Black Music Month QLS Classic: Jimmy Jam Part 1

In part 1, the legendary R&B songwriter and producer Jimmy Jam spoke about his early days, life with Prince and goin' broke.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode
was produced by the team at Pandora.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, what's up, y' all?

Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is Quest Love And as you notice throughout June,
we are celebrating Black Dues Month by releasing an episode
every day. So every day and maybe want to hear,
especially pick QLs Classic and on Wednesdays dropping new two
part episodes with Brady and James Poyser, both of which

(00:33):
were filmed in studio, So make sure.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
You also watch this on your YouTube.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Now for part one, Part two, and Part three of
my all time favorite ULS episode. This is the legendary
Jimmy jam Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of
QLs Classic.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
I'm Questlove.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
This episode we consider it to be our finest hour.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
We interview the is a God himself, Jimmy Jam. Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
This is without no doubt one of our best moments,
my personal favorite UH. In part one of the three
part series, we discussed this life in Minnesota of in Minneapolis,
coming up as a DJ, his friendship with Terry Lewis's
music partner, and getting mentored by the one and only
Clarence Avon. Not to mention Uh, Princey starting a little

(01:23):
unknown band called The Time.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
We Hope you enjoyed.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Here we go, Suprimo Sun Supremo Roll call Suprema So
Supremo roll call Suprema So Suprimo roll so Brima So.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
So I went to the mirror, Yeah, with Grayson Vaness. Yeah,
the mirror looked back at me. Yeah, that's where the
god said, Supremo roll.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Call Supremo So roll. What's love double dipping? Yeah, not
trying to be facetious.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Yeah, that mirror really said Supremo row.

Speaker 5 (02:17):
My name is Fante, Yeah, in the heels of a Gora. Yeah,
with my man Jimmy Jam. Now where is my fodora Supprivo.

Speaker 6 (02:27):
Soun Sun Supremo role, Suprema Son Son Supremo role called.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
My name is Sugar, yeah, the engineer. Yeah, if you
need me, Yeah, I'm over here.

Speaker 6 (02:42):
Supremo Son Son Supremo Role call Suprema Son Son.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Supremo Role call. I'm unpaid bill, Yeah, chilling with my family.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah, mister Jimmy Jam Yeah, I had to be my
first Grammy's.

Speaker 6 (03:00):
Supremo role call, Suprema So Supremo role came.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
This was my name. Yeah, and I still say yeah,
best record of the eighties. Yeah, Alex is here saying, come.

Speaker 6 (03:14):
Suprema Son Supremo role call Suprema Supremo role call.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, never out of touch. Yeah, Jimmy Jam is here. Yeah,
I miss you.

Speaker 6 (03:30):
Suspreama supremo role call Suprema son Son Supremo role came.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
I don't know. Yeah what I was supposed to say. Yeah,
I'll be fat Albert.

Speaker 6 (03:43):
Yeah, so supremo role call, Suprema Son Supremo role call
Suprema son Son Supremo role called Suprema.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Son Son prem.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Ladies and gentlemen. I do not want to waste a second.
Welcome to Jimmy Jam. Okay, let's go, Jimmy Jam. Where
were you born?

Speaker 2 (04:10):
No, I'm not wasting a second. No, how you doing.
I'm good, I'm good man.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
We're very overwhelmed for this Pineapple goals man.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
This is goal Yeah. Yeah, Like my life is whatever?
Do it? I thought she was gonna fall my.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, it was like, my life is Balty, g Avenue
and Mediterranean. Like this is ward Walking Park place.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah, Monopoly references it is. It is sports. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
H Hello there, mister James Harris, the third Man.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
I'm wonderful man. It's great to be here with you
today finally and your crew, your whole crew. Man, it's wonderful.
Thank you. We've been looking forward to this one for
a minute. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
This is serious of life life goals here. Yeah, let's
just we're starting from.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Where were you born? Minneapolis, Minnesota?

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Okay, what part of what part of Minneapolis?

Speaker 2 (05:13):
I grew up South Minneapolis, So you know, I can
say like forty first in Portland Avenue, which doesn't mean
a lot to anybody, but you know, if you think
of downtown, it's like, you know First Street, second Street,
you know, First Avenue, so on and so forth. I
lived forty one blocks south of downtown.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
I feel like when any black person is from the
south side of town, south side of east side, that
means something something like what part of what was the
town part of town to not go to? In Minneapolish.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Well, okay, if you were black, the northeast was where
to not go to. It was called actually the northeast
is what we called it. Where the white people lived.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, yeah, every town has a white people.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
White the white people didn't didn't necessar therely want us
to be there. You know, because white people live every
I mean, let's face it. Back growing up, I think
the state population was something like three percent black, and
maybe it was eight percent black in Minneapolis or something
like that. So pretty much white people were everywhere. But certainly,

(06:20):
you know, everybody was very tolerant, I guess, I would say,
and it was very progressive town. But as you can
tell from the music, it came out of there. I
think that's had a lot to do with it. But no,
I mean, really, the north side probably is where the
folks were. You know, I was one of the only
South Side guy. I mean in Prince obviously because we
went to school together and stuff. But on the north

(06:42):
side of town you had you know, Morris Day, Jellybean,
Terry Lewis, you know, and you had the community center
called the Way, which everybody used to rehearse at and
that kind of thing. So it was a lot more
happening on the north side of town, I would say
that on the south side.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
So in your formative years, how many of your contemporaries
and peers that you were professional with would you see
on a regular basis?

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Everybody? Man, it was a it was a small community,
it was it was it was a lot like I
always say that Purple Rain the movie was a kind
of a It was fiction, but it was it told
a lot of truth. And that was there was like
a couple of clubs you could play at, and there
was more bands than the clubs could hold. So it
made for a very competitive situation where if your band

(07:29):
wasn't firing, you just wouldn't be playing in the club.
And so that's the way we grew up. So there
was like the Elks Lounge. There was a club called
the Nakarima Nakaima was actually American spelled backwards. And you know,
the Cozy Bar was another place. There was a place
called the Flame. And you know, so between you know,
back in that day, you had you know, my band,

(07:50):
I had a band called Mind and Matter. Terry had
Flight Time. We were together and then we were apart.
We were you know, we were going back and forth
a lot. And then Prince had Grand Central. Morris had
a band called the Enterprise Band of Pleasure at one point,
you know, so on and so forth. So what happened was
there was all these bands, but there's only a couple
of places to play. But all of those guys and

(08:12):
particularly people like and that, and really the best, probably
the baddest dude up there was Sonny Thompson.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Everyone speaks of Sonny Thompson like he's God. Yeah, Like
what is it about? What is the legend of Sonny Thompson.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Well, Sonny Thompson. I remember back when I first met
Terry and I remember we put our little band together
and stuff, and then they used to do these big
outdoor festivals at a place called the Phillisweetly which is
a big community center, and they used to do these
outdoor concerts and I remember seeing they had a band,
actually the original band that was called the Family. Sonny
Thompson was in that band. But I'd never seen a

(08:50):
brother play the guitar like that. I mean, he just
was like he was like legendary. He was like the dude.
And on top of it, he had the to like
if you didn't like him or you didn't like the
way he was playing, he was gonna come down to
kick your ass. Right, So he'd he'd played the gig
and stuff, and then afterwards if he'd like, look at
it you and you'd say to him, oh man, he

(09:11):
killed it, Sonny. Man. That was amazing. Because because you
better say that. But the good news was he always was.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
He was.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
He was amazing, and he was a dude that everybody
just kind of stopped and stared and went, damn. What
was his style of playing? He was a great rhythm player.
He played with a lot of aggression. You know. The
thing I always said about about Prince and the way
he played is I've never seen anybody attack instruments the
way Prince did. Like he literally attacked the instruments louder

(09:40):
or just toned well, you know he would. I mean
I always say, like, for instance, Terry, you know, Terry's
a great bass player, There's no doubt about it. But
you know how we always use the analogy like in basketball,
people that make you better. Prince was that person, right,
So Terry would be playing a bass part and Prince
would take the bass from Terry and go, no, play

(10:03):
it like this, and then he'd play it, and then
he'd had Terry the bass back, and Terry would look
at the bass like he'd never seen it before, you know,
and it's like damn. You know so that but that
was the way Sonny was, and I think Prince got
a lot of that from sonny like the attack of
the instruments. And it's the same with the keyboards. We
used to break keyboards all the time because it wasn't

(10:24):
like you would just hit the keyboard politely. It was
like we were doing all kind of swoops and wow
wow and all that kind of stuff, Like we would
break keyboards. I mean that kind of stuff. I mean
that was the way he wanted you to play. And
so I mean that that kind of attitude, to me
was the thing that you know, set him apart, along
with a whole lot of other things, but it really

(10:45):
set Prince apart for sure.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
What were the what was a gold club to play
in Minneapolis at the time, Like, was First Avenue a
dream that was unattainable?

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Worst? No, Actually, here's an interesting thing. Yeah, Now First
Avenue was actually the first place that actually allowed like
black bands to play. So there was a quiet segregation.
Oh it was not in your fleece, Oh it was.
I guess you could say it was quiet. I mean,
if you were a band and you were trying to
play somewhere, you knew there were clubs that were just unattainable.

(11:20):
You just weren't going to play that club. And I
thank God to this day that that happened, because what
it did, as history has always shown with black folks,
is from adversity comes all good things. You know, you
look at what you don't have, and then you figure
out that you can't go the easy route that everybody

(11:41):
else is going, and then you figure out a way
to go get it done. So what we used to
do back in the day, we knew we couldn't play
I can't remember even the names of the clubs, but
there was all these very fancy white clubs and they
all had white bands, but they were all playing R
and B music, which was ironic. We couldn't play those clubs.

(12:01):
So what we would do is, for instance, there was
a hotel downtown called the Dykeman Hotel. It was a
hotel that was probably about a year away from, you know,
being torn down. I mean, it was just nobody stayed there.
Rooms were ratty, the whole thing. But what they had
was a big ballroom. So what we would do is
we would take, you know, we'd go to the owner

(12:23):
of the hotel and we'd say, hey, can we rent
the ballroom out. We'll give you the liquor whatever. The
liquor sales are you keep and we'll take the door.
We'll charge you know, three bucks at the door or whatever.
And so what it did is it forced us to
become entrepreneurs because it wasn't like we just had the
talent we could go play. It was like, okay, we

(12:43):
got the talent, Now we got to figure out how
we're going to go play. So we would do that.
Now we now, back in the day, there's no Twitter
and no social media, so it was go to instant prints.
That was the place you go. You print up a
bunch of flyers and then you put them on people's
cars and you'd say, you know, ladies get in free
too for one drink. So you'd say whatever the heck
you needed to say to get them to get them down.

(13:06):
And all of a sudden, you get on Saturday night
and all of a sudden, you'd get fifteen hundred people
in this ballroom. Meanwhile, the white clubs are sitting empty.
So now they're going, wait, where's everybody at tonight? And
they're like, well, they're all going to see the band
you wouldn't let play at your club. And so what

(13:28):
happened after that was there began to be a little
bit of a thing where people begin to recognize that
maybe there's a talent or maybe we should let these
folks in, you know, because these guys are talent and
they're obviously drawing, right. But the first person to really
act upon it was Steve McClellan at First Avenue who said,
we'll book you guys in what was called Seventh Street Entry,

(13:50):
which is like the little club, right, so if you
were cool there, if you could get it going there,
then we'll move you to the main room. But he
was the one that really gave us THEO and he
gave you know, back then, it wasn't just by the way,
It wasn't just black bands, but it was like new
wave bands you think about, like the Replacements and the
Suburbs and all of those bands. Those bands all started,
those white bands all started in that Seventh Street Entry.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
We even mixing with those guys at all, like would
you see replacements?

