Speaker 1: Of course, Love Supreme is a production of My Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 1: The following program contains language that some listeners may find offensive.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme Archives. This is the Allen Leeds episode.
Speaker 1: I believe that Alan was definitely uh. In one of
Speaker 1: our first ten episodes, UH, the team Supreme made a
Speaker 1: pilgrimage to Minnesota to talk to the revolution and UH.
Speaker 1: We figured since Alan Leeds was there, we knock off
Speaker 1: two for one, and of course it was an education.
Speaker 1: We did UH sort of a sequel to that episode.
Speaker 1: We did it in two locations at Electric Lady Studios
Speaker 1: in New York, with a special appearance by one Michael
Speaker 1: Eugene D'Angelo Archer, who infamously gave us uh the shortest
Speaker 1: response ever. It's more R and B Anyway. This is
Speaker 1: the very classic edgeumicational Allen Leeds given you before one
Speaker 1: one the signs of his life as a tour manager
Speaker 1: on whatets Love Supreme Archives. Roll Call, Roll Call Suprema
Speaker 1: Role Role, It's love and Uptown. Yeah, that's where I live. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hang with Allen Leeds. Yeah, five minutes Kid Bollamo, role
Speaker 1: called Supremo role. My name is Fonte. Yeah, I'm in Minnesota. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Quests Love Supreme. Yeah, we're taken over. So prema roll call,
Speaker 1: so prema road call. My name is Steve, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we in Many Yeah. I got the sugars. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: though I'm skinny. Roll call so roll. I'm unpaid bill, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't complain. Yeah, the weather's right. Yeah for purple
Speaker 1: rain Roma. Roll call Suprima Prima, roll call boss bills
Speaker 1: the name. Yeah, I need to stay in my lane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I can't write rhymes. And that's a real damn change.
Speaker 1: Roll call Soma, roll call my names like yeah, so
Speaker 1: happy to see you. Yeah, don't have a leads sometimes,
Speaker 1: I believe sometimes. Ye, Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another
Speaker 1: episode of Quest Love Supreme. How y'all doing good man?
Speaker 1: Road trip? Yeah, road trip. It's amazing trip. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: we are still on our road trip thing. Uh up
Speaker 1: here in Uptown many Wood, Minnesota. UM. We are very extremely,
Speaker 1: extremely honored to have um a guest that I know
Speaker 1: it's personally tired of me bragging about his life and
Speaker 1: his achievements. Um, but you know his real life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is is serious life goals. I mean I'll say
Speaker 1: that it's it's he's tired of No, well, it's just
Speaker 1: to me the most interesting part of the car. I mean,
Speaker 1: people might see the car and see the flash, but
Speaker 1: I love engines, I love yes, I love to see
Speaker 1: how it works. And this this, I mean name it.
Speaker 1: Alan Leeds has been there for Peak, James Brown, not
Speaker 1: just like oh remember James Brown, the Blues Brothers or that,
Speaker 1: like yeah, like even before must at like this is
Speaker 1: you know, he handed him the poster that has the
Speaker 1: sex Machine lyrics on it. For James Brown, for Peak, Prime, prints,
Speaker 1: for this, for Maxwell, for D'Angelo, for Chris Rock, for
Speaker 1: Rathael Sadeck, for me, for you ladies and gentlemen, please
Speaker 1: give it up. For Alan Leads And I'm still waiting
Speaker 1: for my first record to come out. Um, Alan, like
Speaker 1: you do you know, I know it makes people cringe
Speaker 1: whenever I try to like overdo it with the with them.
Speaker 1: She accolades. Um, so I'll try and do less of that.
Speaker 1: But um, and I know you hate that more than anything,
Speaker 1: but only publicly you at home, I played the tapes
Speaker 1: over and over see this is me. Well you know, well,
Speaker 1: I guess if if we are cut from the same
Speaker 1: cloth as the fact that you know the value in
Speaker 1: uh what history will bring or you you least have
Speaker 1: the knack to know that this might be uh in
Speaker 1: a historical moment. So I'm one of those sentimental pack
Speaker 1: rats that never throws anything away just in case it'll
Speaker 1: have historical value at the end. And I will say,
Speaker 1: like being at your house, there's so many artifacts and
Speaker 1: so so much history in it, but I kind of
Speaker 1: want to go back to the beginning. Uh, you were
Speaker 1: born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Correct, New York. You were born
Speaker 1: in New York. Wow, all these New York surprises. Where
Speaker 1: were you born in New York, Jackson Queens? Wow? I
Speaker 1: did not. I thought I knew everything about your life. Wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. So what was your what was your
Speaker 1: childhood like? Because the journey, what what makes Alan leads
Speaker 1: very distinctive amongst uh any human being that I've known,
Speaker 1: is that your role in Black Entertainment's journey and the
Speaker 1: fact that you, I mean, a person is lucky to
Speaker 1: catch one Maverick in their life. You've caught six of
Speaker 1: them and peak moments, not just like at the at
Speaker 1: the like you from the beginning of an experiment to
Speaker 1: seeing it at its climax. And in his historical note,
Speaker 1: so what was your entry into music period, like, did
Speaker 1: you come from a musical family where I came from
Speaker 1: a music business family kind of indirectly ahead an uncle
Speaker 1: who played saxophone in the orchestra that backed Prairie Como Okay, TV,
Speaker 1: had another uncle who was programmed director of Tinton Wins
Speaker 1: in New York when they were the rock and roll station,
Speaker 1: Tinton Wins. He pretty much invented the top forty four men,
Speaker 1: and he and Alan Fried Murray the k all these
Speaker 1: legendary disc jockeys on his station. And I would go
Speaker 1: out there and I met these guys and get tons
Speaker 1: of free records. So as a kid, my childhood was
Speaker 1: really about baseball and records because and I also had
Speaker 1: an aunt who work for a publishing company, Monster Clients,
Speaker 1: was a young Quincy Jones Okay, So you know, I
Speaker 1: had these people in the extended family that were very
Speaker 1: much in the business. My mom and dad were not,
Speaker 1: but but they were music fans. Um. So free records
Speaker 1: was just the records was the thing that was at
Speaker 1: I was a very popular kid once we hit teenage,
Speaker 1: and everybody wanted records because I had them, just like
Speaker 1: you need no No. I wasn't then interested in sharing
Speaker 1: him because usually I didn't like the records they liked.
Speaker 1: So what were your contemporaries listening to that They weren't
Speaker 1: listening to Elvis and Ricky Nelson and whatever was on
Speaker 1: top forty radio. And what were you into? He was
Speaker 1: Smith and Clowns and the coasters and Jack Barry and Richard.
Speaker 1: You were the the the hip guy, the hip white
Speaker 1: guy that knew what was going on in duke joints.
Speaker 1: And yeah, well, I mean I don't know a juke
Speaker 1: joint yet. I just knew that in these boxes and
Speaker 1: records that my uncle would send me, there were always these,
Speaker 1: you know, there were all the pop records that were
Speaker 1: boring looking labels like calling me in our Cia and
Speaker 1: Capital and Decca, and they just looked like, you know,
Speaker 1: I already had an anti establishment attitude about age five.
Speaker 1: I don't know where, but it was like, these are
Speaker 1: some boring labels, um, but didn't there's this label that's
Speaker 1: got yellow and black stripes and it's called Specialty Records,
Speaker 1: and that was Little Richard and Tutti Fruity did not
Speaker 1: sound like any of that other stuff. Um, the first
Speaker 1: Little Richard recordized. That's actually a funny story. The first
Speaker 1: Little Richard record I heard was Long Tall Sally, which
Speaker 1: was his second hit single, and I heard it on
Speaker 1: Alan Freed radio show, and I looked ballistic, like, what
Speaker 1: the hell is this? I got to have this record?
Speaker 1: And I remember telling my mother that I had to
Speaker 1: had to had to have an advance on my allotment
Speaker 1: so I could go to the store and buy this
Speaker 1: this forty five that ED heard on the radio. And
Speaker 1: she's like, what is it? Is it new knacking Cole record?
Speaker 1: Right now? Mind you are, let's see fifty six. I'm
Speaker 1: nine years old. So she took me to the record
Speaker 1: store and she says, I, I've never seen you so
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about something. So she's dying to see what this is,
Speaker 1: so would bring the record home. I put it on
Speaker 1: and play it and she just has a steer in
Speaker 1: the headlights. Look. That wasn't negative or positive, it was
Speaker 1: just what the hell is this? And I remember saying
Speaker 1: to her, becasey never let me forget it my isn't
Speaker 1: it pretty? Wow? Now? You know, I've heard that record
Speaker 1: a million times since, and I'm not sure. The only
Speaker 1: thing that, as an adult I can think that I
Speaker 1: would have thought was pretty was the melisma in this
Speaker 1: singing style. Because it's a it's a screamer. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's not like it's a ballad. So to use
Speaker 1: the word pretty to describe long til sadly but a
Speaker 1: little Richard is pretty much a stretch. But there was
Speaker 1: something about it that struck me. What's yeah, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, what spoke to you that the Battle Davy
Speaker 1: Crockett or you know well, I mean I've watched that
Speaker 1: corny and you knew even me, it's almost understand me.
Speaker 1: I like that concole I also had and you know,
Speaker 1: I get me very careful about this because it's not
Speaker 1: politically correct, but I had an obsession with black culture
Speaker 1: and I have no idea where that came from. You know,
Speaker 1: I would watch it and watch the same TV that
Speaker 1: everybody else watched, which was very limited in you know,
Speaker 1: you once, once Dick Clark had American Band staying at
Speaker 1: least there was something different. But you know then that
Speaker 1: it was. It was variety shows would very little are
Speaker 1: and be a rock and roll and I enjoyed nacking,
Speaker 1: but I always went to the black artists. I love
Speaker 1: Louis Armstrong, I love Count Basie, I love Nat King
Speaker 1: Cole something Natra, I ignored. My father likes Sinatra. It
Speaker 1: was played in the house. It was like, yeah, that's okay,
Speaker 1: But I was I didn't pay any attention at all.
Speaker 1: Did you read it as more authentic to you or
Speaker 1: just eventually not yet because I hadn't been exposed to it.
Speaker 1: But once I, once I started actually taking books out
Speaker 1: of the library to read about the history of black
Speaker 1: music and heard about people like Lightning Hopkins and Howlett
Speaker 1: Wolf and I of course I had to go check
Speaker 1: those out. But that that came later. That came in
Speaker 1: my teens, where I was beginning to actually understand that
Speaker 1: there's genres, and there's tastes, and there's the music comes
Speaker 1: from somewhere and represents something. But as a little kid
Speaker 1: listening nine years old, you don't know all that. It's
Speaker 1: it's no, there's no cultural aspect to it. You just
Speaker 1: heard something and you don't liked it, or you did
Speaker 1: it so no, I mean I like white rock and
Speaker 1: roll too, like Bill Haley and the comments, but basically
Speaker 1: because I hadn't heard Joe Turner's original of those songs. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what was on radio. So did Can I assume
Speaker 1: that the trickle down effect also affected your little brother Eric?
Speaker 1: We should know Eric is uh a saxophone uh god
Speaker 1: in his own right, uh play with James Brown Prince
Speaker 1: of course his own projects. So it is are your
Speaker 1: music taste now affecting him as well? Or yeah? I
Speaker 1: think inevitably. Um, not so much because it was about
Speaker 1: me and my taste, but just because when you have
Speaker 1: two brothers in the house and once five years younger
Speaker 1: older brother who's opening a lot of doors and whatever doors,
Speaker 1: will you know if I'd have been into country music,
Speaker 1: he might have been attracted to at I think it
Speaker 1: was just circumstantial at first because this is when he
Speaker 1: heard me playing, and it's older brother. And when you're
Speaker 1: five and your brother's ten, you look up to your
Speaker 1: older brother. So when you changes later now in your
Speaker 1: teen years, because I know that you you did stints
Speaker 1: on on radio and whatnot, like what was your entry
Speaker 1: into this is the business? That's there's really two answers
Speaker 1: that the the first time I knew I wanted to
Speaker 1: be in the I mean I did use the DJ
Speaker 1: at home. I had a turntable and a really really
Speaker 1: primitive walkie talkie system and ran the court across the
Speaker 1: hall to my brother's bedroom and I would DJ for
Speaker 1: him and you know, actually touched it and had my
Speaker 1: own top forty lists that I typed up every Friday
Speaker 1: from my imagineering radio station that nobody heard but my brother.
Speaker 1: So that was practice. But that was just was all
Speaker 1: I wanted to do when I got home from school,
Speaker 1: was played these records. Somebody had to hear it because
Speaker 1: it was pretty stupid talking to myself. So he became
Speaker 1: the sucker. That was, he was the guinea pig audience
Speaker 1: because you had to have when he felt dumb. So
Speaker 1: but I went to the first the first R and
Speaker 1: B he showed that I saw. It was in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, so I would have been fifteen years old,
Speaker 1: and it was Fats Domino. It was the Impressions Curtis
Speaker 1: made Field when we were still the Impressions, the original
Speaker 1: Gypsy Woman that just come out, So it was very
Speaker 1: very early in the Impressions. Um I don't honestly remember
Speaker 1: who else was on the show. I could look it up,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, But I'll tell you what was on
Speaker 1: the show was five dancers called the Twisting Parquettes. And
Speaker 1: I later learned that there was a choreographer in New
Speaker 1: York or Glue Parks, a woman who was became quite
Speaker 1: famous for choreographing um popular dance in black music circles,
Speaker 1: and these were some of her proteges. So they were
Speaker 1: the Twisting Parquettes. And this is back in the ear
Speaker 1: when the twist was a big deal. But as a
Speaker 1: fifteen year old looking at these five sisters and they
Speaker 1: had short, little skirts and there was nothing nasty about
Speaker 1: it at all compared to today, they were conservative. But
Speaker 1: at the time, that ship was hot and I sat there.
Speaker 1: I don't remember anything about Fats Domhindo said, because I
Speaker 1: was sitting there day dreaming, how do you get on
Speaker 1: the bus. These girls ride a bus every night, and
Speaker 1: how do you get on that bus so you can
Speaker 1: hang with them? Bus driver, I thought, I thought a
Speaker 1: little bigger than that, but you know, but you know,
Speaker 1: there was an m C and I said, maybe that's
Speaker 1: the ticket, because you know, I don't think I don't play.
Speaker 1: Probably should have been a musician, but I never had
Speaker 1: the patience to learn instrument I took drums for two
Speaker 1: weeks and the teacher got mad at me for tapping
Speaker 1: my foot to keep time. If he would have explained easier,
Speaker 1: but I mean, you know, if if he had, if
Speaker 1: he had explained that you need independence to play high
Speaker 1: hats and bass drums, and you shouldn't. You don't want
Speaker 1: to have the habit of patting your foot, I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I think I would have understood that. But he didn't
Speaker 1: say a word except just slap my knee and tell
Speaker 1: me to stop. So the anti authority in me lashed
Speaker 1: out and said, the hell, we're too Plus we were
Speaker 1: on practice pats was the second week, Yeah, trust me,
Speaker 1: I didn't test the drums still, like three years into it,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, And that was no fun. So so my
Speaker 1: drumming career consisted of turning over the waste baskets at
Speaker 1: home and creating a set and playing loaned records, and
Speaker 1: I had good time. I was about to say, I
Speaker 1: never asked you, like, why didn't you actually choose music?
Speaker 1: Because as virtuoso as your brother is, I would imagine
Speaker 1: that you could have also been a virtuoso musician. I'm
Speaker 1: usually pretty humble, but I probably would have been. I
Speaker 1: probably could have played It's stuck to something wow. But
Speaker 1: I never settled. I never fell in love with an instrument.
Speaker 1: Drums were easy because it was physical, it wasn't melodic,
Speaker 1: didn't have to learn music, you know, chords, and so
Speaker 1: I was lazy. Really, I just didn't have the commitment
Speaker 1: of the self discipline to put into learning how to
Speaker 1: play an instrument properly. And honestly, I think that's it's
Speaker 1: it's just just lazy and like self discipline. That's weird
Speaker 1: because you're the most organized person I know. We are
Speaker 1: here with the great Alan Leeds um here on Quest
Speaker 1: Love Supreme. I guess you're you're you're foray into uh
Speaker 1: what I knew you for, which is tour managing? Um?
Speaker 1: Can I safely assume that starts with James Brown? Or
Speaker 1: you know? Did you or is it that you jump
Speaker 1: from DJing too promoting your own shows? And well I did.
Speaker 1: I did a little promoting because myself and another couple
Speaker 1: of younger DJs at the station, I mean the station
Speaker 1: basically advertise to and or promoted all the urn V
Speaker 1: shows they came through Richmond, which were a lot at
Speaker 1: that time. They were three or four clubs that had
Speaker 1: shows every weekend. There were concert halls that had concerts
Speaker 1: on that rege once or twice a month, so it
Speaker 1: was a really busy scene. Anybody who played Washington and
Speaker 1: was headed south came through Richmond. So you know, the
Speaker 1: Otis Ridings, the same cooks to Jackie Wilson's, the Drifters.
Speaker 1: You know, all the classic soul artists came through town
Speaker 1: at least two, three, and sometimes four times a year. Okay,
Speaker 1: So are you saying that it was just they happened
Speaker 1: to stop through or was it like today things are
Speaker 1: playing like? You know, No, they were both. These were
Speaker 1: legitimate businesses. There were clubs and promoters and concert promoters
Speaker 1: and these were real shows. But but understand something too,
Speaker 1: because artists didn't tour back then. They worked, and they
Speaker 1: worked as many weeks out of the year as their
Speaker 1: success on records allowed them to work. Because it wasn't
Speaker 1: like it wasn't huge money and they weren't playing arenas,
Speaker 1: they were playing dance halls. Um, I mean, we did
Speaker 1: a James Brown showing alluminum barn at the fair Grounds
Speaker 1: in the wintertime with no heat. The band played the
Speaker 1: warm upset with their coats on and still had like
Speaker 1: three thousand people there. Go figure, And when you say work,
Speaker 1: do you mean like they worked just like regular jobs
Speaker 1: like they had you know, you say they didn't tour.
Speaker 1: They worked, but no, I'm I'm using work as you know, metaphorically.
Speaker 1: But they didn't think if it is too like even
Speaker 1: when I joined James in in sixty nine, we didn't say,
Speaker 1: oh hey, it's time to go on tour. It's like
Speaker 1: the show was on the road fifty one weeks out
Speaker 1: of the year, because tour insinuates that you're gonna stop
Speaker 1: exactly exactly and like it's it's it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: you got a new album, sing you tour. Well, it
Speaker 1: wasn't about albums. It was about singles, and there was
Speaker 1: a new single every three months or so, and that
Speaker 1: the idea was this is what you did for a living.
