Questlove Supreme: Mic Murphy

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina. Man, you kidding me?

Speaker 1 (00:14):
And it starts right.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
I'm recording now, recording. Oh hell no, I ain't. Come on.

Speaker 4 (00:26):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of West Love Supreme.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
It was quest Love with me of course. Uh, Team
Supreme fon Tigelow in a new location.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Yeah, man, yeah, man came down to Charlotte.

Speaker 5 (00:42):
He gets working for a couple of days and yeah, bro, yo,
yo man, I had to I'm meant to tell you too.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
I think I may be joining you. I ain't going
as crazy as you going with.

Speaker 5 (00:53):
It, but I've drastically cut down my meat into.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
There you go bright like drastically. I still I mean,
I still do my fish.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
I love.

Speaker 5 (01:03):
I can eat fish like every day of the week,
and uh still do my you know, my chicken. I
do like you know chicken, but uh like beef or
like I think, yeah that.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
It might be wrapped. Bro, we might make it the seventies.

Speaker 6 (01:16):
Make sure you're replacing that iron. Just make sure you're
replacing that iron with something.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Man, I be drinking metal musle in the morning. I
feel old.

Speaker 5 (01:26):
Keep doing George Loe Man listen to keep that cholestero
all down.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Speaking of what's up sugar, Steve? How you making out?

Speaker 7 (01:35):
Oh my god, you're just talking about meat? Makes me
want a steak. You know, I don't know, I do
everything bad, so I might I might not make it
to seventy.

Speaker 8 (01:44):
But I love y'all, loveye, I'm everything's okay to be
with with everybody here and looking forward to great.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
Everyone's fine. You just you just recorded an album for
your label.

Speaker 7 (02:00):
We recorded, We recorded two full records in two days
for David Murray was one of the records and London,
a h Norwegian guitarist was another one. That's JMI Recordings
dot Com. Everybody.

Speaker 4 (02:17):
We we joke, we joke about Steve's new Fountain celebrity.
But Steve has definitely done a lot of pivot work
in the last few years, developing really just living in
his dream, like you know, recording and putting out is
you know, after you collect every jazz record, I guess.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
The next thing is you have to be start making
them start. Yeah, you're the new tailor, so that's right.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
You know.

Speaker 7 (02:41):
The label started right around when this podcast started, about
five years ago.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Five years old. You have a new background. You look
like you're on a tour bus right now.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
I'm not.

Speaker 6 (02:52):
I'm in my new spot, but.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
You just have tour bus curtains.

Speaker 9 (02:59):
Well, from this, this is way better than the paper
with the paper clip.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
You just it looks it kind of looks like a
tour bus.

Speaker 6 (03:08):
Okay.

Speaker 9 (03:10):
These are the factory blinds they gave me at the
new spot, and I'm real happy to be.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
At Okay, Well, you're making out everything's fine.

Speaker 9 (03:17):
Living good and the blackest and neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
Holly Louijash shout out to a Stelle who took me
around and showed me the good corner stores I am living.

Speaker 6 (03:25):
That's like, yeah, we'll just.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Be careful because a lot's going on in LA that.

Speaker 6 (03:30):
Is happening to very rich people, very rich people who have.

Speaker 9 (03:34):
Say that to me, Like, because everybody who tells me
to well, I'm being specific because people have said that
to me a lot out from outside of LA and
I don't think they understand that the people who are
getting robbed are not in my tax.

Speaker 6 (03:49):
It's like criminals just figured out rich people.

Speaker 4 (03:51):
Yeah, so that's what Well, Okay, let's hear everyone's moving
to a pivot where we now you know, now, let
me not even put that out there, lazy gentleman. I
will say that our guest today is the founding member
of probably one of the most legendary futuristic electric funk

(04:14):
duos professionally and better known as The System. What made
The System unique is the kind of space that they
occupied at a time period in which new ideas and
new concepts were happening in real time.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
And this is like the post.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
Disco Leroy Burgess era of boogie, in which it was
needed of a jolt. You know, It's like new wave
was sort of coming in for a lot of the
pop acts. And you know, of course, Prince finally had
control of the wheel and made the entire world take
notice of his vision, even made like Leon Silvers in
the West Coast take note of his vision. Meanwhile, I'll

(04:53):
say that in New York City, you know, club culture,
dance culture sort of reached a boil where hip hop
was slow creeping into We're dipping their toes in the water,
and you know, for the first time you're hearing songs
with a little harder edge to it, and R and
B and funk you know, acts were slowly dipping their
toes in the water using like futuristic synth sounds and

(05:15):
harder drum programming, and you know, and I feel that
that particular pocket is very influential.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Duo occupied.

Speaker 4 (05:25):
Let me just get it, get him out of the
way first, please, welcome to the cost Love Supreme Mike
Murphy of the System, Thank you, sir, Thank.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Your brother, thank you quest Love, thank you fam Wait.

Speaker 4 (05:36):
I wanted to know because you occupy there's there's a
very specific period of New York City that I'm unaware of.
Like we've had many guests that can sort of put
me down with what was happening in Los Angeles between
like seventy seven to eighty five. But for the first time,

(05:57):
I think we're really going to dive into what R
and B and what dance culture and what black music
in general was going through in between you know, nineteen
eighty eighty one, eighty two, eighty three or forty five
for those that weren't under the Purple Umbrella and for
those that weren't directly doing hip hop, like especially in

(06:17):
New York City.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
So you know, thank you for doing the show Man.
I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Brother.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
So you're you're speaking to us now from.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Where East Harlem, New York City?

Speaker 1 (06:30):
And okay, so you're still a Harlem resident?

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yes, yes, I am. Okay, but well I grew up
in Jamaica, Queen, so this I'm a I'm a twenty
year transplant of each Okay.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
Well, before we started taping, you were letting Fonte know
that you two are from the same hood.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
We're probably sorry.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
I'm born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Wow, yep, crazy Morgan'll the.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Cores, the Austin's, Yeah, we big, We rolled deep down there.

Speaker 5 (06:59):
That's so dope, some of them, I'm sure I do.
I went to Central, so I went to kind of Central,
so that was where I came from school. And then
and uh, Raleigh. I mean I've moved to Riley in
like five but been there ever since. But yeah, man,
it's you know, cool city. Real it's going up like
everywhere else, like the rent and all the property is

(07:19):
going nuts.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
But but it's it's a beautiful city. Man, That's what's up.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
How long did you live there before you moved to
New York?

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Oh? I was I moved up here when I was
a baby. But every summer, you know, how mom, do
you're gonna go down your uncle Jess. You're going to
your uncle Jesse's this summer. So I did that till
I was like thirteen fourteen. Once you finally was like
all right, okay, you know, because I started, you know,
playing in bands and stuff, and we were gigging a
bunch and she was like, all right, I'm gonna let you,

(07:47):
gonna let you get some okay.

Speaker 4 (07:49):
Was it were those good memories of having to go
down south or was it always like I mean, I
want to play with my friends in the summer up
in New York.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Or No, my cousins were friends. Bernard Fowler is my
first cousin. Yeah, that's my first cousin.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Of course. So is this the Queens as well?

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, he's from Queensbridge, and you know, as kids, we
would we were best friends, running back and forth to
each other's house. Is our mother his My father and
his mother are brother and sister, so so she was
like my she's my real auntie. And we spend weekends
together hanging out, playing and stuff. So we've tight. Wow.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
So he's your actual first cousin.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
He's my actual first cousin.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
That's incredible, all right.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
So for our listeners out there, like Bernard is pretty
much you know, he's who's the who of background singing.
You know, he's known for his work with the Little
Rolling Stones.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, and lead singers and lead singers. She's he's definitely
one one of the absolute best.

Speaker 4 (08:55):
Yeah, I gotta say the infamous House classic, well Peach
Boys don't make Me wait?

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Maybe it won't make me wait. Yeah, that's all Bernard.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, yeah, not to mention like the work that he's
done with Bill as well and and Herbie.

Speaker 4 (09:09):
Hancock and the recently departed HYBYI.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Okay, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
So the question I usually start with, can you tell
me what your first musical your first musical memory was.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
You know, as a kid, my mother loved music, so
we used to go to the Apollo all the time,
and it was at a time when you could see
five shows in one day. You could just sit there,
hang out and watch all the shows, and so I
did that a lot. Those are my earliest, my earliest
memories you know in music in the house of course,
the Jackson Five, who I emulated in my first band,

(09:50):
and kind of That's how I got my start.

Speaker 6 (09:53):
What did your mom do for work, man, My mother.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Was my mother. No, my mother was a a plan
reader engineer for Ma Bell for Bell Telephone Company, and
she was a rebel, like she was the original liberated woman.
She really was community leader and she used to give back.
In the day, there were a lot of social groups

(10:20):
that gave dances. So whenever they'd have a dance, of course,
my little band, the Soul Shakers, we'd be like the
floor show. So they would have like a well known
kind of orchestra. One was Ron Ron Williams and the
Band of Renown, so they would be the big band playing,
and then we would come on and do like a
Michael Jackson James Brown floor show.

Speaker 4 (10:42):
It's interesting to hear normally a lot of our guests
on the show, if their formative years were in the
sixties or seventies, nine times out of ten secular music
is taboo.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
But it sounds like to hear like was was. Were
your parents strict with music?

Speaker 4 (11:04):
You're not allowed to listen to any music but gospel
or any of those things.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
No, I didn't have any of that pretty much. I
mean in my house it was like Brooke Benton was King.
You know, it's like the Black King, Cole was King,
the smooth, the smooth r and b love the Love
of Boys singers. So I kind of grew up really
actually loving Brooke Benton, those kind of classic songs with

(11:29):
the strings, with the deep, deep melodies and the deep lyrics,
and that's kind of what I cut my teeth on.
And later it developed into more more of the funky stuff.

Speaker 4 (11:40):
Okay, how many siblings do you have? Where do you
fall in your family line?