Speaker 2 (14:16):
And we didn't mix it all, not I mean just
because we didn't. It wasn't that we didn't like them.
We were aware of them, and I think they were
aware of us. But we know we never mixed together
at all. It was just kind of the same dudes
from the neighborhood that we grew up with. It was
all of those same guys all together.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
So kind of jumping ahead a little bit, did you
have goals to make it out of Minnesota or or
was it just like, Okay, we'll just be a local
band here and maybe.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Well no, I mean I'll get a job. Like are
your parents supportive of this? Or well? Okay, So two
really good questions. So my parents. First of all, my
dad played in a band and was always a professional musician.
Used to take me to rehearsals and stuff back when

(15:08):
I was, you know, six seven years old, and I
you know, at that point I had the music bug totally,
so I got to see it. I used to used
to get to go to the studio and the whole thing.
But he was always he never made it really where
he wanted to. He was always kind of that guy
on the cusp of making it. You know. He'd get
on a few back in the day, there were kind

(15:29):
of regional records that were hits, and my dad would
play on those records and then they'd ask him to
go tour. But because at that point of his life
he had me and he had gotten married, my mom
always used to kind of frown upon you know, like, well, no,
you can't. You got responsibilities, you got family, and you
got you know, you can't just run off and go

(15:49):
on tour and that kind of stuff. And that really
affected what happened with me because when I got to
the point where I really wanted to do music, my
mom was one hundred percent behind me because she realized
that my dad never had a chance to do what
the way he wanted to do it. So she really
kind of stepped out of my way and it was
very supportive of me. So that was huge for me.

(16:14):
By the way, and they because they separated and so
or they got divorced, and so I basically stayed with
my mom. So she said, you know whatever, as long
as I see you doing music, you can do whatever
the heck you want to do. But you know, as
long as you was serious about it, and that kind
of thing. So that was that was important.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
What was the industry in Minnesota? Like if cars were
Detroit and black families were there middle class and buying
instruments and stuff, and the same for factories in Indiana
and the Midwest, what was the industry in Minnesota that
kept was that an industry town at all?

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Well, the things I remember growing up were first of all,
grain and flower. I remember gold metal Flower was a
big company back in the day. Pillsbury was up there,
big company general. Yeah, I forgot. I now realized.

Speaker 5 (17:05):
He said that the ghetto boys man thought he had came,
but it was gold metal Flower. Now I get it.
It was flower, right, Thank you for solving that mystery.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Whether I was gold made.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Life because his accent, you know, I I two thought,
thank you the flower solving the mystery of Willie d.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
I didn't know there was a mystery. You know, we
had it, but I just didn't. You didn't put it together,
That's what he was saying. You. But all of those
were up there, and obviously three of them was up
there to Honeywell, there was some some pretty big companies
up there, for sure. But just to and just to
wrap the other thing we were saying. The whole idea, yes,

(17:55):
was to get out of town. That was our focus
because we knew we couldn't sit around and depend on
playing in the clubs that weren't gonna let us play.
And we knew that we couldn't make it playing in
a club circuit where there's two or three clubs and
there's eight bands or whatever. It is, like that was
not going to happen. So we set our sites always
on making it nationally. That was our whole thing. When

(18:19):
Prince made it out, that showed us that it can happen.
And it also because he was so unique in what
he did, that then brought everybody started looking at Minneapolis like, Okay,
what else is up there? Because that happens with all towns,
happened with Seattle, happens you know, that's just the thing
that happens. It's like something great comes out and it's like, oh,

(18:39):
what what else is there? What else is there? So
we were definitely the beneficiaries of that. And there's a
lot of great I will say, a lot of talented
white musicians playing R and B music that never made
it out of Minneapolis. Some of them made it out
because Jesse took a couple folks with him and when
he did his band and Jesse Johnson review the Peterson

(19:00):
the Peterson's. How many Peterson's were there A lot? Yeah,
that was the that was the musical family up there.
I mean, just so much talent, you know, but there
were but there were other ones too, and I'm just
kind of I'm blanking our names and stuff. But there
was a lot of talent. But because they didn't they
were very comfortable, so they had no reason to try

(19:23):
to think outside of getting out of Minneapolis or anything
like that. Like, we were so a lot of great
talent up there that people didn't know about until, like
I say, until that time when you know, Jesse picked
up a few people. And I'm trying to think Margaret Cox,
who was actually Tomorrow Margie. But yeah, but Margaret Cox
was insanely talented, you know, so as a singer. So yeah,
people like that.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
So when can I assume that Funky Town was the
first at least indication that an escape could be made
or something could happen. Was that just like a fluke
went off in your eyes?

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Well for us, you know, Prince was the example that
you could make it, because see Prince was like three
years before Funky I forgot that. Yeah, but no, but
but but but Funky Town was eighties and that was
you know, at the height of the disco craze and
when it was and actually when disco was being played
on the radio, not only in the clubs, but actually

(20:18):
the format because I remember we had a radio station
up there that went from a rock format to a
disco format, which was very controversial, but disco was hot
at that point in time. But we thought, what did
you grow up listening on? Like, what were you listening to? Grow?
For me, yeah, well there was nothing but pop radio

(20:38):
up there. I mean, I grew up as a kid.
My earliest memories were always you know, I always loved
the harmony groups. I loved Seals and Cross America. Yeah,
you know that kind of stuff. Bred that was. I mean,
to this day, that's the way I stacked my harmonies
because of the way they sang those songs. Back in

(21:00):
a little bit later in life, I liked, like, around
the time I met Terry, I was really into Chicago
that was. That was my favorite band ever, you know,
and me and Terry both loved them. And then Terry
then turned me on to when I met him, he
turned me onto Earth Wind and Fired, Tower of Power,
New Birth. I met Terry in seventy two. Okay, yeah,

(21:20):
so we're just we're talking Last Days in Time, Earth
Winding Fire and music in my mind Stevie Wonder you know,
these were the albums and Terry turned me on.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
To those black radio You didn't have no black radio
experience at the age of ten twelve.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
There wasn't a black radio experience for me. When I
got into high school, I was really into or junior
high and into high school, I was really into Gambling,
Huff and everything coming out of Philadelphia. Blue Magic was
my favorite all time group. I know everybody was into stylistics,
but Blue Magic was my group. But how could you
hear it or see it? Was? Oh yeah, Soul Train

(21:55):
definitely was on and you definitely would hear it on
Soul Train. But I I remember I had a friend
of mine whose dad was an executive of music Land,
which is one of the big retail stores back in
the day. So he used to get every single record
that came out. And my thing was I was always
a big liner note reader and a big label reader.
So my thing was we all collective and vill Yes,

(22:22):
So my whole thing was, I remember there were records
that would come out and I would particularly during the
Motown era because I really I really loved the Motown records,
all of that stuff, the Holland Dozer, Holland, like I remember,
I did. I remember looking at a Supremes album at
a like a family reunion or something back in sixty
two or something or sixty so I was like three

(22:43):
or four years old, and I remember that Holland Dozer
Holland it was. The album was called The Supreme sing
Holland Dozer Holland, that gold record and the gold record, right,
I had no idea what that meant. I kept going,
what does this mean? What do you mean they singing
Holland Dozer Holland. And then somebody explained to me, no,
they wrote the songs. The girls are the singers, but
somebody wrote the songs, and something went off in my

(23:04):
head at that point. That always made me look who
wrote it, who produced it? And so I remember like
all the Motown records would be the first ones I'd
always go to. And I remember like staring at the
first time I heard I Want You Back Jackson five
and you know Dinah Ross and Dinah Ross presents the
Jackson five, and I thought, oh, wow, that's cool, and

(23:26):
I looked down the record. I'm like, well, I don't
see Donna Ross's name anywhere on here. There's some dudes
called the somebody I got to find out who the
corporation is, you know. So that was always my my
thing and and I knew that because what I learned
was there were certain there were groups I like, but
it was all about who produced them. Like it was.

(23:47):
It was like, you know, like Eddie Kendricks could come
out with a song and I would be like, Yeah,
that's okay. And then you come out with a song,
I go, oh, I love that song. Okay, who did
that song? Okay, Leonard Casting and you know, Frank Wilson
and okay. And then I'd hear another song that had
nothing to do with Eddie Kendricks, but I'd go, oh,
I like that track. Who did that? And it'd be

(24:09):
the same dudes, right, And that's when I got That's
when I started going, Okay, that's that's my thing. And
so for me, that's what always excited me, and that's what,
you know, ultimately made me want to become a songwriter
and a producer.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
What kind of equipment were you dealing with when you
first started, Like did you have a piano in the
house or Fender.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
Rhodes or we had how did you get it around
the gigs? Oh? Well, okay, well I'll tell you. Our
very first gig was the summer that I met Terry,
which was seventy two, and I remember my dad at
the time, I thought of myself as a drummer. I'd
had drums in the house since I was like five
years old. They bought me a drum set, and I

(24:51):
used to play and I used to blast. I remember
one of my favorite records was this Jackson Fire record
called Looking through the Window right, because I loved the
way it had that and I used to play the
drum to that, and I love that the way, the
and all that stuff, all the dynamics of it. So

(25:11):
I used to play like to that kind of stuff,
and so I thought of myself as a drummer. So
what happened was Terry was going to put this band
together to play at this kind of year in summer
year in thing, and uh, he said, but he heard
me play piano, and so he said, man, I need
you to play keyboards for me for this thing. And
I said, I'm a drummer, Terry, and he said, no, Nah,

(25:34):
I heard you play the keyboards. I said no, but
really I played the drums. And he said, I already
got a drummer and I said, no, I played it.
I played the keyboards. I mean I played the drums.
So Terry then brought over jelly Bean Johnson, who was
his drummer, and jelly Bean played and I said, yeah,
I can mess with some keyboards. So that that ended

(25:54):
my drumming career at that point. And uh, it was
jelly Being playing guitar back then. He yeah, he did
play guitar back then, okay, but he was a drummer.
I mean he was, I mean a great drummer. So
I mean you could tell it back then. He's super
talented dude. And he's probably the one person in Terry
there's probably been in Terry's life longer than me. I mean,
I think him and jelly Bean go back. I met

(26:16):
Terry when I was probably thirteen or something, and jelly
Being probably precedes me by three or four years because
they went to school together. So I didn't meet Terry
till the summertime, you know, think, but yeah, I mean, yeah,
he was amazing. So what we did is we went out.
I was playing drums with my dad, okay, and he
had a gig where he would play the weekends at
a couple of clubs and stuff. And that and real quick.

(26:38):
How that happened was he had a trio, right, and
was him this guitar player named Coffee and a drummer right,
but every they never could keep a drummer, so every
week there'd be like a different drummer and so yeah, right,
So eventually the one there was a gig and the

(26:59):
drummer and show up, and my mom said, why don't
you let Jimmy play a set? He knows all your songs.
We've been watching you play for all this time. It's
a million So anyway, I so I did. I sat in,
I did one set with him and stuff, and everybody
liked it. Crowd liked it. Okay, right, So a couple

(27:20):
of weeks later and stuff, same thing, and so Coffee
the guitar player said, you know, hey, my dad's name
was Jim. Also he say, Jim, you know, why don't
you let your son go ahead and play? You know
he knows the show show, just let him play. I'm
not sure about that whatever whatever, So anyway, I did.
I played the whole show. So after they get into
that gig, Coffee said to my dad, why don't you

(27:42):
just let your son play? Man? We don't have to
keep finding drummers, you know. So my dad said, okay, cool,
we'll let you play. Well, you are a drummer. And
then my mom said he and my mom said how
much you're gonna pay him? And she became my agent
real quick. So and and then my dad said, well,
you know, i'll throw him out, you know, a little
something something. She said, no, no, no, you're gonna pay him

(28:03):
just like you pay you pay right. And that was
the start of my you know gig, and that started
my little I don't know college runner. I don't know
what happened to that money, but we started putting that
money away. So that that was the parents. Do you
ever see your college for money from all them? Yes?

