was going
Speaker 8: to change my life.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm still on food stamps.
Speaker 4: At this time. Okay, So.
Speaker 6: I go in in the whole like a couple days before.
Speaker 8: I'm like so excited, and this is I'm going to
Speaker 8: be in Maurice's office when I have this moment to myself,
Speaker 8: I'm going to cry.
Speaker 6: It's going to be unbelievable.
Speaker 8: So I get up there and I'm closing the door
Speaker 8: and someone comes over and says, can't they used to
Speaker 8: call him the kid?
Speaker 4: Can the kid.
Speaker 6: Listen with you?
Speaker 8: And I thought, Shit, that's this weird kid and he
Speaker 8: never says anything, And so here's the real to reel.
Speaker 8: Here's the weird kid, maybe four feet back from the
Speaker 8: real to reel I'm back, like at Maurice's desk, so
Speaker 8: I'm maybe eight feet behind him, and I couldn't even
Speaker 8: concentrate on the record. I just kept looking at the
Speaker 8: guy going, fuck you, you know, what are you doing?
Speaker 4: To myself? Like, what are you doing in here? My moment?
Speaker 4: And then four months later, I Want to be your
Speaker 4: lover came out and I went, oh, my fucking god,
Speaker 4: it's Prince. Was there no small talker or anything? Nothing?
Speaker 4: Not a word.
Speaker 2: Did you'll ever circle back to each other?
Speaker 4: Never? No, not a word.
Speaker 8: But you know, there's my Prince story. I'm really good
Speaker 8: friends with Wendy though still.
Speaker 4: But the friends of the show, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know we there's so much that we missed.
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to know how fast this is gonna
Speaker 1: be the most obscure music question I asked of the day,
Speaker 1: how fast did it take you to write shopping for
Speaker 1: me to see?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 4: You are pulling them out? Oh wait, you think you're
Speaker 4: just on the show because they told you like he
Speaker 4: wanted history. I just didn't know it was you.
Speaker 8: Well, I didn't write it as fast as The fastest
Speaker 8: song I ever wrote was Neutron Dance.
Speaker 4: That was the fastest.
Speaker 6: That was fifty eight minutes, twenty eight for lyrics and
Speaker 6: thirty two or whatever.
Speaker 2: It is, no weed, How do you remember that?
Speaker 8: Because I did not want to write the song that
Speaker 8: was real. That was the first time I was in
Speaker 8: I had so many hits in a row and I
Speaker 8: had nothing, and it was at a point where I
Speaker 8: was miserable writing and really feeling like I had ruined
Speaker 8: my career.
Speaker 6: And uh, there was should I tell you the Neutron Dancer?
Speaker 4: Okay, that there was a movie called Streets of.
Speaker 2: Fire, yes, Diane Lane.
Speaker 8: But all they told me about this movie was that
Speaker 8: it was a handsome guy, cute girl and a black
Speaker 8: doop band and they're out of town. They're only ones
Speaker 8: to escape a nuclear holocaust. That's all they told at.
Speaker 4: I believe Streets of Fire was the first PG thirteen
Speaker 4: rated film. Yeah, this is where I can Dan Hartman.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well so this was that was the spot that
Speaker 8: it was written for. And it was Joel Silver's first.
Speaker 4: Movie too, okay as a director, right, yeah.
Speaker 8: As a producer, as a producer and anyway, so they
Speaker 8: said write this song. I didn't have any common evidence
Speaker 8: that I could write good anymore. My publisher put me
Speaker 8: with someone who had never written a song before. But
Speaker 8: they signed him because his brother had the biggest record
Speaker 8: of the year of the year before, which was Maniac. Yes, yes,
Speaker 8: but because he was Michael Simbello's little brother. So and
Speaker 8: I only found out that he had never written before
Speaker 8: like five minutes before he was coming over.
Speaker 4: And so when I, well, you're telling me that Danny
Speaker 4: Simbelo's entry into music, he's.
Speaker 1: Written a lot of shit that that was his first
Speaker 1: song was to dance. But you're saying to me that,
Speaker 1: like it was nepotism that got him in the door.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, he would have been the first to tell you
Speaker 6: that too.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Really, yeah, because his name just pops up everywhere
Speaker 4: the addition stuff.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Michael like one of my favorite collaborators ever, so
Speaker 8: is narda.
