Speaker 1: Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. What's Up?
Speaker 2: This is Sugar Steve from questlof Supreme. Anybody who knows
Speaker 2: this podcast is well aware that our interviews can last
Speaker 2: for hours, so often we split them into two parts.
Speaker 2: It also gives listeners a suspenseful reason to come back
Speaker 2: next week or check their podcast feed for more episodes.
Speaker 2: Back in twenty twenty two, we sat down with la
Speaker 2: Reid for what became a rare three part interview.
Speaker 1: Part one of La.
Speaker 2: Read's three part QLs recalls his childhood in Cincinnati, playing
Speaker 2: the Indianapolis club circuit, working with Midnight Star, and meeting Babyface.
Speaker 2: This classic episode was taped in July twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Please rate, like, and subscribe to this on your podcast feeds,
Speaker 2: check back for new episodes, and follow our new YouTube
Speaker 2: page at QLs.
Speaker 1: You know good and well, you might as well get
Speaker 1: some water. Dog. I'm gonna Memphis for all I can,
Speaker 1: and you need some snacks or something. Bro. All right,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, I was already told at the top
Speaker 1: of the show, make.
Speaker 3: This quick, quick on this one.
Speaker 1: I'm going all right, ladies, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is another episode of Quest Love Supreme. How are you guys?
Speaker 1: That's nice anyway, if you know me based on the show,
Speaker 1: you you know there's a particular type of interview that
Speaker 1: I that we all love the nerd out on, and
Speaker 1: this is no exception, I guess today. You know he
Speaker 1: is former super executive chairman CEO of Epic Records, former
Speaker 1: chairman CEO of def Jam, former president and CEO of Arista,
Speaker 1: and also his own uh in print record not to mention, oh,
Speaker 1: former award winning songwriter and producer and former drummer and
Speaker 1: probably the most moisturized band of all time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not to mention.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, y'all know me. It's gonna take forty
Speaker 1: five minutes once I started reading off the accolades. Look
Speaker 1: you already know it, man, like you literally know it.
Speaker 1: Two occasions. This guy a girlfriend, This guy Ronnie rock
Speaker 1: with you, don't be cruel. This guy into the road,
Speaker 1: this guy I love should have brought to you home
Speaker 1: last night, this guy not to mention the Axie sign.
Speaker 1: Name him Tony Brason, Damien dam Goodie Mom, Jermaine Jackson,
Speaker 1: us outcasts. I can name them all, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: We finally have him. I feel like this is the
Speaker 1: sequel to the baby Face episode. It really is.
Speaker 4: Nah, this is the baby fake, the Baby Safe episode
Speaker 4: that was breaking bad.
Speaker 1: This is better call Sault exactly. There you go, yo.
Speaker 1: This this guy is so legend that he even dropped
Speaker 1: me from the label and took me back on my birthday. Yo.
Speaker 1: I got dropped the morning of my birthday and came
Speaker 1: back the night of my birthday.
Speaker 3: Is gonna be a long one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, please welcome l A Reed, thank you, thank you. Welcome.
Speaker 3: That's accurate, but well.
Speaker 1: You know, dramatic. Richard Nichols was so maybe rich was
Speaker 1: just using a Jedi mind trick on me to get
Speaker 1: that I'm done. Rich woke me up for my birthday
Speaker 1: and six in the morning, like a mirror, the brooch
Speaker 1: just got dropped off. Def jam. I was like no, literally,
Speaker 1: I was all depressed. And then like I we met,
Speaker 1: didn't we? I called you up and I literally called
Speaker 1: you up and I left the message. I was like,
Speaker 1: come on, dog, it's my birthday.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: Ah my god, that's my favorite story of all. Look,
Speaker 1: every every artist has a CEO executive story, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad that's my story because it could have been with
Speaker 1: you hanging me out the window of my ankles or something,
Speaker 1: or or any any other unsavory CEO story. How are you?
Speaker 1: How are you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm good, man, I'm good. I'm entertained already. This is
Speaker 3: already fun.
Speaker 5: So la where right now? Where are you speaking to
Speaker 5: us from? I am in Los Angeles in the studio.
Speaker 5: We have a studio in Studio City. And I'm I'm
Speaker 5: I'm I'm in the studio, all right, my favorite place.
Speaker 1: Dare we ask you what you're doing in the studio?
Speaker 1: Is this top secret? No?
Speaker 5: You know, I'm always digging and just I love the
Speaker 5: idea of being around people. And I just have a
Speaker 5: lot of writing camps and some writers and producers come
Speaker 5: by meet with people. I'm just always looking for music,
Speaker 5: you know. But right now I'm actually working on Usher.
Speaker 1: And it's so good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is camp Usher time, Camp Usher. That's right.
Speaker 1: Usher's tiny desk performance is probably a pleasant, well needed
Speaker 1: jolt in the right direction of reminding people. And I'm
Speaker 1: also I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that. Uh,
Speaker 1: The versus Comedy Hour also played a part.
Speaker 3: I missed it.
Speaker 1: I heard about it. Comedy show history.
Speaker 6: Needles to say happy to hear there may be a
Speaker 6: Chris and Usher versus that is the dream four hours,
Speaker 6: six hours, seven hours.
Speaker 5: I think sometimes people should set those out. That's my opinion.
Speaker 5: I don't think that. I don't think they're for everybody.
Speaker 5: I think because I don't know.
Speaker 1: The way that initially came to us, I wish it
Speaker 1: would have stayed there, which was mainly about like two
Speaker 1: producers working on beats at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: like the Buster and what Alchemists was the first one
Speaker 1: or was it not the Buster Alchemist? The just Blaze,
Speaker 1: Swizz and.
Speaker 3: Swizz and ten.
Speaker 1: That was first. Yeah, just Blaze and the Alchemists.
Speaker 4: I remember, if we're talking about verses, how versus started,
Speaker 4: that was.
Speaker 1: Well, I meant the the pre versus there was like
Speaker 1: there was this thing where like just Blaze and Alchemist
Speaker 1: would do this back and forth thing. You don't remember
Speaker 1: remember the yeah yeah right. But for me, I was
Speaker 1: kind of hoping that that was more of the modus
Speaker 1: operandi where it wasn't about you know, winner take all.
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, once the pandemic started, people
Speaker 1: just want to entertainment, and that seemed like a logical
Speaker 1: way to keep people entertained, of course with the best
Speaker 1: aless talent, but eventually you're gonna run out of a
Speaker 1: list talent, right, and then what do you do.
Speaker 6: It was supposed to be the classics too, It was
Speaker 6: supposed to be like up into you know, a certain
Speaker 6: age kind of era range. I felt like too, and
Speaker 6: they kind.
Speaker 1: Of well, now, just think it's finding somebody that has
Speaker 1: had ten to fifteen notable hits, right, which is that
Speaker 1: that was going to run dry quickly, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 5: And so that's funny because I don't always like to
Speaker 5: bring light to it. But the truth is, we're hard
Speaker 5: pressed to find artists with fifteen to twenty hits sacks.
Speaker 1: That's hard, it is, and those that have it aren't
Speaker 1: with us anymore, right, And so the well is, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're in we're in a place right now where it's
Speaker 1: diminished returns, and you know, you gotta let people in
Speaker 1: the door. Like lately, I will say, for my own group,
Speaker 1: you know, we've been having this sort of conversation with
Speaker 1: the powers that be at least the last five to
Speaker 1: six years, like you have to let us in the door,
Speaker 1: Like who the hell is left? You know what? I mean,
Speaker 1: so it's sort of like I'm not saying that there
Speaker 1: was a begrudging all right, come in, you know, like
Speaker 1: that sort of thing.
Speaker 6: But could battle, y'all. That's kind of hard. That's hard anyway,
Speaker 6: that's a.
Speaker 1: We're not even built like that. Yeah, we we did.
Speaker 1: We did get in, we did get an offer once.
Speaker 1: I guess I could mention it now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, please tell everybody, because you're totally the.
Speaker 1: Roots and Goodie Mob had a versus on the table
Speaker 1: that we weren't able to do and really wow, But
Speaker 1: you know, I mean that.