Speaker 1: You got your station where and there were a bus
Speaker 1: and depending on the level of success you had, um
Speaker 1: you went all over the country. Whoever would hire you
Speaker 1: and pay you to play, you showed up and played
Speaker 1: and hopefully you worked fifty two weeks out of the year,
Speaker 1: because that's how you supported yourself. So since James Brown
Speaker 1: situation wasn't the average situation in R and B, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that everyone has a level of
Speaker 1: the what they call the Chipland circuit. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: back then the the main houses where what the regal
Speaker 1: in Chicago, Uh, well, there was there was the theater
Speaker 1: circuit in the major cities. That was a Howard and
Speaker 1: Washington regal in Chicago, was abtained in Philly, Royal in
Speaker 1: Baltimoreton of course, the Apollo in New York. And there
Speaker 1: were a couple of theaters in Detroit that did show
Speaker 1: several times a year, like the state theater was that
Speaker 1: still the State in Philly, you know, the state theater
Speaker 1: in Detroit was that it was usually the Fox okay
Speaker 1: okay okay um so and then in between then you
Speaker 1: would go to the smaller markets and it was sort
Speaker 1: of like up in the air, whoever would or the
Speaker 1: Leminum Barn exactly. Okay, I mean you might play a
Speaker 1: tobacco warehouse, you might play fair grounds arena of some
Speaker 1: kind of basketball or you know, now small theater, big club,
Speaker 1: dance Halls. Well, okay, since James Brown situation, uh, it
Speaker 1: is quite different. Um, I would like you too, could
Speaker 1: you explain to us what the average conditions of a
Speaker 1: Chittling circuit date would consist of. I mean just in
Speaker 1: terms of well I asked that because like, okay, so
Speaker 1: you know, when we first started, there was such a
Speaker 1: thing as a writer like put I could put Captain
Speaker 1: kruntziiro and have it every night. I could have Bonner's Peppermint,
Speaker 1: so like you know, but obviously the glamour rider thing
Speaker 1: was obviously the thing that was started in the seventies
Speaker 1: and the eighties. But in the sixties. If you are
Speaker 1: let's say you're Johnny Taylor and you have kind of
Speaker 1: a hot record, that's that's that's cooking a little bit.
Speaker 1: I mean, what is the average scenario for you? Are
Speaker 1: you traveling by yourself? Do you have an entourage? Do
Speaker 1: you have your musicians with you? Or it depends entirely
Speaker 1: on me. There's no set rule. The idea was you
Speaker 1: get hit record to get you out there. Your first
Speaker 1: hit actually gets you out there because everybody wants to
Speaker 1: see who has a new hit on radio, And the
Speaker 1: first time out you're probably making five hundred bucks at night.
Speaker 1: This is like sixties. No, it couldn't be good, but
Speaker 1: but you know, you know, I don't know for the
Speaker 1: sixties level like was that. Okay, you might make less. Actually,
Speaker 1: if you're a support act, you might make three a night.
Speaker 1: And when you figured that, you've got to pay for
Speaker 1: hotels and gas at the station wagon and whoever you've
Speaker 1: got on the road, you gotta pay them. Um No,
Speaker 1: even at ten bucks at night in the hotels, it
Speaker 1: still adds up. I mean, everything's relatives, it's but the
Speaker 1: point being, once you had two or three hits, then
Speaker 1: the goal was the first goal was to have the
Speaker 1: rhythm section of your own. So some of these artists
Speaker 1: would have to go to town. But let's let's take
Speaker 1: let's let's take an example. Let's say the Pressions Curtis
Speaker 1: made it feels the Impressions. Okay, they had to hit
Speaker 1: Gypsy Woman, and they toured behind that. Curtis played guitar,
Speaker 1: so they didn't need a guitarist, and they used whatever
Speaker 1: band was up in the show. If it was a
Speaker 1: theater like the Apollo, that'd be a house band, okay.
Speaker 1: If it was a club, it would be like if
Speaker 1: they were in Richmond, in my town, Um, there'd be
Speaker 1: a local band that would be told to learn the
Speaker 1: Impression songs. They'd come in in the afternoon, they do
Speaker 1: a quick what you would call a sound check. They
Speaker 1: do a rehearsal and hope for the best. Now a
Speaker 1: side note, you actually knew the Winston's correct? Uh? The
Speaker 1: all right, the Winston's brother they did the infamous straight
Speaker 1: out of Compton break? Uh? But were they like the
Speaker 1: local band that would be there when well, here's here's
Speaker 1: here's the story there. The Winston's themselves were not um
Speaker 1: but J. C. Coleman, Gregory Coleman, who was the drummer
Speaker 1: in the Winston's in the famous break. Um. He had
Speaker 1: a local band in Richmond, And that's how I knew
Speaker 1: him because we did gigs together all the time. And
Speaker 1: his his first wife was the female singer. And it
Speaker 1: was like a seven eight piece band with a horn section.
Speaker 1: And they would back o their artists like back to
Speaker 1: the Impressions, for example, who come through town, and they
Speaker 1: would back them and they do a set of their own.
Speaker 1: They might play school dances. They might you know them too.
Speaker 1: They would do any gig that came their way, but
Speaker 1: they were basically a local band. Now in J. C.
Speaker 1: Coleman's case, Um, he was a go enough drummer that
Speaker 1: he got recognized and somehow he ended up on the
Speaker 1: road with the marvel Letts as part of the Motown
Speaker 1: Motortown Review shows, and he was the Martin Valette's personal drummer.
Speaker 1: He went from the Otis Reading and he and several
Speaker 1: of the members of the Otis Redding Band were laid
Speaker 1: off what notice decided to tour with the Barquees. This
Speaker 1: was shortly before he died. And Um, at that point
Speaker 1: those guys who came out of Otis As Band formed
Speaker 1: the Winston's and they became a club band that was
Speaker 1: actually based in d C and the regular gig Wood
Speaker 1: says a house band of the Discotheque in DC called
Speaker 1: Ram's R A N. D. S and UM. And then
Speaker 1: they got a deal and they cut color and father
Speaker 1: the amen break was the flip side, which was that
Speaker 1: was a B side. They actually they actually I loved
Speaker 1: something out. They had actually toured strangely enough, with the
Speaker 1: Impressions for several months as their band. Now this is
Speaker 1: once the Impressions reached a certain point where they had
Speaker 1: more hits and the money got bigger than they put
Speaker 1: together their own band because they everybody hated playing with
Speaker 1: these local bands because it was always raggedy. I mean,
Speaker 1: like were they all of them? Was it just like
Speaker 1: someone comes with core charts and says, here, read this
Speaker 1: or you just his guys didn't even read music. Most
Speaker 1: of these local bands, at least in the South didn't
Speaker 1: even read music. Now, the house bands in the theaters
Speaker 1: up north did and they wanted, like you played the Apollo.
Speaker 1: If you didn't bring charge, get your feeling, it's hurt.
Speaker 1: But down south, in the in the clubs, nobody read music.
Speaker 1: So it was like learning the records. The band were
Speaker 1: just learned the records before the group came to down
Speaker 1: So the impressions come to town, they do a little
Speaker 1: run through before the club opens, and and then they
Speaker 1: just wing it. And I mean, I'm Steve. I used
Speaker 1: to MC shows in these clubs, and I remember the
Speaker 1: drifters who traveled with only a guitar player. They never
Speaker 1: had a band, and they had huge hits, but they
Speaker 1: never had a band. It was just the vocalists and
Speaker 1: the guitar player, and the guitar player would just be
Speaker 1: literally calling out changes to the band as that in
Speaker 1: the middle of the gig, it was it was crazy wow.
Speaker 1: Now keep keep in mind that this was the peak
Speaker 1: of soul music, which was the singers the genre so
Speaker 1: and and those guys really needed to sing because crowds
Speaker 1: wouldn't you know if if if you really couldn't sing, um,
Speaker 1: you weren't gonna last out there very long. You get
Speaker 1: your feelings are real quick. So most of the one
Speaker 1: of those clubs, if as long as the vocals were
Speaker 1: clear and you could really feel the vocals and and
Speaker 1: the rhythm section kept time, the audiences were usually happy.
Speaker 1: But she's saying that they had apoler mentality in other
Speaker 1: places then, other than the Apollo, as far as if
Speaker 1: your show wasn't tight or yeah, you know you better
Speaker 1: come correct. But the point was correct if you suck
Speaker 1: your suck. But you know that didn't just just happen
Speaker 1: in recent years, and they were a couple of acts
Speaker 1: you had tape records that would come through town and
Speaker 1: really lay an egg because they just didn't have it.
Speaker 1: I wonder what a black route is harder on people,
Speaker 1: probably because the martyrn money to see a show. I
Speaker 1: think that but also because black music in the sixties
Speaker 1: was really a singer's art, whereas particularly after the British invasion,
Speaker 1: it was about the band and it was about the
Speaker 1: hairstyles and the British clothes. They got sore and the
Speaker 1: girls would screaming didn't even hear what they were playing.
Speaker 1: So eventually, I guess, I mean, what was your first
Speaker 1: James Brown experience and what about that really called out
Speaker 1: to you as far as I mean did you Was
Speaker 1: it a moment where it's like, oh, this is my
Speaker 1: destiny or is it just like I had fallen in
Speaker 1: love like everybody else with the first live at the
Speaker 1: Apollo Am because it was just so totally apart from
Speaker 1: everything else. I mean, it was just so obvious. Like
Speaker 1: soul music and sould music, they were great, a ton
Speaker 1: of great artists. But once you heard that, rook, could
Speaker 1: you like, Okay, this this is some other stuff, this
Speaker 1: is this is really the gold standard here, So okay
Speaker 1: to explain to our listeners. So um, James Brown came
Speaker 1: out the box uh with Please Please Please, which was
Speaker 1: an instant hit, and then I guess he struggled for
Speaker 1: two years to come up with a follow up hit
Speaker 1: and how many singles do you reckon? Like at least
Speaker 1: fifteen or sixteen before try Me? Maybe not fifteen, but
Speaker 1: probably nine your ten. Okay, so a bunch an amazing
Speaker 1: amount of missus which you know nowadays. I mean he
Speaker 1: actually got dropped and Trying Me got a miss deal back.
Speaker 1: Really he cut a demo up Trying Me that he
Speaker 1: played pursued Nathan and King Records, who who had dropped him,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, please Mr Nathan, listen to
Speaker 1: this literally try me, please please please try me. Um.
Speaker 1: And so once uh I get us, uh, maybe three
Speaker 1: or four years and two his career, James Brown decides
Speaker 1: that his his audience needs to uh it needs to
Speaker 1: feel what his live show or at least the energy
Speaker 1: of what his live shows about, and then they'd be
Speaker 1: more open to him. So enter James Brown Live at
Speaker 1: the Apollo Volume one, which came out sixty two, was
Speaker 1: recorded till root sixty two. It came out early sixty three.
Speaker 1: So what was you know? I mean, I have my
Speaker 1: favorites and obviously because I'm more closer to break beats
Speaker 1: and you know, like what my standards for James Brown
Speaker 1: a certain type of funk of course, I don't have
Speaker 1: a a sentimental attachment to Volume one. I mean, I
Speaker 1: understand why it's effective, but you know, my favorite is
Speaker 1: personally Volume three. Uh. But what was it about that
Speaker 1: record that spoke to you and spoke to America because
Speaker 1: DJs would play this from beginning to end like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they played it a song, Yeah they really did. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, it was it was the
Speaker 1: the dynamic was so apparent because he really if you're
Speaker 1: listening to the album, you realize it's one long medley, okay. Um.
Speaker 1: He had segues in between the songs. Oh, never stopping,
Speaker 1: never never stopped, never never stopped, which was totally different
Speaker 1: because every other act in those days they play a song,
Speaker 1: it would end with a big chord, they take a bottle,
Speaker 1: you know, that introduced the next song. But with James
Speaker 1: was just non stop action and you could just, not
Speaker 1: having seen him perform yet, you would just sit there
Speaker 1: and fantasize about what this must be like because it's
Speaker 1: just it's crazy and I lost someone. Understand something too.
Speaker 1: For James Barron, people of your generation, Um, when he
Speaker 1: cut that record into sixty two, he was already the
Speaker 1: king of that circuit. He was already setting house records
Speaker 1: at the Apollo with the Outward Theater in places like that,
Speaker 1: and but he hadn't crossed over yet, and most of
Speaker 1: White America had no clue who he was. But the
Speaker 1: majority of his said records at that point were slow songs.
Speaker 1: They were what we call gospel blues, R and B soul,
Speaker 1: whatever tag you want to call it, but you know,
Speaker 1: very church influenced style of singing and really straight out
Speaker 1: of the gospel courtest and but the the energy and
Speaker 1: the passion is just unlike anything else that was on
Speaker 1: record at that point because nobody, first of all, nobody
Speaker 1: even Ray Charles, had made a live record, so you really,
Speaker 1: unless you went to the shows, you really had no
Speaker 1: concept of what those little forty fives turned into with
Speaker 1: a full band arrangement. And it was obvious that James,
Speaker 1: first of all, he had a killer band that was
Speaker 1: ridiculously well rehearsed, and that alone set him apart from
Speaker 1: everybody else, because there was nobody else in har and
Speaker 1: B except maybe Ray Charles, who could afford that, because
Speaker 1: the economics of that circuit were such that even somebody
Speaker 1: like Jackie Wilson or Jerry Butler Otis reading at the
Speaker 1: at the beginnings of their careers. Well, Jackie Wilson never
Speaker 1: had a band of his own. Otis Otis did, but
Speaker 1: it was never a good band. Um well, you know
Speaker 1: so so so James thing really was was very unique
Speaker 1: on that circuit. I mean he came to do business.
Speaker 1: So when he came to Virginia, Uh, I mean, how
Speaker 1: did you to first meet? Like what was the Well,
Speaker 1: I went to a show and this was long before
Speaker 1: I was I shouldn't say a longe, a couple of
Speaker 1: years before, and it up on the radio station. I
Speaker 1: went to one of his shows about and this was
Speaker 1: also in sixty three, and it was it was a
Speaker 1: concert in the theater. It wasn't a club show, and
Speaker 1: there was like a smattering of white kids, you know
Speaker 1: that had discovered James Braham And I'd say, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's what we call the Landmark Theater now then it
Speaker 1: was called the Mosque. I'm sure you've played. You played
Speaker 1: there with um holds three thousand people, maybe there were
Speaker 1: a hundred white people there. So it was at least
Speaker 1: that the live album had begun to attract some white fans,
Speaker 1: but he still wasn't on pop radio. So yeah, rich
Speaker 1: white kid didn't it still didn't really have ac clue
Speaker 1: who he was. Um, but I mean the show was
Speaker 1: everything I dreamt it would be, and I was just
Speaker 1: you know, blown to like everybody else was. But a
Speaker 1: couple of years later, fast forward, I'm working for the
Speaker 1: radio station James Brown's coming to town. The station is
Speaker 1: promoting the show, and I just begged the program director
Speaker 1: to let me go interviewing mits hotel to hype this
Speaker 1: show because it was kind of true sational that if
Speaker 1: an act came to town early enough in the day,
Speaker 1: they would either come down to the radio station to
Speaker 1: do an interview. And the whole idea was not it
Speaker 1: was it was twofold. It was to plug the current
Speaker 1: single and encouraged the DJs to continue playing their records.
Speaker 1: And it was two hype ticket sales for the show
Speaker 1: that night. UM. A lot of the ticket sales for
Speaker 1: those shows were walk up, unlike today where shows are
Speaker 1: pretty much sold out in advance. Um, in those days,
Speaker 1: sales are still not like that, because you know, our
Speaker 1: advancing show will be like, yeah, man, you only sold
Speaker 1: twelve tickets, we might canceled, IM Like No Man's Black
Speaker 1: People and then like it sold down that night, you know,
Speaker 1: but that that's that's still a dynamic. But I mean
Speaker 1: back then, it was just rule of thumb. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the exception. It was the rule. Um. So at any rate, um.
Speaker 1: But James was big enough that he wasn't going to
Speaker 1: come to the station. He might send Bobby Bird down
Speaker 1: to do an interview, or you know, one of the
Speaker 1: supporter acts Macio or somebody, but so he rarely came
Speaker 1: to the station. Just he used to. But by the
Speaker 1: time I went to work at the station, he had
Speaker 1: kind of graduated past that. So the idea was, this
Speaker 1: is sixty five, so I'm like, let me take a
Speaker 1: day recorded to his hotel. And that's what happened. And
Speaker 1: you know, I met him and we talked for about
Speaker 1: a half hour before we went went on tape, and
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, he took a liking to me. And
Speaker 1: I've always wondered why. I don't mean that from a
Speaker 1: humble sense, um, but we stayed in touch and every
Speaker 1: time after that he would come through town, I would
Speaker 1: go backstage, hang out the dressing room and we would
Speaker 1: talk music. And you know, I was I was the
Speaker 1: typical little kid who had all kinds of questions, what's
Speaker 1: your next thing? Well, where did you record it? Um,
Speaker 1: did you use the road band? Who's in the band now,
Speaker 1: who's the lead who's the new lead trumpet? You know,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly, And he would engage you totally. But after
Speaker 1: I went to work for him, I discovered you did
Speaker 1: that with any disc jockey who had primed time, because
Speaker 1: it was like, so, you know, I mean, he made
Speaker 1: me feel like I was the only guy in the
Speaker 1: world he's talking to like this, right, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: talking business. I actually turned the tape recorder on when
Speaker 1: we were just kicking it without him knowing it, and
Speaker 1: you hear us in the background conversing and we're talking
Speaker 1: about things like the Motown review and what promoters Berry
Speaker 1: Gordon used and he should have used a black promoter,
Speaker 1: and James is just going off about you know, we're
Speaker 1: talking business and I'm a little pimpley faced high school kid.
Speaker 1: It's like I was just blown away. It's like I
Speaker 1: love this guy that he engaged you. Yeah, exactly, And
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna be the next Dick Clark. It's like,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna be big. You got the prime time
Speaker 1: you know his yeah, his rule of thumb. I guess
Speaker 1: one of his books he said that, you know he
Speaker 1: always made the well the intern or the or the
Speaker 1: person who not Lewis on the totem pole. But pretty
Speaker 1: much he'd make them feel important because he figured that
Speaker 1: and about five to six to seven years that they
Speaker 1: will soon be the station manager exactly. Yeah, they'll be
Speaker 1: the music director picking the records. That he started that
Speaker 1: concept because all of us just took down. That's real, right, No, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I was taught that was the first thing. I
Speaker 1: was taught to do. Every college interview, every and now
Speaker 1: every every RinkyDink college interview ever done now ends with
Speaker 1: ten years later like some CEO of some corporation that's like,
Speaker 1: you don't remember this is but in Brown University you
Speaker 1: played at home my first interview, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: that's now I'm doing something else for them that's you know,
Speaker 1: way big. So it's it's I see how that's plays.
Speaker 1: So at what point did he take you serious enough
Speaker 1: to take over or at least start working for Did
Speaker 1: you start off as tour manager or no, actually started
Speaker 1: doing publicity. What happened is that I used to chase
Speaker 1: the show around. I mean any time it was anywhere
Speaker 1: near where I was a hundred miles two hundred miles.
Speaker 1: I'd go to d C at the Howard Theater. I'd
Speaker 1: go to Norfolk, Virginia, and I'd go to West Virginia.
Speaker 1: And you know, just any time the James Round Show
Speaker 1: was within radius, I was there and really just totally
Speaker 1: make it a pest to myself. But I got to
Speaker 1: know his manager. I got to know his his road manager,
Speaker 1: and not to mention, made friends with Bobby Burden, some
Speaker 1: of the guys in the band, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, they let me hang. So fast forward
Speaker 1: to nineteen sixty nine and I'm in college in Pittsburgh. Um,
Speaker 1: the little radio phase it and it thanks to the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War trying to draft everybody. It wasn't in college,
Speaker 1: so I'd aside a bit of getting college where I
Speaker 1: was going to Vietnam. So so your career was abruptly
Speaker 1: halted in favor of a college career that lasted for
Speaker 1: about two years until he hired me. But what happened
Speaker 1: is when you actually his manager called and said he's
Speaker 1: coming to Pittsburgh and he's got issues with the program director.
