Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome back, y'all.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is Jeff Luna and the Love for one Another Podcast.
I want to welcome you back to this wonderful journey
through music life.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
And how we navigate through it all together.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
No, we do not talk about hate here, but we
do not act like we are blind to those amongst
us filled with hate. So strap yourself in as we
take this musical journey and learn to have love.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
For one another.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Welcome once again, This is Jeff with the Love for
one Another podcast. I tend to say things too fast
sometimes and I don't even understand what I'm saying, so
I try to slow down and give it to you
the way it's supposed to be. This is Jeff Luna
with the Love for one Another podcast. How's that a
little bit better? Anyway, Enough screwing around, let's get to
(01:31):
the show.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So we have been doing something that's been exciting exciting to.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Me has been reading from the Morris Day's book on Time,
A Princely Life in Funk by Boris Day and.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
This dude named David Ritz. I still don't every show.
I'm kind of like, who's this guy? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So we read some chapters and I think we're going
to read another couple of chapters today because we took
a break from that to get to some of some
conversation on current events that have to do with loving
each other and in a special way, right, showing that
love unconditionally. That makes that I think we all need
(02:21):
to experience.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
It's important.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It's important to not only to others, but to ourselves.
If we don't find a way and learn how to
practice it in our daily lives, then it makes our
lives difficult. I really believe it does. Our lives are
hard enough as it is. Nothing makes it better by
hating on other people. So you know, we don't want
(02:48):
to keep saying the same thing.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Over and over again. But how do we not do that?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I mean, if you were trying to talk to somebody
about building a car, while you're going to talk about
building the car almost every day so they can understand
what needs to be done.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
If you're teaching them.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
About a job, then you talk about that job. I
not no teacher, But if I'm talking about showing love
for one another, then I think that that's important to
talk about almost every day and get it in there somewhere.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That way, it becomes like a normal thing if it
can become Lots of things become normal in our lives.
And some of them are bad things. I mean, some
of them are just things we do, and some of
them are the.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Things we talk about.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And sometimes if we can spend every day, just give
it a few minutes every day to try and think
of ways that maybe actually look at it this way,
if you can spend the end of your day reflecting
on how you spend your day. Reflection, right, Some people
help people, some people work all day, some people do
(03:53):
multiple different things, you know, whatever it might be. But
reflect on your day and say, how did I spend
How much time do I spend actually loving another person.
I'm not talking about just physical love. I'm talking about
emotional love and love that comes from deep within. Maybe
they didn't even know, they might not have known it, right,
and that's a special kind of love that person don't know,
(04:16):
but you truly love them. You just like man, I'm
okay with you. You might never know what, you might
not care, you might think it's funny, might think it's
what's wrong with you, But I truly do. I feel
a love in my heart for you, and I feel
that I hope every day is prosperous for you and
things get better whatever you're going through. Maybe that person
(04:37):
is not even going through a hard time, but you
just wish them well. Reflect upon your day for a
little bit and.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
See see what that does for you.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
It might help with things that are going on in
your life without saying it. Sometimes the greatest gratification that
we can get in life is from things we do
for others. Maybe sometimes we don't even realize it yet.
And I didn't know that that was going to make
a difference in my life by helping somebody else. My
(05:09):
life is terrible, but I helped somebody else for a minute,
and it helped me feel better about my life. And
now I can go make my life better, or vice versa.
If I make my life better first, I can help
make other people's lives better. We've talked about that before.
It's an important thing to do. So with that all
being said, let's take a short little break and we'll
(05:30):
come back and read some chapters from More's Day's Lovely Book,
and then we'll move on from there. This is Jeff
with Love for one another podcast, and we'll.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Be right back after this.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Hey, this is Jeff and we are back to Love
for One Another podcast, and let's get this thing started.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
This is book reading.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I've been doing it a few times here and there.
I'm not no major book reader or nothing like that.
Put those little warnings out there so you can all
understand if you go, why is he reading it funny?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Because that's how I read.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Plus, this is Morris's book Man on Time, A Princely
Life in Funk by Moore's Day, and I wish it
would have read it himself because I listened to the
people reading the books instead of reading them myself, and man,
this thing would have been killed her. Like I said,
Mi Tay read her book and it was really good
because she read it makes it more personal, and I
(06:33):
think that's what that's WHATULD have done too. So I've
always wanted to kind of read it myself. And I felt, well,
if I'm going to read it myself, then I'm going
to read it on here and let you enjoy it
too if you can.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
If I'm sure most of you probably already read it,
but it took too long. I should have done this
a long time ago anyway.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
So I'm on chapter five Champagne, and we'll get started
and I have in no way trying to act like
Morse or act like Prince, because he does a little
prince in here too.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
But this is.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I'm trying to give it my feel of how I
had read it anyway, So in my mind is how
to read it, and I hope you enjoyed it. So anyway,
this is chapter five called Champagne, and it starts off
with saying, strange spelling. But that's what the name of
our new band was. I'd shown you it a strange spelling.
I'd shown you that strange spelling was an attention getter.
(07:28):
I'd show you how being normal gets you nowhere. That's
Prince talking right. You showed me a lot of shit
after you split. I tried to use that shit to
keep us going. We were convinced we could make it
without you. We should have known better, but we were young, hungry.
Between all of us switching off, we had vocal power,
(07:49):
we had musical power.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yet with you.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Gone, we lost our superpower. During rehearsal, we weren't as
tough on our We weren't as tough on ourselves as
you've been on us.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
We lost the leader.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Then when we lost Andre Simone, we really found ourselves sputtering.
No one could blame Andre for accepting an offer to
join your new band. If I had been given that offer,
I would have grabbed it.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
But no offer came.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
You didn't see me as part of your immediate musical future.
Warner Brothers had.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Given you a deal, and you were gearing up.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
To cut your first album. Champagne fizzled out. I was desponded.
I was also drifting. I dropped out of North Hive
after my junior year and hadn't developed any skills beyond music.
While my music had tapered off, my love life haven't.
(08:44):
Hadn't I'd fallen for a young, attractive winner, Jennifer Graves,
who on October seventeen, nineteen seventy five, gave birth to
our precious daughter, Tianna. I was eighteen. I lacked the
maturity and responsibility the fatherhood required, but I loved the
little girl and wanted to do by her, do right
by her. The problem was that I had no real direction.
(09:08):
The strongest element in my life remained my mom. As
a go getter, she never slowed down. She came up
with a solution. She bought herself a brand new in
nineteen seventy seven ruin te Top Grand Prix, and we
moved to Maryland, Sandy state of Minneapolis, and Jesse went
to live with his dad in Illinois. It was just
(09:29):
Mom and me the plane. The plan was to bring
out Jennifer and Tiana once we got settled. Mom chose Gaithersburg,
halfway between Baltimore and DC, because we could move in
with her best friend, Francis. Meanwhile, she could easily drive
travel up the coast to New York and continue to
(09:53):
try and lend me a record deal. I had made
other demos, at least in my mind, whereas as good
as a demo Prince had used to nail his warner
brother's contract. At the same time, I had no illusions.
I was not prints, I could not play every instrument,
and I could not sing or write.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
With his facility.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
But I could play drums, I could play a little
keyboards and a little guitar. I could sing, and I
could write. And I had a mother who wasn't about
to give up on me. Mom worked in beauty supply
stores selling wigs before getting a good government gig at
the Opportunities Industrialization Center is a job development specialist count
(10:37):
on Mom to land on her feet, count on me
to keep floundering jobs here and there hardly satisfied my
musical soul. So I found myself moving into a jazz
community of serious players. All my friends were jazz cats.
I sat in with all kinds of bands. There was
no money in it, but lots of artistic satisfication, not
(11:01):
to mention growth. I was aware of the history of
the jazz drumming. I knew about Bassie's big band drummers,
Papa Joe, John's Jones and Sonny Payne. I knew about
Louis Bellson and Buddy Rich, But until Maryland, I never played.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Straight up about in the style of Art Blake Lea
and Max Rope.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I was proud to become a scent a decent jazz
drummer who could hold his own in the heavyweight players
in DC area. But besides an occasional gig, my money
was still funny. Mom chipped in helping me rent an
apartment for Jennifer and Tianna in the same complex where
we were staying for a while. That boosted my spirits,
(11:48):
but the boosts didn't last long. Young as we were,
Jennifer and I got in.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Each other's way.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
The relationship collapsed under the weight of the unhappiness. Jennifer
and our daughter soon moved back to Minneapolis. I never
gave Tiana the time and care she deserved. There was
a moment when my misery came to head. I managed
to find work in Montgomery, Ward, where they put me
behind the counter of one of their rental car divisions.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Would you like a green.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Ford Pinal or an orange Chevy Vega, I'd asked the customer.
I wasn't happy. One of the co workers, one of
my co workers, Tyrell, had a boombox and he'd bring
in he'd bring to the gig, fine with me. These
were disco days, when Donna Summer was calling out last dance,
Gloria Gaynor was declaring I Will survive, and the Jacksons
(12:39):
were ready to blame it on the boogie, and Rick
James was firing up Mary Jane.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
I dug it all.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Wasn't until I heard a song called Soft and Wet, though,
that I spun around on listen hard there I was,
says Prince, Yes, sir, it was you on the radio,
Prince Snappy groove, the distinctive dirty Minneapolis funk being driven
insane by a certain body part he called soft and wet.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Sec obsessed.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Prince had cut a track not unlike dozens of tracks
we had cut together. That's my boy, I told Tyrell.
We played in the band together. Sure you did, Morris, really, man,
I was a drummer. He's my homeboy, Prince, that's him.
Tyrell looked at me and like I was out of
my head. If you were such a solid drummer, he said,
(13:32):
then what are you doing here renting out in Paulas
didn't have an answer, so I simply sulked. I went
to Regardless store and to see if I could get
an actual copy of Prince's first album for you. I
shouted out six ninety eight to buy it, had to
hear it all. What I heard was a Prince had
refined his sound. He'd started the scope with the grand Central.
(13:55):
He was playing all the instruments and playing the hell
out of them. The songs were a little slid than
what he'd been writing before, but the funk was firmly
in place. He was clearly going for the bop for
that pop feeling that was sweeping the clubs from London
to la And went to the new standard. Grab Billboard
(14:15):
to see how the record was selling. Soft and Wet
was a little bit of a hit on the R
and B charts, but the second single, just as Long
as We're Together didn't go anywhere. Neither crossed over. I
know that didn't make Prince happy. Prince loved him some
R and B. Prince was R and B. Prince was
(14:35):
flat flat out determined to get beyond the R and
B market. That's true to virtually every black artist whoever sang.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Through the math.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
If blacks comprised twelve percent of the population and even
a smaller percent of the wealth, where's the big money crossover?
