Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Ladies and Gentlemen,
Speaker 1: Welcome to QLs classic George lighting LyX Johnson, formerly a
Speaker 1: legendary of Brothers Johnson Funk Unit. We talked to him
Speaker 1: about his days with Billy Preston, pairing up with Quincy Jones,
Speaker 1: eyewitnessing sly Stone make the legendary album There's a Riot
Speaker 1: going On, and also his brother.
Speaker 2: In the late Green Lewis.
Speaker 1: Thunder Thumbs Johnson from October twenty fourth, twenty eighteen. This
Speaker 1: is the George Johnson episode of Questlam.
Speaker 3: Supreme Suprema Supremo, Roll Call Supremo, Roll Call, Suprema Supremo,
Speaker 3: Roll Call, Suprema Sun Sun Supremo Roll Call.
Speaker 4: This is the show. Yeah, my name's Questlove.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I want to welcome you, yeah to the club.
Speaker 3: Supreme Supremo, Roll Call, Supreme Supremo.
Speaker 4: Roll My name is Fonte.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Check out my flow. Yeah. One of my favorite jams. Yeah, Tokyo.
Speaker 3: Suprema Son Supremo, Roll Call, Supremo, Supreme Roll Call.
Speaker 2: My name is Sugar.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I get my kicks.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: From thunder Thumbs Yeah, and light lips.
Speaker 3: Son Supremo, Roll Call Supreme So Supreme, Roll.
Speaker 4: Still is riding. Yeah in the new Mercedes. Yeah, down
Speaker 4: the highway. Yeah to the ladies.
Speaker 3: Suprema Suck souprem Suprema Son Son Supremo.
Speaker 4: Roll calls em.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know the deal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I want to know, George, Yeah, is what
Speaker 4: you feel really real?
Speaker 3: Roll call Suprema Son Son Supremo, Roll Car Suprema Son
Speaker 3: Son Suprema Roll Call.
Speaker 7: My name is Troy, Yeah, pop Sisdom Man. Yeah, are
Speaker 7: y'all already Yeah for a little bit of blame.
Speaker 3: Roll Supremo Sun Sun Supremo, Roll Call Suprema Son Son Supremo,
Speaker 3: Roll called.
Speaker 4: This is GJ.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'd like to say, yeah, get the funk out in
Speaker 2: my face. Yeah, I'm doing my.
Speaker 3: Roll Suprema So Supremo, Roll Car Suprema Son Sun Supremo,
Speaker 3: Roll cal Suprema Son Son So Frema roll call.
Speaker 4: Small Way better. That was it, Gemen.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: Many people have.
Speaker 8: Asked, but I gotta be honest with you. We've had
Speaker 8: our first role call train wreck and to never ever
Speaker 8: do a role call twice with the guests. But we
Speaker 8: actually that was our second take. Maybe at the fate
Speaker 8: of the of this episode, we can play the wreck.
Speaker 8: This is hilarious because once again Fonte has drink Steve's milk.
Speaker 4: Wow, man, that's crazy.
Speaker 3: Is this?
Speaker 8: This is our first father son edition of It is
Speaker 8: cost love supreme, This is complimenting. We are live at
Speaker 8: the illustrious Capitol Records building. Uh, the house that Nat
Speaker 8: built in the Beatless, the Beach Boys and Gillian Frank
Speaker 8: What what the studio we're in right now?
Speaker 4: What studio is the studio A? Is the studio A?
Speaker 2: And Neck and Cole is really the headliner in here?
Speaker 2: And I guess Frank Sinatra as well.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, so we're in a room with history.
Speaker 4: I will say that our special guest today, one of
Speaker 4: our two guests today, is probably one of the most
Speaker 4: legendary guitarists in funk soul history, having contributed to projects
Speaker 4: for Billy Preston, Liningless Smith, Bill Withers, Quincy Jones, Steve Arrington.
Speaker 4: That I didn't know George Duke, David Williams, the legendary
Speaker 4: guitarist David Williams. You gotta tell me about that.
Speaker 2: He used to come over my house. I will teach
Speaker 2: him some things.
Speaker 4: It's going to be so good.
Speaker 8: Renee and Joyce Kennedy, formerly of a Mother's Finest The Silvers,
Speaker 8: but of course he's better known by his his non
Speaker 8: de plume UH Lightning Licks who along with his brother,
Speaker 8: the late Great Lewis Johnson, UH, he's one half of
Speaker 8: the legendary monster duo the Brothers Johnson. Also not not
Speaker 8: not not to be outdone. His offspring is as an
Speaker 8: impressive uh resume as well. You can name it from
Speaker 8: j Lo to solangdo.
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, a lot of a bunch of stuff. Work
Speaker 6: with a few people, yes.
Speaker 8: Shory Radio Johnson also, but please welcome the legendary George
Speaker 8: Johnson and.
Speaker 2: Right quest those supreme.
Speaker 6: Thank you, thank you for coming man, thank you, thanks
Speaker 6: for having us.
Speaker 4: The Stunt Link my Daddy edition. So how are you
Speaker 4: to do?
Speaker 2: Oh? I'm doing good.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I don't come out to many interviews. I'm actually working
Speaker 2: on a book and thinking about doing some new music
Speaker 2: with my son. So when I heard that you came
Speaker 2: through and want to interview, I had the Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: going to do this.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 8: We're excited about this. We're excited. Okay, So I want
Speaker 8: to get right into it. Okay, where were you born?
Speaker 2: I was born in Los Angeles, California, in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 2: I'm currently sixty five years old. Just turned May seventeenth.
Speaker 4: Graduations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, still kicking up. Basically, have been enjoying the aftermath
Speaker 2: of where God took me through the whole livelihood of
Speaker 2: learning music. I started playing at five years old bb King,
Speaker 2: but he wound up covering one of my songs that
Speaker 2: I wrote for Billy Preston, a song called I Wonder Why,
Speaker 2: and I had a chance to meet him. And it's
Speaker 2: funny because every artist who I've met was seen abound
Speaker 2: a meeting from the Beatles, James Brown, you know, through
Speaker 2: my track in my career, really slid Stone, Larry Graham,
Speaker 2: you know, these were people who personally hands on taught
Speaker 2: me or everything about funk. But I knew as far
Speaker 2: as guitar. That was probably about eleven. I had a
Speaker 2: choice to whether I to play bass or if I
Speaker 2: wanted to play guitar. But I was already playing guitar,
Speaker 2: and I knew it was playing guitar had the six
Speaker 2: strings and you could play chords as opposed to notes.
Speaker 2: I was actually teaching my brother Lewis, when I play
Speaker 2: a C chord, you should play a C note. So
Speaker 2: actually I knew I could get further in writing and
Speaker 2: watching the Beatles performers three guitars and drums, which is
Speaker 2: the same instrumentation we had as kids. The Johnson three
Speaker 2: plus one, and you know, I just loved it. You know,
Speaker 2: the motown thing that hit, what you do, the things
Speaker 2: you do, all the Smokey Robinson and it was the
Speaker 2: Funk Brothers who I really learned a lot because at
Speaker 2: one time I thought it was different bands. I didn't
Speaker 2: think it was one band exactly, so you know, these
Speaker 2: were legends. Unfortunately they didn't get stock in the company,
Speaker 2: but you know, these were people who I most admired.
Speaker 2: You know, sixth seventh grade, I'm going to school humming
Speaker 2: hits and you know I can't.
Speaker 4: I would.
Speaker 2: I was really creative, so I got good grades. I'm
Speaker 2: sitting there writing lyrics and history and you know, or
Speaker 2: or geography, and I pulled that into I wanted to
Speaker 2: pull all that into my world through through history. I
Speaker 2: wanted to know a lot of things, which is a
Speaker 2: lot of things I know on a black issue that
Speaker 2: you guys would never know from doctor Francis Creswell saying
Speaker 2: to Ny mock Barr, you know, travel the world, and
Speaker 2: you know, dove into being a Christian into Islam at
Speaker 2: a very early age, and had chanced to meet Minnesulta's
Speaker 2: fery Khan and Mustafa Muhammad who's a very close friend
Speaker 2: of mine and kind of balanced the unbalanced for me.
Speaker 2: What kept the focus going and in the right direction
Speaker 2: was the music, because the music could teach me the most.
Speaker 2: And we had prejudices and all that stuff back in
Speaker 2: the early sixties and backing up into the fifties, so
Speaker 2: as kids, we weren't really given the right to have
Speaker 2: an opinion. It was up to the parents, you know,
Speaker 2: and they came from old school, like my family came
Speaker 2: from Mississippi, New Orleans, you know, down south. They were
Speaker 2: never taught the right things, you know, even as far
Speaker 2: as we were when we grew up, you know, nons
Speaker 2: wouldn't teach us the truth. We'd gone to church and
Speaker 2: see all these pictures of white folks, you know, which
Speaker 2: there were black saints. Later on to find Saint Peter,
Speaker 2: who's supposed to hold the keys to heaven. Okay, he's
Speaker 2: in the mill he's at the Vatican as a statue
Speaker 2: which the Pope gets up, and you have the Quran,
Speaker 2: I mean the Bible, the Quran and the Torah, and
Speaker 2: in front of all that is a black statue of
Speaker 2: Saint Peter, which he gets up at five o'clock in
Speaker 2: the morning kiss his feet. Had we had known that
Speaker 2: it would inspire us more as the as youth to
Speaker 2: feel better about ourselves as far as being, you know,
Speaker 2: sitting in the back of the classroom, which I always
Speaker 2: wanted to be, first row, second rope. I need glasses.
Speaker 2: I can't see the board. So in my travels it's
Speaker 2: like I used all of that, you know, in geography.
Speaker 2: I want to go everywhere I see on this map.
Speaker 2: You know, they have the big old picture, you know.
Speaker 2: And we never went out of la and I wound
Speaker 2: up traveling the world probably about over a dozen times.
Speaker 2: And I'd get on the plane read Okay Idaho with
Speaker 2: their famous for potatoes. This, you know, it would really
Speaker 2: prepare myself to know and ask questions. In went over
Speaker 2: to Africa in eighty four, checked into the lobby, and
Speaker 2: this African king and a prince which was his son,
Speaker 2: were there. I had no idea so he looked at
Speaker 2: me and said, oh, my brother. He said, when you
Speaker 2: get through, could you come over and have a drink
Speaker 2: with it? And I'm like, who the hell is this?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: So I went upstairs and came back down and he
Speaker 2: told me he was a king and he had seventeen
Speaker 2: wives and thirty five kids.
Speaker 4: Busy king.
Speaker 2: I said, how do you do that? Very slowly?
Speaker 4: What a part of LA were you born in?
Speaker 2: Well? Actually we went to Okay, I went to Catholic school.
Speaker 2: It was called Transfiguration. It was right off of Vernon
Speaker 2: and we lived on Samarron. That's where we grew up.
Speaker 2: Street called Samarron and Transfiguration was off of which is
Speaker 2: King now. It was on King and Fourth Avenue. Did
Speaker 2: eight years there learn to speak Latin? I wasn't all
Speaker 2: to boy sally, Yeah, I mean, I was like all
Speaker 2: over the place. But I figured that it would be
Speaker 2: a great opportunity to get out of school when I wanted. Okay,
Speaker 2: So they always would leave the doors open in the front.
Speaker 2: Would you come in through the church? Okay? If I'm like,
Speaker 2: would go over to where the priests were or where
Speaker 2: they dressed and all that. Directory I had reason to
Speaker 2: be in the area because I was an ultim boy.
Speaker 2: So I'd go creep through the church, go through the
Speaker 2: front doors, go down to Taketo.
Speaker 4: Place you.
Speaker 2: Have lunch, and coming back through the doors. A couple
Speaker 2: of times I got caught. So there was a middle
Speaker 2: light and uh, the confession. So if I jumped in that,
Speaker 2: like the priests are doing that, all the moves down
Speaker 2: so if you step in it, they figured the priest
Speaker 2: was in there. So I was hearing confessions and all that.
Speaker 2: Your father helped me my daughters, this is pregnant. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I was like, hey, you know, say three our fathers
Speaker 2: three held marriages when our father acting contrition and you good.
Speaker 4: The original, so we're your Were your parents into music?
Speaker 2: My mom played, uh keyboards. She wasn't really you know,
Speaker 2: she'd learned little music and would play. I never saw
Speaker 2: her play. Well it was having around the piano. She
Speaker 2: can just get on it and play a little bit.
Speaker 2: My dad was a hell of a whistler. He could
Speaker 2: out whistle to tell me.
Speaker 4: We get the car on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you know right right. My dad could whistle
Speaker 2: like that. Really yeah, so it was he would whistle
Speaker 2: melodies if he couldn't sing. I know, all the lyrics.
Speaker 2: He's showing that he could whistle it. He'd whistle out
Speaker 2: a song. Well, he cutting a lawn whatever, cutting the hair,
Speaker 2: you know, helping us with the stuff. But we got
Speaker 2: music from both sides, you know, and we had some
Speaker 2: aunts and uncles that could play, you know, damn anything.
Speaker 2: They wanted to just go to the keyboard, from gospel
Speaker 2: music to rock and roll. You know, they can just improvise.
Speaker 2: How old were you when you got your first guitar? Well,
Speaker 2: this is a very good story because this Okay, I
Speaker 2: was watching at some of it, and I was watching
Speaker 2: Elvis Presley Joe House Rock came out. I probably was
Speaker 2: about five six, and we had a couch and us
Speaker 2: sitting on the floor between my dad's legs, just watching.
Speaker 2: They had about eight of the grand kids running around.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get to the move out the way.
Speaker 2: He saw my interest in this man who was playing
Speaker 2: this box guitar and shaking his legs, and all the
Speaker 2: girls were biting their nails and crying, which is the
Speaker 2: only thing I could not interpretate why there were crying, okay,
Speaker 2: but they were just excited. There was an emotion, you know.
Speaker 2: So he gets up during the commercial, goes into the
Speaker 2: kitchen and it was like a half gallon of milk,
Speaker 2: pours what was left out, washes it out, cuts a
Speaker 2: hole in the middle, takes a stick, staple it to
Speaker 2: it where the pouring part was. He takes four rubber
Speaker 2: bands and put the pins at the bottom. So he
Speaker 2: made a simulated guitar. By the time they say came
Speaker 2: back on, he stepped back over me and he waited
Speaker 2: to and he just handed me the milk cart. Yeah,
Speaker 2: simulated guitar. That was like the most important thing in
Speaker 2: my life. He saw me actually just focusing in on
Speaker 2: this person, you know, more so than any of all
Speaker 2: the other grandkids. So it's like he just knew, So
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get put this in this boy's hand. She
Speaker 2: gonna become that and from you know, he couldn't. Later on,
Speaker 2: he and his brother because his brother Buster my dad's
Speaker 2: name was Joseph. He they're both so creative and two
Speaker 2: black men from Mississippi who have the original blueprints for
Speaker 2: the airplanean's landing. When first the parachute would come out,
Speaker 2: they had reverse reverse whatever it is that reverse thrust.
Speaker 2: That was their idea. But it was two Yeah, they
Speaker 2: have the original blueprint we should have on the airline.
Speaker 2: But because yeah, they had the original blueprints of turning
Speaker 2: one engine on going this way because they only had
Speaker 2: one engine going that way. So that's why when planes
Speaker 2: landing kind of makes you know, and it helps planes
Speaker 2: lands and next time y'all going back to New York.
Speaker 2: Exactly two black men. So those two black men who
Speaker 2: came up with that built our first guitar. Wow, that's
Speaker 2: how my dad's brother came over. You got a busted
Speaker 2: water heater. I can make that. It was a welder,
Speaker 2: you know. And he got some sheep metal Bennett round.
Speaker 2: He had all the two He made that and that
Speaker 2: lasted until we moved. So we had we had great
Speaker 2: black men in our family. Everywhere we would look outside
Speaker 2: of music, somebody knew something about that. Also had an
Speaker 2: uncle who used to come by and check. His name
Speaker 2: was Arthur and he played a three thirty five guitar
Speaker 2: and he used to play backup guitar for West Montgomery. Man.
Speaker 4: Okay, you know so, and then.
Speaker 2: We have an uncle who actually played saxophone and he
Speaker 2: come over and check on us how the boys doing it.
