Speaker 1: Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Hey, what's
Speaker 1: going on? What's going on? Y'all? This is QLs Classic.
Speaker 1: My name is quest Love. You're listening to a classic
Speaker 1: episode of Course Love Supreme. Hey, what can I say?
Speaker 1: Jesse Johnson from the time you know of Course Purple
Speaker 1: episodes are my favorite. This is from August first, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: What makes this Jesse episode so special, in addition to
Speaker 1: his storytelling and his amazing life, is the sneak guest
Speaker 1: that he brought into the show that we weren't aware
Speaker 1: of when I was aware of. Anyway, I hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoy it. This part one of a two part
Speaker 1: Jesse Johnson and Course Love Supreme QLs Classic. I hope
Speaker 1: this works.
Speaker 2: Suprema Supreme, A roll Call Suprema Supreme, Roll Call Supreme, Supreme,
Speaker 2: Roll Call Supreme.
Speaker 3: Supreme, roll car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what I'm always getting into something? Why Ia says
Speaker 1: I ain't right? Mm hmm. Some could say, oh, don't
Speaker 1: go home with him, or my bark's worse than my bite. Right,
Speaker 1: you can trust me, girl. A gentleman, A gentleman never
Speaker 1: tells HM, your secret's safe on site.
Speaker 4: Hey, Jesse, Yeah, come in man, Suprema Suprema roll.
Speaker 1: Car name Sugar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, used to drive a Silica.
Speaker 5: Yeah, back when this dude was making Shaka Delica.
Speaker 2: Supremo Supremo roll Suprema Supremo.
Speaker 3: Roll call was five.
Speaker 6: Was corrected by my mother. Yeah, I was sure today's guest. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it was my father's brother.
Speaker 2: Sup Supremo roll call Supremo Suprema.
Speaker 7: Rolls like yeah, and Jesse, yo, just looking for to
Speaker 7: go out.
Speaker 8: Suprema Supremeo roll Suprema Supremo roll.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and yeah yeah, I want to picture.
Speaker 8: Supreme Supreme Supreme roll Supreme Supreme Ro Supreme Supreme.
Speaker 1: That's all ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: Uh, clown and early, No, you don't.
Speaker 1: It's a long story behind that, you know.
Speaker 3: At the same time that can't even y'all get away
Speaker 3: with her thinking she's right there.
Speaker 1: Those three seconds, those three seconds are the staple of
Speaker 1: the show. It's a long story. Explain what that means.
Speaker 1: But ladies and gentlemen, Uh, nothing sits us more uh
Speaker 1: than getting one on one time.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: What I consider with any purple disciple on quest Love
Speaker 1: supreme and this is no exception.
Speaker 3: Bring up bad memories.
Speaker 1: I'm about to say, paink disciple, you.
Speaker 3: Bring up bad memories of that chachadelic or stuff. No,
Speaker 3: y'all did. Y'all don't know the story behind.
Speaker 1: I've heard the story.
Speaker 3: We don't what y'all hold people, truth had the truth.
Speaker 1: We're going to get that. Let me introduce you for anyway.
Speaker 1: Our guest is a master x men on part with
Speaker 1: some of the best brothers to ever touch the guitar
Speaker 1: from Eddie Hazel, Ernie Eisley, the Brother Nelson himself, Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hendricks name him, uh turner anybody. Uh, he's gaying attention.
Speaker 1: Remember he said he's gay.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know what he.
Speaker 1: Remember he's gay. Jesse Johnson, thank.
Speaker 3: You, question, Thank you for this. It's actually my pleasure, man.
Speaker 3: It's how's it going, bro? It's good, man. I can't complain.
Speaker 3: And that's when people you know I'm a true New
Speaker 3: Yorker in a sense, when you ask me how am
Speaker 3: I doing I'm compared to who?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely as you that. Well, Thank you man,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you but I'm good. I mean, I really
Speaker 1: haven't had a chance to chop it up with you
Speaker 1: since uh well, since you've been on the scene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's why I I this would what great timing.
Speaker 3: Huh yeah, I've done so much stuff together. We've never
Speaker 3: had it, but we're always like jumping out of the
Speaker 3: plane with the parachute on and hitting the ground running.
Speaker 1: Part of me always knew that I'd have this platform
Speaker 1: one day, so I think I wanted to save all
Speaker 1: of my fan out moments for when the tapes are rolling,
Speaker 1: so I could just ask any and everything, because I
Speaker 1: feel like, I mean, after you broke my heart about
Speaker 1: the the lin drum seven seven story, Yeah, it broke
Speaker 1: a lot of heart, and then I'm certain that there's
Speaker 1: like fifty other worries you about to debunk today. Yeah.
Speaker 3: They always say the truth is can be heavy.
Speaker 1: Truth hurts, Yeah, so uh well, yeah, I guess I
Speaker 1: should say that we are recording at the world famous
Speaker 1: Electric Lady Studios, the house of Jimmy.
Speaker 3: And uh Live and Well in New York.
Speaker 1: We're actually in the b room, which you know, rarely,
Speaker 1: what do we do here, Steve? We did like send
Speaker 1: it on maybe.
Speaker 5: One more again, I guess was in here. So a
Speaker 5: lot of vocals and mixing in here.
Speaker 1: But Jordan, I know that, uh, I at least know
Speaker 1: that a track send it on here, Like we started
Speaker 1: off in this room before we even went to the
Speaker 1: ap Ram. So like a lot of the early stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a real Superman Lover on it. Back
Speaker 1: when I think Kim and BB King were supposed to
Speaker 1: do Superman Lover, we're talking about doing D'angelo's Voodoo.
Speaker 7: But right, so, Jesse, you never recorded it here before.
Speaker 3: I've came here a couple of times when he was
Speaker 3: when d was working there, but I wouldn't come in
Speaker 3: because it's like the headspace in here that you know.
Speaker 3: I'm a Jimmy disciple. So it's like even now, it's overwhelming. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's heavy because you depending on you know what you
Speaker 3: feel and how you feel things, and I usually feel
Speaker 3: what's going on and it's it's it's beautiful, but it's heavy.
Speaker 1: I'll say that sixty eight, sixty eight years later, maybe
Speaker 1: would you say that at least seventy five percent of
Speaker 1: the studio still intact from the original plan of Well.
Speaker 3: First of all, it's fifty year.
Speaker 1: Sixty eight. I'm in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 5: Yeah, fifty years yeah, well technically opened in seventy. But
Speaker 5: but there's there's some gear that's original, some microphones, but
Speaker 5: but structurally, it's mostly in the structural exactly our work.
Speaker 7: And you know, can we can we reiterate to everybody too,
Speaker 7: that you kind of grew up in this building for
Speaker 7: some of the New Quest Love Supreen listeners as Sugar Steve.
Speaker 1: Actually, you know, I stole Sugar Steve from Electric Lady Steve.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm only like the third most interesting person here.
Speaker 7: Use somebody might be listening like, what the hell did
Speaker 7: Sugar Steve know what?
Speaker 3: Actually he knows a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I came up here as an intern,
Speaker 5: started cleaning the toilets, and then stay for about eight
Speaker 5: or nine years.
Speaker 1: And wait, you were here eight years before.
Speaker 5: No, I started basically when you when you came.
Speaker 1: Here, So you were an intern when Voodoo started. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we told you did else. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 5: I was an assistant engineer, okay, who cleaned the toilets.
Speaker 1: At the time. There was a cat here named Jimmy
Speaker 1: that we swore was the actual ghost of Jimi Hendrix.
Speaker 1: One time he there was what was it, he jumped
Speaker 1: on the.
Speaker 5: Board and Yeah, if he jumps on the console while
Speaker 5: you're mixing, meanings like he approves of the mix, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there was one time where he like, we
Speaker 1: were looking for the source of some feedback thing and
Speaker 1: the cat actually jumped on the board and pressed it,
Speaker 1: turned it off and pressed some button, and then we
Speaker 1: were forever convinced that that was Jimmy Hendricks.
Speaker 5: Plus his name was Jimmy, which which really helped.
Speaker 1: Yes, that helped, all right, So jesse H, I always
Speaker 1: start each show with this question, where were you born?
Speaker 3: Rock Island, Illinois as far as that from a town
Speaker 3: probably four or five hours from Chicago. It's between before
Speaker 3: you hit Chicago, you hit Rockford and some other Aurora,
Speaker 3: that famous place from U Wayne's World.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so.
Speaker 3: That he thought he had my I play used to
Speaker 3: play in Aurora, Illinois, gains where gains Boro I think
Speaker 3: it's called a Gainsboro, that's something like that. I used
Speaker 3: to play all over those places illis But Aurora in
Speaker 3: the movie, he said he thought he had Mono, but
Speaker 3: he just foo was bored.
Speaker 1: And a roar. But Aurora was really like that.
Speaker 3: But Peoria, I played one of those you know you've
Speaker 3: seen the storied uh Richard probably talking about the Pimp
Speaker 3: Yeah convention. I played one of those Illinois for real
Speaker 3: and they they're real, Like the dude comes in the
Speaker 3: Pimp of the Year with the cup and.
Speaker 1: Well, I was gonna say, you were born in the sixties,
Speaker 1: so you were.
Speaker 3: Yes, But I played with I was so fortunate I
Speaker 3: played with these guys. Was telling me one time that
Speaker 3: they were all Greens Band. So it was a drummer
Speaker 3: David Govan, his brother Oscar on guitar, brother Dennis on bass.
Speaker 3: They were signing there, al Greens band. You know, you
Speaker 3: meet people. I'm in a little town. Came out and
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, yeah, right, right right. And I remember
Speaker 3: playing at this bar midnight specials on the TV and
Speaker 3: break and them cats was up there playing without Green
Speaker 3: and I suised to play. It was fortunate enough as
Speaker 3: a youngster to play with some real cats, you know,
Speaker 3: get to travel around and just drop out of school
Speaker 3: and all that fun stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, for a lot, or I'm saying for a lot
Speaker 1: of us. For me at least, like you think of Illinois,
Speaker 1: you just basically think of Chicago.
Speaker 3: I grew up South Side Chica. I grew up the
Speaker 3: two cities that I grew up and I was born
Speaker 3: in Rock Island, but I grew up in South Side
Speaker 3: Chicago and one of the other roughest places other than
Speaker 3: the rough side of You've heard Quincy Jones talk about
Speaker 3: the South Side Chicago's joke. It's like escape from New York,
Speaker 3: cars on fire and stuff in Jackson Park. It was
Speaker 3: really But East Saint Louis was no joke. I grew yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I grew up in Say Louis. So I saw George.
Speaker 3: I think the album might have been I can't it
Speaker 3: was Jerome Brayley, but it was years before the Jerome
Speaker 3: Braley had the stuff that's on the mother George has
Speaker 3: on a Mothership Connection album. Yeah, but he was wearing
Speaker 3: that so they were coming off that thing, maybe the
Speaker 3: Chocolate City. But I saw them. I was a little kid.
Speaker 3: I rode three buses to get to They played at
Speaker 3: East Side High And when I would tell that story
Speaker 3: to George, George would be like, oh man, you're telling
Speaker 3: your age. I'm like, no, I was a little kid.
Speaker 3: I just was. I had older brothers, so I was
Speaker 3: in the you know, they exposed me, you know, I
Speaker 3: we know the Donald Goyn's books and slams and into
Speaker 3: great music, you know, because I had I had, you know,
Speaker 3: seven older brothers. Whoa damn Wait, you were the youngest
Speaker 3: of seven. No, I'm not like towards the end, but
Speaker 3: I you know, I got older brothers though.
Speaker 6: Okay, siblings in total? How many siblings and total?
Speaker 1: Shit?
Speaker 3: Maybe I shouldn't cuss, right, it's a lot of us.
Speaker 3: It's it was like twelve of us or something because
Speaker 3: my father he raised everybody, but there were not those.
Speaker 3: My older siblings are not his siblings. I'm my father.
Speaker 3: I'm his oldest. And then I have a a brother
Speaker 3: and a sister and knows are my father's he raised
Speaker 3: the other cause I grew up and then we never
Speaker 3: you know, and black families, if you got you can
Speaker 3: have twelve brothers and sisters, but they all got different dads.
Speaker 3: But you never hear words like that's my step sister,
Speaker 3: that's my half. It's like, yeah, sisters same here, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: So were you how did you develop your musical skills?
Speaker 1: Was your family into music or no? But they my father.
Speaker 3: He gave me the he It was a lot of
Speaker 3: my household had a lot of like if I wanted
Speaker 3: to play music. I had to be able to remember,
Speaker 3: you know, you know who wake up in my boy,
Speaker 3: you can play and then you and I had come
Speaker 3: to this stuff like exactly. And if you couldn't do that,
Speaker 3: he wouldn't. I wasn't allowed to play some of them.
Speaker 3: So I was allowed to play and bands at an
Speaker 3: early age. Because he had all these thick records. I
Speaker 3: didn't know. I think, I forget what they're called, but
Speaker 3: they look like an album, but they're smaller seventy eights, yes,
Speaker 3: but they had no names on them, so they were
Speaker 3: that old. He and you remember the old record players
Speaker 3: because we didn't ruin all of his records, were slowing
Speaker 3: them down and learned that, you know, learn and all
Speaker 3: that and so you slow the record. So he had
Speaker 3: all these collections that was Lightning Hoppins. I mean, it
Speaker 3: wasn't into many years later later that I realized it
Speaker 3: was Lightning Hopkins now. But they had no names on them.
Speaker 3: But I had to know all that stuff, and that's
Speaker 3: why I could play Bottleneck and all kind of tunis
Speaker 3: and Robert Johnson because he was like, if you can
Speaker 3: play this, then you can go play, So you're a
Speaker 3: true bluesman to through and through, but just to please
Speaker 3: your dad like he was president.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 3: I was so fortunate in the house growing up. I mean,
Speaker 3: when I read your backstory, it just sounds a lot
Speaker 3: like mine, except for my parents were not musicians, but
Speaker 3: they would promote shows. And as a little kid growing
Speaker 3: up in a small town like Rock Island, which is
Speaker 3: very predominantly Jewish town, which was a really really cool
Speaker 3: thing because I grew up in advertley with a lot
Speaker 3: of culture. No, yeah, I saw all my friends. I
Speaker 3: grew up, you know, mantsa ball and the whole shot,
Speaker 3: you know, with a lot of culture, but not realizing
Speaker 3: it because you know, you're just a little kid going.
Speaker 3: But I would wake up some mornings and there's a
Speaker 3: guy in the living room. I was like, who's that?
Speaker 3: And it was a cat named Major Lance a song
Speaker 3: called Monkey Time. So they would put together shows like that.
Speaker 3: My father would, so he would, I guess, be a
Speaker 3: quase promoter, but he worked a gig. He were a
Speaker 3: couple of jobs, but he would promote these shows. One
Speaker 3: day he wake up and it's like Major Lance the
Speaker 3: living room and you know, Jimmy McCracken, you know, different
Speaker 3: cats like that. So I would really not realizing, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not even in school good yet. So but I
Speaker 3: but they listen to the between the two of them
Speaker 3: listen to everything. They loved everything. So my vocabulary in
Speaker 3: my ears are so giant because it was not so
Speaker 3: I the love of music. It's just a love of music.