That's the name Ray Charles gave his own label after
he had huge cross over hits like Georgia On My
Mind and I Can't Stop Loving You. That's what Chuck
Berry and had in mind when he tailored his lyrics
(15:08):
to white Bobby Sockers Sockers. I'm not saying Prince comprised
his music. But I'm saying is that he aimed his
music at the widest audience possible. He was shrewd in
the way, in the same way Nat King, Cole, Sam
Cook and Sliced Stone had been shrewd.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
The whiter the peel, the better.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
The title cut for You shows out his ability harmonize
his own voices. I love Marvin Gate only he puts in,
puts it in an almost classical bag, introducing himself to
the world as a different kind of artist. When he
drops the groove, the mood changes and the song radiates
a chick like charm. He doesn't freak out completely, but
(15:57):
he sure knows what's happening on the day asked for
an Urban America.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
You through explaining what.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
I had in mind, says Prince Di. I dig my explanation,
don't you not, saying never a thought it was smart
to explain my music. Leave it to others to say
what it means to them. Well, I'm sure well, I'm
sure enough one of the others, and I'm saying, I
(16:25):
dug it. I saw your whole operation was off and running.
The album cover showed you literally coming out of the shadows.
It wasn't a clear photo I caught you on the run.
It only showed your face. It was also a little blurry,
but it was definitely a statement saying that you were
(16:46):
here and I wanted to be there with you. Oh brother,
did I want to be there with you? Why didn't
you come back to Minneapolis?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
I was there.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
I guess I was too down to think straight. Minneapolis
would have made sense because Jennifer and were there. Reconciliation
with loved ones always makes sense. But I wasn't ready
for that. I was seeing myself as a loser, a
guy in a diiveass Montgomery ward Blazer, filling out rental
forms and patient customers. Mom and I were living in
(17:17):
the motels and raunche apartments overlooking garage dumpsters. I was
in the dumps, seeing my distressed. Mom came up with
a plan. Mom always had a plan, California dreaming. She
suggests we leave Maryland and head to San Jose, where
her cousin, Regina, had moved after she and Spike had divorced. Funny,
(17:39):
but Regina, who had originally drawn us to Minneapolis, was
now drawing us to San Jose.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Big mistake. Man.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I hated it. Hated had Regina's domestic situation. I forced
her in the three bedroom apartment with nine people. Hated
my gig as a salesman and the men's store at
the mall. Hated trying to talk cats in the buying
shitty clothes they didn't want. Switching jobs just made things worse.
I got on a construction cleanup crew. I swung a sledgehammer,
(18:08):
breaking stucco off a base of new homes, picking up
pieces and all them off smelly landfills. Did that for
a month until my back send no more. But a
man's gotta work. So I thought life wouldn't be wouldn't
be easier as a security guard. Applied, was accepted and
issued a shiny new blue uniform badging everything. That night
(18:33):
before my first day on the job, I couldn't sleep,
tossing and turning.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
I thought my brain would explode.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
What was I doing living with my mom and ant
Regina in a place where every morning the line of
the bathroom was agonizing, agonizingly long? What was I do
in taking met manual jobs when in fact I did
have a skill I'd been working on since I was
a kid. I could do music. None of the music
(19:01):
I heard on the radio intimidating me. It inspired me
to make to made me realize that as good as
Shalamar's take It, Take That to the Bank might be,
I could have provided a rhythm for that track. I
didn't want to live my life and the line I
didn't want to live my life like the line that
Marlon Brando, a boxer forced to throw a fight, says
(19:22):
to his brother.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
And one on the waterfront. I could have been a contender.
That's me just tossing that.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I had to get back into the ring. How to
get back to Minneapolis. Jennifer was calling, Tiana was crying
for me. And Prince, only months after his first record
had dropped, came out with another simply called Prince. This
time he was out of the shadows. The cover showed
him full full on shirtless prints with Prince ran at
(19:50):
the top, a purple script above his wavy shoulder lengthd hair.
And this time his music did cross over. I want
to be your lover Charter high on the pop charts
on pop radio. He done what he set out to do,
reach the masses. Now, I had to do the only
thing that made sense head home. That's chapter five. That's
(20:14):
chapter five. We're gonna get ready to do chapter six.
Let's take a break and we'll come right back and.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Get started with it.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
This is Jeff with the Love for One another podcast.
Hope you're enjoying it. I am I'm enjoying reading it.
I know I mess up from time to time, but hey,
the same perfection. I'll be right back. This is Jeff
(20:41):
with the Love for one Another podcast. We are doing
a reading from Morris Day's book called on Time, A
Princely Life in the Funk by Moore's Day with who
else David Ritz?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Who's that? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
We are on chapter six. I'm gonna keep on going
because I'm on a roll.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
I feel good. I feel good about myself.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
And this chapter six is called Drummer for Hire. Big
Sis Sandy always was always in like my second mother,
so it was no surprise that I moved in with her.
As soon as I returned to Minneapolis. I visited my
baby Tiana, but my relationship with Jennifer was still raw.
(21:20):
I wanted to get back with my daughter and her mom,
but I didn't have the means to support him. I
couldn't even support myself. I did, though, make a vow
support would have to come from music. I'd taken enough
low paying, soul crushing jobs. Maybe I wasn't Tony Williams,
but I was a drummer. I was a musician, and
(21:40):
I promised myself to stay on that track. That meant freelancing,
playing behind the Twin Cities band, and that.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Would have me.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Playing behind any Twin Cities bands that would have That
would have me jazz R and B cocktail lounges, and
didn't matter. I was going to make money making music,
no matter how thin they sliced the bread. Because the
black music seeing in Minneapolis was small, it didn't take
long for me to see my old running Buddies Flat
(22:12):
Time was getting even more gigs since with the demise
of Grand Central and Champagne, the competition had dwindled. In fact,
where was the Prince had not abandoned Minneapolis. In fact,
he never would. He had formed a new band and
starting rehearsals in the burbs south of the city. You
(22:35):
should come by, said Andre Simone, who was playing bass
in the band.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Prince would love to see you.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I was a little hesitant. Andrea had told me that
Bobby Z, a white boy, was a drummer. I knew
I could outplay him, but I also knew that a
salt and pepper lineup was important to Prince. He saw
it as another way to facilitate crossover. Sensing my hesitation,
Andre urged me on. There's a lot happening around Prince
(23:03):
right now. He said, you should be part of it.
Why don't you ride out right out there with me?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
A week late?
Speaker 2 (23:10):
A week later I took him up on the offer.
Walking in with Andre, Prince's main man, would make things easier.
It was a fall afternoon. The leaves were turning crazy
gold and red, the sky of brilliant blue, a mild
breeze blowing through the urbs. I was more excited than anxious.
It'd be good to see Prince. It'd been too long.
(23:33):
When we arrived, he was already there, guitar in hand.
He looked at me and didn't exactly beam, but he
didn't skull. I thought I saw him break into a
small smile.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
You saw right.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Didn't hold no grudges. Wasn't anything to hold a grudge about,
That was Prince. But was I holding a grudge? Was
I pissed that it was the Grand Central Demo that
had nailed a Warner Brother deal? Was I pissed that
I wasn't named the drummer of this hot new band,
the Revolution? If I was pissed, I decided being pissed
(24:08):
would do me no good, So I chilled, stayed friendly,
said I was happy to help any way I could.
You were too smart for that. You understood the train
was leaving the station, and you wanted You wanted on
the train. That's Prince. I got on the train. Prince's
second album was outstripping his first by leaps and bounds.
(24:33):
I was eager to be part of the phenomenon, and
I was relieved that Prince welcomed me, and it was
in a circle. He seemed genuinely glad to see me.
Things picked up where they left off. He didn't have
to ask whether I dug his first two albums.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
He knew I did. He didn't have to have.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
He didn't have to ask whether I was jonesing to
get behind the drums.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
He knew I was.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
He also knew that I was a cat who could
crack him up. The jokes came fast and furious. The
brothers were back in action. When his new band actually
started to play, I saw how he was putting a
new kind of hurting on the pop, soul, funk, and
the new songs he had written for his third album.
(25:17):
Sex was even more prominent in Freakier. During a break, he.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Came over to me ask a question.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I thought the question was going to be I want
to sit in on drums, but it was something else entirely.
You know how to work a video camera. That's what
Prince said to him. That was the question, and my
answer came quick. I can learn in a hurry, and brother,
I did just like that. I became the videographer, lunging,
(25:45):
lugging around a heavy ass VH cassette machine.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
But I'm not complaining. You got no reason to.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
I kept you on the scene, kept you in the mix.
That's what I wanted. The camera brought me closer to
the action, and the action was all about Prince. Because
Prince liked being videotaped. My new job gave me more
access to him than I had ever had. I could
move around as I please. The closer I got to him,
the happier he was.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Prince loved close ups.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
He loved having his daring dance moves and dramatic guitar
gestures film so he could study them later. And man
did he study them. He was a perfectionist. He dissected
every motion to make sure it was right, and if
it wasn't, he'd rework it until it was. He slowly
came to rely on me for honest appraisals because I'd
(26:35):
come up with them. I knew his stuff as well
as anyone with the possibility, with the possible exception of Andre,
But Andre not especially gracious man was more diplomatic than me.
If I thought a song of dance move was hokey,
I let Prince know. He appreciated my candor and began
rely on me as someone who'd speak my mind. So
(26:58):
when it's time to go on tour, he took me long.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I not only.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Videotaped every show, but had the freedom to critique. Prince
was anything. Prince was for anything that would improve his presentation.
The presentation was starting to include more of the metrosexual stuff.
It wasn't enough for Prince to make sex a central
theme in his music. He also wanted to use sex
(27:23):
as a visual stimulant in his show. Like all Stars,
he wanted the attention of himself. That ain't unusual, but
it was unusual as how when he started the rock
long coats with nothing underneath except undies. That sure is
how got everyone's attention. Provocative songs plus provocative outfits equals notoriety.
(27:48):
Prince was looking to be notorious. I was there for
the Prince Tour, his first national go round. It started
in big clubs where he was a marquee name. Didn't
have to open for anybody because he was getting all
kinds of publicity. He could fill the Roxy and now
layer the Capri Ballroom in Atlanta. The sex bit was big,
(28:10):
more and more. He was selling themselves to the sex
symbol and the girls white and black were buying into it. Meanwhile,
he kept developing material for his third album, Dirty Mind,
No doubt he was intent on getting dirtier. A year
before the record was released, he began to perform Head,
the story of a virgin on her way to her wedding.