Speaker 2 (11:45):
I'm I'm firstborn, so the only of three.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Okay, so I'm the leaders passing it down to you.

Speaker 4 (11:54):
How do you because normally, if most I noticed that
most of people in MU are usually the younger person.
You know, there's always an older sibling that's passing the
music down. Here, listen to this. This is James Brown.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
This is kind of nobody. But my aunt Jennis. You know,
like I told you, my mother worked for mob Bell.
My aunt Jennie, who moved up from North Carolina, would
keep me during the day and she could sing like
Aretha Franklin, real real talk, but she would only sing,
and she would only sing in church. So during the
day when my mother would be at work. She'd be like,

(12:30):
Michah Micah Owen is what you call me, get up
on the table and put on a show for me.
And she put me on the table and you know,
have me sing different songs, the Jackson Five particularly, and uh,
you know that's kind of where my love for music
and performing came from my aunt Jenny.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
So I assume that at one of these concerts you
saw the Jackson Five perform, Like, would you say that
that was like one of the more memorable concerts that
you've saw or.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Oh yeah, well the Fought. There were a lot of
There were a lot of young groups. The Five Stare
Steps may have been the first group that I saw
at the Apollo of Young Guys, and Black Ivory actually
performed at the r KO on Jamaica Avenue in Queens.
When I saw them perform, I'm like, Wow, I can

(13:18):
do that. I can do that because I don't I
think they're just slightly older than me. And when I
saw that they were able to perform and and actually
make a living at it, I was like, wow, I
can do this.

Speaker 4 (13:30):
Were the Stairsteps actual musicians in concert?

Speaker 1 (13:34):
Because yeah, I know that it was studio musicians. But
I know that Kenny.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Kenny, Kenny Burke played, Kenny Burke played on stage. My
memory doesn't serve me how well he played at that time,
but he was definitely he was definitely playing on stage
back then at the Apollo.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
Did when did you start your well you talked about
as far as your musical development was concerned. Was that
a school thing that school encouraged or did you get
her on your own?

Speaker 2 (14:10):
No? I was. I was really I went to egghead schools.
I was busted to schools, and you know, I was
very much into magnet kid math and science. To be honest,
I was really an egghead. But my best friend, this kid,
Robert Fontaine. He and my mother a Rain Fontaine and
Shirley Austin. They could not be separated, and she was like,

(14:32):
they dressed the same, they hung the same. So rob
was her child. So we became close friends, even though
it was a couple of years older than me. He
had a band, and of course he didn't want to
let me in the band because I was too young.
I was like a little perp. But eventually two of
the band members, especially the singer, they started getting into
drugs and everything, and my mother's like, you should hear

(14:54):
Michael sing. I'm telling you you'd hear him sing. And
so I started singing with that band and that's how,
you know, initially got my start singing and performing. And
the band was the Soul Shakers. And I don't know
if you know Ronnie Drayton.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
You know that name, Yes, Ronnie, the late Ronnie Drayton.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Correct, Yes, the late Ronnie. Yes. Indeed, he was the
drummer in the band.

Speaker 4 (15:16):
Wait, isn't Ronnie related to FLAVEO?

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Ah, yeah, we don't know if he.

Speaker 4 (15:22):
Okay, I might be mistaken because there was another Drayton
that I met that used to work at Tower Records
that is related to Flave.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
I know that Flave came from a large family.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
But no, Ronnie's not related to No no no. But
we grew up two blocks from each other. He lived
around the corner for me, and also growing up, he
was kind of inspirational for us because he left the
band as a drummer and said, I'm going to be
a guitar player. I'm gonna start playing guitar. We're like,
I want to stick to drums because you're such a
good drummer. But eventually he kept going at it. He

(15:53):
got a gig with the Chambers brothers and so they
were going on the road and we were, you know,
we were kids in pro keads and we were go
around the corner and watch him being picked up by
the band the station Wagon with his amps and everything,
and we're like, wow, he's really he's really doing it.
So he was an inspiration at all as well.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
It just hit me that Ron used to play with
Noah Hendricks.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
That's right, he was really her band leader Edvin Bird's
song Noah Hendricks.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, yeaeah.

Speaker 4 (16:24):
He's a legend, you know, very very sad to see
see him past.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
He was at our age, he was like the most
serious musician. I mean, I grew up around a lot
of really talented funk bands, like in my neighborhood and
Jamaica Queens. Literally every other block there was a there
was a band. There was a funk band, Mother Night,
you know Eddie Eddie Martinez.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
Of course, the legendary Eddie Martinez.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, Mother.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah, rock Box yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
They were one of our local bands. And we had
some hell of funky bands back then.

Speaker 4 (17:00):
Yeah, where would these shows happen at high schools or
like how like give me a typical rundown of Okay,
if you have a neighborhood band, one, where do you rehearse?
Because I know that, at least for the Midwest, families
with garages, you know, hence the term garage band, like
that's where bands are formed. But if you're in New

(17:21):
York City and you form a band, first of all,
where do you rehearse at.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
We're in Jamaica, Queens everybody had a garage and a basement,
so you're the You're you're either rehearsed in the basement
or the garage. My next door neighbor was Eddie Hazel's father,
Eddie Hazel. He lived next door to me, so the
parliament back in the day would come and and pull

(17:48):
around on the back of you know, basically give parties.
But his father, he did all the processes in the neighborhood.
All hair processes.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Could also do hair. I forgot about that.

Speaker 6 (18:10):
I'm saving a hair chapter until get the.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Wow, oh that's crazy.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
Who who else were your were your contemporaries growing up
as far as like who you went to school with
or other people?

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Well, yeah, when I was in public school, it was
really you asked about how where we would gig. There
were five or six local clubs. There was the Club Ruby,
the Linden Manor, there was after Rochfield Village was built,
there was a big concert venue there. Everybody would play it.
There were a lot of clubs. There were a lot

(18:48):
of bars, local bars, and they all had bands. I
mean we're talking before DJ before they realized, oh we
can just get a DJ to come in. You know,
we give it every everybody would gig. There were bands
like the Firebolts, who were really kind of the leaders
for us local bands because they had it organized so
they played. They gigged every weekend like they always had

(19:10):
shows for different cotillions. And there were a lot of
gigs back then and when we were like the band
under them, so we would sometimes be the opening act
basically the floor show.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
Is this a thing where you can if you're that
top band, can you make a nice living?

Speaker 1 (19:30):
Well, first of all, how old are you doing this period?

Speaker 2 (19:34):
I'm like thirteen, fourteen, fifteen when.

Speaker 4 (19:37):
You can go into a nightclub and do a show
and it's not because a culture wasn't a thing yet.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Or my mother was a mamager and she was a beauty,
so nobody said no to Shirly, so she would kind
of she was kind of book us on gigs. And then,
like I said, during that era, everybody was a member
of a social club. So they would be uh shinnecock
Rod and Gun club and they would give an annual event.

(20:06):
There might be the motorcycle. The Fat Back Band was
the official band for like the Linden Boulevard Biker Biker Club.
Really they would all have event yeah, yeah, yeah they would.
They rehearsed from Linden Boulevard. How far from where I
grew up.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
I didn't know that Fat Back was from there.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Okay, yeah, Fatbacks from Linden Boulevard.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yeah, wacky for like thirty minutes. Yep, I've heard about
their series.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
So all these social clubs, they would have a contillion
where they'd bring out the young ladies. There would be
a lot of events you could play. You could really
make a living. I mean I was a kid and
I was I'm making like one hundred dollars a weekend
all the time. And you know, back in.

Speaker 6 (20:48):
That a teenager period.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah yeah, yeah, back then, what.

Speaker 4 (20:56):
At what point for you at least are you even
considering making this a profession.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
And I gotta know. I know that the group clear
played a.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So I'm not there yet
because I'm really, like I said, I'm an egghead. I'm
going to Brooklyn Tech. I'm gonna be I'm gonna work
for NASA. That's my that was my head. That was
my DUTs in my head. That's that's what it was.
I'm going to NASA. But I was in the band
the Soul Shakers, and at some point we were like,

(21:30):
let's try and see if we can get better. And
a young lady named Laala the Forest Cope you give
good love, Yeah, La La joined the band. So La
La changed a lot from me because she was she
was like the first female rebel who always said, well

(21:50):
why not, why can't we get this? Why can't we
do that? Why can't I was more like in pocket,
like come on, let's see, we'll get it so down,
so down. So once her energy came into the band,
we were forever seeking the better drummer, the better bass player,
the better guitar player, the better sounds is the better gig.

(22:11):
So she changed a lot for me, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Just so we can make it clear.

Speaker 4 (22:16):
I don't you mentioned it earlier, but I wanted to
make it clear for our listeners that don't know. La
Laud wrote Whitney Houston's very first single, you Get You
Give Good Love Love You've Give.

Speaker 6 (22:28):
Yeah, we didn't want to admit we didn't know who
Lai was, but we didn't thank you.

Speaker 4 (22:33):
No, no, lad You know, she made noise and she
did some stuff with like full force and as a
solo artist around like eighty six.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Anyways, sorry, yep, yep, but but part of her thing
was she would write songs way back then and I
would kind of fool around with ideas imitating other people's songs.
But she was the first person I was around who
would just sit at the piano, make up a song
and break your heart. And she was in the band

(23:03):
and we would do gigs and she would sing like
songs like Gladys Knight in the Gladdys Knight song last
what is it? Last time I'm leaving Midnight, and she
would she would tear the house down. She would do
things like Billy Holliday. She just had that soul and
that spirit that she would tear the house down with

(23:25):
these songs and songs like you give good love. She
was writing no songs when she was sixteen. She was
already right, she had written that she had written ten
of those by the time she was sixteen. So that
kind of made me start noticing, you know that, oh,
this songwriting is a thing. Songwriting is really a thing
that you should be focusing on, particularly, you know, in

(23:49):
the band thing. So moving on, we got into this
band called Jack SaaS, The Jack SaaS Band. Former members
included like a lot of local talent in Jamaica, queens
and really good musicians, so we really had to step

(24:10):
up the bar a little bit. But our band, we
were playing all over the East coast, would play the
Jersey Shore, we would play Miami, we would play Virginia,
but we couldn't get a record deal. So along this time,
this guy comes to town. We used to play this
club uptown called the Seller with band this ban Kinky Fox.