Speaker 1: Of the black station there. So he needs a local
Speaker 1: watchdog for the promotion of the concert. Would you be
Speaker 1: willing to do it? And what would that entail? That
Speaker 1: entailed buying the advertisement, newspaper ads, radio ads, um, monitoring
Speaker 1: it to make sure the ads are played right, Um,
Speaker 1: you've been your own customer adds Yes, yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: that was That's the way I knew they'd be, the
Speaker 1: way I wanted to be, and didn't really trust anybody
Speaker 1: to do them. And it was part of the fun
Speaker 1: because I enjoyed doing it. Um, and you know, putting
Speaker 1: up posters, I mean literally driving around and with a
Speaker 1: trunk full of big window card post justs and with
Speaker 1: a staple gun, put them up on telephone poles all
Speaker 1: over town, put him in barbershop windows, and exactly it was.
Speaker 1: It was the old school version of the Street Team.
Speaker 1: And suffice it to say, the show sold out. But
Speaker 1: what really got him was I showed him a bunch
Speaker 1: of newspaper stories that the local paper had done. Um,
Speaker 1: the local daily paper. And at that point, daily papers
Speaker 1: didn't pay a lot of intention to black shows, seldom
Speaker 1: and reviewed them and very seldom wrote them up in advance.
Speaker 1: But what I didn't tell James was that the entertainment
Speaker 1: editor of the paper happened to be a friend of
Speaker 1: my dad's. Okay, so I had the white privilege paid
Speaker 1: off and I got I got, you know, so I
Speaker 1: got a bunch of stories in the paper and he
Speaker 1: was like blown out and he's like, got this, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I showed it to him in the dressing room
Speaker 1: after the show and he's all geek because the shows
Speaker 1: sold out and we were in the Civic Arena. It's
Speaker 1: like thirteen thousand people, so it was, you know, it
Speaker 1: was a real deal. And he was like, Alan, you
Speaker 1: did this here? Can you do this everywhere? And of
Speaker 1: course I said yes, and I had you know, my
Speaker 1: dad doesn't know anybody else in any of the city
Speaker 1: knock the South in that, you know. So that was
Speaker 1: the gig. I was hired to come to Cincinnati where
Speaker 1: King Records was in James's office space was within King Records,
Speaker 1: and at quit school, drove to Cincinnati and started my
Speaker 1: job as publicity director. So was it a learning curve
Speaker 1: for you? Totally? Totally. I was just a kid right
Speaker 1: without the aid of I mean, of course, technology makes
Speaker 1: us alwasier could make us all publicists in this room
Speaker 1: right now, with our with our phones and our computers.
Speaker 1: But I mean, what resources did you have to even know? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know to get coverage in the Times? Or there
Speaker 1: was a marketing book that listed all the country's newspapers. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got hold of that, and once I got to Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: they just threw an itinerary in my in my lap
Speaker 1: and said this is where the show is going. Do
Speaker 1: you think you got it? And there was really nobody
Speaker 1: to supervise, so it was kind of like I can
Speaker 1: invent this and you know, do whatever, because nobody had
Speaker 1: done it for him before in the house, and so
Speaker 1: you were his first publicists pretty much. I mean, he
Speaker 1: had a few independent people that would plant stuff in
Speaker 1: the Washington Afro American, in the Amsterdam News and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, but in terms of like calling the dailies
Speaker 1: in major cities, no, um. And that's what I did.
Speaker 1: I just cold called the newspapers and every town where
Speaker 1: the show was going and would ask for the entertainment
Speaker 1: editor of the paper. And they were used to get
Speaker 1: in calls like this because nobody did it. Now I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. I'm thinking everybody must do this, but
Speaker 1: really they didn't. So at what point do you stop
Speaker 1: doing or did you stop doing publicity? Or were you doing?
Speaker 1: Because I know the James Brown organization people do double duties.
Speaker 1: After about a month when I didn't get paid, this
Speaker 1: see to what I also didn't understand that the James
Speaker 1: Brown organization. First of all, I always called him James
Speaker 1: until I went to work for him, and it was
Speaker 1: made very clear, now it's Mr. Brown. When you were
Speaker 1: friends with him, you were allowed to call him James. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I didn't even know any better,
Speaker 1: and I was also just jockey, so I could have
Speaker 1: called him anything. He was gonna be cool with it
Speaker 1: because he wanted his records played. But now I'm working
Speaker 1: for him now it was a reciprocal I mean he
Speaker 1: called me Mr. Leeds. Everybody in the organization was Mr
Speaker 1: or Mrs or miss whatever the case. Maybe. But what
Speaker 1: I didn't know was that he had gone to the
Speaker 1: president of King Records and told him that he should
Speaker 1: pay me. I brought this kid in. He's a great publicist,
Speaker 1: you pay him. He went off on the road. Well,
Speaker 1: the guy, how nearly it was the president King Records.
Speaker 1: He didn't know who I was. He never met me,
Speaker 1: nor could he care less. So long and short of
Speaker 1: it is, I didn't get paid. So after about the
Speaker 1: third week, I'm like, well, you know the first week
Speaker 1: the office managers telling me, well, it's it's just the
Speaker 1: payroll has got to catch up. Because the pay would
Speaker 1: come from the road Every Sunday, the road manager would
Speaker 1: wire money to the office to pay the office staff.
Speaker 1: And they were like, you know, a couple of clerical people,
Speaker 1: and the receptionists and staff and s and the guys
Speaker 1: who booked the shows. Who literally because because James um
Speaker 1: he booked his own shows, he had guys on his
Speaker 1: payroll who would call the buildings and call promoters and
Speaker 1: booked the shows instead of using an agent. It was
Speaker 1: all in house. So I'm watching these guys do this
Speaker 1: because I'm sitting at a desk in the same office,
Speaker 1: and I'm just paying attention to what they're doing. One
Speaker 1: of them got fired, and I mean I left out
Speaker 1: the point where after after I didn't get paid, I
Speaker 1: actually left for about a month and a half. Brown
Speaker 1: was on tour in California. I couldn't get him on
Speaker 1: the phone, and the guy King Records said, hey, sorry kid,
Speaker 1: but just didn't work out, you know, kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: So I was mad, and you know, my friends at
Speaker 1: school in Pittsburgh had thrown me going away party, you know,
Speaker 1: big shot lead. I could not go home, are you
Speaker 1: I wouldn't go home? Yeah, that's that's tragic, And I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I've never been a person who wants to be tragic.
Speaker 1: So I drove to New York and I knew a
Speaker 1: guy who was cooling the games road manager okay, and
Speaker 1: he hooked me up with Jane Red Junior, I admit
Speaker 1: his dad. And he hooked me up with Jeane Red
Speaker 1: Junior cooling the game. We're just breaking. Their first single
Speaker 1: was just hitting, so I actually got a get with
Speaker 1: them for about a month. Um. But that was also
Speaker 1: no salary. That was like you get a piece of
Speaker 1: the gigs you book commission, um. And most of the
Speaker 1: gigs I was booking were DJ gigs up and down
Speaker 1: the East Coast and djsd' I was gonna say. What
Speaker 1: I learned, uh, was that it was a whole house.
Speaker 1: The black acts were kind of at the mercy of
Speaker 1: the radio stations totally that would throw these shows, so
Speaker 1: no one could actually make a living. It was tough,
Speaker 1: you know, as a musician until so you had several
Speaker 1: hits and could really sell tickets on your own. So
Speaker 1: afterwards you you just you just gave up and came
Speaker 1: back to James. Well, what happened is one of the
Speaker 1: guys who was booking the tour got fired and the
Speaker 1: guy that was still there, Um had stayed in touch
Speaker 1: with me, and he convinced me that James would rehire me.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, rehire me. I never got paid, right,
Speaker 1: I might have worked, but I wasn't. James rounds concerned
Speaker 1: and you're still there doing something and he didn't know
Speaker 1: that you were going. Oh no, he knew I was going.
Speaker 1: He just knew I was going, Just like, yeah, a
Speaker 1: nice kid. But didn't work out, you know. But the
Speaker 1: longest short of is James told as fellow's name was
Speaker 1: Buddy Nolan and Buddy Cauldon. He said, Mr Brown said
Speaker 1: that if you could be in Rochester, New York tonight,
Speaker 1: you got a job and he'll break you in ast
Speaker 1: to our director, assistant to our director and so on,
Speaker 1: and you'll help book the dates and promote the dates.
Speaker 1: So it's no more publicity. Now, it's like we're you know,
Speaker 1: promoting the shows. Um, and I was in New York
Speaker 1: with very little money in my pocket, scraped enough together,
Speaker 1: bought a bus ticket, went to Port authority, caught a
Speaker 1: bus to Rochester, showed up at the gig right as
Speaker 1: he was coming off stage, got backstage, shook hands, said
Speaker 1: welcome back. Son said something patronizing, and an hour later
Speaker 1: I was with him when his lear jet flying the
Speaker 1: Cincinnati So you know what from a greyhound at the
Speaker 1: port authority would know, money in my pocket to a
Speaker 1: job that actually paid me in and a seat on
Speaker 1: the lear jedge. So not bad. It was a good day.
Speaker 1: That is Yeah, that that isn't bad at all. Can
Speaker 1: you can you tell the story of Okay, I wanted
Speaker 1: to give her an example of the time when you
Speaker 1: assumed that James Brown was going to be sick and
Speaker 1: canceled a show that was not one of my bit
Speaker 1: of days musty years and must day years. Yeah he was, Um,
Speaker 1: we had he was. He was what he would do
Speaker 1: because he had a lear jet, he could fly in
Speaker 1: and out of one night ER's in b markets, so
Speaker 1: he might base himself in New York for example, if
Speaker 1: he had gigs. Let's say Fridays in Boston, on Saturdays
Speaker 1: in Providence, and Sundays in Hartford. He would base himself
Speaker 1: out of a favorite hotel in New York and just
Speaker 1: flying in and out of these places and you know,
Speaker 1: be back in his hotel in New York by one
Speaker 1: in the morning. Right. So, he was staying at the
Speaker 1: Americana now the Sheritton on the Seventh Avenue. I was
Speaker 1: home in Cincinnati, and we had a gig in Providence,
Speaker 1: and Bobby Bird, who traveled with him was you know,
Speaker 1: quasi leader of the band at the time and traveled
Speaker 1: with James, was in New York with him, and he
Speaker 1: called me in the morning. I forget if it was
Speaker 1: he or Danny. One of them called me and said,
Speaker 1: Mr Brown is really sick. The doctor's here. Mr Brown's
Speaker 1: got the flu. He's got a fever on it four.
Speaker 1: He can't hold any food down, he can't drink water,
Speaker 1: he's sweating up a storm. He tried to get up
Speaker 1: and go to bathroom and he felt faint and couldn't
Speaker 1: even make it. And he's said, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: so are you telling me to cancel the show? Did
Speaker 1: he say, canceled the show? Well, he didn't say anything,
Speaker 1: Mr Leeds, he's out cold, but you know he's just
Speaker 1: telling you the man's very sick. So I'm in this
Speaker 1: situation of like, Okay, what do I do. UM. On
Speaker 1: one hand, it kicks in right away that the sooner
Speaker 1: you cancel the show, you cut your losses, because the
Speaker 1: longer you wait, the more expensive the cancelation is going
Speaker 1: to be. Because you've got all the labor costs in
Speaker 1: the building. You can stop at two o'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: You don't have to pay the ushers, you know, have
Speaker 1: to pay the police, you know, to pay it's a
Speaker 1: lot of people you don't have to pay um that
Speaker 1: you would have to pay if you canceled at seven
Speaker 1: o'clock at night, after they've all showed up for work.
Speaker 1: So that's on my mind. Um. But by the same token,
Speaker 1: I know James Brown is not very seldom cancels the show.
Speaker 1: And it was the kind of guy who just kind
Speaker 1: of didn't believe in sick He thought sickness was weakness.
Speaker 1: I mean, I actually got laid off for three weeks
Speaker 1: once because I got sick and couldn't come to work
Speaker 1: for a few days. Miss Leads is too sick to
Speaker 1: come to work. I'm too sick to pay him. You know,
Speaker 1: It's like that, it's it's it's like he just thinks
Speaker 1: she's supposed to willach. So I was very reluctant to
Speaker 1: cancel the show. But you know, they're telling me the
Speaker 1: guys on his deathbed. So you know, so three or
Speaker 1: four calls back and forth every hour, I'm calling, how
Speaker 1: is he? How is he? Oh, he's he's he's he's
Speaker 1: going nowhere, miss leads, he's really sick. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: So now, mind you. This is before his cell phones
Speaker 1: and pagers and all of this, and it's a Sunday.
Speaker 1: So now I have to call the radio station that's
Speaker 1: promoting the show. I have to find the road manager
Speaker 1: of the band. I have to talk to the venue director.
Speaker 1: And most of these are switchboards that are closed on weekends. Um,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't easy getting hold of people. But after
Speaker 1: a couple of hours of going round about, and managed
Speaker 1: to get hold of everybody and officially canceled the show.
Speaker 1: So after all that was done, I called the Hotel
Speaker 1: of New York back to see how he was doing
Speaker 1: because we had to show the next day somewhere and
Speaker 1: his wife did answered the phone in his sweep, and
Speaker 1: I said, oh, Mr d I'm so glad you're there
Speaker 1: with him. Is he is he feeling the better? What's up?
Speaker 1: What's up? What's up? She said? I wish I knew.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, huh, what do you mean? Because she
Speaker 1: had just gotten there, if she had flown up from
Speaker 1: Georgia because her husband sick, right, And she said, by
Speaker 1: the time I got you, he'd already left for the
Speaker 1: gig in Providence. Yes, okay, So now I got to that.
Speaker 1: You want to talk about feeling like a fool, Call
Speaker 1: all these people back and say, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: they show I canceled two hours ago. It's back on.
Speaker 1: Go back on the radio, and tell all those people
Speaker 1: you told to give refunds tomorrow that, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: forget what I told you to. You know, I've blown
Speaker 1: the credit of all the radio stations, you know, And
Speaker 1: and I'm sure I blow my job. I'm just I know.
Speaker 1: It's it's history, right. So he obviously he gets there,
Speaker 1: and um, I'm sure we took a hit. I can't
Speaker 1: remember the exact not half him, like a half a house, right,
Speaker 1: So of course I get that I get told my
Speaker 1: girlfriend this. He told yet what happened? I'm sure somebody
Speaker 1: told him he had you know, of course. I mean
Speaker 1: the the band hadn't gotten off the bus, you know,
Speaker 1: they hadn't even expected to set up. They were getting
Speaker 1: ready to turn around and go to the next town.
Speaker 1: So I told my girlfriend, I said, about ten thirty tonight,
Speaker 1: this phone's going to ring and it's gonna be real ugly.
Speaker 1: And it was suffice as to say it really was
Speaker 1: Misleeds Quarter Leaven. But soon as he got off stage,
Speaker 1: he found a phone and called me, son, I know
Speaker 1: you're worried about me. I love you for that. And
Speaker 1: then his voice just cut higher and faster and higher
Speaker 1: and faster until he was shrieking. And the thing it
Speaker 1: was Bobby Burr that had a little hit record that
Speaker 1: called I need help. And he said, why in the
Speaker 1: world you gonna take Bobby Bird's word? You know he
Speaker 1: needs help? Don't you never cancel the show unless I
Speaker 1: tell you. And he's like, I gotta be up here
Speaker 1: sick and worked to have a house. So yeah, things happen. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not one of my better days. But
Speaker 1: but you still can't be cool. Um, no, no, did
Speaker 1: he fire? No, actually he didn't. I was a standard,
Speaker 1: he didn't. I mean, how many times you reckon you've gotten?
Speaker 1: Was getting fired and laid off? Always like a thing
Speaker 1: with him, like was it a running not a running joke?
Speaker 1: But I got fired twice, which was not a lie
Speaker 1: in that camp. I mean there were some guys. I
Speaker 1: mean he's like anybody didn't any kind of self made
Speaker 1: man who runs his own business. He has a very
Speaker 1: very keen knack of re eating people and knowing how
Speaker 1: far to go. Was that mean he knows who will
Speaker 1: take certain things and who won't. And you know the
Speaker 1: guys that are vulnerable, they get fired once a week,
Speaker 1: and it was usually right before pay day. You know,
Speaker 1: So when when did you leave the organization? What you uh,
Speaker 1: finally seventy four and you're there for the mustache period,
Speaker 1: the big yeah yeah, yeah. Context. But I don't think
Speaker 1: this is a generational thing because it's it's like I
Speaker 1: I didn't realize until I went to work for Prince
Speaker 1: how because James had lasted so long, had gone through
Speaker 1: so many metamorphoses artistically, that every generation has their own
Speaker 1: James Brown. And you know, like you said, your favorite
Speaker 1: Apollo album is three and mine is probably two. But
Speaker 1: you know, it depends how old you are and what
Speaker 1: your personal taste and so. But but you know, very
Speaker 1: few artists have that many phases that are so distinctly different. Um,
Speaker 1: but when you're that close, you don't think of it.
Speaker 1: And I think of it in terms of the records.
Speaker 1: But you know when you say the month when when
Speaker 1: you guys first started talking to me about the mustache period,
Speaker 1: I was like, huh, I had to go back and
Speaker 1: look at pictures to see when more because I'm not
Speaker 1: like clocking this mustache? Right? Did the music change when? Right? Well?
Speaker 1: I would call that the payback era because that was
Speaker 1: like the big comeback record and arguably his last great record.
Speaker 1: So were you did you go to the Zaire? Were
Speaker 1: you there for the Muhammad Ali? No? No, unfortunately you
Speaker 1: left by that point. I don't remember if I had left,
Speaker 1: but he wouldn't have took me anyway, because so you
Speaker 1: when you tour manage, you were always in the home base.
Speaker 1: And since that, you know, it was back and forth.
Speaker 1: What would happen is we'd work in the office month
Speaker 1: through third is d and on Friday one if not
Speaker 1: both of us, meaning the guys who were booking the
Speaker 1: shows would fly out and join the tour for the weekend,
Speaker 1: and usually it was just one of us. We take turns.