(28:32):
The singer hits her, hits on her, gives her head,
comes all over a wedding dress, and winds up marrying
him her himself. Caused the hell of a stir, which
was just what Prince wanted. Back then, Head was the
goal to term of oral sex. I remember Marvin Gaye
using a few years earlier on Soon to Be and
(28:55):
Soon I'll Be Loving You from as I Want You album.
Marvin sang it. His generation of black men saw it.
I saw it as a forbidden that the woman was
supposed to sexually serve the man, not vice versa, but Marvin,
who admits in the song that he had never done
that before, talks himself into it, saying he'll do it
(29:18):
soon while calling out the name of his wife, Janice.
Prince took a boulder approach, no hesitation. Didn't matter that
his chick was promised to another cat, didn't matter that
she was a virgin. Those facts only added to the heat.
More than his predecessors. Prince was already was ready to
go down, get down, and stay down until every last
(29:41):
female fan was satisfied.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
By the end of the club.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Portion of the Prince to her head was part of
the show, and the audience, to make a terrible pun,
was eating it up.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Yeah that's nasty.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
I had it all on the camera. Every night after
the show, Prince would study his performing. No doubt, he
got off on himself as most artists do, but he
also abombished himself as he found a fault. He knew
when a dance move was wrong or a note out
of key. Fewer fever was building at the point of
(30:16):
the lines outside the clubs were sneaking around the block
frustrated fans were being turned away from sold out shows.
Prince needed bigger venues, and in nineteen seventy nine going
into nineteen eighty, the cat commanding the biggest venues was
Rick James. It was a mighty moment Prince opening for
(30:39):
Rick James. A torch had was being passed, but the
handoff was messy, funny, but it was the same kind
of mess Rick talked about when he got on the
torch handed off from the funk master before him, George Clinton.
Clinton was seven years older than Rick, who felt the
George's resentment was ten years older than Prince who felt
(31:02):
Rick's resentment, and in nineteen seventy nine when they met up,
Rick was thirty one, Prince was twenty one and yours
truly Prince's trusted videographer twenty two. Prince Agrita opened for
Rick's Fired Up to her. Rick was blazing hot, has
fired up album might burn? It had been burning up
(31:23):
to charge his matches like love Gun. Rick was at
his peak. The cover photo showing him standing tall with
in white thigh high leather boots and blowing smoke from
his big blunt and sporting a white cowboy hat. He
came on as King Rick. With Rick commanding the mountaintop
(31:44):
and Prince on the rise. It should have been a
perfect pairing.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
It was anything but.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
The competition was nasty and the generational gap wide. First off,
Rick was the ultimate stoner. He brandished on stage joint
the way Luke Skywalker brandish his lightsaber. Prince was straight
up sober. Not only did he not get high, he
hated anyone getting high around him. I kicked my weed
away from the boss. Rick blew that shit in Prince's face.
(32:13):
He used dope as a fuel, while Prince was driven
by pure energy. The tour wound up and way its way.
The tour wound its way across the country for more
than three months, sounding out the Omni and Atlanta and
the Cabo Arena and.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Detroit started out great.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
I set up my JVC video cassette recorder on tripod
placed on the soundboard to get the best view of
the stage.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Prince came out.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Smoking, not literally but figuratively. Soft and wet was usually
the opener. He had also gone to I Feel for You,
a song off his second album that a few years later,
Shaka Khan would turn into a smash cover it was
beautiful to see the artist who Prince had covered so
frequently in the Grand Central days to actually singing his songs.
(33:07):
He'd squeeze his head somewhere into the set sexual any
windows flew from one.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Side of the stage to the other.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
He began sporting his and drigging us and dragon Us
get up the open trench coat, revealing black leggings and
a bikini underwear in nineteen seventy nine. That took balls,
but Prince was Prince. He stepped he stepped out on
and did what he wanted to do. The crowds went nuts.
The press started saying that.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
He was outstripping He was outstripping Rick. Rick resented that.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Later he wrote that the crowd boothed them when they
saw Prince and his bloomers, But I didn't hear any
booze on the tour Prince. Rick also wrote about the
drum battle between him and Prince, when supposedly Rick kicked
Prince's ass.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I knew nothing about that.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
I did though, though, that Rick started accusing Prince of
stealing hit, his licks and stage moves. I thought the
accusation was silly. We all steal the line of musical
thieves is endless, from Chuck Berry to Little Richard Tag
Turner and Jackie Wilson to Ray Charles to Stevie Wonder
(34:21):
Michael Jackson. If you don't like the word steal, then
let's say borrow, no matter how you look at it.
Although every musical style is built on the previous style. Sure,
there are innovators, all the artists I just mentioned our innovators.
But innovators are based on shit that came before. That's
(34:41):
what makes innovation. Innovations of these geniuses so startling.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
All at once.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
They contained past president future personally wise. Personality wise, Rick
and Prince were cut from similar cloth. They both hear.
They both were hardly humble. Arrogant is a better word.
They were musical visionaries, and they knew it. Rick had
created a persona for himself, a larger than life character,
(35:12):
and Prince was in the process of doing the same.
Prince looking for validation from Rick and vice versa musically.
The rivalry began, probably brought out the best in both
of them personally. They could have offered one another respect,
but at least there was no bloodshed. The promoters clashed
(35:33):
in on the conflict. The promoters cashed in on the conflict.
As word of Prince Prows grew, they renamed the tour
the Battle of Funk. Prince said, looking back, who who
would you name the winner of that battle? There you
go tripping again, Do I got to name you the winner? Do?
(35:54):
I got to give you the gold medal for besting Rick.
You got enough medals. I had to give Rick props
his contributors to His contributions to Funk were original, his roots,
infusion and jazz that were deep like you. Rick was
a world class writer, ranger, instrumentalist and singer. Rick deserves recognition.
(36:18):
If you say so, I do. At the end of
the tour, Prince no longer needed Rick. He was ready
to go out on his own. But before he did,
he had a complete his third album. Well he was
working in the studio. He let me cut some tracks
of my own big breakthrough. I guess I get paid.
I guess I paid my dues, I had videotaped without complaining.
(36:41):
I'd done what I was asking me. And of course
all the time Prince knew how badly I wanted to
get on the music. So at the end of Fired
Up tour, he rewarded me with free use of the studio.
My brother was challenging me. I jumped at the chance.
I was determined to search my soul for the baddest
groove in the history of bad grooves man. I was
(37:05):
on it, spent hours behind the drums until I found
a stroke. I knew I would turn Princes inside out.
Keep in mind, during these two years that I had
been behind the camera, I'd been studying every move. At
this point, I knew his sounds as well as he did.
Plus I had some pretty damn good percussive ideas of
(37:27):
my own. Now, Prince was always cool, so when I
presented him with the dance track, I thought it was hot.
I didn't expect them to break out in an applause.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
In fact, he.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Did, but he did listen intently all the way through,
nodding slightly. When he asked me to run it back
from the top, I knew how I was gold.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
He dug it.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
At the same time, he wouldn't commit to cutting it, said.
We talked the next day, twenty four hours later, We're
back in the studio. When he said he wanted a
track bingo, but then a wrinkle. He said, I had
two options. He buys the song for me. He'd buys
the song for ten thousand dollars cold cash, or he
(38:12):
could use it and I could get a record deal.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Of my own. My choice. Naturally, I chose the record deal.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
A few weeks later, when Prince flew off to la
he let me stay in his house in Minneapolis Urbs.
I noticed a VHS tape in his recorder without a
label at his tape man. As his tape man, I
labeled everything, What could this be? I slipped it in
and saw someone else that recorded Prince playing a dance
(38:42):
and dancing to my track. He completed it with a
melody married to it, a set of lyrics called party Up.
My fully fleshed out track was untouched, only augmented by
his vocal. The song a declaration of his revolutionary rock
(39:03):
and roll called the party people the dance floor, even
as my man slipped in a political message about full
futility of war.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
It was great.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Took a while for Prince to fulfill his promise, but
I was a patient man. I was finally where I
wanted to be. I was on the inside looking out
for a while. I got back with Jennifer. I loved
being with my daughter, but it was time to hit
the road.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
I had to run. The road would kill any romance.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Prince had completed Dirty Mind with Party Up as one
of the eight songs. Prince owned it outright. The album
had read that everything was produced, arranged, composed, and performed
by Prince, not a word about having written the track
about Maa writing the track for Party Up. That's the
(39:56):
deal we made, right, which was why I never brought
it up again. Also kept cool because I still had
hopes of being your drummer, but it wasn't meant to be. Instead,
I held to the hope that I had soon had
my own record deal. Rather than rock the boat, I
agree to go back out on the road as your
(40:16):
videoographer during the Dirty Mind tour. I could be humble
if I had to. There was always a method to
Princess madness. On his first album cover, he was just
moving through out of the shadows. On the second, he
was shirtless and out. On the third Dirty Mind, he
(40:37):
was in a trench pulled open to show his belly
button and black bikinis. The look he tried out on
stage was now officially imprinted on his latest musical, offering
some critics and fans pushed back, but I always admired
him for not giving a fuck. This was the impression
(40:57):
he wanted to make. He was a musical revolutionary. And
that was that. That is the end of chapter six.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
We are now.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Six chapters in. Man, I'm feeling good about this. I'm
feeling pretty smooth. So let's take a break and we'll
be right back with another portion of the show. This
is Jeff would love for one another, and we'll be
right back with you back. And that was a good
(41:39):
book reading. I'm getting a little bit better. I know
I started here and there and I mess up my
words and everything else. But like I said, hey, I'm
not no official book reader. I think reading is a
tough thing. Oh man, now the air turned on again.
I think it's a tough thing because, you know, if
you don't do it regularly and you try and read
(42:01):
the words before you say them and stuff like that,
it makes it a little difficult. It's not you know,
I don't know. Maybe people have been doing it, Like
some people read books all the time and it just
comes naturally. So for them it's probably like it ain't
no thing. It's just easy to do. But for those
of us that don't read like that. I think it's
(42:24):
a I listened back and I'm like, man, should they
even post this?
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Like wow? But you know what it is?
Speaker 2 (42:31):
What it is, man, that's how I read. You know, Hey,
maybe you might like it, maybe not, but I think
it's sharing.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
The book is awesome. I just love it.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
And there's some other books I want to read too.