Speaker 2: We had basically the same story like the Jackson. You know,
Speaker 2: my mom was, don't buy it. Why are you buying all?
Speaker 2: They said, these boys are gonna be bad. They let him.
Speaker 2: Let me just do what I'm gonna do. And he
Speaker 2: brought us all instruments. Oh, we should be paying bills
Speaker 2: and blood, which you know, it worked out. I'm thankful
Speaker 2: he went that way. He had more faith than my mom.
Speaker 2: She wanted us to be scholars like she was and
Speaker 2: getting master's degrees and all that kind of stuff, and
Speaker 2: that wasn't I got my master master's degree through Quincy
Speaker 2: eight years. Takes four years to get your degree and
Speaker 2: another four to get your masters. I did eight years
Speaker 2: with Clincy Jones.
Speaker 4: In your family, is it just as far as your
Speaker 4: siblings are concerned.
Speaker 2: Now, we have an older brother, Tommy, who played drums.
Speaker 2: He was like Buddy Miles. He played drums and sang.
Speaker 2: His path was too. Well say, we had our group.
Speaker 2: We had two guitars, me and Alex Swear who wanted
Speaker 2: to play with talking Heads.
Speaker 4: Well, Alex, he also played with that's my cousin. Yes, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: He was the plus one. It was a Johnson three
Speaker 2: plus one and exactly. So you know, I was like
Speaker 2: the Quincy Jones then back then being the Arrangers, since well,
Speaker 2: I knew I had to be brilliant in the school
Speaker 2: because my parents didn't want us to do anything until
Speaker 2: after if we had good grades, and after you do
Speaker 2: your homework then you could chill. So I would do
Speaker 2: my homework by the time school was out home the
Speaker 2: right and leave to go to forgot the name of
Speaker 2: the record store and that of Normandy and pick up
Speaker 2: new singles. So you know, it could have been four
Speaker 2: top songs standing in the Shadow, Loves or Temptations or Smoky.
Speaker 2: The first thing I'd do is go home. I'd buy
Speaker 2: five singles out of my pocket because we was doing gigs,
Speaker 2: making about two hundred bucks for one, you know, set
Speaker 2: of three hours and it was only four of us. So,
Speaker 2: I mean from sixth grade on, you know, I had money.
Speaker 2: I didn't have a bank. I put my money under
Speaker 2: the mattress. Anybody who needs money.
Speaker 4: Go, you know, go under here and pick it up
Speaker 4: the mattress of the crown.
Speaker 2: Well, I never had a bank account, and I didn't
Speaker 2: know if I wanted to trust banks. Okay, you're giving
Speaker 2: you my money and then what so.
Speaker 4: In all your years of playing, did you ever take
Speaker 4: formal lessons or was it all just kind of self?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Once I got into high school and my guitarist
Speaker 2: teacher got in touch with my parents and told them
Speaker 2: that they're wasting their money because I'm teaching them motown ship.
Speaker 2: You know, he's teaching us one that we're teaching them.
Speaker 2: You know, because I would pick up really quick. They
Speaker 2: showed me the basics of C chord and you know
Speaker 2: minor chord, and you know one, three, five, and then
Speaker 2: take out the third and you get a minor and
Speaker 2: which a lot of stuff and people don't realize and
Speaker 2: the sound and rappers later got it mixed up and
Speaker 2: they added the third with a note that don't match
Speaker 2: text your record, you know, things like that. But I
Speaker 2: would as a child pick up singles, and I was
Speaker 2: the only one out of the group who would put
Speaker 2: on the record. The first thing I would do is
Speaker 2: write the lyrics.
Speaker 4: Oh okay.
Speaker 2: I was telling my son Troy this probably about a
Speaker 2: couple of months ago. I would write the lyrics and
Speaker 2: then I would pick out the part I wasn't gonna
Speaker 2: play and sing first of all, to pick out the
Speaker 2: hit I want so all we played is hits. We
Speaker 2: had a catalog of about two hundred songs that we
Speaker 2: could play and where jazz to R and B. Because
Speaker 2: we also came from Led Zeppelin, Deep, Purple three Dollar Night, Chicago,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of those groups. We would play
Speaker 2: their music. So we was all over the place musically.
Speaker 2: That's why Quincy loved the style of where I came from.
Speaker 2: I always want to turn my brother Lewis on the
Speaker 2: funk with sliding the family stone. He later didn't got
Speaker 2: me watch it.
Speaker 4: I'm going to do.
Speaker 2: Like watch what I'm gonna do later, you know.
Speaker 4: And it was cool.
Speaker 2: And that's the only problem I would have because sometimes
Speaker 2: he would kind of lie being honest, Well, who taught
Speaker 2: you to do that? I didn't had nothing. I was
Speaker 2: going to touch you how to put the bass in
Speaker 2: your hand? Hey dad, we needed the bass. And he
Speaker 2: did learn on his own and James Jamieson and Automotile,
Speaker 2: he picked it up. He was as bad as I was,
Speaker 2: but he just wouldn't do more than that. Like Quincy said,
Speaker 2: he's a hell of a bass player, you know, and
Speaker 2: he was that.
Speaker 4: So he didn't have the ability to play guitar, but
Speaker 4: you could play guitar.
Speaker 2: No, he could play, but he couldn't play play guitar.
Speaker 2: He'd played guitars on some of our records. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: his style. He just played, as you know, and a
Speaker 2: lot of things that I would play. George, you play bass.
Speaker 2: You could play bass because I was using his bass
Speaker 2: upside down and he'd get pissed from writing something too funky,
Speaker 2: and we go to the studio and Larryot's I mean
Speaker 2: and Quincy play it like George, I'm like, oh ship
Speaker 2: say that. Because on the demo I would play the bass,
Speaker 2: the guitars. I used to lay about seven eight guitars,
Speaker 2: like when you first got I'd be good to you.
Speaker 2: That was all guitars bassed, and the drum machine asked,
Speaker 2: still have still have that? I'm gonna give the trouble
Speaker 2: I heard those. I have all of it. Plus so
Speaker 2: Quincy would listen to everything we had and he would pick.
Speaker 2: So he's like picking all these songs because out more
Speaker 2: or less complete mind. More so my brother and he'd
Speaker 2: have like grooves. So we're like on two different levels.
Speaker 2: But it's like I was saying earlier, because I would
Speaker 2: write and there's something to think about to go with
Speaker 2: your history animals. Okay, when you have a person who
Speaker 2: comes I'm young like I was, and I would write
Speaker 2: lyrics to like BB King's Thrillers, you know, and then
Speaker 2: noticed the difference just not a major chord, the third
Speaker 2: is out as a minor, Okay, so that's that to
Speaker 2: put that there for every song in lyric, I would write,
Speaker 2: whether it was a Smokey Robinson song, you're actually going
Speaker 2: through the emotions of that writer for you to write
Speaker 2: the lyrics down, and you're reading it, it's like wow,
Speaker 2: and he made it to perfection. So I'm writing some
Speaker 2: finished perfection of how someone felt. And I'm writing over
Speaker 2: two hundred some songs. So it's like I got bits
Speaker 2: and pieces of everybody from Chicago, Zeppelin, the Motown, you know.
Speaker 2: It all became the cake with the candles lit.
Speaker 4: So it was part of your writing, DNA, and it
Speaker 4: helped you.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean a lot of people wouldn't look at
Speaker 2: it because they just stay in one area of one song.
Speaker 2: But if you're writing all these different songs, including Supremes,
Speaker 2: you know, all the other Motown acts, David Ruffin songs,
Speaker 2: and even I had to find on later they weren't
Speaker 2: writing in Smoker Robinson Robinson, So I'm going through a
Speaker 2: lot of emotions and oh baby, baby, and it's like
Speaker 2: some of this stuff down and made me cry just
Speaker 2: reading it.
Speaker 4: So that's a good that's a good exercise. I never
Speaker 4: thought that you actually internalize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what if you write? If you write the lyrics
Speaker 2: and get all the lyrics correct, then pick out the
Speaker 2: guitar part. Who's gonna play this? Play the bass? Now
Speaker 2: I'm getting into James Jamieson's head, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Then you get the little drummer's head and you and
Speaker 2: you're listening and giving the parts out, you know what,
Speaker 2: And you're young.
Speaker 8: Here's something that's actually kind of sort of connected to you.
Speaker 8: This explains that Prince poster.
Speaker 4: Oh the Star is Born poster. Yeah, well no, no, no,
Speaker 4: the dude so oh yeah.
Speaker 8: For some reason, okay, so in light of princes passing,
Speaker 8: they found a concert poster in which Prince wrote the
Speaker 8: lyrics to to Quincy's The Dude the Rat And for
Speaker 8: some reason I was trying to they gave some back
Speaker 8: history to it, and I guess like that intrigued them,
Speaker 8: and I guess writing it out physically helped what you
Speaker 8: were explaining.
Speaker 2: Well, you can look up in the archives, because Prince
Speaker 2: was a fan of ours. The first interview he's done
Speaker 2: ever did well, you know where'd you get your music from?
Speaker 2: And he mentioned brothers, Johnson's Slide and Family Stone, which
Speaker 2: I had Me and Sly wound up getting very close.
Speaker 2: As far as Larry Graham too. After that interview, he
Speaker 2: never mentioned anything. Everything was Prince and I went. I
Speaker 2: went to Vegas to see him perform, and he called
Speaker 2: my room, had this guy called it room and they
Speaker 2: did there like two o'clock in the morning, sound check.
Speaker 2: Have George come down, and I had a guest with me.
Speaker 2: I brought my guest. I didn't tell her where we're going.
Speaker 4: We just went in.
Speaker 2: We had the whole MGN. We were sitting on the side.
Speaker 2: Larry Graham was supposed to do a sound check. He
Speaker 2: bumped Larry off and did his sound check because he
Speaker 2: wanted to, you know, meet me and see me. He
Speaker 2: played for us for about two hours straight. It was
Speaker 2: better than the kind of you know check. You know,
Speaker 2: he played songs that wasn't his repertoire.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he came.
Speaker 9: Yeah yeah, and you know he used to do that
Speaker 9: with some of his fan club members, like in the
Speaker 9: early two thousands, he would invite them into the sound
Speaker 9: check right and would just play for them and talk.
Speaker 2: And then we played Club fifty four. He asked me
Speaker 2: to come on stage, and I played with him and
Speaker 2: Lry Graham, but I actually went played on the wrong songs.
Speaker 2: They did a whole slide thing. I was still up
Speaker 2: in the top with my girl was checking him out.
Speaker 2: I said I should be down there for that, but
Speaker 2: I guess he thought I'd come down when I heard
Speaker 2: something I liked. So when he called me on stage,
Speaker 2: they got to this Elvis little groove. But I mean
Speaker 2: it was cool, but it wasn't what IU to prefer.
Speaker 2: But you know, we walked in the club. They were
Speaker 2: playing Get the Funk out of My Face, Strawberry Letter,
Speaker 2: Get to You. I told, I said, man, they handed
Speaker 2: me this guitar. They were so fucked up and out
Speaker 2: of turn. Who did Let's go get on? Let's go
Speaker 2: get on, Jordan, And I was like, don't ask me that,
Speaker 2: because the fans are going getting people.
Speaker 4: What is the age difference between you and your brother.
Speaker 2: Lewis two years? Okay, we were all two years apart.
Speaker 2: It was Lewis's two years apart from me was two
Speaker 2: years and my older brother.
Speaker 8: So your first professional gig outside of the Johnson Brothers
Speaker 8: plus one or the Johnson three plus one.
Speaker 2: Right, I got tired of that. We did win the
Speaker 2: contest and all that in nineteen sixty eight k f
Speaker 2: j's concert. We won everything. We won box instruments like
Speaker 2: the Beatles, box guitars, and we got a record contract
Speaker 2: with I just did a documentary portion with Gina Gina
Speaker 2: Rey Mac Bobby Dog. Oh yeah, she he produced our
Speaker 2: first record as John's three plus. I wanted to testify
Speaker 2: it will sounded just like tighten up with the maked
Speaker 2: mellow part, but it's like make it sweeter, make it sweeter, right,
Speaker 2: another breakdown exactly. So that was the first time we had,
Speaker 2: you know, met Bobby wo Max Label Venture Records, this
Speaker 2: guy named Mickey Stevenson.
Speaker 4: I think, are you looking at it right now? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Of course, I'm like, are you looking at it right now?
Speaker 4: How much is it goes? Well?
Speaker 2: They only made a thousand records. They sold about I
Speaker 2: don't think it's around. I'm googled and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: but uh, they saw just a single. It was just
Speaker 2: a single. Before that, we did our own demo. We
Speaker 2: used to go up to Rachel's enterprise and we would
Speaker 2: cut demos, which I met a lot of people. Actually,
Speaker 2: my girl friend now she used to work for Rachel's enterprise. Okay,
Speaker 2: and and uh her name is Joy Randall. She also
Speaker 2: she works for Disney now.
Speaker 4: And is this how you started interacting with Billy Preston,
Speaker 4: because I know that no, no, no no.
Speaker 2: With Billy Preston. We were looking for a keyboard player.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, And you mentioned earlier Renee and Angela. Renee
Speaker 2: was the same class with Lewis my younger brother. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: age Renee used to come over quite a bit and
Speaker 2: I met him, and you know, he's a he's a
Speaker 2: hell of a keyboard player. And I thought if we
Speaker 2: had a keyboard player to the group, he would be
Speaker 2: the one because he was, you know, two years young.
Speaker 2: He was bad and like he played me some of
Speaker 2: the stuff he had written and he but only where
Speaker 2: the keyboard was was at Billy Preston's duplex he had
Speaker 2: up off of Olympic. So we took the group and
Speaker 2: we went over to Billy's house where he had an
Speaker 2: organ and a Fender road downstairs at his mother's place.
Speaker 2: He happened to just come off the road. I think
Speaker 2: he did some work with the Beatles. He's always hanging
Speaker 2: with the Beatles and make Jagger, you know. And he
Speaker 2: came in and I had on this flag shirt like
Speaker 2: I took with my high school picture at Prinshall High.
Speaker 2: By the way, they putting me at the fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 2: of Princeville High and they put me in the Hall
Speaker 2: of Fame October fourteenth. Yeah, Jersey, So I walk in,
Speaker 2: he walks in, See limo pulls up and his Billy
Speaker 2: he gets that was this big wig looking like sly
Speaker 2: Where I met Slye through him too, because they used
Speaker 2: to come over. Billy Preston was one of the baddest
Speaker 2: motherfucking keyboard players on Earth period.
Speaker 8: What is it about his technic? Is people always speak
Speaker 8: of But since you played with them? What made him
Speaker 8: such so in demand with all these groups?
Speaker 2: And well number one groups would call him for him
Speaker 2: to make them. Yeah, like the Beatles, you know. I
Speaker 2: went over there. Well finishing that story, I mean I
Speaker 2: met the Beatles through Billy. I met sly and family
Speaker 2: Stone through Billy Preston. He was connected which one I
Speaker 2: was when you when you met sly Oh, I was like,
Speaker 2: so goddamn nervous.
Speaker 4: What year was?
Speaker 2: This just had to be in around seventy because he did.
Speaker 2: I was there when Poet went down.
Speaker 4: Wow, I was there.
Speaker 2: But I'll tell this pre story real quick, okay. And
Speaker 2: Billy had asked me to join the group. He walked
Speaker 2: in and saw a big afro and I was in
Speaker 2: my I was like, I was like Jimmy Hendrix and
Speaker 2: Freddy Stone combined and having more time. Things back. So
Speaker 2: I was playing some guitar you would have been probably yeah,
Speaker 2: I would prefer to be Barry Gordy's on the original one.
Speaker 2: So when Billy asked me, and it's like I was
Speaker 2: kind of getting tired of just like we ran our
Speaker 2: gambit as a johnst One and I kept telling my
Speaker 2: brothers that, you know, it's like somebody got to leave.
Speaker 2: We had to go do something else. They didn't want
Speaker 2: me to go, but they wasn't telling me not to go.
Speaker 2: So I went to audition a keyboard player become Billy,
Speaker 2: and he's gonna pull me out of our group. I
Speaker 2: want you to play with me. So that was a
Speaker 2: decision I had to make sure we continue on with
Speaker 2: this new keyboard pro, which he probably would have been bad.