Speaker 1: That's why I was home when he was in Providence,
Speaker 1: in sick in New York. It was my weekend to
Speaker 1: be home. But um, but I wasn't a road manager
Speaker 1: in the sense that I was on the bus constantly, Okay,
Speaker 1: So it was very much back and forth. I mean
Speaker 1: it was. It would never never two weeks went by
Speaker 1: where I didn't see the show somewhere. So what happens
Speaker 1: after seventy four? Now I know that your period of
Speaker 1: Prince was he started uh eighty two, well the last
Speaker 1: stages of the nineteen so he came in eighty three,
Speaker 1: eight three. So what were those ten years? What did
Speaker 1: you do in the in between those ten years? Like
Speaker 1: what other acts are? Well, actually got married and had
Speaker 1: a kid, which kept me at home for a while,
Speaker 1: and then I was I was actually promoting shows, um,
Speaker 1: putting little R and b at, a at, a backer
Speaker 1: and a partner, and we were putting little packages together
Speaker 1: and taking a tour like the Shylights and the Stylistas
Speaker 1: and the Detroit damnerals, take three or four bands, put
Speaker 1: them together and and book a four day runting down
Speaker 1: South somewhere. Maybe play Charlotte, Raleigh, Richmond, you know that
Speaker 1: kind of a thing. Now, had touring conditions changed by
Speaker 1: the mid seventies than it was in the in the sixties,
Speaker 1: they were starting to they were starting to. Um, it
Speaker 1: had dramatically changed in the pop world. It was a
Speaker 1: little bit ahead of the R and B world. But um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't so much that the business changed as much
Speaker 1: as the culture changed. I mean just the face of
Speaker 1: America was changing. The lifestyles, the living conditions, everything was changing. Um,
Speaker 1: at least on the surface it things weren't as as
Speaker 1: overtly segregated, meaning that here's an example. Back in the sixties,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna play in New York, you played the
Speaker 1: Apollo Theater. I mean you could count on one hand
Speaker 1: the black artist who could who could do enough business
Speaker 1: to play the Garden, But you would play the Apollo
Speaker 1: and do four four shows a day, five on weekends.
Speaker 1: So if you played the Apollo for a week, and
Speaker 1: the typical booking was you opened the show opened on Friday,
Speaker 1: one o'clock in the afternoon the first show on the
Speaker 1: first and then second show is like four seven and ten,
Speaker 1: and how long are the shows? How long is the show?
Speaker 1: Two hours? But inside these shows were comedians. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was. It was not as you sang,
Speaker 1: it's for two hours straight. It was kind of no,
Speaker 1: because there would be support acts and the star might
Speaker 1: do fifty minutes our dependent on the audience feel satisfied
Speaker 1: that totally. That's what they were used to. They didn't know.
Speaker 1: I'm just used to, you know, the lead person doing
Speaker 1: a two hour show. Yeah, but nobody did that then,
Speaker 1: Oh okay, nobody did that. Very few people doing that,
Speaker 1: and nobody's given to our shows. Now that's very rare, no,
Speaker 1: I mean you we we would. We would tour and
Speaker 1: have say the Stylistics as a support act. After they
Speaker 1: were talking about Stylistics when they were on maybe their
Speaker 1: third or fourth hit single like rock rock and roll baby, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hits um, but the first hits well, I mean
Speaker 1: like the round two albums and you may yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: and they'd get twenty minutes, twenty minutes. Yeah, they ain't
Speaker 1: got the three jams. What they gonna do? Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know. My research. They would use some songs and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what they did after they ran out of their hits.
Speaker 1: Everybody did Alfhie. You know, you're right, did Alfie? Everyone
Speaker 1: did Alfie? Yeah, yeah they do. I mean that's a
Speaker 1: very seventies thing. But but it's you know, nobody expected
Speaker 1: them to do more. So let's kiss your first foray
Speaker 1: into the rock world. Yeah really, the only one. Now,
Speaker 1: why why did they seek you out? They didn't? Oh you,
Speaker 1: I just believe it or not. This is the only
Speaker 1: act I ever chased was James Brown. Every everything else
Speaker 1: came just by being in the right place at the
Speaker 1: right time. It's just God looks out for fools or something.
Speaker 1: The only show I really chased was James Brown. But
Speaker 1: I had been off the road for several years, okay,
Speaker 1: and was looking to get back in it and paranoid
Speaker 1: because the business had changed. This is now one. So
Speaker 1: after they took the makeup off, No they was. It
Speaker 1: was actually the Creatures of the Night was the album
Speaker 1: which didn't sell and it was their last tour. Would
Speaker 1: make up before it came off? Or they still playing stadiums,
Speaker 1: or they down they were playing arenas but see markets
Speaker 1: and half filling them. It was really a low exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I played pretty much pretty much, but they always had
Speaker 1: big production still like it was a big show. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had to satisfy their fans and they hoped to
Speaker 1: what was that experience like loud? Really yeah? I mean,
Speaker 1: I can honestly say, and it should be a shame
Speaker 1: to say this, but I can honestly say I did
Speaker 1: not know one of the songs you weren't doing like
Speaker 1: I was reading for Loving You Christian, no clue I
Speaker 1: love kiss man. No j Brown had gotten in my head. Man,
Speaker 1: if it wasn't funky, or if it wasn't jazz, I
Speaker 1: was not me. But the Dynasty album they're trying to
Speaker 1: get a little fucking joint word is trying, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I was impressible seven year old
Speaker 1: kid at the time, So you know, I get if
Speaker 1: I was seven out of probably get impressed too. I
Speaker 1: don't know, impressed enough to buy the book. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying that I'm not. I wasn't a kiss fanatic, But
Speaker 1: I mean I grew up in the household in which
Speaker 1: you know what, you you developed your musical taste in
Speaker 1: your formative years from the other adults in the house.
Speaker 1: You're your parents, I'm she was in the kiss. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just doing the particular high school. So you're saying
Speaker 1: my mother turned me on too, James brand Oh man,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying everyone has a cool older figure. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that I I don't know me man like you.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's all good. I just for me.
Speaker 1: I mean I was in the South. They had makeup
Speaker 1: on that was like, you know, it was some devil ship.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you though, that's pretty much I'm kissing
Speaker 1: twisted sister, all that ship all but not see. But
Speaker 1: you're missing in the seventies and ages. I know you're
Speaker 1: born a little bit after me, but feeling the same
Speaker 1: character like white men with paint on now reminded me
Speaker 1: Stephen King. I just know I'm good with all that ship. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just like when yeah, you sound like pretty good.
Speaker 1: Already established the reason I have the shows because my
Speaker 1: sponge memory for stupid details, like even Allen asking Alan
Speaker 1: questions I don't want to know about, like does he
Speaker 1: show the poster with the sex machine lyrics on it?
Speaker 1: I want to know what James Brown's writer was in
Speaker 1: ninety three yo I've heard crazy writers stories from various groups.
Speaker 1: I think, uh, let's see that. We didn't have riders,
Speaker 1: know what? Any right? Did you know? The contracts that
Speaker 1: we have were like one page. That's literally it was
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, this is this is the date, this
Speaker 1: is the time of place. So it never occurred to you,
Speaker 1: guys the number one touring attraction for black music in America,
Speaker 1: probably second to the Motortown Review, which I guess lost
Speaker 1: team after six or sixty five sixty six. It never
Speaker 1: occurred to you guys wants to like, hey, maybe we
Speaker 1: can have because he brought everything donuts, No, he brought everything.
Speaker 1: Every anything he wanted he brought with him. Okay, his
Speaker 1: dressing room was full of stuff, but he would just
Speaker 1: bring it because there was The promoters didn't do that.
Speaker 1: I'll give you give you an example. Teddy Powell. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know who that was. He was
Speaker 1: a major, major black music promoter based in New York,
Speaker 1: but he promoted all over the Northeast and he took
Speaker 1: tours out. He took single dates, he played gospel shows,
Speaker 1: he played jazz festivals, he played R and B tours,
Speaker 1: and whenever we played Newark was played for Teddy. He was,
Speaker 1: you know, our promoter in Newark, and he would occasionally
Speaker 1: buy dates and put him in under the City's too um.
Speaker 1: Teddy had a Marvin Gay two ur shortly after What's
Speaker 1: Going On broke and Marvin had a rider. And this
Speaker 1: was when I was in Pittsburgh and I went. I
Speaker 1: went to the show to basically to see Teddy and
Speaker 1: hang out and talk shop. And he's like home, He
Speaker 1: called everybody home. It was just a real old school
Speaker 1: kind of you know, rough promoter always had a suit
Speaker 1: and tie on, but it was always wrinkled, you know
Speaker 1: that guy. And he's like, oh, I gotta take it.
Speaker 1: Been promoting shows for twenty years now. I'm a rug merchant.
Speaker 1: You know what scripe Marvin Kay? I mean, I know
Speaker 1: he's got a big hit, but it says he's wants
Speaker 1: carpeting and to dressing. We're in the arena. Arenas don't
Speaker 1: have carpeting and dressing room. But I got him. Wow.
Speaker 1: He laid out newspaper and taped it to the floor.
Speaker 1: You can't make this up. I saw it, and that
Speaker 1: was his way of saying, get the hell out of here.
Speaker 1: What's your writer? Okay? Yeah, so it took a minute
Speaker 1: before the artists had the juice to make those kind
Speaker 1: of demands, and promoters the whole balance of the relationship.
Speaker 1: Back in those days, the promoter was, God, this is
Speaker 1: the guy that paid you. You worked for him. I
Speaker 1: guess you got a start. I got the kiss gig
Speaker 1: guy got out of a classified ad in variety. They
Speaker 1: took an ad out. They took an ad. They were
Speaker 1: being managed by a business manager. Their their their longtime manager.
Speaker 1: The coined it parted ways. So their managers were a
Speaker 1: couple of guys who were really accountants clickman and Marx
Speaker 1: how are it? Clickman? I forget so you know all
Speaker 1: about it? Um, And they were not really rocket road guys. UM.
Speaker 1: Longer short of it is Yeah, they put an ad.
Speaker 1: They needed a road manager because they had a tour manager,
Speaker 1: but they needed somebody to handle all the travel and
Speaker 1: the logistics because the tour manager was too good to
Speaker 1: do that stuff. It was that kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: And I was looking for a way to get back
Speaker 1: into business. And as I said, the business had changed
Speaker 1: a lot. It It was on the verge of turning
Speaker 1: from a low tech to you know, mom and pop
Speaker 1: business into something that wasn't quite high tech yet, but
Speaker 1: it was on the way it was changing. It was
Speaker 1: definitely corporatized, and particularly with kiss because they were a
Speaker 1: corporation and ran things that way. But longer short of
Speaker 1: it is I guess the only way they knew to
Speaker 1: do it, because what ever think to put an ad
Speaker 1: in variety for a rock and roll road managers? And
Speaker 1: it was insane. But it was like they saying it's
Speaker 1: for kissing. It was just I don't know. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was it was an employment agency that placed to
Speaker 1: add on their behalf. I mean a place like I
Speaker 1: went to apply for this job with no idea of
Speaker 1: who the group was, and it was the kind of
Speaker 1: employment agency where there's like twenty people taking typing tests
Speaker 1: to go to work as clerical people in offices like
Speaker 1: Manpower exactly. It was like insane, Ah, man Manpower, it's
Speaker 1: where people we did Moore go to fund It really
Speaker 1: is that man Power was like if gessfore you went,
Speaker 1: if you you know, you didn't have like no, no
Speaker 1: kind of degree and nothing like the job corps. It's
Speaker 1: not quite it's like Manpower and the job corps like
Speaker 1: the bottom of the remember feel a job yeah, but
Speaker 1: at least you're geting the office and manpower. Yet your
Speaker 1: job called they seen you like third world countries. How
Speaker 1: do you know that that's peace Corps. Now I think
Speaker 1: it's dropped. Say whatever, it's not. It's bad peace job
Speaker 1: Corps on the court. It's like gardens and rhymed about
Speaker 1: job of corps. So I knew it was bad instantly,
Speaker 1: but now I knew. But I used to work. I had.
Speaker 1: I had a temp job before I had a couple
Speaker 1: of now I had. I worked in a call center.
Speaker 1: I used to call just call people for the government.
Speaker 1: Who for the government, Well you wanted they wanted their
Speaker 1: money back or now it was like some kind of
Speaker 1: survey that they wanted to do. It was some bullshit.
Speaker 1: But I would just call and around. That's why I
Speaker 1: have a good speaking voice on radio. A man. I
Speaker 1: was started the call center and then after that went
Speaker 1: to work for Blue Cross, another call center. Things you
Speaker 1: learn that su never mind and forget it. So what
Speaker 1: what what was your your experience with kiss Like, what
Speaker 1: what was the difference between Matt and James Brown. I
Speaker 1: know that I would assume that you could say that
Speaker 1: James Brown was high maintenance. So what was the difference.
Speaker 1: The difference was James Brown, I was raced to see
Speaker 1: the show. Would kiss the gig was get back to
Speaker 1: the hotel. I didn't have to see the show. I
Speaker 1: mean I saw it once. I was impressed. It was cool.
Speaker 1: But I would think that you would have to always
Speaker 1: just be there to whole hands because that that they
Speaker 1: had a tour manager and as long that it was
Speaker 1: way more important. I mean, they were a well oiled machine.
Speaker 1: They had the right kind of security, the right kind
Speaker 1: of tour manager. They just needed to know that there
Speaker 1: would be the right fruit salad in the room when
Speaker 1: they get back to the hotel. Do you tell the
Speaker 1: food salad story real quick? I mean it was like
Speaker 1: he's literally telling the truth. It's like that that that
Speaker 1: was the most important thing was they had to be
Speaker 1: a fruit salad for Gene. They all had an idea
Speaker 1: menu for what they wanted in their rooms, and I'm
Speaker 1: talking it should be in the room when they walk in.
Speaker 1: The makeup is dripping in, the suits are still on
Speaker 1: its on, but the food has to be there. Proper temperature, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Which is find if you're in at risk. Carton but
Speaker 1: if you're in a holiday inn in Dubuque, Iowa, where
Speaker 1: the kitchen clothed it, ten forget it. So that's how
Speaker 1: I got out of having to watch the shows, because
Speaker 1: I would actually take the limit after I dropped them
Speaker 1: at the show. Once the show went up, I take
Speaker 1: one of the cars and goes shopping and actually find
Speaker 1: a supermarket and make the fruit salad because and the
Speaker 1: reason was that was like about the third or fourth
Speaker 1: show out. Um, I get a call from Gene right
Speaker 1: after they got in their rooms, walked them up, mediment lobby,
Speaker 1: walked them up to let them to their rooms. Go
Speaker 1: back to my room. About five minutes later, phone rings,
Speaker 1: come to my room. Okay, come to this room. This
Speaker 1: is a fruit salad. And it means all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: this rock and roll star in makeup still got the
Speaker 1: uniform on, and he sounds like Jackie Mason. He's like,
Speaker 1: you called this a fruit salad, like Rodney Dangerfield. And
Speaker 1: he picks up a piece and I mean it was
Speaker 1: like about four slices of orange and like two slices
Speaker 1: of pineapple and something. This is what this holiday is
Speaker 1: called the fruit salad? Right, this is not a fruit salad.
Speaker 1: This is ship. This is what I pay you for.
Speaker 1: So it was like, okay, I got it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make the fruit salad. So for the next, you know,
Speaker 1: the rest of the tour, I made the fruit salad.
Speaker 1: So you're trying to tell me that the only one
Speaker 1: kiss was not It's a totally different man. Halen like, wait,
Speaker 1: I'm like fruit salad. What about the women and the
Speaker 1: groupies and the like? Were they beyond that now? And that?
Speaker 1: I was just like, all right, I'm on stage. Where's
Speaker 1: no Jean was still seeing both d and Ross and Share,
Speaker 1: so he was juggling, That's right, he was. He was
Speaker 1: Diana Ross and Yeah and Um. How long did that
Speaker 1: last for UM one tour? It was like three months,
Speaker 1: two months, three months something like that. So when it
Speaker 1: was over, you thought you were coming home. I thought
Speaker 1: I was coming home. They shared the production manager with Prince.
Speaker 1: Prince was out in the tour, and the production manager
Speaker 1: caught me and Catering at like the second to last
Speaker 1: gig on the kiss around like a typical conversation, what
Speaker 1: do you do when you go home? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm going to wait for the phone to ring and
Speaker 1: um and he says, well, you're interested in the Prince
Speaker 1: gig because he just let somebody go. And that was
Speaker 1: like the second or third tour MANAGERIED had on that
Speaker 1: particular tour, And I was like, of course I'm interested
Speaker 1: when he pays me to go home, Yes, I'm interested.
Speaker 1: Now the rere he was, I had already fallen in
Speaker 1: love with Prince. It was very obvious this guy's going places,
Speaker 1: and it was a show I'd enjoy seeing every night.
Speaker 1: Now I had no idea what the gig was gonna be,
Speaker 1: like I've heard he's difficult, a little crazy, but you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't really know much. I didn't know anybody in
Speaker 1: the camp, so I really went in there blind. Did
Speaker 1: that were you that he already went through two or
Speaker 1: three during one tour? No? No, there was only a
Speaker 1: month left on his tour and it was either that
Speaker 1: or go home, and said, of my butt until the
Speaker 1: phone rang And I loved his music. Well, so to
Speaker 1: me it was it was. It was terrific. It was
Speaker 1: like an opportunity to get into camp that that that
Speaker 1: had a future. But I'm in worried as in like
Speaker 1: I would think like when someone changes their cell phone
Speaker 1: number twice in a year. I'm already thinking, like I questioned,
Speaker 1: someone that changes their selves like their life and okay,
Speaker 1: what what life decisions have you made that brought to you? Right,
Speaker 1: it's like the spinal tap, like the whole joke of
Speaker 1: you went through eight drummers? Is that night drum Right?
Speaker 1: So I would figured to go through a couple of
Speaker 1: tour managers in such a short period of time that
Speaker 1: this person is difficult. Yeah, that was. But is it
Speaker 1: that you once you dealt with James Brown kind of
Speaker 1: handle anything? Maybe that was it? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: was that in the back of my mind? Sure it was.
Speaker 1: And as I began, because I didn't know anybody on
Speaker 1: the tour except the production manager and um and he
Speaker 1: had warned me. The first thing he said, and the
Speaker 1: first thing for a no he said when he hired me,
Speaker 1: was don't approach Prince until he's comfortable with you. He'll
Speaker 1: let you know, he'll send you a side and somehow
Speaker 1: he'll let you know when he's ready to communicate with you.
Speaker 1: And like that that was normal sounding to you. No,
Speaker 1: of course not. But I was working for him. It
Speaker 1: was his house and it's like, so I don't have
Speaker 1: to put up with the the artist in my ear
Speaker 1: giving me instructions all the time. Great, I can't mess
Speaker 1: up something I'm not told to do. But someone has
Speaker 1: to be your your information person, alright. So so the
Speaker 1: first week out was out there and and I mean
Speaker 1: I went up to him, he took my hand the
Speaker 1: first night, welcome aboard, something like that. That was all
Speaker 1: we talked about. Um the third or fourth day I
Speaker 1: needed to talk to him about picking hotels. And traditionally
Speaker 1: I would go to an artist and say, here's where
Speaker 1: we're going. Do you have a favorite hotel in these cities,
Speaker 1: so as to make sure that they were booked where
Speaker 1: they would want to be, and being new in the camp,
Speaker 1: it sounded like a logical question. So I came up
Speaker 1: to the dressing room before show one night and I
Speaker 1: talked to Big Chick said I need to see Prince. Well, buddy,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a smart thing to do.