I want to actually get into some discussion on some
really amazing people out there that wrote some amazing books
and talked about unifying people, Martin Luther King especially, and
get into conversation on how to bring people together, because
(43:03):
this is not an easy thing right now, especially in
this day and age.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
I was.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Catching up on news and current events and stuff, and
right now we're just in a tough spot.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Man. I think it seems like.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
We're getting to a point where people are finding it
almost like setting up the scene, right if you're talking
about a player or a movie and you set the
scene and what's the scene.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Well, we got props.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
And we got ideas, and we've got a storyboard, and
we're gonna have this scene where these things are going
to happen. And you're setting up the next scene, right,
So you want to get things in place, and it
almost seems like the things that happen, the dialogue that
comes after it is leans toward hate, It leans toward
(44:00):
a bad outcome, it leans toward revenge, and we're gonna
get you, you know, and a lot of it, to
be honest with you, it's putting more people against people,
you know. And when I talk about people in this sense,
I'm talking about our own, you know.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
People that live here in the US.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
And it seems like we're living in this day and
age where not only do we have our own differences,
not only do we have the differences that are put
to us that have always been there, but now we've
got an even stronger force of the government is actually
pushing this agenda to separate. And we got this side
(44:49):
and that side.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
It's kind of like we're picking the we're picking a team,
and you got the softball team, right, and you're like, oh,
you got to pick your team, and that's what it
feels like what's happening right now is somebody's just picking
all the all the ones that can make the decisions.
So you kind of you're getting left where you have
(45:13):
no sace or no no real feeling of control. Not
that you want control other, but you got to.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Control the situation.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
And usually there's things in place for that. Right there's
there's a the branches of government that are supposed to
keep that in check. That's kind of not working right now.
And like I said, I don't want to get into
politics too much right here. What I'm mainly getting into
is the fact that we're being pinned against each other,
(45:50):
and some of us can see it coming, some of
us might be involved with it and actually feeling helpless,
like well, what can I do about it? How what
am I gonna do about it? I can't do nothing
about it. I'm just it's just me, Like I've always said,
we're you know, when you live here in the US,
(46:10):
especially in California, you have your little square. I got
my square. Whether it be a big square, small square,
it doesn't matter. This is my area, this is where
I live, and I try to do my best to
protect it, make it nice, and live in my square
and just be happy. But that's all you got, like
your voice, your voice of reason, your voice of change,
(46:33):
your voice of everything that normally you just say, well,
when it comes time to vote, I'm gonna vote this,
I'm gonna vote that, or when it comes time to
make a change, I'm gonna see what I can do
and get involved. Right now, it just seems like all
of that's gone. And that's only that's half of the country.
The other half feels like this is everything I ever wanted.
(46:55):
I think for me, I think the problem is when
you say this is everything I ever wanted, and you
see people going through pain and through hurt and disarray
and people being pinned against each other, and I think
there's a confusion there.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
I don't you don't.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
I don't want to sit here and put people down
and be like, well, they don't know what they're talking about,
because I think they do, but you're being put pinned
against each other to to feel like I heard, let
me put to you this way. I heard today somebody
(47:33):
was actually saying, I think it was Marjorie Tyley Green
or whatever, was talking about that we should just separate,
like there should be two different countries because that's how
far apart we are now. She's kind of crazy and
she says a lot of weird things, but people listen
to her like this. This is the problem, is people
listen to these people, and when when all this stuff
(47:56):
happened recently and I saw people posting right away about
civil war or about we're going to get you this
and that, and you declared word and it's man, it's troubling.
It's troubling because we're trying to we're trying to unify,
we're trying to come together, and that's not that's not
what that's leading to.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
So what do we do?
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Could the answer be just nothing, we just write it
out and see what happens, or can we try to?
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Man? What do we do?
Speaker 2 (48:33):
I you know, I could talk to here all day
and try and act like I have answers, and I
don't have answers. I don't know what the answer would
be to something like that, except for we just got
to continue to think that there's something better. There's got
to be something better, Like this is just politics.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Man.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
People got a lot of turmoil going on in their
own home and their own life, and they're like, I
ain't even have time to think about that because I
got just so much going on. I got problems at home,
I got problems and work, I got problems in school,
I got problems here and there, and then I got
all that going on too. It's stressful, man. It's a big,
heavy stress that gets put on your shoulders and just
(49:16):
just squeezing tighter and tighter, and it makes you just
feel like you just want to stop, Like how do
I stop this and have some normalcy in my life?
Speaker 1 (49:28):
You know?
Speaker 2 (49:29):
And there's different things we can do, Like there's different
things to look for, like maybe some laughter, you know,
go see a comedy show, try and relax for a
little bit. I know it only it's only momentarily, but
sometimes that does a lot. It goes a long way,
you know. Sometimes it's just a matter of just being
(49:50):
happy in your home. And that's hard, man, because a
lot of people sometimes the home is not the happy place.
So where do we find it? And what do we do?
It's a good question. I wish I had the answers
to give you. I think if we talk about this
together and try and get through it, maybe we can
find some solutions that help people. I think, like I said,
(50:11):
for me, helping other people in whatever capacity that might
be can be very helpful because it gives you purpose
and it makes you feel better. Whether you know it
or not, it can make a difference. Yeah, it's a
tough time. It's a tough time. So we are here
(50:34):
to enjoy a good hour or so or less or
at fifty minutes and just enjoy ourselves in this show
and enjoy a little bit of book reading with more's day,
you know, the love for one another. Stuff I've tried
to like When I first started this, it was always
about Prince music and understanding the songs and stuff. Like
(50:57):
I said when I started it again, I feel that
there's just a lot of people that have a lot
of that knowledge, and they probably did anyway before, but
just when things happened, we had to come together and
talk about a lot and a lot of stuff. There
was there, what stuff that people just didn't normally practice
about talking about it all the time, right, So we
(51:17):
gave a good place to talk about it. So now
we want to venture into more of life. What's that
noise anyway life? And how do we equate it to
what made us feel good about the music and princes
of music and make it kind of equate to how
(51:40):
we get by through our day without really just kind
of going over the same thing over and over. So
that's why it's good to bring up these things that
are happening today in our lives and try and get
through it somehow together. Got to do it together. I
know a lot of people just like to say, I'll
do it by myself. These are my problems. I've got
(52:04):
these problems, and I'm not going to keep on dragging
everybody into it because we're not getting nowhere that way.
And I ended up just feeling bad about it at
the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
But if we could get through things by ourselves, then
we wouldn't be listening, and we wouldn't be finding these
other solutions that we didn't know that we're there. Sometimes
it's good just to listen, you know, maybe that's all
it takes.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Sometimes.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
But you know, you know, if you ever get in
a conversation with somebody and they're like, man, I just
need to talk, and then they start talking and you
try talking, and it's like, well, I got it, maybe
you should try this. No, I've tried that, and the
end of and you're kind of talking and turning in
a little argument, and you're like, yeah, maybe what they needed.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
Just was for you just to listen. Just listen, be intentive.
You know.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
Sometimes people think they're like, hey, you're still there. Yeah,
I'm here, man, I'm listening to you.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Talk to me. Give it to me. It's okay. I
can take it.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
I got this ear right here that can take all
the stress and the anger that you're going through. Let
it all out, let it out. But here's here's the problem.
Here's the here's the kicker of the whole thing. When
(53:28):
you let it out, do you act on it? Is
there something you need to act on? You can let
out all your pain and anger and anguish, and then
at the end of it you go, man, I need
to do this, and then you never do it, never
make those changes or just do the things that kind
of you know, would make things a little bit better.
(53:50):
You know, it's a tough situation. Man, I go through
these conflicts all the time. What's going to make things better?
I don't know. But that's why we're here trying to
figure it out together.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
And there's you.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
Know, for years, it's whether it be in my personal
life or whether it be at work. And there's always problems.
There's always problems. Everybody's got problems, and you're trying to
solve it, man, like putting out fires left and right.
You don't help you there and I help you here,
and I forgot about this and let's look it up
and I'm gonna check here, and you know, and then
(54:31):
somebody calls you at home and hey, this happened. Oh man,
I can't believe it. Why don't we do this? Or
how we tried that? Or let me just be there
for you to hang on. I'll get there, you know.
And it's like a constant. It's this barrage of stuff
coming at you left and right, right, and then you
get your own problems. You're like, man, I haven't even
told nobody about this or whatever. And I think it
(54:54):
just I think it makes people stronger. I think, you know,
because every time every time you ta take care of something,
you're kind of like, it's like another notch, Like, man,
I took care of that. I did what I didn't
think I could do. I tackled that thing and made
it better, you know, and uh, And it's a it's
(55:16):
an important thing. Makes us stronger. Every time you take
care of something, whether it be in your personal life,
somebody else's life, I work, at home, school, whatever it
might be, you become that much more knowledgeable and able
to handle problems. And I think you can handle a
lot more than you think you can. You know, we're
(55:39):
a lot stronger than what we think. And we're stronger
why because we've tackled problems with The older you get,
the more you can take on. And sometimes when you're
young it's like this, it's a lot of pressure, like
what am I going to do? But as you go
like life will move on. There's always tomorrow, there's always
something better. There's always going to be in a situation
(56:02):
that you're gonna be like, man, I thought I'd never
get out of that. And then they have some hills
you don't even go back down and be like, oh man,
this is tough, but you're gonna work your way back out.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
And a lot of.
Speaker 2 (56:12):
It is with the help of other people. Getting it
all comes back to being willing to accept that help
and be there for other people and just love each other.
And I know it sounds silly. It's a tough thing,
and you know, we can be the dead horse and
keep on going over and over and over it, but
(56:33):
you know what, sometimes we need to hear it. Sometimes
I need to hear it and know that tomorrow's a
better day and we can get there. We can get
there together. I had genessis looking at me because I
think she's hungry, So it might be time to end
(56:53):
this show. Thank you for listening again. This is Jeff
with love for one Another. We will be back again
with another another show. We've been knocking them out. Some
of them are reading books, some of them are talking
about current events, and some of them are just trying
to figure out Like today, man, it's deep, trying to
figure out how to get through this and solve problems
(57:14):
of life. Man, what are we going to do? So
we'll talk about some more subjects coming up. And check
out all the other shows. We got other stuff coming up,
and check out all the stations.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
We are on.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Speaker. We also air on
Real Music Radio the Minneapolis Sound Radio, and I'm telling
you it's a great thing to be out on the
air and spreading the words of no wisdom, just ideas.
So come along for the ride. Check it out and
(57:50):
check out the other shows.
Speaker 1 (57:51):
We got some.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
News and stuff going on over on It's all on
the table. I don't think that's up and run now
and yet on all the podcast stations, so you gotta
check it out and Speaker and then also check out
the stations and all the great shows that DJ Jedi
puts on for you and Christopher. Now until the next time,
and get ready. We got some new music coming out.
(58:15):
Get ready for it. We'll talk to you next time.