Speaker 3: But I love all styles.
Speaker 1: This is a recurring theme on the show, either DJ's
Speaker 1: become producers or if you're three or four years old,
Speaker 1: like God's in the living room teaching you exactly. So, uh,
Speaker 1: what was your band situation like in school? Like were
Speaker 1: you forming bands?
Speaker 3: And no, I was really you know, I guess you're
Speaker 3: It was the weirdest thing. I was like, of course,
Speaker 3: you you know, it's like a disease once you discover
Speaker 3: music and you really get the jones because it's like
Speaker 3: you see girls and you're just like, oh man, she's
Speaker 3: so pretty well love it. But you know, it was
Speaker 3: like that during that time and girls will say you
Speaker 3: don't get high, and I go no, and they go, oh,
Speaker 3: I can't deal with you. And just always try to
Speaker 3: tell my kids it's like I was always a straight dude.
Speaker 3: I was always a nerd dude. I said, but look
Speaker 3: what I did, and look what did I said? When
Speaker 3: I went back to rock, And the first time I
Speaker 3: played the I was with the time. It was printing
Speaker 3: the time, and we played Palmer Chiropractice Auditorium whereas where
Speaker 3: I grew up there and seeing then Lizzie everybody at
Speaker 3: that place, and ac DC's here, so here I'm at
Speaker 3: this place and it's print in the time. And then
Speaker 3: when I went on my own, I went back there
Speaker 3: and played with Hendricks and Zeppelin played at the Call Ballroom,
Speaker 3: so you know, and it's and I just remember this girl,
Speaker 3: she was like miss Black Quad Cities, and I remember
Speaker 3: she walked on. I was sitting under the girl's porch
Speaker 3: in Davenport when she walked up the stairs and I said, him,
Speaker 3: sitting there talking to something. And she walked up stairs
Speaker 3: a meet with somebody, and I said hi, and she
Speaker 3: didn't speak to me. And then when I played there,
Speaker 3: she almost got hit by a car running across the
Speaker 3: But it's like, you know, I didn't say nothing, but
Speaker 3: you just go like, see you just never know that
Speaker 3: dude janitoring over there cleaning the toilet. You just come on, man,
Speaker 3: I know I did the same thing. You don't y'all
Speaker 3: don't even understand I cut I cut teeth. If y'all
Speaker 3: y'all you know for.
Speaker 1: A second, did it's a system too.
Speaker 3: I did all kinds.
Speaker 7: Of stuff because stuff like the first job that you had.
Speaker 3: I okay, as I wanted my first, my first real guitar.
Speaker 1: And what kind of act did you have as a kid?
Speaker 3: I had like the regular tice skulls and the strength.
Speaker 3: It was like a break exactly. And that twenty nine
Speaker 3: dollars of a lot of lawns I mowed. And you know,
Speaker 3: when you're a kid, you have a stack of twenty
Speaker 3: nine once loaded, you just keep you taking up the jar.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm still that way.
Speaker 3: And I had the UH and I had payment ones,
Speaker 3: I had the memory. I don't know if y'all remember this,
Speaker 3: as I'm older than y'all, But Crystal radio. There was
Speaker 3: these things that you would sit in the window. You
Speaker 3: build these little radios and they didn't have batteries, but
Speaker 3: you sit them in the window and they gather in
Speaker 3: store sunlight and did at night you could listen to
Speaker 3: the radio. Yeah, that's what they called there. But they
Speaker 3: were called crystal radio back then because there wasn't solar
Speaker 3: head like a little crystal and that they would store
Speaker 3: sunlight and you'd build them from realistic and before radio
Speaker 3: shock and all that. But yeah, that's how I kind
Speaker 3: of started getting worn in different styles of music and
Speaker 3: getting those jazz stations of blue stations that wasn't even
Speaker 3: in the I.
Speaker 1: Was going to say, how prevalent was Was there a
Speaker 1: black radio station in East St. Yoris?
Speaker 3: It was because I'm always telling my cousin that it
Speaker 3: was black radio that broke Benny and the Jets. Was
Speaker 3: never a single, but it was a DJ in East St.
Speaker 3: Louis name Jim Gates. Yeah, it was never a single.
Speaker 3: Black radio this DJ that started playing it, and at
Speaker 3: the time they were black radio, unlike I don't know
Speaker 3: if because I was in they Saint Louis. I would
Speaker 3: even when I lived in Rock Island, I would go
Speaker 3: to my mother's in the summer and East St. Louis
Speaker 3: and my mother's I mean when I talk about this,
Speaker 3: because I have a book, an audiobook that's come out
Speaker 3: later in the year, but okay, she had a backyard
Speaker 3: and then it was a fence dividing the backyards instead
Speaker 3: of an alley, so there was. There would be this
Speaker 3: guy every now and then sitting on the back porch
Speaker 3: in a chair and playing guitar, and I would go over.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'm a young kid, I go over and I go,
Speaker 3: you know, and just watch him play guitar. And he'd
Speaker 3: have a pipe and he'd be playing. And that cat
Speaker 3: was Albert King. So he would go, you know, he
Speaker 3: would say, you know, because his guitar is strung up
Speaker 3: like for me, but he just turns it this way
Speaker 3: and plays it with the strings upside down. So he
Speaker 3: would go. He would show me things. And so when
Speaker 3: I older, when I tell people, I know exactly what
Speaker 3: he's playing and how he was tuned because he was
Speaker 3: like he would show me. And so when I would
Speaker 3: go right, I knew exactly what he was doing because
Speaker 3: I got to see him do that when I was thirteen,
Speaker 3: and he would show me stuff and he would and
Speaker 3: what it was. He dated the lady behind living behind
Speaker 3: my mother and and I remember it so brightly because
Speaker 3: at the time lou Brock was the Saints cardinal, but
Speaker 3: he had these Dodge dealerships and it was with lou
Speaker 3: Brock Dodges right there, and uh, I didn't realize that
Speaker 3: Albert King, but he drove his own tour bus, so
Speaker 3: it'd be this every time. They'd be this big bus. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just like that's why when I was telling somebody
Speaker 3: on the plane here yesterday, I said, when I talk
Speaker 3: about my life, it's just I was like, I'm lying,
Speaker 3: you know, because there's too much. No, it's planet. It
Speaker 3: just too much stuff lines up for me. Like you know,
Speaker 3: you know my sister, right, Swayne car Walls. He's my
Speaker 3: play sister, but we like really closely, you know something.
Speaker 3: So that was her big joke. She's like, man, he
Speaker 3: just got here famous because I came to Minneapolis not
Speaker 3: knowing anybody. I'm staying at the YMC. Ate like one
Speaker 3: of the village people, right, you know why if you
Speaker 3: didn't live anywhere, you know you could, they would let
Speaker 3: you crash out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I came to Minneapolis, not not but I'm staying
Speaker 3: at the YMC. I'm chilling April nineteen eighty one by June,
Speaker 3: I'm in the stars on that cup.
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow.
Speaker 3: So it's like wow, and I didn't know anybody, so
Speaker 3: what the fuck exactly? So what would happen is I
Speaker 3: was during the day I would go I would go
Speaker 3: walking around and so people would think I was somebody else.
Speaker 3: They are you, are you related to that? And I
Speaker 3: didn't know anybody, and I go no. So I'd be
Speaker 3: walking around. And if you go back and there's a
Speaker 3: guitar store there, I think it's still there. It's called
Speaker 3: Nude could pay. But if you go back and check out,
Speaker 3: there's old ads that I did model for before I
Speaker 3: was ever in the time, so you'll see you can
Speaker 3: look up. Wow.
Speaker 7: So you were dressing like a rock star?
Speaker 3: R No, No, I just must have looked a certain.
Speaker 1: Allen just walking around.
Speaker 3: No, not nothing.
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 3: I don't even think I had any of that stuff
Speaker 3: with me then because I had to when I joined
Speaker 3: this band Enterprise, I had to have all that stuff
Speaker 3: come up.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. So, uh, what effect knowing that I believe
Speaker 1: you were born in sixty what effect did watching? How
Speaker 1: did Hendrix enter your life? Well?
Speaker 3: I was too young to have seen him, so when
Speaker 3: I got but I remember the day. I remember we
Speaker 3: lived in it was any Saint Louis in a basement
Speaker 3: apartment the day he died, because it came on the television.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget it. But I didn't know who he was,
Speaker 3: but I believe it or not. That same day I
Speaker 3: knew who Bob Marley was because he wrote a song
Speaker 3: he wrote. There was a guy named Johnny Nash that
Speaker 3: had a song called was this clearly Yes that You're right?
Speaker 3: Quest You're right? He had he had the That song
Speaker 3: was out way back then. But that's who wrote that,
Speaker 3: right and so, and it came out at the time.
Speaker 3: There was I just remember this one song because I
Speaker 3: used to I used to just make me have. I
Speaker 3: didn't like this, so it was called I was a
Speaker 3: girl watcher A girl watch. Yeah, I watching girls.
Speaker 1: I didn't know the real version later, but I knew
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't know the real version until just.
Speaker 3: So. Yeah, I just said, I you know, I do.
Speaker 3: That's for some reason, you know certain things in your
Speaker 3: like you know, the day you know Kennedy was this
Speaker 3: and the same thing.
Speaker 1: Wait, since we were in a rabbit hole. Side note,
Speaker 1: Run did one solo joint that never quite made it
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three. It was like Run and Papa
Speaker 1: Papa rhyme large or something, and they covered I'm a
Speaker 1: Girl Watcher. Oh wow, but that you have never released
Speaker 1: it because it was like run run, So anyway.
Speaker 3: No, that's just I was just saying how certain things
Speaker 3: become a snapshot in your life because you they're connected
Speaker 3: with music. It's like the day Martin Luther King was assassinated.
Speaker 3: I remember it because one of the songs I love
Speaker 3: was cat just recently passed away that I absolutely love,
Speaker 3: Hugh Mescala grazing in the grass. And so I was
Speaker 3: a young kid and HEAs Saint Louis and been fortunate
Speaker 3: enough at that time I met Martin Luther King as
Speaker 3: a little kid. You know, Malcolm X.
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, I'm gonna need you not to pass by
Speaker 7: these moments, and I'm gonna need you to kind of
Speaker 7: tell I'm.
Speaker 3: Telling you when I elaborate on everything is I believe you.
Speaker 3: It's just like but it's like those times, the times
Speaker 3: that you grew up in and you got to remember
Speaker 3: Malcolm X wasn't like the Malcolm X that people know.
Speaker 3: He went, he flew, you know, they he would be
Speaker 3: the guy that would come in and opened the other mosque.
Speaker 3: And so growing up in the Nation of Islam, so
Speaker 3: through my mother, so.
Speaker 7: I wait a minute, yeah, I got to get.
Speaker 3: I got to experience all of that seriously. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: the reason why I'm like always was kind of really
Speaker 3: corny and not in the drugs or drinking and all that,
Speaker 3: because because I was just raised to do that way,
Speaker 3: raised by a whole bunch of women, my mom, her sisters.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, so.
Speaker 7: Your mom was in the nation, was your but your
Speaker 7: dad wasn't?
Speaker 3: They weren't they were not married? Then okay they were
Speaker 3: like she disappeared with all of us. And there it's
Speaker 3: a whole nother.
Speaker 7: You're gonna say that for the book. I see what
Speaker 7: you're doing.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, it's just it's just like would go on
Speaker 3: and be probably everybody no, like this is a true
Speaker 3: music nerd, but it's like, but it's like the all
Speaker 3: the moments that you live. And because one of the
Speaker 3: things that when Quincy talked about, we would go to
Speaker 3: school in South Chicago and coming home, going to school
Speaker 3: and come home almost like a life and death experience
Speaker 3: every day. That's how East Saint Louis was. How did
Speaker 3: you escape that?
Speaker 1: Though? Like, did you have like.
Speaker 3: No, I was, I have no idea because I because
Speaker 3: let me tell you how crazy it is now. It's
Speaker 3: like it's like my youngest child is fourteen, and I
Speaker 3: can't imagine her walking from here to you know, three
Speaker 3: or four or five blocks where I'm I'm nine, and
Speaker 3: I was ye over seeing those shows when the kids
Speaker 3: go extra extra Read out about when me and a
Speaker 3: kid that lived upstairs from us in this apartment. His
Speaker 3: name was Hermann. Uh he passed away as a child.
Speaker 3: He got hit by a car, unfortunately, but he was
Speaker 3: a He had a gig selling this newspaper called the
Speaker 3: Bistate Defender. So I was so a hustler at such
Speaker 3: a young guy. So I was nine, and I had
Speaker 3: to lie and till the guy was ten. And so
Speaker 3: we would go after school and we would get a
Speaker 3: whole stack of papers. He would get a whole stack
Speaker 3: of paper and carry How crazy this is. You can't
Speaker 3: imagine and doing this with your kid, or allowing your
Speaker 3: kid to do this. But where I lived in the
Speaker 3: Saint Louis, we would walk across the bridge to Saint Louis.
Speaker 3: When you walk across the bridge in Saint Louis, Missouri, now,
Speaker 3: so we would walk across the bridge, me and Herman.
Speaker 3: He was ten, I was nine. We would get these
Speaker 3: stack of papers. They were twenty cents a piece. We'd
Speaker 3: have to turn in the diamond. Then we kept a dime.
Speaker 3: So we'd walk across the bridge. At the end of
Speaker 3: the bridge. You when you got across the bridge, you'd
Speaker 3: make a right and on one side was the Continental
Speaker 3: Trailways bus station. Other side was the farmer's market. So
Speaker 3: we'd be this isn't at night and we're walking down
Speaker 3: there by state defend their busy and we would sell
Speaker 3: every one of those papers, walk across the bridge the
Speaker 3: next day, give the guy his half of the ten,
Speaker 3: then we get another stack. We would do that every day.
Speaker 3: Imagine your kid allowing your kid today. But it was like,
Speaker 3: you know, helping. Huh, how would you guys be out
Speaker 3: there till them papers were gone?
Speaker 7: And y'all was mad late, like the paper come out
Speaker 7: in the morning, y'all sell No.
Speaker 3: The by state there was like some weird paper that
Speaker 3: just kind of told about murders and killings. And because
Speaker 3: at that time Saint Louis, I think Saint Louis, Missouri,
Speaker 3: was the murder capital of the state. And in that
Speaker 3: neighborhood that was the murder capital was where the Spinkx
Speaker 3: brothers came from. Oh yeah, because you they were Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was like you didn't go in that. It was
Speaker 3: the projects over there. And you would walk past this
Speaker 3: store that was called Famous Bar Sticks and Fuller and
Speaker 3: all of some story like that was really like the
Speaker 3: big Then you got two blocks past that, man, it
Speaker 3: was like the White House back in the days. You
Speaker 3: remember you walked past the White House for about two
Speaker 3: blocks and it was, well, what's going on? What happened?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: East St. Louis a lot of cities like that.