Speaker 5 (28:21):
Ever, I had a fifty dollars savings bun like my
grandmother bought me when I was like five.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Never seen. I don't know where it's at. Yeah, my
dad's last time I saw it was on top of
the TV. That was on top of the Big Team.
It's been a long time ago.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
So how does how do you guys melt all your bands?
Because I can assume that the Time is basically a
supergroup of Minneapolis based musicians and one Illinois musician. Yeah,
so what starts the process of of you guys leaving

(29:01):
your respective bands to become the Time.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Okay, well that's I'll try to not make it too complicated.
So here's goods a lot of moving parts. So for me,
first of all, Terry at this point had put together
what was the nucleus of Flight Time, which was Jellybean
Johnson on the drums, Terry on the bass. Interesting story

(29:28):
how he had found Monty Moyer because Terry had been
trying to get me to join the band again. I was.
I was off doing my own band for a while,
and then I had actually quit doing that and I
had started DJing in your band at that time when
you drumming or were you playing keys, I was playing keys,
and I was writing all the songs we did. We
did all original songs, and it was all and I

(29:50):
was doing my best, you know Tom Bell gambling of
this is fression, mind and matter. Yeah, I mean that's
what I was trying to do with a little bit
of electronics in it. You know, I had a little
synthesizer and stuff in it. But it was definitely trying
to be that was that was my inspiration, and so
so I had. You know, those guys to me, weren't serious.

(30:11):
They were older guys. I was just at I was
sixteen at the time, and those guys weren't really serious
about it, Like they're twenty two twenty three, and I
didn't get well. They had jobs and families and kids
and stuff. I'm like, twenty four hours music and you know,
I'm like, y'all are messing up. You know, they get
high and stuff, and I'd be like, y'all getting high,
we need to be working on our music. And you know,
they were like, who the fuck this punk kid you
know telling us? You know, So anyway, eventually I just

(30:34):
said forget it. So I started DJing. I started working
at a record pool, you know, getting records. I started
working at a record store because I the clubs I
played at were influentential enough that I could know when
I heard a record. I could go to the record
store guy and he didn't trust me at first, but
I could say to him, hey, there's this record. Matter
of fact, MFSB had a record called Dance with Me Tonight, okay,

(30:58):
and I had this girl named Joyce. Whenever I played
at the club. And this is a teen club. Because
I played at a bunch of different clubs as a
DJ I had, and my crowd just kind of followed
me around, but the teen crowd was my best. We
did about fifteen hundred kids on a Friday and a
Saturday night. It was huge, a huge pace, Yeah, huge pressure. Oh,
it was great. It was it was awesome. It was awesome.

(31:19):
It is the most one of the most fun moments
of my life actually was doing that because just the
whole idea of introducing people to music, which is amazing,
and you know how that feels. I mean, you guys
do that now. Teens hold you hoses today.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
So if you don't play what they knows.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Well, you know what, okay. So that that's my point.
So I had this girl named Joyce, and Joyce I
don't know where she was from, but she'd always hand
me some record every week and she'd say play this,
this is gonna be whatever whatever, and i' and I'd
listened to a little bit in the headphones and previewed
and it would always sound a little weird to me,
and I'd be like, Joyce, are you sure, and she'd go, yeah, yeah.

(31:55):
And she had a crew of about three or four
other people and she would get out and dance. She said,
I know the dance floor is gonna clear, but we're
gonna I'm gonna dance and we're gonna be cool. I mean, okay.
So anyway, she brought me a whole bunch of different records,
but the one I remember, the one of the first
ones was Dance with Me Tonight MFSB. Right, so, and
I said to her, you know, Joyce, I got the

(32:16):
album that. I said, I've heard the song. It ain't
really that no, she said, no, but this is the
twelve inches different. It's a different mix. I said, okay, cool.
I put the record on and I go cause I
talked to I'd mixed and I talked, I did both things,
and I just said, here's a new one front Zelm Backzille,
all right, exactly right. And I said, okay, here's here's
a brand new one, you know, exclusive, you know whatever

(32:37):
whatever whatever. I put the record on the intro of
the records about I didn't know. It's about sixteen bars
and stuff, and it sounds like I don't know's it
doesn't sound like nothing's gonna happen, right, And everybody's kind
of staring at me for a minute. Because they pretty
much trust me. So they're staring at me for a minute,
and then I see them start to inch off the
dance floor, and I'm like going, oh man, I'm buying right,

(33:00):
And then all of a sudden, it kicks into this
different groove, goes into this groove, and I see every
and then I see Joyce in the middle of the
floor with her crew of people start dancing, and all
of a sudden, now the dance floor starts coming back
on the dance floor. By the end of the night
that record, I had to play it again. They loved

(33:22):
it that much, so I went to the record There
was a record store called Hot Licks, and I remember
this guy named Chico I think his name was Chico
fat fingers right, And he played, he played, he played,
He played with a reggae band uh called Oh Man,
I'm gonna I can't remember the name. It's like Shagoy
or Shambay or had some name like that. Anyway, he
ran the store. So I walked into the store and

(33:42):
I said, hey, man, this twelve inch dance with me tonight.
Can you get some of these? And he said yeah.
He says why and I said, because this is my
number one song at my club. I'm gonna play it
again next weekend. And I said, and I'm gonna tell
everybody to come down that you're the only one that
has the record downtown Minneapolis. You're the only one that
has record. So okay, So he says, well, how many
should I get? And I said, like a thousand? He said,

(34:04):
what You're nuts? I said, okay, cool. So anyway, next
weekend I played it packed the dance floor. I said,
hot Licks, go down to Hot Licks are the only
ones in town with the record. He said, uh, Monday,
he said, he sold out. And he said and I said, well,
how many do you order? He said, well I ordered
five hundred. I said, I told you to get a thousand, right,

(34:25):
And I remember I talked to what later on in life.
I talked to some PR person that worked for CBS
back in the day and they said, man, it was
weird this one record just jumped off for it, you know.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
So wait, we we always did this on Quest Love
Supreme for old DJs.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Can you can you front sell dance with me to
night right now? Front? So yeah, I guess here we go, right,
all right, here's an exclusive. You're gonna here first for
the first time. You trust me on this one. Now
trust me. This is speed dance with me tonight. There
we go. That was with me. And you know what's

(35:22):
funny is is is that ended up being I kept
charts from you know, Dance for Reaction and all that stuff,
and then I started printing the charts out and then
I would take them down to the record store and
I'd leave them right and that record was my number
one record of all time during the probably year and
a half that I was. I was at that club

(35:42):
and she brought me some other ones a Firecracker mass production,
and then she brought me Firecracker was easy. The follow
up was Forever, and I don't remember Forever. Forever started
off with just, uh, a high hat. So it just
started off with which was a guaranteed dance floor, you

(36:07):
know clearer really yeah, But she said, but wait till
the beat kicks in, It's gonna be real cool. So
I said, Okay, here's new mass production. And people were like, well,
they knew that Firecracker was the jam, so they stood
with me for this one. And they stood and when
they kicked in, they uh huh. It sounds like put

(36:27):
the word on yeah, watch when this kicks in. Though
I never even knew they had a follow up record.

(36:49):
This was a follow up. This was a follow up.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
And Masterpieces M A S.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
S in storage. Wow, Joyce should have got an all
job right. Joyce was.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
Joyce was incredible. Man, give my DJ game already. I'm
gonna play these two in my next sets.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
I got, I got. I'll give you one more from
that from that day. What about are you familiar with breakwater? Yeah?
Do it till the fluid gets hot. I don't know that.
Do it to the fluid gets hot.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Let me go and uh release the beast, but do
it to the fluid gets.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Do it to the fluid gets hot. That was another
one that was really hot for me. And these records
were only big at my club, right and at this
record store. That was the weird thing about it. Oh yeah, okay,
I know this got that one. Yeah, I know that.
At the time, just DJ, Jimmy James. What was your DJ?

(37:54):
It was Jimmy Jam That came from DJ really yeah, okay, yeah,
that came from DJ. So what happened? So? Okay? So
that club was called the Disco Trek right now. Also
downtown was a club that went through a series of
different names, but when I worked there, it was called
the fox Trap. Okay, Now, the fox Trap had three levels.

(38:17):
Downstairs live music, second floor was DJ which was me,
and then third floor was a DJ. But it was
more chill, more, you know, laid back right, more of
a lounge type situation. So when I started working, there
was a DJ named Kyle Ray, and Kyle Ray was,
as you call it, the front selling DJ, Like he

(38:38):
did no mixing at all. It was all just personality
and playing records, right, So I took an example from him.
He was actually tragically killed, which was like nuts and
he tragically died, and so I kind of had borrowed
a little of his style as far as front loading
the records. But I could also a mix because I had,

(39:01):
you know, kind of the musical thing, so I always
did a combination of it. And then I had a
little keyboard which I actually have downstairs, which was my
first synthesizer, and I used to play along with the
records and create my own little stuff. So I was
doing that and that, and there was a at the
I was just going by Jimmy Harris, which was my name,
and there was a bartender from Philly who called himself Delphonix,

(39:26):
Right right, okay? And I went over to get, you know,
a drink from him or whatever, a cold because I
don't think I was I don't think that I was eighteen.
I was probably still seventeen eight I don't I don't
even think. But I didn't drink anyway, so it didn't
really matter. And he said, yo. He said man. He said, uh,
what kind of name you got? Man? And I said,
what do you mean? I said, what's your DJ name?

(39:47):
And I said I don't know. He said, man, you
gotta be you gotta be something.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
Man.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
I'm telling everybody your name's Jimmy jam And I said, okay.
He said, Jimmy Jams, pot pots and pans, shake my hand.
He went into this whole rap, right, and I okay, cool. Right,
So anyway, he started telling everybody my name was Jimmy
jam And and it just stuck, and even to the
point when we did the first time record and I

(40:13):
said to Prince when Prince was doing like the credits
on the record, and I said, Prince, what name should
I be under? And he said, you should be Jimmy Cham.
I said, okay, cool, so that was it. So then
it was historic because it was in printed. Brother gave
me my name, Delphonix. Yes, sir, the bartender at the
Fox Trap. Okay, so I'm sorry because we're totally off

(40:47):
track here. Yeah, okay, So okay, So I tell this
story about playing in all the different clubs and stuff.
So at the Fox Trap, Terry was playing downstairs in
the live music room, right. I was playing upstairs right
and the DJ room, and Terry used to come up.

(41:08):
And Terry is really good at bugging the shit out
of people and twisting their arm, and he's really good
at that. He's stubborn, right, So his whole thing was, man,
you ain't a DJ, man, you're a musician.

Speaker 7 (41:19):
Man.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
You need to join the band. We need a keyboard
player and such and such, and and I'm like, Terry,
I just I'm not feeling it, man, you know whatever.
So one day he comes up to the booth and
he says, jam, he said, we got a keyboard player.
And I thought, oh great, he's gonna quit bugging me now.
And he says right. So I'm like, he said come
down here. You should come down and check him out.

(41:40):
And I said, okay, cool, so I grabbed knee deep
by funk a Delic, which was I think seventeen minutes
or whatever it was. I put that on and I
jumped out the booth. It was pretty early in the night,
so it wasn't you know, nobody would have cared if
if it went ran out. But I ran downstairs. I
walk into the room. I hear they're playing what you

(42:00):
Won't Do For Love Bobby Callwell, right, and so they're saying,
and I'm hearing this somebody singing and dun du. I'm
like looking around, who's singing? Somebody singing? The asshole? Who's singing?
And I look behind this stack of keyboards and this
little white guy right and I'm like looking and I'm like,

(42:22):
oh wait, his mouth is moving, but it doesn't sound
like a white boy singing. And who is that? You know?
So I went back upstairs. I looked at Terry and
I went, you know, gating thumbs up. I went back upstairs.
So after the gig was over, I came back down.
I said, hey, man, who was singing to Bobby Callwell?
He said, that's our keyboard player, Monty Moyer, And I said, oh,
I said, nice to meet you. Monty. I said, cool, Terry.

(42:42):
I said, well, good, you got your keyboard player now
we you know, good luck, you know. He said, no, man,
he said, we got to have two keyboard players. Man,
that's the that's the vibe, two keyboard players. So fast
forward a little while. I was going out with this
older lady, right, and she was beautiful too perto rican.
Oh my god. Anyway, so anyway she broke my heart.