Speaker 1: I'm still new blood. So everybody's like patrinising me. And
Speaker 1: he says, well, here's the thing, what do you want
Speaker 1: to talk to him about? Now? Chick called himself looking
Speaker 1: out for me. I'm thinking he's blocking me, right, because
Speaker 1: I still don't get the doneamics of the person answering,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm new in camp and he says well,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, and you just talked to him
Speaker 1: about a few hotels for the next next few weeks. Buddy,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. He hired you because you know what
Speaker 1: you're doing, and if you ask him about hotels, he's
Speaker 1: gonna think you don't know what you're doing. Then why
Speaker 1: did he hire you? So you knew that logic was
Speaker 1: out the window, and so it was up to you
Speaker 1: to guess what his preferences. Yes, so I went to
Speaker 1: Bobby Z and I went to Farnoli and I said,
Speaker 1: where do you guys stay? It's like, okay, he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to talk about hotels. So maybe maybe a week
Speaker 1: into me being there, after four or five, six shows whatever,
Speaker 1: we're in St. Louis and we're in a hotel. After
Speaker 1: the show, I'm in the lobby bar with with the
Speaker 1: whole band I think was there all five of them probably,
Speaker 1: So they hung out occasionally occasionally, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: one of those deals where in a boring hotel and
Speaker 1: after hours and you're leaving first thing in the morning,
Speaker 1: so you're not gonna go out in the street and
Speaker 1: everybody just met. I'll meet you in the bar. We'll
Speaker 1: have a drink right just unwind after a show. So
Speaker 1: we're sitting in a huge round table and the band is.
Speaker 1: You know, I've had a couple of drinks, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of lively conversation and so on and so on,
Speaker 1: and suddenly we look up and here comes to Print
Speaker 1: and Chick walking across the lobby towards us. And what's
Speaker 1: fascinated to meet was the conversation stopped. There was a
Speaker 1: tension at the table. You could feel, and I'm like, hey, now,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, everybody's scared to talk because into
Speaker 1: whatever it is they're saying, they don't want him to
Speaker 1: hear it, because what I didn't realize is that he
Speaker 1: has a way of taking what you say out of context,
Speaker 1: twisting it around him mean something else, and so on.
Speaker 1: So their whole thing was, let's just don't say anything
Speaker 1: unless we're asked. Now, I'm from New York, I don't
Speaker 1: know from That's like, I'll say anything. Pick what you want,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, as luck would have it. The only
Speaker 1: empty chair at the table, who was next to me,
Speaker 1: so Chicken Prince Head outside of the table and I
Speaker 1: get up to offer my seat to Chick, figuring Prince
Speaker 1: will take the empty seat, and Chick kind of physically
Speaker 1: pushes me back in the seat, which was the right
Speaker 1: thing to do, is the bodyguard. But I'm being polite
Speaker 1: because I'm the newbie, right. So we're sitting at the
Speaker 1: table and now it's like awkwardly quiet, and everybody's waiting
Speaker 1: for him to say something because now the boss is here,
Speaker 1: and you know, they were talking about how the show
Speaker 1: was and so on, but but maybe he didn't like
Speaker 1: the show, so they're afraid to express anything. They want
Speaker 1: to read him first. Did he like to show or
Speaker 1: did he not? Is he here to pick up this mood?
Speaker 1: Did we miss the que that if they want to
Speaker 1: read his mood? Right, So there's this awkward silence for
Speaker 1: about sixty seconds, and then he just turns to me
Speaker 1: in my ear and he says, tell me some James
Speaker 1: Brunce stories. Wow, And I don't know what I thought
Speaker 1: of something real quick. I don't really knows what I
Speaker 1: told him. I have no recollection at all. And from
Speaker 1: that point on we talked so that that was okay,
Speaker 1: you're in. You passed initiation really and after that I
Speaker 1: couldn't get in this shut up because now it is
Speaker 1: it is the guy calling number ten minutes with get this,
Speaker 1: do that, get this, do that. Knowing what I think
Speaker 1: I know about him, I would have thought he was
Speaker 1: testing you to see would you spill any secrets, like
Speaker 1: he was testing your loyalty. So the story you told
Speaker 1: must have been humorous enough to give just a little
Speaker 1: bit of information. I'm sure this is that one time
Speaker 1: when I caught James Brown, You're like, oh no, he's
Speaker 1: not no, no dirty laundry that that that's that's too
Speaker 1: are men and you want no one that you don't
Speaker 1: You never dis a previous artist with the New Orleans
Speaker 1: because wow, you just don't. So when when you entered
Speaker 1: the the realm of of the Prince tour um, what
Speaker 1: preparation of anything that you were given? Like what's your
Speaker 1: I still don't know how you just jump in the
Speaker 1: head first too an already existent situation. You know, you
Speaker 1: just dive in. You figure out what's been done, what
Speaker 1: hasn't been done. But the biggest thing in that situation,
Speaker 1: because I wasn't used to jumping in its stream, was
Speaker 1: just kind of observe the whole thing was like, let
Speaker 1: me clock everybody and see how this works. Catch the
Speaker 1: dynamics of the personalities, who's outspoken, who's a problem, who's cool,
Speaker 1: who oversleeps? You know, just get a sense of of
Speaker 1: what you're dealing with. You know, you can't reinvent it.
Speaker 1: You can't come in cold and and reinvent the wheel,
Speaker 1: because whatever they're doing, it's working. Did you have to
Speaker 1: uh to babysit all three acts or was it just Prince?
Speaker 1: And each act had a road manager but they all
Speaker 1: answered to you? Yeah, pretty much, because I was the
Speaker 1: one who was telling him what plane we're on and
Speaker 1: what hotel we're gonna be out and so on. They
Speaker 1: didn't have a voice in that. What the res are
Speaker 1: you talking about? Vanity six? In the time as you
Speaker 1: I'm referring to um? So was it? Was? It well oiled?
Speaker 1: Even with those acts, Like were they professional? Were they?
Speaker 1: Everybody was very professional and it was obvious that he
Speaker 1: didn't tolerate in bullshit, so it was a very professional operation. Now, still,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of opinionated people, and it was
Speaker 1: there was some you had a real sense of drama
Speaker 1: and obviously it didn't take long to learn. A lot
Speaker 1: of it had to do with, um, what had happened
Speaker 1: with Jimmy, jam and Terry before I joined, when they
Speaker 1: had broken away, and Mr Gig because they've been in
Speaker 1: the studio, wounded Atlanta and so on for the listeners
Speaker 1: who don't quick side note. So Jimmy and Terry uh
Speaker 1: flew to Atlanta to produce just be good to Me, right,
Speaker 1: and then an ounce of drop of snow came in
Speaker 1: Atlanta shut the airport down, thus forcing uh, I guess
Speaker 1: uh Brown Mark and Lisa and Prince to fill in.
Speaker 1: Uh the Times music backstage? Were you witnessed to that? No? No,
Speaker 1: there was before before. Okay, So by I mean by that,
Speaker 1: by that point though, I mean could you, I mean
Speaker 1: the bands weren't speaking. The first of all, there was
Speaker 1: a musical rivalry between the bands because the Time could
Speaker 1: kick their ass and often did. Yeah, I mean because
Speaker 1: but Prince did he not have his well, it was
Speaker 1: already he designed that he wanted that. Well, I know that.
Speaker 1: But when I hear like, oh, the Time kicked our
Speaker 1: ass tonight, like I think it was like the frankis
Speaker 1: not Minster that kind of went beyond his control. Like
Speaker 1: I think it was I think the time was him
Speaker 1: just kind of getting his funk nut off, like I'll
Speaker 1: just do this kind of function. But you know, for
Speaker 1: a while, and I think even when we talked to
Speaker 1: Brown Mark and them, right, you know, they were saying that,
Speaker 1: I mean, because you know, after while the time was
Speaker 1: I mean, that was like the black audience, So they
Speaker 1: were It was a stylistic thing as much as anything else,
Speaker 1: because the nature of the songs, the repertoire was was different.
Speaker 1: It was more R and B. Yeah, it was hardcore
Speaker 1: R and B. When you get when, I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't funk with a ten minute vamp on cool a little.
Speaker 1: It's a tremendous song, but it ain't gonna do to
Speaker 1: a house what ten minutes to Cool does or seven
Speaker 1: seven seven, I mean, I get it. So, I mean
Speaker 1: they were just at at best cordial to each other
Speaker 1: by that point best. And then there was the Vanity
Speaker 1: sixth thing where he did been you know, been through
Speaker 1: the Vanity thing. They had already broken up, but he
Speaker 1: was trying to make people think he was still in
Speaker 1: there and they would hang together. But she was making
Speaker 1: everybody aware that it was just to hang that she
Speaker 1: was really done with him. And Susan Moons he's still
Speaker 1: his like sometimes friend, but she's not sleeping with him either,
Speaker 1: And Jill Jones is there, and I mean it was
Speaker 1: it was crazy at that levels of awesome juggling. One
Speaker 1: day fontago, you and I will discuss life. Life goes,
Speaker 1: I guess by the point. But by the time you
Speaker 1: joined the tour, the fabled Purple Notebook ever show itself.
Speaker 1: I mean, how much talk of we might do a
Speaker 1: movie or this sort of thing. Well, I heard that.
Speaker 1: I heard that because some of the guys in the
Speaker 1: band were talking about it. Jill Jones was talking about it.
Speaker 1: I remember Vanity and Susan Moon's he telling me, you know,
Speaker 1: he's writing in his notebook and these ideas. He thinks
Speaker 1: he's gonna make a movie, and everybody kind of like
Speaker 1: the sense I got was that nobody really believed it,
Speaker 1: but everybody was too afraid of him to express it.
Speaker 1: So everybody acted like, yeah, we're gonna make a movie,
Speaker 1: but you know, but like they didn't believe it. At
Speaker 1: what point did it become like, oh crap, this really
Speaker 1: is going to happen. Um About a month after I
Speaker 1: was in Minneapolis and we started doing casting calls. Well.
Speaker 1: But the one thing that I noticed when at least
Speaker 1: for searching the notes of the music that went into
Speaker 1: Purple Rain, was that he was on a serious deadline
Speaker 1: because once the movie got greenlit, songs still weren't finalized yet.
Speaker 1: And so, um, when I'm reading the Warner brother logs,
Speaker 1: the Warner Brothers uh studio logs of how songs got
Speaker 1: created and how fast and close to deadline that they were,
Speaker 1: you know, like the beautiful ones really wasn't created until
Speaker 1: like mer or months before they had to shoot this stuff.
Speaker 1: So I think Take Me with You came like during
Speaker 1: Well that's my point and the fact that, I mean
Speaker 1: it's easy to take for granted that his his talents
Speaker 1: were endless and metaphoric metaphorically speaking, he was just shooting
Speaker 1: three pointers all day. The film people worried about that,
Speaker 1: but we didn't because we, I mean we by then
Speaker 1: I knew what everybody else in they camp do that
Speaker 1: this was the guy who would go downstairs and in
Speaker 1: six hours great a new song. And at that point
Speaker 1: in his career, the songs it was creating were consistently good. Um,
Speaker 1: I think it didn't take long one shooting began to
Speaker 1: realize a that nobody in this cast was going to
Speaker 1: threaten Meryl Streep or George C. Scott. What were those preparations, like,
Speaker 1: did you witness like these? Balied? YEA. When when I
Speaker 1: first got to Minneapolis, as Farnoli said, you're an off
Speaker 1: road road because I said, what's the gig? You're an
Speaker 1: off road road manager with three bands. Why wouldn't Farnoli
Speaker 1: come into do the because he lived in l a
Speaker 1: And and he didn't want to leave. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that this is this was kind of the
Speaker 1: gopher stuff. It's like we had an acting coach who
Speaker 1: had come come been hired from California to come in
Speaker 1: and work individually with the people who had the most
Speaker 1: speaking roles. We had a dance class down downtown that
Speaker 1: was just basically just basic dance and entered as much
Speaker 1: a workout as anything else. But so it's just to
Speaker 1: keep them in shape, not exactly exactly making them lazy
Speaker 1: and like no, but I just just figured yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and and then there was the rehearsals, and and you
Speaker 1: had Vanity six, you had the time, and you had
Speaker 1: the Revolution, and they were all rehearsing. So it was
Speaker 1: my job to stagger their schedules to make sure everybody
Speaker 1: knew where to go and win. The dance classes were
Speaker 1: like three times a week downtown at the Minnesota Dance Theater,
Speaker 1: three times a week downtown. Yeah, then it would be
Speaker 1: like in late morning so that we could have the day,
Speaker 1: you know, the day for rehearsing, and um, everybody would
Speaker 1: go to that together. So that would be all the
Speaker 1: groups together and anybody else who was the nineteen people?
Speaker 1: Is your job to wrinkled nineteen people? Yeah, pretty much,
Speaker 1: Morris included, and yeah, absolutely absolutely, And then Gwen and
Speaker 1: I would go and Gwen would get in tights and
Speaker 1: work out with Susan Mooncy and it would just all
Speaker 1: hang out the silly and Jerome with clown and drive
Speaker 1: the dance teacher crazy, give us hysterical. We should have
Speaker 1: had footage of that that. The dance theater stuff was
Speaker 1: all right. Prince included sometimes not always, but sometimes, I'd
Speaker 1: say half the time he was there. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was it easy at all for you to make
Speaker 1: this move or was it? Like? No, it was pretty
Speaker 1: traumatic actually, because it was like leaving a girlfriend and
Speaker 1: leaving New York, neither of which I wanted to leave
Speaker 1: um to live in a town I had no designs
Speaker 1: of staying in and and but but it was like
Speaker 1: it was like, this is the offer you can't refuse,
Speaker 1: and and and I was I really played hard to
Speaker 1: get with Farnoli when he called me, because it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, because he could tell I ain't feeling Minneapolis, man,
Speaker 1: I mean, how long am I to be there? Well?
Speaker 1: Maybe forever? It was like, no, well, you were lucky
Speaker 1: enough to pull Gwynn into the circle. Yeah, I can't imagine.
Speaker 1: That was like, okay, well I tried that once, like
Speaker 1: out of the end he broke up at the end
Speaker 1: of that. It ended. But wait, that's what you just said, Alan,
Speaker 1: you said that was a part of deal. Like it's
Speaker 1: either both of us or it was part of the
Speaker 1: deal at a certain point. Because after I was here
Speaker 1: for a while and I realized this was a keeper,
Speaker 1: meaning the gig, I was really concerned about our relationship
Speaker 1: because the relationship had just gotten to the point where
Speaker 1: this is like getting serious. And um, but you know,
Speaker 1: she had a good job in New York. She was
Speaker 1: public relations directed for the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum
Speaker 1: and Natural History had been there for several years. All
Speaker 1: her friends were in New York. She had never lived
Speaker 1: anywhere else except when she went away to school, and
Speaker 1: so the idea of her movie just didn't even seem
Speaker 1: worth having a conversation about. Never occurred to me. But
Speaker 1: something happened at the planetarium. They had a change in management,
Speaker 1: and the new regime was was not to her liking.
Speaker 1: So she was starting to obblund So Fate just said
Speaker 1: that if she was ever going to consider a move,
Speaker 1: this was the time. And um my thing was that
Speaker 1: eventually we would tour, which is what I lived for.
Speaker 1: If I had want to be in the movie making business,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't moved to La and got in that business.
Speaker 1: This was just something we were doing until we got
Speaker 1: to the next tour. That that's what got me excited,
Speaker 1: was hitting the road and making music. Making a movie
Speaker 1: was tedious to me. It was just bored. You didn't
Speaker 1: know whether or not it was gonna work or not. No,
Speaker 1: but but I knew whither without the success of the movie.
Speaker 1: One day, he's going to tour again. He's got a band,
Speaker 1: he makes new music, and he's popular. We're going to
Speaker 1: go out and the root and do what we do
Speaker 1: and at that point, I don't want to be away
Speaker 1: from home for six months. So the thing with Gwen
Speaker 1: was like once she came to she she came to visit,
Speaker 1: and then the job situation for her turned intowards something
Speaker 1: that became unpleasant because the management change and was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, and I missed you too, maybe this
Speaker 1: is what I'm supposed to do, so lo and behold.
Speaker 1: She was willing to move. So at that point I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, if we're going to tour, she's going
Speaker 1: to become my assistant. And it it kind of morphed
Speaker 1: organically because there was no Paisley Park, there was no office,
Speaker 1: and so kind of by default my apartment living room
Speaker 1: became the office. That's where guys would come to pick
Speaker 1: up their perdems and you know, when the packages would
Speaker 1: come that I'd have to take the Prince of rehearsal.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of the headquarters for Pierre and
Speaker 1: Productions until we finally had an office a year later.
Speaker 1: Um So, needless to say, Prince Scott used to calling me,
Speaker 1: He got used to Gwen answering the phone, and very
Speaker 1: gradually he started asking her to do stuff for him. Heah,
Speaker 1: so he was like, and I don't know if he
Speaker 1: was testing her what, but he was, you know, did
Speaker 1: did a package come for me? Well? I think so,
Speaker 1: but Alan's at the store. Well I need the package.
Speaker 1: Can you bring it out to the house, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, or or at at one in the morning,
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, I'm in St. Paul and
Speaker 1: I ran out of gas because somebody brings me some gas.
Speaker 1: He would do that a lot. Really yeah, I got
Speaker 1: it probably half a dozen times that he would call
Speaker 1: the house and say, we're not a gas and we
Speaker 1: have to go get gas, or we call somebody who
Speaker 1: was already out, either his brother Dwayne, or we find somebody.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like it had to be me, but you know,
Speaker 1: somebody got to bring me some without cell phones. I
Speaker 1: can't even imagine exactly that's that's crazy. Yeah, it was crazy,
Speaker 1: but but he he got used to Gwen doing stuff,
Speaker 1: so it just became like okay. And then then fans
Speaker 1: had discovered his house, the Purple House, and whenever he
Speaker 1: and I would go to New York or go to
Speaker 1: l A for meetings or business or just to get
Speaker 1: away for a few days, he was getting nervous about
Speaker 1: leaving the house empty. So there were a few times
Speaker 1: he asked Gwen the house sit for him when we'd
Speaker 1: be out of town and so and so so was
Speaker 1: it a gate at the house or yeah, there was
Speaker 1: an electronic gate and so on. In fact, once there
Speaker 1: were some fans out there and she accidentally opened the
Speaker 1: gate and at art attack because they came in. But
Speaker 1: that's a Gwen story. But but long and short of
Speaker 1: it is she just became part of the family. I
Speaker 1: mean it was you know, she became very friendly with
Speaker 1: Susan Muncie, particularly because Moosey didn't drink the kool age.
Speaker 1: She was more like a very grounded person, which appealed
Speaker 1: to Gwen because she was totally baffled by the whole
Speaker 1: rock and roll thing. She was She was from the planetarium,
Speaker 1: from the museum world, where every postage stamp counted, and
Speaker 1: you know, now it's like rock and roll, it's like
Speaker 1: case send something counter to counter, which was before fed
Speaker 1: x um. And she just couldn't get with the the
Speaker 1: sentiment entitlement and the with the waste and in the
Speaker 1: excess of our lifestyle. So it was it was a
Speaker 1: little bumpy for us. But you know, she adapted pretty
Speaker 1: quick and and and he accepted her. Well, I'm just
Speaker 1: amazed that. Can you describe the I guess the work
Speaker 1: ethic is what I'm really trying to grasp because I've
Speaker 1: never seen anyone who is up at the crack or
Speaker 1: I mean, what time did rehearsals normally start? Mm hm,
Speaker 1: as a were like like three ish to three o'clock
Speaker 1: in the afternoon. Really yeah, okay, So when did they end?
Speaker 1: Though totally varied, depended whether it was just a rehearsal
Speaker 1: rehearsal or if it was something specific, and the closer
Speaker 1: you get to that specific gig or tour, then the
Speaker 1: rehearsals might go to midnight, one or two in the morning.