Speaker 1: Were there any notable uh peers or people that we
Speaker 1: were doing all day long?
Speaker 3: Because if you guys go look at the history of
Speaker 3: Chuck Berry and all them. So East Saint Louis, downtown
Speaker 3: eas St. Louis, there was a club and I just
Speaker 3: don't know how, and I ain't dead or whatever, but
Speaker 3: I was a kid. I was a little kid, wasn't
Speaker 3: old enough, but I was so crazy with music already.
Speaker 3: This club Chuck Berry would play it and the club
Speaker 3: had a back door. You would open the back door.
Speaker 3: I remember hearing stories. Elvis used to do this when
Speaker 3: he was a you know, a kid, he was a
Speaker 3: little kid. He would do to go look in the
Speaker 3: window at the you know, the juke joints and they
Speaker 3: would let him do that and the little white kid,
Speaker 3: and I actually did that. I would this club. You
Speaker 3: would open the back door and you could see straight
Speaker 3: through the club to the stage, and I would see
Speaker 3: Chuck Berry play. I would see the I would just
Speaker 3: sit there and be like And so I was really
Speaker 3: fortunate in the sense that I knew what I was.
Speaker 1: Going to do.
Speaker 3: And then what changed it. Parliament Funkadelic played at Eastside
Speaker 3: High School, and then whenever I would tell George. I
Speaker 3: was telling George just during the Graffiti Bridge filming and
Speaker 3: he was like, Oh, you're showing your age. I said, no, bro,
Speaker 3: I was, I wouldn't even and I wouldn't in high school.
Speaker 3: I said, I took the rebusses to get to that area,
Speaker 3: and I said, I was so young and so little
Speaker 3: that when the guy opened the door, he was like,
Speaker 3: who's with you? You know at the school, and he
Speaker 3: let me come in. So I'm sitting in the bleachers
Speaker 3: watching them rehearse sound check and everything, and it was
Speaker 3: I knew from that moment what I was gonna do
Speaker 3: because Michael Hampton walked in. It was back in the
Speaker 3: seventies where there was these patch of jeans and Michael
Speaker 3: Hampton walked in and he had a pig nos amp
Speaker 3: on east side and they had they all had some
Speaker 3: barrels hanging off their back like real Mexicans, and it
Speaker 3: was like and it was the only time I've seen
Speaker 3: during the soundcheck, George Clinton played a black less Paul.
Speaker 3: He played guitar and it's just the real this was
Speaker 3: Funkadelic fund And you talked to George. George's memory is frightening,
Speaker 3: like George remembers any and George is mind blowing with that.
Speaker 3: Like George talked to me by about three years ago
Speaker 3: and oh, I haven't seen you since the Blop blop
Speaker 3: blop and he was dead and the and it was
Speaker 3: the last time he saw me was at Paisley was filming.
Speaker 3: You know, it's just mind but that show. I remembered
Speaker 3: it because I'm dude, I'm a little kid. I'm like
Speaker 3: and I took like two the transferred things to get there,
Speaker 3: and so I to this day, I try to remember
Speaker 3: how I got home because I'm a little kid and
Speaker 3: just walking from that school back to where the bus
Speaker 3: just just like sick with it. As far as no,
Speaker 3: I was actually living with some other.
Speaker 7: People like in the books ran away.
Speaker 3: It was like a foster kid at that point time.
Speaker 1: It's another recurring on this show. So how did you
Speaker 1: wind up in Minneapolis?
Speaker 3: Well, I was in in Rock Island. Rock Island is
Speaker 3: a really very very very small town. And at the
Speaker 3: end of the bridge, there's this bridge that it takes
Speaker 3: you from you're in rock I know, Illinois. When you
Speaker 3: go with a bridge in Downport Iole. Well read the
Speaker 3: foot of that bridge. There's a you can see it
Speaker 3: online because it's no longer there now, but it's called
Speaker 3: the Yankee Clipper. It was a hardcore biker bar. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you went in there black, you died. You I'm
Speaker 3: not I'm serious. The band the you can look it up.
Speaker 3: The motorcycle group was called the Grim Reapers. Seriously seriously,
Speaker 3: like yeah, no, seriously, you you and he and it
Speaker 3: even worse. You had a chance, you had a better chance,
Speaker 3: Like I learned something about cats that were hardcore like that,
Speaker 3: Like I went in there and I survived because I
Speaker 3: went in there and cranked them. Map and the guy
Speaker 3: who placed I took in his band of band was
Speaker 3: called Dealer. And the guy who place I took he
Speaker 3: was like an actual dealer and he just got tired
Speaker 3: of planning, so I took his he gave the job
Speaker 3: to me. And then and the band was all all
Speaker 3: white band and the club was like it was like
Speaker 3: it used to be at one point in scription, so
Speaker 3: you had a The stage was like this when we
Speaker 3: were and then it came out in a little you
Speaker 3: like that because it was a strip joint and it
Speaker 3: was a long stage like that, and then a bar
Speaker 3: ran and I and when the singer, one of the
Speaker 3: guys in the band was gay, and I never got
Speaker 3: any flat because I played my butt off.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I went in there and just popped it harder than
Speaker 3: it ever you know. I heard somebody kick guitar like that,
Speaker 3: and and when he would come up to sing, hey
Speaker 3: what pelt him with so much stuff? And I was like, damn.
Speaker 1: So this like the Blues Brothers where you just the chicken. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But what I discovered at that young age is like
Speaker 3: you can be white, but if you're gay, they will
Speaker 3: hate you more then they hate me. Yeah, they don't.
Speaker 3: They never because they loved me because I went in
Speaker 3: there and really, so.
Speaker 1: Does this mean that you would have to go zero
Speaker 1: to one hundred and automatically show your shred skills to
Speaker 1: let you let them.
Speaker 3: Know it's something happens to you because you you in
Speaker 3: your mind know that it's a It's it's hard to explain.
Speaker 3: It's like something in your mind knows that it's like
Speaker 3: sink or swim, and so you just dive right in
Speaker 3: swimming and you don't know how to swim, but you're swimming.
Speaker 3: You know you're swimming. So at the end of that bridge,
Speaker 3: the town is so small at the end of that bridge.
Speaker 3: Think that Yekee Clipper across the street, down across the
Speaker 3: street at the end of the Sheraton. The only big
Speaker 3: hotel you know, I was like the taj Mahal in
Speaker 3: this little town. So across the bridge you take right now,
Speaker 3: are you ever heard of the rko Orpheum? That's it
Speaker 3: right there, because you got to what y'all got to remember,
Speaker 3: Iowa is the rock and roll belt of the United States.
Speaker 3: That's why the monsters of rock all of that stuff. Iowa, Iowa, Iowa, Iowa, Iowa.
Speaker 3: That's why my cousin always gets jealous because I've seen
Speaker 3: everybody growing up because that's where all the the cont
Speaker 3: like Van Halen first, Van Halen album. I saw them
Speaker 3: when they had the exact clothes that are on the
Speaker 3: cover everything. I saw all of that Atlanta Rhythm section,
Speaker 3: the Doobies when they had the Taking It to the
Speaker 3: Streets album, lant Rhythm second, saw everybody, the cars, the
Speaker 3: Thin Lizzie, they saw them all. And what what would
Speaker 3: happen is a lot of big bands like Rush, let
Speaker 3: us come in one time and watch them rehearse, because
Speaker 3: they would come to the Rkoorphi and a lot of
Speaker 3: bands would rent that and rehearse there for a month,
Speaker 3: Like Rush rehearsed there for a month, And so you
Speaker 3: need to come in because you know, you when you're
Speaker 3: in the audience, That's when I kind of first got
Speaker 3: the you know, you're in the audience, everything looks like
Speaker 3: shining and then you get up there and this dude's
Speaker 3: answer all knit and they wasn't as tall as you.
Speaker 3: You know, it was my first time. Yeah, get into that.
Speaker 1: But she's saying that Iowa was like mostly a starting point,
Speaker 1: sort of like Michael Jackson's starting off in Kansas City
Speaker 1: or something like, you're saying that Iowa was just a
Speaker 1: starting but it was.
Speaker 3: It was yet a lot of people you'd be surprised.
Speaker 3: And then and then if you turned, if you went
Speaker 3: across the Centinial Bridge right at that same you could
Speaker 3: turn left this arka or from you turn this way.
Speaker 3: The Call Ballroom. The Call Ballroom is where Zeppelin flew
Speaker 3: in from Minneapolis. That's where Jimmy Page's Black Beauty got stolen.
Speaker 3: And then the Sunburns Less Paul that you've seen him
Speaker 3: play forever, that's where he bought it from. Joe Wash
Speaker 3: was at the Call Ballroom. So it's like if you
Speaker 3: go look at the and then they just released The
Speaker 3: Hendricks at the Call Ballroom. And a guy that of
Speaker 3: course was older, that was there. His name is Jerry Wetzel.
Speaker 3: He told me everything had happened and that was a
Speaker 3: thousand years ago in the seventies. He told me that
Speaker 3: like seventy eight, seventy and I was a kid and
Speaker 3: the music start listening to the stories. Everything he told me.
Speaker 3: They just released it last year, late last year, the
Speaker 3: Hendrix at the Call Ballroom. Everything he told me was
Speaker 3: he said he came because the Call Ballroom doesn't have
Speaker 3: a backstage, and it's a stage. The stage has covered
Speaker 3: it cut into you so you can stand it went
Speaker 3: in at the stage and go ques and it's like,
Speaker 3: I'm like next to you. It's like, you know, back
Speaker 3: then they built halls for real music, right, and so
Speaker 3: everything he told me, he said, Hindricks went, he came
Speaker 3: on stage, he caught walked through the audience with the
Speaker 3: police because there's no backstage, so you have to come
Speaker 3: through the audience. And I played there when my first
Speaker 3: album was out, so I was like, you can't tell me,
Speaker 3: so he said. He came up and he was like,
Speaker 3: you know, then he went, he said, oh, you're experiencing.
Speaker 3: And he said when he started playing, he said, don't
Speaker 3: know what happened, but I got I was like completely
Speaker 3: out of it, but I was just able to see
Speaker 3: a lot of like that. And what ended up happening.
Speaker 3: Every band that, even at the big Iowa Jams and
Speaker 3: the Credit Credit Island concerts, with all the men they
Speaker 3: stayed at that, they would come across the bridge they
Speaker 3: at that Sheridan and they would come to the Yankee
Speaker 3: Clipper and I would jam with all of them, Molly Hatchet,
Speaker 3: everybody jam and they all said the same thing to me,
Speaker 3: and I knew that's when I had to get my
Speaker 3: ass out of there, and they would all, what are
Speaker 3: you doing here? What are you doing here? And so
Speaker 3: I didn't have money, you know, because when you're Midwest kid,
Speaker 3: you think you gotta go to Hollywood, gotta go and
Speaker 3: I had money to do that. So I they saved
Speaker 3: up money for me too. I gotta get a bus
Speaker 3: to in his far as I can go with Minneapolis.
Speaker 3: But that's how I ended up there.
Speaker 7: And so but nothing was there, you just like, that's
Speaker 7: as far as I can go.
Speaker 3: It was like I just knew I need to be somewhere,
Speaker 3: and I knew nothing about many I didn't know, And
Speaker 3: as a matter of fact, when I met Prince, I
Speaker 3: didn't everybody. I just knew. He walked in the room
Speaker 3: and he was like hey, and everybody changed, you know,
Speaker 3: the dude six eight was four, what's walk? And everybody changed,
Speaker 3: and I was like, dude, must be. And then the
Speaker 3: funniest thing about why he even came over because he
Speaker 3: was buying I had a little color TV and you
Speaker 3: know them first VCRs. He came over to buy that
Speaker 3: from me for three hundred dollars. And he had invited
Speaker 3: me through Morris because the band and I joined Morse
Speaker 3: day was the drummer in Enterprise, and I never played
Speaker 3: a show with him because he and he invited me
Speaker 3: to First Avenue. So I'm like, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: know anybody and shit, so I'm like outside the club
Speaker 3: and this girl just was just dropped it. Georgeous pulled me.
Speaker 3: I must have looked lost and she just yanked me,
Speaker 3: and I'd never forget her, Sandy, It's so beautiful. She
Speaker 3: yanked me in the thing and like you just let
Speaker 3: you know, just like I must look lost, I must
Speaker 3: look like a tourist or something. And then I go
Speaker 3: in and I watched Prince shows this is a Dirty Mind.
Speaker 3: He's getting ready to leave for the Dirty Mind tour
Speaker 3: and Moors so this is eighty eighty one. Okay, this
Speaker 3: is the April eighty one. So he so I he
Speaker 3: invited me to the show through Mors and I've never
Speaker 3: met him yet or nothing, and so Morres said, hey,
Speaker 3: he got your ticket.
Speaker 1: Here, Da da da.
Speaker 3: I go down the First Avenue, you know, see the show,
Speaker 3: and I watched and I was like, this shit's amazing,
Speaker 3: Da da da. And what Morris was the Morris was
Speaker 3: a dude at the video at the soundboard videotape and
Speaker 3: all the shows, and I didn't know at the time
Speaker 3: that they had this whole thing going where, you know,
Speaker 3: he had these He made some deal with Morris over
Speaker 3: the party up song. And so the next day Princess
Speaker 3: coming over to buy this thing and this is eighty one,
Speaker 3: so it's three hundred dollars. I'm at the why so
Speaker 3: that's like three million dollars, you know. So he comes
Speaker 3: over and it was the only it was the last
Speaker 3: time I ever sung with jeans on because he was like,
Speaker 3: you know, it was the whole kind of punk thing.
Speaker 3: He had the jeans on the thing that Quest has
Speaker 3: on the rood boy. But then and all that and
Speaker 3: this exact one exactly that came from the douction Dog Jamie.
Speaker 1: I gave up.
Speaker 3: I set all that stuff up. I gave you. No, yes, no,
Speaker 3: you don't understand it. D You haven't talked to D right, okay,
Speaker 3: I'll talk to you after the show. You gotta you
Speaker 3: don't understand what's getting to happen.
Speaker 1: Now, I gotta.
Speaker 3: I gotta show you something. You're gonna lose your mind.
Speaker 1: Another house is this.
Speaker 3: I'm going to give you an inside thing so that
Speaker 3: you will know what to grab when this I'm just
Speaker 3: I'm gonna take you to something.
Speaker 1: Get that VCR man. I went that board.
Speaker 3: This is I just spent twenty because Jamie Sup is
Speaker 3: a very very dear friend of mine, and I've always
Speaker 3: been She's always been an absolutely dear person to me
Speaker 3: because she was you never forget people that were nice
Speaker 3: and generous and looked out for you when they didn't
Speaker 3: have to, and you wasn't nothing on you wouldn't anything
Speaker 3: on the bottom of the shoe. And she was that
Speaker 3: way to me. Taught me. I mean, I every time
Speaker 3: I go jack in at the airport, is that She's
Speaker 3: the reason how to do that?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I went up to the when I was told my cousin.