Speaker 4: But but Danny really unbelievable. It was just a nepotism move. Yes,
Speaker 4: that's crazy.
Speaker 8: And he had been in Stevie Wonders maybe seventeen at
Speaker 8: the time, and he had been in Stevie's band since
Speaker 8: he was fifteen. So the only thing I knew was
Speaker 8: that he could play okay, which was great for me
Speaker 8: because I can't play. So I put a timer on
Speaker 8: when he came over, because I said, I only have
Speaker 8: an hour, and I thought, and he came over and
Speaker 8: he had like he had like a little bag lunch
Speaker 8: and he had a hockey uniform on and he was sweating.
Speaker 6: It was just like the worst thing that could have
Speaker 6: happened to me.
Speaker 8: And uh and I knew we had to write for
Speaker 8: a doo wop band, so I just said to him,
Speaker 8: play the tritest fifties.
Speaker 4: Bass line that you could think of.
Speaker 8: And he immediately, you know, boom boom boom boom boom,
Speaker 8: bom bomb ba ba ba ba ba bum bum bum
Speaker 8: bum bomb. And I can sing a melody to anything.
Speaker 8: Start tapping those water bottles together. You'll have a song
Speaker 8: in thirty seconds. So uh we So I know the
Speaker 8: music was done in twenty eight and then we started
Speaker 8: on the lyric and I knew it had to have
Speaker 8: something to do with you know, it was a nuclear holocaust,
Speaker 8: so you know something. There's got to be like burning
Speaker 8: in there or exploding, you know something.
Speaker 1: And I let you to tell you the story because
Speaker 1: I'm like, what does this have to do with Beverly Hills,
Speaker 1: cop like, why, well, yeah, yeah, no, I get it.
Speaker 8: No, So we though the original title of Neutron Dance
Speaker 8: was Barbecue. I'm just burning on the barbacue. That was original,
Speaker 8: So I was, you know, this was a song we
Speaker 8: were writing. We weren't writing for a particular artist, so
Speaker 8: I it was very autobiographical because I just I felt like,
Speaker 8: you know, my career is over. What's happening in my life,
Speaker 8: and I knew I had to make a change. If
Speaker 8: I don't get off my ass and do something, it's
Speaker 8: all over. So and that's you know that lyric I
Speaker 8: don't want to stole and all that stuff. Well, there's
Speaker 8: something very exact about that line we wrote the first verse.
Speaker 8: I don't want to take it anymore. I'll just stay here,
Speaker 8: lock behind the door, just no time to stop it.
Speaker 8: Get away works hard to make it.
Speaker 6: Every day.
Speaker 8: I look out of my window and there are two
Speaker 8: kids picking the lock on my nineteen sixty two pink corvetor.
Speaker 6: So I race out of the house and I'm thinking,
Speaker 6: I got to get this kid out of here.
Speaker 4: This song is like a piece of shit.
Speaker 8: So I'm running out of the house into my driveway
Speaker 8: to chase the kids away, and I yelled back the.
Speaker 6: Line, someone stole my brand new Chevrolet, which.
Speaker 4: Is how how that happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they didn't steal it.
Speaker 8: You caught them, No, I caught it, and they were kids,
Speaker 8: so they ran away as soon as I got out there.
Speaker 8: And then by the time I was back because I'm
Speaker 8: just racing, It's like, why am I putting I'm into
Speaker 8: this song?
Speaker 4: My career is over? Who's this kid?
Speaker 8: So then I had in the rent is due. I
Speaker 8: got no place to stay, and so that song was finished.
Speaker 8: He was out of the house in fifty eight minutes.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, and handed it in. They rejected it, you.
Speaker 8: Know from the movie, which to me it was like
Speaker 8: this piece of shit song written in under an hour,
Speaker 8: so didn't surprise me. But my publisher really liked the song,
Speaker 8: got it to the Pointers. Pointers cut it, but it
Speaker 8: was they were at their height. They had already chosen
Speaker 8: five singles off this next album that was coming out.