Speaker 1: But the average day because I mean, he'd rehearse all
Speaker 1: everybody's on a retainer, so he would rehearse constantly, even
Speaker 1: if there wasn't a tour around the corner, and those
Speaker 1: rehearsals might be I mean, if he went the studio
Speaker 1: and recorded a new song, he'd want to rehearse it
Speaker 1: with the band, so they'd learned it even before the
Speaker 1: record ever came out, without even knowing whether the song
Speaker 1: would make an album. So we were always rehearsing, and
Speaker 1: those just for lack of better way of putting in.
Speaker 1: Those kind of everyday rehearsals without a serious purpose would
Speaker 1: maybe three o'clock till eight o'clock a day or something
Speaker 1: like that, five or six hours. Not as intense as no,
Speaker 1: but then if it's if it's a tour three weeks away,
Speaker 1: then they get really really focused and longer. But the
Speaker 1: thing was the rehearsal might last three or four or
Speaker 1: five hours, but then he'd want the jam on night. Oh,
Speaker 1: after the rehearsal, after rehearsal, once he done whatever he
Speaker 1: wanted to rehearse, then it was like, okay, didn't he
Speaker 1: like all of his studden started playing body heat and
Speaker 1: vamp on it for like an hour. Were they generally
Speaker 1: enjoying it or was it like one of them was like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: I made plans to Yeah, there were those times, but
Speaker 1: they knew better than to make plans. You just didn't
Speaker 1: dare make plans. But I'm certain someone gave you like
Speaker 1: the eyes like yeah, of course it's my kid's birthday,
Speaker 1: Like that's sort of but none of that matters. It's
Speaker 1: all about him indulging. Is That's what retainers are for
Speaker 1: you're seven. In fact, let's play first Avenue to night
Speaker 1: at midnight, get out of bed and comes down town.
Speaker 1: What was the most eleventh hour request you've ever had
Speaker 1: to make? Happened in your history of this organization? The
Speaker 1: video for Alphabets Alphabet Street. Really that was a oh god,
Speaker 1: this might not happen or no. It was a phone
Speaker 1: call on a Sunday morning in a snowstorm. But I
Speaker 1: mean it's Minneapolis, so that's no. But it's still a
Speaker 1: Sunday morning. And he it was no advance notice whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Was literally like ten ten eleven o'clock Sunday morning phone rings.
Speaker 1: I want to see the video, okay, when now? Wait?
Speaker 1: Time out? Was there even like in a hello, hello,
Speaker 1: is Alan there? No? Very seldom just hello, I want
Speaker 1: to shoot the video? He'd just go right into He'd
Speaker 1: never say alone. I just said. It used to drive
Speaker 1: quitting crazy because he'd never say hello to her, and
Speaker 1: like would she would dance the phone Allen there? Not
Speaker 1: is Allen? Just two words Allan there? And like yeah,
Speaker 1: and she did what you would probably do, high prince,
Speaker 1: how are you just hey? Prince? How you hello? Wait?
Speaker 1: Were you're allowed to call even I can't imagine him.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine calling him Prince. That was his name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what else was coma play? I'm gonna call him Clay.
Speaker 1: This is long before alright, you know? Uh so Alan, Uh?
Speaker 1: I guess can you tell us at the time when
Speaker 1: you're taking this uh tour on the road, like, at
Speaker 1: what point does this become like Beatlemania? As soon as
Speaker 1: we got to Detroit the first shop? What is it
Speaker 1: about Detroit? Like he was it? The fact that electrifying
Speaker 1: mojo just yeah, I think I had the city on
Speaker 1: fire for him more than anything that wasn't around. But
Speaker 1: I think it was one of the first cities where
Speaker 1: he blew up. And for whatever reason, it just works.
Speaker 1: Billy Sparks from Billy Sparks is from Detroit. But but
Speaker 1: when you really think back, Detroit, Motown, decide Detroit. When
Speaker 1: you think of p funk Um and the fact that
Speaker 1: the early Funkadelic came out of Detroit, there was always
Speaker 1: kind of a unique merger of of funk and rock
Speaker 1: there that wasn't necessarily elsewhere, And maybe that speaks to it.
Speaker 1: I'm just guessing here. I always wanted to know how
Speaker 1: did Billy Sparks get his position in Purple Rain, like
Speaker 1: was he just always Billy Sparks is a promoter by
Speaker 1: trade and an actual Actually he worked with Quentin Perry
Speaker 1: and Jeff Sharpoo where our tour promoters, and had been
Speaker 1: with Prince since the controversy tour so It's before my time,
Speaker 1: and continued to be the tour per voters and um
Speaker 1: Billy's Billy's gig was that he did to all their
Speaker 1: radio and he was like their publicist. He was their
Speaker 1: promo guy who would go to all the radio stations
Speaker 1: and hype the shows. But I mean, obviously there's something
Speaker 1: personal about Billy that Prince took a liking to him.
Speaker 1: I mean he had he was. Billy's a character. He's
Speaker 1: got a really outgoing personality and a real flavor to
Speaker 1: him and had a good sense of humor. But enough
Speaker 1: to say I'm gonna put you in my movie and
Speaker 1: do you have any I mean, this is the guy.
Speaker 1: But you just thought that was natural, Like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well dude, he put me in the movie. Why wouldn't
Speaker 1: he put put everybody in the movie. Yeah. By the way, Alan,
Speaker 1: for those who do all the point is about me,
Speaker 1: It's about he put everybody in the movie. It was like,
Speaker 1: you know, that was his that was his thing. Where
Speaker 1: the world everybody's going to be part of this his dream.
Speaker 1: Once we would all live in a gated community Janasson
Speaker 1: and and you know kids will have a nursery center
Speaker 1: inside Paisley so we never have to mix with it
Speaker 1: was real, Howard. You know, it's more like Dr York
Speaker 1: York Bill. No, I'm just no, no, no, that's a
Speaker 1: whole yeah with its own soundtrack. Yeah, all right, So
Speaker 1: you're just saying it was very natural for Billy Sparks
Speaker 1: to just Yeah. It was like it's part of the gang.
Speaker 1: That's the Purple Crew gang. At at the at the
Speaker 1: at the height of that tour, Um, I mean did
Speaker 1: you think that it was over? Was? I mean what
Speaker 1: kept you on because he stopped touring for two years,
Speaker 1: but yet you were still there correct? Yeah, Um, you
Speaker 1: were just there on standby and case. No, because by
Speaker 1: that point, whatever he did that was part of it,
Speaker 1: even if it was just two for the hang, that
Speaker 1: was just part of whenever he traveled and go with him,
Speaker 1: and it was it was I mean, there was a valet,
Speaker 1: there was a chef, and there was me and I
Speaker 1: was like the road manager. And even if it wasn't
Speaker 1: a tour, I was still managing his moves in in
Speaker 1: and ounce of hotels and clubs and whatever. Okay, So
Speaker 1: it was just, you know, there was just that point
Speaker 1: in time where whenever he moved down, moved with him.
Speaker 1: So and and understand something to all this time from
Speaker 1: the day I got to Minnesota. What it really really
Speaker 1: was was, as much as anything was, I was like
Speaker 1: the liason between Prince and the management. Because his management Kavala, Ruffalo,
Speaker 1: and FARNOLDI were based in l A. They did not
Speaker 1: want to move to help to Minneapolis. If they had,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't never had a gig. So you were the
Speaker 1: silent member of of of that firm. You decided to
Speaker 1: live in Minnesota. I see, I see. Um. So at
Speaker 1: what point are you just told that you're the president
Speaker 1: of Paisley Park or no. It's just it's like, Kate,
Speaker 1: we got the money, we're gonna build the building, you know.
Speaker 1: And um Now, Okay, as as a principan that I
Speaker 1: was his guy, I mean I was the guy on site.
Speaker 1: I mean there was Farnoli who I answered to, and
Speaker 1: Cavallo and Ruffalo to a degree. But um, but in
Speaker 1: terms of on site mean, now, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of other guys by the nd by the time we
Speaker 1: built Paisley that it was a pretty big crew of
Speaker 1: technicians and engineers, and um we hired a student that
Speaker 1: the the guy who actually ran Paisley, the facility, the
Speaker 1: studio manage, the building manager was a guy named Harry
Speaker 1: Grossman who had Maurice White's complex in West Hollywood. We
Speaker 1: hired him away as as a as a music observer,
Speaker 1: always noticed that whenever someone chooses to upgrade, that also
Speaker 1: marks the beginning of the moment, like kind of the
Speaker 1: beginning of the not the beginning of the end. But
Speaker 1: it's like Barry Gordy taking Motown out of Detroit and
Speaker 1: going to l a uh wu tang uh leaving the
Speaker 1: versus Basement two a more posh Hollywood studio. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's other examples of you know, cleaner studios and that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, and then it lose it's it's it's
Speaker 1: did you feel I mean not saying that you could
Speaker 1: answer from I wouldn't call you a Prince fan, but
Speaker 1: I would at least think that you miired some of
Speaker 1: his music time, did you necessarily feel like this might
Speaker 1: be a jink situation where like, and you know, all
Speaker 1: this magic is coming out of the warehouse in this
Speaker 1: particular studio, not a jink situation. UM, I think, would
Speaker 1: I know where you're going with this? But I look
Speaker 1: at it a little differently, but maybe with the same result.
Speaker 1: My brother always accuses me, He says, you holp you
Speaker 1: what was like every artist's early work the best? And
Speaker 1: I do tend to um And I think it's because
Speaker 1: there's a there's a sense of adventure when an artist
Speaker 1: is developing. When an artist is growing and learning, is
Speaker 1: he or she goes along and discovering new things to
Speaker 1: their skill set that they didn't even know they had
Speaker 1: necessarily And you're gonna get that in their early work.
Speaker 1: Now that doesn't mean it's their best work, but just
Speaker 1: the way my DNA is, that's what appeals to me
Speaker 1: the most. And the more you're established, the more you've
Speaker 1: defined yourself, then it's starting to get to the point
Speaker 1: where you can become derivative or or or or just
Speaker 1: repetitive because you pretty much have done what you have
Speaker 1: to do and now it's just about how can I
Speaker 1: do this differently, but you've kind of learned what you're
Speaker 1: gonna learn. There's just a point where you get a
Speaker 1: ceiling as as as an artist, and you, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say, run out of ideas, but you know
Speaker 1: you you're gonna you're gonna do another adort. It's just
Speaker 1: gonna have a different name it. It might be even
Speaker 1: as good. But I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Have
Speaker 1: you heard this song? I have not heard She's all that?
Speaker 1: Have you heard this? She's all that? Alan? That's not fair.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, have you heard it? Of course of
Speaker 1: course he's heard it. Okay, that was during it was
Speaker 1: during your reign. Are you allowed to say what you
Speaker 1: thought of it? Or you should probably tell who it
Speaker 1: is first? Okay? Well, I don't know that. No, we can't.
Speaker 1: Even if even if we could, I don't think I
Speaker 1: don't think we would. Is it that? Well? There was
Speaker 1: a point where okay, so when Karmen electra, Okay, we
Speaker 1: can start right there? All right, quest les Supreme where
Speaker 1: leads ladies and gentlemen? No? Um, yeah, so he uh electorate?
Speaker 1: First off, you should probably tell the significance of the
Speaker 1: song the door. Will you tell me? Well, it's like
Speaker 1: the fan favorite Prince song, Like, what's your favorite Prince ballot? See,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that's it's a door. It's a door.
Speaker 1: It's a door, trust me. But what's your favorite? Forget
Speaker 1: what anybody else thinks. What's the most popular, what's the best,
Speaker 1: what's your favorite's close? Win with dance and glo slow.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: real honest with you. I technically have been very much
Speaker 1: indifferent to print slow songs. No, no, no, you gotta
Speaker 1: pick don't do that. No no, no, no no, Like
Speaker 1: I don't know, I skipped these ships. I you move
Speaker 1: for beautiful ones. It moves you. When I got it
Speaker 1: you on then I'm like, all right, I'll put some
Speaker 1: print things on it. But I don't like, like, look,
Speaker 1: I acknowledge, I acknowledge that do Me Baby is probably
Speaker 1: his best. See that's mine vocal performance. Yeah, but it's like, really,
Speaker 1: hearing a ten minute song of Prince having sex is
Speaker 1: not my go to thing. So I think that's generational.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's your generation of of No. No,
Speaker 1: I'm who feel uncomfortable and racing a ballot unless you
Speaker 1: got a woman under your arm. Yeah, it's okay to
Speaker 1: like a ballot. No, no, I'm saying, I just never
Speaker 1: like slow songs. I just had a flashback to the
Speaker 1: endography bird. She's sorry with the ballot, all right, you
Speaker 1: get it passed. But my point was there there was
Speaker 1: a point in his career where we've heard his ballots.
Speaker 1: They just sounded like, Okay, this is the new version
Speaker 1: of doom me baby, and it's like scandal. This might
Speaker 1: be a dynamite ballot if I never heard the other ones, right,
Speaker 1: But if I heard Scandal his first, that's the joint.
Speaker 1: I like condition of the heart. But I don't consider
Speaker 1: that a ballot. The narrative, the point being, there's a
Speaker 1: point where you've defined yourself as an artist and and
Speaker 1: you can't help but be repetitive because it's what you do. Now.
Speaker 1: You've kind of stopped learning and growing. And yeah, you
Speaker 1: may you may find a new way to mix it,
Speaker 1: or you may tinker with the instrumentation and approach it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's you know, different ways to do things,
Speaker 1: but you're basically still doing the same thing you've already done. Wait,
Speaker 1: that's what I knew was eventually going to happen, but
Speaker 1: it would have happened with it with out Paisley part
Speaker 1: because it happens to every artist. Well to explain to
Speaker 1: our listeners, uh sort of u taboo blasphemous thing that
Speaker 1: Prince did in terms of karma, the lecture and and
Speaker 1: some sort of Ted Turner colorization. Way was he took
Speaker 1: his much loved the door ballot and gave it to
Speaker 1: Carmen to wrap over a song called I'm All That. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was Badea, so suffice it to say God burst
Speaker 1: his soul. He was a little confused with the advent
Speaker 1: of hip hop and hip hop's um crossover into mainstream
Speaker 1: acceptance just at best bewildered him. Were you around for
Speaker 1: his hammer observations? Because I think more than Run DMC
Speaker 1: and Public Enemy, I feel like Diamonds and Pearls was
Speaker 1: derivative of the Hammer reaction. Thunder was definitely definitely that
Speaker 1: I got. I can't think of its of a particular song,
Speaker 1: but there's a conversation that we had alone in studio
Speaker 1: A and I don't recall how we've gotten on the subject,
Speaker 1: but I'll never forget what he said. He held up
Speaker 1: a copy of Billboards Hot one m and Hammer and
Speaker 1: Vanilla Ice both had hits at the time, huge hits,
Speaker 1: a dark period. And he pointed to the chart and
Speaker 1: he said, do you know what it feels like to
Speaker 1: spend your whole life learning a craft and look at
Speaker 1: this and see Hammer and Vanilla Ice, who cannot sing
Speaker 1: and cannot play an instrument, and I can't get in
Speaker 1: the top twenty. Yeah. Wow, he didn't get it. And
Speaker 1: I would say, okay, fuck Hammer, fun funk the Ice,
Speaker 1: What up with public enemy? Well that's a good politics,
Speaker 1: but it ain't it ain't. They can't singer, They can't
Speaker 1: singer play. You know, I don't think he really respected
Speaker 1: the art of sampling in mixing, but he wasn't mad
Speaker 1: at those pray checks either. Well of course, well no,
Speaker 1: of course, but it's certainly influenced. As you said, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a point where you can't beat him join them,
Speaker 1: because there was a point where he looked up and
Speaker 1: lives that. You know, this is a guy who threw
Speaker 1: out the bulk of the eighties. Was the he was
Speaker 1: the leader. He was the guy who was building the new,
Speaker 1: the new. He was setting the new trends. You know,
Speaker 1: he was at the forefront that he he was cutting edge.
Speaker 1: Everything he was doing was what everybody was fighting. Now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's not his day anymore. There's
Speaker 1: new kids on the block, bad bad pun But um,
Speaker 1: you know, all of a sudden, it's something else, and
Speaker 1: it's something he doesn't do and something that he doesn't
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I know the brother grew up in
Speaker 1: North Minneapolis, and you know what the Minneapolis is to Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: it's the hood. But it ain't like growing up in
Speaker 1: the Bronx in the seventies. When we moved to Minneapolis
Speaker 1: and sort of hood, the first thing we thought was
Speaker 1: like damn projects, Like how did it end? Everything is relative? Okay,
Speaker 1: dude did not understand hip hop culture. Okay, he may
Speaker 1: or may not have liked to give ni record, but
Speaker 1: the culture didn't relate to him. Blackness aside. It wasn't
Speaker 1: where he came from. He grew up in Mini funking Apolis.
Speaker 1: You know what I wish, You know what I wish though,
Speaker 1: I wish someone was there to actually just explained to
Speaker 1: him he was actually hip hop and didn't even know it.
Speaker 1: Like he That's the funny. The funniest thing was that
Speaker 1: he didn't even know he was showing the blueprint, because
Speaker 1: in my mind, all he did was provide the blueprint,
Speaker 1: because everything he did from his work on drum machines,
Speaker 1: that to me it was hip hop. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: even talking about the times where he just rapped a song,
Speaker 1: like even when no, no, I know, but even then
Speaker 1: I didn't think like, oh, Prince can rap. I was
Speaker 1: just like Prince sometimes just spoke shit and but but
Speaker 1: I've meant his attitude. But those are his cask offs
Speaker 1: and his head those are just the silly little songs
Speaker 1: that we have fun with. Their not the serious work. Right.
Speaker 1: But even then, like everything he did from his u
Speaker 1: the stories that he would concoct in early interviews, to
Speaker 1: his exploitation of are fair scared exotic women, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's your definition of hip hop, which is
Speaker 1: very broad. But his as much an arro who work
Speaker 1: hip hop, to him, moment meant two things. You didn't
Speaker 1: play and you didn't sing, but you still made records.
Speaker 1: But to me, he was more when he wasn't trying
Speaker 1: to rap. So yeah, I agree, I agree, And I
Speaker 1: mean that the proof of the pudding is that when
Speaker 1: he you know, when when he suddenly realized that not
Speaker 1: maybe not suddenly, he gradually realized that that he was
Speaker 1: no longer at the cutting edge of things and had
Speaker 1: to reckond saw that. Then all of a sudden, he's
Speaker 1: he's singing into a microphone shaped like a gun, and
Speaker 1: he's got somebody spitting rhymes in his band. And the
Speaker 1: guys who were trying to get him into hip hop
Speaker 1: we're actually the wrong guys because they weren't prime examples
Speaker 1: of that culture and were people who rapped for a
Speaker 1: living or tried to. But it wasn't Chuck, but we're
Speaker 1: him and Michael Jackson going through it seemed like at
Speaker 1: the time, and I said, I felt like Michael Jackson
Speaker 1: and him were going through that at the same time.