This is Jeff would love for one another, Have a
great night and peace. See
Welcome back, y'all.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is Jeff Luna and the Love for one Another Podcast.
I want to welcome you back to this wonderful journey
through music life.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
And how we navigate through it all together.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
No, we do not talk about hate here, but we
do not act like we are blind to those amongst
us filled with hate. So strap yourself in as we
take this musical journey and learn to have love.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
For one another.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Welcome once again, This is Jeff with the Love for
one Another podcast. I tend to say things too fast
sometimes and I don't even understand what I'm saying, so
I try to slow down and give it to you
the way it's supposed to be. This is Jeff Luna
with the Love for one Another podcast. How's that a
little bit better? Anyway, Enough screwing around, let's get to
(01:31):
the show.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So we have been doing something that's been exciting exciting to.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Me has been reading from the Morris Day's book on Time,
A Princely Life in Funk by Boris Day and.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
This dude named David Ritz. I still don't every show.
I'm kind of like, who's this guy? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So we read some chapters and I think we're going
to read another couple of chapters today because we took
a break from that to get to some of some
conversation on current events that have to do with loving
each other and in a special way, right, showing that
love unconditionally. That makes that I think we all need
(02:21):
to experience.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
It's important.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It's important to not only to others, but to ourselves.
If we don't find a way and learn how to
practice it in our daily lives, then it makes our
lives difficult. I really believe it does. Our lives are
hard enough as it is. Nothing makes it better by
hating on other people. So you know, we don't want
(02:48):
to keep saying the same thing.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Over and over again. But how do we not do that?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I mean, if you were trying to talk to somebody
about building a car, while you're going to talk about
building the car almost every day so they can understand
what needs to be done.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
If you're teaching them.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
About a job, then you talk about that job. I
not no teacher, But if I'm talking about showing love
for one another, then I think that that's important to
talk about almost every day and get it in there somewhere.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That way, it becomes like a normal thing if it
can become Lots of things become normal in our lives.
And some of them are bad things. I mean, some
of them are just things we do, and some of
them are the.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Things we talk about.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And sometimes if we can spend every day, just give
it a few minutes every day to try and think
of ways that maybe actually look at it this way,
if you can spend the end of your day reflecting
on how you spend your day. Reflection, right, Some people
help people, some people work all day, some people do
(03:53):
multiple different things, you know, whatever it might be. But
reflect on your day and say, how did I spend
How much time do I spend actually loving another person.
I'm not talking about just physical love. I'm talking about
emotional love and love that comes from deep within. Maybe
they didn't even know, they might not have known it, right,
and that's a special kind of love that person don't know,
(04:16):
but you truly love them. You just like man, I'm
okay with you. You might never know what, you might
not care, you might think it's funny, might think it's
what's wrong with you, But I truly do. I feel
a love in my heart for you, and I feel
that I hope every day is prosperous for you and
things get better whatever you're going through. Maybe that person
(04:37):
is not even going through a hard time, but you
just wish them well. Reflect upon your day for a
little bit and.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
See see what that does for you.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
It might help with things that are going on in
your life without saying it. Sometimes the greatest gratification that
we can get in life is from things we do
for others. Maybe sometimes we don't even realize it yet.
And I didn't know that that was going to make
a difference in my life by helping somebody else. My
(05:09):
life is terrible, but I helped somebody else for a minute,
and it helped me feel better about my life. And
now I can go make my life better, or vice versa.
If I make my life better first, I can help
make other people's lives better. We've talked about that before.
It's an important thing to do. So with that all
being said, let's take a short little break and we'll
(05:30):
come back and read some chapters from More's Day's Lovely Book,
and then we'll move on from there. This is Jeff
with Love for one another podcast, and we'll.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Be right back after this.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Hey, this is Jeff and we are back to Love
for One Another podcast, and let's get this thing started.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
This is book reading.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I've been doing it a few times here and there.
I'm not no major book reader or nothing like that.
Put those little warnings out there so you can all
understand if you go, why is he reading it funny?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Because that's how I read.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Plus, this is Morris's book Man on Time, A Princely
Life in Funk by Moore's Day, and I wish it
would have read it himself because I listened to the
people reading the books instead of reading them myself, and man,
this thing would have been killed her. Like I said,
Mi Tay read her book and it was really good
because she read it makes it more personal, and I
(06:33):
think that's what that's WHATULD have done too. So I've
always wanted to kind of read it myself. And I felt, well,
if I'm going to read it myself, then I'm going
to read it on here and let you enjoy it
too if you can.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
If I'm sure most of you probably already read it,
but it took too long. I should have done this
a long time ago anyway.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
So I'm on chapter five Champagne, and we'll get started
and I have in no way trying to act like
Morse or act like Prince, because he does a little
prince in here too.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
But this is.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I'm trying to give it my feel of how I
had read it anyway, So in my mind is how
to read it, and I hope you enjoyed it. So anyway,
this is chapter five called Champagne, and it starts off
with saying, strange spelling. But that's what the name of
our new band was. I'd shown you it a strange spelling.
I'd shown you that strange spelling was an attention getter.
(07:28):
I'd show you how being normal gets you nowhere. That's
Prince talking right. You showed me a lot of shit
after you split. I tried to use that shit to
keep us going. We were convinced we could make it
without you. We should have known better, but we were young, hungry.
Between all of us switching off, we had vocal power,
(07:49):
we had musical power.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yet with you.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Gone, we lost our superpower. During rehearsal, we weren't as
tough on our We weren't as tough on ourselves as
you've been on us.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
We lost the leader.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Then when we lost Andre Simone, we really found ourselves sputtering.
No one could blame Andre for accepting an offer to
join your new band. If I had been given that offer,
I would have grabbed it.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
But no offer came.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
You didn't see me as part of your immediate musical future.
Warner Brothers had.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Given you a deal, and you were gearing up.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
To cut your first album. Champagne fizzled out. I was desponded.
I was also drifting. I dropped out of North Hive
after my junior year and hadn't developed any skills beyond music.
While my music had tapered off, my love life haven't.
(08:44):
Hadn't I'd fallen for a young, attractive winner, Jennifer Graves,
who on October seventeen, nineteen seventy five, gave birth to
our precious daughter, Tianna. I was eighteen. I lacked the
maturity and responsibility the fatherhood required, but I loved the
little girl and wanted to do by her, do right
by her. The problem was that I had no real direction.
(09:08):
The strongest element in my life remained my mom. As
a go getter, she never slowed down. She came up
with a solution. She bought herself a brand new in
nineteen seventy seven ruin te Top Grand Prix, and we
moved to Maryland, Sandy state of Minneapolis, and Jesse went
to live with his dad in Illinois. It was just
(09:29):
Mom and me the plane. The plan was to bring
out Jennifer and Tiana once we got settled. Mom chose Gaithersburg,
halfway between Baltimore and DC, because we could move in
with her best friend, Francis. Meanwhile, she could easily drive
travel up the coast to New York and continue to
(09:53):
try and lend me a record deal. I had made
other demos, at least in my mind, whereas as good
as a demo Prince had used to nail his warner
brother's contract. At the same time, I had no illusions.
I was not prints, I could not play every instrument,
and I could not sing or write.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
With his facility.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
But I could play drums, I could play a little
keyboards and a little guitar. I could sing, and I
could write. And I had a mother who wasn't about
to give up on me. Mom worked in beauty supply
stores selling wigs before getting a good government gig at
the Opportunities Industrialization Center is a job development specialist count
(10:37):
on Mom to land on her feet, count on me
to keep floundering jobs here and there hardly satisfied my
musical soul. So I found myself moving into a jazz
community of serious players. All my friends were jazz cats.
I sat in with all kinds of bands. There was
no money in it, but lots of artistic satisfication, not
(11:01):
to mention growth. I was aware of the history of
the jazz drumming. I knew about Bassie's big band drummers,
Papa Joe, John's Jones and Sonny Payne. I knew about
Louis Bellson and Buddy Rich, But until Maryland, I never played.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Straight up about in the style of Art Blake Lea
and Max Rope.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I was proud to become a scent a decent jazz
drummer who could hold his own in the heavyweight players
in DC area. But besides an occasional gig, my money
was still funny. Mom chipped in helping me rent an
apartment for Jennifer and Tianna in the same complex where
we were staying for a while. That boosted my spirits,
(11:48):
but the boosts didn't last long. Young as we were,
Jennifer and I got in.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Each other's way.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
The relationship collapsed under the weight of the unhappiness. Jennifer
and our daughter soon moved back to Minneapolis. I never
gave Tiana the time and care she deserved. There was
a moment when my misery came to head. I managed
to find work in Montgomery, Ward, where they put me
behind the counter of one of their rental car divisions.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Would you like a green.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Ford Pinal or an orange Chevy Vega, I'd asked the customer.
I wasn't happy. One of the co workers, one of
my co workers, Tyrell, had a boombox and he'd bring
in he'd bring to the gig, fine with me. These
were disco days, when Donna Summer was calling out last dance,
Gloria Gaynor was declaring I Will survive, and the Jacksons
(12:39):
were ready to blame it on the boogie, and Rick
James was firing up Mary Jane.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
I dug it all.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Wasn't until I heard a song called Soft and Wet, though,
that I spun around on listen hard there I was,
says Prince, Yes, sir, it was you on the radio,
Prince Snappy groove, the distinctive dirty Minneapolis funk being driven
insane by a certain body part he called soft and wet.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Sec obsessed.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Prince had cut a track not unlike dozens of tracks
we had cut together. That's my boy, I told Tyrell.
We played in the band together. Sure you did, Morris, really, man,
I was a drummer. He's my homeboy, Prince, that's him.
Tyrell looked at me and like I was out of
my head. If you were such a solid drummer, he said,
(13:32):
then what are you doing here renting out in Paulas
didn't have an answer, so I simply sulked. I went
to Regardless store and to see if I could get
an actual copy of Prince's first album for you. I
shouted out six ninety eight to buy it, had to
hear it all. What I heard was a Prince had
refined his sound. He'd started the scope with the grand Central.
(13:55):
He was playing all the instruments and playing the hell
out of them. The songs were a little slid than
what he'd been writing before, but the funk was firmly
in place. He was clearly going for the bop for
that pop feeling that was sweeping the clubs from London
to la And went to the new standard. Grab Billboard
(14:15):
to see how the record was selling. Soft and Wet
was a little bit of a hit on the R
and B charts, but the second single, just as Long
as We're Together didn't go anywhere. Neither crossed over. I
know that didn't make Prince happy. Prince loved him some
R and B. Prince was R and B. Prince was
(14:35):
flat flat out determined to get beyond the R and
B market. That's true to virtually every black artist whoever sang.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Through the math.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
If blacks comprised twelve percent of the population and even
a smaller percent of the wealth, where's the big money crossover?