(24:32):
I don't know if you know Timmy Allen. They were
like they would play one weekend, we would play another weekend.
So this guy Fred Petris, little Macho Music, who produced
Change and BB Change. Yeah, yeah, so he comes to town.
I'm still deciding if I'm really gonna do music. So

(24:53):
he comes to down and he says, hey, I really
like you guys. I want you to be I had
this record out called Peter Jacques Band, which was a
huge hit in Europe. He's like, I want you to
guys to tour and pretend you're Peter Jack's band. So
we're like, okay, because you know he's gonna pay us,

(25:13):
we're going to put well, basically we didn't record anything
on the album, but we were going to perform the
touring act of Peter Jacks Band and we would be
the artist. So that kind of fell apart. But then
he called me one day and he said, hey, Murphy,
I want you to introduce me to bands in the city,
all the best musicians, and I want you to work

(25:36):
for me. I want you to work in my office.
I want I'll teach you publishing, I'll teach you recording,
I'll teach you everything. But just connect me with all
the bands. And so I did, because I knew I
knew all of the musicians. Not I didn't know all
of the studio recording musicians because in New York at
the time, they were really they kept it real tight.
You couldn't even get you couldn't get a session, you

(25:57):
couldn't get to record anywhere. They had it on lock,
Fid Thornton, Color, They just they had sessions, Yogi Horton,
you know that whole crew. They had the session world
on lock. So a band like ours didn't stand a chance.
But through through my relationship with him, he actually did
bring me in to run his office and I would

(26:19):
hook him up with the musicians and do demos, and
I would go to the sessions when he was out
of town make sure everybody was recording, booked the sessions,
learned about publishing, and at that time it became real
for me because I could connect my brain with the
creative part on how this can how this is a

(26:41):
real business, and how you can really you know, how
you can make things happen. So that's when when I started, Yeah,
that's when I started to think about music as a
real profession for me.

Speaker 4 (26:55):
There's one thing I wanted to ask about your tenure
and your band, and you were doing these club gigs
on an average one, how long were you expected to
perform at.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
These these shows?

Speaker 4 (27:09):
And how big is the repertoire, like just in terms
of I understand like every band had to know the
top forty so you had to have of course, So
how how does that work? Is it like every Friday
you go to the local record store, you get all
the forty five's and you're like, okay, damn, we got
to learn to how to trap by the commodorees or like,

(27:32):
what's that process?

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Walking through that process.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
As the point where we got serious. We were rehearsing
four days a week and we were were the shows.
When look, we went from being like a floor show
band actually having to hold on a club and generally
you'd be booked Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so that's five sets,
three nights in a row, so you had to have
And also we were doing originals cut because at that

(27:56):
point were we started figuring out how to manipulate our
sound and create a sound of our own and Jack sass.
Actually it was a really killing band. I don't know
if you know. Liz Chisholm was the bass player. She's
one of the original female bass players in New York.
Liz Chisholm Omar Jakeim was an early drummer in the band.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Legend.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
I mean, we were, we were, we were, we were
pretty serious, like we were coming up on a funky
rock thing. We were doing things like we were doing
rare earth songs. We were doing uh, we were just
doing our own brand. We would we would hit them
with with the top forty hit, but we'd also hit
them with something that's in the vein, like a song
by war or you know. We were coming off a

(28:40):
little bit left of center, but it was really working.
It was working.

Speaker 4 (28:45):
You mentioned queens, and also I wanted to know whether
or not at the time was anyone like from the
Jamaica Boys like in also in the sphere I'm talking
about like Bernard right, you know, Marcus Miller, all those.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
So all those cats are in the mix. Bernard Wright
was in the Junior Firebolts. So the Fireballs I mentioned earlier,
who had really gotten it down to a science where
they were gigging all the time for weddings. So they
created a spinoff called the Junior Firebolts, and Bernard was
in the Junior Fireballs.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
You're so popular, you have your own sequel.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah, all these bands were in the mix, and all
these bands were killing.

Speaker 4 (29:29):
Okay, so you right now you led us to the
point where you're learning the business. How are you getting
talked into being a tour manager. And at what point
are you entering Clear's life like, because I remember, like
it's weird that I know, like intimate connections is a staple.
But I'll admit that only after hip hop that I

(29:52):
learned intimate connections because I always knew Clear because of
like their early part in nineteen eighty where they had
the song called win.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, I'm around them this whole time. So I'm in
Brooklyn Tech High School and Dennis King is the chief
mastering engineer at Atlantic Studios right on fifty ninth Street.
So he was someone who took interest in my early band,
Jack says, and actually was the first person to ever
take us into the recording studio. So he worked at Atlantic,

(30:26):
and I would come home and I would stop at
Atlantic Studios, and he lived near me in Queens and
I would ride home with him. But that stopped entailed
waiting around in Atlantic Studios Columbus Circle. I'm telling you,
I saw everybody record Aretha. I saw the Stones come
through there, Ricky Lee Jones, I mean like everybody who

(30:50):
was anybody. I'm talking the days when you know all
the actually the Cats, A lot of the Cats from Philly,
the guitar player, and the bass player, Bookatie Owms, what's
his name the keyboard player. They would all be around there,
Jeve yep. So I got to kind of blend in
through that and also view recording sessions and learn sessions.

(31:13):
So Dennis at the time was working with the band Clear,
who was from Baltimore, and they had one small record
that didn't do a lot, but by the time the
second record came, they were in demand to tour. So
he obviously couldn't go on the road because he was
a mastering engineer at Atlantic, and he knew I knew
the road because I had taken my band everywhere and

(31:33):
I knew all the details, booking hotels, all of that.
So he asked me to be their road manager. So
the first tour, well, the first big tour I get
to go on is Prince Rick James and Clear. I
felt I done it. Clear was the opening act. I

(31:54):
thought I died and way to Heaven. I thought I
died and went to heaven. Brother, So oh, it's crazy.
I mean I have actually pictures from the tour of
Prince when he was doing the jockstrap and the reset
ladder thing. I have pictures back there, Rick Jane All,

(32:16):
I have pictures of all the madness. And he Rick
had had kind of a crush on the clear girl,
so you know, he liked him as the opening act.
And we did. We must have done like fifteen dates.
And I'm telling you, Prince killed Rick. Prince killed It
was so funny because killed Rick. He killed Rick every

(32:40):
single city. He killed him. First they started out. You know,
it's the opening act. You might have six feet of
depth and they peel you off. And the next act,
you know, have twelve feet of depth. They peel him off,
and then Rick has his whole big show, right. But
Prince Prince had those stairs and he had like a

(33:01):
little light rig that said Prince. And I'm telling you
they were kicking ass and taking names every single gig.
It was crazy, it was. And I'm standing there with
my mouth of him because in a way, my band
Jack sass. We had this guitar player, Vick Vaughan. I

(33:22):
hope he hears this. Vic Vaughn was as good as Prince.
He was good a guitar player and as good as singer,
but he didn't have that you know, that extra thing
that makes you want to stick to the business. He
ended up he ended up moving to the midwest, South
Dakota somewhere, but he was kind of the New York
City embodiment of Prince. So when I saw Prince, I

(33:44):
was like wow, And it also made me kind of decide,
you know what, I can do my own I can
come up with my own thing that's different than all
of this, but I could do my own thing. So
that's when kind of my road management dream turned into
you know, I want to create some thing.

Speaker 4 (34:00):
What were touring conditions? Like whoa, I'm so glad you're
tour manager because it's like.

Speaker 5 (34:07):
Weird y'all know y'all know everything? Yeah, exactly because musicians
you'll put the fires out sort of, you know, have
very selective memory. But if you're touring in nineteen eighty,
you know a bandlike Clear, Are you guys in a
fifteen passenger van?

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Are you tour bus status yet? What kind of hotels
are you in? Like I want to know, like the
boring stuff, like what what is that like?

Speaker 2 (34:32):
In nineteen eighty it was it was right, it was correct.
Al Hayman was the tour promoter, so everything they don't
have to war you don't have to worry about the money.
You just had to be there on time. I always
book connections. I don't even know if they're still in
business connections, bus service. You know. We had a budget

(34:52):
for hotel room. Hotels were cheap back then. You could
get you could get decent hotels for one hundred dollars.
It was. It was smooth and correct. It was smooth.
Every per diem was solid. I was handling the money.
Everything was smooth. I had three bands on tour together.
I had Clear, Change and BBQ all on the road

(35:16):
at the same time. I was a little twork. I
was a little twork, but I knew I knew how
the right job.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Because I wanted to know about those groups.

Speaker 4 (35:27):
And in the case in the case of Change, of
which I believe it was Jimmy jam that revealed to
me that Change was really well in name the two
Italian guys.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Uh yeah, Malavas.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Were they in concert? How did that work?

Speaker 2 (35:45):
No? They never showed up to concert. They were studio
musicians and brilliant ones. They had an amazing sound and
Michael Brower would engineer most of the projects. It was
all the best suit. Lutha Vanress, who I also worked
for on the road after I think it was like, yeah,
I think early shows. Yeah, I was. I was a

(36:05):
guy with the fog machine and I was the guy
with the spotlight, and I was paid Lutha. Lutha paid
his guys. It was crazy. I had to listen. I
love working for Luther so much. And that was another
point where I was like, Wow, I love I could
I want to I want to entertain again. But I
did one tour where I drove from New York City

(36:26):
to Los Angeles for his on his first tour, all
down through Texas, myself and one other road guys. So
I've I've done. I've worn all the hats I've worn,
like the road he hat, I've won the drive and
truck hat, hold the spotlight, I won.