Speaker 1: At some point. They both must have felt that that
Speaker 1: way because they both were artists. But I think he
Speaker 1: adapted way better In prisoned, Michael Jackson worked with like
Speaker 1: actual rappers and we got the Golden the album from
Speaker 1: But I think I think the important thing is Michael
Speaker 1: never tried to be somebody he wasn't And when prince
Speaker 1: of singing into a mic shaped black a gun and
Speaker 1: having a rapper in the band who isn't good that's
Speaker 1: trying to be something you're not. Was there? And this
Speaker 1: is only like a few short years after the song
Speaker 1: dead on It where he basically calls out rappers. So
Speaker 1: was there a general feeling of relief when the Batman
Speaker 1: soundtrack sold like seven eight million units? Or was it
Speaker 1: just like was it like, okay, the lights are still on?
Speaker 1: Or was it well, I don't, I mean nobody was
Speaker 1: nobody was feeling doom? Um? Well okay, well, okay, I
Speaker 1: mean don't don't justus understand. Mean, Diamonds and Pearls was
Speaker 1: a huge selling record. I know that. So did he feel.
Speaker 1: Vince Kid and you know, Love Sexy was a flop
Speaker 1: by his standards, but there's a lot of artists would
Speaker 1: have loved to have those sales. I mean, every everything
Speaker 1: is relative. It wasn't like he was, you know, he
Speaker 1: just was no longer at the forefront of things because
Speaker 1: the world had caught up and people were listening to
Speaker 1: different things. They got used to him. There's a point
Speaker 1: were no matter how good you are, people get used
Speaker 1: to your only knew once. I would like to ask
Speaker 1: you about your take, or at least what you can
Speaker 1: indulge on the Japan run which for many Prince fans
Speaker 1: know that was like the the last hurrah of the revolution. Um,
Speaker 1: how not? How easy was it too? This is eighty
Speaker 1: six I believe there's eighty six. Um, So I guess
Speaker 1: the legend is that once one d and uh Bobby
Speaker 1: saw Prince smashes cloud guitars twice. Actually, um, when you
Speaker 1: watch have you seen the clip? So there's he's doing
Speaker 1: the preboine solo and then he just looks and then
Speaker 1: he just takes the cloud guitar and stamps to the
Speaker 1: ground marches off stage. But what's so funny is that
Speaker 1: the staff is so efficient. I know he wanted to
Speaker 1: be like the one and done, like this is done,
Speaker 1: I'm walking off stage. But then the guitar tech had
Speaker 1: another weren't ready for him, so I was like, man,
Speaker 1: you you were the momentum. Now gonna go back. So
Speaker 1: then he came out, didn't know this older and then
Speaker 1: he smashed that one too, and this time really marched
Speaker 1: off stage. And you know, Wendy was like, oh god,
Speaker 1: I knew that was the beginning of the end. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've been there for a lot of I guess awkward
Speaker 1: silent car rides home. Um, did you think, did you
Speaker 1: know if you had a future after that, you know,
Speaker 1: after that moment where you figured he was going to
Speaker 1: disband the group or I didn't take it as seriously
Speaker 1: as they did. Um Oh, so even if he didn't
Speaker 1: have a future, you just be like on to the
Speaker 1: next And well, I thought I had a future because
Speaker 1: I figured somebody's gonna play with him. Okay, you know
Speaker 1: I wasn't there. The band didn't hire me, he did, Okay,
Speaker 1: So so that didn't I didn't for a minute think
Speaker 1: that that would affect me. Um. I had a different
Speaker 1: idea about the thing, because there was by that time,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of tension in the band for
Speaker 1: whatever reason. And I've been around the you know, everybody
Speaker 1: in that band. This was their first real taste of
Speaker 1: anything major. They'd all come from bar bands and all
Speaker 1: they knew was this, And it was almost a disservice
Speaker 1: to their careers to blow up to the proportion that
Speaker 1: they did, because it's deceptive. It's like the real world
Speaker 1: doesn't like Purple Rain, but that's their reference point. Wow.
Speaker 1: And I had been through so many artists and so
Speaker 1: many bands have been through James Brown, going from Macio
Speaker 1: to Bootsey and you know, all of those kinds of transitions.
Speaker 1: And I was fully aware of the fact that there's
Speaker 1: only one name on the marquee that sells the tickets,
Speaker 1: and that as long as the new band is good,
Speaker 1: Prince is gonna be eight. Now people are gonna sendimentally
Speaker 1: miss the old band and due to the stay for
Speaker 1: good reason. Yeah, but I never for a minute thought
Speaker 1: it wasn't gonna be I. Um, but isn't the whole
Speaker 1: starting over again? And no, because because his music was growing.
Speaker 1: And now the irony is that went near at Leasta
Speaker 1: had so much to do with opening him up to
Speaker 1: new music, but so did Eric and so did Sheila,
Speaker 1: all right in their own ways had brought him to
Speaker 1: things that he hadn't heard before. And the point here
Speaker 1: is not who did it, but that his palette had
Speaker 1: had grown so tremendously that five pieces wasn't going to
Speaker 1: handle it. I E. Here comes Eric and he says,
Speaker 1: get a trumpet player, so we can do parts umlution
Speaker 1: movement and now it becomes the counter revolution um. But
Speaker 1: the real point being that that he just his what
Speaker 1: he heard was so much bigger than what Purple Rain
Speaker 1: was in terms of just from a musical standpoint, and
Speaker 1: I think he saw those five pieces as a limitation wow.
Speaker 1: And it has nothing to do with the quality of
Speaker 1: musicianship or the personalities or anything. Um. It was just
Speaker 1: time for a change and he wanted some new blood,
Speaker 1: and he wanted a bigger group and an opportunity to
Speaker 1: explore different kinds of music. And I think to something
Speaker 1: else I picked up from James Brand was that when
Speaker 1: you bring new people into the band, it reinvigorates you.
Speaker 1: Because when you feel you've gone as far as you
Speaker 1: can with the people around you, the only way to
Speaker 1: keep from being derivative is to freshen up the people
Speaker 1: around you, and James did that all the time, particularly
Speaker 1: with drummers. He may not change his whole band, but
Speaker 1: he went through drummers like crazy, and every one of
Speaker 1: them had a very identifiably different style out Jabbo Claude,
Speaker 1: I see you're right. So you were president of Paisley
Speaker 1: Park two win, Well it was technically I was vice
Speaker 1: president the Paisley Park Records. I was president. He was
Speaker 1: um obvious, I forgot that one. I took over the
Speaker 1: label in January of eight nine. So was it a
Speaker 1: real label like warners respected you guys, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to h and up until I took it over. Really,
Speaker 1: there was no Paisley Park Records. It was an imprint.
Speaker 1: I mean, it existed on paper, but nobody ran it.
Speaker 1: You know, Cavala Ruffalo and Farnoli we're supposedly running it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, if you wanted to call Paisley Park Records,
Speaker 1: there was no number to call. You would call Cavala
Speaker 1: Ruffalo Management and maybe they'd have time to talk about it.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't there focus because they ran am management
Speaker 1: company with a lot of clients. So it's just a
Speaker 1: vanity label in their eyes to him, and I think
Speaker 1: they usually really wanted it to turn into something new
Speaker 1: way Maverick did, in the sense that one of these
Speaker 1: artists will catch on. Yeah, because he was a guy
Speaker 1: who had been able to produce Manic Monday the time,
Speaker 1: Vanity six. This was a guy who could write and
Speaker 1: produce good records with people, and they expected he would
Speaker 1: do that in the house. When did you realize, like,
Speaker 1: maybe perhaps you should make your exit then what or
Speaker 1: it ended up being ninety two? May have ninety two, Um,
Speaker 1: you're just this just one day you wake up and
Speaker 1: realize you've been in the same place too long and
Speaker 1: you're just not Minnesota. Though, like you know, when i'd
Speaker 1: say place, I'm talking about a career position. UM, I
Speaker 1: don't mean geographically. UM. Was it quasi amicable? I mean
Speaker 1: at least that, Yeah, I mean actually hired me back
Speaker 1: for a couple of one off projects. I came back
Speaker 1: a year later to put together a Japanese to reform UM.
Speaker 1: I didn't do the tour, but I assembled the crew
Speaker 1: and dealt with the promoter and worked on all the
Speaker 1: contracts and the writers and so on. UM. And then
Speaker 1: I came back to do the liner notes for the
Speaker 1: Hits project. So we we spoke. I mean, we were cool.
Speaker 1: It was just that he had the Paisley Park label.
Speaker 1: Was wasn't no win. It was a joint venture with Warners,
Speaker 1: meaning there was owned fifty fifty and funded by Warners. UM.
Speaker 1: But his contract was up and he wanted He was
Speaker 1: in the midst of renegotiating his own contract. And there
Speaker 1: were a lot of things about those negotiations that I
Speaker 1: wasn't keen on. We we just didn't see eye and
Speaker 1: certain things from a business standpoint. It wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: as much as anything else. But Um, he he was
Speaker 1: convinced that the failure at Paisley Park, and I've never
Speaker 1: met an artist who would say anything different was because
Speaker 1: Warners didn't prioritize the product. And I knew for a
Speaker 1: fact because as as as the head of the label,
Speaker 1: I was spending better part of a week to ten
Speaker 1: days out of each month working out of Warners in
Speaker 1: Burbank and very close with Mo Austin, Lenny Warnick or
Speaker 1: Bitney Medina, the whole gang, and I knew what they
Speaker 1: were willing to do if we had the product they wanted,
Speaker 1: and it just wasn't there. They expected him to make
Speaker 1: cutting edge records, or at least contemporary radio worthy records,
Speaker 1: and not that all the records were bad. We made
Speaker 1: some good records, made a couple of great jazz albums
Speaker 1: with my brother Um, one of which actually did very
Speaker 1: well on the jazz charts Things Lift and Said was
Speaker 1: the top ten jazz album that year. But jazz albums
Speaker 1: were selling units at best. Um we had George Clinton
Speaker 1: record that was one of the least interesting George Clinton records.
Speaker 1: It was old stuff that he had recorded for another label.
Speaker 1: The deal had fallen apart and Prince did it as
Speaker 1: a favor. Um, and the idea of signing George was
Speaker 1: that they would work together. Never happened. I mean, Prince
Speaker 1: gave a couple of tracks, but none of the none
Speaker 1: of that was one song and that was the worst
Speaker 1: song in the album. No, it was the Big Pump
Speaker 1: with a Big Pump. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah that Um.
Speaker 1: And then he signed Mavis Staples and that that was
Speaker 1: a good, solid old school soul record. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: time for her to come back yet. Thankfully she has.
Speaker 1: She had a lot of successfu lately thrilled for that
Speaker 1: much deserved. The Mayvid Staples records were good records, but
Speaker 1: there were no hits. There was nothing at all that
Speaker 1: was contemporary radio worthy, not when hip hop was blowing up,
Speaker 1: and you know that's what those were the records were doing.
Speaker 1: And Warnest was just like, come on, guys, we love
Speaker 1: Mavis and George, but there's a reason they don't have
Speaker 1: deals cold they're not selling records. Wow, now I'm depressed.
Speaker 1: I always brag about you have, uh, you have this
Speaker 1: artifact in your house, um, on this cassette. You have
Speaker 1: what what my opinion is some of the greatest recorded
Speaker 1: moments in answer machine history. Uh, of which these these
Speaker 1: notable music gods are leaving you messages, But but you
Speaker 1: still get an inkling of an idea of what the
Speaker 1: time was like, Like, I guess with James Brown's message,
Speaker 1: it's because he left a few messages. I get the
Speaker 1: feeling that was like one of the first times that
Speaker 1: James Brown was dealing with a modern answering machine. I
Speaker 1: was one of them, you know, like the news guy
Speaker 1: doesn't know he's on the air yet, like yeah, wait,
Speaker 1: wait now, oh hey, guys, this is from Channel six news,
Speaker 1: Like that's how James Brown's messages And then like next
Speaker 1: comes uh uh, I guess Prince left you a message about,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, leaving a piano for my father to
Speaker 1: play in this But it sounded like that grasshopper kunk
Speaker 1: Fu voice. Yes, I don't I don't know if he
Speaker 1: mentioned seventeen days or he I think he mentioned one
Speaker 1: of his singles that was kind of I don't know,
Speaker 1: I've only heard it once. And then then George Clinton
Speaker 1: calls and talks about, you know, I might sign the
Speaker 1: Paisley Parker that sort of thing, and then like it's
Speaker 1: just it goes through throughout history and you get to
Speaker 1: see the scope of you know, of of what Alan's
Speaker 1: life is like when the angel calls like that happened
Speaker 1: was and there's one that's missing that I never somehow
Speaker 1: I erased, never transferred what that was? Miles and it
Speaker 1: was tell that little purple motherfucker that called me. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to say I had it for about a month.
Speaker 1: I saved it. One day was gone. Well I know that.
Speaker 1: I mean, even though you made a life and soul,
Speaker 1: I know for a fact that you are a jazz fanatic.
Speaker 1: I mean, if anything, I think that you would have
Speaker 1: loved to how come you never pursued I know that
Speaker 1: your love for Weather Report kind of surpasses, at least
Speaker 1: in my eyes, any any music that you've worked with,
Speaker 1: Like I know that your fandom for for that particular unit.
Speaker 1: How come you never I don't know about surpasses, but
Speaker 1: I know you love some other big time tim So
Speaker 1: how come you never? And probably the number one is
Speaker 1: any Parmier Wow? Mm So at no point did you
Speaker 1: think like I want to manage these guys and um,
Speaker 1: it just wasn't my world and they didn't. But I
Speaker 1: figured if you can conquer that they don't have well
Speaker 1: paid tour There you go, gigs weren't there, okay, so
Speaker 1: when you made your exit, didn't I mean, do you
Speaker 1: ever fear? I mean, I guess the life of a
Speaker 1: tour managers like you're only as stable monetarily at least
Speaker 1: as the act that year with until you get to
Speaker 1: your next I feel like it's almost like a trappiez thing,
Speaker 1: like you might catch you might catch the you know,
Speaker 1: the the bar of the Chapeese line, or you can
Speaker 1: just fall into the pit. I mean, there were there
Speaker 1: were phases in my career where for just simple economic
Speaker 1: reasons I was concerned about what's next and fearing the
Speaker 1: fact that you might have to take a gig it
Speaker 1: didn't like, or worse yet, just go through a year
Speaker 1: without kicks because sometimes the phone didn't ring. But you know,
Speaker 1: it was very blessed because that it was ten solid
Speaker 1: years with Prince would a paycheck every week, so that's
Speaker 1: not a typical tour manager situation. It was five five
Speaker 1: and a half solid used with James Brown except for
Speaker 1: the three weeks I got fired because I was sick.
Speaker 1: Otherwise would a paycheck every week, so that was not
Speaker 1: a typical tour managers thing. Now the rest of the time,
Speaker 1: it's been kind of freelance, except once I got back
Speaker 1: with the Angelo, now is his co manager. Of course,
Speaker 1: that's an entirely different relationship, and it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: about management contracts and so on, which is a whole
Speaker 1: different um kind of the compensation situation. But you know,
Speaker 1: there were times, but I've just been really really blessed
Speaker 1: because it's it's it's like like the Prince thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had become a huge Just just to make a
Speaker 1: long story short, I didn't get into Prince until Controversy
Speaker 1: and um um before I met my wife Gwen and
Speaker 1: was dating a girl in Pittsburgh who worked at a
Speaker 1: radio station and said, I got front road tickets to
Speaker 1: the Controversy show Prince and come on, let's go because
Speaker 1: she worked for the station and they were promoting it
Speaker 1: so on and so literally front row center. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to see this, like the record, but
Speaker 1: you know, I want to see some little guy in bikinis.
Speaker 1: What what I'm going to miniature Chippendale's. You know, It's
Speaker 1: like I had absolutely no interest, but you know, new
Speaker 1: girlfriends so I went and I walked out of there like, yo,
Speaker 1: I gotta work for this guy someday. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: just the music, it was the whole pack. It's the
Speaker 1: lighting was dope, the p a was dope. Everything about
Speaker 1: his thing was was like what's like gold standard? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, you could see this is this is the
Speaker 1: real deal and obviously an amazing performer. Um, And I
Speaker 1: didn't know a soul with that outfit. And I was
Speaker 1: out of the business that A year later, I'm working
Speaker 1: for Kiss and Lo and behold, the production manager says, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to go to Prince Okay? You know um,
Speaker 1: and kind of D'Angelo happened. I mean, I met Chris
Speaker 1: Rock because he came to a print show. He came
Speaker 1: to Love Sexy. This was even before sn L and
Speaker 1: he was when Nelson George brought into the show and
Speaker 1: we hung out after and it was like that kind
Speaker 1: of like hey man, one day, I'm gonna be big
Speaker 1: and I want you to run my shows. Like if
Speaker 1: you run this, I want you to run my shows.
Speaker 1: That's how literally, and it's like yeah, it was was
Speaker 1: Chris Rock next after your Prince? No no, no no,
Speaker 1: But I'm saying that's how I'm and and you know,
Speaker 1: we kind of stayed in touch, rand into each other
Speaker 1: once or twice a year. He'd come to Mineapolis pay
Speaker 1: Comedy Club and call me, and once he blew up.
Speaker 1: And it's now it's been five Chris Rock tours UM
Speaker 1: and the Maxwell thing happened. Somebody of a friend of
Speaker 1: mine who worked for Sony gave me the first CD
Speaker 1: UM the Urban Hank Sweet before it came out, said
Speaker 1: this is a kid from New York. You think it's
Speaker 1: right up your alley. You're probably gonnat like this. Just
Speaker 1: gave it to me, and I'm like, oh ship, this
Speaker 1: is kind of dope. I'm driving around the lake one
Speaker 1: day playing it in the car and Gwen says, what's that.
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's some kid from New York. Maxwell's He's,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I haven't heard anything fresh in years.
Speaker 1: So on it's and my wife has real old r
Speaker 1: and b ears it, so it went for for her.
Speaker 1: It's from Luther Vandrows to Maxwell. That was the evolution.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, Okay, if she loves it, this is
Speaker 1: this is gonna work. And like three months later, I
Speaker 1: get a call from an agent who says, I got
Speaker 1: a new kid who's going now and he's kind of difficult.
Speaker 1: So I thought of you. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: that was a compliment or not, but you know, it's
Speaker 1: the rep I guy after Prince and James Brown and
Speaker 1: so on. And it turned out to be Maxwell. And
Speaker 1: that's the record I've been in love with for three months.
Speaker 1: So I do several Maxwell tours. Brown Sugar comes out.
Speaker 1: I fall in love with that. Um, I'm a D'Angelo fan.
Speaker 1: I saw him once or twice on shows that I
Speaker 1: was with other artists, didn't know him, never met him. Um.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an impressed with the show I saw because
Speaker 1: he was a guy in the Trench coast sitting at
Speaker 1: a piano. He didn't really work the stage. Yet this
Speaker 1: is Brown Sugar, eras and trench coats and but but
Speaker 1: I finished at Maxwell tour. I don't remember which one
Speaker 1: is the third or fourth Maxwell tour. And I'm in
Speaker 1: New York at a meeting, finishing up the accounting with
Speaker 1: the business manager, planning to fly home in the morning.