That's the name Ray Charles gave his own label after
he had huge cross over hits like Georgia On My
Mind and I Can't Stop Loving You. That's what Chuck
Berry and had in mind when he tailored his lyrics
(15:08):
to white Bobby Sockers Sockers. I'm not saying Prince comprised
his music. But I'm saying is that he aimed his
music at the widest audience possible. He was shrewd in
the way, in the same way Nat King, Cole, Sam
Cook and Sliced Stone had been shrewd.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
The whiter the peel, the better.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
The title cut for You shows out his ability harmonize
his own voices. I love Marvin Gate only he puts in,
puts it in an almost classical bag, introducing himself to
the world as a different kind of artist. When he
drops the groove, the mood changes and the song radiates
a chick like charm. He doesn't freak out completely, but
(15:57):
he sure knows what's happening on the day asked for
an Urban America.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
You through explaining what.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
I had in mind, says Prince Di. I dig my explanation,
don't you not, saying never a thought it was smart
to explain my music. Leave it to others to say
what it means to them. Well, I'm sure well, I'm
sure enough one of the others, and I'm saying, I
(16:25):
dug it. I saw your whole operation was off and running.
The album cover showed you literally coming out of the shadows.
It wasn't a clear photo I caught you on the run.
It only showed your face. It was also a little blurry,
but it was definitely a statement saying that you were
(16:46):
here and I wanted to be there with you. Oh brother,
did I want to be there with you? Why didn't
you come back to Minneapolis?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
I was there.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
I guess I was too down to think straight. Minneapolis
would have made sense because Jennifer and were there. Reconciliation
with loved ones always makes sense. But I wasn't ready
for that. I was seeing myself as a loser, a
guy in a diiveass Montgomery ward Blazer, filling out rental
forms and patient customers. Mom and I were living in
(17:17):
the motels and raunche apartments overlooking garage dumpsters. I was
in the dumps, seeing my distressed. Mom came up with
a plan. Mom always had a plan, California dreaming. She
suggests we leave Maryland and head to San Jose, where
her cousin, Regina, had moved after she and Spike had divorced. Funny,
(17:39):
but Regina, who had originally drawn us to Minneapolis, was
now drawing us to San Jose.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Big mistake. Man.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I hated it. Hated had Regina's domestic situation. I forced
her in the three bedroom apartment with nine people. Hated
my gig as a salesman and the men's store at
the mall. Hated trying to talk cats in the buying
shitty clothes they didn't want. Switching jobs just made things worse.
I got on a construction cleanup crew. I swung a sledgehammer,
(18:08):
breaking stucco off a base of new homes, picking up
pieces and all them off smelly landfills. Did that for
a month until my back send no more. But a
man's gotta work. So I thought life wouldn't be wouldn't
be easier as a security guard. Applied, was accepted and
issued a shiny new blue uniform badging everything. That night
(18:33):
before my first day on the job, I couldn't sleep,
tossing and turning.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
I thought my brain would explode.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
What was I doing living with my mom and ant
Regina in a place where every morning the line of
the bathroom was agonizing, agonizingly long? What was I do
in taking met manual jobs when in fact I did
have a skill I'd been working on since I was
a kid. I could do music. None of the music
(19:01):
I heard on the radio intimidating me. It inspired me
to make to made me realize that as good as
Shalamar's take It, Take That to the Bank might be,
I could have provided a rhythm for that track. I
didn't want to live my life and the line I
didn't want to live my life like the line that
Marlon Brando, a boxer forced to throw a fight, says
(19:22):
to his brother.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
And one on the waterfront. I could have been a contender.
That's me just tossing that.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I had to get back into the ring. How to
get back to Minneapolis. Jennifer was calling, Tiana was crying
for me. And Prince, only months after his first record
had dropped, came out with another simply called Prince. This
time he was out of the shadows. The cover showed
him full full on shirtless prints with Prince ran at
(19:50):
the top, a purple script above his wavy shoulder lengthd hair.
And this time his music did cross over. I want
to be your lover Charter high on the pop charts
on pop radio. He done what he set out to do,
reach the masses. Now, I had to do the only
thing that made sense head home. That's chapter five. That's
(20:14):
chapter five. We're gonna get ready to do chapter six.
Let's take a break and we'll come right back and.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Get started with it.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
This is Jeff with the Love for One another podcast.
Hope you're enjoying it. I am I'm enjoying reading it.
I know I mess up from time to time, but hey,
the same perfection. I'll be right back. This is Jeff
(20:41):
with the Love for one Another podcast. We are doing
a reading from Morris Day's book called on Time, A
Princely Life in the Funk by Moore's Day with who
else David Ritz?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Who's that? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
We are on chapter six. I'm gonna keep on going
because I'm on a roll.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
I feel good. I feel good about myself.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
And this chapter six is called Drummer for Hire. Big
Sis Sandy always was always in like my second mother,
so it was no surprise that I moved in with her.
As soon as I returned to Minneapolis. I visited my
baby Tiana, but my relationship with Jennifer was still raw.
(21:20):
I wanted to get back with my daughter and her mom,
but I didn't have the means to support him. I
couldn't even support myself. I did, though, make a vow
support would have to come from music. I'd taken enough
low paying, soul crushing jobs. Maybe I wasn't Tony Williams,
but I was a drummer. I was a musician, and
(21:40):
I promised myself to stay on that track. That meant freelancing,
playing behind the Twin Cities band, and that.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Would have me.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Playing behind any Twin Cities bands that would have That
would have me jazz R and B cocktail lounges, and
didn't matter. I was going to make money making music,
no matter how thin they sliced the bread. Because the
black music seeing in Minneapolis was small, it didn't take
long for me to see my old running Buddies Flat
(22:12):
Time was getting even more gigs since with the demise
of Grand Central and Champagne, the competition had dwindled. In fact,
where was the Prince had not abandoned Minneapolis. In fact,
he never would. He had formed a new band and
starting rehearsals in the burbs south of the city. You
(22:35):
should come by, said Andre Simone, who was playing bass
in the band.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Prince would love to see you.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I was a little hesitant. Andrea had told me that
Bobby Z, a white boy, was a drummer. I knew
I could outplay him, but I also knew that a
salt and pepper lineup was important to Prince. He saw
it as another way to facilitate crossover. Sensing my hesitation,
Andre urged me on. There's a lot happening around Prince
(23:03):
right now. He said, you should be part of it.
Why don't you ride out right out there with me?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
A week late?
Speaker 2 (23:10):
A week later I took him up on the offer.
Walking in with Andre, Prince's main man, would make things easier.
It was a fall afternoon. The leaves were turning crazy
gold and red, the sky of brilliant blue, a mild
breeze blowing through the urbs. I was more excited than anxious.
It'd be good to see Prince. It'd been too long.
(23:33):
When we arrived, he was already there, guitar in hand.
He looked at me and didn't exactly beam, but he
didn't skull. I thought I saw him break into a
small smile.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
You saw right.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Didn't hold no grudges. Wasn't anything to hold a grudge about,
That was Prince. But was I holding a grudge? Was
I pissed that it was the Grand Central Demo that
had nailed a Warner Brother deal? Was I pissed that
I wasn't named the drummer of this hot new band,
the Revolution? If I was pissed, I decided being pissed
(24:08):
would do me no good, So I chilled, stayed friendly,
said I was happy to help any way I could.
You were too smart for that. You understood the train
was leaving the station, and you wanted You wanted on
the train. That's Prince. I got on the train. Prince's
second album was outstripping his first by leaps and bounds.
(24:33):
I was eager to be part of the phenomenon, and
I was relieved that Prince welcomed me, and it was
in a circle. He seemed genuinely glad to see me.
Things picked up where they left off. He didn't have
to ask whether I dug his first two albums.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
He knew I did. He didn't have to have.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
He didn't have to ask whether I was jonesing to
get behind the drums.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
He knew I was.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
He also knew that I was a cat who could
crack him up. The jokes came fast and furious. The
brothers were back in action. When his new band actually
started to play, I saw how he was putting a
new kind of hurting on the pop, soul, funk, and
the new songs he had written for his third album.
(25:17):
Sex was even more prominent in Freakier. During a break, he.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Came over to me ask a question.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I thought the question was going to be I want
to sit in on drums, but it was something else entirely.
You know how to work a video camera. That's what
Prince said to him. That was the question, and my
answer came quick. I can learn in a hurry, and brother,
I did just like that. I became the videographer, lunging,
(25:45):
lugging around a heavy ass VH cassette machine.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
But I'm not complaining. You got no reason to.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
I kept you on the scene, kept you in the mix.
That's what I wanted. The camera brought me closer to
the action, and the action was all about Prince. Because
Prince liked being videotaped. My new job gave me more
access to him than I had ever had. I could
move around as I please. The closer I got to him,
the happier he was.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Prince loved close ups.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
He loved having his daring dance moves and dramatic guitar
gestures film so he could study them later. And man
did he study them. He was a perfectionist. He dissected
every motion to make sure it was right, and if
it wasn't, he'd rework it until it was. He slowly
came to rely on me for honest appraisals because I'd
(26:35):
come up with them. I knew his stuff as well
as anyone with the possibility, with the possible exception of Andre,
But Andre not especially gracious man was more diplomatic than me.
If I thought a song of dance move was hokey,
I let Prince know. He appreciated my candor and began
rely on me as someone who'd speak my mind. So
(26:58):
when it's time to go on tour, he took me long.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I not only.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Videotaped every show, but had the freedom to critique. Prince
was anything. Prince was for anything that would improve his presentation.
The presentation was starting to include more of the metrosexual stuff.
It wasn't enough for Prince to make sex a central
theme in his music. He also wanted to use sex
(27:23):
as a visual stimulant in his show. Like all Stars,
he wanted the attention of himself. That ain't unusual, but
it was unusual as how when he started the rock
long coats with nothing underneath except undies. That sure is
how got everyone's attention. Provocative songs plus provocative outfits equals notoriety.
(27:48):
Prince was looking to be notorious. I was there for
the Prince Tour, his first national go round. It started
in big clubs where he was a marquee name. Didn't
have to open for anybody because he was getting all
kinds of publicity. He could fill the Roxy and now
layer the Capri Ballroom in Atlanta. The sex bit was big,
(28:10):
more and more. He was selling themselves to the sex
symbol and the girls white and black were buying into it. Meanwhile,
he kept developing material for his third album, Dirty Mind,
No doubt he was intent on getting dirtier. A year
before the record was released, he began to perform Head,
the story of a virgin on her way to her wedding.