Speaker 4: How'd you get past Richard Perry?
Speaker 8: I had nothing to do with that at that he
Speaker 8: was like, yeah, that was strict Like, yeah, that was
Speaker 8: strictly my My publisher did that. And anyway, Pointers cut it,
Speaker 8: and then I get a package in the mail that
Speaker 8: had a cassette and a letter from Jerry Bruckheimer.
Speaker 6: He's doing his second movie. They you know, need a
Speaker 6: song that sounds like the song that's on the cassette
Speaker 6: and it's Neutron Dance.
Speaker 2: Did he know you from Detroit?
Speaker 4: And he know?
Speaker 8: No? Okay no, But they certainly had to have known
Speaker 8: I was the writer of Neutron Dance and they're sending
Speaker 8: me this thing to copy, which they I knew they
Speaker 8: sent to every writer in LA because all my friends
Speaker 8: were calling me up and everyone knew, Oh it's Eddie
Speaker 8: Murphy that you know this is going to be hot. Yes,
Speaker 8: we're going to write a sound alike to Neutron Dance.
Speaker 4: So is that the process for most soundtracks, at least
Speaker 4: for beck then? Back then that sounds like this.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they put the temp music in, So this explains
Speaker 8: the yes, absolutely, So they sent him I want a
Speaker 8: new drug?
Speaker 4: Right? Yeah? I see.
Speaker 8: And anyway, so I got so sick of my friends
Speaker 8: telling me that they've ripped me off that I called
Speaker 8: Danny up and said come over, And so we stripped
Speaker 8: a Neutron Dance demo down to the drums, used all
Speaker 8: the same sounds, wrote an exact parallel lyric, and handed
Speaker 8: that song in Rejected for Beverly Hills Cop and three
Speaker 8: weeks before the movie came out, I found out that
Speaker 8: Jerry Bruckheimer had gone into his garbage can looking for
Speaker 8: a cassette to tape over put played the first few
Speaker 8: seconds of this song that he pulled out of the garbage.
Speaker 6: And it was Stirred Up.
Speaker 4: So stir it Up and Neutron.
Speaker 8: Yes, ye, listen to the lyric of stir it Up
Speaker 8: and listen to the lyric of Neutron dance.
Speaker 6: And they had they are the exact same song.
Speaker 4: I'm doing something I haven't done it alone.
Speaker 2: A story, Yes, it's yo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's how that, that's how those two.
Speaker 1: That's a crazy story I've heard since the Human Nature
Speaker 1: discovery for Quincy Jones.
Speaker 6: From Steve Picaro.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, yeah, the cassette was on auto what do
Speaker 1: you call it when it goes to SIDEB automatically?
Speaker 4: Yeah, whatever, It was on side A. Yeah, not from Steve,
Speaker 4: but from the other guys in the group. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: they were recording over his cassette and suddenly, yeah, like.
Speaker 8: From me and Steve wrote a song. Michael Jackson wanted
Speaker 8: a song like Human Nature, and we wrote a song.
Speaker 8: It was my first time working with him, and Steve
Speaker 8: was going to meet him in Las Vegas or something,
Speaker 8: and then Michael Jackson died. So there is a song
Speaker 8: on the new latest Toto album called The Little Things
Speaker 8: that Steve actually sings the lead on that was supposed
Speaker 8: to be the Human Natures Sound Alike that went to
Speaker 8: Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2: I gotta make a note said with the name of
Speaker 2: this again.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so, uh, lots of stories like that.
Speaker 4: Where are we at right now?
Speaker 3: Like, I mean, we passed, but we didn't even get
Speaker 3: to the Color Purple and let's get to the parties
Speaker 3: and the Jennifer Lewis best eason.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well she's one of my best friends and we
Speaker 6: need to show him.
Speaker 8: Just from last week her doing leading a little sing
Speaker 8: along with her book Chanting in order to sell the
Speaker 8: book at.
Speaker 3: Her house Color Purple with a full like choreography, but
Speaker 3: in the back doing a choreography too.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a minute a minute.
Speaker 8: What happens if Jennifer Lewis cannot come when I throw
Speaker 8: a party?
Speaker 4: I changed the day?