(43:04):
I was I think I was eighteen, she was thirty,
proudly right, Oh wow, so damn. Her name her name
was Carmen, and she worked at the Horse of course.
She worked at the at the cosmetic counter, one of
the stores up there, man, and she just was amazing.
So anyway, she broke over me. So I'm a little

(43:24):
broken hearted, and I'm walking home, right, I'm walking from
her apartment home, which is, you know, maybe ten blocks
not that far. So I'm walking up Lake Street, which
was one of the main things. And I walked by
this club. I didn't even know it was a club.
It was like a community center. And I'm walking by
and I hear, you know, music coming out of it
and stuff, and I was like something going on in here, right,
So I opened the door. I look in. I walk in.

(43:45):
There's a band rehearsing. Whose band is it? Terry's band? Right?
I said, Terry, what's up? Man? He said, oh, this
is our rehearsal space. Man. Where you know this? They
opened up this club. They're letting us rehearse here and
then they're going to actually open it up night times.
And it was called the YASM y a a s M,
which was the Young African American Society of Men or

(44:08):
something like that or something.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
Yeah, it turned out it's upstanding.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Yeah yeah, so they yeah them. So anyway, I was like, okay, cool.
So anyway, they're in their rehearsing and stuff. I said, yeah,
cool cool. So Terry said yeah, man, so come on, man,
you ready to join the band? And I said no, man,
I said, I you know, I'm this girl. Just broke
my heart, man, you know. And Terry's like, man, you
get your mind off of man, you know, you just
need to jump back in. Just I said, nah, man,
I don't have any keyboards. Man. You know, I sold

(44:37):
all my keyboards and stuff. You know, we'll get you keyboards. Man,
what kind of keyboards you want? Man? I said, no, no,
I don't Terry, I'm good. Right, So this is before
cell phones, right, I go home. Next day, my phone
rings Terry Lewis, Come on jan what you're gonna do? Man?
Come on man, we got we got keyboards for you. Man,
come on down, come on down, you know. And at
that point they had started getting some gigs and stuff.

(44:57):
They were gonna be opening for the Barcades and Switch
at this concert. Right whoa, So it was like, man,
you got to join the band. Man, we're going to
be opening for Barcades and Switch. Now at this point
in time, the Alexander O'Neill was our lead singer. Okay, okay,
so this is when Alex was the lead singer. So anyway,
we had a nice little band. We had basically the band.
We didn't have a guitar player. We it was kind

(45:19):
of we would rent a guitar player, but we didn't
really have anybody serious on guitar. Right, So anyway, we
go and do the gig. The gig was cool. Somebody
from Switch stole some some of our shoes. Really yeah,
yeah exactly, So anyway, but it was cool. So at

(45:39):
that point I pretty much was in that. So anyway,
so the band was set except we didn't have a
guitar player. So we started gig and started doing our thing.
Our reputation was basically that we were the we were
the best band in Minnesota. So we you know, we
would other bands agree with you, well, yes, they would actually,
interestingly enough, because what happened was so this is the

(46:02):
Jesse Johnson piece. So Jesse had Jesse had moved to Minneapolis,
or actually had come to Minneapolis because he heard Prince
was looking for a guitar player. But he was mistaken
because he was actually looking for a bass player. He
was looking for somebody and he ended up getting brown Mark.
But he but Prince met him, and Prince, you know,

(46:23):
like Jesse, and he said, he told Jesse, he said,
you should, you should stay in town and and you know,
get in one of the bands up here and just
you know, stick around. So Jesse went to Morris's band,
which was called Enterprise Band and Pleasure. So Morris, interestingly enough,
was the drummer in that band, not the lead singer,

(46:44):
and a girl named Sue Anne Carwell was the lead singer.
Sue Anne Carwell was amazing, amazing singer. Prince di It's
a lot of stuff with her back in the day too. Yeah,
I mean she was. She was an amazing singer. Interesting enough,
little side note, Morris did come up and sing one

(47:05):
song every night. He got off the drums and Suana
actually went back and played the drums. Oh, they traded,
they traded switch and and the song was ironically too Hot,
like cool the game, cool the game. Oh, okay, okay, okay.
So mister Coole sang too Hot, so and so, and

(47:26):
he sang it really good. That was the funny thing.
And if you think about it, that's a really tough
song to sing. There's a lot of different intervals and
it's crazy. If you ever watch people try to sing
that song. It's tough. A bridge is tough. No, it's
think about it. You gotta hit all the not Yeah,
it's a lot of and then it goes to the
change and then you know it's a lot. Anyway, he

(47:49):
used to hit it flawlessly every night. Right. So, anyway,
everybody kept telling us about this guitar player. You know,
they come to our gigs and they'd be like, man,
you checked out Morris and Nim's guitar player, And we
were like no, he said, man, they got this guitar player. Man.
He wears pink suits. It does like ten minute guitar solos. Man.
You got to check him out and we were like, okay, cool.
So we had a night off, we went over and

(48:11):
checked him out. He was exactly as advertised, right. So
afterwards we went up two women. We said, hey, man,
you need to come join our band. You need to
come watch us. You know, nothing against Morris, but you
need to come to our band. So he said, okay, cool.
So the next weekend he came here. Well, I mean,

(48:32):
you know, because I mean there's no I mean it
is all word of mouth and the fighting words then
taking money out of my mouth. Well there's no social
I mean there's no social media. So I mean it's
all just kind of word of mouth. Somebody hears something,
they tell the next person, they tell the next person,
so on and so far that's what it was. And
so anyway, yeah, so you know, he came over, checked
our band out and we were good. Right. So he

(48:55):
went back to Morris and he said, yo, Morris, he said,
you know, no offense man, but you know I'm going
to join a flight time. Man. They're like really good.
And when Mori said, actually kind of surprised. Well, it
surprised us when he told us he said, he said,
and Morris said, yeah, that's cool, Jesse, because pretty soon

(49:15):
we're all going to be one band anyway.

Speaker 6 (49:17):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
And we didn't know what that meant. We were like,
what's the time I wrong going to be one band?
That doesn't make any sense? Okay. So, as the story goes,
Prince when he was doing the Dirty Mind album, right,
and of course the first couple of albums he did
were more R and B records with some rock stuff
on it, but Dirty Mind was a whole different departure.

(49:39):
Warner Brothers was scared of Dirty Mind because they didn't
hear any like funky hits on there. Uptown sort of
in that. But they wanted another song. They said, we
need another funky song on the record. Right, So Morris
actually wrote Party Up, but Prince took the credit for it.

(50:02):
But he owed Morris a favor and he told Morris,
if you put a band together, I'll get your record deal.
So Morris came over to our band and said, Prince said,
if I put a band together, he'll give it, get it,
get us a record deal. So y'all just be the band,
and now we'll go get a record deal. And that's
how Morse ended up in the band. But that's not

(50:25):
the end of the store.

Speaker 5 (50:26):
I was gonna say so because he didn't want to
sing initially.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
Right, Alex. So we had two dilemmas. One was well,
actually it wasn't the We actually had one dilemma because
Alexander O'Neil was the lead singer of the group. Was
he a good lead singer? Singer at that time? Alexandro amazing.
Never would sing the same lyrics. Twice we had a

(50:53):
song called I remember, we had a song called march Wright.
There was an original song and every gig he'd sing
different lyrics. He just would just make up lyrics as
he went along. The course would always be the same,
but the actual lyrics he would sing were always different.
And he did that a lot because he never showed
up the rehearsals and he never you know, he didn't
really care, but he no, he could pull it off.

(51:13):
He was alex was amazing. So anyway, our big dilemma was, well,
if Morris is the drummer, what happens to Jellybee? Do
we have two drummers? Jelly Bean was good on guitar,
but not at the point where we could make him
into a guitar player. So he was kind of like
gonna be the odd man out and it was almost like, Wow,

(51:35):
who's going to break the news to Bean? And oh really?
Oh yeah, so we were at that point. Well, so
Prince called a dinner at Perkins Cake and Steakhouse, which
is sort of like the equivalent of Denny's but better.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
No, it's still there. I would still I went to
that Perkins. Yep, my first night at Paisley. Yep, it's
still there. Right, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
So anyway, we sit down and we're all going to
have dinner basically, and Prince is gonna kind of lay
out the game plan and what we're gonna do. Right,
So Alexander O'Neil's there. Now. The first thing to say
about Alex is Alex always speaks in the third person,
like a football player. Yeah. So so Alex, now he know,

(52:26):
he goes into his before now we've we've ordered food, right,
and of course Prince is buying. So Alex orders a
big steak and he orders all this food, right, So
Alex goes, Okay, Prince before we get started, because he
had a little lisp, right, so he would have go, okay,
Prince before we get started and things like that that
you know, I had a few things I just want

(52:47):
to get off my chest. There we go, and and
we're all like looking at Alex like what are you doing? Man?
And He's like, so, you know, here's the thing. So now,
alexand o Neil, you know, first of all, adaxon on
Neil need you know, I need to new house. I needed,
I need a new call. You know, I need I
need a pulling things. You know, als down on Neil,
you know, yeah, I need a pulling things. You know,

(53:08):
gud is down on Neil needs you know, I just
need some things. You know. I know this this whole
record thing is real cute and all that stuff that,
but this, you know, Alex thatann o' neil needs some things.
You know what I'm saying, Prince. You know, so this
is all cute and everything, you know, but I'm just
letting you know that, you know, before we get started.
You know, this is and and as he's talking, everybody's
kicking each other under the table and nudging everybody like
what the heck is this dude doing. We ain't even

(53:29):
got the deals. Ain't sot, Louen sign condoe, ain't nothing.
It's like, you know, So, as he's talking and I
see this, and if we ever do our movie we
want to do, it's like a movie. Alex the waiter
comes and as Alex is finishing his tirade, puts this

(53:52):
big steak down in front of him, and Alex goes
right on, cue Princess. So just the way I see it.
So I'm gonna go ahead and throw down a see
a steak right here. So Prince and Morris look at

(54:14):
each other and get up and leave the restaurant. Yeah,
they're gone. So now we're like, going, he's gonna pay
for this. This is not right. Yeah yeah. So we're like, okay,
this is not good. So anyway, I don't even know.
We were like, dude, what are you What are you

(54:35):
doing here? Man? What are you doing?

Speaker 6 (54:37):
Now?

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Like, well, man, I'm you know, I'm just you know,
trying to point out a few things. You know, people
think you know, because I'm telling you, man, you know,
he's the way it is without that O'Neill. You know,
if there's a bear in the woods in Alexander, Neil,
you better help the beard because you don't got to
help Alexand and by the way, we have a publishing

(54:58):
company called Help the Bear. Wow. And that's why because
that was Alex's that was alexix line. So, needless to say,
we just thought everything was done. And I can't remember
whether So Terry got a phone call and I can't
remember whether it was from Morris or from Prince. I
think it might have been from Prince and he just
said because it was just it was a very short thing.

(55:21):
It was. It was basically lose the Bear. Yeah, it
was like Alexander or Neil is out, Morris Day is
the lead singer, Jelly Bren Johnson is the drummer. Meet
tomorrow at nine o'clock at such and such and such
at the YASM to rehearse. And that was it, and

(55:44):
Alex was done. Bean was the drummer, Morris was somebody
told him. I don't know who told him, but yeah,
he got the word. But I need to know the
story of the next time you saw Alex. So was
Alex cool with this? Of course? Not? Well? Yeah, because yeah,
because you know, held the band because we don't need help. No,

(56:07):
But I remember what our conversation with the conversation I
remember having with Alex after that was just one where
we said to him, hey, man, if we make it,
meaning me and me and Terry had this conversation with him.
We just said, man, when we make it, we're coming
back and getting you. And that was it.