Speaker 3: Is I get it, though, I actually get it. As
Speaker 3: odd as it is, I kind of get it.
Speaker 1: Well, I meant, but you guys don't have rivals.
Speaker 5: The truth is you don't have rivals because we don't
Speaker 5: live in an erab for there's no black bands. First
Speaker 5: of all, you're an only black band that and and forever,
Speaker 5: so you you would actually have to go back and
Speaker 5: battle like like cameos.
Speaker 1: I would have actually we talked to our last episode
Speaker 1: was with Larry. Amazing episode, by the way. No, I
Speaker 1: think probably if it were to come down to that,
Speaker 1: we probably would do like d'angela did, which is like
Speaker 1: have roots and a whole bunch of friends come by
Speaker 1: and so fun. Anyway, Jo, we're wasting time here, La.
Speaker 1: What was your very first musical memory.
Speaker 3: Sh first musical memory ever, like.
Speaker 1: Ever, your first thought of music? What like what it
Speaker 1: might be?
Speaker 5: It might be a little hazy, but I think that
Speaker 5: it was growing up Cincinnati, Ohio in the kitchen, small kitchen,
Speaker 5: transistor radio in the window, and I think it was
Speaker 5: It's My Party, and I cry if I want to. Yes,
Speaker 5: I think it was that because for some reason I
Speaker 5: remember that name, Quincy Jones. Don't know why, but like
Speaker 5: I knew that name as a baby and it never left,
Speaker 5: you know. I think it was that, or it was
Speaker 5: something from Motown, right, like one of those dancing in
Speaker 5: the streets.
Speaker 3: So I can't exactly. I was very young.
Speaker 5: But the one that, the one that got me though,
Speaker 5: the one that, like the life changing moment, was when
Speaker 5: I heard give the drummer some and and cold sweat
Speaker 5: James Brown. That moment, like that was that the world stopped.
Speaker 5: So speaking of Cincinnati. Oh, by the way, uh case
Speaker 5: our listeners don't know. Not many people knew that Quincy
Speaker 5: Jones produced Leslie Gores. It's My Party.
Speaker 1: That's his very first, very first hit as a as
Speaker 1: a pop producer. I was going to say that I noticed,
Speaker 1: at least from what Bootsie told me and just from
Speaker 1: observing that anyone who's in proximity of King Records and
Speaker 1: their whole operation had their life changed, either as someone
Speaker 1: that works inside of King Records or the studio or
Speaker 1: the factory, or someone like Bouotie Collins did hung in
Speaker 1: the alley way and just hoped maybe one day we'll
Speaker 1: get used or something like that. Yep. But because there
Speaker 1: is a five year of five to ten year age
Speaker 1: discrepancy of you and Boucie's generation, right, how did the
Speaker 1: James Brown Ohio effect? And Plus this also explains why
Speaker 1: Ohio is the funk capital of the United States, because
Speaker 1: I mean, basically, King Records moved their operations to Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: and basically at a time period in which the ripple
Speaker 1: effects started happening even in other cities like Funk just
Speaker 1: spread throughout Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland, been all over. So just
Speaker 1: as a ten year old, were you aware of James
Speaker 1: Brown's presence in the city.
Speaker 5: I feel like I didn't know it officially, but I
Speaker 5: felt the presence. Like the first concenter ever went to
Speaker 5: was a James Brown concert at the Cincinnati Convention Center,
Speaker 5: and I hung outside and I met mace O Parker
Speaker 5: and that that was a big deal for me, like
Speaker 5: literally walking down the street outside the convention Center. And
Speaker 5: also King Records was like a few doors down from
Speaker 5: like my karate school as a kid, right, so I
Speaker 5: would go to karate school, but when I wait on
Speaker 5: the bus, right, take the bus home afterwards, and I
Speaker 5: knew that that was King Records. So I never saw
Speaker 5: a soul, but I would just stare at it. I
Speaker 5: felt drawn to it. But then as I got like
Speaker 5: slightly older, all the musicians in Cincinnati were all so
Speaker 5: impacted by Bootsy and James Brown, but more Bootsy to
Speaker 5: be honest, right, James was like the godfather of soul,
Speaker 5: but Bootsy was our local superstar. So everything that Bootsy did,
Speaker 5: we all, you know, aspired to do. Bootsy holds his
Speaker 5: base this way, so you hold your.
Speaker 3: Base like Bootsy.
Speaker 5: Right, Bootsy wears these kind of shoes or he has
Speaker 5: these Everything was about whatever boots he did was the magic,
Speaker 5: you know, and he was like a god to us.
Speaker 1: James Brown needed Booty more than Boots. He needed James
Speaker 1: even though Bosi needed that guidance, right, Yeah, James Brown
Speaker 1: needed that validation of you know, the next generation respecting him.
Speaker 1: And this was the first song super bad, very first
Speaker 1: song with sex Machine. Sex Machine was boosy, very first one. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you got it. There's there's an amazing all right. So
Speaker 1: they did that song in two takes and there's a
Speaker 1: there's a really amazing rare dialogue for James, Like if
Speaker 1: you listen to James's outtakes, normally it's sarcasm or I
Speaker 1: mean not like mean spirited, but like if they mess
Speaker 1: up or whatever, you'll you'll you'll you'll hear them like
Speaker 1: chass Tis the engineer or something like that. But when
Speaker 1: they do the second take of sex Machine, there's like
Speaker 1: a forty five minute conversation of James just like you
Speaker 1: hear him walking in the studio and tell them like
Speaker 1: like being encouraging almost, like which is rare for James Brown.
Speaker 1: But he's like obviously knows like these these six seventeen
Speaker 1: eighteen year old kids are really really scared right now,
Speaker 1: and he's just oh no, you got it, man, like
Speaker 1: you can do it. And da da d D like,
Speaker 1: which is oh wow, compared to the rest of what
Speaker 1: James does, like on the other takes or whatnot. Like,
Speaker 1: it's almost like he knew that he was dealing with children,
Speaker 1: you know what I.
Speaker 3: Right, So, yeahs some sensitivity and he was, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 5: So you're a drummer sort No, you're you're a drummer.
Speaker 5: I played the drums.
Speaker 1: Well okay, well, first of all, your home situation. What
Speaker 1: was your domestic home situation then, like, was your family
Speaker 1: musically inclined? Your parents?
Speaker 5: And my immediate family meaning my mother, my sisters. We
Speaker 5: had a stepfather there. I never knew my father, but
Speaker 5: we had a stepfather there. Occasionally he was there, I'm
Speaker 5: being me and he was there. But they played music
Speaker 5: because they had poker games all the time, right, So
Speaker 5: they always played music and it was always kind of
Speaker 5: a The weekends were festive. And eventually I became.
Speaker 3: Like the guy to play the records at a very.
Speaker 5: Young age, right, And I could play what I wanted
Speaker 5: to play, you know, So I played slat in the
Speaker 5: family stone, or I played war or I played you know,
Speaker 5: whatever I wanted to listen to at the time. And
Speaker 5: James Brown and you know King Floyd.
Speaker 3: I remember that song.
Speaker 6: Was it a situation where you where they say, let
Speaker 6: me see what you got the first record?
Speaker 5: No, it's just like the record player would stop and
Speaker 5: they're all and they're all into the game. So I
Speaker 5: just walk over and play what I wanted to play
Speaker 5: and no one said anything.
Speaker 1: Okay, So question for them for that music. And at
Speaker 1: that time, would that be the equivalent of say, like
Speaker 1: my nephew or my guy kids putting trap music on?
Speaker 1: When say the adults in the room when he hears
Speaker 1: something older, yeah, more Ray Charles.
Speaker 5: So like they love Bobby Womack. They just like, you
Speaker 5: know communications album. I think it was like they they
Speaker 5: like they like things that felt more like the blues,
Speaker 5: more soul, blues and and funk.
Speaker 3: Was the music of the kids?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah for your people from Ohio.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody's from Ohio. Yeah. So I have an uncle.
Speaker 3: I had an uncle. He passed away, and he's a drummer.