Speaker 6 (36:44):
Any of them know about your talent? Did anybody know that?

Speaker 2 (36:47):
No? No they didn't, They didn't know. Let me tell
you a great story. We're on the road in South
Carolina somewhere and Clear, which were on with Clear and
David and I had made the record in Times of Passion.
We made it like one weekend, actually like in one day,
twenty four hours. We made the record, went to the
studio got it out. I knew a couple of people
Atlantic because I had worked with with Dennis and I

(37:11):
had worked with Clear, and they always said to me,
you know, because I was a good looking young fella. Yeah,
They're like, hey, if you ever, if you ever make
a record, so why don't you bring it, Why don't
you bring it to me? Let me hear it. So
we made in Times of Passion and one day I
took it to Atlantic. They signed it the same day,
but I didn't I didn't make any noise because Clear,
I was working for Clear, and I don't know, if

(37:31):
you know Woody. Woody was a little bit of a
kind of jealous guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. So
we're on the road in South Carolina doing an outdoor
date and I'm carrying you know SVT bass amps, I
know those spg ampeg I'm carrying an SVT bass cabinet

(37:52):
to put below the bus, and David's on the tour
bus and he's yelling, make our songs on the red
our songs on the radio. In time the Passion was
playing on the radio.

Speaker 4 (38:05):
That's how everyone found out that you were yes singer.
So can you well, since you already you brought the
great David Frank into the picture.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
Can you explain the story? What am I to believe?

Speaker 4 (38:19):
And he told me this once was was Madonna originally
supposed to be in the system and you replaced her.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, So what happened was we were all we all
were growing. We all kind of circulated around the music
building on eighth Avenue and thirty sixty whatever. Okay, you know,
all the bands rehearsed there. People would kind of share
recording spaces, like you'd have a space and you'd have
it from two to five and someone else would have
it from five to nine. So I got I got

(38:50):
a back up because I got David. I got Dave
in Clear. I got on to be the keyboard player
and Clear. So what happened was Dennis King was prettying
together the tour for Clear, and they didn't have a
keyboard player. So one night he took me to this
club uptown and he said, yeah, come with me. I
want to see this singer. You know, I want to
see the singer and then tell me what you think.

(39:11):
So we go to this club. I didn't think much
of the singer, and I said to him, Hey, that
keyboard player is really good. I mean you should maybe
you just consider him from clear. But they were playing
kind of like steely Dan's style, you know, it wasn't
it was nothing like the electro that you come to
know David as at the end of the player you
come to So he did that for he did that tour.

(39:33):
This was not the rig James tour. It was the
next tour. He did that tour. And when I when
I would work, I guess I would sing sometimes or
I would sing along the songs, not making anything of
it or paying attention. But one day he had cut
this track that he'd been working on because he got
a DSX, a DMX and he got an Overheim, which

(39:53):
he actually kind of bought it with another one of
the musicians in the music building. So out of the
blue he calls me and he says, hey, I wrote
this song, and you know Madonna was supposed to sing it,
but you know, Steve Bray wants to put guitar and
they want to put this on it and that, and
I don't. I don't want to do that. I don't
want to do that. So he was like, why don't
you come to the loft and listen to it? So

(40:16):
I go to his shared loft in the music building.
I don't know what I'm expecting because I've only heard
him play in the clear mode, which is kind of
jazzy soul with some pune basically, and that's not what
I wanted to do either. I wanted to do something
completely different musically than that. So I get there and
he said, well, you know, listen, geor it tell me
what you think. He hits the button and it's the

(40:38):
track of in Times of Passion. But I died and
went to heaven because it was exactly what I what
I had been thinking of, because I was thinking, if
what if you put Rick James and craft work together,
what would that sound? And when he hit when he
hit that button, I was like, this is this is it?
You know, this is I've been looking for. I hadn't yep.

(41:01):
She said, well, yeah, Madonna was gonna and I knew
Madonna too. There's a story there too, she said, yeah,
Madonna'll think. Okay, Well, when when I when I was
in the band, when I was in Jack Sass, we
used to play at the Queen's College, rath Scaler. She
would play on Wednesdays and my band would play on Thursdays,
so I knew her from that, so, you know, you

(41:22):
know how you go and check the competition out. I'd
gone to check her out then, and and you know,
and we also knew each other around the music. Mcmathe,
Are you want to do it? Mcmathein that time? You want?
That's time? She was like that. She was like, she
was like, you know, I knew she had the attitude,
but I didn't you know, I didn't know what how
far she was going to take it. So anyway, David said, yeah,

(41:44):
Madonna was going to record it, but she backed out
at the last minute. Can you can you record it?
And I said, well, what was the title she had?
She said, Crimes of Passion. Said okay, let me see
what I can come up with. And I was just
singing along with the track, humming and kind of crimes
a Passion, kind of falling with it. He was like,
that's great, that's great. Now go home and write the song.

(42:07):
I'll pick you up in the morning, we'll go to
the studio and record it. I'm like, write the song
right tonight and we're gonna record it tomorrow. So, you know,
I had had the dream of what I wanted to
sound like, but I had no idea what I wanted
to say, So somehow I stayed up all night. David
came to pick me up my mother's house in Queens

(42:28):
at like seven o'clock in the morning. We go to
the studio in Long Island. We recorded all day. We
laid it on the parts, I sing all the leads,
all the backgrounds. We mix it, and the next morning,
when he dropped me off at my mother's house, I
had a big sound system innovation because I always owned
the band's pa. So I put the cassette tape in

(42:50):
and I played it, and I was like, this is
this is the one. If you don't do something with this,
you're never gonna do anything. So I immediately, like at
nine o'clock, called Dennis King, Hey, Dennis, can you can
you cut a couple of acetates of this thing I
cut yesterday? So he said sure, So I went to
the studio Atlantic. He cut three assetates, of which I

(43:11):
have I have two of them now, And I went
and I went to the two people who I knew
in the record business who had said to me, if
you ever, if you ever come up with anything, let
me know. One was Jim Delahant who worked for Atlantic
Records with Jerry Greenberg. Okay, and the other one was
was r f C Records, and they, you know, they

(43:33):
were big because they had you know, Socio and they
had they had a lot of really popping electoral soul.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Right, So I went to yeah, okay, ye, yep, he's
the president of mag is he not?

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah, he was a president, but at the time he
was president of Atlantic. He had just come stepped down
from being the president of Atlantic.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
So he was the president of Atlantic.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
He was the president of Atlantic, Yes, but when but
he was forming his own label, and I think he
had only he had signed he had only signed one
act so far. So I take the record to Jim
Dellahan and I said, Jim just cuts this. He plays
like thirty seconds of it, and he says, hold on a second,
and he disappears through a door and out comes Jerry Greenberk.

(44:22):
My jaw is on the ground because Jerry is the cheese.
I mean, he's he's the man. He comes out, he
kind of looks at me, sits in his chair, turns
around to face the speakers. I'm looking at the back
of his head. He listens to like thirty seconds of
it and he turns around and says, get yourself a
record deal, just like that, one day, one day, it

(44:43):
was that easy. Well yeah, at that moment, at that moment,
and the record came out and it it caught a fire,
It really did. It caught a fire.

Speaker 4 (44:54):
So this wasn't a case where you had to like
a relationship with Larry Love or someone to like, you'll
play my thing, test it out on the crowd and
see how it works. So you just instantly had an
end with the Brass Atlantic.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
Absolutely, and thank god, Frankie Crocker love the record. Okay,
Frankie Crocker loved the record. He ran it into the ground.
And he you know, Frankie was a DJ at the time.
If you like something, he's playing it. He doesn't care
what the trend is, he doesn't care what anybody says. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
So he played that record to death. And then you know,

(45:30):
as far as the system, the rest is history.

Speaker 4 (45:36):
You said something really interesting about your interaction with David
frank and what you said was he pressed a button.
So can you explain to me at the time your
willingness to embrace kind of a new culture, which is programmed,
you know, at the age of you know, sort of

(46:00):
seventy nine eighty. New drum machines are being invented, New
synthesizers are being which I could imagine could be intimidating,
because the thing is is that there's a watershed moment
for black music after the sort of post disco fallout
where a lot of these bands that were foundational, name

(46:21):
them like Brass Construction, mass Production.

Speaker 5 (46:25):
Mask, any band with like eight niggas on the cover,
you just know what it is.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
No cameo, same thing.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
No real talk. I was already there because I was already.
I was already listening to craft Work, I was listening
to Yazoo, the Arrhythmics, I was eating I was eating.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Up every record until UK and of course early Garan.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Of course the Thompson I was. I was there already,
I mean I was, I was. I was eating off
of soul and funk. But I was already there because
of what you're saying. I had been on the road
with brask and fifteen Pieces, and I'm like, how these
guys making money? How you know, it's like this is
this something makes this makes no sense to me. I

(47:17):
don't get the math here, and you know, there were
a lot of there were a lot of brass construction
like bands, phrasey, all these bands from from the Midwest.
I was like, how everybody, so I was, I was,
We've interviewed all those bands.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
I was just laughing, Yeah, we've been interviewed.

Speaker 4 (47:37):
And is the thing is though, is because you know,
even though I was like nine in the eighty like
when like terms like new wave were being invented in
all those things, I'd never truly understood or got a
chance to ask a guest on the show, like is
this a Titanic synchrosus.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
Whim moment for you?