Speaker 2: It probably could have worked out. And as he pulled
Speaker 2: me aside and he asked me, how long have you
Speaker 2: been playing? He said, love the way you play? Who
Speaker 2: were some people that you love? And I was telling
Speaker 2: him sly and he just start smiling. He knew them.
Speaker 2: That was his best friends. I like Freddie Stone, I
Speaker 2: like Jimmy henrix Is. He needed that ingredient he did
Speaker 2: not have me before, he asked me. He did have
Speaker 2: some other great people, Tony Maid and Bobby Watson. Yes,
Speaker 2: right right, yeah, I mean they were before us, and uh,
Speaker 2: I was also listening to them because we are on
Speaker 2: the same We had played clubs and we'd see Rufus
Speaker 2: and Shaka Kount. That's how I new about them, and
Speaker 2: as far as a lot of other groups too, but
Speaker 2: they kind of stood out. We wound up having some history,
Speaker 2: uh later in life, touring together. So I decided to myself,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go out with Billy. So Billy called. He said, man,
Speaker 2: we're getting ready to do what like six months old
Speaker 2: in Europe. So I said, well, I said I'll go.
Speaker 2: So it's having dinner and to mention to my mom.
Speaker 2: I said, well, by the way, I'm leaving in the morning,
Speaker 2: just like that. I'm that's how it. What said, I'm
Speaker 2: leaving in the morning to go to Europe. I've been
Speaker 2: going to Germany. You ain't going, No, damn Johnny you
Speaker 2: I asked to getting up and going to school because
Speaker 2: I was in junior high school, junior college and West
Speaker 2: l A's Junior College, and I had set up all
Speaker 2: these musical courses. And I asked my teacher. He was
Speaker 2: the only one I respected. So if you had the
Speaker 2: chance to go out with Billy Preston and go to
Speaker 2: Europe and you know, do music. But I had like
Speaker 2: harmony theory, I had like a handful of different types
Speaker 2: of music because I wanted to finish do to learn
Speaker 2: the music. And he said, what yours. Let me tell
Speaker 2: you this, you only have one chance to go to Europe.
Speaker 2: You can always come back to school. So I would
Speaker 2: clean out your lock her. So I just went took
Speaker 2: all my shit out, cleaned it up, put it in
Speaker 2: my bag, went home and decided to I was going
Speaker 2: to Europe. So I called my girlfriend.
Speaker 4: I served my mom right now, boy, you ain't decide not.
Speaker 2: I'm your decision making. So I told her to come.
Speaker 2: I was goa come get her and go to the airport.
Speaker 2: I was leaving the cars to my low riding Malibu
Speaker 2: about sixty five Malabu orange with GJ on the side
Speaker 2: of white in terrier. And it wasn't dropped. I just
Speaker 2: cut the strings. So the hell it had a rock
Speaker 2: to it, you know. So and I left. My mom
Speaker 2: came down, but she had told me get up, it's
Speaker 2: time to go to school. I said, all, I said, well,
Speaker 2: I told you I am going to Germany. So she
Speaker 2: didn't believe me. All right, So I leave and probably
Speaker 2: was gone for about a good month because I was
Speaker 2: known for getting up leaving because you know, the girlfriend
Speaker 2: at least I had called checked. I didn't call because
Speaker 2: I didn't want to hear right.
Speaker 4: Oh man.
Speaker 2: So we were in London and I decided to call.
Speaker 2: And this is in seventy one. So I said, look,
Speaker 2: I'm in London, England, and we're leaving here. We're going
Speaker 2: to Paris. And you know, I'm fine, I'm good. I'm
Speaker 2: making some good money making like probably about seven hundred
Speaker 2: per gig, which wasn't bad. Yeah, And I told her
Speaker 2: I will send money. So then she kind of chilled out.
Speaker 2: Then I want I sent money, and even though I
Speaker 2: had no bills, I just sent money and she didn't
Speaker 2: said another You know, she's like knew. And I was
Speaker 2: the only son who would do anything like that, including
Speaker 2: when his bass player Grady quit and Billy he quit
Speaker 2: at the airport. I used to go home and teach
Speaker 2: Lewis the show. We'd sit on the side of the
Speaker 2: bed he had. We had double beds, and my guitar
Speaker 2: this way and his guitar that way. Easy to follow,
Speaker 2: so I taught him every song he had done. So
Speaker 2: my brother Lewis literally new Billy show after the first
Speaker 2: tour after the year, goes by at the airport and
Speaker 2: I think they had red Devils available, yellow jackets, Kwai ludes,
Speaker 2: all that ship was out his bass players. These are pills.
Speaker 2: I never really got into them. My I had girls.
Speaker 2: They come over and they bring it to the parties
Speaker 2: and whole bag of yellow jackets, and what the hell
Speaker 2: are you gonna do with this? You know, there was
Speaker 2: no sealem you know, I don't know. People at the
Speaker 2: party they'd take one and you know, my dad would
Speaker 2: find what was this ship he always was taking. He
Speaker 2: flushed down the toilet and it was funny. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: tell you this story. This is kind of my personal business.
Speaker 2: But you know, I had sampled, uh some lines of cocaine.
Speaker 2: I had a friend of mine who always had it,
Speaker 2: and he kind of I'd tell that other people. I knew,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna mention they were doing it. So he
Speaker 2: brought it and he had like a whole mountain of
Speaker 2: cocaine out in the bedroom. My dad saw the weed
Speaker 2: experiment with weed cocaine, but in that pills. He said,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you one thing, you better flush that down
Speaker 2: a toilet. About the weed.
Speaker 4: Was the biggest concern.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he he didn't know what blow was.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Right now, so you know, he he couldn't He didn't.
Speaker 2: He couldn't say anything about that because he didn't know
Speaker 2: what it was. So I'm looking at my boy who
Speaker 2: brought it, and We're both like glad he said flush
Speaker 2: the weed, and I was both. I mean, I had
Speaker 2: just got into too cocaine and I didn't really know
Speaker 2: how I was supposed to feel, you know. And UH
Speaker 2: got around a few huge people that they were known
Speaker 2: for that ship.
Speaker 4: Speaking of which, can you tell that police session went.
Speaker 2: All right? So I get back home from the trip.
Speaker 2: I didn't mean to go off. Please, like Troy would say,
Speaker 2: we talked.
Speaker 4: That's what this show is for.
Speaker 2: Just bring me back to Okay. So anyway, I go
Speaker 2: back to Billy Preston and it's so ironic and I
Speaker 2: don't know if I should mention this, but I probably will.
Speaker 4: I will.
Speaker 2: A friend of mine, who was Billy's engineer, took me
Speaker 2: over to this girl he was dating, and it was
Speaker 2: April and her sister happened to be Kathy, who was
Speaker 2: married Kathy Silver. Yeah, okay, So he goes into the
Speaker 2: bedroom with April and he leaves me with Kathy.
Speaker 4: So we're down.
Speaker 2: So this first time I met her, and you know,
Speaker 2: I wasn't married, and everything was cool, and I thought
Speaker 2: she was so beautiful and nice and sweet. But back then,
Speaker 2: I mean, I had so much experience with a bunch
Speaker 2: of different gorgeous women. I had three of them living
Speaker 2: with me at one time. Three they were all girlfriends,
Speaker 2: and they never left. So I had to put him
Speaker 2: to work. All right, you comed up the kitchen and
Speaker 2: you cut clean. All I know is I'm writing good.
Speaker 4: To you, legends.
Speaker 2: Are you listening to this episode.
Speaker 4: Special?
Speaker 2: I'm here to tell the truth. Like I mentioned, it
Speaker 2: was probably be the most truthful interview, and it's gonna
Speaker 2: take you in a lot of different areas y'all have
Speaker 2: done because I'm just being me. A lot of this
Speaker 2: stuff I'm putting in my book, which is gonna be
Speaker 2: off to change, incredible, and it'll be more informative that
Speaker 2: I can dig into right now. But this year, I'm well,
Speaker 2: I got it seventy percent done, so I left off
Speaker 2: actually sixty percent. I left off twenty percent off the back,
Speaker 2: twenty off the front, so and nobody could do it. Okay,
Speaker 2: it goes back when I was like a baby. That stuff.
Speaker 2: I remember the first time it rained.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: But me hooking up with Kathy was like he put
Speaker 2: me with Kathy because he was with April. And then
Speaker 2: they disappeared and left us in the room. So we
Speaker 2: laid by the fireplace, and you know, I had no
Speaker 2: idea that was gonna be sliced on wife, So you know,
Speaker 2: the most furthest I went with her. We kissed a
Speaker 2: little bit, and you know it's like shit, I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna lay out here and let him walk into us.
Speaker 2: We can't walk into him. So and we were there
Speaker 2: for probably for a couple of hours, and her older sister,
Speaker 2: April wanted us to hook up because Michael and I
Speaker 2: kind of had a look alike with big afros, light skin,
Speaker 2: very cool, you know, on chill. You know, I never
Speaker 2: really wanted for anything as far as out of a
Speaker 2: woman than that my grandmother or mother aunts could give.
Speaker 2: So I've been used to that, so I wasn't used
Speaker 2: to a lot of the benefits of a woman. Just
Speaker 2: like we wing not have my guitar. I said, this
Speaker 2: is the only thing you can't come in between me
Speaker 2: and my guitar, or my guitar or my music. And
Speaker 2: it kind of rolled from that. That's why the woman
Speaker 2: who I picked was Troy's mom. You know, she was
Speaker 2: my soulmate and nobody comes close to that. She passed
Speaker 2: in two thousand, but you know she was the only
Speaker 2: one I let into my world and inspired me to
Speaker 2: continue writing. Okay, So anyway, afterwards, you know, Sly played
Speaker 2: the Palladium. I took my wife to be there and
Speaker 2: we went backstage and I saw Kathy and Sly coming
Speaker 2: down the hallway. They're getting ready to go on because
Speaker 2: I said I want to go. You know, see Sly.
Speaker 2: I didn't know him yet, so I see him walking.
Speaker 4: This is when.
Speaker 2: He was they were doing if you want me to stay?
Speaker 2: It came out. Yeah, but I had met him before.
Speaker 2: We'll get back to that. But I saw her coming
Speaker 2: and he turned his head and end on his big
Speaker 2: hat and the Selver outfit, and she like looked at
Speaker 2: me and her and she said, So I totally got it.
Speaker 2: I understood it. There's like a lot of Sly attitude personality.
Speaker 2: It just came into me just from watching, listening, telling stories.
Speaker 2: Because Troy will tell you it's not to me. People
Speaker 2: he'd trust to this day except for me. And I
Speaker 2: can truly say that, Oh will sit down and you
Speaker 2: know slides man, I mean Troy's mane.
Speaker 7: The email will be encrypted though they got a special
Speaker 7: funk language that the emails el.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is probably about four years ago and we
Speaker 2: still talk. He'd send me like eighty five emails.
Speaker 4: In a day, Sylvester. No, he does.
Speaker 2: He has a laptop and you know he'd learn and
Speaker 2: when he'd get bored, he would text people that he trusts,
Speaker 2: not everybody. So we would when I wasn't around him,
Speaker 2: and I don't go around him a lot. He'd have
Speaker 2: a questions, a g I got some songs. I got
Speaker 2: some new songs because he would give me songs. He'd
Speaker 2: come over my house and I was out to Dina
Speaker 2: when I was with Patrise. That's why Patrice come by.
Speaker 2: They all would love to meet him, but he wouldn't
Speaker 2: let a lot of people meet him period.
Speaker 8: Why was he such a recluse because I know that
Speaker 8: once he well, that's because certain people that he trusted
Speaker 8: and he opens up and he's regular and that.
Speaker 4: Sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Because he's a prophet, and a prophet is one who
Speaker 2: only God is spoken to. Wow, you know, yeah, then
Speaker 2: that's the true fact. Like Abraham was a prophet. Those
Speaker 2: are who God speaks to, somebody who's been on the
Speaker 2: journey and who accepts themselves and who could still do
Speaker 2: what they want to do regardless. And he has leadership,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden he doesn't have any leadership.
Speaker 2: Then he has someone he wants to trust. The two
Speaker 2: it's like a God speaking to Jesus. And you know
Speaker 2: it gets so deep as far he don't doesn't spread
Speaker 2: himself out. If you want no slide. Just listen to
Speaker 2: all of his songs. You caught me smiling all that
Speaker 2: and listened. He stand because he politically in the sixties
Speaker 2: was like the only Malcolm X that would bring truth
Speaker 2: and put it in your face.
Speaker 4: So with poet, like when you were there of him,
Speaker 4: what was that was?
Speaker 2: Well when we after I met him, And this is
Speaker 2: the scary part for me because I heard him before
Speaker 2: I met him. He Kathy was in the house with Billy, okay,
Speaker 2: because Billy's sisters knew her or something, and that's how
Speaker 2: that hooked up. I'm trying to look at her just
Speaker 2: before we hooked up, checking her out. Then he said,
Speaker 2: slides here. I'm like what I looked out the window.
Speaker 2: I knew he had a mobile home that he record
Speaker 2: with and he would he came to Billy had wooden stairs,
Speaker 2: so I'm hearing Sly's voice her and just walk Sevesters here, Sevester.
Speaker 2: So I'm like sitting by the on the seat of
Speaker 2: the keyboard player right where the doorway, getting ready to
Speaker 2: see this man for the first time in my life.
Speaker 2: But I knew him, like you know, and they see
Speaker 2: him he walks in. Then they had this thing with
Speaker 2: that like stomp and laugh, which you know how to do.
Speaker 4: They're talking.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, and I looked at him. It was like
Speaker 2: my mouth dropped because it was like seeing Jimmy Hendrix.
Speaker 2: But I was concerned, and you know, we got a
Speaker 2: chance to talk about all that kind of stuff because
Speaker 2: we became very close. And Billy pointed at me first
Speaker 2: said this is George Johnson, this is my new guitarist.
Speaker 2: And Billy was so proud of me. Sly knew what
Speaker 2: that meant. He knew exactly what that meant. So Sly,
Speaker 2: out of Billy's whole band, I was the only one
Speaker 2: who opened up that He opened up too, And that's
Speaker 2: how I got to get into bell Air with Poet
Speaker 2: and uh. Well, after he visited, he went to the
Speaker 2: room with Suet Billy, and I'm like sitting in the
Speaker 2: in the living room kind of shaking, thinking what I
Speaker 2: wanted to ask him, or if I should ask him
Speaker 2: anything at all, because he had that vibe first of all,
Speaker 2: and held get out. He always want a leather he
Speaker 2: had this way he was sliced out.
Speaker 4: You have his dog with him? Gun?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no he didn't, he told me. Shot gun in
Speaker 2: the head.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, I'm sorry, No, he.
Speaker 2: Said, this is how that happened. He was Kathy was
Speaker 2: at home. He was in the studio. This is right
Speaker 2: before I started kind of following to the studios and
Speaker 2: he'd let me come in and uh, same thing like
Speaker 2: with Stevie Wonder and out there when he did creeping on.
Speaker 2: Oh wow wow.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: Billy got a call Kathy and she said, she said, Sylvester,
Speaker 2: you have to come home. Gun just bit your son.
Speaker 2: Yeah wait, Gun, just what bit the baby? So, just
Speaker 2: like I told me this story, I said, so what
Speaker 2: did you do and how did you do it? He said, Man,
Speaker 2: he said, I went went home and I went outside
Speaker 2: and sat down because he had a baboon and a
Speaker 2: pit bull.
Speaker 4: What I didn't know about the baboon.
Speaker 2: He had a baboon. I can't tell you what the
Speaker 2: pit did to the baboon. Uh, but he'd have him
Speaker 2: in the cage and he'd always stick. It's all my
Speaker 2: trying to get the pit. But he said. I went
Speaker 2: outside and I looked at Gun and uh sly was like,
Speaker 2: this is the personality. He said. I just asked him
Speaker 2: one time, he said, Gun said, did you bite little Sylvester?
Speaker 2: So the dog he didn't put his head down, and
Speaker 2: he knew Sly Slide had him train really well, and
Speaker 2: he had his gun for gun, his tail didn't go down.
Speaker 2: I said, don't tell me. He said no, he didn't
Speaker 2: submit when I asked him that question. So he took
Speaker 2: the gun and me had just shot him in the head.