Speaker 5: He is a jazz drummer, right, And I remember him
Speaker 5: taking me to jam sessions with him when I was
Speaker 5: very very young, and he set up a set of
Speaker 5: drums in his uh in his apartment and he lived
Speaker 5: in an apartment, so you couldn't like, you couldn't really play.
Speaker 5: So I was just playing with my fingers, but I
Speaker 5: was playing James Brown.
Speaker 3: That's the best I could. And he was like, that's
Speaker 3: not music. Oh man, that's not music. Yeah, that's music.
Speaker 5: Jazz guy, a jazz guy like that.
Speaker 3: Okay, I got it.
Speaker 5: So I knew early on, like, okay, I see, I
Speaker 5: see what the purists are thinking here, you know, versus.
Speaker 3: That was commercial. James Brown was commercial. And by the way,
Speaker 3: your music, your real music college can ask your question.
Speaker 3: So did Miles Davis? Now who ripped off? Who?
Speaker 1: But h so what? Yo? So what Miles was first?
Speaker 1: Pee Wee pee Wee Ellis? Yes, yeah, I went on
Speaker 1: record to say that you know all those and actually
Speaker 1: all those guys start alongside your uncle, as in, I'm
Speaker 1: a jazz musician, but let me just make some money
Speaker 1: on the side and play this pop stuff that I
Speaker 1: don't care about, and then I'll have a jazz career.
Speaker 1: And basically, Pee Wee Ellis would basically steal jazz arrangements
Speaker 1: that he liked and incorporated James Brown. So the whole
Speaker 1: cold Sweat is essentially what.
Speaker 3: Right? Right? Okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and so that's that's that's weird for me
Speaker 1: because like I know, and that's the thing where even today,
Speaker 1: like just to fight my urge to not say something
Speaker 1: derogatory to you know, another generation about their music. You know,
Speaker 1: like for instance, like trap is about to be old
Speaker 1: school and now drill is replacing that and right, and
Speaker 1: so the temptation to not roll my eyes in the
Speaker 1: air right is heavy, right, And I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be the guy that's just like performatively co
Speaker 1: signing everything just to make me look young and me
Speaker 1: look hip. Right. But you know, it's it's weird how
Speaker 1: the timeline of music lasts, whereas something could be totally
Speaker 1: foreign to you but seems like so innovative to the
Speaker 1: next generation.
Speaker 6: It's funny because they both share regional commonality too, because
Speaker 6: a lot of New York is jazz musicians. Because my
Speaker 6: dad is eighty something, he was a jazz musician. They
Speaker 6: thought James Brown was country, just like how some New
Speaker 6: Yorkers may think about trap and you know other music.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, definitely that How old were you when
Speaker 1: you felt that you really developed your drumming skills?
Speaker 5: I was probably about fifteen and I actually liked the story.
Speaker 3: I was in a choir class.
Speaker 5: Interestingly enough, I was the only one in the choir
Speaker 5: class that didn't have to sing.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: My music teacher was incredible. His name was Terry Brown,
Speaker 5: and he was the choir teacher. And he had a
Speaker 5: class that all the talented people in school were in
Speaker 5: this class, all the singers, all the you know, the performers,
Speaker 5: the guys that knew how to do the harmony. And
Speaker 5: I was just drawn to the class and he liked me,
Speaker 5: and he let me hang out in the class although
Speaker 5: I wasn't in the choir and I ended up like
Speaker 5: standing there for hours and hours day. But he had
Speaker 5: a group outside of school called the Mystics, and it
Speaker 5: was a three man singing group. It was Terry Brown,
Speaker 5: it was Gerald Brown, and I don't remember the third
Speaker 5: guy's name. And one day I'm walking down the hall.
Speaker 5: I'm probably I'm about fifteen years old. I always carried
Speaker 5: my sticks in my pocket. I bet you can relate
Speaker 5: to that, right, I just always kept them with me, right,
Speaker 5: And he stopped me in the hall and he said, hey,
Speaker 5: you have you have a set of drums.
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, what are you doing this? Weekend.
Speaker 5: He said, I want you to audition. Bring your drums
Speaker 5: to Mary Junior High School. I forgot the time, and
Speaker 5: I want you to audition. So I walk in and
Speaker 5: there's three other two other drummers. I'm sorry, there's three total.
Speaker 5: There's two other drummers and there's one guy.
Speaker 3: This guy he has he looked like he looked like
Speaker 3: he was going to kill it. He had a beautiful,
Speaker 3: big afro.
Speaker 5: He had a double bassed drum and the most beautiful
Speaker 5: kit in the world. And I came in with like
Speaker 5: this little ricky dick that's what we call it. I
Speaker 5: don't know if you guys know I came in with.
Speaker 5: I came in with the rinky dink kit right, with
Speaker 5: like one crash symbol, one ride symbol, and some my
Speaker 5: hats one time, and this dude intimidated me. But when
Speaker 5: he started playing, he wasn't good, and I was like, oh, and.
Speaker 3: We were playing.
Speaker 5: I remember the audition like it was yesterday, and we
Speaker 5: were playing the Ojays.
Speaker 3: The Ojas had.
Speaker 5: Backstabbers nine hundred and ninety two arguments. Yeah right right,
Speaker 5: that's that's Philly music, right, And but it was my turn,
Speaker 5: Like I knew those songs cold, and so I aced
Speaker 5: it and I got the gig.
Speaker 3: So that weekend.
Speaker 5: The following weekend, he took me to Chicago and we played,
Speaker 5: uh the weekend gig at a place called the Skyway.
Speaker 3: And I was fifteen years old.
Speaker 1: So you were just allowed to leave the crib.
Speaker 5: My mom was okay with it, Like I talked to her.
Speaker 5: She trusted my teacher, and we drove to Chicago from Cincinnati,
Speaker 5: did two shows, and came back and had about seventy
Speaker 5: five dollars. Mom was okay with that real money. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 5: that was pretty good money. That was seriously some good money.
Speaker 1: That was awesome money.
Speaker 3: And that was the beginning that your daddy paid a
Speaker 3: mere He paid what.
Speaker 1: Was my rate In nineteen eighty I made one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a night. So at the end of the week
Speaker 1: I make six hundred dollars. Wow, I was rich for
Speaker 1: like an elementary school kid. I want too many records.
Speaker 1: By the time I became his band leader, you had
Speaker 1: me somewhere in between. I think in the eighty three
Speaker 1: I started at one hundred and fifty no, one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five bucks a show, and then by the
Speaker 1: time the very last show before I I you know,
Speaker 1: the roots went to live in London. I think what
Speaker 1: was I making man? Maybe like three seventy five. So yeah,
Speaker 1: but like you know, four days with my dad. You know,
Speaker 1: that made me very popular lunchtime. At lunchtime, you buy
Speaker 1: me a cheese steak a bit like.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 1: All right. So in Cincinnati, are there any other notable
Speaker 1: musicians or songwriters or your fellow crew that we would
Speaker 1: know that was coming up with you at the time.
Speaker 3: Most of them you won't know.
Speaker 5: But the most important are the members of the group
Speaker 5: Midnight Star, And that would be Reggie Callaway and Vincent
Speaker 5: Callaway and Melvin Gentry and Bo Watson and Belinda Lips
Speaker 5: London and yeah, and they were serious. They were very serious,
Speaker 5: and they were the first ones. Oh and there's also
Speaker 5: my friend Toughie who played he's a keyboard.
Speaker 3: Player and he played with Zapp.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, right, and he sung he sung the song
Speaker 5: all right, It's going to be all right?
Speaker 3: He sung lead on that. Right.
Speaker 5: So, so there was the Midnight Star crew and Roger
Speaker 5: and the Human Body or Roger and Novels or Zapp
Speaker 5: or however you might know them. That was that Crew
Speaker 5: and the and we always felt that we felt the
Speaker 5: energy of Parliament Funkadelic somehow, some way, Like I remember
Speaker 5: going to Club Diplomat and it was a bunch of
Speaker 5: musicians that looked like they might be in Parliament right right,
Speaker 5: and they smelled like they might be in Parliament, and.
Speaker 3: It was broken and they had a lot of groups.