Speaker 7 (56:23):
And see, Bill, it works out, no, because we we
you know, it just you know, we felt bad and
we felt like, you know, we didn't know the way
things were going to work out, that.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
We'd actually have an opportunity to do that and come
back and grab him. But we did the way things
worked out. But but now we just kind of felt
like that, and you know, and then at that point
we were we were off and running and Alex was
just you know, still gigging locally and everything, you know.
But yeah, he talked himself right out of that and
we did one song with Alex, actually recorded one song

(56:56):
called you. It was called you. Yeah, he was called
you would be Mine. Wow it sounded vague, yeah, exactly, yeah,
it was. It was ironic.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
But so once you guys started rehearsing, uh, well, yeah,
talk about that process, like how often would you guys rehearse.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
And every single day? Every single day? Now here's the thing. Now,
the album was already done. I mean Morrison Prince had
already done the Time album. We didn't play on the
Time album a lick.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
So you were given, we were record the cassette, were given,
given the cassette and six songs could learn learn these songs?

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Six songs.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
You also did the what's the to the beat song?
The oh no no, no, no oh oh, dance to the beat,
Dance to beat dance, So there were extra songs too, correct.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Yeah, but we never recorded dance to the Beat. I
don't think. I think we just played it live. I
don't think we ever recorded it. If it was recorded,
it was live for records.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
It was it only expected of you guys to just
do a half hour no matter what, or because I'm like,
if you're doing having a show's material usually if people
do cover songs, have a forty five minute show ready
or hour show ready.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
Well, when we went okay, so when we went out initially,
so when we were rehearsed and actually there's one piece
of the rehearsal, I got it, I got it, or
two actually rehearsal stories I'll relate to you while we're
on the rehearsals because we're rehearsing at the YASM and
the ASTHM, as it turns out, was owned by this
guy named Leonard Weaver was his name, right, Old Cat,

(58:29):
old black Cat. And he had this bar, and in
the bar were these juice machines. One was lemonade and
one was fruit punch. And he also had these lamps.
It was like a lounge and he had these lamps
and they were naked women basically with a lamp shade
on top of it. Right. So when we started rehearsing,

(58:50):
Leonard said he had two rules. He said, y'all stay
out of my juice machine and y'all don't touch my
titty LAMPSA it's Italian, so tidy lamb. So we said, okay, cool,

(59:14):
we got you man. We're not gonna mess when we
got it. So we started rehearsing. We rehearsing every day
at this point. So I remember, you know the whole thing. Now,
Jerome at this point was not in the group. Jerome
was a roadie, right, and I remember we had gone
and done a couple of gigs and Jerome had to

(59:36):
like ride in the truck with the equipment with this
gap tooth British guy, you know, with the British teeth.
Jerome helped me, you know, load the abs, and you know,
it was like all this and Jerome was just like
so pissed off, like you know whatever, but he's you know,
he's going along with it, right, So he's trying to
figure out, man, how can I get a gig in

(59:58):
this thing, you know, you know something. And Terry's trying
to figure it out too, because that's his you know,
Jerome's Terry's brothers, right, So we're trying to figure this out.
So anyway, we're rehearsing and in the stick Morris sings,
somebody bring me a mirror. Right. So on the walls
of the yasm are these big mirrors, right, but not

(01:00:18):
like little mirrors, but I'm talking about big body, full
body mirrors. Right. So Prince is at the rehearsal and
he's watching us rehearse, and Morris says, somebody bring me
a mirror, and out of the blue, Jerome goes and
grabs a mirror off the wall, puts it in front
of Morris. Morris turns around, looks at it kind of

(01:00:39):
like started like oh, and pulls out his comb and
starts combing his hair. Prince falls on the floor.

Speaker 7 (01:00:49):
Like he's like, ah, we gotta do that, we gotta
do that, we gotta do that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
And Jerome was no longer a roady. So that's how
that's how he went from being the roady to be
in the valet. It was simple as that. And that happened.
And every night we'd go into the bar and drink
the juice out of the juice machine, but then we'd
pour water into it so it would look like nothing

(01:01:16):
happened because every time. So Leonard would walk in every
day and he'd come in and he'd look and make
sure everything was cool. And then one day we were
playing around and we broke one of the titty lamps. Oh,
and so we like turned it around and tried to
kind of glue it and try to whatever. And I
swear to God, he walked in and he looked and
he said, who's been in my juice machine? Because it's

(01:01:39):
because it's because it's all like light colored now, like
brother's trying to be slick, but it ain't working right,
so it's all like that. And then he looks and
he's like looking at it all of us, He said,
who was in my juice machine and we're like going, oh,
we don't know, but it was Jesse was who it was.
So anyway, we were like, no, we don't know, we
don't really know. So he was like looking around who lamp?

(01:02:03):
And it's like he can he see that? He's like
a one hundred feet away from the Teddy lamb? How
does he know they lamp was broke? It was crazy.
It was crazy times, man, But it was like the
whole formation of us as a unit. That was the
back drop of it. And it was the reason we
were so tight, not only as musicians but just as

(01:02:24):
people because we already grew up as friends anyway, but
that those experiences just totally solidified everything that we were doing.
And then we would play at night, like like we
would rehearse during the day and then at night Weaver
would open the place up, charge people and we play songs,
not you know, when we do a couple of covers,
but mostly it just be our stuff. People didn't know
what the heck we were singing, but they just liked it.

(01:02:46):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
It was just like a place to go and hang out. Okay,
this is what I gotta know now. More than anything
you guys had this image that was just as important
and prevalent as the music was. And how did you

(01:03:09):
guys actually care for like, did Mars have ten versions
of that gold jacket? Did you haves?

Speaker 4 (01:03:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
Exactly, because the thing is that what I knew about
touring is every show I do, it's drenched?

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Are you?

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
But I know that it's required that you guys you
know it. Do you guys have a wardrobe person that
runs shited to the cleaners and stuff? Because I feel
like and did you have to look that way? Twenty
four to seven?

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
Okay, well, yeah, so the wardrobe really was based on
the way we dressed anyway, you guys always as a
matter of fact, as a matter of fact, you're looking
at it. You're looking at it right now. But I'm
going to show you picture of Terry. You can't see
this on the air, but this is Terry Lewis at
like fourteen fifteen years old? Wowar draftage? Yeah, and he's

(01:04:12):
got and he's got and he painted this base red,
black and green. This is the base when I met Terry,
he painted his you know, so he was afrocentric in
the whole thing, that's right. So when people talk about
the way we looked. I mean that that goes from
you know, back in that day. I mean we we
we used to take because the three stores, we couldn't

(01:04:32):
afford to dress. We wanted to dress nice, but we
couldn't afford it. But you could go to a thirst
store and get a suit for ten bucks, right, and
get a hat and whole thing. So we were always
rocking that style and Prince just enhanced it. Now Morris
is stuff the press we called it the pressley, the
jacket that he had on the first two album covers.
There was only one. Yeah, there was only one that

(01:04:52):
was it the pressley, And yeah, we kept it dry.
You know. That was part of Jerome's job. By the way,
he was the real valet for the group. He'd call
everybody and say, you know, have your dry cleaning ready
to go, you know, if we'd be at a hotel
or that kind of thing. But yeah, all of our
stuff was thrift shop stuff. And it was interesting because
the first tour we did, I remember, we would go
to thrift shops and we would clean up. Second tour

(01:05:14):
we did, they were all out of stuff. Because people
caught on and doing it. Yeah, it could totally caught on,
so it was interesting. But yeah, no, that was the thing, man,
We just that was always kind of our style anyway.
You guys weren't quite of age, but.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
Like that that look when they came out in nineteen
eighty one. I mean that's the first time I think,
like we were all big in our moms like, yo,
take us to the thrift store.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
Word you would never hear duran. I was wondering if
that was cool to y'all because that's like the dog I.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
Mean, they talked about baggies and then like and you know,
my mom be like I can baggies.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
I can get you some bags. It's like two dollars
at the thrift store. And it was like the thrift store.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
Yeah, well for as I frowned on it, but like
because my cousins were more like in the street, you know,
like b boy and just came out and sergery of
valent All the drug dealer shit. Right, But when oh
my goodness, like all of sixth grade, all I wore
were just baggies and my parents couldn't be more pleased

(01:06:21):
on like twenty pairs of pants, you know what I mean. Yeah,
So so you guys just naturally look like gangster.

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
We just naturally, Yeah, we just naturally did it, and
and we just kind of fell into it. And we
also liked the whole idea, the whole cool aspect. We
liked anyway, because it was about respecting yourself and it
was about you know, dressing well and having class and that.
And we liked the idea of that. I mean we
enhanced it, and Prince enhanced it. I mean he he
took it to a whole other level. And yes, he

(01:06:51):
wanted us to always look the part he hated the
idea of because we used to talk about it back
in the day when we first started to touring and stuff.
We would go out like with Cameo, you know, and
Cameo would have, you know, the glitter suits on and
the whole thing, and and Prince always kind of frowned
on it. He just said, no, he said, you should
look the way you look, you know, and nobody should

(01:07:13):
see you looking unlike yourself what they expect to see you.
Even to the point where I remember with Morris, I mean,
by the second tour, we were holding that pressley together
with tape literally, I mean it was just like that
thing was about ready to fall apart, and I remember
Morris kept saying, Prince, can I get a new jacket?

(01:07:34):
I need a new Presley And Prince was like, no,
that's what people expect to see you in, and that's
the way you need to look. He was very much
into that, right, And I remember about halfway through that
tour and we were kicking his ass pretty good every
night at that point. We know, yeah, and I remember
they at one point in time, I remember the management

(01:07:56):
came to us and said, we're gonna put you guys
out on your own, on your own tour because Prince
didn't let us play. You have to now think about
once again, no media, no social media. Right, So everything
that you got you read right. It was a newspaper thing. Right.
The two biggest markets obviously were La and New York. Right,

(01:08:17):
those two markets. We didn't play with Prince. We didn't
open with him, right, So he did Madison Square Garden
or whatever it was. We didn't play, but we played
for Vanity six. So we were in the building, right,
which to this day is the thing you're probably pisss
Jellybean off the most of anything. Man. All our friends
are out there, man, we're in the building and stuff
and we can't even play. I was like, he used

(01:08:38):
to get so mad. Same with the Forum in LA.
Never played the Forum in LA. We played Long Beach Arena,
and we played I think Nasau Coliseum or something in
New York. But we never got to play those shows
because the reviews were all like, yeah, Prince was great,
that was great, but you got to see the time,
you know, and he didn't want that. So that was

(01:08:59):
the thing. Replayed those markets. So after we saw that
happen and we were kind of like, okay, So the
management's like, you know, we're gonna put you on your
own tour, and I think it was gonna be Evelyn
Champagne King and Shallamar or somebody like that, right, So
we were like, okay, cool, great, we'll do our own tour.
That's cool. So then they changed their mind and they
said so by this point in time, so Morris said, well,

(01:09:21):
if we're doing our own tour, I'm getting me a
new Presley. So Morris orders this new Presley, right, And
I remember Prince used to sometimes come in our dressing
room because after we do the Vanity six set, we
would they in the old at the beginning, they would
give us like fifteen minutes to change, right, So we
would come out and do the Vanity six set, and

(01:09:42):
then we go back in the dress room, hang out
for a little bit, and then we come back out.
Sometimes we'd actually be dressed, but we put on like
capes or we put on something stupid, so people set
the people on the side, Yeah, so they couldn't see
who we were, right, So, but it was great because
we were so warmed up. It was like our sounds
play it for Vanity six. So it even made us better, right,

(01:10:04):
And then it got to the point where he wouldn't
even give us enough time to change or anything. We
really started killing him then because we were all warmed up,
and it was like Jellybean, like the longer he played,
the better he got. He was one of those kind
of drummers, so it was all working against him. So
I remember we had kind of lattached him in about
three or four gigs in a row. So anyway, he
comes into the dressing room and we were really kind

(01:10:25):
of feeling ourselves at that point in time, and he
comes into the dressing room and he goes and nobody's
really reacting to him, and he just kind of goes
what are you guys doing? And Morris says, got something
to show you, Prince, And so Jerome goes and brings

(01:10:46):
out this wardrobe thing and unzips it and Morris like
flips it and the thing comes off and he goes,
I got a new Presley. Prince literally goes, ah, I

(01:11:07):
created a monster and ran out of the room. Swear
to God, Swear to God. He did, he created a monster.
He did.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
It's like, yeah, what were those Okay? So I know
by the time that what time is it came out,
you guys were and maybe assuming a better place. But

(01:11:40):
in the very beginning the first album, were you guys
like I just want to know what a working class
musician was into and doing between eighty one and eighty two, Like,
were you guys driving yourself to the gigs? Like I
don't know if you read Maurice whites autobiography, but I'm

(01:12:02):
shocked that even up until Spirit they were like driving
themselves to the gigs.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
They would, you know, station wagons to the gigs and
that stuff. Well, we did. We definitely did the station
wagon thing, There's no doubt about that. We did, but
not by the time, by the time we were actually
touring with Prince. No, we had a tour bus, and
you know we were making our little one hundred and
fifty dollars a week after they a week.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
Yeah, what is what is a working class musician make
in eighty one on that tour? Like, were you guys
at the top level or no?