Speaker 2: That told me a whole lot about it. Jesus, Christ
Speaker 2: shot the damn dog in the head because he didn't
Speaker 2: at least he didn't submit to what he did.
Speaker 4: Is that what happened? Yeah?
Speaker 2: That was That was Sly hunt. These are things that
Speaker 2: I never really told in public. This is one reason
Speaker 2: why him and I are so. I can't tell you
Speaker 2: too too much about him because but he wouldn't be
Speaker 2: listening though, right, somebody, somebody could somebody, man, you hit
Speaker 2: that great story, George Johnson.
Speaker 4: You're out there listening. We would love would love to
Speaker 4: have you on the show. Slide.
Speaker 2: This is I can get him on the show.
Speaker 4: Jesus. That was.
Speaker 8: Does he still I had running with him maybe five
Speaker 8: six years ago? Does he still have this? It looks
Speaker 8: like the speed racer kind.
Speaker 2: Of audio death bike.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I heard just like after it looks like.
Speaker 2: It looks like the Adams family.
Speaker 4: It was so hot, and it was like it was me.
Speaker 8: Chappelle and I were headed to the Grammys in the
Speaker 8: year that the Sliding family Stone reunited, and.
Speaker 4: Like just at our feet, Slide stopped and Dave and
Speaker 4: I just looked at each other and then he just
Speaker 4: went off, and it was like it was one of
Speaker 4: the things, like no one's ever going to believe what
Speaker 4: just happened.
Speaker 2: Well, I had a lot of those kind of stories,
Speaker 2: and I just kept to myself, and what is that
Speaker 2: vehicle called? Well, it actually was a tricycle because they
Speaker 2: had one wheel and the motorized and it was two
Speaker 2: in the back. But it was built like if somebody
Speaker 2: tried to build a Harley and extended it. And they
Speaker 2: had the two wheels in the back, and they had
Speaker 2: almost like a seat for two. One of them had
Speaker 2: a seat for two, and one of them just just
Speaker 2: a seat for one. And I would always touch a
Speaker 2: man too scared because I'd call it the death trap.
Speaker 4: Take it on the highway, right onto one on one freeway.
Speaker 2: He had a friend of mine who lived up north
Speaker 2: drive it down to him and he had about two
Speaker 2: or three of them, but he was you know, slide
Speaker 2: was so into everything right and left and was And
Speaker 2: who was that group that had the motorcycles, the gang Groupe? Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: he knew them, you know. And I think that's when
Speaker 2: he started biking back back then. But you know, he
Speaker 2: come over to the house. He came over for two
Speaker 2: three years straight. Troy was little, and you know.
Speaker 7: He used to call the house before cell phones at
Speaker 7: like three in the morning, and me and my sister
Speaker 7: would be sleep ready to go to school. My mom
Speaker 7: answered the phone and it was not.
Speaker 2: It wasn't too pleasant.
Speaker 4: He was he was gangster.
Speaker 7: He was gangster as all hell. But he was definitely
Speaker 7: scared of my mom. You call it the damn house
Speaker 7: at three in the morning. My kids got school in
Speaker 7: the morning.
Speaker 4: A song.
Speaker 7: I don't give a fuck about sly Stone.
Speaker 6: I don't about the song.
Speaker 4: That I tell you to.
Speaker 2: Anything ideas he had just when the answer phone would
Speaker 2: come on to just put it, yeah and leave it
Speaker 2: and I'll listen to it, you know, later on. But
Speaker 2: we're gonna get back the poet. But anyway, we kind
Speaker 2: of jumping in front of it and back and in front.
Speaker 2: But like I was saying, a lot of his personality
Speaker 2: and you know. That's how I wound up going out
Speaker 2: to me. You know, because Sly was as brilliant as
Speaker 2: a motherfucker period. He could deal with anybody on any level,
Speaker 2: and if you weren't chosen to be spoken to, you
Speaker 2: just won't never get it. That's the kind of person
Speaker 2: he was, you know. So when he did call, he
Speaker 2: would call it four or five in the morning, and
Speaker 2: he thought it was okay, and then he told me,
Speaker 2: he said, man, he said, I'm scared of DeBie, your wife.
Speaker 2: I'll be laying right there. I just left the studio
Speaker 2: with him, you know, because we worked for like two
Speaker 2: years straight just cutting stuff and I seeing what he had.
Speaker 4: He had me.
Speaker 2: He gave me all of his quarter and no half
Speaker 2: inch eight track reels, which was probably about a dozen
Speaker 2: that he wanted me to go through and pick out
Speaker 2: what was good and what was not good. That was
Speaker 2: my job for probably about four years, because I mean,
Speaker 2: that's what I'm saying, the trust he would never give nobody.
Speaker 2: That last thing he did ask me to do, which
Speaker 2: was a couple of years ago, was to go up
Speaker 2: to the Frisco house and go up to the attic
Speaker 2: and get all of his ship, including the songs, you know, pictures, clothes,
Speaker 2: and I said, that's kind of a too big of
Speaker 2: a risk. And I had one guy who would do it.
Speaker 2: But if you ask anybody, he probably know what was missing.
Speaker 4: You want me to get.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, So I wasn't trying to putting into that.
Speaker 4: You know, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: When we went to his house the first time is
Speaker 2: after he came up the stairs and I met him,
Speaker 2: Billy and man, we're gonna go with sales house. In
Speaker 2: case I knew all the name slides sevest seals, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't you know what I mean. I would adapt to
Speaker 2: nicknames and stuff like that and would never say no
Speaker 2: because I knew whatever it was gonna be, it was
Speaker 2: gonna be crazy. Just how I met little Richard one
Speaker 2: night he came into the studios for and I was
Speaker 2: scared of death of him because it's like a pass gate.
Speaker 4: But he was big, big gate.
Speaker 2: At Billy and he's looking, man, I said, what's up
Speaker 2: with your boy? Or your Billy said you leave on
Speaker 2: the law, you will get his ass kicked. I had
Speaker 2: I had the jout Billy in the neck a couple
Speaker 2: of times, you know, knocking him back and don't mess
Speaker 2: with my brother when he gets on the set.
Speaker 4: You know, But how how long was your duration with
Speaker 4: Billy before?
Speaker 2: Three years? Well those three years, Well I get to
Speaker 2: the poet thing real quickly.
Speaker 4: This is before.
Speaker 2: So anyway we go. We get to the bel Air House.
Speaker 2: It was like this cold blooded, sinking, sunken stone house.
Speaker 2: Which across the street from that was the Beverly Hill
Speaker 2: Billy's mansion that they on TV. So I'm like looking
Speaker 2: at that, looking at Slides house. And then next door
Speaker 2: to him, Doris Date lived, which people thought he right.
Speaker 2: So we going to the crib and we're all sitting
Speaker 2: you know, and uh now this is another time. The
Speaker 2: first time he did the palladium out here, and and
Speaker 2: he got into the mobile home. We beat him there
Speaker 2: because building him new.
Speaker 4: You know, he traveled in a mobile home.
Speaker 2: No, He's like he always had a mobile home because
Speaker 2: he would have cats. Like I'm gonna get ready to
Speaker 2: get to move the studio from upstairs into the mobile
Speaker 2: home so he could drive and keep recording then or
Speaker 2: change his mind, He's like, okay, mobile all the stuff
Speaker 2: into the mobile. He did like three guys and they
Speaker 2: would take everything from up in the studio that's recordable
Speaker 2: down into the mobile home and he hook it all up,
Speaker 2: which could have it took three hours to do. Then
Speaker 2: the one time I was over there and I see
Speaker 2: he just told him to do it, and then he
Speaker 2: didn't never mind put it all back.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: It's worked exactly. But you know, he when we were
Speaker 2: there the second time, I saw him and he walked
Speaker 2: in and he had these little bells on and red leather,
Speaker 2: so you can hear him coming up to the door.
Speaker 2: So he came up to the door because he knew
Speaker 2: Billy was there. People could have been in the house,
Speaker 2: like if he just walked off stage. So he was like,
Speaker 2: you just said percussion and ship and bloom, that's the
Speaker 2: kind of stuff he'd say, kicked the door, bloom, make
Speaker 2: his own sound effect like batman.
Speaker 4: Bloom.
Speaker 2: And then he come and look, he had a certain thing.
Speaker 2: I guess when you got your wig on and your
Speaker 2: leather suit and you slide stone, you know, you the king.
Speaker 2: You know, ain't nobody as funky as you are. He
Speaker 2: had an aura, you know, and that's where Prince got
Speaker 2: his thing from, whichly made him. Tell me where did
Speaker 2: he get his bibe? From a lot of people don't know.
Speaker 2: He got his walk from Bob Dylan. And that's a slide.
Speaker 2: Prince did that too. You walked your shoulders side to side,
Speaker 2: you know, as you walk in. Bob Dylan was the
Speaker 2: coolest white boy I was in. I used to look
Speaker 2: at videotapes. You go back and see videotapes of Bob Dylan,
Speaker 2: you know, slide, and he told me, he tell me shit.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't tell people like that. Man, you crack up
Speaker 2: when you find out. So I got there from Bob Dylan,
Speaker 2: and that's of course you came up through the same era.
Speaker 2: And then I noticed, I say, well, Prince got that
Speaker 2: from you. He didn't like Prince at all. Prince ain't
Speaker 2: as funky as you. I was on to tell him
Speaker 2: to go to Prince. I said, man, I ain't got to.
Speaker 2: I had to leverage Prince had.
Speaker 8: George George Clinton once said that his favorite slid quote
Speaker 8: about Prince was a sly used to tell George that man,
Speaker 8: he should he tastes like spinach when he needed to
Speaker 8: be tasting like Cola greens.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell you something. And George Clinton and I
Speaker 2: are very close. George Clinton well with his band and
Speaker 2: everybody who was involved with including Born and Burning War,
Speaker 2: all the other cats. They was like the funkst cats
Speaker 2: on the planet because they had more funk than anybody
Speaker 2: had on stage, you know, Bob Gun and we was
Speaker 2: out there on touring them with him. So it's like
Speaker 2: a lot of them had the equal it was more
Speaker 2: more equal. When I was in the Slide in the
Speaker 2: family Stone, of course I loved the drummer and Greg Erica.
Speaker 2: Of course I loved Larry Graham and Larry Graham and
Speaker 2: I got very close and then there was a competition
Speaker 2: or Slide knew I was hanging with Larry. Larry know
Speaker 2: I was hanging with Slide. You know, they wanted to
Speaker 2: They wanted to deceive me to make a decision.
Speaker 4: Bring together.
Speaker 2: We just wouldn't hang out. We just you know, from touring.
Speaker 2: Larry Graham was like my older brother and he taught
Speaker 2: me a lot about He taught me more about funk
Speaker 2: than Slide could on base. Larry didn't because Larry could
Speaker 2: execute that stuff. Slide we could execute it, but he
Speaker 2: played with a pick a pick and there was more
Speaker 2: melody until rus Day Allen came on the scene and
Speaker 2: turned it out within time. I'm yeah, and Rusty and
Speaker 2: I met, and well, you know, we're clos It's like
Speaker 2: I had to know everybody who was in the House
Speaker 2: of Funk, you know, and we all kind of knew
Speaker 2: and you know a lot of people. That's why even
Speaker 2: nowadays you hear rappers and singers, it's like not enough, Okay,
Speaker 2: somebody produced you, somebody wrote the record, so it's not
Speaker 2: it's not coming out of you. Somebody helped develop, you know,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. But when I was there and
Speaker 2: I went up here and let nobody come up, and
Speaker 2: I went upstairs, and they had eight monitors on the
Speaker 2: bed for all the rooms in certain areas of the house.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, what are y'all doing? They were having fun,
Speaker 2: having their little milk and cookies. Yeah, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: what are y'all doing? He said, all were looking at everybody,
Speaker 2: but Sly was looking at Billy's girlfriend's breast and she
Speaker 2: had this little cut thieves looking at her Cleaveland and
Speaker 2: he just said that I'm looking at what's the names?
Speaker 10: You know?
Speaker 2: He said, you could tell her to come up because
Speaker 2: the waistly is if you don't make your way there,
Speaker 2: you ain't coming up. Well, the whole band was a
Speaker 2: Billy was sitting downstairs. I got tired of waiting. He
Speaker 2: had this bodyguard named Jay R who had a cut
Speaker 2: across his knife cut, and he was like looking at
Speaker 2: all of this, like beating on his chair and just
Speaker 2: waiting for him. Damn you motherfucker to get up. Sit there.
Speaker 4: Now, you can't leave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean, people were stuck. So I decided,
Speaker 2: I said, look, Billy's upstairs, it's my friend. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go see what's up. He didn't say a word. He'd
Speaker 2: let me go up when I opened the door, and
Speaker 2: he had this egg chairs you could sit in. They
Speaker 2: had the music come through. You could sit down and
Speaker 2: listen to music. Sly looked over at me and he
Speaker 2: remembered Billy said, Man, this is George. They don't fuck
Speaker 2: with him, this motherfucker. Because we had in our family,
Speaker 2: to be honest, some inside on some brutal kind of
Speaker 2: shit with motherfuckers been in prison. So we had our
Speaker 2: own mafia thing that runs in the family, and including
Speaker 2: certain people that came to assistance of FOI who who
Speaker 2: they worked and went and got some of them in
Speaker 2: an organization. So I never really talked about that. And
Speaker 2: you know, we grew up with gangsters living in our block.
Speaker 2: The leader of the Slossons, leader the Gladiators back then
Speaker 2: the next door to us and down the street, so
Speaker 2: and we had all to find his babysitters. So they came,
Speaker 2: so they were trying to get with them, and then
Speaker 2: they protected us. And since we had just three puzzling
Speaker 2: and played music and went around to all the high
Speaker 2: schools and colleges, we brought people together. And if it
Speaker 2: wasn't for you and your group, me and my wife
Speaker 2: wouldn't have got you know, it was it was.
Speaker 4: It was like that.
Speaker 2: So I kind of felt every move of emotions that
Speaker 2: people would describe, and you know, I didn't take anything
Speaker 2: for granted. That just kept my ears open wide, knowing
Speaker 2: that'd be a great opportunity to jump or go to
Speaker 2: different places that no one else could take me. Everywhere
Speaker 2: I have been, no one else but the next great
Speaker 2: person took me to, like Billy Preston, you know, And
Speaker 2: when after after I was up in the bedroom and
Speaker 2: there were Billy was on the cloud and that and
Speaker 2: Sli was on the Fender Roads. But playing on Billy
Speaker 2: played a lot of backwards stuff, just.
Speaker 10: Like in.
Speaker 2: So do wow, you know, I think, but I can't yeh.
Speaker 2: Billy would here would slively playing and he'd just do
Speaker 2: a he he knew where his place would be. And
Speaker 2: I heard poet and I'm like, it gets no funky,
Speaker 2: you know?
Speaker 4: Can I ask you something?
Speaker 8: So because normally I talk to people about their reaction
Speaker 8: to there's a ride going on once it's the finished product,
Speaker 8: but what they're creating it's nothing like the raw ra
Speaker 8: cheer leader vibe of what stand represented or the dance
Speaker 8: of the music album.
Speaker 4: Every day people, You're totally right, like was this not
Speaker 4: a foreign thing to you? For you to be hearing
Speaker 4: like this is literally the first funk I.
Speaker 2: Was in to the original stuff that you're talking about.
Speaker 2: And I was all in a political movement, so for
Speaker 2: us to see a black man just how we had
Speaker 2: other people knocking, like Muhammad Ali, but he has his
Speaker 2: wig on a long collar, looking like a clown. But
Speaker 2: they was just his look.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: At the same time, he's like, you know, how black
Speaker 2: can you be? And you're gonna go there and disgrace
Speaker 2: Islam wearing a wig. He was on one David Caviage
Speaker 2: show or something like. You know, he talked about it,
Speaker 2: and I could see Muhammad at Lee's point and I
Speaker 2: could see Sly's point. He told me how he made
Speaker 2: the band. You know, we have different colors, different textures,
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of colors, and that's where George Clinton
Speaker 2: got his whole idea from, and you know, different sounds,
Speaker 2: and he even was different. But he was the leader
Speaker 2: of the group. So he said, you have all that,
Speaker 2: all those colors, all that creativity of all that sound.