Speaker 5: There was one called the Over the Hill Gang, but
Speaker 5: they all it was a whole funk movement. I just
Speaker 5: remember like it felt like they were on some tour
Speaker 5: because it was so many of these guys and they
Speaker 5: just kind of stopped at that club played that night,
Speaker 5: so we were around them all.
Speaker 1: But the most.
Speaker 5: Important and meaningful were Midnight Star and those are the
Speaker 5: guys that we actually wrote with and they produced our
Speaker 5: first album with my band and kind of taught us
Speaker 5: the art of songwriting.
Speaker 1: Walk us through the process of what it took for
Speaker 1: a band to get local gigs. Are you localized as
Speaker 1: in Cincinnati only, or do you have it so that
Speaker 1: you can go out of state and those types of things.
Speaker 5: We were Cincinnati for the for the most part, and
Speaker 5: then Indianapolis, which was one hundred miles away, and it
Speaker 5: was kind of a strange phenomenon when when we started,
Speaker 5: when we were ready to play in the club, music
Speaker 5: started to change.
Speaker 3: And this was probably like.
Speaker 5: Seventy seven something like that, seventy six seventy seven, and
Speaker 5: Cincinnati was slightly more progressive than like Indianapolis, which was,
Speaker 5: like I said, one hundred miles away and disco was
Speaker 5: taking over. So there were no gigs in Cincinnati. I mean,
Speaker 5: we played the clubs in Cincinnati, like there were like
Speaker 5: four or five clubs that we would play weekends. But
Speaker 5: somebody turned me on to a club called the Zodiac
Speaker 5: Lounge in Indianapolis.
Speaker 3: This was life changing.
Speaker 5: I drive, I drive to Indianapolis with my band members,
Speaker 5: go to this club, see the club owner, and they
Speaker 5: hired us to play six nights a week. That didn't
Speaker 5: happen in Cincinnati. So now we're doing six nights a week,
Speaker 5: four shows per night, like four forty five minute sets
Speaker 5: per night, six nights a week night.
Speaker 1: And you're doing one hundred miles each each.
Speaker 5: Well, we literally ended up moving there. We got an
Speaker 5: apartment there. Okay, we got the gig, went back, got
Speaker 5: our gear, came back, stayed in the hotel for a
Speaker 5: couple of nights. Really bad cheap hotel. I forgot what
Speaker 5: it was called. Maybe it was the Rego eight something
Speaker 5: like that, right, or the Motel six You're in trouble, Yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 5: it was those. So we got a little apartment and
Speaker 5: we ended up staying there for three or four, about
Speaker 5: four years, playing clubs, and it went from one club
Speaker 5: to the next and all over the city. And that's
Speaker 5: where we really kind of learned.
Speaker 1: So what was it about that particular environment that was
Speaker 1: a jackpop moment as opposed to you know, the city
Speaker 1: that we would expect right wide, open door of music
Speaker 1: to come from.
Speaker 5: The difference was entertainment nightly, right, and so that meant
Speaker 5: it was no longer a weekend thing.
Speaker 3: That it wasn't.
Speaker 5: It was which weekends could that could be hobby even
Speaker 5: though we were serious, that could be deean hobby, whereas
Speaker 5: six nights a week, that's your job.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you're saying before seventy seven, a Monday night
Speaker 1: party somewhere wasn't a thing. Thursday night party wasn't the thing.
Speaker 1: Only Friday Saturdays and.
Speaker 5: Sunday Saturday, Friday Saturday for the most part, right, and
Speaker 5: then and then there might be an occasional wedding fashion
Speaker 5: show something like that.
Speaker 3: But but for the clubs were only weekends.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: And we went to Indianapolis and it was like it's
Speaker 5: like seven or eight clubs that had entertainment every night
Speaker 5: and all the bands were competing. And that's when I
Speaker 5: met some That's when I realized that there was a
Speaker 5: different caliber of musicians. Like in Cincinnati, everybody was funk.
Speaker 5: We were all funk musicians and some people could you know,
Speaker 5: maybe jazz influenced, maybe a little blues influence, but we
Speaker 5: were all funk. When I went to Indianapolis, which is
Speaker 5: where Babyface is from, and Reggie Griffin you might know
Speaker 5: Reggie Griffin and Rayferl Griffin his brother who's like this
Speaker 5: incredible fusion drummer, right, and it was just a it
Speaker 5: was an entire community of really really gifted musicians. I
Speaker 5: realized then that I wasn't long for drumming, right. They
Speaker 5: put us to shame. It was insane.
Speaker 1: The thing is, I would think that if you're there
Speaker 1: for the specific duty or task to make people dance
Speaker 1: intricate arrangements, would that matter. I mean, unless you're doing
Speaker 1: unless you're trying to do like get Away by Earthwood
Speaker 1: and fire or something, I mean, right, and also what's
Speaker 1: the rehearsal regiment like, and are you guys able to
Speaker 1: nail every song that comes down the path?
Speaker 5: It's cover songs, right, obviously it's all cover songs, so
Speaker 5: you know, you know, you learn all the Rick James
Speaker 5: songs or whatever is how you know. And we would
Speaker 5: do that in the daytime in the basement, you know,
Speaker 5: or or at the club, you know, when we lived
Speaker 5: in the apartment, we would do it at the club
Speaker 5: during the day. Eventually we got a small house and
Speaker 5: we had a basement that we could rehearse in and
Speaker 5: try to record. But yeah, it was still all you're right,
Speaker 5: it was about dancing. But we have four sets, so
Speaker 5: the first set you could do whatever you wanted to
Speaker 5: do because the club wasn't crowded yet, so that's when
Speaker 5: you could do experimental stuff and try out a new
Speaker 5: song that you may have written or or pretend to
Speaker 5: be returned to forever.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, you're gonna say return to ever
Speaker 1: in like five seconds? Yeah, you know, right, I knew,
Speaker 1: I just knew it.
Speaker 3: We played at it, you know, we never play.
Speaker 1: All right, explain one thing though, because I think for
Speaker 1: every musician, they're either Team weather Report or Team Turned
Speaker 1: to Forever. Now that's great in my real life. In
Speaker 1: my real life, I've okay, So amongst a certain cowbird
Speaker 1: musician friends I have, I've I've gone on record to
Speaker 1: say that, you know, I feel like a bad Philadelphia
Speaker 1: because I'm not exactly on the Stanley Clark band wagen
Speaker 1: as I should be right as in Philadelphia, like the
Speaker 1: song of his I love the Most is so on Him,
Speaker 1: which is the heaven sent joint with Howard Hewitt. But
Speaker 1: what was it about return to Because I was always
Speaker 1: Team weather Report? But what was it about return to
Speaker 1: Forever that had you guys' attention? Because literally everyone your age,
Speaker 1: anyone born the latter half of the fifties beginning of
Speaker 1: the sixties, there's a love for return to Forever that
Speaker 1: you know. And no, no, no, I'm not even asking
Speaker 1: as adversarial, because yes, I Lenny White, I love Chick Carea.
Speaker 1: But I just never had someone explain to me what
Speaker 1: was it about return to Forever?
Speaker 3: So it was first it was Chick Corea.
Speaker 5: It really was chick that that led that because the
Speaker 5: way he composed it felt like obviously it was jazz fusion,
Speaker 5: but there was this classical element.
Speaker 3: And it was this classical element and.
Speaker 5: The way that they would play, the way that they
Speaker 5: would like play riffs together, you know, like everybody sort
Speaker 5: of playing the same riff. You know, nobody else played
Speaker 5: like that like uh. And they found a way to
Speaker 5: do that and be and groove and be in the groove.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: And I was I like Stanley Clark, but not like
Speaker 5: Jacko Pastory. It's like not even close for me personally,
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna get in trouble for this, but I'm
Speaker 5: I'm team weather Reporting. That conversation like easy, easily and
Speaker 5: Joe Zawana was way more soulful than like than Chick Korea.
Speaker 5: So I mean he did mercy, mercy, mercy for cannaball.