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
We were, No, we were well below the top level
because we we were like I say, we would get
one hundred and fifty dollars a week in a in
a check and for that it was in mind per
dim Yeah. Well and we get per diem too, so
I guess it would add up to two fifty a week.
So that if that changes anything. I mean, my my
check after taxes was one hundred and seventeen dollars. I
still have, I think my check stub, you know, my

(01:13:00):
check stub. But no, we were going broke and it
probably you know, for me at the time, I was
living at home anyway, so I hadn't moved out, and
I didn't have any kids. I didn't have any responsibility.
It was really tough on Terry because Terry not only
Terry drove a school bus, you know, and and was
making really good money doing that, but also because when

(01:13:22):
we were gigging his flight time and we're like I say,
we were like doing our own gigs and do outing,
and yeah, we were doing really well. I mean as
a bad I mean Terry took a huge pay cut,
probably the biggest out of anybody had a young son
at that point in a house. I mean, Terry was
always very like responsible from like an early age, like

(01:13:42):
he was already living his he was like an adult
at an early age. So for him, yeah, it hit
him really bad, Like it messed his credit up. You know,
it messed him out. Crap. Oh, yeah, it totally messed it,
totally messed him up. And and even I remember the
second year we had an ultimatum, like it was in
I think it was Sandie. I think we were in
San Diego and uh, we had we were all sharing

(01:14:07):
rooms at that point in time except for except for Morris,
and I remember Terry said, man, we got two gold albums.
They had bumped us up to two fifty a week
and then Vanity and yeah, Vanity six was giving us
another one hundred a week or something like that at
plus per diem. So everybody was saving their for deem

(01:14:27):
to buy a VCR or whatever I mean, you know,
that was the hot thing back in that day, was
save up for a VCR. Right. But we but everybody
was getting you know, at that point in time, he
getting on everybody's getting on everybody's nerves. So it was like,
you know, Terry said, man, we need our own rooms.
So he went to management at the time, and there
was this lady named Jamie Shoop, and Jamie shop was
like she was our tour manager, not Allen. No, okay,

(01:14:48):
Ali came along after us after Yeah. Yeah. So Jamie
was amazing. Uh took great care of us. She I
mean as best she could. I mean, because it was
it was Prince's thing. I mean, there was no doubt
about Prince ran it. But she looked out for us
the best you can. And she said, listen, she said,
if you guys should have your own rooms, I'll advocate

(01:15:11):
for that. Let's have a meeting whatever. So we told
everybody here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a
meeting in San Diego, and we're basically going to say
if we don't get rooms, we're quitting the tour. That's
the thing right now. Jesse, for some reason, we said,
don't tell anybody, but Jesse for some reason went behind

(01:15:33):
our backs and told management or told Prince or told somebody.
So when we got everybody in this room, we thought,
you know, we had the upper hand. We're gonna spring
this on them. We walked into the room and Prince
was like, so you guys are going to boycott. Huh,
We're like going. We like all looked at each other.
Then we all looked at Jesse, and Jesse's like, what,

(01:15:55):
you know whatever, We're like, okay. So Terry at that
point was just like, you know, listen, dude, He said,
I can't. You know, I can't. I got a I
got a kid, I got you know whatever, whatever. I can't.
You know, I can't do this. And I remember Prince said,
he said to Terry, rock stars shouldn't have kids. Wow,

(01:16:17):
never forget that. I'll never forget that to this day.
And uh, anyway, so Terry, so Terry walked up. Terry said,
Terry said quit. Terry said, Terry said, I remember going
into it. He said, I'm always gonna have enough money
to get a bus ticket. If i can do nothing else,
I'm gonna have enough money to get a bus ticket

(01:16:39):
to go home. And so he had his you know,
fifty dollars or whatever the heck a bus ticket was.
He had it, and he said, that's it. I'm out
of here. Well, of course, Jamie came to the rescue
and talked to Prince and said, Prince, come on, these guys,
you know, they can have their own rooms. It's what's
not what's the big deal. It's you know, it's three
more rooms a night. What's the big deal? And anyway,

(01:17:00):
Prince was so Princell said, okay, fine, they got it.
But if it wouldn't have been for Terry doing that, right,
because because for Terry it was serious. It wasn't like
a you know, a grandstanding type thing or anything. It
was like serious, like Terry, Terry had real life and
real responsibilities.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
And for nineteen eighty two, what would have been fair
market share for what, you know, what tickets were back then,
what the gross was for these shows? And I know
everyone's on this tour, so I know it's vanity, and
yeah there are people and you guys and your people

(01:17:37):
and the revolution and printing his people, I'm sure the
staff and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
What is fair for that time period? Honestly? Quest So
I don't know, I don't really know. It wasn't that
because you know, we were and tour support wasn't a
thing like Mo Austin and those guys weren't like I
think Warner Brothers. Yeah, I think Warner Brothers definitely at
the tour. I mean because all three records were all

(01:18:02):
Warner Brothers records. I mean, you couldn't actually have a
better situation, right, you know, they were all records. But
the other thing was we weren't making any We never
made any royalties on the time records. All we made
was the salary, so it wasn't like it was an
advance against royalties. And remember back in those days, if
you had a gold record, you were doing pretty well

(01:18:24):
because you know, the money flowed. I mean, the royalties
were pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
So when they were open a budget that wasn't split
with you guys, like it was just like we just
paid regular salary.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Just played a regular salary. We never we never were
royalty artists individually. Morris was, but the rest of us weren't.

Speaker 1 (01:18:42):
Was there a big difference between you guys and the
Revolution when it came to that, Like financially.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
I never knew what the Revolution made quite honestly, I
never did. We never, we never really dealt with it.
I'm sure they were making more than us, you know,
but so what point does.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
The idea of moonlighting even coming to your you know,
your brain, like and it's moonlighting and thing like we
need to make our own money and get our own
publishing or just like no, hey, we want to express ourselves.

Speaker 2 (01:19:16):
Yes, yeah, No, it wasn't. It wasn't a money thing ever.
It was so so the way that went down was Terry.
Once again, Terry, And if I don't say it enough
during this interview, thank God for Terry Lewis. I mean,
I swear to God that brother in my life has

(01:19:37):
just been a godsend in every possible way. And but
Terry said, I can't remember where we were at. I
want to. First I was thinking it was Houston, but
it wasn't Houston, but it was somewhere and we were
kind of ending up. The tour was kind of beginning
to end up, and we were and Terry said, I'm

(01:19:58):
going to go to La the tour and everybody was like,
what you going to do in La t and he said,
he said, man, he said, I'm just gonna make some
demos and try to get some songs placed and just
do some stuff. And everybody was like why, and he said,
because they need us out there, and everybody said, man,

(01:20:21):
you're crazy, and so Terry said, well, who wants to go?
Somebody want to come with me? And everybody's like, man, no, man,
I'm saving up from my VCR man. And literally that's
what everybody said. And I looked at Terry and I said,
well I'll go. Terry said okay, and I said, but
where are we going to stay? He said, I don't know,

(01:20:41):
We'll figure it out. Said where are we going to
get equipment from? I don't know, We're going to figure
it out. I said, where were we going to get
a car from? I don't know. We'll figure it out.
And I trusted that brother because that was the brother
that when the girl broke up with me and when
I was a drummer and he told me I needed
to be a keyboard player, got me into the band.

(01:21:02):
And I just trusted because he because he had made
decisions before and twisted my arm to do things. And
I'm like, I'm not gonna he doesn't need to twist
my arm on this one. I'm gonna go on faith
on this one. And so when the tour ended, we
went to La Uh. Terry sold his car, I think,

(01:21:22):
if I'm not mistaken, we bought some Viking ship. We
bought uh. We bought you know, in the classifieds. We
bought a task cam, a little four track tape, a
little microphone. I had this little Cassio keyboard with a

(01:21:42):
little drum machine built into it. He had his base,
and there were some people we knew from Minneapolis that
had a house that they were renting a house out there,
and they had one bedroom in the house and it
was smaller probably in this little area we're sitting there.
We had enough room to put two cots in there,
and that's where me and Terry bunked. We didn't have
a car, so we would walk to there was a California. Yeah,

(01:22:04):
but we're in the eighties. In the eighties. Well, here's
the funny thing, though. The only places we went because
we'd do our demos at home, right, So we'd do
our demos at the crib. So we'd sit at the
crib all day. They'd go to work, the people who
we were staying with, and we'd all day be in
like the bathroom and stuff to get reverb and stuff
and be making our little demos and stuff. And then

(01:22:24):
we would walk. There was a place called Golden Bird
Chicken that was on los Enega Avenue. Best chicken ever
to me, and you could get a four piece for
two ninety nine. Because we didn't have any money, so
we'd go get the two piece, the four piece rather
for two ninety nine. That was our one meal of
the day. And then when the people got home at night,
they'd all make milkshakes or whatever, so we'd have a

(01:22:45):
milkshake at night. And that was That was basically the
way we lived. And it was funny because oh and
we didn't have any clothes. We had our time clothes,
so like we're in ninety degree weather, but we got
these suits. And the police used to the police used
to stop us. Right, we just be walking and the
police would stop us and they go, uh, everything okay, gentlemen,
and we go like, yeah, everything's good, and they'd look

(01:23:07):
at us and they go, you're not from here, are you.
We'd be like no, how could you tell, you know?
But they never messed with us really, and it was
cool and that was kind of our thing. And then eventually,
you know, we hooked up with some girls that had cars,
you know, right, I found a girl that had a Porsche.
It was cool, you know, So we figured it out.
But that was what we were doing. And of course
the word back in Minneapolis is that we were out

(01:23:28):
there starving to death, and you know, we're starving to
death and they're nuts and they're crazy, and you know,
that was kind of the thought process.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
How much downtime did you have because I figured, at
least until the time that you guys were dismissed, that
there was no downtime, like you're always rehearsing.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
We had, we had, Okay, so that was between so
the first tour was eighty one into eighty two. We
think we were done in April of eighty two. Ok
So we had between April and probably June or July
before we started rehearsing for the next tour and stuff.
So there was never sulation where he's like, where are
you guys? Oh yeah, no, that was good. That was

(01:24:10):
a good one. No, it definitely it definitely. It definitely turned.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
Into that were you guys given a general rule that
you weren't allowed to Like.

Speaker 2 (01:24:19):
Yes, it wasn't a general rule. It was a mandate.

Speaker 1 (01:24:22):
Basically, did mars enforce these rules or was it just
like Prince said, Zoe, this was Prince No, this was
Princes had This was not Morris.