Speaker 2: So he didn't admit to so after hearing Dance to
Speaker 2: the Music was the first one that I heard, even
Speaker 2: though we heard I was down with them when they
Speaker 2: were in contests with the Chambers brothers, who time was
Speaker 2: up other than Chaga's brothers too. But the line that
Speaker 2: we're gonna win and all his greatest hits, like you
Speaker 2: had mentioned, even from Don't call Me Nigger Whitey, you know,
Speaker 2: he made statements that were vital for those times, and
Speaker 2: he spoke his mind. I think he was probably one
Speaker 2: of ten groups that were just you know, he wasn't
Speaker 2: afraid of it, putting it on the record that the
Speaker 2: record states that boom, this is how I feel. This
Speaker 2: is where we're coming from. So he was like the
Speaker 2: warrior gangster on record. But did it not feel or
Speaker 2: foreign to you? Like very uns It was because he
Speaker 2: was in his world with the Riot album. He didn't
Speaker 2: have a lot of input with the group, okay, and
Speaker 2: or the Fresh album. He might would pull Freddie in,
Speaker 2: Larry in, you know, he might would call in uh,
Speaker 2: Cynthia or Rose you know. Rolls and I became very
Speaker 2: close because she was like I told her, letting me
Speaker 2: know anytime there was a problem. So she was watching
Speaker 2: My Watchman and I was telling him everything from what
Speaker 2: he ate, well, he likes a couple of newdles, said
Speaker 2: that all. Doesn't y'all give him some.
Speaker 4: Vegetables.
Speaker 2: He liked cheese, which is you know, he told me
Speaker 2: that weird day. If you got a packet of cheese
Speaker 2: in the back of your pocket, then you got something
Speaker 2: else you don't need that goes with it, that it
Speaker 2: clogs you up. Yeah, because of lactose.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a lot of stuff like that. He I
Speaker 2: didn't know. He just tell me in the studio you
Speaker 2: got it now that.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you told me stories about Hendrix, which he knew.
Speaker 2: Hendrix was my know, which I did have a chance
Speaker 2: to meet Hendrik Sai or his dad.
Speaker 4: Can I ask a question? Was Betty Davis around at
Speaker 4: any part of this?
Speaker 2: I never saw her? Damn, I never saw her. But
Speaker 2: I liked this the baseline Larry did with with a
Speaker 2: lot of her stuff. Oh for yeah, oh yeah, that
Speaker 2: was that was the ship. But it was you know,
Speaker 2: when you talk about funk, there was really no other
Speaker 2: person that you can go to outside of when George
Speaker 2: Clinton came up. His funk was different. So everybody had
Speaker 2: that little different type of funk. And that's why him
Speaker 2: and George won. I knew they were gonna hook up.
Speaker 2: First the egos came in, and once that settled down
Speaker 2: and they're both together, then George would call me up
Speaker 2: versus about ten years ago and man, you his slie
Speaker 2: new stuff. He's done so and now I really hadn't
Speaker 2: heard it because you know, I would be the one
Speaker 2: who would talk about him from his face, right, I said, Man,
Speaker 2: you know, first of all, you ain't gonna be doing
Speaker 2: that ship in my house. Second of all, maybe I
Speaker 2: think I'm gonna wait to after you die to little
Speaker 2: sell more records. His eyes got this, man, ain't nobody
Speaker 2: told me no ship like that, I said, Jimmy Hendrix
Speaker 2: died and his record sales boost. You know, if you
Speaker 2: want to start acting ignorant, you know, I'm even going
Speaker 2: through all this music you letting me go through, and
Speaker 2: if you're gonna put something together, I just might wait
Speaker 2: till you're gone and it'll be worth more money. So
Speaker 2: he knew I would like talking to him like himself
Speaker 2: talking to himself. I said, you taught me everything about
Speaker 2: you that I know. He first care said man gj
Speaker 2: Used called me gedg. You got more on my records
Speaker 2: than I have thought existed. And I would cut some stuff,
Speaker 2: recut it, like singing a simple song and playing my
Speaker 2: version and like totally tweak it out. That'd be STEPHF.
Speaker 2: Troy would get, you know, add some stuff, and you know,
Speaker 2: he could tell things I was into and have it.
Speaker 2: Could I play and learned to play a lot like
Speaker 2: Larry Graham, but I also learned a lot and playing
Speaker 2: bass like Sly. Both of them knew that. And I
Speaker 2: played the guitars like he was unsynthesized, said, man, you
Speaker 2: got to get back to these telecaster guitars, tankling, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying. Like on the slow version of
Speaker 2: Thank You. You know that was a sound you're not
Speaker 2: doing that you're trying to incorporate, and you're putting three
Speaker 2: things on one track, which shouldn't be doing anyway, because
Speaker 2: you know, that's how he would record play a certain
Speaker 2: amount of you know, guitar or something on there I
Speaker 2: was and it switched to a loud mood bass to
Speaker 2: make the meters go up.
Speaker 4: And I said, was he his own engineer?
Speaker 2: Yep? Right, So you know when I hooked up with him,
Speaker 2: I was trying to teach him a couple of things
Speaker 2: that I learned from Bruce Woodine. So you know, certain
Speaker 2: things that you know, minus three dB for like a
Speaker 2: high hat or anything that bright comes back at you
Speaker 2: how has laid down. You know, I never would have
Speaker 2: known that I learned a lot from Bruce.
Speaker 4: Say, I forgot that Bruce Woodine actually engineered your records.
Speaker 2: Yes, we were the reasons why this is gonna trip
Speaker 2: you up off the wall happened thriller blooprint and bad
Speaker 2: Michael introduced I could show you a picture us at
Speaker 2: Carnegie Hall, and he was following seventy nine and he
Speaker 2: was following the brothers Johnson down to my little bow
Speaker 2: tie I had on when he did the covers for
Speaker 2: because yeah, I used to work, you know, I used
Speaker 2: to He was studying, studying me and my brother, and
Speaker 2: he loved the sound. He was complaining about whether you
Speaker 2: should go the qu at that time they had just
Speaker 2: started working on but had eight months into Off the Wall,
Speaker 2: and I knew then, you know, it was my job
Speaker 2: and it was nothing I could do to step back
Speaker 2: and just let them float as long as they could go.
Speaker 4: How did you guys end up getting with Quincy?
Speaker 2: Well, with Quincy, I had hooked up actually with Stevie
Speaker 2: Wonder because I was going to join Wonderlove auditioning for
Speaker 2: me and my brother before that.
Speaker 4: Really, yeah, and I was on or like after like
Speaker 4: what period?
Speaker 2: This was around right before he recorded the song Creeping,
Speaker 2: because I was in the studio with them all night. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I had been kind of because we were at the
Speaker 2: record plant and he was a studio B okay okay,
Speaker 2: and we were in the Studio A or Studio C,
Speaker 2: which is the biggest studio where Quincy was. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: I think I was in the Chacuzie hanging out a
Speaker 2: couple of times.
Speaker 4: It was in the studio plan.
Speaker 6: Right when you walk in that door to the left,
Speaker 6: the left, they turned into a gym. It's a gym now.
Speaker 6: I think they got some exercise equipment.
Speaker 2: Initially it was a jacuzie, which is cool because if
Speaker 2: you work in one, just chill out and go on
Speaker 2: jaczie and get you.
Speaker 6: Some food and hang out, amongst other reasons.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I might want to man.
Speaker 2: Well, they was keeping it pretty clean. It was all
Speaker 2: It always has been pretty clean.
Speaker 4: But we.
Speaker 2: Was in there, and Quincy will tell you this, and
Speaker 2: he mentioned in his interviews too, that took me and
Speaker 2: Lewis and we were in the studio with with Stevie.
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, this now, this is my brother because
Speaker 2: I always initiate the initial hook up. Say I hung
Speaker 2: there without Lewis when I was caring creeping. Now, I
Speaker 2: don't know if it had a lot, because Stevie used
Speaker 2: to always call me Turan brother. This my Turian brother.
Speaker 2: I knew when he would record his birth My birthday
Speaker 2: is like seventeenth think his was the fourteenth or fifteen, thirteenth, thirteenth. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I would creep into the studio two three o'clock
Speaker 2: in the morning, and he knew my footsteps.
Speaker 4: He knew the rhythm in the pattern.
Speaker 2: He knew how he knew my walk. Just George Johnson,
Speaker 2: just George Johnson's it. Okay, was rocking his head. Say
Speaker 2: what you doing man? He pressed the button. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: start this new track, finishing one thing, which was I
Speaker 2: forgot the last song. He did his song that too.
Speaker 2: It was so fun of him, Like, man, he had
Speaker 2: too much funky things in the can. Now this is
Speaker 2: after I met Sly, So it's like, now all the
Speaker 2: and I'm gravitating. I had Billy pressed in his slice.
Speaker 2: I'm gravitating, just two keyboard players. M hm. So I
Speaker 2: spent all night with his mom and first time she
Speaker 2: met Stevie and creeping unfolded from the tambourine. The first
Speaker 2: thing he later.
Speaker 4: That was the first thing.
Speaker 2: The first thing on the track was the tambourine right right,
Speaker 2: and then that's all you heard. Then he added everything
Speaker 2: else and we were there till about eight in the morning,
Speaker 2: and the whole damn song was done. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: you see how bad this matter offuck is Without a
Speaker 2: that's crazy, yeah, without the click.
Speaker 4: He just be the last night.
Speaker 2: And he did that, you know, probably maybe as a
Speaker 2: test store. Because we're sitting up there, I wonder what
Speaker 2: he's gonna do next, you know, And he did everything
Speaker 2: to the drums, synthesizes all the parts and you put
Speaker 2: a basic vocal and that that's why we were there
Speaker 2: from like two in the morning, probably about ten thirty
Speaker 2: in the morning. But a couple of my close friends
Speaker 2: knew because I'd be up at a and them in
Speaker 2: the studio late at night between him and Line of Richie,
Speaker 2: and we passed it. Hey, Line was up. He was
Speaker 2: a night out too. Some of them don't make a
Speaker 2: move until after twelve, and you can't call them before
Speaker 2: three in the afternoon because they're sleep right, so you know,
Speaker 2: then they'd call me. Steve would give me a heads up.
Speaker 2: I bet studio, George, okay, I'll be at the studio.
Speaker 2: I said, all right, I might come down. Well, you know,
Speaker 2: to look up in line. On one time I called
Speaker 2: it two thirty. Say it's not three o'clock yet. I said,
Speaker 2: all right, all right now, but Tommy back coming back,
Speaker 2: man coming back. And you know, just they knew who
Speaker 2: I had hung over and who I've been hanging out with.
Speaker 2: Because after that I went to George Duke. So it
Speaker 2: was Billy Preston, Stevie Wonder, George Duke, that's the.
Speaker 4: Education, Yeah, for real.
Speaker 2: And then I went to uh, George Duke, Bill Withers.
Speaker 2: This was before Billy Preston.
Speaker 4: I forgot because you're on the back cover of Bill right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, me and my wife and my dad who
Speaker 2: was sitting.
Speaker 4: On the ground. So was that a real?
Speaker 2: Like what was the concept behind Ray Parker Jr.
Speaker 4: Was that a real because he on Sultan.
Speaker 2: He was to the left with his wife. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was like it was a whole. It was on Bill's property,
Speaker 2: in his backyard. We just took like we was over
Speaker 2: there for barbecue and hanging out. Just took a musician
Speaker 2: family picture, and you know it's like heavy hitters are there.
Speaker 2: They were, they were on set. And even back then,
Speaker 2: somebody like maybe Ray Parker is like he just recently
Speaker 2: hooked up with Sly. A lot of people wanted they
Speaker 2: knew I was there. I could easily invite him to
Speaker 2: but I never take anybody over this. The only person
Speaker 2: that took over his place was Irene care because she
Speaker 2: was my neighbor and Patrise Russian, And to be honest
Speaker 2: with you, I think she was a little bit envious.
Speaker 2: So I know she was a Michael Jackson because she
Speaker 2: she wanted me to be just the only one. She didn't,
Speaker 2: you know, want too particular about said to Garrett would
Speaker 2: come over right, you know, and you remember side, so
Speaker 2: you two were next door neighbors. That next door she
Speaker 2: lived the street that explains to the curve, right. That's how, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we hooked up.
Speaker 4: And that was the weirdest. Whenever I saw the credits
Speaker 4: on the album, I'm like, I didn't care.
Speaker 2: And she was a great right and she went lyrics.
Speaker 2: She really had nothing to do with the music.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: Uh. Back then I was experimenting with basslines on keyboards
Speaker 2: and it was like a Bobby Brown thing. Don't don't down,
Speaker 2: don't don't don't you know.
Speaker 4: And that was way before then. We are the ticket
Speaker 4: to the.
Speaker 2: Irene lived probably like three blocks away Patrise. Russian lived
Speaker 2: about four blocks away and around the corner. So I
Speaker 2: used to I used to always before Irene moved out
Speaker 2: to where I am, and she moved twice near me.
Speaker 2: You know, I guess a lot of people's like if
Speaker 2: you hang out with somebody, because I always wanted to
Speaker 2: meet her That's how Fame tour manager said, so I
Speaker 2: want to meet her, said you're gonna work with her
Speaker 2: one day, and that happened without his help. We just gravitated.
Speaker 2: Actually the fifth member of Toto who did a lot
Speaker 2: of movie scores.
Speaker 4: DA. No, it's never total.
Speaker 2: They are all members of the group, James Newton, Howard
Speaker 2: Howard and I because we was working in the studio
Speaker 2: and he's the one to introduce me to Irene.
Speaker 4: Do you still speak to her? I was just I
Speaker 4: was like, I haven't heard from her in a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we talked, but it's you know, it's we're still cool.
Speaker 2: It's like I kind of let things lie where they
Speaker 2: lie if you get pissed off about something I heard.
Speaker 2: She was very hard to get along with the time.
Speaker 2: I wasn't like forcing anything, and it's like, if you
Speaker 2: are a true person who you are, you kind of
Speaker 2: let things go. But I think it boiled down too
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, We're together working and you saying, oh,
Speaker 2: I can't work with you today, Casid Garrett's coming over attitude,
Speaker 2: or you know, I can't work digging Irene. I mean
Speaker 2: Patrese's coming over. Patrice came over and she heard this
Speaker 2: one song I did call I Fresh and sly I
Speaker 2: wanted to play on it too, and I didn't let him.
Speaker 2: But so if you pass some time to pull up,
Speaker 2: you pull up I Fresh, and you're gonna hear some
Speaker 2: similarity or sly Stone, which he was the one that
Speaker 2: got me playing keyboard. Okay, So Patrese came over. That
Speaker 2: was her favorite gen. She used to come over just
Speaker 2: to hear that. So when Irene Carer would see her
Speaker 2: coming up, all ship's gonna get you know, it's over
Speaker 2: because he might be working with Irene. You know, he
Speaker 2: might be where it wasn't might be I was working
Speaker 2: with you know, side Garrett. We cut a lot of
Speaker 2: demos together.
Speaker 4: And how did you guys end up signing with like
Speaker 4: and M? And story?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay. At when we're at the record plant and
Speaker 2: I was working with Q, I had told him the
Speaker 2: story because before and then I would go up to
Speaker 2: A and M because I was working with Billy Preston.
Speaker 2: He was on A and this would be the first
Speaker 2: good place to go on. I took and them basically
Speaker 2: the same kind of song that I took Quincy, Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, and they basically you know, didn't pay attention
Speaker 2: because you had a black door to go through a
Speaker 2: white door. And that was funny because we were the
Speaker 2: only group in the history of May and Them who
Speaker 2: covered all genres of music, not just funk, jazz, blues pop.
Speaker 2: You know. So Michael was paying attention to back then,
Speaker 2: and we started paying most of the bills, you know,
Speaker 2: from Styx. I was the one who had picked Human
Speaker 2: that was on the charts for twenty seven weeks, the
Speaker 2: song Human by Human Nature, Human League. Yeah. I did
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff, ghost stuff that a lot of
Speaker 2: people don't realize and wait, yeah, and it brought Jimmy
Speaker 2: jam and Terry Lewis on the scene.
Speaker 4: So how did.