Speaker 5: I mean, this boy, this man is no joke. So
Speaker 5: I'm really probably a Weather Report guy, except that Lenny White,
Speaker 5: you know, was just so bad man.
Speaker 3: You know. But if I had to pick, I couldn't take.
Speaker 3: I couldn't. I'm glad I don't have to.
Speaker 1: You said you mentioned having a band, but what was
Speaker 1: the band's name.
Speaker 3: My band was called Essence.
Speaker 5: My band was called Pure Essence at first, and and
Speaker 5: pure essence was it was some kind of take on Stylistically,
Speaker 5: it was somewhere between sliding the family Stone, earth Wind
Speaker 5: and Fire with the love of fusion music, not the ability,
Speaker 5: but the love.
Speaker 1: That was that was a great way to smooth it out.
Speaker 1: All right. So let's let's move forward to your your
Speaker 1: in Indianapolis now or you're in Indiana right. How did
Speaker 1: you How did you meet Babyface?
Speaker 5: So he had a band. He was in a band
Speaker 5: called Manchild. Yeah, and they were really good and they
Speaker 5: were like stars.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 5: Everybody in the group was like looked like they was
Speaker 5: six foot and and and weighed one hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 5: They looked like just like everybody in the band looked
Speaker 5: like Mick Jagger. I mean, there's a fox start. Look
Speaker 5: at these guys. Man and Kenny was in the band.
Speaker 5: It's a guitar player. I didn't meet them when we
Speaker 5: when we were in I didn't meet him when we
Speaker 5: had the band Essence, my first band. I literally met
Speaker 5: him after we started the group the deal, right, because
Speaker 5: a quick story was we sort of ran my band
Speaker 5: Essence kind of ran out of gas. We got became complacent,
Speaker 5: we didn't renew we didn't refresh, and eventually we kind
Speaker 5: of got kicked off the circuit. And this club owner,
Speaker 5: I got to tell you this. This club owner tell
Speaker 5: me his name is Walt Manning. He owns a club
Speaker 5: called the Night Flight. The night Flight is the hippies
Speaker 5: club in Indianapolis. On one level it's a DJ and
Speaker 5: on the lower level live band. And the deal was,
Speaker 5: if you can get people to come from the disco downstairs,
Speaker 5: that's how you make your money. To give us a
Speaker 5: small advance. But we would get the door and it'd
Speaker 5: be like a thousand people upstairs and they play off
Speaker 5: the wall. They were playing down the summers. They were
Speaker 5: playing like disco. It was in full full till and
Speaker 5: we were downstairs and like fifteen people might come down.
Speaker 5: Half of them would like the people that we knew.
Speaker 5: And we had a couple of weeks off. I went
Speaker 5: to the club and asked the club owner, walked if
Speaker 5: I could get in it, if I can get one
Speaker 5: hundred dollars advance for my band so I could like
Speaker 5: pay the rent and give my guy some food. And
Speaker 5: he says, there ain't gonna be no advance because you're fired.
Speaker 5: And let me tell you why you fired. You fired
Speaker 5: because you guys suck your drop. You're boring. No one
Speaker 5: comes downstairs. You need to read news, you need to
Speaker 5: rip off a sleeve or die your hair or do something,
Speaker 5: because all of this, this socially conscious thing you're doing
Speaker 5: is completely boring. You're out of step with the times.
Speaker 5: And I mean, he just read me man.
Speaker 3: Wow. I was like, WHOA, what year was this?
Speaker 5: This would have been seventy nine, eighties something like that.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm like whoa.
Speaker 1: And y'all were still hanging on to like got to
Speaker 1: give it up, like songs from like nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 5: Yeah We're still, Yeah, we're there, and and early Earth
Speaker 5: Winning Fire like like the wrong Earth Winning Fire songs,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 3: And this guy just read man.
Speaker 5: And then he goes into cash redster and he pulls
Speaker 5: one hundred dollar bill out and he throws it on
Speaker 5: the counter. He says, I'm gonna give you one hundred
Speaker 5: dollar bill, but I never want to see you again.
Speaker 5: And you don't owe me the hundred but you owe
Speaker 5: it to somebody, so pay it forward and get the hell.
Speaker 3: Out of here. And fired us. He was drunk and
Speaker 3: he was an alcoholic, right.
Speaker 1: Oh, I was going to say, that's the best firing
Speaker 1: I ever heard. I need to use that shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he gave me.
Speaker 5: So I got the hundred dollars now and I go
Speaker 5: back and I think about what the man is saying,
Speaker 5: and I immediately knew he was right. I immediately knew
Speaker 5: that we had somewhere slipped, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: so I need to bust this thing up and start
Speaker 5: all over. And that's how we started the deal, right
Speaker 5: was So my bass player, his name is Ko, He's
Speaker 5: my best friend. Also, we let everybody else go. We said,
Speaker 5: you know, Ko, Ko plays on all the records, Face
Speaker 5: and Whitney and Bobby and all that shit. But he's
Speaker 5: really incredible, really really talented. So he and I started
Speaker 5: the band. We first let everybody go, say, guys, we're
Speaker 5: going to end the band and it's just not working.
Speaker 3: It's run its course.
Speaker 5: So we went back to our hometown of Cincinnati, and
Speaker 5: he and I just sett in either his mom's house
Speaker 5: or my mom's house, and we just kind of thought about, like,
Speaker 5: who are the most talented kids that we went to
Speaker 5: school with that also had the presence of a star.
Speaker 3: Like we started thinking about it differently.
Speaker 5: We started thinking about it beyond like who could be
Speaker 5: beyond talent? But that combination of talent and start them,
Speaker 5: that's when that really sort of first came into my consciousness.
Speaker 5: And so we picked a couple of guys that we
Speaker 5: thought were really good and we started the band, the Deal.
Speaker 3: We went back to Indianapolis.
Speaker 5: Well, we sort of getting kicked off at the circuit
Speaker 5: and I went to the club owner. I said, just
Speaker 5: give us a week, give us one week in the club,
Speaker 5: and I'll show you because they lost confidence in us.
Speaker 5: And that week, oh, I left something important out. The
Speaker 5: deal was a Prince copy band.
Speaker 6: A copy band, not a cover, but just a copy.
Speaker 5: Stylistically like, we wanted to look like them, we wanted
Speaker 5: to play like them.
Speaker 3: We did some of their songs, we did some of
Speaker 3: the time, some of.
Speaker 5: The Prince right, and we were completely like Minneapolis kids
Speaker 5: all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: Right, So can I ask is you know? And it's
Speaker 1: rare for me to ask someone who's actually of the
Speaker 1: age at the time it's happening. But when he came
Speaker 1: out like was it totally a this guy is just
Speaker 1: of a different ilk than everyone else.
Speaker 5: It was so obvious, Like I didn't even know whether
Speaker 5: this records or hits or not. I didn't really look
Speaker 5: at charts and all this stuff, right, but it was
Speaker 5: so obvious that it was him and I was, and
Speaker 5: also so Bootsy co signed it. I was looking at
Speaker 5: black Beat magazine. I don't know, I forgot to know that.
Speaker 3: Young he.
Speaker 4: Said.
Speaker 5: Bootsy said Prince is next. He said it in a magazine,
Speaker 5: and I.
Speaker 3: Was like, damn. I kind of thought so.
Speaker 5: But when he said it, that was like the validation, right,
Speaker 5: and there was no there was no turning back.
Speaker 3: Prince was the Prince was the king.
Speaker 1: I grew up an environment where he was taboo and
Speaker 1: you weren't not even you weren't allowed to. Every adult
Speaker 1: I knew hated Prince, right, So that just made it
Speaker 1: even more like, all right, well let me see what
Speaker 1: they're talking about. But I've just never been in an
Speaker 1: environment with someone who is an adult or of the
Speaker 1: age like teld the story of them seeing it and
Speaker 1: being like, yo, I like this.
Speaker 6: That's because you come from older music too, Because my
Speaker 6: mother loves fucking Prince.
Speaker 3: As soon as he popped out, Oh my mom told
Speaker 3: me don't play that in her house.