(28:32):
The singer hits her, hits on her, gives her head,
comes all over a wedding dress, and winds up marrying
him her himself. Caused the hell of a stir, which
was just what Prince wanted. Back then, Head was the
goal to term of oral sex. I remember Marvin Gaye
using a few years earlier on Soon to Be and
(28:55):
Soon I'll Be Loving You from as I Want You album.
Marvin sang it. His generation of black men saw it.
I saw it as a forbidden that the woman was
supposed to sexually serve the man, not vice versa, but Marvin,
who admits in the song that he had never done
that before, talks himself into it, saying he'll do it
(29:18):
soon while calling out the name of his wife, Janice.
Prince took a boulder approach, no hesitation. Didn't matter that
his chick was promised to another cat, didn't matter that
she was a virgin. Those facts only added to the heat.
More than his predecessors. Prince was already was ready to
go down, get down, and stay down until every last
(29:41):
female fan was satisfied.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
By the end of the club.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Portion of the Prince to her head was part of
the show, and the audience, to make a terrible pun,
was eating it up.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Yeah that's nasty.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
I had it all on the camera. Every night after
the show, Prince would study his performing. No doubt, he
got off on himself as most artists do, but he
also abombished himself as he found a fault. He knew
when a dance move was wrong or a note out
of key. Fewer fever was building at the point of
(30:16):
the lines outside the clubs were sneaking around the block
frustrated fans were being turned away from sold out shows.
Prince needed bigger venues, and in nineteen seventy nine going
into nineteen eighty, the cat commanding the biggest venues was
Rick James. It was a mighty moment Prince opening for
(30:39):
Rick James. A torch had was being passed, but the
handoff was messy, funny, but it was the same kind
of mess Rick talked about when he got on the
torch handed off from the funk master before him, George Clinton.
Clinton was seven years older than Rick, who felt the
George's resentment was ten years older than Prince who felt
(31:02):
Rick's resentment, and in nineteen seventy nine when they met up,
Rick was thirty one, Prince was twenty one and yours
truly Prince's trusted videographer twenty two. Prince Agrita opened for
Rick's Fired Up to her. Rick was blazing hot, has
fired up album might burn? It had been burning up
(31:23):
to charge his matches like love Gun. Rick was at
his peak. The cover photo showing him standing tall with
in white thigh high leather boots and blowing smoke from
his big blunt and sporting a white cowboy hat. He
came on as King Rick. With Rick commanding the mountaintop
(31:44):
and Prince on the rise. It should have been a
perfect pairing.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
It was anything but.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
The competition was nasty and the generational gap wide. First off,
Rick was the ultimate stoner. He brandished on stage joint
the way Luke Skywalker brandish his lightsaber. Prince was straight
up sober. Not only did he not get high, he
hated anyone getting high around him. I kicked my weed
away from the boss. Rick blew that shit in Prince's face.
(32:13):
He used dope as a fuel, while Prince was driven
by pure energy. The tour wound up and way its way.
The tour wound its way across the country for more
than three months, sounding out the Omni and Atlanta and
the Cabo Arena and.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Detroit started out great.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
I set up my JVC video cassette recorder on tripod
placed on the soundboard to get the best view of
the stage.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Prince came out.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Smoking, not literally but figuratively. Soft and wet was usually
the opener. He had also gone to I Feel for You,
a song off his second album that a few years later,
Shaka Khan would turn into a smash cover it was
beautiful to see the artist who Prince had covered so
frequently in the Grand Central days to actually singing his songs.
(33:07):
He'd squeeze his head somewhere into the set sexual any
windows flew from one.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Side of the stage to the other.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
He began sporting his and drigging us and dragon Us
get up the open trench coat, revealing black leggings and
a bikini underwear in nineteen seventy nine. That took balls,
but Prince was Prince. He stepped he stepped out on
and did what he wanted to do. The crowds went nuts.
The press started saying that.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
He was outstripping He was outstripping Rick. Rick resented that.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Later he wrote that the crowd boothed them when they
saw Prince and his bloomers, But I didn't hear any
booze on the tour Prince. Rick also wrote about the
drum battle between him and Prince, when supposedly Rick kicked
Prince's ass.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I knew nothing about that.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
I did though, though, that Rick started accusing Prince of
stealing hit, his licks and stage moves. I thought the
accusation was silly. We all steal the line of musical
thieves is endless, from Chuck Berry to Little Richard Tag
Turner and Jackie Wilson to Ray Charles to Stevie Wonder
(34:21):
Michael Jackson. If you don't like the word steal, then
let's say borrow, no matter how you look at it.
Although every musical style is built on the previous style. Sure,
there are innovators, all the artists I just mentioned our innovators.
But innovators are based on shit that came before. That's
(34:41):
what makes innovation. Innovations of these geniuses so startling.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
All at once.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
They contained past president future personally wise. Personality wise, Rick
and Prince were cut from similar cloth. They both hear.
They both were hardly humble. Arrogant is a better word.
They were musical visionaries, and they knew it. Rick had
created a persona for himself, a larger than life character,
(35:12):
and Prince was in the process of doing the same.
Prince looking for validation from Rick and vice versa musically.
The rivalry began, probably brought out the best in both
of them personally. They could have offered one another respect,
but at least there was no bloodshed. The promoters clashed
(35:33):
in on the conflict. The promoters cashed in on the conflict.
As word of Prince Prows grew, they renamed the tour
the Battle of Funk. Prince said, looking back, who who
would you name the winner of that battle? There you
go tripping again, Do I got to name you the winner? Do?
(35:54):
I got to give you the gold medal for besting Rick.
You got enough medals. I had to give Rick props
his contributors to His contributions to Funk were original, his roots,
infusion and jazz that were deep like you. Rick was
a world class writer, ranger, instrumentalist and singer. Rick deserves recognition.
(36:18):
If you say so, I do. At the end of
the tour, Prince no longer needed Rick. He was ready
to go out on his own. But before he did,
he had a complete his third album. Well he was
working in the studio. He let me cut some tracks
of my own big breakthrough. I guess I get paid.
I guess I paid my dues, I had videotaped without complaining.
(36:41):
I'd done what I was asking me. And of course
all the time Prince knew how badly I wanted to
get on the music. So at the end of Fired
Up tour, he rewarded me with free use of the studio.
My brother was challenging me. I jumped at the chance.
I was determined to search my soul for the baddest
groove in the history of bad grooves man. I was
(37:05):
on it, spent hours behind the drums until I found
a stroke. I knew I would turn Princes inside out.
Keep in mind, during these two years that I had
been behind the camera, I'd been studying every move. At
this point, I knew his sounds as well as he did.
Plus I had some pretty damn good percussive ideas of
(37:27):
my own. Now, Prince was always cool, so when I
presented him with the dance track, I thought it was hot.
I didn't expect them to break out in an applause.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
In fact, he.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Did, but he did listen intently all the way through,
nodding slightly. When he asked me to run it back
from the top, I knew how I was gold.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
He dug it.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
At the same time, he wouldn't commit to cutting it, said.
We talked the next day, twenty four hours later, We're
back in the studio. When he said he wanted a
track bingo, but then a wrinkle. He said, I had
two options. He buys the song for me. He'd buys
the song for ten thousand dollars cold cash, or he
(38:12):
could use it and I could get a record deal.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Of my own. My choice. Naturally, I chose the record deal.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
A few weeks later, when Prince flew off to la
he let me stay in his house in Minneapolis Urbs.
I noticed a VHS tape in his recorder without a
label at his tape man. As his tape man, I
labeled everything, What could this be? I slipped it in
and saw someone else that recorded Prince playing a dance
(38:42):
and dancing to my track. He completed it with a
melody married to it, a set of lyrics called party Up.
My fully fleshed out track was untouched, only augmented by
his vocal. The song a declaration of his revolutionary rock
(39:03):
and roll called the party people the dance floor, even
as my man slipped in a political message about full
futility of war.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
It was great.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Took a while for Prince to fulfill his promise, but
I was a patient man. I was finally where I
wanted to be. I was on the inside looking out
for a while. I got back with Jennifer. I loved
being with my daughter, but it was time to hit
the road.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
I had to run. The road would kill any romance.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Prince had completed Dirty Mind with Party Up as one
of the eight songs. Prince owned it outright. The album
had read that everything was produced, arranged, composed, and performed
by Prince, not a word about having written the track
about Maa writing the track for Party Up. That's the
(39:56):
deal we made, right, which was why I never brought
it up again. Also kept cool because I still had
hopes of being your drummer, but it wasn't meant to be. Instead,
I held to the hope that I had soon had
my own record deal. Rather than rock the boat, I
agree to go back out on the road as your
(40:16):
videoographer during the Dirty Mind tour. I could be humble
if I had to. There was always a method to
Princess madness. On his first album cover, he was just
moving through out of the shadows. On the second, he
was shirtless and out. On the third Dirty Mind, he
(40:37):
was in a trench pulled open to show his belly
button and black bikinis. The look he tried out on
stage was now officially imprinted on his latest musical, offering
some critics and fans pushed back, but I always admired
him for not giving a fuck. This was the impression
(40:57):
he wanted to make. He was a musical revolutionary. And
that was that. That is the end of chapter six.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
We are now.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Six chapters in. Man, I'm feeling good about this. I'm
feeling pretty smooth. So let's take a break and we'll
be right back with another portion of the show. This
is Jeff would love for one another, and we'll be
right back with you back. And that was a good
(41:39):
book reading. I'm getting a little bit better. I know
I started here and there and I mess up my
words and everything else. But like I said, hey, I'm
not no official book reader. I think reading is a
tough thing. Oh man, now the air turned on again.
I think it's a tough thing because, you know, if
you don't do it regularly and you try and read
(42:01):
the words before you say them and stuff like that,
it makes it a little difficult. It's not you know,
I don't know. Maybe people have been doing it, Like
some people read books all the time and it just
comes naturally. So for them it's probably like it ain't
no thing. It's just easy to do. But for those
of us that don't read like that. I think it's
(42:24):
a I listened back and I'm like, man, should they
even post this?
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Like wow? But you know what it is?
Speaker 2 (42:31):
What it is, man, that's how I read. You know, Hey,
maybe you might like it, maybe not, but I think
it's sharing.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
The book is awesome. I just love it.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
And there's some other books I want to read too.