Speaker 1: I've been on the road for three or four months,
Speaker 1: and I'm walking across the lob in my hotel and
Speaker 1: my cell phone rings and it's like, Mr Leeds, my
Speaker 1: name is d' angelo and I've heard about you and
Speaker 1: so on and so on and so on. And I
Speaker 1: thought it was Maxwell playing a prank, honest to god.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, yeah, right, Max, to get out of
Speaker 1: here because I just left him at this meeting. We've
Speaker 1: been on the road for three months. He's playing. He's
Speaker 1: playing playing with me. So I'm like, yeah, right, Max,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't get me now. I'm on the
Speaker 1: phone up and two minutes later it rings again. It's like, seriously,
Speaker 1: this is d' angelo and um, you know, i'd like
Speaker 1: to see if you could fly into New York to
Speaker 1: have a meeting. And you guys were working on in
Speaker 1: the last month or so a voodoo at the time,
Speaker 1: and um, I stayed over and I said, well, I
Speaker 1: happened to be in New York. I canceled my flight,
Speaker 1: went to meet with him, and dumb god bless his soul,
Speaker 1: um the next day. And that was fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: What was hilarious was that we didn't I think I
Speaker 1: told him the night before that you were going to
Speaker 1: come to like one of the rehearsals. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you were. I recall that you
Speaker 1: came to s I R to watch us do something.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was the very beginning of
Speaker 1: the tour or whatever. We're just starting to rehearse the tour,
Speaker 1: but I remember remember the night before, like d and
Speaker 1: I were like rehearsing our lines, like Okay, we don't
Speaker 1: want to freak him out, so maybe we shouldn't ask
Speaker 1: that many uh Prince Chase questions, so which is like
Speaker 1: We're gonna play real cool when he comes in, like don't, don't,
Speaker 1: let's not geek out. And I think that last at
Speaker 1: all for like five minutes in the So you guys
Speaker 1: were like the anti Prince back then, where no we
Speaker 1: were when one Prince and Alan first started talking and
Speaker 1: he was like tell me some James Brown stories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were like tell us some print stories. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, like if I mean what drives
Speaker 1: you now, like what's your what's your passion? What's the
Speaker 1: same thing that always did to music. I'm still a
Speaker 1: kid who's a fan of the music. And that's the
Speaker 1: blessing is that every other tour manahge I know may
Speaker 1: have started out that way and then got jaded because
Speaker 1: they had to take that gig they didn't want, or
Speaker 1: the artists they were in love who turned out to
Speaker 1: be a jerk and um, you know, or they had
Speaker 1: too many months off between tours and couldn't pay the bills,
Speaker 1: and all that passion for this, this life of traveling
Speaker 1: and meeting interesting people and going interesting places and doing
Speaker 1: interesting things comes to a halt. And you know, but
Speaker 1: my first wife once said, you know, what, are you
Speaker 1: gonna come home and get a real job. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I think it's real money paying the bills, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you call a real job. But
Speaker 1: you know, I'm one of the few people on the
Speaker 1: planet that's blessed enough to actually enjoy what I'm doing
Speaker 1: to get and get paid for it. But I love
Speaker 1: the music, and I guess at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I mean, people ask him at this age, what in
Speaker 1: the world are you doing on the road because Mondy's hurt.
Speaker 1: When I get in a bunk on the tour bus,
Speaker 1: this is not fun anymore. But when the lights go
Speaker 1: down and people scream and the vant guard hits the
Speaker 1: funk out of here, I get paid for this. That's
Speaker 1: all you can say. I guess wait before before we
Speaker 1: we we we wrap up. I just personally want to know,
Speaker 1: I mean out of I mean, you've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of historical things in your years as a manager tour manager.
Speaker 1: You know, do you think you can actually um come
Speaker 1: up with like a top three historical moments like I
Speaker 1: was there when blah blah blah was conceived, or you
Speaker 1: know that time when Prince and Michael Jackson that, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, Like do you have a personal top three
Speaker 1: like reflection? I was actually there when this happened thro
Speaker 1: about sex Machine. So you mentioned the poster with the
Speaker 1: lyrics on it in Nashville, which was the first recording
Speaker 1: session he did with the new bit, and that was
Speaker 1: Boots and his brother Phelps and those guys um which
Speaker 1: kind of reinvented his brand of funk and open things up.
Speaker 1: So did you feel so James Brown was about to
Speaker 1: be played out by that point or something? He was
Speaker 1: played out, the records weren't selling the it had I can't,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen sixty nine, I'm still thinking like Mother Popcorn.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that the younger kids Mother Popcorn was
Speaker 1: Mother Popcorn was a huge hit, but we were living
Speaker 1: in the era of this is still living in the
Speaker 1: era of the single, and you were only as good
Speaker 1: as your last single. And after Mother Popcorn came Fucking Drummer,
Speaker 1: which is legendary, but you couldn't give the record away,
Speaker 1: didn't sell. That's crazy. James Brown's one flop and his
Speaker 1: whole it was between the and let a Man Come In,
Speaker 1: which it's a nice record, but it wasn't a real hit.
Speaker 1: I mean, it did okay, but it wasn't like a
Speaker 1: number one record. Brother Rap that was another one, did okay,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't a number one record. But Sex Machine
Speaker 1: was hot. Sex Machine was like, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: people are calling, kids are bugging out, the attendance at
Speaker 1: the show's picked up, and the fact that we had
Speaker 1: a new band and had gone through the bad press
Speaker 1: that came when Macy on Him left and Marvel Whitney
Speaker 1: had quit and did an interview this and James So
Speaker 1: the press had been really, really negative, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden we got this new band with these new
Speaker 1: kids and this fresh hit, and it was like, in
Speaker 1: a period of three or four months we had gone
Speaker 1: downhill and come back up. So that was cool. That
Speaker 1: was that was pretty major. I think Payback because there
Speaker 1: again he was cold. He'd had several records that you know,
Speaker 1: you might consider worthy but weren't huge hits. And Payback
Speaker 1: was a huge hit, and um and didn't sound like
Speaker 1: the other ones. Okay. And then obviously Purple Rain. I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's just the premiere of that, just or
Speaker 1: just you know, the premiere and the idea that the
Speaker 1: reviews and the box office the opening week that like,
Speaker 1: my god, we're really really part of something that's gonna
Speaker 1: be huge. That's amazing. This is this is a story
Speaker 1: about the Proper Rain premiere that you tell a lot
Speaker 1: that I don't think. I don't think all of our
Speaker 1: listeners have heard about you guys being in the limo
Speaker 1: approaching the theater. Can you tell that story. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we had a procession of limos going to the premiere.
Speaker 1: The premiere was that the Man's Groundlands Chinese Theater in
Speaker 1: Hollywood board and you know, big red carpet affair. MTV
Speaker 1: was out front and everybody else was out front, and
Speaker 1: you know, um, a lot of celebs invited. We typically yeah,
Speaker 1: typical l a rock and roll movie. Premiere, UM, and
Speaker 1: we had a We were staying in Westwood at what
Speaker 1: was then called the Westward bar Key, I think it's
Speaker 1: a w now and UM. We had limos for the
Speaker 1: band Windy and Lisa we're in one. I guess Bobby
Speaker 1: and Fink we're probably at new I don't I forget
Speaker 1: how we were divided up, but we had several limos.
Speaker 1: And I was in the car. Who was just me,
Speaker 1: Prince and Chick. Chick was in the front. I was
Speaker 1: in the Backwood Prince. As we came out of the hotel,
Speaker 1: he grabbed the flower from the garden in front of
Speaker 1: the hotel. There was just a little garden in front
Speaker 1: of the hotel, but along the curb grabbed flowers and
Speaker 1: he was holding them in the car all the way.
Speaker 1: Now this is again before cell phones and high tech stuff,
Speaker 1: so we had walkie talkies, and we had security already
Speaker 1: at the theater that we're going to orchestrate how the
Speaker 1: cars pulled up in what sequence and so on and
Speaker 1: so on. And as we got within about five or
Speaker 1: six blocks of the theater, one of our security guys
Speaker 1: radio Big Chick and to and started telling them how
Speaker 1: crazy the scene was like man, you won't believe there's
Speaker 1: there's thousands of kids in the street. The police are
Speaker 1: going crazy trying to control the crowd. This is just
Speaker 1: the biggest thing I've ever seen. It's madness. So on
Speaker 1: and so on and so on, and and Prince overheard,
Speaker 1: we in the backseat kind of overheard some of it,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden his voice kind of broke
Speaker 1: and he said, Chick, what did they say? And Chick
Speaker 1: repeated it to him, and I looked at his face
Speaker 1: and it was the deer in the headlights. It was
Speaker 1: like all of this preparation, the whole or deal of
Speaker 1: making the movie, making the album, of doing the preview
Speaker 1: shows that we did at First Avenue and so on,
Speaker 1: all of that had let up to this moment, this
Speaker 1: whole fantasy that know what he believed what happened, but him,
Speaker 1: or at least he claimed he believed it would happen.
Speaker 1: And for a split second, he really lost it, and
Speaker 1: he grabbed my hand and he said, what did he say?
Speaker 1: Say it again? I mean, just just really lost it.
Speaker 1: And it lasted for about his hand was shaken, and
Speaker 1: it lasted for about ten fifteen seconds, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden he stiffened up, he got his game
Speaker 1: face back on, and from then on it was typical Prince.
Speaker 1: And I don't think he ever heard so he was human.
Speaker 1: He was human totally for like fifteen seconds. And that
Speaker 1: was the only time you ever did that in front
Speaker 1: of you or in front of me. That's amazing. Did
Speaker 1: you have a human sat next to him at the
Speaker 1: premier graffiti bridge? All right? Just like that was the case?
Speaker 1: What was that? Who where he got up and left
Speaker 1: before the lights came up? It one scene? Or Okay,
Speaker 1: do you love this film? No? I mean, but it
Speaker 1: was the birth of Tevin Campbell, so you know it
Speaker 1: has a special place in my heart. Really, for all
Speaker 1: five minutes he was right, and thank you. See I
Speaker 1: was close. She was pretty whatever she was actually liked
Speaker 1: her album. I don't know what any My wife was
Speaker 1: pretty shet in a movie to shame. Well that I
Speaker 1: know that, you know, doing all this emotional emotion of
Speaker 1: the stuff is you can't stand it. And uh, I
Speaker 1: appreciate the fact that you let us pick your brain.
Speaker 1: If you got a second, let me put one PostScript
Speaker 1: on the last thing we talked about momentous moments. This
Speaker 1: is something I want to share, and and it's embarrassing
Speaker 1: to share it to you. I wish we were talking
Speaker 1: to somebody else because it looks like I'm trying to
Speaker 1: bottle you up. But um. Once we're in a car
Speaker 1: coming from his show and Chris Rock I don't know where,
Speaker 1: he said, Yo, what was the best tour you were
Speaker 1: ever on? And he was like, you know Jame's brand,
Speaker 1: Prince Prison. I'm sure he was fishing for a print store,
Speaker 1: because you know, Chris says, you will know he's a
Speaker 1: print o file like the rest of us. And I
Speaker 1: you would think I'd stop and think about it, but
Speaker 1: before I could even think, it just came out, as
Speaker 1: if I were programmed. Voodoo really just came out. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't even even think to ask that. I didn't think
Speaker 1: about it. I didn't think of it. And once it
Speaker 1: came out, I was like, yeah, he's right, you know,
Speaker 1: and what made that the best? Yeah? Oh, did you
Speaker 1: see it? That's what Chris said, because he was he
Speaker 1: was stunned and and and and the only thing I
Speaker 1: could say to him was did you see it? And
Speaker 1: he said, no, I missed it. When it played Tann
Speaker 1: I was out of town and I missed it, damn it.
Speaker 1: And I said, then I can't tell you the biggest
Speaker 1: disgrace in my whole career is that we didn't professionally
Speaker 1: shoot that show. That there isn't a professional shoot of
Speaker 1: that show. I mean there's bootlegs of the Brazilian shows,
Speaker 1: but you weren't there and we didn't have the set.
Speaker 1: They don't count. Yeah, yeah, I gotta say that. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, I think maybe I downplay it just it's
Speaker 1: just to do. It was the perfect show, the perfect
Speaker 1: material that was not it was Well I hear that too.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, yeah, I guess I could probably say that,
Speaker 1: probably say that probably the most magical times of my
Speaker 1: drumming career came where it's that to where I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like in our mind, I think that we just
Speaker 1: created the show hoping that one day, like we get
Speaker 1: the pad on the back approval from the Big Brother
Speaker 1: approval thing, and uh, it didn't happen. But we still
Speaker 1: went to that city and I felt like, who are
Speaker 1: you looking to get the pedal the back from? I
Speaker 1: don't think that was the best show though. Really they
Speaker 1: were in Minneapolis Fonte. Oh okay, I get it. So
Speaker 1: you thought that it was just okay, no, you know
Speaker 1: what your brother got on stage, and yeah, he ruined
Speaker 1: Jock's life for about a month. No, Um, maybe okay,
Speaker 1: maybe I was just caught up in the good one.
Speaker 1: But I think that was just the whole prince or
Speaker 1: magic of it all. I mean, because the thing was,
Speaker 1: it could have went either way, and I felt like
Speaker 1: what I didn't I didn't want to. We could have
Speaker 1: slam dunked it. Or we could have been like, uh
Speaker 1: what's his name on the Orlando Magic that missed those
Speaker 1: four Uh yeah, yeah, or we could have Kenny Anderson
Speaker 1: and missed and and lost our our our championship goals.
Speaker 1: No on the worst night, that show was dope. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, just for a listener. Wise, though, y'all
Speaker 1: you and indeed eventually did get like a pad on
Speaker 1: the back. Maybe it wasn't for Voodoo, but like creatively,
Speaker 1: at some point we had we had respect. We had
Speaker 1: his respect. Tell us who was in that band, in
Speaker 1: the in the Voodoos tour band, well, uh, miraculously he
Speaker 1: got Probably the best thing about that tour was the
Speaker 1: fact that he got a lot of cats to just
Speaker 1: leave their day jobs. Much of the Segrein of whatever
Speaker 1: situation they were in. So like Roy Hargrove, uh was
Speaker 1: part of the horn section, uh Peno Palladino, who um
Speaker 1: I mean by that point, I mean even before then,
Speaker 1: before two thousand, I mean he was severely in demand
Speaker 1: as a session bass player. Um cats like an uh
Speaker 1: about to say Anthony Anderson right before you did, right, Anthony,
Speaker 1: Anthony Hamilton's uh j Yes, Shelby j James KOs have
Speaker 1: one point Balou was yeah, but um didn't he get
Speaker 1: fired or something? Bloud never got fired. I couldn't swear
Speaker 1: there was some somebody got Firedou just things like I
Speaker 1: got fired. But okay, now he just got a record
Speaker 1: deal after that, and uh, you know, I mean there
Speaker 1: was a time lapse between the gig that Blou was
Speaker 1: on that was like the Essence Festival, and you know,
Speaker 1: by the time we got Voodoo finished, it was a
Speaker 1: new millennium. So but Spanky and uh yeah, Spanky, Alfred
Speaker 1: Chalmers and jeff Johnson Jesus, yeah I forgot about Yeah,
Speaker 1: God rest is so old to Jeffrey Johnson. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So Alan, I would like to thank you for coming
Speaker 1: get up for Alan, Thank you for having me this
Speaker 1: is a bit fun. Thank you. I appreciate you coming. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess it's a brutality. Yeah, alright, so we're about
Speaker 1: to wrap up. We've learned a lot uh with Fontikola. Man,
Speaker 1: what did you learn today? Bro? What did I learn?
Speaker 1: I think the most interesting thing I learned just when
Speaker 1: listen now and talk is, um, how similar the business
Speaker 1: of you know yesterday or yesteryear. Rather, it's very similar
Speaker 1: to the business now, and that it's very much singles driven.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. It's it's not really uh
Speaker 1: a thing of you know, it's not really about the
Speaker 1: album per se um. When you talk about James would
Speaker 1: put out a single every three months. That's pretty much
Speaker 1: what all the guys are doing now, particularly in like
Speaker 1: hip hop, and you know it's cats just kind of
Speaker 1: putting out well, you know, just singles. That's just what's
Speaker 1: kind of that only tells me that we need I mean, well,
Speaker 1: the Beatles changed all that once Charging Peppers came out.
Speaker 1: Then it was like, ah, the album to be the format.
Speaker 1: So I guess now any day now someone's gonna release
Speaker 1: the album format that will make everyone believe in a
Speaker 1: bigger vision than just the single and maybe they will
Speaker 1: do it only on pendor uh so uh, I'm paid, Billy.
Speaker 1: What did you learn today? Bro? Two things? One I
Speaker 1: could listen to on Lyad the Dog for fucking ever. Man.
Speaker 1: It's just like it was amazing and too it was
Speaker 1: interesting to listen to a guy who has been going
Speaker 1: off his instincts, his his love of music and what
Speaker 1: he likes and how that shaped his career. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty inspiring thing, just like this is the music he loved,
Speaker 1: and so he followed it and he continues to follow it.
Speaker 1: And I think, as a person who dabbles and music,
Speaker 1: that that's a great thing. That's amazing. There's very few
Speaker 1: people that get to make a living off of like
Speaker 1: what you love. I mean, like you have to sometimes
Speaker 1: just kind of do the ship you hate in order
Speaker 1: to make that rent. But and those people are in
Speaker 1: this room, which is also kind of cool to share
Speaker 1: that just trying to make rent man every damn day,
Speaker 1: sugar Steve. What I found interesting about Alan was among
Speaker 1: among the the things that made him uniquely qualified to
Speaker 1: do what he did and to have the career that
Speaker 1: he had was I think that at all the different stages,
Speaker 1: I think you did what my father tells me to do,
Speaker 1: which is make yourself useful. So like, in addition to
Speaker 1: doing your actual job of tour managing, you did the
Speaker 1: publicity for James and then you did the the imprint label.
Speaker 1: You're running that for Prince. So you were doing making yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, worthy of a salary, you know, worthy of
Speaker 1: having a weekly paycheck rather than just the tour manager checks.
Speaker 1: You know, kept your employed. You know, so I thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, I was thinking about my father, because it
Speaker 1: makes yourself useful. You know that my dad told me
Speaker 1: that too, your is not mine? Oh my god, so much?
Speaker 1: What had I learned? Well? I learned not to give up,
Speaker 1: um because I don't. Showed me that through your passion
Speaker 1: you can live life in the joyous way, and that's
Speaker 1: my goal. I have also learned that, um yeah, working
Speaker 1: with musicians is a doozy. I've also learned that I
Speaker 1: need to take a mirror in a corner and slow
Speaker 1: drag with him and to a nice Prince ballot, because
Speaker 1: show what is from with life. I'm just saying all
Speaker 1: that I learned some more too, Okay, much time, boss Bill?
Speaker 1: Would you learn bro? I learned that I'm too reliant
Speaker 1: on technology, and I wouldn't have made it four years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love technology as much as you. You see, we
Speaker 1: will see you next Wednesday one pm specifically yea and
Speaker 1: ten m specific specific Listen Pisketti ten am, Pisketti time.
Speaker 1: This is Quest Love Supreme Onfa Fontigoelo Boss Bill, unpaid Bill,
Speaker 1: and uh Sugar Steve and do we have a proper
Speaker 1: moniker for yet? Doesn't misogynistic Margaret. We'll see you then,
Speaker 1: Thank you, West. Love Supreme is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. This classic episode was produced by the team
Speaker 1: at Pandora. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.