Speaker 2: Well, John McLean and I are very close and I
Speaker 2: was like helping him out. Yes, everybody else, Yeah, well
Speaker 2: this is probably before a lot of other things that happened.
Speaker 2: But you know, we were just about ready to leave
Speaker 2: a and m and I was doing my job. I
Speaker 2: just kind of got bored and didn't have my parking
Speaker 2: space there, and I told him, I said, I help
Speaker 2: you out there. The guards and everybody knew what George
Speaker 2: Johnson's here, He's probably back there helping another motherfucker out.
Speaker 2: John McLean had given me first this cassette and told
Speaker 2: me to listen to it. Tell me what I thought.
Speaker 2: He was originally working in the mailroom, think making about
Speaker 2: five hundred bucks a week or something like that at
Speaker 2: a and him became before he came, so he went
Speaker 2: to the Power Moves. It's just how I got Sly
Speaker 2: on Jesse Johnson's record video.
Speaker 4: You did that? Yeah, wow, I was the only one
Speaker 4: that makes sense, the only one but never had sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, never got credit for a lot of stuff. That's
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. A lot of truth. Crazy crazy, And
Speaker 2: Sly wasn't interested. You told me, man, I don't want
Speaker 2: to do this and get you some money. You could
Speaker 2: do what you like to do, all right.
Speaker 4: You can do what you like. Jesse.
Speaker 8: Jesse did our episode and he explained to us that, yeah,
Speaker 8: he just sent the two inch to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they never met before the video.
Speaker 2: It's like he wasn't interested in meeting him. He said,
Speaker 2: you're the funcust why he want interested in meeting Prince?
Speaker 2: I said, man, you got to go hang with Prince,
Speaker 2: and he did. Prince came out to his place and
Speaker 2: he was in the palisades, and Slide told me he
Speaker 2: knocked on the door, came out. I said, what did
Speaker 2: you do? Just looked at him on the monitor. I
Speaker 2: didn't let him in.
Speaker 4: Now why Prince gravitated to Larry?
Speaker 2: But Prince Prince had Larry and focus. He was trying
Speaker 2: to bring back Sly to him, and Slid and Sly
Speaker 2: and Freddy who at it not to go with Prince.
Speaker 2: They're the only two that held out. Slide told me
Speaker 2: a prince just trying to be like me. I said, well,
Speaker 2: let him be like you and he the new you,
Speaker 2: you know, let him you know, if he got all
Speaker 2: this money could help you. Prince Sly one out there
Speaker 2: and saw his complex and I think very you know,
Speaker 2: could be jealous or at least about it. And you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. But he's been to the right
Speaker 2: and he's been to the left, being up and down
Speaker 2: with his financial status. And you know, when you see
Speaker 2: another person coming and want to be you, they wouldn't
Speaker 2: even let him send At the hard Rock Rock and
Speaker 2: Roll Hall of Fame, Prince asked to sit at the table.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't want They didn't let him come sit at
Speaker 2: the table. Would Sly in the family stone? So I
Speaker 2: mean he was trying to be, you know. That's why
Speaker 2: he was very cordial to me, you know, and do
Speaker 2: you give me a private show. I could have probably
Speaker 2: went with them, but I wasn't too into their you know,
Speaker 2: I knew he was gonna be prince after that. You know,
Speaker 2: I wasn't gonna be too much more of you know,
Speaker 2: the time happened, like I said, when Jimmy, jam and
Speaker 2: Lewis because they did the drum tracks and all that
Speaker 2: on Human and that was bringing them in. But John
Speaker 2: McClean asked me to listen to this cassette and tell
Speaker 2: me what you think. So I probably would wait till
Speaker 2: along the way good to lunch for the next day,
Speaker 2: and I would listen to it when I leave my house.
Speaker 2: So I listened to it, turned it out, got the
Speaker 2: side too, and Human came up. You know, It's like
Speaker 2: I had to keep rewinding. I didn't even know it
Speaker 2: was Jimmy and Terry.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: So I said, okay, got to the I was gonna
Speaker 2: kept listening to us. I couldn't go no further than that.
Speaker 2: I said, you know what A and them, It just
Speaker 2: going to show you, show you about these companies. A
Speaker 2: lot of people that ain't got the right ears. I said,
Speaker 2: this is totally fucked up because they got this hit
Speaker 2: out of see Quince's side to second song on side too.
Speaker 2: It should be on side one the first record. Oh.
Speaker 2: Man said, that's cool. I'm bringing in my boys, Jimmy
Speaker 2: and Terry. I said, who Jimmy, Jammy Tayor. I said,
Speaker 2: whoever did it needs to be I didn't even know
Speaker 2: that they were from the time, right, okay, okay? And
Speaker 2: I said, you need the next board, meaning because I
Speaker 2: was actually on the Board of Governors with the Grammys
Speaker 2: from the seventh ninety two ninety four. They wanted me
Speaker 2: to become the president of NARS and at that time
Speaker 2: I chose not to us. I said, I got an
Speaker 2: mc hammer came up. Oh wow, I got bored on
Speaker 2: board of the board.
Speaker 6: So it was a lot of things that sometimes I like, damn,
Speaker 6: I wish you would have did it.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it was cool. I mean I was in.
Speaker 2: I was on the head of the producer committee because
Speaker 2: Irene Carry's husbands will encourage me to get on the board.
Speaker 2: He said, man, yeah, well all the stuff you know
Speaker 2: and have been through. He said, you need to be
Speaker 2: signing off on some stuff and you know, I was
Speaker 2: on the producer committee for two years and picking up is.
Speaker 4: It like to be at that level because like right
Speaker 4: now Jimmy jim is also Yeah, really I was on
Speaker 4: the he's.
Speaker 6: Like one of the heads of the producer committee.
Speaker 4: How important is it? Like what's the end games being at?
Speaker 2: Well, say number one was they all thought I was
Speaker 2: the plant of Quincy's.
Speaker 4: Ahay, they were scared, so.
Speaker 2: They and this is after Thriller. Okay, I was there.
Speaker 2: That was in eighty four, I mean at eighty four. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so after that, I was there from ninety two to
Speaker 2: ninety four. So they thought I came with the master
Speaker 2: map of the plant, okay, and it was cool, and
Speaker 2: I just didn't want to be on the border ground
Speaker 2: and I wanted to go to to find out. Okay,
Speaker 2: what's the highest position, you said, producer committee. So I
Speaker 2: got on that like instantly. I was getting all free music.
Speaker 2: They'd send me the box and I wouldn't have to
Speaker 2: pass it on to nobody else that kept all the CDs.
Speaker 6: That was the first time I heard the chronic.
Speaker 4: For those committees.
Speaker 2: You just get everything, okay, yeah, I mean, well the
Speaker 2: other ones you share except for the producer committee, because
Speaker 2: you got these different categories of music. So you may
Speaker 2: have two and three people. Oafter you get through the box,
Speaker 2: send it to sell it. You know, sometime they may
Speaker 2: take out a few things, but you have to deliver
Speaker 2: the whole box.
Speaker 4: And what's the whole purpose of that committee?
Speaker 2: To well? With that committee? You eventually before that, if
Speaker 2: you're just going to be a member of the board,
Speaker 2: they're going to get your briefcase and have a lot
Speaker 2: of applications that you sign people on to the Grammys
Speaker 2: from September. After September it is too late, okay, so
Speaker 2: you actually will see a group. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: people now say, oh, would you like to get go
Speaker 2: for a nomination? I maina sure for the Grammy. Their application, right,
Speaker 2: you're not gonna say no. You know, you fill out
Speaker 2: the application. You have the right to submit to fruit.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, okay, so you know what I mean. I
Speaker 2: didn't get paid. I brought intellect and experiencing what I
Speaker 2: know about music. Since I hooked up and had all
Speaker 2: these other people from Billy Preston.
Speaker 4: You brough an opportunity basically, right.
Speaker 2: I could hear something now when it's a hit. Just
Speaker 2: how I picked the song Human When I told John McClean,
Speaker 2: I said, you go up to the board meeting next week.
Speaker 2: I know it was the second week of every month,
Speaker 2: and you tell her Bible and Jerry Moss because they
Speaker 2: had sticks out thing in Human League. I said, this
Speaker 2: is the hit that's on side too, and I don't
Speaker 2: think they ever changed it, but then they did try
Speaker 2: it and it wound up on charts number one for
Speaker 2: twenty seven weeks. That was the first time people at
Speaker 2: A and M news. I think John mintioned George told
Speaker 2: you he said that that was the one. So I
Speaker 2: was like the ghost of music there picking hits.
Speaker 9: When did you guys first start recording your first album?
Speaker 9: Form with Quincy producing seventy five And that was on
Speaker 9: his album is It Love that We're Missing? Wrote four
Speaker 9: songs trying to find out about you just listening listen.
Speaker 7: And he has those writing sessions. He would like a
Speaker 7: little dictaphone, he would like record when he played the
Speaker 7: songs yeah with Quincy, like in the in his apartment.
Speaker 7: He like has all of that stuff. He used to
Speaker 7: play that stuff for me when I was on the
Speaker 7: way to school. I was like five years old listening
Speaker 7: to these like session tapes of them writing these growing.
Speaker 8: Up, Like, at what point do you realize, Okay, he's
Speaker 8: not just dad, but he's sort of might kind of
Speaker 8: be a big deal and a big deal.
Speaker 6: Well, I always knew he was like a superhero and
Speaker 6: I was at two years old.
Speaker 4: My first word was tape.
Speaker 6: And it's funny he passed down the same so it
Speaker 6: was kind of like how how my grandfather.
Speaker 2: Gave hold on. He would also say, ready, cassette.
Speaker 7: Go, So yeah, he he did the same thing with
Speaker 7: me where he because I was like, I didn't know
Speaker 7: what capacity I was going to do. Uh music, I
Speaker 7: just was into it, and I was into the technology
Speaker 7: side of it, and so like I love the tape machine.
Speaker 7: Because I would see him in his studio and you know,
Speaker 7: he'd be laying down the guitar part. So he teached
Speaker 7: me how to punch him in because he didn't he
Speaker 7: couldn't punched men, and like you know, certain things, and
Speaker 7: so I was all, you know, he'd bring me to
Speaker 7: the studio and I meet all these amazing great people.
Speaker 2: Wasn't paying attention to nobody like this is Quincy Jones.
Speaker 4: Uh who is on the cover or the inside of blam.
Speaker 6: That's uh that Cody cousin.
Speaker 4: Son.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they still hang out. He's trying to do music.
Speaker 6: But yeah, that's none of them.
Speaker 2: I like Troy Okay, Well.
Speaker 6: Sound pretty okay.
Speaker 4: So I have I have questions about the production techniques
Speaker 4: of the brother Johnson the Brothers Johnson sound, but I
Speaker 4: have to get this question out the way. Well, first
Speaker 4: of all, we look out for number one, right, uh,
Speaker 4: like many other uh songs done by black artists. Of course,
Speaker 4: that was always my exposure to the Beatles before. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I thought that I didn't know. Yeah, I didn't. That
Speaker 4: was my first time hearing that, so right, and you know,
Speaker 4: my art teacher trying to tell me, like, no, that's
Speaker 4: not the Beatles did this verse. We did, but I'm
Speaker 4: in first grade, so I didn't know the.
Speaker 2: First Well, yeah I got that was the crimination of
Speaker 2: the Funkadelic and Brothers Johnson and Beatles.
Speaker 4: I see, Well it worked because I always thought that
Speaker 4: that was your song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, there wasn't. You know, everything I would approach
Speaker 2: it would have to have a signature on it. A
Speaker 2: lot of the first album that you were talking about
Speaker 2: mostly was one bass, a drum machine, and probably about
Speaker 2: eight guitars. That's how I learned about arrangement. Quincy would
Speaker 2: take all the guitar parts and put different and it's yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean we our keyboard players be like George Duke
Speaker 2: and Herbie Hancock, Harvey Mason on drums, so our band
Speaker 2: were people that he could get and come into the studio.
Speaker 2: Harvey Mason was playing with headphones on pull out the
Speaker 2: drum track on songs like trying to find out about
Speaker 2: you if you you know it would just go for
Speaker 2: it and we you know. So that was like the
Speaker 2: only the first band outside the little band we had
Speaker 2: and these are like you walking in you saying Herbie
Speaker 2: Hancock walking the floor, like playing notes on and tell
Speaker 2: me bedtime story now. Uh, you know all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuck in my head that Herbie wrote that They had.
Speaker 4: You guys with the rhythm section on sounds and stuff
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 2: I played on a few things. They took me out
Speaker 2: the mix purposely when Michael Jackson hit and Lewis had
Speaker 2: a lot to do with that. That's when we started.
Speaker 2: I was about to chew his head up.
Speaker 4: I was going to sort of.
Speaker 2: Come.
Speaker 4: I was going to get there. Wait, wait, I have
Speaker 4: one specific question the Devil. That was my jam. It's okay,
Speaker 4: but I just want to know. Did y'all everythink like
Speaker 4: a seven year old with hear the songs?
Speaker 2: Jesus Well actually didn't work because I wrote that song
Speaker 2: after The Exorcist came up.
Speaker 4: Come on, man, it's like, okay, listen with song.
Speaker 2: I would always skip it with Billy Preston and by
Speaker 2: him being Christian and all that, and they had the
Speaker 2: gospel music. It's certainly what I would step out of
Speaker 2: the zone. And it makes songs like make the Devil man,
Speaker 2: you know, so I gotta make me a devil song?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: You did? You did?
Speaker 2: And I used the stand and I took a pencil.
Speaker 2: That's when it starts. You got yeah yeah, And I
Speaker 2: used Hendricks. I got my watch Hendrix here.
Speaker 4: Okay, so this is what I'm telling you. Yeah, as
Speaker 4: an adult, let's see the technique. I see the.
Speaker 2: Technical Let it get to the fun really quick.
Speaker 4: This ain't the f.
Speaker 2: Sli no, no, no, no song o cakes.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's the suit.
Speaker 2: I said the stuff huddle, don't make hair like that's
Speaker 2: my bass line?
Speaker 4: And was that you singing on singing?
Speaker 2: They gonna be born? Guitars coming all of the counterpoints like.
Speaker 4: All right, we're about to hitting the ass burning party,
Speaker 4: run under the covers and he will take you down.
Speaker 2: You're going to be a snoop time.
Speaker 4: He will have your ass.
Speaker 8: I think in nineteen seventy seven, I accept what Jesus questions.
Speaker 2: Person like, and you know what, I probably wrote it
Speaker 2: because I was raised and wasn't ultiboy.
Speaker 8: They were like a mirror again, like that song, that song,
Speaker 8: It did it literally like I never saw you to
Speaker 8: the same ever again. And even with y'all, even the
Speaker 8: shutter open, uh for the back cover of Right On Time,
Speaker 8: I was still thinking.
Speaker 4: Like, oh man, I would bury your albums like and
Speaker 4: then like bottom last of my Dad's pole, I had
Speaker 4: to do that with my dad was just giving. Some
Speaker 4: covers were scarier, should you bury them under?
Speaker 2: I'd give. I would give acknowledgment to certain things that
Speaker 2: kids should know and adult should know. The devil was
Speaker 2: like I wasn't scared of him. I even ran my
Speaker 2: vocal thing backwards. That's how I got that sound, and
Speaker 2: I used your mother sucks cocks and how yeah I
Speaker 2: did play it and you hear it. That'd be a
Speaker 2: whole nother phone.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, man, I wasn't listening to.
Speaker 2: And the thing.
Speaker 8: But but aside from that, Blake, aside from that, I
Speaker 8: always wanted to know you guys had a very weird.
Speaker 4: Greek course technique that I can only described as like
Speaker 4: this animated muppet sound like for yourself, be yourself right exactly,
Speaker 4: or even right on time, or even like very speeding
Speaker 4: Serena's voice on get the funk out of my face? Like,
Speaker 4: how come you guys never.
Speaker 2: Just did me get the funk out of my face?
Speaker 4: I've always thought that that was me.
Speaker 8: But how come none of the vocal techniques, besides your
Speaker 8: lead vocal, how come they were never just dry and
Speaker 8: natural like you guys were either like even with Stump,
Speaker 8: it's like the Muppets were singing.