Speaker 4 (47:58):
Like do you learn new technology or do you just,
you know, defiantly say no, I'm gonna keep my horn
section and these Fender roads and this clabinet.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Let me tell you one of the reasons why I
loved jac sass. So we had we always had great drummers,
but a lot of times they were nowhere to be
found when it was time to do. We had this
cat Lino Reyes. I don't know if you know who
he is, Leno. He ended up playing with rig Games,
but we had a couple gigs lined up and he
just didn't show up, and I had bought a rolling

(48:32):
drum machine, like a little Mini eight o eight. I
was like, come on, guys, we can use this for
the gig. Let's just do the gig. And they laughed
me out of rehearsal. They laughed me out of rehearsal.
But I was like, all right, you know, somebody's somebody's
working on this. And I'd already been geared up, you know,
reading Nmy Out of the UK and like you said,

(48:54):
Gary Numan, all these bands in my image. I was
already dressing new ways and I was always thinking new wave,
but I didn't know how to create it on my
own with the with the musicians that I had around me.
So I was already playing with technology and drum machines
and all that kind of stuff. When I met Dave Can,
I just ask.

Speaker 9 (49:15):
A question about radio, because you mentioned that, like Frankie
Crocker popped off your popped you off on radio, and
I'm curious that you mentioned a new wave, like, so
what happens after that? How do they decide, Okay, we're
going to continue to service these black radio stations, We're
going to service the pop radio stations.

Speaker 6 (49:34):
Like how does that happen? What happens after.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Frankie response, the response to the people calling in what
is that? Actually when that record first played, you know
who tu May is, right, yes, oh yes, yeah, so
in to May like two days later and and Tue
May called and said, man, I heard your record and
I had to pull onto the side of the road

(49:59):
outside out of the Midtown Tunnel. What are you doing?
I'm doing a session now. He was doing Juicy Fruit.
He was recording that at the time, and he invited
David and I to play on that session because he
wanted that. He yeah, we're We're told that session.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
I forgot, yeah, he.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
Told So we went.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Yeah, we went and played on that session, and we
started getting We started getting a lot more calls like
from the UK, come to the UK produced this artist
and groups and and you know in America also, hey
produce us, can you give us give us some of
that that system funk. So we started doing pretty much
right out of the box.

Speaker 9 (50:41):
So they never put you in a radio box, so
you were never just in the Frankie Cracker in urban box.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
Well we you know, everybody starts in an urban box.
But once you start breaking out, don't forget we had.
You know, after after the results of that record starting
to take off like that, I had another meeting with
Jerry and he was like, you guys want to do
a twelve inch And because of what I had learned
with Petras, I was like, now we want to do
an album. Well, what would you what would you give

(51:09):
us to do a twelve inch? And he gave us
a number and I was like, give us double that.
We'll do an album. Now we had already been we
had already been writing songs like, we had already been
working on songs. So basically our process in recording was
we would get together and maybe spend a couple hours.
David might have some ideas he's working on, We're do
an arrangement, I'd work on a vocal, I'd sing a melody,

(51:31):
and you know, we basically had seven songs for the
album already, so it was basically we go into the
studio record all the parts he had pre recorded. Now,
I don't want people to think that pressing a button
means you're just pressing a button and something's coming out
that's been pre recorded. There's a lot that song in
Times of Passion. If you ever listen to it. He's

(51:53):
using an OB eight. He made four different keyboard sections
on the instrument.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
I was gonna say, was MIDI a thing? Backman?

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Yes, MIDI was a thing. Midy was just becoming the thing.

Speaker 4 (52:06):
Because I always wanted to know, like, yeah, you guys
had intricate arrangements, especially on that first record, and I
was trying to figure out, like, are you programming in
this in real time? Or is this MIDI? Like is
MIDI culture in eighty three? I never knew when Mitty came.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
So no, he's playing. He's playing in real time. But
as you know, you can either sequence it or you
can let it play in real time, so he's recording it.
He's really Actually David is a is a great physical player,
like great, so he was. He divided the keyboards into
different sections. So there might be one section of course
in the lower and that's the base, and another section

(52:41):
might be a pad. Another section might be a little
squeaky thing, which you could you could you could change
programs while you're recording and it would record the program changes.
So those sounds like Bud is him basically pressing different
program buttons, and then you had to drum machine so
you have you know, you could have six, seven, eight

(53:03):
parts would play back automatically.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
You know, And none of this was a tea at all.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
No, because after we we did in Times of Passion,
I kind of knew how the system could work and
how we could take it to another level with the
instrument because basically you had you were basically it was
a digital recording, you know, without tape. You could record
all the songs except for the vocals, because they had
nothing at that time where you could actually record the

(53:30):
vocals and still be in sync with everything. So being
someone who had played in bands five shows a night,
I could I could hit it on a dime, like
every gig, the harmonies all.

Speaker 4 (53:39):
Lot before I get into sweat and you're in my system.
There's one thing I always wanted to know, you know.
At this time, also like hip hop is also finding
its legs and developing, and you know, pretty much, I
guess the the modus operandi of hip hop was was
kind of like, Okay, there's no more music lessons in school,

(54:03):
so we got to figure out how to make music.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Ah, we'll make hip hop.

Speaker 4 (54:06):
And you know, I'm certain that you're growing up and
and you know, are firsthand witness to this culture as
it's starting. How how did that not call you and
you still maintain like singing and traditional R and B
and funk like you could. Well, yeah, you've done rap

(54:26):
on your records, and I got to ask you about
that too, But no, not really.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Actually, if you listen to some of
our stuff, those beats are actually imitating some of the
hip hop that was coming around.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
But you just Africa Bombarda because I thought there was
a place for melodics and storytelling in the way I could.
I wasn't a rapper, was I wasn't a rapper, and
I thought there was still a place for the context
of what I was doing over these bombastic beats that
would still work so and there were other guys who

(55:06):
were just they were just doing it so much better,
and I just had to remain kind of authentic to
what system is.

Speaker 4 (55:14):
That was what I was leading into, because the thing
is is that you know the kind of the genre
of freestyle, you know, the kind of Stevie B Planet
Man Tronic sort of eight a weight lead break dance
and music, which is clearly more on the hip hop
side of the fence than you know, there's some other

(55:35):
guys like I don't know the names, like the guy
that saying like your little brother, or.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Nolan Thomas, Nolan Thomas, how do you know that.

Speaker 5 (55:44):
I'm in a nucleus jam on it, Yeah, or even
like the street dance guy.

Speaker 4 (55:55):
I forget his name, I forget his name, but yeah,
Like however, it's it's like the particular lane that you
guys occupied, even though it has the ingredients, like I know,
like the DMX was was sort of the the secret weapon. Yes,

(56:15):
so you guys weren't using a lin drum and you
weren't using an Ato eight yet I almost feel like,
you know, between what Prince was developing, which was more
purple print whatever I call it purple music, yeah, and
the freestyle stuff that was more closer to Shannon, you know,
you know, like the Shannon freestyle breakdancy nuclear stuff. You

(56:39):
guys were closer to New Jack Swing to me minus
minus the go go overs. No no, no, no, no,
I don't mean that. What I'm saying is the seeds,
like your your beats were hard enough to wrap over
and it's kind of a space that Jimmy Jam and
Terry Lewis weren't occupying just yet because they were in

(57:00):
anally territory. But what I wanted to know is, like,
how like as far as you like going to nightclubs
and whatnot, Like, are you guys saying yourself like, yo,
we got to compete with these loud ass drums and no.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
But did you hear baptize the beat? Ever?

Speaker 3 (57:18):
Baptized the beat? Street sounds right?

Speaker 2 (57:20):
Our record? Yeah? Our record baptized the beat? That was
that off kilter. We were doing it. We just were
doing it our way, and we were listening to everything
that was going on. And you know, my lesson was
always be different, just just stay just stay the course
and be different.

Speaker 4 (57:46):
I have a prince question. Has anyone played you his
version of your in my system?

Speaker 2 (57:52):
Yeah? I've heard it, yes, yes, wow, okay, yeah, it's
mostly Line and him kind of okay.

Speaker 4 (57:59):
So, in in light of the the Beatles documentary that
you know is on Disney now, the Get Back documentary,
which I you know, I feel is fascinating people not
baptized the music, We'll say that it might be a
little excessive for nine hours of watching them try to
make a record. However of it I think that's a

(58:22):
very important documentary only in the fact that you truly
get to see how records get made, which in the
case of the Beatles, it seems like they're two default
go to places whenever they get stuck for an idea,
like Paul will tend to go back to earlier Beatles songs,
so he'll go back to you know, he'll start singing

(58:46):
Lovely Redo or.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Mad or.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
He'll go back to that.

Speaker 4 (58:51):
And John Lennon's go to thing is either Little Richard
or Chuck Berry, like every three seconds is like wop
boba bamboo. And the thing is is that when you're
writing songs, you have to do you know, I've gone
on record to say, like, you know, D'Angelo and I
would do entire prints albums, and then one song will

(59:13):
spark an idea like, well keep on doing that again,
and then you morph into another song. So in the
case of Prince I always wondered and obsessed over the
fact that when he's creating music, like is he aware
of other music at the time, or is he just
in his own private bubble in which you know, he's

(59:34):
just alone, isolated and coming up with this brilliant stuff,
or is he actually aware of what black music is
doing and then creating his own thing and kind of
you know, I finally got my answer and hearing, so
you know, I, you know, after he died in selling
like just a whole mountain load of Prince sound checks

(01:00:00):
and mainly like his sound checks to me, like tell
the best story of his creativity, because you know, he'll
riff on a line for five hours in a row
before it's lunch breaking.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
So there's a moment.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
There's a moment where kind of at the tail end
of the nineteen ninety nine rehearsals before they go on
the road, you know, they pretty much they play you know,
karaoke and for them. But the reason why, you know,
people of diden't ask like, well, why didn't he learn
the song? I think the whole idea is not to

(01:00:37):
learn the songs or learn the changes. Like you learn
one part of it and hopefully if you repeat it
enough then it becomes something else. And there's a moment
where you clearly like in this forty minute version of
your and my system, he will eventually morph that into
what we know as the bird, but it starts. I

(01:01:00):
find it fascinating that once once you know, once I
spent a year just listening to those sound checks. Then
I realized, like, oh, so he listens to modern radio
and then learns it and then tries to unlearn it
and morph it into his music.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Like how I mean to know what he morphed into.