Speaker 1: Really, everyone thought Prince was the devil yo.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she's a don't play them because he had a
Speaker 5: song called Ancestors Everything is said to be and she's like,
Speaker 5: you will not play that in my house.
Speaker 1: Time out you, all right? So when Dirty Mind comes out,
Speaker 1: Now here's the weird thing. I mean, when four You
Speaker 1: came out, you know, he was in right on magazine
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, and I have a sister who's
Speaker 1: slightly older than me, so her and her high school
Speaker 1: girlfriends were bored. And then you know, when the second
Speaker 1: Galm came out with I Want to Be a Lover
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, they were bored. Now the thing
Speaker 1: is when Dirty Mind came out, especially in Philadelphia, I
Speaker 1: swear to you maybe I heard Uptown once on the radio,
Speaker 1: right and besides right on magazine, I would have never
Speaker 1: known what Dirty Mind was. So it's almost as if
Speaker 1: Dirty Mind never came out, and we went right to
Speaker 1: the time and controversy and I didn't even catch I
Speaker 1: didn't catch up on Dirty Mind until after Purple Rain,
Speaker 1: when then it was like, all right, you got to
Speaker 1: be completest and get everything. But Philly radio was not
Speaker 1: playing anything off of Dirty Mind. And I think by then,
Speaker 1: like my sisters love of that type. You know, it
Speaker 1: just sort of waned a little bit. So, as far
Speaker 1: as I knew, he just disappeared all of nineteen eighty. Wow,
Speaker 1: So you're saying that when Dirty Mind came out in
Speaker 1: real time, Oh my god, it was guys got it
Speaker 1: and totally understood and got.
Speaker 5: It everything about it, the way they dressed, everything, they
Speaker 5: talked about, party up and had and all these songs
Speaker 5: that we were deep, deep deep into prints, like deep
Speaker 5: into it and just thought he was the greatest thing ever.
Speaker 1: Like in my mind, it was a flop and nobody
Speaker 1: was with it, right He quickly.
Speaker 3: Crazy recovered, So we didn't. You know what's crazy is.
Speaker 5: At that time we were so into Prince that we
Speaker 5: didn't judge whether something was a success or not because
Speaker 5: we were just so blown away by his First of all,
Speaker 5: he was playing everything and and and doing all that
Speaker 5: was that was as far as I knew, that was unusual.
Speaker 5: And he was on this sort of punk thing, right,
Speaker 5: and that was he was.
Speaker 3: He was borrowing from new.
Speaker 5: Wave and and incorporating it into this sort of funk thing.
Speaker 3: He was just an original. It felt like an original
Speaker 3: to me. Was he?
Speaker 5: So was it done in a way because I also
Speaker 5: know that, you know, Rick kind of had a missed
Speaker 5: with or a miss with the Guard of Love record,
Speaker 5: which I mean, I don't know if Big Time really
Speaker 5: could have saved that record, but he was really Rick
Speaker 5: James was trying to like really make a statement like
Speaker 5: here's my my star moment and.
Speaker 1: Really made a pop album.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And what's weird is I can't wait to get lee
Speaker 1: Roy Burgess on the show because if you listen to
Speaker 1: the intro of Big Time, you can clearly hear that edit, like,
Speaker 1: I know, the Leleroy Burgess part of Big Time versus
Speaker 1: Rick's portion, which is basically I see Leroy Burgess adding
Speaker 1: that it's like an eight bar piano intro that's clearly
Speaker 1: not Rick James, right, and then they slice splice the
Speaker 1: rest of the song to it. But I don't know
Speaker 1: for me, was was Rick?
Speaker 3: Not?
Speaker 1: Like in your mind, what was Rick James? Because he
Speaker 1: too was trying to establish pump punk and all that stuff.
Speaker 5: Rick was a hit maker, right, Rick had the hits,
Speaker 5: you know, Mary Jane and you and I and he
Speaker 5: had the hits, but he didn't know to start him
Speaker 5: to us, right, He was actually a hit maker before
Speaker 5: Prince was, right, but we didn't focus on him.
Speaker 3: I don't know why.
Speaker 5: In Cincinnati, Indianapolis, the local bands all played.
Speaker 3: Rick James songs everybody.
Speaker 5: Some people played them better than others, but that was
Speaker 5: in every local band in their set.
Speaker 1: But you didn't look at it as innovative as I.
Speaker 5: Think back on it, it was, But at that moment
Speaker 5: I didn't think so. I thought it was just another
Speaker 5: guy making hits. I just didn't I've never focused on it.
Speaker 5: It was years later that I looked back on it
Speaker 5: and said, wait a minute, this guy's insane, right, you know,
Speaker 5: this guy wrote square biz like. This guy's like insanely talented.
Speaker 5: Didn't really know it at the time. This didn't quite
Speaker 5: catch it because there was something about Prince that just
Speaker 5: appealed to us more.
Speaker 3: And you know what, I think it was like in Cincinnati.
Speaker 5: We heard black music, but we also listened to rock, right,
Speaker 5: We listened to a lot of rock music on the radio,
Speaker 5: like and so I think that that presence of punk
Speaker 5: rock and that presence of rock and that presence of
Speaker 5: funk that blend Prince. Prince kind of did all of
Speaker 5: that as one artist. Uh So, something about that that
Speaker 5: really appealed to us.
Speaker 1: Wait and now, now I have to ask your audiences
Speaker 1: were they receptive to it as well? Because this is
Speaker 1: also Middle America, it's not exactly New York. How are
Speaker 1: they adapting to.
Speaker 6: Because y'all had the eyeliner too, right, I thought, Baby, say,
Speaker 6: y'all committed, like, no, we.
Speaker 3: Went all the way. I'll tell you, we went all
Speaker 3: the way.
Speaker 1: His word glam not glam breed.
Speaker 3: That we were breathed.
Speaker 5: You a breed, which minute the new the new breed,
Speaker 5: the new breed? Right we were We were our generations
Speaker 5: version of whatever hip hop might have represented. Like we were,
Speaker 5: but except you had to be really bold and daring
Speaker 5: and audacious and brave to pull it off because you
Speaker 5: know you're going to be criticized by everybody on a
Speaker 5: musician level, on a human level, right, people are gonna
Speaker 5: question your sexuality everything. Right, You're putting a lot at
Speaker 5: risk here to be a part of the movement. So
Speaker 5: we went all the way. Eyeliner, the Jerry Curl, everything,
Speaker 5: you know, the makeup. We we went crazy with it.
Speaker 5: But but you know what's crazy is we didn't We
Speaker 5: didn't even audition for our record label.
Speaker 3: We never met our record label.
Speaker 5: We literally sent a photograph and a demo of two songs,
Speaker 5: body Talk, three songs Body Talk, a song called just
Speaker 5: My Luck their Face wrote, and a song called I Surrender.
Speaker 5: We literally sent three songs and a photograph and we
Speaker 5: got signed to dig Griffy.
Speaker 3: No, we just we gave it to a man.
Speaker 5: We had a manager, we shared a manager with Midnight
Speaker 5: Star's name was Pablo Davis.
Speaker 3: And he went to turn In.
Speaker 5: He went to Solar to turn in and no parking
Speaker 5: on the dance floor, which was nice, big album, and
Speaker 5: so we caught it. We caught a tail wind because
Speaker 5: in that meeting he said, Okay, I also have this
Speaker 5: man at a Cincinnati called the Deal and he shows
Speaker 5: them the photo, plays them the demo and we got
Speaker 5: a record deal.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what was on the demo talk.
Speaker 3: Just my Luck?
Speaker 1: And so the Body Talk that is the demo? Is
Speaker 1: that the version we know? Or did you guys?
Speaker 3: The recorded version is a little bit better.
Speaker 5: It's a little bit better, like uh yeah, because you'd
Speaker 5: appreciate this. The demo was all the Oberheim drum machine, right,
Speaker 5: and then not that one, No, the first that was
Speaker 5: one called the d X, the d M d m X, Yes, right, okay,
Speaker 5: and like it was looked like an Oberheim keyboard, and
Speaker 5: so that the the demo version was purely that the
Speaker 5: the recording had like real high hats and real crash.