Speaker 3: I went up to the gate in LA yesterday and
Speaker 3: I said, oh, can you I got in line and
Speaker 3: the girl, so can you just check my boarding pass
Speaker 3: to make sure I'm okay? And she said, why wouldn't
Speaker 3: you be? And I was like, and I'm thinking myself,
Speaker 3: and I can suck up anything. I've been at the
Speaker 3: airport at the gate and missed the fly because I
Speaker 3: just know, I yes, I just don't. I don't be
Speaker 3: paying it in anything.
Speaker 7: And you ain't have to.
Speaker 3: And so I was just went up to the thing
Speaker 3: and shoulder and now I'm gonna tell you how how
Speaker 3: stupid it gets. I wanted to think and short to think.
Speaker 3: She goes, why wouldn't you be? Yeah, you're fine. Why
Speaker 3: wouldn't you be okay? You know, pretty pretty sister. You know.
Speaker 3: She's like, why wouldn't you be okay? And I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't say that, but I'm thinking, I said,
Speaker 3: because I actually did say because I can mess up anything.
Speaker 3: And she said, no, baby, you're good, You're good, You're good.
Speaker 3: But when I went and sat down I told you
Speaker 3: about I couldn't find my boarding. It was like the
Speaker 3: code had inside pocket and I had put it in there,
Speaker 3: and thought, I'm like, asking, have you seen a board?
Speaker 3: That's how I'm telling you know, I'm a Gemini.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna query. Come on, man, I'm.
Speaker 1: Right now.
Speaker 3: I can just you so be thinking you'd be thinking
Speaker 3: about I don't know what everything, but I made I
Speaker 3: already knew early in life. I made a point that
Speaker 3: I would be good at a whole bunch of stuff,
Speaker 3: but I know it would be great at one thing.
Speaker 7: So and this life is a loted you at the
Speaker 7: time that you don't have to know these things.
Speaker 1: This is great for.
Speaker 3: The most part. Thank god, I have a lot. I
Speaker 3: mean for what I've accomplished. I never They's never been
Speaker 3: a part of my dreams. I just wanted to be
Speaker 3: around the corner playing guitar at some pub or something.
Speaker 3: So what if accomplished You have no idea? Yeah, I
Speaker 3: was going to say one, I have no idea any
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 1: Were there any other black people in You're Midwessex before
Speaker 1: you got to Minnesota?
Speaker 3: No, that had to say no, no, because that was
Speaker 3: the whole thing that That's why I ended up playing
Speaker 3: at that biker bar with the white cats. Because all
Speaker 3: the brothers that I knew that were the top cats,
Speaker 3: they had jobs because they wanted to have They had Lincolns,
Speaker 3: got a lot and it and I would they would
Speaker 3: give me whenever they came and pick me up for
Speaker 3: the gig, get a job, get your card, and I
Speaker 3: was like, you know, that wasn't my thing, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to play with your an and your neck. I
Speaker 3: would be first saying where I get a taxi? No,
Speaker 3: they would pick me up, but they would gripe about
Speaker 3: picking me, y'all. But the thing was that they worked
Speaker 3: at uh. I mean that they made more money and
Speaker 3: they worked at it. They worked as straight. So the
Speaker 3: music thing was kind of a hobby where to me,
Speaker 3: I wanted it to be six nights a week and
Speaker 3: then you know, at the time, unfortunately, at that time,
Speaker 3: it was like White Cats was the ones. It was
Speaker 3: like they were working six seven nights a week. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, I gotta go mess with these luggers because
Speaker 3: these brothers wanted to have Lincolns and none of the
Speaker 3: White Cats though, had lincolns. A catalyzed big shit. They
Speaker 3: just love was like me, hey, hey, we're making ten
Speaker 3: in eighty one. I think I had a ten thousand
Speaker 3: dollars a year. You couldn't tell me I wasn't rich.
Speaker 7: Well, your journey it sounds kind of like we had
Speaker 7: Michael McDonald here too, who was also from Saint Louis.
Speaker 7: And it is interesting because you mentioned the Doobie brothers
Speaker 7: in Iowa. So I was like, damn, y'all had parallel
Speaker 7: journeys going on, and then y'all did y'all ever cross paths?
Speaker 1: And that's no.
Speaker 3: He had just I think taken it to the Streets
Speaker 3: was his first Doobie's record, right yeah, because the other
Speaker 3: cat who really founded the Doobies with that, Tom Johnston,
Speaker 3: he quit because he didn't like where it was gone
Speaker 3: with the Michael McDonald's stuff. So no, I never I
Speaker 3: never met him because I liked the other Doobie you know,
Speaker 3: the Doobie Brothers, Old black Water and all that ship and.
Speaker 1: That that I don't know whatever that was.
Speaker 3: That's as much as I'm a plague. So you want
Speaker 3: to so you I gotta just say this to you.
Speaker 3: That was when I went when Prince came over. This
Speaker 3: is how, this is how our relationship was founded. For
Speaker 3: this is why we This is why I lived with him,
Speaker 3: and we were cool up until I left, because he
Speaker 3: came over to pick up that thing and he sat
Speaker 3: down and and everybody changed and stuff. All of the
Speaker 3: hardest brothers. Why you big? You know, we stole that
Speaker 3: from another base player named Jeff mcgravey, But he was
Speaker 3: the one. What are you big streets of San Francisco
Speaker 3: knowles having, you know, that's where we got all that
Speaker 3: hy you well, even he changed when Prince walked in. Everybody, Prince,
Speaker 3: what's going on?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And king.
Speaker 3: He came and sat out. He sat down, Yeah, black
Speaker 3: leather jacket, and was like I said, last time, first
Speaker 3: and only time I ever seen him with jeans on.
Speaker 3: After that, he's been decked every since. He never heard it,
Speaker 3: but he I set across from him, probably where that is,
Speaker 3: and I said, hey, man, I saw you. Sure no,
Speaker 3: he said. I said, hey man, I'm Jesse and he
Speaker 3: said Prince. And I was like, whoa man? Because I
Speaker 3: can't even do it as monotone. He would never think
Speaker 3: he could sing his eyes off because he spoke it
Speaker 3: was one note. Hey, how you doing. I can't even
Speaker 3: do it? Yeah, you're doing It was just so low
Speaker 3: and yes, And I just freaked out and I said, man,
Speaker 3: I thought you was gonna go hi Maname is Prince
Speaker 3: And he just kind of started laughing a little bit.
Speaker 3: And Morris is standing more. The only person that really
Speaker 3: remembers is Morris is standing where Princess sitting. Morris is
Speaker 3: standing right here. Morris Day, That's who I know. I
Speaker 3: don't I don't know who print says or nothing about
Speaker 3: him or anything. So I just knew he must have
Speaker 3: been somebody. He must have been. Like I saw the
Speaker 3: show the night before, but I still didn't know anything
Speaker 3: about because you know, how segregated the rock and.
Speaker 1: Roll so none of this hits.
Speaker 3: None of his radio, yeah, none of the black rock
Speaker 3: Island has no black radio.
Speaker 1: Zero.
Speaker 3: That's why I knew the Doobies and Zeppelin and everything
Speaker 3: else like that, because there's no black radio. So when
Speaker 3: he hit, you know, it was right towards the disco.
Speaker 3: So I was fortunate enough to miss that whole discorder
Speaker 3: because I was rock and roll thing. So he I said, yeah, man,
Speaker 3: I saw your show. I said, think so invioted show.
Speaker 3: I show you show. It was really cool, man, I
Speaker 3: really dug it, So you really dig Hendrix Hunt. I
Speaker 3: never watched him, and I stood up. I was like you,
Speaker 3: I swear, I said, you lie. The every move and
Speaker 3: more sustained behind him, and Prince looked at me and
Speaker 3: he fell on the floor. Kh He fell on the floor,
Speaker 3: just laughing his eyes up. And that was like that
Speaker 3: was the relationship was we was never know you know.
Speaker 3: So that's why when you would see me out in
Speaker 3: LA during that whole you always see both of us
Speaker 3: together all the time because I didn't have that oh man,
Speaker 3: you know, because he we'd walk in the club and
Speaker 3: chicks with be all on him and shit, and I
Speaker 3: just go hang over here for a minute till you
Speaker 3: was the cool and then we just hang out and
Speaker 3: he's like, man, you know, when I walk in the
Speaker 3: club with other people, I won't say that name. They
Speaker 3: wouldn't come near me to rest it. And I asked, mother,
Speaker 3: fuck are your priends? I ain't nobody, you know. I
Speaker 3: was never tripping like that because I remember after the
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety nine tour being so broke. But I never
Speaker 3: equated his wealth or shit with what I should be
Speaker 3: making because I knew that I'm broke. I'm in the time,
Speaker 3: I got gold, platinum, broke as a mother like, I
Speaker 3: ain't even pay attention. I'm so broke. But I knew
Speaker 3: that that was his shit. You did what I'm saying,
Speaker 3: Like a lot of people don't realized that. Like somebody
Speaker 3: just I saw somebody on Twitter and I couldn't bring
Speaker 3: myself to just break the harbor. They said, oh, man,
Speaker 3: I don't know what the question was because I don't
Speaker 3: really know how that shit works, but I just see
Speaker 3: that reply and it said, oh my.
Speaker 1: Favorite, without a doubt.
Speaker 3: Seven seven.
Speaker 1: You know, Jelly Bean on drum drums.
Speaker 3: Jerry on bass, and I just I can't do it.
Speaker 3: It's like, dude, that's that's all, Prince. I hate to
Speaker 3: tell you and David Geirbaldi on the program for it,
Speaker 3: but you know you just, oh, I just got I
Speaker 3: can't run nobody's dreams. I'm gonna be thinking that, but
Speaker 3: that's what I mean. It was all his stuff. So
Speaker 3: but I knew that, I knew within myself I had
Speaker 3: talent because I'm I'm horrible when it comes to learning
Speaker 3: songs off of records and ship like that. When you
Speaker 3: when I met you for the first time with D's
Speaker 3: thing in twenty twelve, I was like, and I was
Speaker 3: telling you, dude, never played any music before, did I
Speaker 3: didn't have a hand, and you know, creating and creating
Speaker 3: this is just crazy. And plus you know d the
Speaker 3: biggest thing, well for you would probably is normal, but
Speaker 3: that is these timing. And he would tell me the
Speaker 3: hours that you and him and that you and Peano
Speaker 3: would argue him and go that ain't the one, and
Speaker 3: he would and y'all he was telling me, he said
Speaker 3: a mirror Pino would be like that ain't the one.
Speaker 3: That ain't the one, but you know how he's one
Speaker 3: now his one is now a two or three or something.
Speaker 1: Pick up.
Speaker 3: Yes, if you ain't, if you like, if you plan
Speaker 3: lady or something and you daydream for half a second,
Speaker 3: you gotta stop. And because his his whole. That's what's
Speaker 3: beautiful about his music though, because it's like, uh, it's
Speaker 3: the same thing with Prince, Like a lot of people
Speaker 3: always see him trying to figure out what Prince did
Speaker 3: on the keyboards and what they don't know. You ain't
Speaker 3: never figured that ship because he took the overheim a
Speaker 3: pedal board and until anything, and he just wants something
Speaker 3: that he never It is crazy. It was no rules
Speaker 3: to how he how he did anything. You know, he
Speaker 3: had a little bit of theory behind him, but it
Speaker 3: was all guttural. It was all instinct. It was just
Speaker 3: like you know, and that we related really and intellectually.
Speaker 3: We related to a great deal of stuff because the
Speaker 3: dude was like so smart, you know, I Q wise,
Speaker 3: he was really really smart dude. But I learned records,
Speaker 3: how to make records. I had never been in a
Speaker 3: studio till I met him, So I learned how to
Speaker 3: make a record, Like how Chris Moon taught him. That's
Speaker 3: how I learned.
Speaker 1: Were you there at the infamous uh Perkins restaurant uh dinner?
Speaker 3: I hate to break it to you, my man, it
Speaker 3: wasn't Perkins. I'm gonna take you back Sambos. Y'all don't
Speaker 3: remember Sambos. Get you a Sambos Burger. Yes, it was
Speaker 3: called We had Minneapolis had the last standing Sambos on
Speaker 3: Lake Street. That ship wasn't no Perkins. That was a
Speaker 3: Sambos on Lake Street. And I remember Morrise and I
Speaker 3: rode motorcycles and shit together, so that Morris was going
Speaker 3: to the meeting with because the way the time actually
Speaker 3: came together was nothing like all this stuff that people
Speaker 3: make up and say, and it wasn't anything like that.
Speaker 3: The time was Morse day and I. If you see
Speaker 3: the assetate which I owned today, it says the Nerve. Oh,
Speaker 3: I remember that, And it's just Morse and I and
Speaker 3: what we were. We were gonna be the Blackhall and Oats.
Speaker 3: So it's the album that y'all know. We'd get it
Speaker 3: up cool, all of that, but it was just Morrise
Speaker 3: and I.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be called the Nerve.
Speaker 3: It was the Nerve. And so when Prince went to
Speaker 3: used the name, but it was owned by some people.
Speaker 3: But Dick This though, catch This though the Time was
Speaker 3: owned forever until nineteen. He didn't buy the name until
Speaker 3: ninety seven.
Speaker 1: He leased the name.
Speaker 3: It was owned by two white cats in North Carolina somewhere.
Speaker 3: They owned it all those years. He's just leasing it, really, yeah,
Speaker 3: And then he bought the rights. When I knew the
Speaker 3: rights was up, I was on the phone with Terry.
Speaker 3: That's why I remember. I had just moved to Awatuki, Arizona,
Speaker 3: from Minneapolis, and I remember being on the phone with Terry.
Speaker 3: It was like ninety seven because I just dropped that
Speaker 3: bear on my neck and sole thing and and I
Speaker 3: was like, man, just by the by that, you know
Speaker 3: it's and he was and then print A bought it,
Speaker 3: damn exactly. So he but it was like we didn't
Speaker 3: own them. But but then that all the flight time
Speaker 3: thing and all that stuff, how people try to tell
Speaker 3: it didn't come together like that. It was just at
Speaker 3: the last minute because Prince was on a dirty mind
Speaker 3: tour and so Morris when he left, he had you know,
Speaker 3: laugh row and jeans. I never saw him look like
Speaker 3: that again when he came back. He was a totally
Speaker 3: different cat.
Speaker 1: Oh so he was afro, not feathered.
Speaker 3: No, he came back from the Dirty Mine tour and
Speaker 3: the album that you know was they have that album. Okay,
Speaker 3: the first album was called the Time, it was called
Speaker 3: The Nerve. But when he came back and the Prince
Speaker 3: would call me and sold this girl that I lived
Speaker 3: with at the time, she they would answer the phone.