Speaker 4 (01:01:23):
I know, back then it probably wasn't obvious that he
was gonna be king or like a god in music.
But I mean, I'm certain that it has to feel
somewhat like validating that you're definitely one of the pegs
that helped him climb to a hit, which is you know,
the Bird for the Time.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Yeah, no, it feels good. I mean, if you're trying
to get around to how to how David and I right,
I don't do that at all with David. So our
process is more David thinks more like he's Beethoven. I'm not,
I'm being honest with you. Yeah, he's thinking, yeah, does

(01:02:07):
it fit into the context of what's going on now
in music? No, that's kind of my job to edit
that music together, because sometimes you hear long landscapes of
some of the things we have or what they became.
There's modulations and then there's time. So I kind of
I'll inspire him when he thinks and ideas no good

(01:02:29):
like he played during My System for me the baseline
when we because we were working on the album. I
would go, we'd spend two three hours, you know, writing
songs because we both had to do other gigs to survive,
and that was one idea. He was like, I don't know,
what do you think I don't like. I'm like stop.
I'm like stop, yes, yes, that baseline. I'm like, no, stop,

(01:02:52):
give it to me. So a lot of times it
would be like what he thinks is the chorus, I
think is the verse? You have a section, Maybe he
thinks that's the A section. But I will edit it together,
even back then from the beginning. I'll edit it together
and move things around to make it be what I
hear as not commercial, but something that that I could

(01:03:16):
sing over and somebody else could sing over. You know.
People ain't singing over modulations and people ain't singing over
you know. So I will edit into a piece, and
I'll send it back to him and say, hey, try this,
and then we'll take it a step Further'll be like, oh, yeah,
I never thought of that. We'll take no, that's not
he'll be like, no, that's not the chorus, that's the verse.
I'm like, let me give me a minute, let me

(01:03:38):
let me ride this out for you, let me get
sexy on you, let me show you, and then you
will come up with you in my system. So that's
kind of how it works, and that's kind of how
it's worked throughout our career. You know. We never I
don't listen to anything else and suggests, Hey, we need
something that sounds like this. Okay, So he may have

(01:03:58):
ten ideas on a on a cassette and send them
from you, just little pieces, and I'll say, I like
this piece, this piece of that piece. Let's work on these,
and we'll work on it. I'll be like, we need
a B section, or we need a we need a chorus,
we need the chorus to hit more, and we'll work
on that and we'll mold it and slowly, but surely,
I'm saying solely surely, but sometimes only within an hour

(01:04:20):
or two hours, we'll have the shape and the form
of a song.

Speaker 4 (01:04:24):
Wait a minute, I'm so glad I'm talking to you
right now, because there's two questions I've been dying, dying
to ask you or Frank and I can't believe this
is the moment. First of all, one one of the
secret sauces in the group, in my opinion, was always
you gotta please tell me about the great Paul Pascoe

(01:04:47):
on guitar. Next, what what David Williams is to Michael Jackson.
You know, David Williams has probably been the most consistent,
steady thing and Michael like not even Michael Jackson is
consistent and steady through his career, through you know, creativity, physicality, whatever.

(01:05:07):
David Williams is almost the most consistent. The sound of
his guitar from like that line of Billy Jean to
want to be starting stuff, Like the sound of that
loud pluck guitar. I think next to David Williams, Paul
Pesco has one of the most distinctive act sounds, like

(01:05:28):
he's well speaking of Madonna. Uh, he's that work on
I think Lucky Star, that's him.

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
Yep, Yep, he's on. He's on a lot of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Oh, he's the the ah CC Music Factory.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
Absolutely, yeah, he's on a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
Haull of notes like adult education.

Speaker 4 (01:05:49):
All that tell me about Paul Pesco, Like I never
heard any stories about him.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Yeah, so Paul is just a wonderful, wonderful guy. We
this is for you. This is Paul Pesco. I don't
know if you know our song this is for you.
Uh huh, this is for you. He's the guy. He's
the guy. Really, him and him and David, they would
get together and cook up some things. This is for

(01:06:15):
you as one. I want to make you feel good.
That's Paul and David cooking up that that plectrum on
I want to make you feel good. The lines. Yes,
he's he's basically like a line and a kachunka guy.
But also he's he's very cordy. He knows his chords,
he knows how to create atmosphere and mood. Just a

(01:06:36):
brilliant guy. Love. I love the guy. I love the
way he plays, I love the way he thinks.

Speaker 4 (01:06:41):
Okay, my second question, when you know your your your
first record comes out when I'm twelve, and I swear
to God, I swear up and down because I swear
that's your voice.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
I'm hearing.

Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
I swear up and down. There's a there's a local hit. Well,
I don't know if it's a local hit or a
local group New York group. I need to know, did
you have anything to do? There was a song that
used to always play in Philadelphia. It's the name of
the song. It's not Attitude. It's a song called We
Got the Juice. Do you know the song?

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
Yeah, of course I know. We produced Attitude is our group.
We created Regia gem In Lewis. We created that group.
Bernard singing on that. I'm singing La la, Chris Tello,
that's that's swear.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
You boys don't need to find like you're you always
yelled on your.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
Records and it's when.

Speaker 4 (01:07:46):
I was a kid, I always thought that was the
system and someone corrected me, like at a record store
once and I never you know, I forgot the name
of the song, but I always swore that We Got
the Juice was like the follow up.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
So that was Bernard Powers group or.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
No, well that was if that look. I was following
the Fred Petroz model. You have a band, you have
a band, the system, and then you can expand that
sound to another use kind of change the attitude of
it and create a whole other bank of songs. We

(01:08:22):
wrote all of Cindy Mazell sings on it. Who was
someone who sang a lot of Yeah, she sings on
Lisa Fisher sings on it, La La sings on it.
Bernard follows sings on it. It was just our way
to spread the juice.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
But it was clearly that song could have been the
next single on the System album.

Speaker 4 (01:08:43):
Like so obviously you're you're saying you're creating your your
your not your competition, sort of like printing the time,
like you had to grow your own.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
Crist Yeah, exactly, to be honest, Yeah, that's what we're
that's what we were doing. Exactly what my that was
my idea.

Speaker 4 (01:08:58):
I found out recently that Charlie xc X finally admitted
to me that what's the name of the idiom song that's.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't care.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
Yeah, yep, I love that song. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Charlie actually basically admitted to me that that group never existed.
They just found two models to sing that song.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
Band.

Speaker 4 (01:09:27):
Yeah, But she was more coming from the place where
she felt that the song was still cartoony, that no
one would take her series as an artist. So like
the the compromise was, we'll still release the song, but
we'll do it under like it won't be a Charlie
X record.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
I get it now. So did you just feel that
we got the juice wasn't like serious enough for the System,
but it was still a good song that worked.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
No, well, we had I think we had the System
System record then and it was still climbing and we
were still touring it. And I really took a page
at a Prince's book with the Time, because actually I
saw I saw Prince at the Ritz and the Time
was an opening act, but I know it was Prince's band.
They had on these black robe hoodie costumes. You couldn't

(01:10:15):
see their faces, so they were the band playing and
I was like, wow, we could could do something like
that in New York. We could like, I could come
up with another group. We have enough musicians around. Really,
that was really the thinking, to be real honest with you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
So was was that song also your version of the
Times wild and Loose? Always?

Speaker 4 (01:10:39):
You know, I always keep clear like derivative of wild
and loose, like that was your version of it?

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
You know, I didn't. I really didn't listen to the
Time that much except seven seven, seven ninety three eleven.

Speaker 3 (01:10:53):
That was.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
That was my joint back then. That was my joint. Oh,
Frankie Kraker had this saying on the radio, we got
the juice, so I knew we could come up with
something using that that he would play it, and he
did and it spread, it spread it Just.

Speaker 4 (01:11:12):
So, how is how is touring for you guys? Doing
this when when the album takes off?

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
Well, I mean that's if I have any regrets, I
kind of regret that we didn't turn the touring thing
into a bigger thing, because when the records took off,
we had calls to produce records in the UK. We
had called We produced a lot of Howard Johnson, Nick
and Valerie Simpson.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
What did you work on?

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
I can Nick and val Yeah, it comes, it comes
with the package, you know. That's all. We did like
three songs on that album. Okay, I think we're the
only people ever produced to produce them. We did. Uh,
We produced a lot of records and I think that
was an era for what we could have done, you
know from the live avenue. So we we did some victures.

(01:12:05):
We did Marvin Gaye's tour that was a that was
a big tour. We did Ready for the Yes, Yes,
that's correct, Yes, can you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Oh wait, was it you guys Imagination?

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
Well, we did in the UK. We did do some
dates with Imagination also because they were kind of a
similar We were in a similar.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
Vibe, so he wanted somebody really contemporary to open.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
Yeah, and we had I don't think, I'm not sure
what do we have. Don't disturb this group at that time?

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
What do you know that this is your and my system?

Speaker 4 (01:12:39):
This is like eighty three eighty four, so it's probably
the Experiment record and Sweat Yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
It also may have been out Himan too, because you know,
I want a neat, neat concert, show up on time,
do the gig, get on, get off, easy, turnaround, no
big nine piece horn band. You know, we we fifth
the bill in a lot of ways because we travel light.
But that's kind of my one regret that we didn't
really build up what we could do live with the system.

Speaker 4 (01:13:14):
When you're performing live, because the albums are so have
very distinctive like electronic sounds how and you know, also
going off these Prince rehearsals, which I know he had
to sort of turn serious miracles to get the sound
of the studio to duplicate that live.

Speaker 1 (01:13:35):
Like how easy is it to do? That stuff live.

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Nah, that was easy. Look, we have we have a
keyboard player, Chris Kello. I don't know if you know
who he is, but he's a phenomenal Now he wrote,
he's the one who did all the arrangements for Dian Warren.
But he was a young kid. He was like maybe
fourteen or fifteen when his mom when I asked his mom,
can you let him come on the road with us?