Speaker 2: No, it basically came from things that were going on
Speaker 2: TV shows, you know. I mean you're walking in with Q.
Speaker 2: You got to have like various types of you know, uh,
Speaker 2: like characters. Yeah, they were like characters. It's just like
Speaker 2: the brother who sang the parts you sounded like. I
Speaker 2: can't think of his name right now, but he got
Speaker 2: that stuff because he knew in the sly.
Speaker 4: Right right, I get it.
Speaker 2: So he was a wonderful person coming in to do that.
Speaker 2: It's like I wanted to take No, I wasn't Richard,
Speaker 2: he was one. He did a high vocal too. Why
Speaker 2: in the hell can he came out and see that's
Speaker 2: when you get old Alex Bob.
Speaker 4: No, uh, I didn't know that Ricky was playing with
Speaker 4: you guys. Ricky Lawson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I found him in Detroit in a basement. Really yep,
Speaker 2: just in Detroit in a basement that one of my
Speaker 2: musicians mentioned him and said he needed to be looked at.
Speaker 2: So I went and looked at him. You know, he
Speaker 2: went from there to heights, you know, and you know,
Speaker 2: that's what it's about. And that's what I love about
Speaker 2: Prince because he a lot of moneies he gave away
Speaker 2: and went to kids who you know, had to do
Speaker 2: with music or needed help. You know. He drop off
Speaker 2: monies to different schools and different communities. He only would
Speaker 2: take a certain amount and he'd leave the whole rest
Speaker 2: of it and wind them given to the mayor, which
Speaker 2: is something you know, It's kind of the attitude the
Speaker 2: ultimate attitude Slide would have wanted. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: need any monthy monthy.
Speaker 8: People got in the Sugary Otis way later, yes, in life,
Speaker 8: but you were there for round one.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He was actually a neighbor to his parents, lived around
Speaker 2: the corner. I used to go visit. I used to
Speaker 2: visit them before I met him because I remember seeing
Speaker 2: the Johnny Oda Show and Three Tons of Joy when
Speaker 2: I was a kid, and I mentioned to my mom
Speaker 2: and one of my cousins had me meet one of
Speaker 2: Sugary's cousins who I almost started to date. I did
Speaker 2: go over to her house. I think she passed away,
Speaker 2: but I saw this album and it looked like this
Speaker 2: Mexican dude on it, and I said, who's that? Oh,
Speaker 2: this is my cousin. This is Sugar Yoldison. Before I
Speaker 2: played that record run Across the Ice Cold Daydream and
Speaker 2: all that stuff on there and Strawberry Letter Letter, I
Speaker 2: went straight to Q and told him this is we
Speaker 2: need to cut this song. And it was never a single.
Speaker 2: Lewis used it at his wedding. Quin's the original one
Speaker 2: Sugar Yoldis is and when we got to the vampa
Speaker 2: the guitar and yeah, it's it's all over and we
Speaker 2: have to do this this song.
Speaker 4: So it was your idea to cover Strawberry letter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I brought some ship to the picture.
Speaker 4: No, your version to me is all we did, was.
Speaker 2: Added, Yeah, because you don't do nothing, he created. You
Speaker 2: do something and beef it up. Otherwise it's not worth
Speaker 2: doing all the time. You know, what do you think
Speaker 2: that song is about? I know what it's about. And
Speaker 2: that song basically is as shugy. He was almost had
Speaker 2: that slide like attitude, and he'd have a girlfriend who
Speaker 2: he never really respond to because he was a musician.
Speaker 2: He kind of reminded me of me too. Don't come
Speaker 2: between me right exactly. So she had written these strawberry
Speaker 2: letter sent it letters to him, oh wow, and he
Speaker 2: never opened one, and he told me he went back
Speaker 2: he had a break, and all of a sudden he
Speaker 2: opened them and still had the scent. You know, I
Speaker 2: missed you, baby. When you're coming home, it be Strawberry
Speaker 2: letter one, Strawberry two, all the way to twenty two.
Speaker 2: That's why a present from you, Strawberry letter twenty three
Speaker 2: two twenty two. The music plays I said that a
Speaker 2: few so the song is actually twenty three, but the
Speaker 2: people say why is it twenty three? And you always
Speaker 2: say twenty two. All those letters a president from you
Speaker 2: Strawberry letter twenty two. Right, that's where it ends, and
Speaker 2: the song begins as twenty three The mystery unlocked. Yeah, difficult.
Speaker 4: Did you ever get his initial reaction to it when
Speaker 4: when he heard it?
Speaker 2: Or Sugar and I was tight as me and fly
Speaker 2: because Sugar could sometimes be very hard to get along
Speaker 2: with and deal with. I knew his parents two years
Speaker 2: before I even met him. When I met him and
Speaker 2: then he heard, you know, because Quincy had got him
Speaker 2: to come into the studio. We were out of town
Speaker 2: to do the guitar solo, and he couldn't play it
Speaker 2: because it was in a different key. It's like I played,
Speaker 2: It's a whole different stretch. I didn't actually play on it.
Speaker 2: He got to leave Ris why and that's the reason
Speaker 2: he plays because I wasn't available. I left the road
Speaker 2: to come home, did a little mix on it, and
Speaker 2: then pulled up the two guitar parts and showed my
Speaker 2: cousin the other part and went back out on the
Speaker 2: road till Quincy finished it. So and then could put
Speaker 2: it up so a lot of things. I mean, they
Speaker 2: had my ass so busy that I should have got
Speaker 2: credit for even the way it went down with Michael
Speaker 2: Jackson because he wanted both of us, ok and they
Speaker 2: told Quincy, you know, I want George and Lewis. Michael
Speaker 2: was filing the shit and he was very disappointed. My
Speaker 2: brother Lewis said, George doesn't write for anybody. He's working
Speaker 2: on Brothers Johnson's stuff. He doesn't do sessions. So you
Speaker 2: told him. My guitar person was in the room. He's
Speaker 2: the one that told me that. Lewis said that. I said,
Speaker 2: what did Quincy do? He said, he kind of looked up.
Speaker 2: He didn't have too much to say because and I said, Okay,
Speaker 2: I see the whole scenario. Because Quincy thow ahead, He
Speaker 2: and them didn't want us to do shit. They was
Speaker 2: trying to keep me like locked because back then and
Speaker 2: even Quincy had done interviews.
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 2: Is it Quincy Jones?
Speaker 4: Is it Michael Jackson?
Speaker 2: To me, it was all but at that time when
Speaker 2: he when Michael came out with Off the Wall, Stump
Speaker 2: was number one, So people would have gradued what we
Speaker 2: would have automatically went to, Okay, it's the Brothers Johnson
Speaker 2: who's making that shit happen. It ain't Quincy. And you
Speaker 2: know the music is the vibe is you know, so
Speaker 2: if they left me off, they what they didn't have
Speaker 2: to put brother john sony okay, and then they just
Speaker 2: took Lewis and he became, uh.
Speaker 4: That's crazy though, So is that just him on Get
Speaker 4: on the Floor.
Speaker 2: Lewis played bass on Billy Jeans everything.
Speaker 4: A lot of what Get on the Floor is initially
Speaker 4: the song he wrote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, no, I mean it could have been
Speaker 2: one that was developed that I didn't even put guitar
Speaker 2: on yet because it wasn't approved by me okay to
Speaker 2: be totally honest, se So you know, I got left
Speaker 2: out the mix. And you know, Michael did call me.
Speaker 2: He took the kids out to Disneyland one day and
Speaker 2: I had three messages sound like he was crying or
Speaker 2: he was that's on him and Quincy was on the
Speaker 2: way out to divide. But he knew between me and
Speaker 2: James Ingram, we were the only two people that ever
Speaker 2: you know, went back on Q's face. And because I
Speaker 2: would look at him like a teacher and I also
Speaker 2: look at him as a dad, that I also look
Speaker 2: at him as a kid because I had to teach him.
Speaker 2: He said, okay, Jordan, I had to hold Louis's hand,
Speaker 2: but you're going to be all right. I said, well,
Speaker 2: don't get too much any knowledge, and that Lewis boys
Speaker 2: shit because he's young, he's on the Divideuse to be
Speaker 2: totally honest. He you know, there's a lot of good
Speaker 2: things about him. There's a lot of things that he
Speaker 2: didn't play into correctly. He never really looked at himself
Speaker 2: as being a part of Brothers Johnson because the Brothers
Speaker 2: Incent was me and he'd picked nine or eight of
Speaker 2: my songs out of the eleven they got on the
Speaker 2: first album, Get the Funk Out in My Face. Lewis
Speaker 2: wrote the track, I laid the guitar, I wrote the lyrics.
Speaker 2: He did Land the Ladies and as all the rest
Speaker 2: of those songs were mine. Quincy just said in a
Speaker 2: meeting with George, you're gonna make all the money. I
Speaker 2: just said, we'll give Louis give my brother half without
Speaker 2: thinking so.
Speaker 4: For songs like Love Is and Running for Your Love
Speaker 4: and all that, the songs that he said.
Speaker 2: My signature running for eleven, I did that a lot
Speaker 2: of songs I would do, and I knew he would
Speaker 2: get pissed off because Quincy at first didn't know he
Speaker 2: had learned Lewis, it's like play the accidental Who's that
Speaker 2: on bass? He says, George, play it like George. I'm
Speaker 2: like why and the fuck he said that? You know?
Speaker 2: I mean? And I could put myself in Lewis's shoes too.
Speaker 2: So a lot of my songs got favored and picked
Speaker 2: and had my signature guitar. That's why when I stepped
Speaker 2: up off on purpose on Blam, didn't write nothing in
Speaker 2: Quincy's Call, and I said, man, give me a song,
Speaker 2: Just give me one song. And I wrote Blam and uh,
Speaker 2: that was a tie of the album, never a single
Speaker 2: with all the other stuff. That's and they brought in.
Speaker 4: Simpson, who wrote and Ain't We Funking? Now?
Speaker 2: That was between me, probably Alex Lewis. You know a
Speaker 2: few people in the band, Ricky Heath.
Speaker 4: Okay, you know. I always wanted to know why on Treasure, Ricky,
Speaker 4: why did Ricky sing Treasure or not?
Speaker 2: Because I needed a break. I was singing too much,
Speaker 2: and I like and I liked all about the Heaven,
Speaker 2: which is typically that's my little He wrote both. But
Speaker 2: it's like, damn, you know, I'm up here, and I
Speaker 2: was like, I'm the only one working, working, working. Lewis
Speaker 2: back played the bass chill. You know, I had to
Speaker 2: like make him sing because somebody please sing a song
Speaker 2: where I could just chill. And this is funn Come treasure, right,
Speaker 2: And I loved that because when he'd sing it all
Speaker 2: that to do the same background part.
Speaker 4: So I was like, so, I like, you're singing background
Speaker 4: in your own right, right.
Speaker 2: I mean I didn't sing lead, and I'm back there saying,
Speaker 2: you know, I felt like I'm hanging out with Aggie
Speaker 2: Johnson side effecting, you know, and the cleaners, yeah, and
Speaker 2: the cleaners on Crimp. We grew up together. Aggie knew
Speaker 2: so much about me than that anybody knew, because he
Speaker 2: was coming to the house and he watched it firsthand.
Speaker 4: Is that cleaner still on Prinshaw?
Speaker 2: I think it is okay, okay, But he's like, this
Speaker 2: is Georgia's ship. And he would tell the band and
Speaker 2: he said from from Lewis, he was there. He come
Speaker 2: over to the house. He said, you think that's something
Speaker 2: you ought to hit the original rass ship. Quincy polished
Speaker 2: it and taught me how to do it. But you know,
Speaker 2: you go with the white noise on four track and
Speaker 2: triple it to the eight track, and you know you
Speaker 2: get all these different type sounds and textures. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: Then you record the bass again to keep that fatter.
Speaker 2: And I'm playing upside down bass left handed with a
Speaker 2: pick and with my thumbs. And you know, Lewis was
Speaker 2: good at he could take any of my stuff. The
Speaker 2: difference was it would sound like Graham Central Station in
Speaker 2: me okay, because Larry Graham taught me how to play bass.
Speaker 4: Did Lewis actually have the ability to play like James
Speaker 4: Jafferson use his two fingers or would Yeah, he would.
Speaker 2: Play and he got his come up and as they
Speaker 2: would say when he was in the studio with Stanley
Speaker 2: Clark and the engineer hit record and Louis was always
Speaker 2: like a warrior that saw he was in Japanese and
Speaker 2: all this stuff, and you know he would challenge and
Speaker 2: you know everything was about a challenge. And don't let
Speaker 2: him get on stage and Larry call you up. Is
Speaker 2: he gonna come out there and fuck you up? But
Speaker 2: that's what he ultimately went to and stayed there because
Speaker 2: he really didn't have a lot of friends. Bass players
Speaker 2: like Stanley Clark. They got stuff on tape with him
Speaker 2: at George Duke when Stanley would get ready to come
Speaker 2: out and he turned back on Now I ain't gonna
Speaker 2: start that ship, and he'd go back in this spot.
Speaker 2: But he was when I first saw damn, it's like
Speaker 2: I actually liked it because I saw Louis got his
Speaker 2: ass whooped so bad. I'm gonna tell you how and why,
Speaker 2: because they were in the studio one't a lot of
Speaker 2: people around. But then you know, after he kind of
Speaker 2: got established and you know, Quincy had called both of
Speaker 2: them in. Louis couldn't read as fluent as Stanley Lewis,
Speaker 2: couldn't two fingers fluent as Stanley Lewis is doing that
Speaker 2: that stuff with thumping and all that, and then all Stanley,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm like, second here, good, somebody showed his ass,
Speaker 2: you know, without saying nothing. He needed to be to
Speaker 2: be put down, knockdown few not.
Speaker 4: So, how did you guys work together on the Winners album,
Speaker 4: which was the first album without Quincy?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: What was? It was very hard? I mean I worked more.
Speaker 2: It's like you from the very first album. I picked
Speaker 2: the album covered see Quence the songs mixed it.
Speaker 4: And the commercial was dope.
Speaker 2: And use it took a lot to you know, Quincy
Speaker 2: was just our producer. We were signed to the label.
Speaker 2: Lewis didn't want to do anything a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: asked George, asked George, That's what I'm saying. He never
Speaker 2: felt it was our group. M hm, you know, and
Speaker 2: even into the Winners album, he didn't feel cool until
Speaker 2: he did Passage album, which was the Christian album. I
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with it. And leading up to
Speaker 2: all that was even with the story with Michael, because
Speaker 2: he didn't want me to be a part of that
Speaker 2: because he'd feel like right, so he could take me
Speaker 2: out the mix. And since I'm not on it saved
Speaker 2: a lot of questions about was he Quincy Brothers Johnson?
Speaker 4: You know, why do you think it was important for
Speaker 4: him to establish his or for him to have agency
Speaker 4: as in this is mine and.
Speaker 2: Because this is ours? Well it wasn't. It wasn't. But
Speaker 2: you know, unfortunately that's the.
Speaker 4: Way he grew up.
Speaker 2: He grew up at home under my mother's apron Well,
Speaker 2: if you picture stuff like me and my older brother
Speaker 2: and I had to split my time. Louis would stay home.
Speaker 2: He would never go out and run and hang and
Speaker 2: you know, most like get shot at sometime, a jump
Speaker 2: a fence and ride your bikes. And you know, he
Speaker 2: never experienced that. He was always a homeboy. He was
Speaker 2: afraid he was hanging out with gangs and you know,
Speaker 2: not in them, but around him knew him. So he
Speaker 2: was very shielded. And that's another reason why him and
Speaker 2: his first wife split up. I'm more in short, because
Speaker 2: she would tell me, George, I don't have three kids.
Speaker 2: I get four, which is you know, and when you're
Speaker 2: protected like that. She would talk to him and we'd
Speaker 2: be in the airport and I had to tell her
Speaker 2: chill on her responses to him when he'd make a comment,
Speaker 2: and in front of the whole band, it's like she
Speaker 2: wouldn't you know, Oh Louis could acting like a child,
Speaker 2: say please, don't talk to him like that. You know
Speaker 2: he has the same amount of respect the band has
Speaker 2: for me. When you talk to him like that, you know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't work for me. So he was a different
Speaker 2: you know, That's why he was so bad. A lot
Speaker 2: of people who on the borderline of being a genius,
Speaker 2: there's something a lot of things they can do and
Speaker 2: a lot of things they can't relate to, right, But
Speaker 2: they have fucking genius.