Speaker 3: You know, I was standing at the cribs. She would
Speaker 3: answer the phone and it's Prince Jesse there. And they
Speaker 3: would earn her friends were freeing.
Speaker 1: They'd be.
Speaker 3: On the phone and they would go and her friends like,
Speaker 3: who is here? And she would always and this is
Speaker 3: a true, honest, I got a story stack of bibles.
Speaker 3: He would go, what did you come here for?
Speaker 5: Us?
Speaker 1: Second?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be famous. She would laugh so hard. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, she'd fall on the floor crying. And that
Speaker 3: should have been a sign I didn't pay attention. Story shirt.
Speaker 3: But yeah, he would call and say, stay there, stay there,
Speaker 3: stay in Minneapolis, stay in Minneapolis, stay, don't leave, don't leave.
Speaker 3: We're gonna get your car. Like I was just gonna.
Speaker 3: I was just and that the fucking starving to death
Speaker 3: in minis because we would play a weekend. Man, Sue
Speaker 3: Anne talk about that. So we play a weekend and
Speaker 3: make thirty five dollars. You remember them days you make
Speaker 3: you in heaven. It was like we would go to
Speaker 3: white and White Castle was like like La. Like there
Speaker 3: was a time in La that I'd be at the
Speaker 3: studio and then you see the White Castle here and
Speaker 3: you would see a purple pink Bentley, so what the
Speaker 3: Paris Hilton would be in line. It was like that
Speaker 3: kind of how in an out burger. But White Castle
Speaker 3: was that back in the day on Lake Street. So
Speaker 3: we after the club's closed, Prince everybody was in that ship.
Speaker 3: It was like that because it was the joint. It
Speaker 3: was like the joint, so we were all you know,
Speaker 3: it was a joint. So thirty five dollars was like
Speaker 3: we get some White Castle. You know, you can take
Speaker 3: about five and get about thirty White Castle and exactly.
Speaker 3: So he would call and say, don't leave, stay there.
Speaker 3: You know, we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do that,
Speaker 3: and we go to this and we're going. I said,
Speaker 3: I'm a car. We're gonna get your car, which he
Speaker 3: never did, but in a way they later on it did,
Speaker 3: but didn't have no air in it, so fuck. But
Speaker 3: I had a great stereo. I think I told that
Speaker 3: story online about the jungle of song. I would play
Speaker 3: him songs and he would let, oh my god, he go, Morse,
Speaker 3: you gotta hear this, and Neat and Morris and Jimmy
Speaker 3: jam are the only two people I know when they cried,
Speaker 3: they tears start, they they literally are quiet. And he
Speaker 3: kept doing that. But most people you know and be like,
Speaker 3: oh man, ain't playing nothing, but I didn't. I just
Speaker 3: kept playing songs for him till one day. I it
Speaker 3: was after acting class, before we started preparaying. I said, hey, man,
Speaker 3: I want to play you something. So he I want
Speaker 3: to go listen to it in his car because he
Speaker 3: got air. This is somethinger my car, no air, one
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty degrees. He goes. But I had the
Speaker 3: stereo over everybody. I had the bomping shit over. So
Speaker 3: he's listening to it in your car. And I was
Speaker 3: trying to give him the cassette so he could listen
Speaker 3: to it later. And it was right after acting class.
Speaker 3: Caught me cool, let's just listen to it now, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, ship you know, laughing at So it
Speaker 3: was a jungle up, you know, exactly as you know it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I put it on the thing because I get sick
Speaker 3: of motherfucker's telling me your boy said that in Billboard,
Speaker 3: Nelson George. So when I met him the first time
Speaker 3: here in New York on the island, it was a
Speaker 3: press release party for my first record, and he was
Speaker 3: and his name was on a card and I was
Speaker 3: looking this way, and the girl was with wit said,
Speaker 3: ain't that the guy in Billboard that said this is.
Speaker 1: What I said?
Speaker 3: This is honest. I got to I said, yo, man, hey, bro,
Speaker 3: then do you really think you're gonna sit here on
Speaker 3: my ship? And he made him leave.
Speaker 6: Wow can you.
Speaker 7: In the article?
Speaker 3: He said, Uh, it was really it was really dispepful.
Speaker 3: He said, I didn't probably didn't write ship and the
Speaker 3: princess probably put my name on it for the blah
Speaker 3: blah blah blah blah. You just don't say that unless
Speaker 3: you talk to the people, because you back in the day,
Speaker 3: he had an article in Billboard, had a little picture
Speaker 3: of him. Yeah, but I didn't little blur really remember it,
Speaker 3: like I mean, I remember reading the article, but the
Speaker 3: girl remembered the face and I was like this, I
Speaker 3: was a remembering it was someplace here and it was
Speaker 3: like a really popular Chinese place because they had brought squab,
Speaker 3: which I didn't know was pigeons.
Speaker 1: Mister, No, it was it was before that. Yeah, Nelson
Speaker 1: looked like twenty one Jump Street. And also but I
Speaker 1: did what was the sergeant's name? I can't remember.
Speaker 3: I was just telling Deanna today. I was like, damn,
Speaker 3: you know me, I was always a never industry cat,
Speaker 3: but an industreet's cat. And I said so, I didn't.
Speaker 7: Because Prince wasn't even that dude though, right Like, he
Speaker 7: wasn't mean not for nothing. I ain't gonna say not
Speaker 7: that nice. But he wasn't the one that just throws
Speaker 7: somebody's name on a song that they had nothing to
Speaker 7: do with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's a nice No, he was. No, it wasn't
Speaker 3: a nice thing. It was like it wasn't known there
Speaker 3: on the publishing.
Speaker 1: Record. I even wanted to make it seem like he
Speaker 1: did everything.
Speaker 3: But my I don't even think Jungle Love said my
Speaker 3: name on the record.
Speaker 1: Though I think it did. You know why?
Speaker 3: I thought, No, I'm gonna blow y'all away. I'm a
Speaker 3: blow I got a piece of something I ain't never
Speaker 3: seen I have. You know, back in the day when
Speaker 3: you would do a record, they do all the artwork
Speaker 3: for you album, you know, you know me. They then
Speaker 3: they send you the record and you have to look
Speaker 3: at the and look at all the writing. Well, I
Speaker 3: have that in the very for the ice Cream Castle album.
Speaker 3: I'm produced by Jamie Starr, co produced by Jesse Johnson.
Speaker 3: And the same thing with it. If you got the
Speaker 3: first pressing of the Sheila E record, the first ChIL
Speaker 3: records exactly and now and then after that there, No,
Speaker 3: it came off. It came out years ago. It came
Speaker 3: off years ago because he was Prince was vindictive when
Speaker 3: you left him, and it was real bullshit because I stayed,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, I was just telling Ingrid today.
Speaker 3: When I left after finishing Purple Rain and all that,
Speaker 3: my check was like three hundred and thirty dollars. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't make it though, And this is my question, and
Speaker 3: I got kids, I got so you so as far
Speaker 3: as dedication and all that place.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, hang.
Speaker 3: On, Yes, three hundred and thirty nine dollars, bro.
Speaker 1: Wait, am I sitting in the room Ingrishavez.
Speaker 7: Don't cheesecake, you said, no, she touch cheesecakes, pie, talked
Speaker 7: about the three kids like he's got the mic. We
Speaker 7: put the whole chair in answer, she with.
Speaker 1: High I'm Ingrid seven, you said, Ingrid, And I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, and I put my glasses on.
Speaker 7: Like.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that was one of the things that
Speaker 3: she was so nice that she's an hour into this
Speaker 3: interview not knowing that you've been sitting.
Speaker 1: At the same freaking time and hello, how are you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I could. I can't touch the cheesecake because I've been
Speaker 1: sugar free for thirty six days.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 9: Came on the way from Minneapolis for you today.
Speaker 1: That's right, so I have to break it. Just yes,
Speaker 1: I want to.
Speaker 9: Say I'm Aquarius as well.
Speaker 5: You know what I was saying.
Speaker 7: We're kind of all over the place sometimes, are you
Speaker 7: just make sure are February of January?
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, twentieth twenty first we're all together. Wait, this
Speaker 1: is freaking me out because I didn't know that was
Speaker 1: ingrish Chaves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I was like on this. I met
Speaker 3: her on the set of I said I would never
Speaker 3: be there, I would never go I never went to Paisley,
Speaker 3: I said, I never go there and never go down
Speaker 3: to paid to be in it, and so I got
Speaker 3: paid for a week Grafita Vision. I barely made it
Speaker 3: three days and we got into it and I had
Speaker 3: to leave.
Speaker 1: Wait all the shooting was just three days?
Speaker 3: No, I yeah, my shooting yeah for whatever I'm in
Speaker 3: the movie was three days because I it was it
Speaker 3: was like all this time when by from Purple Rain
Speaker 3: to now and I hadn't seen you know, like Prince
Speaker 3: would call me up with and play he was. I
Speaker 3: was telling my cousin they had a weird sense of humor,
Speaker 3: Like he called me up long after that's gone. I
Speaker 3: think my first album was about the Dropper what I
Speaker 3: can't remember? But he call you. I mentioned a song
Speaker 3: today and I was like, you know, and he would
Speaker 3: and he was always like he could call you and
Speaker 3: you and it and I'm like real, So I go, man,
Speaker 3: you get this number and he and henores, but he
Speaker 3: ignores that. And I mentioned this song today and I go,
Speaker 3: what do you talk about? Raspberry Beret? And click good,
Speaker 3: Clay hangs up. It was I gonna listen to the song.
Speaker 3: And I had moved the opposite of everybody. So I'm
Speaker 3: in this area called Blaine. It was nothing out there
Speaker 3: but cows and shit me so.
Speaker 1: Old man Johnson's farm exactly so.
Speaker 3: And then the other one was I mentioned I wrote
Speaker 3: a song about you, and I was like, I didn't
Speaker 3: know what. At the time, I was living in Paris
Speaker 3: and I we had Chris crossed a lot and I
Speaker 3: was like, eighty nine, maybe that wasn't wrote a song
Speaker 3: about you. Send me this tape, Bob George, I'm.
Speaker 7: Like, mother forgot that day.
Speaker 3: Wait, you know that's a part of the song that's
Speaker 3: got a gun all that ship. He that's his sense
Speaker 3: of humor. So I had to call it, Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that's funny. But we would there's things that we would like,
Speaker 3: can you.
Speaker 1: Explain the references? Bob? How is that about you? How
Speaker 1: is that cop you? Or the dude?
Speaker 3: The dude when he goes can we just dance or whatever?
Speaker 3: I don't I don't know. But he because his nickname
Speaker 3: for me for I was here comes Jesse, I'm okay
Speaker 3: Johnson because you know it was the tie. We was
Speaker 3: just some street dudes. And so whenever we would run
Speaker 3: into stuff and I would get that, I would get
Speaker 3: called all the time. I'd be a we've been an
Speaker 3: in store signing, and then some girl you're gonna be
Speaker 3: like bitch, you know, and I would just like, you
Speaker 3: know what, twenty twenty year old, you don't you don't
Speaker 3: you know you just like you're fighting. You don't care
Speaker 3: because I come from you, Saint Louis. Were girls girls
Speaker 3: kick your ass. It ain't like it ain't like how
Speaker 3: it is now.
Speaker 1: You were.
Speaker 3: I grew up going to school good as girl. You
Speaker 3: like me, don't you. This girl used to sit behind me, batty,
Speaker 3: and you're my boyfriend. And she was a twin too.
Speaker 3: She was a twin and her brother, just to describe him,
Speaker 3: they looked just alike. His nickname was Big Fake. So
Speaker 3: I wasn't trying to fuck with So. I used to
Speaker 3: be terrified at this girl. But I'd seen girls just
Speaker 3: beat MoMA and now so so. But it would we
Speaker 3: be in an in store, you know, at a full
Speaker 3: in store, and then I signed something. I didn't act
Speaker 3: funny or nothing, but I signed something this girl be
Speaker 3: like and I just immediately I just bet you what
Speaker 3: you beat you Withn't that nigga you're with you? It
Speaker 3: would happen in hotels, and I would, you know, because
Speaker 3: we would go up come back from the show and
Speaker 3: go up to our room and get changed, and she'd
Speaker 3: come down and lobby and for like the nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: nine tour, can never meet anybody, you know, would be
Speaker 3: on my arm. What vanity and we were like best friends,
Speaker 3: So she'd come down on my arm like because she
Speaker 3: was all the perfect man. No, she's a perfect, complete
Speaker 3: killer blocker. Because girls would come up to me, you
Speaker 3: can have and she wasn't you know. We were like
Speaker 3: brother and sister. Well, our relationship to the day she died,
Speaker 3: she was we were super tight. It's like on me
Speaker 3: and Jamie and and and she would be the whole.
Speaker 3: She had been all over the world and seen in
Speaker 3: places we had never been. So when she came out
Speaker 3: on tour and was seeing this stuff for the first time,
Speaker 3: she was like completely really enthusiastic and excited about it
Speaker 3: because she had she'd been you know, modeling and been
Speaker 3: all over the place, but she had never experienced adelation
Speaker 3: like that before. And so when we'd go in the lobby,
Speaker 3: we'd go up and get changed and then we get rid.
Speaker 3: I try to sneak by doors. Never gonna get it's like.
Speaker 3: And she'd be on your arm, literally girls, and then
Speaker 3: she would point you out, how y'all do women? Y'all see,
Speaker 3: y'all see stuff we don't see. You'd be like, oh,
Speaker 3: she's fun, look at her nails, look at everybody you
Speaker 3: don't even see. You don't even.
Speaker 7: Care, you're like that.
Speaker 3: That's what she would say, stuff like she's not even
Speaker 3: pretty territorial pes, It's like, what do you do?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: So that And I could never say to her, no,
Speaker 3: you know, because she was like, we guarded them, you know,
Speaker 3: her Susan, We were like that. I was like their
Speaker 3: big brother, because Susan to this day, if you talk
Speaker 3: about Susan, you talk to Susan Mooncie, she'll tell you
Speaker 3: how how often her and Prince were together. And I
Speaker 3: was always with them, And she said, she remembers me
Speaker 3: looking at my watch at hey, where do you gotta go?
Speaker 3: You know, in Minneapolis, you know it's like ninety below,
Speaker 3: there's this much snow. So when you would go way
Speaker 3: out to Chanhassan, where Prince live, you pack a suit
Speaker 3: case because you wasn't trying.
Speaker 1: I would.
Speaker 3: I had never lived in a city with freeways before.
Speaker 3: So Rock Island is that little, It's that small. So
Speaker 3: when I came to Minneapolis driving, it was like you
Speaker 3: would see where you needed to be and you couldn't
Speaker 3: get to it, and I would. I would, just I'm
Speaker 3: telling you honestly, God, it was like scared shareless. It
Speaker 3: was like so big and intimidating for years to me
Speaker 3: and I can imagine, yeah, but but now I got
Speaker 3: GPS that ship because I'd be daydreaming, you know, and
Speaker 3: that's where listening to music in my car and I'm
Speaker 3: because I was telling ingrid earlier. I've been all over
Speaker 3: the world with no cell phone or or pager, you
Speaker 3: know we used to. Now people can't even on my phone.