Speaker 3: That's the only difference. But it made it sound. It
Speaker 3: sounded better.
Speaker 1: Damn. I would like to hear that one, you know.
Speaker 3: What I mean, Like you know that the d MS was.
Speaker 5: The real heart was like it's a whole different sound, right,
Speaker 5: and and and it moved differently.
Speaker 1: You know, so you kind of skipped apart. Okay, how
Speaker 1: did that version of the deal wind up being that
Speaker 1: version of the deal with all the members that we know?
Speaker 3: Because baby yeah, I was trying to get back to
Speaker 3: how I met face.
Speaker 5: So so that band is playing the clubs and you know,
Speaker 5: unlike my first band, pure essence, Uh, the deal is
Speaker 5: packing them, man, people are coming like this whole edge
Speaker 5: that we had and this androgyny that we seemed to have,
Speaker 5: and this music was, uh, it was a sensation, a
Speaker 5: little bit a local sensation. And we went from having
Speaker 5: fifteen people in the room to like one hundred people
Speaker 5: and one hundred and ten hundred and fifteen hundred and
Speaker 5: twenty like and we start having lines around it was
Speaker 5: incredible that we had.
Speaker 3: We were a local success.
Speaker 5: If that had been the Internet, we would have been trending,
Speaker 5: like you know, we had a little buzz. So one
Speaker 5: night I've met face Kenny at the time, and he
Speaker 5: came to watch our band and his manager introduced me
Speaker 5: to him. All I remember is us looking at each
Speaker 5: other saying hi. And then fast forward a few months later,
Speaker 5: a keyboard player friend of mine called and said, hey, man,
Speaker 5: Kenny Edmans wants to join your band.
Speaker 3: And I said, Nah, he's not breed enough.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: I was like, nah, he ain't got the thing.
Speaker 5: You know, he's like regular, he's normal, you know, you know, No,
Speaker 5: he didn't have and so I literally passed on it.
Speaker 3: And then.
Speaker 5: Midnight Star I hired their keyboard player, Bo Watson. I
Speaker 5: didn't hire, I asked him to come in and play
Speaker 5: a session for us because somebody paid for a session
Speaker 5: for the deal to record and I needed a keyboard player.
Speaker 5: So I called Bo Watson, who had known from the
Speaker 5: Indianapolis music circuit, and Bow came over and he listened
Speaker 5: and he played on the record with us, and he
Speaker 5: went back and told everybody in his bad like these
Speaker 5: guys are onto something. So the next day the manager comes,
Speaker 5: Reggie Callaway, everybody comes and hears us, and they say, well,
Speaker 5: we love what you guys are doing. We want to
Speaker 5: sign you. We want to sign you to our company
Speaker 5: called mid Star Productions. I was like, Okay, this sounds good,
Speaker 5: this seems this is a little bit better than playing
Speaker 5: at the club. Started liking this, So I go to
Speaker 5: the studio one night to visit them. They were recording,
Speaker 5: and there's this guy. It's dark, he's in the booth
Speaker 5: and I can't see the guy, but he's singing this
Speaker 5: song called play another slow jam, this time make it Sweet.
Speaker 5: And he's singing it. I'm like, who is this boy
Speaker 5: with this voice? Just like this tender voice, like sounded
Speaker 5: so good. He comes out of the booth as Kenny Edmunds,
Speaker 5: except he has got a trench coat, he's got the
Speaker 5: Jerry curR.
Speaker 3: I made his breath. He's completely breathed, and I'm like, Yo.
Speaker 5: This is the dude I just said he couldn't joined
Speaker 5: the band, and I mean he now he is.
Speaker 3: He suited up.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, and the most gifted of anybody I've
Speaker 5: ever met. I never met anybody that gifted, right, that
Speaker 5: could really like write a song and make a demo
Speaker 5: and do all the parts and sing in the background,
Speaker 5: and and the lyrics.
Speaker 3: Were like like really poetry, I know. Let anybody like him.
Speaker 1: Was a raincoat and some underwear and the.
Speaker 5: Jerry girl, Yes I had glasses.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: That was it, man, And that's how we that's how
Speaker 5: that version of the band. So I asked him to
Speaker 5: join the band, and uh, he said, what will I do?
Speaker 5: I said, well, I'd like you to be the guitar player,
Speaker 5: keyboard player and and be a writer and like co produced. Damn,
Speaker 5: but you can't sing because we have to lead singers.
Speaker 5: And he was like okay.
Speaker 3: So we went.
Speaker 5: We went, made all our demos, got a recording contract
Speaker 5: with Solo Records, and uh, he didn't sing on the
Speaker 5: first album.
Speaker 3: Wow, that changed.
Speaker 1: That was a flex? Was that you said that?
Speaker 6: When he said okay, you know, in the back of
Speaker 6: his mind was like you'll be back.
Speaker 3: He was already set on doing a solo album.
Speaker 5: Honestly, even though he was in our band, he was
Speaker 5: already in his mind, I'm going to be a solo artist.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: So look, I mean we've had everyone on the show,
Speaker 1: including non Solar signees. One of y'all are going to
Speaker 1: tell me a real damn story about grif All right, man,
Speaker 1: but I got you.
Speaker 3: Ask the ques, come on, talk to me, talk to
Speaker 3: what was about? What was outside?
Speaker 1: We outside? First of all, you're you're you were in Indiana.
Speaker 1: You're eventually gonna have to go to Los Angeles. Talk
Speaker 1: about the move to that. But this is the thing,
Speaker 1: is I keep hearing like these nearest sub night stories
Speaker 1: of don't mess with Dick Griffy. What was Dick Griffy like?
Speaker 5: So the first time I met him, my first phone
Speaker 5: call after we put our record out, put out Body
Speaker 5: Talk and it's starting to climb the charts, and he
Speaker 5: calls our house. I never met the man, he said,
Speaker 5: whoever answer, He says, let me speak to Antonio. That's
Speaker 5: how he talked. By the way, I can imitate him
Speaker 5: really good. So I pick up the phone. Antonio, Dick Griffy,
Speaker 5: the record that Body Talk, the records a smash, right,
Speaker 5: and I just wanted to welcome you to the label.
Speaker 5: Everything was like kind of right.
Speaker 3: So I went.
Speaker 5: So after that, fast forward, I go to LA and
Speaker 5: I meet him and I go into his office with
Speaker 5: Reggie Callaway because we just mixed our album, went to
Speaker 5: turn it in and I meet him and him, but
Speaker 5: I was asided.
Speaker 3: I was just like the kid in the band.
Speaker 5: It was Reggie Callaway and Dick Griffy's meeting, and Dick
Speaker 5: said he wanted certain things to happen on the record,
Speaker 5: and Reggie was like, no, we're not doing that.
Speaker 3: So I immediately saw you.
Speaker 1: Give me an idea of what his idea of what?
Speaker 5: What did he want? I don't remember what he wanted, like,
Speaker 5: I don't remember, but he.
Speaker 1: Was giving creative advice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, creative advice. It was really creative, very like he's yes,
Speaker 3: ok he was.
Speaker 1: But more than in that CEO way of that's a hit,
Speaker 1: that's not a hit. What do you say, like the
Speaker 1: vocals it too loud, or I don't like those drums, or.
Speaker 5: More like this is a hit versus or you should
Speaker 5: try this producer, or you should try this songwriter, or
Speaker 5: you know, putting Leon Silvers with Chalamar or like that
Speaker 5: kind of stuff. Okay, Yeah, he was good. He was
Speaker 5: really good. So so my first real encounter, my first
Speaker 5: real encounter was first album comes out, second album. It's
Speaker 5: time to make the second album, and we make it.
Speaker 5: We make the album in Cincinnati, in Columbus, Ohio, the studio,
Speaker 5: and we sent demos into Dick Griffy and he liked
Speaker 5: some stuff, some stuff. He questioned. He had a particular
Speaker 5: fondness for Kenny because Kenny would sing on demos and
Speaker 5: he was like, he thought he was really incredible. So
Speaker 5: the first, my first encounter was this song called Sweet
Speaker 5: November that Babyface did for the deal, right, and how.