Speaker 2 (01:24:31):
As a matter of fact, I really Moore said something
that rehearsal one day that was so for us, very
empowering and very enlightening. I don't know how everybody else
took it, but he said that this thing ain't gonna
last forever. Whoa And he said that I suggest everybody

(01:24:56):
figure out what it is that they want to do
out of this and start working towards it. He said,
I don't know what everybody else is doing. He said. Now,
he said, I'm taking acting lessons because he said, I
want to learn to actually, you know, do I want
to be I want to be able to act. I
want to be able to do stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:25:12):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:25:14):
Was this before, this is before purple ring? This is yeah,
this is this is going into the into the nineteen
ninety nine tour. Okay. So and he so he said that,
and then he said, uh, he said, you know, he
pointed in me and Terry and he said, Jimmy and
Terry producing records. He said, I don't know what the
rest of y'all are doing, but y'all need to figure

(01:25:35):
it out. So he knew, he knew, you know, he
knew what it was going to be. So that was
very encouraging to us. And well, Terry and I used
to do. I mean, we spent a lot of money
doing it, but and I have no idea where we
got the money from quite honestly now that I think
about it. But Prince used to we would rehearse during
the week, and we would we would rehearse, you know,

(01:25:58):
Monday through Friday or whatever. When we would get done Friday,
Terry and I would hop like the last flight to
LA and you know, we had booked a couple of
you know acts at that point in time. We were
doing a group called Reel to Reel for Leon Silvers.
We were doing Climax for Dick Griffy at Solar, so

(01:26:21):
we had a couple of things going right. So we
would fly and we do, you know, twenty four hour
lockout at the studio, right, which we didn't know. So
we do twenty four hour lockout, but then we would
work twenty four hours. We didn't know that. It just
meant that nobody could come into studio after you right,
So we drive the engineers. He'd be like, what time

(01:26:41):
do you think we're gonna end tonight? We said, we
got twenty four hour lockout. What are you talking about?
He was like, no, but that doesn't mean you were.
I said, no, we got it for twenty four hours.
We're working twenty four hours. Terry'd be asleep on the couch.
I'd be working that I fall asleep and Terry would
be working. Oh man, no, we were. I mean it's like,
come on, man, we're trying to get this done. So
that was the way we would work, and then we
would catch a plane back to be back in time

(01:27:03):
for Monday rehearsal. So Prince got wind of what we
were doing. Who snitched Jesse? And so all of a
sudden the rehearsals would start going longer and longer. Then

(01:27:24):
all of a sudden, there'd be a Saturday rehearsal, or
there would be are we are we rehearsal tonight? No,
and there's no rehearsal tonight. Okay, cool, We're gonna hop
a plane and then we're literally on our way to
the airport. Oh yeah, there's a rehearsal that kind of
thing would start happening. So it was a lot of roadblocks,
you know, kind of thrown in front of us at
that point. And yeah, out of that, So it was

(01:27:48):
it was an interesting time. But no, we were doing it.
We certainly weren't doing it for the money because we
weren't making any money. But we were doing it just
because we had a love of music and and we
didn't feel what we were doing sounded like the time,
because one of Prince's concerns was that, you know, don't
give away the time sound. And it's like, well, but
you all the time side, So what we're doing isn't

(01:28:09):
the time, I mean, you know, And so there was
a lot of that. I remember. We we got blamed
for Leon did just keep on loving me. Prince swore
we did that record. We said, Prince, we weren't even
in the studio when that record was done. We still
swear that we did that record, right. He told me
a story like you know, they're hid behind Leon Silvers,

(01:28:29):
but I know it was them, Like he still believes
that that's them. We didn't actually, matter of fact, it's
funny we heard that record. I think the first time
we heard that record was on the radio and we
loved it. I mean we were because we were Leon
Leon Silver's disciples man. We love Leon Silver's man, and
we heard that record and we were like, oh, hell yeah,
we love this. This is great and we're we never

(01:28:51):
heard it before, we weren't in the studio. I mean
he took how he approached you, like, listen to this. Well,
you know, it's funny because we did. When we did
we did a record called can You Treat Me Like
She Does? For Real to Real and a very obscure record.
But the demo of that song, Terry's playing the bass
very much like the time, and Leon always called it

(01:29:13):
the patent bass, like when you're patting something, because it's
really it's more of a percussive thing than actually playing notes,
so it's just boom. Terry calls it boogaloo bass, right.
So Leon always called it the patent patent bass, like
you're patting the bass. Right. So when we did the

(01:29:35):
demo of the record and Leon heard it, he says, oh,
he said, because he always scratched his beard and he
always talked like this, and he'd say, yeah, he said,
I like that. I like that record. He said we're
going to do that record on my group Real to
Real And we're like, okay, great, Leon cool, you know,
So we went in and did the track. So as
we're doing the track, Princess in our mind talking about

(01:29:57):
don't give away the time sounds so now so Terry
la is watering down the bass part now right, So
now Terry Terry's just gonna boom, you know, He's just
kind of doing like that. So we turned, you know,
we did the track and we said, okay, here you go, Leon,
and he goes what happened to the patent bass? And

(01:30:17):
we were like, no, that's the way we do it,
just just like that. No, I heard the shits on
the demo and he was patting the base different than
he's doing it. So either you guys can do the
pattern on the bass or I'll go in and do
it myself. And so we were like, oh, shaid, okay.
So we went in and I think I think Leon

(01:30:37):
Terry did kind of add a little bit to it,
but never wanted to give the whole thing away. But
I think Leon did go in and you know, put
a few little pats of his own there. But nah,
I mean, we really were conscious of that, of not,
we didn't want to give away the time sound and
I think and and by the way, when we were producers,
that was the same thing we did when we started producing.

(01:30:58):
We we would do one act and then the we'd
be like, no, we're going a whole different groove or
drum machines or keyboards or whatever to try to keep everybody.
You know, then, how did.

Speaker 1 (01:31:07):
You avoid the Dick Griffy pitfall? Because you guys could
easily been.

Speaker 2 (01:31:14):
Just still our house producers. Yep, did he pursue you
guys at all? Sort of the Well, the reason is
one man, Clarence Savon. Clarence Savon didn't allow that to happen. Now,
when we went to see Clarence, there was a lady
named Dina Andrews who was an A and R person

(01:31:35):
that sold our records. And she, pardon me, she was
the one that actually introduced us to Dick Griffy and
she also knew and and by the way, all of
these songs we were doing back then were all based
on one demo tape that we did at the house,
and and high Hopes was on their SOS band I
saw called when You're Far Away that we ended up
doing on Gladys Nye and the Pips a song called

(01:31:56):
the only one that we did on Dynasty, which was Leon's. Yeah,
I didn't know. As matter of fact, the keyboard on
there is that original little Cassio keyboard because because Leon said, man,
keep that keyboard sound just like you had it, I said, okay, damn.
So like literally climax we did for Dick Graphy real
to real we did not for I mean for Leon

(01:32:17):
Silver's yeah exactly, and so on and so forth. So anyway,
but all of these songs were all on that same
demo tape, and everybody just heard different songs they liked.
Dick heard, you know, wild Girls. Yeah he's heard wild
Girls and said, oh yeah, wold Girls. That wild Girls.
We like that. You know, he still a copy of
you know, Terry probably does. He probably does. I don't.

(01:32:39):
I don't have it, but I bet you he does
because he still got the four track you know that
we did all that stuff probably in his room somewhere.
Yeah he's got no, it's not here. It's not he's
got it at his house, but it's not here, but
he's got it definitely. But anyway, so that was that
was the whole thing. So everybody had their own different
kind of things that they liked. But what happened with
Clarence was Denia said, I'm gonna introduce you to to

(01:33:00):
Clarence Avan because Clarence said wanted us to do. We
had done High Hopes, but we didn't produce it. We
just wrote it right, So Clarence wanted to hear what
it would have sounded like if we produced it. So
we had the demo, so we, you know, Dina set
up a meeting. We went to meet him. Clarence called
us the two thugs because we walked in with, you know,
our hats and our suits and stuff, and he said,

(01:33:20):
who are you two thugs? You know? So anyway, he
listens to the he said, he said that High Hopes.
He said, I like that record, he says, you know,
and we said, well, Clarence, he said, it's cool, but
the way it came out, but you know, he said,
what's the difference in the demo? I said, we put
the chili sauce on the demo. He said, oh, you
did chili sauce. I like that. Okay, let's hear that
we put it in and he said, yeah, yeah, I

(01:33:41):
like that. I like that. He said, okay, so I
want you to do two songs on the next SOS
band record and we said okay, cool, yeah, we're down,
you know whatever. So he said okay, he said, but
here's the thing. He said, now y'all's manager is negotiating
your fee. And when he said that, our first thought
was oh, man, so we were like, okay, Clarence, well

(01:34:02):
we can you know, we can get the budget down, man,
you know, whatever you you know want to do. And
he said, get the budget down. She ain't asking enough money, y'all.
Y'all are worth more than that. And we were like, oh,
we was representing you at the time. Dina andrews, Okay, okay, yeah,
she was like our kind of de facto but she
but she worked for Solar but yeah, but she was

(01:34:22):
moonlight and I guess you could say, you know, representing
our affairs. And uh. She had also got introduced us
to a guy at Warner Brothers Publishing and I'm trying
to think of who it was or Warner Chapel, I
can't remember his name, who was going to give us
a publishing deal. Right, So Clarence had seen the publishing
deal and Clarence said, if y'all signed this publishing deal,

(01:34:48):
I'm never speaking to YouTube again day. And we were like, wow,
what's what's the problem with the with the deal Clarence?
And the deal was something like it was like, I
don't know one hundred and I don't know it, one
hundred and seventy thousand dollars for three years or something
like that, right, which at the time you thought, oh
my god, I'm like, are you kidding me? We'll take
us one hundred and fifty dollars a week. Yeah, right,
We're like, oh, come on, man, that's great, he says.

(01:35:11):
He said, Well, let me just break it down for you, gentlemen.
So he said, so you got one hundred and seventy
thousand dollars. So first of all, you know you're gonna
split that in half because there's two of y'all in
case you didn't understand that there's two of you. Okay,
So now maybe you have you know, eighty five thousand dollars.
Now Uncle Sam's gonna take his fifty percent. And now

(01:35:32):
you got forty thousand dollars and three years for forty thousand.
That's fifteen thousand dollars a year. What are you gonna
do with that? We're like, uh, well, he said, gentlemen,
he said, I guarantee you you first runty check will
be more than that total three year check. Mark my words.

(01:35:54):
And we said, okay, Clarence, we're cold, We're with it,
so we never will never signed a deal. Clarence gave
us the SOS band deal, and of course that led
to the ill fated recording session at Atlanta and Atlanta
that we all know about. So but that was the thing.
And and by the way, Clarence was absolutely right. Our
first royalty check was uh, probably right around that number,

(01:36:17):
just for I think just for the first like soos name,
so for one song. Yeah, what was that was?

Speaker 6 (01:36:24):
It?

Speaker 2 (01:36:24):
Just be good? Yeah? So he was right. So that's
how we didn't get into the Dick Griffy thing because
he didn't allow that to happen. He said. And the
other last little thing he told us when we met
with him, he said, think about this, gentleman, what are
you going to be doing seven years from now? And
we said, we I be making hits and he said, no, no, no, no,
he said, I don't mean that. He said, right now,

(01:36:46):
you got me, You got Barry Gordy got Lonnie Simmons,
You got Dick Griffy, right, you know where where the
guys are in the industry, who's going to be the
next us said, that's who you need to That's what
you need to stay looking at. You need to start
identifying talent and then helping them out. And he says,
if you ever come across somebody who you think is talented,

(01:37:09):
they're in a screwed up deal or whatever it is,
you introduce him to me. And we said, okay, And
you know who we met l A l A Read
in the deal yep, because he was in the deal
and he was and they had that in the contract
as nobody else did. They had that, They had that contract.
And we met him and knew him and face were

(01:37:31):
doing stuff together and he said, can you introduce me
to Clarence And we said absolutely. We called Clarence. We
said Clarence, we got somebody for you, just like you said,
and the rest is history there. So Clarence l then whisper,
yeah he is he absolutely is? He absolutely is?

Speaker 1 (01:37:49):
Well yeah, the first time, I I mean, I love
Sussex Records, but I didn't know that he was then.

Speaker 2 (01:37:57):
Ahead of it. Or even taboo.

Speaker 1 (01:38:00):
But yeah, I remember he was one of the first
people you thinked when you got your Grammy, your Producer
of the Year, Yes, for your Grammy.