Speaker 1: Batteries start you gotta charge.
Speaker 3: You know, I start paying where I'm like, I my
Speaker 3: cousin the slash managers always mad at me because I'm
Speaker 3: always turning all my ship off.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say. So we went to Minneapolis for
Speaker 1: the super and it's like, thank God for GPS because
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out I mean, even me
Speaker 1: driving all you know, I did the whole tour of
Speaker 1: Minneapolis and all that stuff, like even with GPS and security,
Speaker 1: like I still felt like I just try to imagine
Speaker 1: what was it to drive forty years ago, thirty years ago?
Speaker 1: And and if your people and if you're you know,
Speaker 1: he always seems like he's in thought, always thinking about
Speaker 1: music or something music relate, and if your people watcher too.
Speaker 3: In Minneapolis is a really beautiful city. It's like it's
Speaker 3: so clean, you go, oh my god. And it's even
Speaker 3: most cities like go see the sky or whatever. But
Speaker 3: so when I yeah, it's I I'll kill somebody if
Speaker 3: I don't have GPS to just say, dude, turn right here.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if y'all know ways, but ways
Speaker 3: unless you know your own voice in it?
Speaker 7: Yeah you know that?
Speaker 3: No, No, they added that. So I mean I going
Speaker 3: there and all my ship fool, what are you? I
Speaker 3: purposely it's so excellent you will ride with me?
Speaker 9: Then?
Speaker 3: Mother fuck you just miss motherfucker. I got all of
Speaker 3: my daughter by the fourteen year olds. She is in
Speaker 3: the car dying right because it's like, dude, really, I
Speaker 3: told you, I put on my own but no, going
Speaker 3: back to what we were doing Graffiti Bridge and I
Speaker 3: met Ingrid the first time I remember talking to because
Speaker 3: she has she has this heaviness tour. Even even back
Speaker 3: then as a young lady, she just had this heaviness
Speaker 3: tour like she her mind always looked like she was
Speaker 3: in thought, like she was some she. I always took
Speaker 3: it like she really a member. I always told you
Speaker 3: that my cousin was like she always so like she
Speaker 3: wasn't in none of it. I thought I was bad.
Speaker 3: I was just out there going ship over with Yeah,
Speaker 3: but it was all that time passed and it was
Speaker 3: the same kind of thing was happening. And so if
Speaker 3: that easily boor g thedn't how bad were the rehearsals,
Speaker 3: because I know that, like you guys were one of
Speaker 3: the tightest but musical.
Speaker 1: Here's that.
Speaker 3: I came up like that whole lot of all that
Speaker 3: stuff because I grew up with the James Bound thing
Speaker 3: and all that, so all of that when I was
Speaker 3: doing all that horn stuff, all of that stuff, I
Speaker 3: was like all the horn parts. I was coming up
Speaker 3: with a lot of those arrangements and a lot of
Speaker 3: the steps because I played guitar, and so when somebody
Speaker 3: else would try to come up to I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm not doing this shit because I can't sing and
Speaker 3: play and do all that dumb shit at the same time.
Speaker 3: So as a when you're playing and somebody, oh, I
Speaker 3: get this stuff, it's like, yeah, but you're not playing nothing,
Speaker 3: so I'm not even paying attention to that. So I
Speaker 3: would come up with a lot of cara fee because
Speaker 3: I knew that it would be simple, like if we
Speaker 3: were just doing this or something, a simple move like that,
Speaker 3: but if you got three cats doing it tight.
Speaker 1: It looks really cool.
Speaker 3: And if the whole stage is going, I knew that,
Speaker 3: So I would come up with a lot of the
Speaker 3: choriography and like we would do the chili sauce across
Speaker 3: the stage. Came with all that ship and so we
Speaker 3: do it around so you could play and then you
Speaker 3: work so hard on it that rehearsal because you would
Speaker 3: want it to be where you didn't think about nothing.
Speaker 3: Because the singing play at the same time an instrument,
Speaker 3: there's a middle brain you gotta find. So when people
Speaker 3: go how do you do that? You as you know,
Speaker 3: you can't think about one or the other. But he
Speaker 3: be playing drums, he'd be playing drums and singing and
Speaker 3: he'd be talking at.
Speaker 1: The same time. So he sandwich man.
Speaker 3: I saw him as a session murdering and he was
Speaker 3: eating something and I'm like, and he kept going he
Speaker 3: was and then he was doing and then he would
Speaker 3: switch off credit and I was like, that's a bad dude,
Speaker 3: But he knows that it's a middle brain. If you
Speaker 3: think about one or the other, you're gonna mess up.
Speaker 3: So it's a place I think right, left, right, I
Speaker 3: mess up. Yeah, it's like you, but you got to
Speaker 3: a place that doesn't exist. It's just like an inner
Speaker 3: blank space and you can almost see yourself in front
Speaker 3: of you doing with you, but you know you. But
Speaker 3: if you think about singing, or if you think about plant,
Speaker 3: you're gonna mess out.
Speaker 1: When Jones calls it the alpha state, yeah, where you
Speaker 1: just don't don't think about it, do it.
Speaker 7: So we're gonna get in a whole graffiti Bridge chapter
Speaker 7: because I, well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got a lot Ingrid.
Speaker 3: I that's when I met Ingrid on the side, and
Speaker 3: I forget who introduced me to it, but I didn't.
Speaker 3: I just asked her today did she ever live in Minneapolis?
Speaker 3: Because I didn't think she was from Minneapolis or even
Speaker 3: live there. She says she lived at twelve years but
Speaker 3: I never thought that. But she heard her baby was like,
Speaker 3: he wasn't that old. He was like, what eight months
Speaker 3: or was he older than that? But he but I
Speaker 3: knew she had and I just adore kids. So my
Speaker 3: kids were kids then at the point in time too.
Speaker 3: I think her son and my daughter, the Isabella is
Speaker 3: around the same age. But I was talking about that.
Speaker 3: But she was talking to me, and she was really
Speaker 3: super nice. But I'm standing next to her and I'm
Speaker 3: facing her, but she rarely ever did that. She would
Speaker 3: occasionally did her but she would talk and have a
Speaker 3: full till conversation with you, but she wasn't She was
Speaker 3: really nice, but I was like, Okay, maybe I'm bucking
Speaker 3: her and talking about stuff. And then eventually I walked away.
Speaker 3: I'm on stage shooting now a scene, and then I
Speaker 3: watched Prince walk over to her and she does the
Speaker 3: same thing. She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, So tell.
Speaker 7: The people, what were you think? You're angry?
Speaker 1: What was going?
Speaker 9: Well, let's see, I had met Prince a few years earlier,
Speaker 9: so I had made this record with him that hadn't
Speaker 9: been released, and so this is a few years later,
Speaker 9: and so when I got back into this scene, I
Speaker 9: was kind of over it. So I knew I was
Speaker 9: right a little bit of a you know, like, Okay,
Speaker 9: I'm gonna do this movie.
Speaker 3: But you know she's like, y'all since you're here, y'all, No,
Speaker 3: she really you saw it all over her? Have I
Speaker 3: not told you that? I told my cousin and I
Speaker 3: was like, going. She she wasn't impressed by not, not
Speaker 3: nothing that any of us was doing.
Speaker 1: Can I ask a side question? This is this is
Speaker 1: a side detour, but I think Bill and I at
Speaker 1: least would like to know what was said to him.
Speaker 1: Oh what did you say to him that made him
Speaker 1: canceled cancel the Black album?
Speaker 9: I didn't say anything to him. I think he was
Speaker 9: looking for a signed you know. And yeah, you know,
Speaker 9: so it wasn't a conversation. It was because he didn't
Speaker 9: talk to me about it. I had no idea about
Speaker 9: this Black album or anything that was going on in
Speaker 9: his head that night.
Speaker 3: He just had this.
Speaker 7: He was on this.
Speaker 9: He had these questions in his heart and his mind,
Speaker 9: I think, and the night that I met him, he
Speaker 9: felt like there was a sign.
Speaker 3: And yeah, the sign was don't put out that ship
Speaker 3: to said the only good rappers are dead rapper and
Speaker 3: do what you normally do put that ship on the
Speaker 3: time album. Let us be for motherfuckers, let us let
Speaker 3: the tie, let me more sent terry beef with motherfuckers.
Speaker 3: Shipped to do it, because like when that ship said
Speaker 3: we don't like New Wave, ain't none of them. I
Speaker 3: don't that ain't me on there. That's all Prince voice
Speaker 3: that I know. But you that ship was, ain't that
Speaker 3: Andre we don't like New Way and that ship ain't
Speaker 3: got nothing. I gotta go boxing, petty, But I gotta
Speaker 3: go box with motherfuckers now. And I ain't got nothing
Speaker 3: to do with that ship on that record.
Speaker 1: But that's no.
Speaker 6: At this point, he had just left right now, he
Speaker 6: that left, Yo, I never put you into neither, but that.
Speaker 3: I heard that when you heard it. Okay the record again.
Speaker 1: In my mind, I don't like me.
Speaker 3: Wait, I ain't on none of that.
Speaker 1: I'm damn he's being petty.
Speaker 3: I'm not getting shot or some ship out in there, you.
Speaker 6: Know, because even someone had an album out around the
Speaker 6: same time called Living in the New Wave.
Speaker 3: That was his whole that was his whole thing, His
Speaker 3: whole thing was.
Speaker 1: In my mind, I'm thinking, like, well, is he talking
Speaker 1: about the Talking Heads or right I think.
Speaker 3: Like the actual legit and new wave and but legit.
Speaker 3: That was the whole thing about legit new wave band.
Speaker 3: They didn't call themselves that did, know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: It was just press was calling him that. But so
Speaker 3: you never said that he was bucking the shot at Andrea?
Speaker 7: And was he ever nice to anybody who heard.
Speaker 3: He was he was? I don't know was he ever nice.
Speaker 7: To anybody who left?
Speaker 9: I think that when I left, my record got dropped.
Speaker 3: I mean, just like he was vindictive on this ship.
Speaker 3: And then John when I played there December, When was
Speaker 3: that December seventeen, twenty seventeen, John, what's his name? John?
Speaker 3: You know the John John Ringos. Well, you know, he
Speaker 3: was always fiercely he was like he was always fiercely competitive.
Speaker 3: I'm like that shit ain't fiercely competitive.
Speaker 1: That's some bullshit.
Speaker 3: He did a lot of when I left, he did
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff that people just don't know, Like
Speaker 3: the whole Shocadelica thing. I I think it's whole. We were,
Speaker 3: Oh my god. We used to ride around LA with
Speaker 3: the member of the Garbage cam back Seville. The catall
Speaker 3: like to be with the gar We prints the room
Speaker 3: we'd had the biggest hat song could barely fit in
Speaker 3: the car. It was like something from Amoa, Get You
Speaker 3: Suck Leaning. He was leaning his way. I'd be leaning
Speaker 3: and we would and there's a riot going on. Was
Speaker 3: our bible, was our bible. It was like day in,
Speaker 3: day out. That's and so when I got the opportunity,
Speaker 3: which didn't have anything to do with me, John McClain
Speaker 3: put the whole thing together. Because John McClain, I was
Speaker 3: always always recorded in Minneapolis, so I wouldn't be in
Speaker 3: LA because I didn't want record people coming over. And
Speaker 3: there's this thing I never I didn't have budgets when
Speaker 3: I recorded. I recorded on what it's called the fun
Speaker 3: because when I signed with the label, I knew enough
Speaker 3: by then, because I was broken enough and had got
Speaker 3: you know whatever initiated. Let's just say that I knew
Speaker 3: how to do yes exactly, how to least construct a deal.
Speaker 3: And so when I did, I signed as a production
Speaker 3: company that as Jesse Johnson. So that's why I could go.
Speaker 3: If you look at that period, I'm on all kinds
Speaker 3: of stuff, doing everything everywhere. But when I so, John
Speaker 3: was my an R guy. John McClain was my in
Speaker 3: our guy, and he signed me, so the only artists
Speaker 3: I think i'd sign at that point in time. But
Speaker 3: he would fly in when I say I'm done. You
Speaker 3: know I'm mixed, I'm done, and so he would say,
Speaker 3: he said, okay, man, he said, you got a nice record,
Speaker 3: and I'll play me shit you don't like. And one
Speaker 3: of the songs I crazy was in the songs I
Speaker 3: didn't like?
Speaker 1: Why do you specifically ask you for what you don't.
Speaker 3: Because he knew that I would because the way he
Speaker 3: set it up for me to record, because I was
Speaker 3: recording on a fun and not on pos nobody knows
Speaker 3: what I'm recording. So when you're going to record an
Speaker 3: eight song album, he knows I'm gonna record twenty songs,
Speaker 3: a billion songs. And so he would go, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: I play the song, and yeah, a nice record here.
Speaker 3: Now play me the shit you don't like. And one
Speaker 3: of the songs I played and was crazy and he's.
Speaker 10: That's a hit, Daddy's I'm gonna take that to La.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna put slide on there. And I couldn't picture it.
Speaker 3: I couldn't. I was like, what hem ma, man? He
Speaker 3: was like, and I couldn't picture it. I couldn't picture it,
Speaker 3: and he was like, so he did that whole thing
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with me. I didn't see Sly
Speaker 3: until I went to LA to do the video for Crazy,
Speaker 3: and that's.
Speaker 1: When we recorded his parts Away from You.
Speaker 3: A guy named Billy Valentine got all the vocals and
Speaker 3: everything on Sly in La. He did all of that
Speaker 3: and Sly, I guess when he's you know, Slye was
Speaker 3: the pioneer of that slowing the tape down and singing
Speaker 3: if you won't man this day, that's where that sound
Speaker 3: comes from it and so I get upset if I
Speaker 3: do it now.
Speaker 1: People.
Speaker 3: It was like, Prince, it's the funk out of here.
Speaker 1: It's like I was.
Speaker 3: Sly was the inventor of so much of that ship
Speaker 3: and so uh that Prince he he took that really
Speaker 3: in a weird way, and it was uh and uh
Speaker 3: this last thing. I had a celebration in Minneapolis and
Speaker 3: some psychic lady said, you know, Prince loves you or
Speaker 3: something sent the message saying that or whatever. Bet they
Speaker 3: had a psychic reader at or somebody said, I get
Speaker 3: that a lot. But he called me when we were
Speaker 3: in when I was saying some stuff with that something
Speaker 3: was not right, and I was in a I was
Speaker 3: in for eleven day's rehearsal with D in New Zealand,
Speaker 3: and then we went to the Gold Coast Byron Bay
Speaker 3: to the festival. And when I was there, we had
Speaker 3: got their day off and then we played. And the
Speaker 3: first day we played, when I came back to the room,
Speaker 3: because I don't take any of my I don't take
Speaker 3: phones or anything with me. I leave everything at the
Speaker 3: hotel and I don't take anything because motherfuckers be stealing.