Speaker 8: What I changed the day? Because she ends up hosting
Speaker 8: the parties with me all the time.
Speaker 1: Jennifer is, Uh, she's she's knowingly responsible for the success
Speaker 1: I'm having with my current book right now. I heard
Speaker 1: usually right before, I didn't want to do an audiobook.
Speaker 1: This is like my fourth book, and I'd like try
Speaker 1: to uh stave off the publisher for making me do
Speaker 1: an audio.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So once I gave in, then I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, let me do some research because what I
Speaker 1: don't want to bore people with my voice. And someone
Speaker 1: recommended to me listen to how she tells the story
Speaker 1: on her audiobook, and I listened to her.
Speaker 4: You gotta listen to get the audiobook of Jennifer Lewis's
Speaker 4: and Another Mother Black.
Speaker 1: She's the most compelling storyteller, Like she uses her voice inflections.
Speaker 1: So that's the reason why I decided, like, yo, well,
Speaker 1: I don't have the gift of like then.
Speaker 4: I told oh, he's gonna yeah, Like I didn't have that,
Speaker 4: So I figured, like, what's my version of Jennifer Lewis. Oh,
Speaker 4: I'll do skits.
Speaker 2: So like I put, oh, you reacted to actual Well.
Speaker 4: I have like actors and stuff like people like rereading
Speaker 4: and Steve Is. Who are you Steve, I'm Paul McCartney. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Steve is Barbara so like, I owe that to Jennifer
Speaker 4: Luis's face. He's so proud.
Speaker 8: But you know, Jennifer Lewis has a similar type story
Speaker 8: of being inspired by someone in order to get a
Speaker 8: movie part that she got when she went up for
Speaker 8: what's the Disney movie that she's in? Mister No No,
Speaker 8: And the character is Mama Oda. It's one of the
Speaker 8: Disney movies like yes, okay six seven years ago.
Speaker 2: She's been in a lot of shoots.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And she didn't know what voice to use for
Speaker 4: the character. And she owns a lot of my.
Speaker 2: Art that I've done and beautiful by the way.
Speaker 4: Don't you.
Speaker 8: In nineteen ninety nine, I took on an alter ego
Speaker 8: named Bubbles, the artist who I manage, and Jennifer started
Speaker 8: buying up bubbles stuff.
Speaker 6: Ru Paul and Lily Tomlin own the most.
Speaker 4: They battle each other.
Speaker 2: Are you saying? Have they ever been in the rooms?
Speaker 2: All these people been in the room.
Speaker 4: All together?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, all die.
Speaker 8: No, it wasn't cars. It was like the Princess, Prince,
Speaker 8: Princess and the Princess. Okay, that's it. So anyway, So
Speaker 8: one of the paintings of mine that she owns by
Speaker 8: Bubbles the artist who I manage but is actually me.
Speaker 4: Is a thing of moms maybly.
Speaker 8: So Jennifer goes to the audition and she has no
Speaker 8: idea what to do, what voice to do, and she
Speaker 8: said she flashed on the painting of Moms. And so
Speaker 8: if you listen to her character in that movie, it
Speaker 8: is Mom's maybe.
Speaker 3: She goes, yeah, I used to listen to tapes of
Speaker 3: moms maybe my dad driving a school.
Speaker 2: Like incredible, incredible, And you painted her?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I loved moms. Man, Well, bubbles painted her.
Speaker 2: I mean bubbles.
Speaker 4: I just managed, right, Okay, it would it would actually uh,
Speaker 4: I'd be remiss if I didn't mention obviously. Well, okay,
Speaker 4: I'm certain that you're going to say, yeah, I wrote
Speaker 4: it in five minutes, didn't mean anything to me, just
Speaker 4: and it just became one of the biggest theme songs.
Speaker 4: When did you actually write remembrance I'll be there for you.
Speaker 6: Re brands, brands, I'm sorry that was written in nineteen
Speaker 6: ninety four.
Speaker 8: I did not really didn't want to be a songwriter
Speaker 8: anymore because I had gotten onto the internet in nineteen
Speaker 8: ninety one, came up with a concept for social Yeah yeah,
Speaker 8: social network In nineteen ninety two, my CEO became Mark
Speaker 8: Cuban and no one understood.