Speaker 1: M did that? First?
Speaker 5: I forgot yeah, yeah, okay, And so it's on the
Speaker 5: demo and Dick Griffy hears it. He says, who is
Speaker 5: that singing Sweet November? I said, that's Kenny. I want
Speaker 5: that on the album. I said, well, we had a problem.
Speaker 5: I said, what's the problem. But the problem is that
Speaker 5: we made a deal when we started the group that
Speaker 5: our two lead singers, Carlos and d would do all
Speaker 5: the vocals on the album. That's Kenny singing. And he
Speaker 5: was like, well, that's a stupid deal. And you put
Speaker 5: that song on the record or ain't gonna be no record?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: I got it, Kenny, your songs on the album? You said,
Speaker 3: Tweet November maybe the album? Right. So that was my
Speaker 3: first sort of encounter.
Speaker 1: How are you taking the unofficial I guess you're now
Speaker 1: the figurehead, the father of the group.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I kind of always was. I don't know. It
Speaker 3: was my idea to go get everybody.
Speaker 5: I put it all on my shoulders and said, you know,
Speaker 5: if you guys rock with me, I'll do my best
Speaker 5: to take care of you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it seems like you from as you when you're
Speaker 4: hearing this about you now, it makes sense that you
Speaker 4: were the one that kind of could bridge the gap
Speaker 4: between the business and the creative, Like you knew how
Speaker 4: to talk to both sides.
Speaker 3: I tried to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, because I had to negotiate with the club
Speaker 5: owners right, you know, for pay and when they wanted
Speaker 5: to deduct expenses, and you know, I had to.
Speaker 3: I had to do the tough guy work. But and
Speaker 3: they trusted me.
Speaker 5: You know, all of us went to high school together,
Speaker 5: by the way, except for Babyface was in Indianapolis. But
Speaker 5: the rest of the band we all went to high
Speaker 5: school together. We were all in that choir class with
Speaker 5: mister Brown and you know, so we were all really
Speaker 5: like good friends and grew up together in the same neighborhood.
Speaker 3: So there was a trust factor there.
Speaker 1: Since you're talking about the the Material Things album.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know that album. I'm so impressed with you.
Speaker 5: Man, I just got to tell you, I never met
Speaker 5: anybody with all of us. Yeah, but my my, my
Speaker 5: question about Material Things is, and I always I don't
Speaker 5: know why it is, but the.
Speaker 1: Tom tom programming. I never heard a song in which
Speaker 1: the kick drum and the tom toms had to compete
Speaker 1: with the each other mix white, So I always wanted
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 3: All that stuff, right, who gets.
Speaker 1: The final word on a final mix? Because? Okay, when
Speaker 1: I was younger, material things irked me because I was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: those tom Toms are way too loud for this song.
Speaker 1: As I got used to hearing it in my older age,
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, well, you know, I'm I
Speaker 1: can see being innovative, but like, who who back for
Speaker 1: those records? Was the Callaway brothers that were leaning on
Speaker 1: the production? Was it were you guys allowed a word
Speaker 1: in edgewise?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Just as far as structuring the albums full.
Speaker 5: Disclosure, The first album, called Street Beat, was completely produced
Speaker 5: by Reggie Calloway and the songs were co written by
Speaker 5: the members of Our band and members of Midnight Star. Okay,
Speaker 5: when it was time to make the second album, Material Things,
Speaker 5: we had fallen out and Callaway Us and Midnight Start
Speaker 5: we kind of falling out and Reggie didn't want to
Speaker 5: produce the second album.
Speaker 3: So Dick Griffy said you produce it. So it was
Speaker 3: on me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, so me, Reggie didn't want to produce it,
Speaker 1: or you guys didn't want Reggie to produce it.
Speaker 5: We wanted Reggie, but Reggie didn't want to do it,
Speaker 5: and I didn't know why. I thought there was some
Speaker 5: It probably had something to do money. Something He never
Speaker 5: said to me, like I don't want to produce your record,
Speaker 5: but it felt business y.
Speaker 1: Did he have that option?
Speaker 3: Again?
Speaker 1: Y'all still tell me nice guys stories about Dick Griffy,
Speaker 1: But does Reggie Callaway have an option to mess up
Speaker 1: the money by saying, you know what, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to produce the second album?
Speaker 5: Yeah, because he and Dick Griffy visited my apartment in
Speaker 5: Cincinnati and we played them demos that we worked on,
Speaker 5: and they collectively decided which songs we should record. So
Speaker 5: he Dick gave him a past. Yeah, he let h
Speaker 5: He let him sit it out. So Kenny and I
Speaker 5: like co produced together. So all those decisions, loud ass
Speaker 5: tom songs, too fast or that's all me and Kenny
Speaker 5: producing for the very first time in our lives and
Speaker 5: having following a hit record that Reggie produced. Now it's
Speaker 5: on us, and it was it was a complete stiff. Wow,
Speaker 5: it was a complete stiff.
Speaker 6: That's a good lesson for class.
Speaker 1: So that's that's weird. It's weird for me, all right.
Speaker 1: So here this is what I'm just learning. And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I alluded to the stuff I'm
Speaker 1: working on past Summer's Soul, but currently having made an
Speaker 1: official announcement, because you know, I will say that there
Speaker 1: was a popular dance show of the seventies and maybe
Speaker 1: other decades of which I'm learning that I'm learning that
Speaker 1: the host of said dance show has relationships with different
Speaker 1: CEOs and no matter what the state of the record
Speaker 1: is on the outside world, because there's songs that was
Speaker 1: played on this show so many times that I would
Speaker 1: instantly thought, oh, that's a hit one of them, which
Speaker 1: being material things like all of nineteen eighty four is
Speaker 1: season Like if you get four spots on the most
Speaker 1: important dance portion of that show, then to me, that
Speaker 1: was like, oh, you have a bona fide hit. And
Speaker 1: it was only later that I figured out that material
Speaker 1: things didn't get the same push that body talk in.
Speaker 5: You know, It's exactly. It simply wasn't good. It wasn't good.
Speaker 1: Were you guys scared and were you afraid of getting dropped?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 5: I didn't even think about it. You know, by the way,
Speaker 5: I've been dropped and fired a lot of times. I
Speaker 5: never think about it, right, So.
Speaker 6: This wasn't the first time.
Speaker 3: I just got fired from.
Speaker 5: I just got fired from the Knife Flight, right, So yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm meaning to it.
Speaker 6: You know, I love it. You ain't nobody till you
Speaker 6: get fired from somewhere, that's what you say.
Speaker 5: But no, no, we didn't think about getting dropped. All
Speaker 5: I thought about was damn this record. Just I couldn't
Speaker 5: get it right, man, I couldn't get it right. I
Speaker 5: just couldn't get it right. I tried so many times,
Speaker 5: you know, because the studio, I mean studio wasn't cheap,
Speaker 5: but we had it on lock so we could go
Speaker 5: in and mix it, press and acetate.
Speaker 3: Go to the club. Played at the club.
Speaker 5: It didn't sound right, Well, go back and try to
Speaker 5: a couple of days and we tried everything, and then
Speaker 5: when we thought we had it right and we turned
Speaker 5: it in, the label apparently agreed because they made it
Speaker 5: the single and it just didn't work, and it was
Speaker 5: just embarrassing more than anything. But it also put a
Speaker 5: fire in all of us, and I would say particularly
Speaker 5: myself and Kenny. It really put a fire into us
Speaker 5: that and we're competitive people, so we were like, we
Speaker 5: can't let Midnight Start be responsible for our success and
Speaker 5: then when.
Speaker 3: We get the shot, we blow it right. Let's get
Speaker 3: to work.
Speaker 1: All right, ladies and gentlemen, I know you don't like
Speaker 1: this when this happens, but you know we got more
Speaker 1: in store for you. To stay tuned for two more
Speaker 1: episodes of this epic Question of Supreme with the Great
Speaker 1: La Reid while you had it. Feel free to check
Speaker 1: out our other LS episode with Babyface as well. All Right,
Speaker 1: see y'all next time. What's Love Supreme is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.