Speaker 3: So I leave everything at the hotel and completely disconnected
Speaker 3: and kind of want need that anyway. But when I
Speaker 3: got back, he there was a girl that I can't say.
Speaker 3: Her name is an unusual name, but she uh worked
Speaker 3: for him. So she's like, oh, Prince wanted to talk
Speaker 3: to you, has something for me. And I haven't talked
Speaker 3: to Prince in a thousand years. So he's like, you
Speaker 3: wanted to he has something for you and he wanted
Speaker 3: to tell you. And he's like, you know you need
Speaker 3: to do you need to you know this is her
Speaker 3: message and you know Google transcribes, yeah, the message And
Speaker 3: the only person I ever played the message for was
Speaker 3: D and he said, you know, you need to do Jesse.
Speaker 3: These other people you're dealing with there, they want to
Speaker 3: be you, they want to be me, or they want
Speaker 3: to be Morris and they you know, he said all
Speaker 3: this stuff like that beneath you, and you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know who he was really talking about. And the
Speaker 3: only person ever played it for was D and he
Speaker 3: was like, who do you think he's on?
Speaker 1: Like, I don't know, I know, but I.
Speaker 3: Don't know anyway. But then you know, everybody knows Prince.
Speaker 3: You know, you call the number and it's like a burner,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like doesn't exist now, number back, But
Speaker 3: it's never self destructive exactly. And so that was the
Speaker 3: last thing I had.
Speaker 1: Interaction with him, and that was God.
Speaker 3: Was that seventeen sixteen? Yeah, twenty sixteen. We were there
Speaker 3: because Karina was there too. She's you know, you know Corina,
Speaker 3: She's in a documentary, so she was there too. But yeah,
Speaker 3: the only person I played that show for was D.
Speaker 7: But uh, we should say to D is D'Angelo for
Speaker 7: all the listeners because I don't know they might.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, wait, okay, we this is
Speaker 1: the most jumping ahead of time. We got to go
Speaker 1: back a little bit. Yeah, we gotta go back a
Speaker 1: lot of it because I want to hear at least okay,
Speaker 1: So when you at least developed the first record.
Speaker 3: He well, the fly thing really messed him up. Because
Speaker 3: the thing about it with Prince, I learned a lot
Speaker 3: every almost everything I learned about when I got under time,
Speaker 3: Like he, I wasn't afraid to do anything like you
Speaker 3: you know, we would we like people. They were trying
Speaker 3: to look like girls, but we were who he was
Speaker 3: trying to really look like was little Richard because you know,
Speaker 3: if you look at the photos, little Richard, he was
Speaker 3: pretty as fuck, right, And so you know, in principal
Speaker 3: you got to do this and you you know, put
Speaker 3: the because I never wore makeup or had foundation on
Speaker 3: our island. But he was like whatever, you know he was.
Speaker 3: He just like knew that. I was like fearless as well.
Speaker 3: And then when you fearless like that, it helps that
Speaker 3: you have somebody alongside with you that thinks like minded.
Speaker 3: They ain't just like, ain't no tripping, they don't trip
Speaker 3: about the ship, you know, and people was like, man,
Speaker 3: I think that goes gay. And I'd be like you,
Speaker 3: but I hope you gay like he gay. Then only
Speaker 3: maybe a proctologist might see more crack, like whatever, what
Speaker 3: the fuck? Whatever fuck out here with that bullshit. But
Speaker 3: they would always say that about me. But see, James
Speaker 3: Brown told me, when they start calling you, that's when
Speaker 3: you know you made it, you know, because when that
Speaker 3: comes from the man they were. You remember as a
Speaker 3: kid it was like James and Bobby Birds getting married
Speaker 3: and crazy. And so when the signs were made the
Speaker 3: first game, then you start getting shoot a lot you
Speaker 3: grew up, yeah, or your sister like in my case,
Speaker 3: was like threatening to cause you and once money, or
Speaker 3: she's putting out a story of a lot. Wow, wow,
Speaker 3: really yeah, I just know I told you all to day,
Speaker 3: I said, I saw the episode of Say Yes to
Speaker 3: the Dress. I just told him yes. Then she said,
Speaker 3: but yeah no. But but going back to the Black album,
Speaker 3: I just that that that that one song would have
Speaker 3: caused a lot of problems in l A that only
Speaker 3: a rappers, No, that's a song that's dead on it.
Speaker 3: Only a rapper is a dead rapper. And I was like,
Speaker 3: that shit going end up on a time record. Now
Speaker 3: we beefing and get shot it and got shit to
Speaker 3: do with that song, man, But you know that was
Speaker 3: long gone after that. But I'm just saying, dude, Due
Speaker 3: was vindictive when you left, and you didn't do anything
Speaker 3: wrong you. I went and made it on my own merits.
Speaker 3: I wrote every song I ever did, or every song
Speaker 3: was mine, because if I would have even attempted to
Speaker 3: steal something is he didn't you know, he didn't play that.
Speaker 3: He would sue the pants off you because he had
Speaker 3: the bread to do that. So I never went into
Speaker 3: anything like that with him. And I had just never
Speaker 3: signed releases or something. So when I left, lawyers were
Speaker 3: telling me, man, he owes you millions of dollars and
Speaker 3: you can go, And I never did, and you got
Speaker 3: your freedom.
Speaker 7: Got publishing Jungle. You got your publishing for Jungle.
Speaker 3: Luve right, No, I mean I did, but I there's
Speaker 3: prices that myself and Morris had to pay if we
Speaker 3: were leaving. But I was never in a contract, but
Speaker 3: we still there was prices you had to pay. Oh
Speaker 3: so if you left, then you had to differ up
Speaker 3: some things.
Speaker 1: So what okay, I gotta ask, where is that the
Speaker 1: board because I know that you purchased Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: bought it, but it was really fucked up because I'm
Speaker 1: I just left, I'm on my own.
Speaker 3: I'm he know how poor I am. And he's doing
Speaker 3: dress rehearsals and just give it to you, like no,
Speaker 3: it's just like this, motherfuckers. And he's doing dress rehearsals
Speaker 3: at uh the Saint Paul Center or something, yeah, the
Speaker 3: Saint Paul Civic Center. And I go over there and
Speaker 3: I got a check for I think eighteen thousand. You know,
Speaker 3: that's like nine million dollars to me. So I told
Speaker 3: him I would just gave you the board, like no,
Speaker 3: But he was real hardcore funny about it messed up
Speaker 3: because the only person standing in a room when it
Speaker 3: went down was out of leads. But I walked in
Speaker 3: the room and I said, you know, to get that board.
Speaker 3: It was a Soundcraft B three great board. We did
Speaker 3: a lot of shit on it, nineteen ninety nine Vanity
Speaker 3: the time. We did a lot of great stuff on it.
Speaker 3: All the purple rain was down on board. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: we I go. I give him a check for that,
Speaker 3: which was like killing me because because my fun, my album,
Speaker 3: my first album, Fun was one twenty five and they
Speaker 3: pay it to you in thirds you know, you get
Speaker 3: a third when you start, third when you mix, and
Speaker 3: the other remaining third when you had But people think
Speaker 3: that's a lot of money, but they don't realize it's
Speaker 3: working capital. It's not. It's like you get maybe get
Speaker 3: to get twenty out of that if you're lucky, if
Speaker 3: you're lucky. But I was really good. And because all
Speaker 3: the control is in your hands to to to to,
Speaker 3: you know, to make sure you coming, you know, you
Speaker 3: do right with the money. So and so I go
Speaker 3: over to buy it, and I bought a board, but
Speaker 3: it was garbage. It was a Soundcraft sixteen hundred. And
Speaker 3: when I.
Speaker 1: Started recording, it was like, oh.
Speaker 3: And I and I had already lied my way into
Speaker 3: the record you know the record deal. They say, you
Speaker 3: you don't know about this, you produce records. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: of course I know what I'm doing. A clue what
Speaker 3: I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Susan, that was at least happening now.
Speaker 3: Actually Susan. Then Susan didn't come with me until until
Speaker 3: I did the Love Struck Hung So that's so Susan
Speaker 3: I'm talking about.
Speaker 6: And that's what question real quick, when did the Janet
Speaker 6: Jackson tracks come in? Is this before you got signed
Speaker 6: or after.
Speaker 3: This after, but I was before my record ever came
Speaker 3: out because I was a John McClean project too. So
Speaker 3: I bought that board. I had to take the other
Speaker 3: board back.
Speaker 1: It was garbage.
Speaker 3: It was I don't know what I paid for nine
Speaker 3: thousand or something, and I took that shit back and
Speaker 3: I was like, all right. I was panicking. I had
Speaker 3: to make something happen. So I knew Prince Sella their board,
Speaker 3: and I called him and he's like, yeah, yeah, d
Speaker 3: d DA. And I didn't even say that, like, man.
Speaker 1: Why don't you just give it much? Motherfucker.
Speaker 3: I ain't even get into that. I just said, Okay,
Speaker 3: where do I need to I went over to the
Speaker 3: same reci to check and Alan Leeds was in the
Speaker 3: room and I and I said, you know, you should
Speaker 3: be the nicest people in anybody ever met. And he goes,
Speaker 3: why do you say that? And I say, because everything
Speaker 3: you've ever dreamed of is happening for you in the
Speaker 3: way that you dreamt of it happening, meaning a crossover,
Speaker 3: right right crossover. That's why when the time plays seven
Speaker 3: seven and stuff live, white people be like, oh what
Speaker 3: the fuck is that? And then the black people in
Speaker 3: the audience be like, yeah, because they knew all the
Speaker 3: time shit before that. But if you ever see the
Speaker 3: audience that the white kids, only the white folks only
Speaker 3: know that ship from the Purple Range. They think that's
Speaker 3: the only time record that's And so I got to
Speaker 3: see that in two thousand and eight when I performed
Speaker 3: that run in Vegas with them, and it's like you said,
Speaker 3: seven to seven and the walk and all that shit,
Speaker 3: And it's weird, how now people don't they don't like something,
Speaker 3: and then you know, we like something, we go, man,
Speaker 3: it's cool.
Speaker 1: Let me go see these other.
Speaker 3: Records, and then we might end up. There's times we
Speaker 3: go Danni, shit, old man, them records wasn't right yet,
Speaker 3: you know, but we'll go back and find out everything.
Speaker 3: And so when I bought the board he said, I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: it should be the nicest person anybody ever meet. And
Speaker 3: I'm meaning this because I love Prince even to the
Speaker 3: day they he died. We were the best of friends.
Speaker 3: We had a major love for one and I lived
Speaker 3: with him. I live with him, I lived in him
Speaker 3: all the way and when we finished Purple Raine, I
Speaker 3: was living at that house. And then when he went
Speaker 3: to La. It was cold blooded. He went to La
Speaker 3: and I said, And on the rap night, I said, Prince,
Speaker 3: can I stay at your house and use the studio?
Speaker 3: He said yeah. But when I went there, I said,
Speaker 3: can I just use the studio? Because I knew he
Speaker 3: was going to La to you know, wrap the film
Speaker 3: and do whatever. I went there.
Speaker 1: He took a boy.
Speaker 3: It was just a take machine and the board and
Speaker 3: the speakers, so I had to like go with someverb
Speaker 3: and on it. And that's where Susan came. I met Susan.
Speaker 3: And you've seen Susan say, how if it wasn't for Jesse,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't got the gig because I'm the one that
Speaker 3: came and I knew everything. But you couldn't never sing
Speaker 3: ithing around Prince. I remember a suns and sound. He
Speaker 3: plugged in harmonizer.
Speaker 1: And I said, what does that do?
Speaker 3: Don't worry about that? And that's all you I knew
Speaker 3: right then and there. Okay, he ain't supposing you ain't
Speaker 3: supposed to know, no ship. But I had big eyes
Speaker 3: and ears open, and so when he when she came in,
Speaker 3: she came from Crosbie, Stills and Nash, so she never
Speaker 3: was around no thumping, bumping, And I said, look, this
Speaker 3: is the drum machine he uses. This is how he
Speaker 3: likes his kick a cute, this is what he uses
Speaker 3: on the base. And I showed her all that stuff.
Speaker 3: And so when he came in for the first time
Speaker 3: and finally called her, she knew all this.
Speaker 1: So all the outboard gear that he would have in
Speaker 1: his drum machines too.
Speaker 3: He took all that shit to La and he didn't
Speaker 3: tell He said, oh, yeah, sure. Then what I asked
Speaker 3: about it was actually shocking.
Speaker 1: Was at the wrapper.
Speaker 3: I was like, ah, because I had been staying there,
Speaker 3: but for some reason, it's weird as hell. I Jamie.
Speaker 3: She was asking me, you know, like the top of
Speaker 3: the year. She said, all that time you spent at
Speaker 3: princes House, why did you just sleep in the living
Speaker 3: room on the couch? And I said this bedrooms? He
Speaker 3: had other bedrooms in there, and his bedroom was on
Speaker 3: the lower level. And then after nineteen ninety nine, Jamie
Speaker 3: had remodeled, had the whole house remodeling at the West Lake.
Speaker 3: Speakers of shit. But I and she said, why did
Speaker 3: you she financed me. Why would you ever sleeping in
Speaker 3: the other bedrooms? I said, because that best friend had
Speaker 3: them flowers and shit on it and ruffles. That shit
Speaker 3: freaked me out, man. But but let me tell how
Speaker 3: futuristic this cat was. Because I didn't know any of
Speaker 3: this stuff. But he would take me in the bedroom
Speaker 3: like on if you've seen Twitter, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: Prince had a I said, he had a stack of
Speaker 3: rejection letters because the one that Owen published is one
Speaker 3: of them. But he had a bunch of them because
Speaker 3: he showed them to me. The only reason why I know,
Speaker 3: because he showed them to me. But how ahead of
Speaker 3: himself he was. You know, he in one of the bedrooms.
Speaker 3: He opened up the door to the closet to show me,
Speaker 3: and he had every outfit from the what was the
Speaker 3: first album, call for You for You? He had all
Speaker 3: of the whatever he had on on their leather jacket,
Speaker 3: the bell bottoms of shoes, hit everything. He kept everything
Speaker 3: he had to get. He just had that foresight or
Speaker 3: something and he had and he was showing it to me.
Speaker 3: But I didn't know what this stuff was. Some big
Speaker 3: ass platform shoes, one am I supposed to do?
Speaker 1: But he had.
Speaker 3: Everything from every album up until you know, this is
Speaker 3: like after nineteen ninety nine, tours. So but he was
Speaker 3: showing me just like and that's where he had the
Speaker 3: whole stock of rejection letters, and he's like, look what
Speaker 3: this guy said, Look at this guy said, look at it,
Speaker 3: and they were at all. I was like, I don't
Speaker 3: hear receipts and the yeah, but but it to me
Speaker 3: was showing you how you you had a belief in yourself.