(01:14:02):
That I'm putting him in fifte maybe he was sixteen.
Maybe maybe him and Bernard Wright were arch rivals in
that area of Queens. They were both like idiots, suvant
genius keybop players, but all that sixteenth note and he
could do all of that stuff. So we really didn't

(01:14:24):
have a live both him and David David very dexterous,
both hands keep what Chris, very dexterous, Paul. That was
That was not the hard part. Hard part was kind
of convincing David to maybe add a drummer or ad
you know what I mean, add that other component that
would allow us to have that push and pull that

(01:14:45):
you know you can only get with a live band.
Those hits, those accents, you can only get that with
a live band. You know, and have to playing with
live bands. I know you need that. So and also
it was very compelling all these production offers and and
you know, you kind of just you write the songs,
you get to publishing, you get the production fee. You know,

(01:15:06):
it's you're on the road, you're spending spending, spending, spending,
you know what I'm saying. It was like that kind
of balance of you know, being away from home.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
And right, I have I have a this is My
Night question?

Speaker 4 (01:15:21):
Of course, you know you you and David are You're
brought aboard by the great Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
I always mess up his name. This guy's my my hero. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:15:34):
How you know, Atlantic house producer and you know average
wipe in He produced Shaka Cohn's first like six solo records,
and you know, it was a it was kind of
a big deal when Shaka's I Feel for You album
came out, in which you know, this is clearly them
acknowledging the power of hip hop and where music is going.

(01:15:57):
So it's a less jazzy record and more leaning towards
the future. But there's there's a question I always had
about this is My Night, and this leads to a
I don't know if the grace period has passed that
I can actually say the name of this particular Thursday
night institutional comedy show that all of America religiously watched

(01:16:20):
all the eighties. But there's a moment in in that
particular black comedy show on NBC at eight o'clock on Thursday, Yes,
before Family Dies. So there's there's an iconic episode. There's
an iconic episode where the youngest daughter of the brood

(01:16:44):
has a sleepover and you know, one of the one
of the kids that are having a sleepover is.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
Is Alicia Keys. So there's there's there's a really funny,
cool moment that connects you guys with this episode in
which kind of, uh, just randomly call these two kids
THEO and Denise maybe yeah yeah maybe yeah where where
they are.

Speaker 4 (01:17:11):
Having a quickie like dance party with the kids and
they're dancing to a version of This is My Night
that is not the album version of This is My Night.
And I make fun of Alicia Keys because she's the
only kid in this in this group you YouTube it
Rudy sleepover, it like she's the only kid that clearly

(01:17:34):
has two left feet, uh, in the scene. It's funny,
but it might assume that before that song was submitted
to Shaka, that you guys demoed it, or because that
version of this is My Night is not the version
from Shaka Khan, but it's clearly like a different So
I just wanted to know, like.

Speaker 2 (01:17:54):
I gotta hear it. But we demo. To be honest,
we demo every song. We never go and cold the record,
so we demoed. So the way that came about we
were recording at Atlantic Studios. Reef was in the studio A.
We were in Studio B, the Hallway studio, and we
were working on Don't Diserve This Groove, and he came

(01:18:15):
and asked, hey, you guys have anything for Haka, and
we worked on it like overnight. The next day we
turned it into him and he was like, yeah, we're
going to record it. But he also, don't diserve this groove.
You if you if you know the song in the
middle section, there's a female, right, So we played them
don't diserve this group because we respected him, We respect
him so much, and he said, all you need to

(01:18:37):
do is add the girl at the girl in the middle,
that's all. And you have a you have you have,
you have a smash, So we added the girl in
the middle and we had a smash And.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
He talked about that.

Speaker 3 (01:18:49):
He was talking about the middle part in the hook that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
No, no, no, no, no, we had we had that already,
We had that close the door and turned up. Yeah,
we had that hook already. We had everything, but the
middle we didn't have that. But he said at the
girl at a groot in.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
The middle, who was the girl who was singing that part?

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
We had Orgie Wheeler, Cindy Mizelle singing in the chorus,
and wait.

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):
Jie Willard from uh uh Unlimited touch ar you will yep.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
Yeah, a lot of our stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
You killing give that facts she's lessend there.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
BJ Nelson, that's that's BJ. In the solo section, that's
my girl. I love you BJ. Yeah. BJ sang the
middle eight, Audie Wheeler, Cindy I think sang with me
on the hook, or maybe it was just Audrey and
BJ on the on the chorus hookst BJ sang the
lead in the middle of the call and response.

Speaker 5 (01:19:53):
What did you think of Michelle's cover of that I
Love her? So Look Miche.

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
Michelle and so so I co I co produced her
first album. The first three songs. I got shafted out
of the credit. I was a vocal.

Speaker 10 (01:20:10):
Product plantation, yeah, dread dreadlocks, Yeah yeah, I produced that
vocal yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I got.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
I got kind of shafted by the credit by someone
who I brought up in the business, in the game.
Who kind of I ended up? I ended up?

Speaker 3 (01:20:31):
I was thinking Gamson, No, not.

Speaker 2 (01:20:32):
Gamson, Gamson's my man, bets I got. I got chefted
on the credit. Yeah, I got shifted on the credit.
But yeah, she acknowledged it, she said. When the song
was released, she said, for those in the know, McMurphy
co produced you know, my first, my first record.

Speaker 6 (01:20:48):
I know she'sout giving credits because she.

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
Yeah, yeah, I love I love Michelle, love her from
day one, love everything she does, everything she touches. I'm
just you know, I was. I was so proud to
actually I to that point. That was my proudest production
moment really honestly, because the whole record was so beautiful

(01:21:13):
and just attitude, and you know, I love her and
everything she does.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
Is there any other stuff you worked on that you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
I co wrote Secret Garden from Madonna. I didn't get
a proper credit. Yeah, yep.

Speaker 6 (01:21:30):
So y'all did end up working together.

Speaker 2 (01:21:33):
Yes, yes we did. And I wrote another song. So
I wrote the song to your father, which she called
me up when she was working on the album, called me.
She said, McMurphy, McMurphy, I'm gonna make you rich. You're
gonna be You're gonna be rich McMurphy out of the song.

(01:21:54):
The song didn't make it on the album. And and
Secret Garden I played. I played the instrument and the
chords too. I didn't get any credit, but you know,
life is life, man.

Speaker 5 (01:22:05):
Another cat I wanted to ask you about from from
that era that was kind of moving and shaking chet Pettybone.

Speaker 3 (01:22:10):
Did you guys ever have any dealings working together?

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
Yeah? Well, he remixed a bunch of System cuts, and uh,
I know David played on a bunch of his remixes. Okay,
but he did remix a bunch of system songs at
some point.

Speaker 3 (01:22:23):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
Oh, can you can you please settle this once and
for all? All right?

Speaker 4 (01:22:30):
I recently found out that it wasn't you, but I
will say that for the last thirty five years I
would have put my life on the fact that you
were the voice so glow of glo.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
Shut up. Really that was that was That was Chris.
That was Christopher, Yeah, that was Chris was who we were.
We were really good friends, you know, we were real
we were real friends and we still were still that
was Chris Max. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:23:02):
So since we mentioned so, can I ask you about
the hair and the maintenance? And because I don't disturb
this groove, it was.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
Yeah, I had, I had, I had well started. My
first One of my first girlfriends was a hairdresser, so
she taught me early to maintain and she would like
she would print it and get it right, and it
just it just it became like a vegetable that just
kept growing. It took on the life of its own.

Speaker 6 (01:23:28):
Some aquaint would help with help with the.

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
You know, I would tie it up at night. I
would tied it up at night like a bouffonp.

Speaker 6 (01:23:38):
I love it like the girl on a chair.

Speaker 4 (01:23:41):
Yes, you see, I sleep on the pillows right here,
just like like Friday.

Speaker 1 (01:23:49):
She doesn't let her hair touch the bib.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
Yep.

Speaker 5 (01:23:58):
Do you remember when you were we all recorded I
know the song Baptized Beat, but recording the scene for
Beat Street.

Speaker 3 (01:24:05):
Do you remember anything about that?

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
They was that? Yeah, very clearly. Well, it was that
what's this club on twenty second Street? The uh, it
was a roller skating rink. It was a roller skating
rink on twenty seven, twenty eighth Street, and everybody was there,
all these different acts, and I know we we performed

(01:24:26):
the song and when we were done, they were like next.
In the edits, they said next. But I thought we had.
I thought we had the slam in the song. I
thought baptized the beat, And to this day, I think
it's one of the most inventive songs lyrically. Beat wise
changes the bridges, everything about it. Yes, it's it's it's

(01:24:47):
some fly shit for me, it's it's.

Speaker 1 (01:24:49):
Not y'all would definitely better than Andy.

Speaker 11 (01:24:51):
Be Bad, Shine and Wine.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
Yeah, you can tell when he planned his career, he
knew like.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
Yo, man, I'm just in and out.

Speaker 4 (01:25:15):
Poor guy never had a chance. Yeah, so okay, can
you There's the one thing I also wanted to know
is how did the group dissolve after eighty nine? And
you know, why didn't you guys sort of try to
push it further past that point?

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
So let's see, we had don't disturb this groove. There's
a massive hit we did big tours next record Rhythm
and Romance. I think we kind of went down the
rabbit hole of Teddy Riley style funk in our own version.