Speaker 1: So explain the concept because back then it was the
Speaker 1: super Information Highway.
Speaker 4: Lest Yeah.
Speaker 8: I wanted to take anything that could be done in
Speaker 8: an online environment, which was not a lot, and there
Speaker 8: was maybe one of each of these things, but you
Speaker 8: could sell things, you could play games, you could do email,
Speaker 8: you know, it was very limited stuff. I wanted to
Speaker 8: take everything, combine it together in one place, which wasn't done.
Speaker 4: Then if you shopped for the one car.
Speaker 8: That maybe was online, you'd have to take ten minutes,
Speaker 8: log off, then go to where you would you know,
Speaker 8: play a game. You were always in this black hole
Speaker 8: of cyberspace. So I wanted to combine everything. I'm the
Speaker 8: first one ever that said the Internet is a social place,
Speaker 8: that this is about people connecting to each other. So
Speaker 8: there could be collaborations and there could be friendships, and
Speaker 8: there could be all this kind of stuff. And at
Speaker 8: the same time, you could sell them cars, and they
Speaker 8: could collaborate with each other, and they could get information,
Speaker 8: they could do anything.
Speaker 4: And we're going to create this.
Speaker 8: Fictional community inhabited by these fictional characters who are going
Speaker 8: to be the guides into cyberspace for people who in
Speaker 8: nineteen ninety two did not understand what cyberspace was. And
Speaker 8: I prototyped it throughout the nineties, but we were just
Speaker 8: too early. No one knew what we were talking.
Speaker 3: As Mark Zuckerberg, No, we were likely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when you discovered Friendster.
Speaker 8: And and well that I had a ton of resentment
Speaker 8: that took me forever to get over because all those
Speaker 8: they ignored the issues that we couldn't solve and therefore
Speaker 8: didn't do it.
Speaker 6: What happens to copyrights? What about privacy?
Speaker 8: And we just didn't know the answer to it, you know,
Speaker 8: still damn But so I was interested in that, and
Speaker 8: I still had a publishing deal to you know, a
Speaker 8: quota to fulfill, and quotas had never been I'd never
Speaker 8: had one before, but it never would have been a
Speaker 8: problem in the old days. But now I'm interested in
Speaker 8: something that's nonlinear, that's totally interactive, and I'm not interested
Speaker 8: in a three minute song that goes from here to
Speaker 8: here and the artist is the only one that has
Speaker 8: to say in it. I'm interested in what is music
Speaker 8: now that anyone from anywhere can impact what it is
Speaker 8: you're creating. So every time I thought I'd written enough songs,
Speaker 8: the publisher would say, no, you know you haven't. Finally
Speaker 8: got down to iota seventh of a song and they said,
Speaker 8: there's this TV show coming out.
Speaker 6: No one thinks it's going to be a hit. Write
Speaker 6: this year out of your deal.
Speaker 4: So shit.
Speaker 8: So the music Michael Skloff had written already, he was
Speaker 8: married to one of the producers, right, and gave me
Speaker 8: the song. I thought, this is the whitest thing I
Speaker 8: have ever heard in my life. It's going to ruin
Speaker 8: my career. But everyone said, don't worry, because who's going
Speaker 8: to hear this?
Speaker 6: No one's ever gonna hear it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And so I handed it in and it blew
Speaker 8: up instantly, And so it was a forty five second
Speaker 8: thing that a disc jockey in Nashville made a cassette
Speaker 8: of and played it back to back for forty five minutes.
Speaker 8: Rembrands got it because they were the only band signed
Speaker 8: to Warner Brothers who were.
Speaker 6: In LA at that time that weren't on tour.
Speaker 8: So no one, yeah, no one associated with this song
Speaker 8: really wanted anything to do with it. And it became
Speaker 8: the biggest airplay record in.
Speaker 6: Nineteen ninety four. It was unbelievable. So for me, that
Speaker 6: was the official end of my publishing deal.
Speaker 8: So it was perceived that I'm going out on a
Speaker 8: high note, when in fact I was like barely crawling,
Speaker 8: you know, yeah, because I wanted to do this cyberspace.