Speaker 3: You ain't really.
Speaker 1: Well wait, I still don't get the question answered.
Speaker 3: Where is the board now, John McClean, If Jesus it's
Speaker 3: upstairs and Marvin's woman John had it.
Speaker 1: Marvin's boy and Prince's board is in that same upstairs
Speaker 1: up in the where bedroom is.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's upstairs. And if you walk in, if you
Speaker 3: walk upstairs and you see the best, you know how
Speaker 3: he has had that secret door that opens even met. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but what did I buy? I bought the t s,
Speaker 3: the Giant one fifty six input and all that automation
Speaker 3: because I had the two machines and stuff, and so
Speaker 3: I outgrew it. But but my it was nicer after
Speaker 3: I bought it because I had api okay five fifty
Speaker 3: bees installed, had a roll of like six of them
Speaker 3: installed in it. So I you know it was a
Speaker 3: great console though it was it smacked it to it,
Speaker 3: It really did. And that's why when he I was
Speaker 3: just keeping it and then he said, oh, I'll buy that,
Speaker 3: and then he bought it for what I paid for
Speaker 3: a way back then. But he had Soundcraft come out
Speaker 3: and recap everything, refresh everything. So it's like men and
Speaker 3: it's just sitting there, but it's all connected and everything,
Speaker 3: but it's just sitting there and it's the five point
Speaker 3: fifty b that we cut all that stuff. And then
Speaker 3: I'm just like really not a collector of anything in.
Speaker 1: That sentimental No, Okay, I gotta ask you, how did
Speaker 1: you manage to escape the dressing room from the food fight?
Speaker 1: It was the handcuffed like what they Every everyone's account
Speaker 1: of the food fight in in Cincinnati was that on
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety nine to was that you're you're anger,
Speaker 1: But I was you to take that that entire coat
Speaker 1: rack down.
Speaker 3: It wasn't because if you if I was really angry
Speaker 3: like that, I gotta steal pipe in my out. It
Speaker 3: has been I've been on death row right now, so
Speaker 3: I've obviously wasn't. It's just like you know you uh,
Speaker 3: but it scared me that day because Prince when I
Speaker 3: when I took that thing down, everybody in that room,
Speaker 3: his band members, everybody fled like roaches. He cut the
Speaker 3: light time. I was like, you can see because there's
Speaker 3: somebody was shooting pictures and you can see just THEO
Speaker 3: and I was yeah, and I was running behind Prince
Speaker 3: and like, say, if you open the door, you know
Speaker 3: most it was a It was a big, big ass
Speaker 3: arena place, so they have fire doors. So when he
Speaker 3: opened the door, Bobby z or somebody ran through the
Speaker 3: door before Prince, and so the door was closing, but
Speaker 3: Prince was busy doing this and then he hit the
Speaker 3: edge of that door and I kind of stopped because
Speaker 3: I thought he didn't hurt himself. He hit that ship hard,
Speaker 3: but he lamb and then rolled around the door. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'd have been dead if I hit the
Speaker 3: door like that. But no, I wasn't like that. But
Speaker 3: we had it was a but was funny though. I
Speaker 3: just I just got the concert. So I have him
Speaker 3: taking you both from the stage. But what you know,
Speaker 3: what you didn't see is he was running. You don't
Speaker 3: see how giant the stage is. The stage is like
Speaker 3: ten twenty feet he was running so hard, and then
Speaker 3: Roger Trautman's drums big as drum set zapps with you
Speaker 3: guys at yes, prince, yes, it was before the vanity.
Speaker 3: It was before so it's the controversy to it, right,
Speaker 3: But that drum set is sitting there, giant mam maculate.
Speaker 3: He was running and he couldn't stop, and he knocked
Speaker 3: that hole off the stage like twenty feet. This is
Speaker 3: one stage you guys are for. We got got him
Speaker 3: good because he used to do less work and he
Speaker 3: got that whatever he used to say, I'll do use
Speaker 3: whatever the words. That's always and he and then he
Speaker 3: would always pull out this pair of underwear and do this,
Speaker 3: like pull out a pair of drawers like man, I
Speaker 3: went on a special hunt. I got a pair of
Speaker 3: draws that you know, you can put them on a
Speaker 3: car like a braw and I put that and I
Speaker 3: paid the production manager. I put that ship in his
Speaker 3: because when he would come off, he would change and
Speaker 3: put on the same kind of the same exact jacket.
Speaker 3: Put that ship in the pocket. He goes, I'll did
Speaker 3: you in and he's like, and you got to see it.
Speaker 3: It might even be on the tape to here, but
Speaker 3: you see him and he and it's like a magician
Speaker 3: pulling out the scarfish and he's like, and he does this,
Speaker 3: and he looks at the production mad because the production
Speaker 3: dude was from here, and he looks at him and
Speaker 3: he's like, he was so see, he could do that ship,
Speaker 3: but he couldn't take this ship back. He was like,
Speaker 3: And I didn't think he'd be that hot about that.
Speaker 3: You know, he pulled that ship on these big ass straws,
Speaker 3: and he was. But the fact that you have to
Speaker 3: see him go after that, you in.
Speaker 1: And then he had to.
Speaker 3: Nerd a dude like and he was hot. And I
Speaker 3: was on the side of the stage. And so that
Speaker 3: was the day before the food and so the food
Speaker 3: fight was the actual because that that day that I
Speaker 3: did that wasn't the end of It was the day before.
Speaker 1: So that's how I was and was the end.
Speaker 3: And so after the thing with me, when they got me,
Speaker 3: you saw the door kind of small. He saw the
Speaker 3: time members with juice bags on the head. They took
Speaker 3: green garbage bags, put holes in them and had them
Speaker 3: all life suit him and you saw them out there
Speaker 3: just hot and ready to kill until Morris. We caught
Speaker 3: Matt faink and you know you so they were so
Speaker 3: angry that they were this close to him and could
Speaker 3: hit him. Its like, was just off completely. It was
Speaker 3: just off. I mean, I'm like, because Terry's like, he's
Speaker 3: just so close to it and then the egg breaks
Speaker 3: in his hand because he's gone.
Speaker 1: And the musicians shouldn't be sports people.
Speaker 3: He's picking the egg off the I mean, just like
Speaker 3: revenge time and the only person that wasn't food fight.
Speaker 3: They ran up on him. But he was never part
Speaker 3: of it. I never said more than he what's up
Speaker 3: to him? Than all the years around. It was down Dickerson, Dickerson.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we caught math faint somewhere man, and he
Speaker 3: was not good, wasn't pretty. Yeah we were. You know,
Speaker 3: you just don't need a lot for the time to
Speaker 3: be mad. We ain't paid and then you know where,
Speaker 3: you know, we're going back to the hood. When the tours,
Speaker 3: you know, it wasn't.
Speaker 7: A lot at the end of the day, were y'all
Speaker 7: at least scale like to other the other musicians that
Speaker 7: you would tour with left like Roger Troutin.
Speaker 3: Ask him that we don't know nothing about no scales
Speaker 3: and ship that's something that we just you know, but no, you,
Speaker 3: in all honesty, you can't. The reason why you never
Speaker 3: hear me bitch and moan about it because it's like
Speaker 3: you're there by choice, so you know, ain't nobody you do?
Speaker 3: No because what you learned and what an experience couldn't
Speaker 3: buy it with all the money in the world. So
Speaker 3: when I look at it, and I've always looked at it's.
Speaker 10: Like what if I got paid away more money?
Speaker 3: But I would have never been in that inner. That's
Speaker 3: why when a man was sitting here and he was
Speaker 3: laughing about cleaning the toilets, which I don't know, dude
Speaker 3: would call me in the middle of the night. I
Speaker 3: lived down you know those apartments that you see from
Speaker 3: the freeway that are in different colors. See the scu
Speaker 3: was That's why I lived, and that's where they used
Speaker 3: to film the Marriytime Marshall. Really yeah, but I used
Speaker 3: to live there and to get in Michael, you call
Speaker 3: me at any hour and I would go drive way
Speaker 3: out there because it's the studio. And then the girl
Speaker 3: I was dating with, I think you guys are having
Speaker 3: a fair and I'm like, did the funk out here?
Speaker 3: You know how to make records, call me too, but
Speaker 3: this is fucker called this is fuck. They don'ts how
Speaker 3: to make records, you know, And seriously, that's exactly what
Speaker 3: came out of my mom I'm like going, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: but he went and out over you because Sigon came.
Speaker 3: Hear around you and listen to some records or whatever
Speaker 3: and the three genos back then it was still three
Speaker 3: channels right now. But I'm like, ship, this is another thing.
Speaker 3: So he would call me out there. Morris is the
Speaker 3: Morse is the witness to this. But Morris, you know,
Speaker 3: in the studio they had that really long cue tip
Speaker 3: that you clean the head, stop using those not for that.
Speaker 1: He would be mad, like you.
Speaker 3: Man, would you stop you? But this we were this
Speaker 3: is doing according the Bird, I think with the bird,
Speaker 3: the original bird, Okay, And he called me out and
Speaker 3: he called me out the drive way out there in
Speaker 3: the middle of like I think I will record or something.
Speaker 3: That got me out there because the machine broke and
Speaker 3: I meant to rewind it by hand. He called you
Speaker 3: just yes because he knew. He was like just gonna
Speaker 3: pay the dudes to be in this moment because you
Speaker 3: know them two grew up together. As kids, Morris and
Speaker 3: Hill was so Morrison be sitting at the board and
Speaker 3: he would be Ryan because I'm like, man, fuck the
Speaker 3: fuck is why you had me call Man? You need
Speaker 3: to call Dom Batcher.
Speaker 7: Why Morris an't give you the handsome.
Speaker 3: No, because he because they're hilarious. They're the funniest dudes.
Speaker 3: They are the funny. Morris is probably one of the
Speaker 3: funniest dudes you ever meet. And he's off the cuff
Speaker 3: with it. Like on stage even that run in Vegas,
Speaker 3: a girl came up and had this top on and
Speaker 3: she had a you know, was like tied in the
Speaker 3: back of the boat and just saw the top of
Speaker 3: his head he got when he touches things like I'm
Speaker 3: about to go from PG to double D like ship
Speaker 3: just immediately he don't think about it and he just
Speaker 3: fat and I just be like, I can't even I
Speaker 3: tell you when we you know, when we see each other,
Speaker 3: we'll see each other now and before we say anything,
Speaker 3: we just look at each other and start Ryan just
Speaker 3: start laughing because we know.
Speaker 7: Morris isn't the same for everybody who never met Morris.
Speaker 1: He is purple.
Speaker 3: He is funnier because all that stuff was written all
Speaker 3: that stuff was written by friends. But Morris Morris is
Speaker 3: funny as hell. He so funniest cats ever. Man, all right,
Speaker 3: are you about to change the topic because actually want to.
Speaker 3: There's a photo going around of Morrison Prince and Princess
Speaker 3: and Jamie star mode or where he's doing that. Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: that's just the polls. They would never they would never
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 6: Well no, no, no, no no, I'm just asking, like, you
Speaker 6: know what he would did Jamie Starr character appear in
Speaker 6: the studio whenever?
Speaker 3: That was some ship that was just print. I ain't
Speaker 3: seen them about get Ready knock Up one time, and
Speaker 3: I was just so happy. I was like being out
Speaker 3: in the middle, be fun friends. It was on the
Speaker 3: set of Propine and Morris came in and uh he
Speaker 3: was late, and he wasn't late because y'all don't even
Speaker 3: know man. Y'all don't even know man. He We would
Speaker 3: be on the set every morning at five thirty, but
Speaker 3: we wasn't shooting being dressed. No, it wasn't no hurry
Speaker 3: up and wait. Just didn't want us to be doing
Speaker 3: anything else. So you'd be on the set every day,
Speaker 3: full makeup, dress and ain't shooting nothing, just had just
Speaker 3: so he would know where where's Jesse. I know where
Speaker 3: he's over there? Okay, you know that kind of ship.
Speaker 3: And so Morris was like, yeah, man, you know what,
Speaker 3: fuck this ship. And so Morris walked in one day.
Speaker 3: It was so it was so amazing because he was
Speaker 3: always like my idol, because he.
Speaker 10: He came in high collar, clean his hell, ask got
Speaker 10: look just looked amazing, hairlaid, everything, came in clean his
Speaker 10: hell and Prince and it was when you.
Speaker 3: First walk in the first avenue. You know you can
Speaker 3: either go that way if you go this way. There's
Speaker 3: a stairway, so that the stairway is full of extras.
Speaker 3: And Prince walked up to him, which he was used
Speaker 3: to doing and sand stuff for him. And Morris never
Speaker 3: would say anything in front of everybody, but he this
Speaker 3: morning wasn't. He wasn't at one because.
Speaker 1: He walked up to it.
Speaker 3: Man, you know you're letting the thing about it.
Speaker 1: He's doing this.
Speaker 3: Like mother fucker, and what the fuck? And I was like,
Speaker 3: that's about time. And then when they made it to
Speaker 3: the dressing room with that, then Prince came into the
Speaker 3: dress rooms man and Morrises immediately was and then Bean
Speaker 3: jumped and he's like, bring this ship man, Morsels, get ready,
Speaker 3: And I was like, I'm standing at that going because
Speaker 3: that's what he with. Me and Jerome used to fight
Speaker 3: all the time, really because when Jerome got when Jerome
Speaker 3: came around, he wasn't in the band. He was like
Speaker 3: the roadie dude. So he would be mad all the time.
Speaker 3: You'd see him and he'd be moving the suitcases and roadka.
Speaker 3: He'd be mad all the time. He was always mad
Speaker 3: at me for something he didn't even know me. But
Speaker 3: and so we fight all the time. I said, you
Speaker 3: know what, Mom, Toddy, you musclehead motherfucker, let's do this
Speaker 3: ship And Prince used to be the always be the
Speaker 3: one let him let him fight, So that was my
Speaker 3: opportunity to investigator. Yeah, and Bean jumped in your friends,
Speaker 3: did Joy ass off the way? Let these niggas had
Speaker 3: his ship out?
Speaker 7: I just want to know who said I will fuck
Speaker 7: you up more?
Speaker 1: Yes, So sorry y'all, So sorry to cut y'all so short,
Speaker 1: but you know there's more to come next week on
Speaker 1: our special interview with Jesse Johnson, Tune in next week
Speaker 1: when Jesse will talk about those Purplerine deleted scenes. That
Speaker 1: we didn't get to see touring with Luther vanros and
Speaker 1: Roger Troutman and Larry Troutman. Also, we'll talk about a
Speaker 1: few Prince demos going up for auction. It'll be a blast, y'all.
Speaker 1: Trust me, Trust me? You want to come back next
Speaker 1: week for part two of our interview with Jesse Johnson
Speaker 1: on Quest Love Supreme see event West. Love Supreme is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by
Speaker 1: the team at Pandora. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio,
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