(01:25:56):
I really think pretty much at that time we kind
of run our course for where our heads you're at
right then in terms of we would either have to
go really simpler, like really back to the basics, or
I don't think we could get any bigger in terms
of the music, in terms of the chord and the
layers and the parts and the levels, And it had

(01:26:20):
just to my head it had blown up into too
much to too much to digest. And David actually has
started to get a lot more session worker on his own.
What is this nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety I'm kind
of looking for a new direction. I'm trying to think

(01:26:44):
of something that's a little bit different. He had quite
a bit of success in that era as a keyboard
player and working and producing, and I was trying to
find my own niche. I ended up going to la
in nineteen ninety two ninety three and forming a band

(01:27:05):
with uh Just. It was really like a summer camp,
like a musical summer camp. We had all kind of
gotten divorced, or our record deal that ended, or we
were trying to find ourselves with Andre Simone, Gard Nicole, Saint,
Paul Peterson, myself. So we went there the summer nineteen
ninety three, and actually that record just came out two

(01:27:27):
weeks ago, The Mighty Soulmates. It just came out, and
we recorded like twenty four songs. We recorded like twenty
four songs and yeah, so we recorded actually a and
M record. John McLain kind of put us together because
he was a friend from way back. He's the one

(01:27:47):
that said keep an eye on prints. You know, once
he loses that baby girl voice and starts singing in
a full voice, he gonna be a monster. He gonna
be a monster. And he turned us on kind of
the Jimmy and Terry and he was really like a
like a coher driving force. So I think he said,
once you guys get together, to what you can do.
So we hold up summer garding Nicole's house in Woodland

(01:28:08):
Hills for like four or five months. We wrote, literally
we wrote maybe more songs when we finished twenty four
twenty five songs.

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
Not torupt But John McLean is one of the most
elusive hardest cats to get. He is our dream interview.

Speaker 4 (01:28:26):
Like he's literally the common denominator of almost every other
guest on this show.

Speaker 1 (01:28:34):
And well, well yeah, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:28:38):
Dick, he has reasons. He has reasons.

Speaker 4 (01:28:41):
Yeah, he can't make it, But I know why, why
is he such a mystery?

Speaker 2 (01:28:49):
He kind of you know, I mean, I've spent time
with him, like over the court because he really was
a fan of the system. He really was. He put
us together. He brought us to produce a couple so
we did a couple of projects for him. But I
would ride around with him in LA and we would
kind of talk music and he would talk Michael John.
He grew up with the Jackson family. His father, I

(01:29:10):
think was I don't want to speak out out of line,
but his father was in the underground under whatever in LA.
But John always had a brilliant ear for music and
a personality to put stuff together and just a sense
of kind of what would work and who would work.
He's always had that. So he brought us together. We

(01:29:33):
spent somemer together, wrote this record, and then the earthquake
happened in January and we kind of all splintered and
all went our separate ways. I think John changed labels
or whatever. And this record is sat complete since nineteen
ninety four. So I was finally able to get a

(01:29:53):
deal for it with Adya Warner and the record just
came out on on December third.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
Oh. Man, Wow, that's music to my ears. Literally wow,
that's and over the course.

Speaker 2 (01:30:05):
Also, Andre Simone and I have become brothers over the
last Actually I met. I met Andre on the Prince
Rick James Clear tour. He was the only person in
the band because I'm you know, I looked like a roady.
I'm basically a roadie. No one would no one would
look for me, no one and talk to me. But
Andre and I connected on that tour and we've remained

(01:30:28):
friends ever since.

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
Okay, so are you You weren't in system mood yet,
You were just one of the guys in as far.

Speaker 2 (01:30:37):
As yeah, I was just one of the guys hanging
around the edge. I don't know what you do exactly,
but you ain't you ain't you ain't an artist, so
you know you get so.

Speaker 1 (01:30:44):
Love well that's beautiful man, yo. I just want to say, man,
like I mean this, this is definitely a dream interview.
Like I've always wanted to talk.

Speaker 4 (01:30:55):
To you or you know you or David either or
and this is one of the moments that, you know,
definitely a highlight for me to get the nerd out
and study history here.

Speaker 2 (01:31:10):
Actually yeah, yes, absolutely one.

Speaker 5 (01:31:15):
And I just want to say too, man like, don't
disturb this grooves? Like one of my favorite songs of
all times, like in any genre. I mean, you know
that song just when I was a kid and I
would just hear it like, you know, in the way
like my mom taking me to school in the morning,
you know what I mean, Like.

Speaker 3 (01:31:28):
That was just I think it's kind of still one
of my favorite songs.

Speaker 6 (01:31:31):
Of all the eighties babies.

Speaker 9 (01:31:33):
I mean it posted the video with jay Z just
saying it in common and this casual language like don't
disturb this groove, Like I kind of think it's like
at least the top ten for most eighties babies.

Speaker 2 (01:31:43):
No, it really might be.

Speaker 5 (01:31:44):
I mean, no, that that song is just an amazing record,
man Like, seriously.

Speaker 2 (01:31:48):
That.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
It's you know what they said, It's just.

Speaker 2 (01:31:55):
That's a good story about that. There's a good story.
We have time yeah, yeah, so so so when when
when we would make records, generally the label. They just
let us do what we do. They just you know,
you just turn it in when you're done. So at
this point it's like we had done a system, we
had done experiment, we had done the pleasure Seekers, and

(01:32:18):
now we're coming on. Don't disturb this group. The pleasure
Seekers did. It made a lot of noise. So now
it's time they want they want they want payback. They
want that money right, they need that big hit the
money record. So we knew, David and I that don't
disturb this groove was it? We we knew. So you
know you're going to a and R meeting. You're gonna

(01:32:39):
play all your ship, but you're gonna save the best
one the last, right, You're gonna save the best one
for last. So we start playing the songs on the album.
We play everything, and now we're like, okay, we got
one more to play for you hit play on the record.
It plays for about a minute, a minute and a half,
and Sylvia's says, come on, baby, I know y'all got something.

(01:33:03):
I know y'all got something else, but you got what
you got for me? Yes. So Merlin Bob, who was
also he was like, really that the yeah, Merlin Bob
Merlin Merlin. Bob said no, no, no, no, no, just
wait a second, let's listen to that one more time.
And they listened to the second time, and she still

(01:33:25):
didn't want to release as the first single, but she said,
all right, you know that if that's what y'all you know,
if that's what y'all want to do, I'm okay with it.
But you know, I think we is a little.

Speaker 12 (01:33:35):
Stronger and a right about this, yes, right, all right, now,
right right, yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:33:49):
What was her come back to you hit? What was
the comeback?

Speaker 2 (01:33:53):
No, there was no, there was there was no comeback
that that record just went through the ceiling was not yeah, no, no, no,
we never got We never got that. But that was
kind of I thought that was an interesting story about
don't disturb the screw.

Speaker 5 (01:34:09):
So they didn't label, didn't believe in it until it
until it saw it hitting it and it went out.

Speaker 2 (01:34:14):
Yeah, until they saw some recognition from some label out
on the West coast, I think in Washington State or something.
There was some taste to make a label. At the time.
They said their phones were lighting up, so you know,
that one blew up and and I really believe it's
one of our one of our best.

Speaker 1 (01:34:32):
Yes, yes, absolutely, yes. All right, so just before we
sign off, any other secret projects you've you've done that
we don't know about.

Speaker 6 (01:34:45):
Come on, let's give you a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:34:47):
I know I've done a lot, but I don't know
what I think. I think that Michelle and the Madonna
stuff is kind of really what I'm I'm kind of proud.

Speaker 1 (01:34:56):
Of stuff you there. No, thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):
Man, Thank you for having me. Man. I really appreciate
you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:35:10):
All right, man, thank you for the music well for real?

Speaker 2 (01:35:12):
Yeah, yeah, I want to shout out to my brother,
David Frank. We've been on this road since nineteen eighty one,
even earlier because he was in clear. My love for him,
my love for his talent, my respect for him, and
him getting on board with all my crazy ideas and
my crazy energy. I got so much love for him.

(01:35:34):
And we actually we have a record on the griddle
right now that's being mixed in LA. It's a new
system record being mixed by Tom Lloyd Algae and Jimmy Douglas.

Speaker 5 (01:35:47):
Okay, songs are finished, Jimmy Senator Jimmy d Yeah, yes, yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:35:55):
No, we're not we're not playing but you know, we
need the right we need the right place to write
home to get it out in this new world. But
it's I think it's going to be a sensational.

Speaker 1 (01:36:04):
Record as as you're doing this, I promise this.

Speaker 4 (01:36:08):
My last question, are you are you aware of the
sort of the phase of like throwback that that sound
that you guys helped create, like from groups like Tuxedo
or up in Canada there's what's the a trax brother's.

Speaker 5 (01:36:26):
Name, Oh, Chromeo, Chromeo like, and we're not We're not throwback,
but the Foreign Exchange.

Speaker 3 (01:36:33):
I mean, me and my brother, we are very much
inspired by y'all. For real.

Speaker 4 (01:36:37):
I was gonna say, are you against like Oftentimes people
say like no, let's push forward, let's push forward, But
I swear there's just a generation of people that are
starving for like authentic like pulling out the DMX drum machine,
pulling out the Oberheim synthesizer, that sort of thing. Are

(01:36:57):
are you guys going back to square one with us?

Speaker 2 (01:37:00):
We for the most part, yes, but we're down with
your quest. You've got an idea, brother, we'll make a real, real,
simple and basic I mean, well that's that's what we're about.
That's what we're trying to get you right now.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
This might be a mission for Zoe and.

Speaker 2 (01:37:22):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:37:22):
I mean I'm listening. I mean listen. Here said, here's an.

Speaker 2 (01:37:28):
Open for all. He's your man.

Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
I will do the documentary on it, I promise ye.

Speaker 2 (01:37:33):
Here's an open.

Speaker 1 (01:37:35):
That's beautiful.

Speaker 4 (01:37:37):
Well, once again, thank you very much for joining us,
Sugar Steve anything any.

Speaker 3 (01:37:42):
Thank you, thank you for chiming for your music.

Speaker 2 (01:37:45):
Michael, thank you, thank you, thank you having me.

Speaker 1 (01:37:47):
All right, all right, we'll talk to you later.

Speaker 3 (01:37:50):
I'll be good.

Speaker 1 (01:37:57):
M What's Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio.

(01:38:18):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Questlove

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