Speaker 6: Thing and no one knew what I was talking about.
Speaker 4: So so that was just whatever.
Speaker 6: It was a gift, total gift.
Speaker 4: Okay. So in the ending, can you confirm or not
Speaker 4: confirmed for me that one song can change your life,
Speaker 4: because usually movies, movies and TV gives you this impression
Speaker 4: like that one hit single you could just live off that.
Speaker 4: Oh that's not true. Yeah, that's not true at all.
Speaker 1: It's like if if you only wrote September, well, if
Speaker 1: I had to only the modest life, yeah, if I yes,
Speaker 1: if I had only written simptem, I do live a
Speaker 1: modest life because I'm a self financed artist.
Speaker 6: So any of these other ideas, I get.
Speaker 8: It's that song and a few others that are carrying
Speaker 8: the whole thing, you know along. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 8: I think if you wrote it by yourself, if you
Speaker 8: produced it, if you sang it, you know, may and
Speaker 8: it was a gigantic kit that remained a classic. You
Speaker 8: could probably live a comfortable life, but those things happening
Speaker 8: at the same time are so rare.
Speaker 4: Uh that yeah, Michael Jackson, I know that. Yeah, No,
Speaker 4: I know that's so you got to you gotta write it,
Speaker 4: you gotta.
Speaker 6: Just you gotta do everything. And I was never in
Speaker 6: that position.
Speaker 4: You know, You're always a collaborator and one fourth of them.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and you know the publishing, like if you write
Speaker 8: for TV that that publishing is gone, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So and an Earth Wind and Fire those were my
Speaker 8: first songs, so I got less of a writer's share
Speaker 8: than I should have.
Speaker 4: And my publishing was owned by A and M. So
Speaker 4: you know, everyone gets their cut. Oh yeah, lunch money,
Speaker 4: I see. Yeah, so okay, yeah, I see, Okay.
Speaker 1: Gun to your Head the three songs that you're the proudest.
Speaker 1: So I'm really salty. There're so we didn't talk about
Speaker 1: all American girls.
Speaker 2: We didn't talk about Well, she's going to invite us
Speaker 2: to her house, so maybe because we can invite Jennifer Lewis. Yes,
Speaker 2: oh my god, yeah, I'm getting emotional.
Speaker 4: To go.
Speaker 2: I would like to do that.
Speaker 4: Ever, she lives really close.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll meet you.
Speaker 4: Got to make it happen. Okay, yeah you're out there, so.
Speaker 2: No, but we're gonna do it this year.
Speaker 4: We're ready, ready. Well, I thank you, thank you. This
Speaker 4: is wow. I could forever. Well.
Speaker 8: I'm so impressed with what you know. I always knew
Speaker 8: that you knew a lot of stuff, but you were
Speaker 8: digging them out from the bottom.
Speaker 1: I'm really well in Boss Bill and Fantigolo and Unpaid Bill.
Speaker 1: You missed eight Newsy today, Like I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: the least knowledgeable of the six of us on the show.
Speaker 4: So wow, that's some bullshit.
Speaker 2: He don't feel like that.
Speaker 4: I mean, if Bill and Fante were here, I barely
Speaker 4: get a word of it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Fante would take Yeah he would have too.
Speaker 1: I mean they'd be freaking out over you know. Oh God,
Speaker 1: you wrote I should have loved you. Oh yeah, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: That should have been a continent.
Speaker 4: The bass player was Yeah, and Randy was seventeen years old. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Randy Jackson.
Speaker 2: We have him on the show coming up to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was seventeen years old when he first played that,
Speaker 1: and he sounds so much like Bernard Edwards anyway.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I think that was conscious too. I think
Speaker 6: we were talking about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it felt like she grew. Yeah, all right, anyway,
Speaker 4: I thank you very much for coming on, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: He will legendary status right here.
Speaker 4: Sorry, riding Hall of Fame twenty eighteen fame. We've we've
Speaker 4: lost to our yeah world, So it's nice knowing you.
Speaker 4: You by anyway, This is use of course, Love Supreme
Speaker 4: the next go round. I'll see.
Speaker 8: H h h h.
Speaker 4: Court.
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