Speaker 2 (01:38:10):
Yea.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
So how okay, I'm playing willfully ignorant here. The day
that you got fired, I mean, was that mid tour or.

Speaker 2 (01:38:20):
Did you that was between tours? So so what had
happened was of course obviously the whole snowstorm happened. We
missed the gig in San Antonio went to You're sitting
on the plane as no, the planes, they weren't letting
people on the plane. There was literally no I'm from Minnesota.
What time was the flight? Flight was like first thing
in the morning, like seven o'clock in the morning, like

(01:38:41):
just when even then, and think like maybe we rent
a car. We did think of that. We thought of
every possible scenario. We booked ourselves on any flight leaving.
We booked ourselves on it. You could do that in
those days. And literally we were booked on like ten
different flights and they all canceled, and they all canceled. Literally,
Then we thought, well, can we get the rent a

(01:39:03):
car back drive to an airport that's open. But once again,
now you're not dealing with it's not ways and you
know and and and Siri and what's the closest airports
that's opened, Sirie And it's none of that. You know,
you had none of those, you know, the ability to
do that. So but no, all of those possibilities. We
were like, take a flight to anywhere we can connect

(01:39:23):
and get to San Antonio. So we had the whole
day to figure it out. And so literally for eight hours.
And of course we're in the Atlanta airport. Everybody been
in the Atlanta airport. It was one of the first
airports with totally separate terminals for everything, where you had
to take the train to get to each terminal. We
were up and down on the train, up and down
like what's taken off? Anybody taken off? Anybody was It

(01:39:44):
was probably the worst day of my life, I would say,
because we had never missed a gig. I mean you
just as a musician, the show must go on. I
mean I remember Terry, there was a gig we had.
Terry had stitches and stuff and was bleeding and gotten
in a car accident, still showed up and do the gig.
You know. We actually we were opening for uh maybe

(01:40:04):
it was a cam it might have been a cameo
we were opening for or something. But he showed up.
I mean, he was like, where's Terry? Always at the hospital,
but he's on his way. It's like, okay, cool, you know,
it's like you just don't miss a gig man. So
that was crazy. But we figured out we were going
to miss it when we got into town. It was
really funny because I actually went to the club afterwards
and everybody was saying, oh, may y'all were great, y'all
were great. I felt so weird. I was like, I'm

(01:40:26):
going home, man, this is this is too weird. So
when we got back to LA we just figured, you know,
because we were still making our little check, a little paycheck, right,
so we got you know, we would go by the
accountant's office, and I figured we're going to go get
our last check, right. So we walked into the account's
office and everybody was like, hey, how you guys doing. Oh,
here's your checks. Okay, we'll see you next week. We
were like you will, okay, cool, all right, So we

(01:40:49):
took our check, right. So we did that for the
next couple of weeks, three weeks, you know, just went
in and got our check and whatever, and I'm like going,
I don't think they know we're fired. It's weird, you know.
So then we were at this Whispers concert. Did you
know you were fired? Though we were told we were fired. Okay, yeah,
we were told we were fired. Matter of fact, who
told you you? Rent? Prince told us, so he is confrontational.

(01:41:11):
It wasn't like give my management to tell you over
at a dinner too or something where like Prince and
Morris were sitting together. It wasn't. It wasn't a dinner.
It was what happened was and this is so damn
movie storybook time. Okay, we had, you know, we're ready
to mix the SOS band songs and we had ended

(01:41:33):
up doing just be good to me, but also did
tell me if you still care also in a subsequent session.
So we're like ready to go. We're like got the
time booked at Larabie Studios, right, and we're gonna mix
with Steve Hodge the way we know Steve Hodges from
looking at the liner notes, and it's like, okay, we
need Steve Hodge at Larabie. That's the combination that we
need right to mix the record. That's all. We didn't know,

(01:41:55):
but that's what we figured. So we got the time booked.
That day, we get a call from Prince meet me
at Sunset Sound at six thirty and we were like damn.
So we kind of looked at each other and we said, well,
we're supposed to be mixing the SOS bad record. Well
we got to go. We got to go to Sunset Sound.
I mean, it's like it was obvious to it was
no choice. It was like, no, the time is our priority,

(01:42:18):
you know, the SOS thing. We can wait and we'll
figure it out. So we went. When we pulled up,
the accountant was there, a guy named Fred Moultrie. He
was there, and we said, we're getting our we're getting fired.
Like we knew the jig was up, right, You instantly knew.
We just knew. We just knew that what So we said, hey,
what's up Fred? And Fred had this high voice and

(01:42:38):
he said, hey, guys, how you doing. Have a good session?
Y'all have a good session. We were like, okay, cool,
all right, well maybe not, you know. So we go
into this little room, kind of this little sitting room
right adjacent to the studio and myself, Terry Jesse, Morris,
and Prince, just the five of us, right, And Prince goes,

(01:43:01):
I told you guys not to produce other records, and
you did, so you're fired. And room went silent for
a minute. And then I got up and I said, okay, cool,
and I got up and walked out the door. So
Terry stayed in there for a little while, trying to

(01:43:22):
reason with him, like yeah, Terry was like, come on, mane,
well Terry. You know, Terry was great because here's the
one thing. First of all, Prince couldn't bullshit Terry ever.
You just he's just usually he's just not the cat
you do it with. And that's what Prince liked about
Terry so much. He knew he couldn't do you no, Oakie,

(01:43:43):
donk on him like like he would just tell him straight,
like Prince, you suck right now or you He would
just always say that yeah he could, yeah, oh absolutely,
Oh yeah. They used to get in, They used to
get in these five six hour conversations about stuff about
about life and religion and you name it. And and

(01:44:05):
because Prince would have all these philosophies and he'd do
all this stuff and it would be like and he talked,
and when he talked, man, he had this way of
kind of like it was like drinking the kool aid. Man.
It was like, right, no one ever challenged him morning,
nobody challenged him. And Terry would always go like, yeah, okay,
well that's what you think, but here's what I think,
and and would come right back at him. And I
think Prince always appreciated that with Terry, and Terry was

(01:44:28):
really the leader of the time. I mean, Morris was
the lead singer, but whenever there was a decision to
be made, Morris would always go, Terry, what do you think? Okay, right,
So Terry was that dude. So Terry, Yeah, So Terry
tried to reason with him a little bit and just
kind of go like, come on, man, why would you
why would you do that? We're not giving away the
sound like you say, we're doing you know so and so,

(01:44:49):
you know whatever. Anyway, about ten minutes later, Terry comes
out and he says, Okay, well, what do you want
to do now? And we looked at our watch. I
said with him, we got time, and yeah, we got
time at Larabie. Let's go to Larby and mixes. Right,
So we walk into Larabie and we had never even
met Steve Hodge before, and so we walk in and

(01:45:10):
he goes, you guys, Jimmy and Tarry, Yeah, he says,
I'm Steve and I said, hey, Steve, nice to meet you.
How you doing no good? And Steve goes, what's wrong
with you guys? And he said something wrong and we said,
we just got fired from the time, and he said.
Steve said hmm. He said, well, I'm gonna tell you something.
He said, you don't have much story about because this

(01:45:31):
record you guys got here. He said, this is a hit.
And he knew, he knew, he knew, and it was
that should be the end of the story. But it wasn't.
Oh okay, so because that was how that happened, of
course not. I'm telling you. We're still picking up our
little paychecks right every week, right right. So now we're

(01:45:52):
backstage at a Whispers concert. We run into Lee Bailey.
He's got this show called radio Radio. So so Lee
Bailey he's backstage and he walks up to me with
a microphone and he says, Lee Bailey, radioscope here, you're
fired from the time. What's the bottom line? And he
puts the mic in my face and yeah, right and right,
and I'm going, who are you Lee Bailey radioscope? I said,

(01:46:17):
I said, I know. I said, We're just here watching
the concert, man, but I heard you got fired. From
the time. I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. Man,
We're just here watching the concert, right, So I just
kept saying that. Right. A couple of days later, we
go to the accountant's office and we go, hey, guys,
and they go, we can't give you your checks. Guys.
We said, why not? I said, because you guys got fired.

(01:46:39):
And we laughed and we said, we got fired like
four or five weeks ago. Who told you we got fired?
It was just on the radio. He's still doing it.
He's still doing so. So then the epilogue, as we

(01:47:00):
call it, back from the Dan August Days. Anybody Dan
August fan, But he said, a Quinn Martin production anybody
ever watched Quinn Martin production shows? Okay, well I got some. Yeah,
I stopped it. Oh, I can't believe it. I can't
believe nobody in the room. Okay, So, Quinn Martin was
a production team did TV shows back in the day.

(01:47:21):
But Burt Reynolds was on a show called Dan August.
He was a detective. It was really good, great show. Anyway,
they would always say it would always say act one,
act two, Act three, and then at the end it
would always say epilogue, and it was always the wrap
up of the show. So the epilogue of the story
is Prince had jelly Bean called Terry. And as it

(01:47:50):
turned out, the reason that the accountant didn't know we
were fired is because we never were really fired. It
was a bluff and the idea was we were supposed
to fall flat on our faces and then beg for
our jobs about right. Well, unfortunately that didn't happen because
just be good to me came out unfortunately for who

(01:48:10):
and not for us. So anyway, just be good to me.
Everybody basically was felt like, okay, well this is a
this is a smash. Whoever did this? We're good, you know.
So Jellyban, So Prince decided divide and conquer. So he
called Jellyban and he said to Jellybean, get get Terry.
Lewis back and Terry said, and uh, Bean said, what

(01:48:33):
about what about Jimmy? And he said, no, just just Terry.
So jelly Bean jelly Bean called Terry and I'll never
forget this. We're in this We're in this little little
room and we had a little three bedroom apartment, uh,
with Dina, with Dina Andrews, I think, as a matter
of fact, at that point, and I remember Terry getting

(01:48:54):
a phone and going, hey, Bean, what's up. What are
y'all doing? And so Bean's telling them, Oh, yeah, we're
gonna do this movie, Purple Rain, and we're gonna do
this whole thing, and you know, blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah, and uh, Terry says yeah. He says, well,
he said what about Jimmy And he said, you don't
want Jimmy back? And Terry said, you every cuss word,

(01:49:16):
every like if he could climb through the phone and run.
Bean's knocking, and I was like, Terry, what's going on?
He says, no, no, you can't. I mean, he was
so pissed off. Anyway, I said to Terry, I said, man,
go do the movie. It's no big deal. I said,
I'm not going anywhere. I said, you know, make the
movie sounds fun, go ahead and do it and whatever.
He said, No, he'll no, he said, no, we in

(01:49:38):
this together. He said, if they're not going to do
that to us, you know, we're a team and you
know whatever. Yeah, so that was it.

Speaker 6 (01:49:46):
So that was it.

Speaker 2 (01:49:47):
So then and that's so, that's why we were out.
And then wait, wait, why are you looking at me?

Speaker 5 (01:49:51):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:49:51):
Why did you look at me?

Speaker 6 (01:49:53):
Mere?

Speaker 2 (01:49:53):
Because I felt you looking at me like you And
there are some words of wisdom coming from this.

Speaker 1 (01:50:00):
Worry about loyal.

Speaker 2 (01:50:01):
You're here with you for twenty years. You're here with
me now flashback. It took a long time, like this
was like another episode of tune in. She looks you
give me that you listen to this, you're with me.

Speaker 6 (01:50:25):
Okay, it's what I'm taped now.

Speaker 2 (01:50:26):
I just needed it. Thank you, I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:50:29):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:50:31):
I'm sorry. Bringing That's what we do here.

Speaker 1 (01:50:35):
That's what we do here.

Speaker 2 (01:50:36):
It's a public service.

Speaker 1 (01:50:37):
Yes, oh man. That's it for part one of our
conversations with Jimmy jim Thank you guys for tuning in.
And next week we got part two and that's when
Alexander returns, Jimmy and Terry helped Janet take control and
much more.

Speaker 2 (01:50:51):
Don't miss it.

Speaker 1 (01:50:53):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.