I want to actually get into some discussion on some
really amazing people out there that wrote some amazing books
and talked about unifying people, Martin Luther King especially, and
get into conversation on how to bring people together, because
(43:03):
this is not an easy thing right now, especially in
this day and age.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
I was.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Catching up on news and current events and stuff, and
right now we're just in a tough spot.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Man. I think it seems like.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
We're getting to a point where people are finding it
almost like setting up the scene, right if you're talking
about a player or a movie and you set the
scene and what's the scene.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Well, we got props.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
And we got ideas, and we've got a storyboard, and
we're gonna have this scene where these things are going
to happen. And you're setting up the next scene, right,
So you want to get things in place, and it
almost seems like the things that happen, the dialogue that
comes after it is leans toward hate, It leans toward
(44:00):
a bad outcome, it leans toward revenge, and we're gonna
get you, you know, and a lot of it, to
be honest with you, it's putting more people against people,
you know. And when I talk about people in this sense,
I'm talking about our own, you know.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
People that live here in the US.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
And it seems like we're living in this day and
age where not only do we have our own differences,
not only do we have the differences that are put
to us that have always been there, but now we've
got an even stronger force of the government is actually
pushing this agenda to separate. And we got this side
(44:49):
and that side.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
It's kind of like we're picking the we're picking a team,
and you got the softball team, right, and you're like, oh,
you got to pick your team, and that's what it
feels like what's happening right now is somebody's just picking
all the all the ones that can make the decisions.
So you kind of you're getting left where you have
(45:13):
no sace or no no real feeling of control. Not
that you want control other, but you got to.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Control the situation.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
And usually there's things in place for that. Right there's
there's a the branches of government that are supposed to
keep that in check. That's kind of not working right now.
And like I said, I don't want to get into
politics too much right here. What I'm mainly getting into
is the fact that we're being pinned against each other,
(45:50):
and some of us can see it coming, some of
us might be involved with it and actually feeling helpless,
like well, what can I do about it? How what
am I gonna do about it? I can't do nothing
about it. I'm just it's just me, Like I've always said,
we're you know, when you live here in the US,
(46:10):
especially in California, you have your little square. I got
my square. Whether it be a big square, small square,
it doesn't matter. This is my area, this is where
I live, and I try to do my best to
protect it, make it nice, and live in my square
and just be happy. But that's all you got, like
your voice, your voice of reason, your voice of change,
(46:33):
your voice of everything that normally you just say, well,
when it comes time to vote, I'm gonna vote this,
I'm gonna vote that, or when it comes time to
make a change, I'm gonna see what I can do
and get involved. Right now, it just seems like all
of that's gone. And that's only that's half of the country.
The other half feels like this is everything I ever wanted.
(46:55):
I think for me, I think the problem is when
you say this is everything I ever wanted, and you
see people going through pain and through hurt and disarray
and people being pinned against each other, and I think
there's a confusion there.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
I don't you don't.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
I don't want to sit here and put people down
and be like, well, they don't know what they're talking about,
because I think they do, but you're being put pinned
against each other to to feel like I heard, let
me put to you this way. I heard today somebody
(47:33):
was actually saying, I think it was Marjorie Tyley Green
or whatever, was talking about that we should just separate,
like there should be two different countries because that's how
far apart we are now. She's kind of crazy and
she says a lot of weird things, but people listen
to her like this. This is the problem, is people
listen to these people, and when when all this stuff
(47:56):
happened recently and I saw people posting right away about
civil war or about we're going to get you this
and that, and you declared word and it's man, it's troubling.
It's troubling because we're trying to we're trying to unify,
we're trying to come together, and that's not that's not
what that's leading to.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
So what do we do?
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Could the answer be just nothing, we just write it
out and see what happens, or can we try to?
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Man? What do we do?
Speaker 2 (48:33):
I you know, I could talk to here all day
and try and act like I have answers, and I
don't have answers. I don't know what the answer would
be to something like that, except for we just got
to continue to think that there's something better. There's got
to be something better, Like this is just politics.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Man.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
People got a lot of turmoil going on in their
own home and their own life, and they're like, I
ain't even have time to think about that because I
got just so much going on. I got problems at home,
I got problems and work, I got problems in school,
I got problems here and there, and then I got
all that going on too. It's stressful, man. It's a big,
heavy stress that gets put on your shoulders and just
(49:16):
just squeezing tighter and tighter, and it makes you just
feel like you just want to stop, Like how do
I stop this and have some normalcy in my life?
Speaker 1 (49:28):
You know?
Speaker 2 (49:29):
And there's different things we can do, Like there's different
things to look for, like maybe some laughter, you know,
go see a comedy show, try and relax for a
little bit. I know it only it's only momentarily, but
sometimes that does a lot. It goes a long way,
you know. Sometimes it's just a matter of just being
(49:50):
happy in your home. And that's hard, man, because a
lot of people sometimes the home is not the happy place.
So where do we find it? And what do we do?
It's a good question. I wish I had the answers
to give you. I think if we talk about this
together and try and get through it, maybe we can
find some solutions that help people. I think, like I said,
(50:11):
for me, helping other people in whatever capacity that might
be can be very helpful because it gives you purpose
and it makes you feel better. Whether you know it
or not, it can make a difference. Yeah, it's a
tough time. It's a tough time. So we are here
(50:34):
to enjoy a good hour or so or less or
at fifty minutes and just enjoy ourselves in this show
and enjoy a little bit of book reading with more's day,
you know, the love for one another. Stuff I've tried
to like When I first started this, it was always
about Prince music and understanding the songs and stuff. Like
(50:57):
I said when I started it again, I feel that
there's just a lot of people that have a lot
of that knowledge, and they probably did anyway before, but
just when things happened, we had to come together and
talk about a lot and a lot of stuff. There
was there, what stuff that people just didn't normally practice
about talking about it all the time, right, So we
(51:17):
gave a good place to talk about it. So now
we want to venture into more of life. What's that
noise anyway life? And how do we equate it to
what made us feel good about the music and princes
of music and make it kind of equate to how
(51:40):
we get by through our day without really just kind
of going over the same thing over and over. So
that's why it's good to bring up these things that
are happening today in our lives and try and get
through it somehow together. Got to do it together. I
know a lot of people just like to say, I'll
do it by myself. These are my problems. I've got
(52:04):
these problems, and I'm not going to keep on dragging
everybody into it because we're not getting nowhere that way.
And I ended up just feeling bad about it at
the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
But if we could get through things by ourselves, then
we wouldn't be listening, and we wouldn't be finding these
other solutions that we didn't know that we're there. Sometimes
it's good just to listen, you know, maybe that's all
it takes.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Sometimes.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
But you know, you know, if you ever get in
a conversation with somebody and they're like, man, I just
need to talk, and then they start talking and you
try talking, and it's like, well, I got it, maybe
you should try this. No, I've tried that, and the
end of and you're kind of talking and turning in
a little argument, and you're like, yeah, maybe what they needed.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
Just was for you just to listen. Just listen, be intentive.
You know.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
Sometimes people think they're like, hey, you're still there. Yeah,
I'm here, man, I'm listening to you.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Talk to me. Give it to me. It's okay. I
can take it.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
I got this ear right here that can take all
the stress and the anger that you're going through. Let
it all out, let it out. But here's here's the problem.
Here's the here's the kicker of the whole thing. When
(53:28):
you let it out, do you act on it? Is
there something you need to act on? You can let
out all your pain and anger and anguish, and then
at the end of it you go, man, I need
to do this, and then you never do it, never
make those changes or just do the things that kind
of you know, would make things a little bit better.
(53:50):
You know, it's a tough situation. Man, I go through
these conflicts all the time. What's going to make things better?
I don't know. But that's why we're here trying to
figure it out together.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
And there's you.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
Know, for years, it's whether it be in my personal
life or whether it be at work. And there's always problems.
There's always problems. Everybody's got problems, and you're trying to
solve it, man, like putting out fires left and right.
You don't help you there and I help you here,
and I forgot about this and let's look it up
and I'm gonna check here, and you know, and then
(54:31):
somebody calls you at home and hey, this happened. Oh man,
I can't believe it. Why don't we do this? Or
how we tried that? Or let me just be there
for you to hang on. I'll get there, you know.
And it's like a constant. It's this barrage of stuff
coming at you left and right, right, and then you
get your own problems. You're like, man, I haven't even
told nobody about this or whatever. And I think it
(54:54):
just I think it makes people stronger. I think, you know,
because every time every time you ta take care of something,
you're kind of like, it's like another notch, Like, man,
I took care of that. I did what I didn't
think I could do. I tackled that thing and made
it better, you know, and uh, And it's a it's
(55:16):
an important thing. Makes us stronger. Every time you take
care of something, whether it be in your personal life,
somebody else's life, I work, at home, school, whatever it
might be, you become that much more knowledgeable and able
to handle problems. And I think you can handle a
lot more than you think you can. You know, we're
(55:39):
a lot stronger than what we think. And we're stronger
why because we've tackled problems with The older you get,
the more you can take on. And sometimes when you're
young it's like this, it's a lot of pressure, like
what am I going to do? But as you go
like life will move on. There's always tomorrow, there's always
something better. There's always going to be in a situation
(56:02):
that you're gonna be like, man, I thought I'd never
get out of that. And then they have some hills
you don't even go back down and be like, oh man,
this is tough, but you're gonna work your way back out.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
And a lot of.
Speaker 2 (56:12):
It is with the help of other people. Getting it
all comes back to being willing to accept that help
and be there for other people and just love each other.
And I know it sounds silly. It's a tough thing,
and you know, we can be the dead horse and
keep on going over and over and over it, but
(56:33):
you know what, sometimes we need to hear it. Sometimes
I need to hear it and know that tomorrow's a
better day and we can get there. We can get
there together. I had genessis looking at me because I
think she's hungry, So it might be time to end
(56:53):
this show. Thank you for listening again. This is Jeff
with love for one Another. We will be back again
with another another show. We've been knocking them out. Some
of them are reading books, some of them are talking
about current events, and some of them are just trying
to figure out Like today, man, it's deep, trying to
figure out how to get through this and solve problems
(57:14):
of life. Man, what are we going to do? So
we'll talk about some more subjects coming up. And check
out all the other shows. We got other stuff coming up,
and check out all the stations.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
We are on.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Speaker. We also air on
Real Music Radio the Minneapolis Sound Radio, and I'm telling
you it's a great thing to be out on the
air and spreading the words of no wisdom, just ideas.
So come along for the ride. Check it out and
(57:50):
check out the other shows.
Speaker 1 (57:51):
We got some.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
News and stuff going on over on It's all on
the table. I don't think that's up and run now
and yet on all the podcast stations, so you gotta
check it out and Speaker and then also check out
the stations and all the great shows that DJ Jedi
puts on for you and Christopher. Now until the next time,
and get ready. We got some new music coming out.
(58:15):
Get ready for it. We'll talk to you next time.
This is Jeff would love for one another, Have a
great night and peace. See
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