Speaker 4: You know. Yeah.
Speaker 7: He was very like to himself kind of person in general,
Speaker 7: like you didn't really like he wasn't like very outgoing
Speaker 7: only to certain people. One of the last things I
Speaker 7: talked to him about on the email I was working
Speaker 7: on the project. I was like, y'all, I'll do some
Speaker 7: play a little bit too, a little bit bass, guitar, keys,
Speaker 7: every little bit of everything. And I was like, Yo,
Speaker 7: you know uncle, I want to, like, you know, do
Speaker 7: some throwback sound. I want to kind of like get
Speaker 7: your your tone. You're like, what, you know, what did
Speaker 7: you you know what how'd you get that sound? How
Speaker 7: did you like in your bass and all that? He
Speaker 7: was like, oh yeah, like I'll tell you.
Speaker 6: He was like let me Uh. I was like, so,
Speaker 6: you know, do I need to go buy a vintage
Speaker 6: music man?
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 6: I was trying to plan to see, like let me
Speaker 6: have one of your basses, but he know, I was like, man,
Speaker 6: I'm trying to get this sound.
Speaker 7: How can I do I need to buy a vintage
Speaker 7: He's like, Nope, don't buy advantage, you just get you know,
Speaker 7: just buy you a Mexican Uh.
Speaker 6: What the p bass?
Speaker 4: What would he use?
Speaker 6: He used the music man uh uh sting Ray and
Speaker 6: what he what what he told.
Speaker 7: So the whole secret was is when Fender Leo Fender
Speaker 7: stopped working for Fender and started music Man, he uh
Speaker 7: kind of uncle uncle Lewis was a part in developing
Speaker 7: the Stingray bass and so the one that he had
Speaker 7: was like specifically created for his style of playing, and
Speaker 7: so they moded the it was too expensive to mass
Speaker 7: produce and that was a part of his sound. So
Speaker 7: it was like in the it was in the design
Speaker 7: of the bass to kind of fit his style and
Speaker 7: that's why his tone was so specific and at that
Speaker 7: time nobody could get it because it was all it
Speaker 7: not only didn't have to do with his playing, but
Speaker 7: it was in the actual pickups, in the way that
Speaker 7: the bass was designed.
Speaker 6: And that's what he told me.
Speaker 7: He was like, you know, you know, just get a
Speaker 7: just get a Mexican p bass, you know, cheap and
Speaker 7: hot rot it, and this is how you do it.
Speaker 6: And then told me the whole thing, and it was like,
Speaker 6: don't tell you that.
Speaker 7: I was like why, Like it's like eight hundred years later,
Speaker 7: like but you know, people asked me that question a lot,
Speaker 7: like about them and the dynamic, and you know, when
Speaker 7: I think about it, it's like, yes, it's you know,
Speaker 7: everything my pop said. But also you just got to
Speaker 7: think about it like they're just brothers, like if you
Speaker 7: could just like from there from the beginning, like they
Speaker 7: literally had an entire career together as brothers, like you
Speaker 7: know if I don't know if any of you guys
Speaker 7: have siblings, like.
Speaker 6: A whole career.
Speaker 7: Not only that, but it's like the whole world is
Speaker 7: looking at you and y'all like y'all supposed to just.
Speaker 6: Like but that's the thing.
Speaker 8: I never saw it as like George's group and the
Speaker 8: other guy in the background, right. The thing is to
Speaker 8: me the brothers Johnson is, which is weird because I
Speaker 8: know that, you know, for for them, and his guitar
Speaker 8: playing is well documented on those records, but for me,
Speaker 8: it's like his voice and Lewis's thumb, and to me,
Speaker 8: like that thumb and your father's voice are equal.
Speaker 7: Right, and also like part of like some of that
Speaker 7: even though my dad was like you know, on some
Speaker 7: a lot of the records, like writing the parts guitar
Speaker 7: parts and and some of the bass parts. Even like
Speaker 7: we talked about this recently, the reason why it worked
Speaker 7: it was, and it was such a specific and exclusive
Speaker 7: sound was because of the two elements coming together. And
Speaker 7: so even though my dad had an approach and perspective
Speaker 7: and like he said, like he would he would bring
Speaker 7: the Larry Graham element on if he would demo a bass,
Speaker 7: And even though everybody, yeah, I play more like that,
Speaker 7: you know, my uncle would still take it and do
Speaker 7: his own thing and make it his own, you know,
Speaker 7: and and use that as a blueprint. But eventually it
Speaker 7: would just turn into his thing. And it was the
Speaker 7: combination of all of that that made it do this.
Speaker 6: It was a balance. It was like this thing and
Speaker 6: it was like, yeah, it was. It was crazy. And
Speaker 6: I and I looked at it the same way too.
Speaker 7: Like growing I always thought it was just like, yeah,
Speaker 7: it's the two of them that they are part of it.
Speaker 7: But when I when I look back, like growing up
Speaker 7: in it, you know, they were. They were my superheroes,
Speaker 7: you know. Growing up I looked up to them obviously.
Speaker 4: And asking how are you.
Speaker 7: I'm thirty five, yeah, so uh, you know, I kind
Speaker 7: of I was born in eighty three, So it's like
Speaker 7: towards the end, I remember never doing the kicking album.
Speaker 7: I was there for a lot of the sessions, and
Speaker 7: like he started a lot of those demos at the
Speaker 7: house and stuff, and that's when he like taught me
Speaker 7: how to punch in and all that stuff.
Speaker 6: But yeah, like I it was, it was.
Speaker 7: It was crazy to watch it all like unfold. And
Speaker 7: I knew my dad would kind of like take the
Speaker 7: lead on certain things, but I don't think it was
Speaker 7: ever like he said. It wasn't like he just was
Speaker 7: just so hungry to take the lead. He just was
Speaker 7: just like ever since the Johnson's three plus one, he
Speaker 7: just do it because nobody else would want to sit
Speaker 7: there and write the lyrics out. But they was out
Speaker 7: playing and ship like it had to get done somehow,
Speaker 7: you know. And and with my uncle, you know, he
Speaker 7: was the he was the youngest sibling. So like he said,
Speaker 7: like he he wasn't able to go out and run
Speaker 7: the streets because he was too young.
Speaker 6: He just couldn't do it.
Speaker 7: And you know, my dad was like a little bit older,
Speaker 7: so it was okay for him to be out with
Speaker 7: the older brother. They're getting into trouble and ship and right.
Speaker 7: So you know, I think it was just that you know,
Speaker 7: them being yeah, that whole thing, you know, that that
Speaker 7: whole thing. And it's interesting because my dad is like
Speaker 7: the middle sibling, and so there's that, and then my
Speaker 7: other uncle, the oldest, he's definitely the big brother, and
Speaker 7: so they clashed a lot of times and bump heads.
Speaker 7: But I think at the end of the day they
Speaker 7: all still had a mutual respect for each other and
Speaker 7: they were bump heads and even like U till right
Speaker 7: before my uncle passed away. You know, they got together
Speaker 7: and did the thing with Quincy at the Hollywood Bowl,
Speaker 7: and you know, whenever it was, that magic never left.
Speaker 7: That's the crazy thing about music, is like when once
Speaker 7: you have that chemistry and that connection, no matter what
Speaker 7: you go through and how you know, crazy it gets
Speaker 7: like every time they would get in the room, when
Speaker 7: when they would start, it was just like nothing ever
Speaker 7: wouldn't happen.
Speaker 4: Can I ask a question, No, Mari, I gotta ask
Speaker 4: a question on street wave? How the one is? Really?
Speaker 4: I always this feels like a weird course.
Speaker 8: Stop laughing attecause don't doom doom, doom doom.
Speaker 4: I feel like your brother.
Speaker 8: Your brother emphasizes the two as the one, but you
Speaker 8: guys are as The rhythm section or following the traditional
Speaker 8: one two, three, four, But his the way he starts
Speaker 8: at dude, I always feel like his pick up in
Speaker 8: his mind was the one. It's just because the symbol
Speaker 8: is emphasizing. It's just like I feel like it's a
Speaker 8: it's a dog chasing his taille. Who is the architect
Speaker 8: of street wave?
Speaker 2: Well, it's basically you're basically right because this on people
Speaker 2: like Harvey Mason be on the set of John Robinson
Speaker 2: and they would use their influence and they'll beat. They
Speaker 2: know exactly what to do with Lewis drum wise, okay,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, we've had lots of drummers and
Speaker 2: and a lot of ones that stuck well, like Harvey
Speaker 2: Mason and uh Jr. Who I really loved. Harvey Mason Jr.
Speaker 2: Was cool, He did the trick. Harvey Mason was like
Speaker 2: one of the cats who was like a drum god
Speaker 2: to me because he could pick up. He would play
Speaker 2: to something of our tracks and we had the drum
Speaker 2: machine already in it. We wouldn't be playing with him
Speaker 2: except for in the headphones, okay, because we would cut
Speaker 2: it with a drum machine. Then all of a sudden
Speaker 2: he'd come in set and would play it and I
Speaker 2: just watch him just how we'd be in a room
Speaker 2: and this studio minds me of studio A and A
Speaker 2: and M. They have all the big stuff where they
Speaker 2: do strings and the whole illustrated stuff, but.
Speaker 4: We're the world room. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh it's something funny speaking of that, how
Speaker 2: we get left out of that when we were part
Speaker 2: of the world.
Speaker 4: That was good.
Speaker 2: Even had James Browton, I mean Ray Charles in Sight
Speaker 2: and Shaka Khan saying I'll be good to you yes,
Speaker 2: and then me and it was like four people that
Speaker 2: should be in the world with Guinness Records, Quincy Jones, myself,
Speaker 2: Chakakan and rachels On one song I'll be Good to
Speaker 2: You that I.
Speaker 4: Wrote, Oh that's right for back on the Block. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I came right and.
Speaker 2: I was like, I would look how you look just well,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, I hope you did half of half
Speaker 2: of it. I hope, yeah, but you know a certain things.
Speaker 2: Wasn't surprised because I knew how the music industry was
Speaker 2: and you can't come out. See we were signed to
Speaker 2: a contract. That's why I want to believe in A
Speaker 2: and M that you initially signed they had no idea
Speaker 2: who you are, what you're going to be. They were
Speaker 2: so jealous of Quincy because he until we came, brought
Speaker 2: him out of jazz and all of a sudden, you
Speaker 2: hear is the love that were missing that was GJ sound.
Speaker 8: And brought him you guys, definitely brought him into the
Speaker 8: modern era, modern music era.
Speaker 2: And then and his closure would be and work for
Speaker 2: him as a hit on Michael Jackson and do it
Speaker 2: because Sony didn't want him to do it. They figured
Speaker 2: he was just a jazz artist even though he produced us,
Speaker 2: and he couldn't do the job. Quincy was like the
Speaker 2: perfect camp in music. Have you have you because if
Speaker 2: you think about it, you get, you know, Ry Templeton
Speaker 2: to write some songs, great songs, You got Greg Felling Games,
Speaker 2: You get all these great musicians. And I didn't notice that.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not talking about the brother or anything.
Speaker 2: But every time he would get used this more they
Speaker 2: would get used. If anybody's getting used, they wouldn't really
Speaker 2: never get the credit they deserved. I'd say, great filling
Speaker 2: Games put in about the certain the same amount of
Speaker 2: work that I have done on projects, which then they
Speaker 2: going to eventually give him an oscar for something. But
Speaker 2: what about all the other shit that you did that
Speaker 2: was you know, even more crucial. Michael Jackson, you know Michael.
Speaker 4: And then if you notice when we discussed that, yeah,
Speaker 4: we had film games on the show last year, earlier this.
Speaker 2: Year when he went on his own, a lot of
Speaker 2: his stuff wasn't that impressive, you know when he didn't
Speaker 2: sell to men records he was trying to get. He
Speaker 2: couldn't do that back when he first started without being
Speaker 2: validated by someone who had ears like Mike Quinty and
Speaker 2: his crew. I was doing that alone with me and
Speaker 2: Quincy Seor Lewis played the bass and eat the sishy
Speaker 2: and go to sleep on the couch. But I was
Speaker 2: the one who had to finish above Quincy. And he knew.
Speaker 2: I knew, Okay, you hired, you're you are the producer.
Speaker 2: You are my brother, you are my father. I respect
Speaker 2: you the highest because you could teach me more than
Speaker 2: anybody has taught me, from sly Stone to Billy Preston.
Speaker 2: And you know, we were just grooving with our friends.
Speaker 2: With them, they just played me ship and look at
Speaker 2: me and smile. I'm like, damn, you don't play some
Speaker 2: moret you know this. I was like, man, if this
Speaker 2: ain't funky, I eat concrete.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute. Speaking of which, ah damn. I forgot
Speaker 4: to ask what was the situation behind this? Had to
Speaker 4: be like how.
Speaker 8: You technically did get to work with Michael Jackson on one?
Speaker 8: So yeah, was a track, which is weird because Black.
Speaker 4: Radio used to pimp like this is the duet with
Speaker 4: Michael Jackson and brothers Johnson, and they would debut it
Speaker 4: and play it and then I just hear, like one mouseie.
Speaker 2: What he's doing like that, which my daughter would love
Speaker 2: because she knew his voice and took her around and
Speaker 2: he was doing thriller Billy Jean to the studio. But
Speaker 2: that song happened. That was a B track that wasn't
Speaker 2: even supposed to be included in any of our stuff.
Speaker 2: We were out on tour. Michael s to write get Quincy,
Speaker 2: you know, one of our songs. He wanted to write
Speaker 2: with us, but the way he chose to write, he said,
Speaker 2: go in and see what he did. What they recorded
Speaker 2: that they weren't using. I never did like this had
Speaker 2: to be because it was a base. It was it's
Speaker 2: like that don't even sound like you. I dug it,
Speaker 2: you know, And it wasn't Lewis because the one time
Speaker 2: he went on a scent based in the tangent you know,
Speaker 2: play it on stage. Was just saying, man, how could
Speaker 2: you not play your bass?
Speaker 4: You know? Did you not?
Speaker 2: You weren't known for keyboard.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: What was the decision to not have him played that
Speaker 4: bass line?
Speaker 2: Well, it was no decision. What happened was It's like
Speaker 2: when it got to that point, I didn't give a
Speaker 2: ship or a fuck about nothing, to be honest, It's
Speaker 2: like you couldn't hurt me no more and you already
Speaker 2: hurt me and I still had knocked you up the
Speaker 2: bottom line. Now, if Michael got the track, he wrote
Speaker 2: the lyrics, it was all about Michael Jackson's I don't.
Speaker 2: I didn't even play guitar on it. That's how pissed
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 4: I didn't.
Speaker 2: There's no guitar on the damn okay, So it's like
Speaker 2: Michael got the leftovers. Only thing I did was sing
Speaker 2: lead okay. And you know I didn't plan for it
Speaker 2: to be a single nothing, because it's like I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Well at that point, we hadn't used that for an
Speaker 2: album to be put on an album. So I was like,
Speaker 2: all right, Michael came up with this stupid ass. If
Speaker 2: he wasn't checked it would have checked with me on
Speaker 2: you know which tune? Could I have gave him one
Speaker 2: of mine or written one?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: So he like took a B tune wrote on it
Speaker 2: just because of his name and went forward. And A
Speaker 2: and M already did they quota or only going to
Speaker 2: release one? We never gotten more than two songs a
Speaker 2: hit off of a record, except that's it. That's why
Speaker 2: Quincy and enrolled with Thriller and they got eight off
Speaker 2: of that. That's kind of one of the teachings. But
Speaker 2: A and M did not want to recognize truth even
Speaker 2: though they were Herbalt and Jerry Moss, and we got
Speaker 2: sold off to PolyGram for two hundred and fifty million,
Speaker 2: along with the rest of all the other groups, you know,
Speaker 2: real like that. I just went into the office with
Speaker 2: her Abell and Jeremi. I said, look, we are men,
Speaker 2: I'm done. I walked away from at least two point
Speaker 2: three million on my next album that I could have
Speaker 2: done as a single, but I said, okay, that'll just
Speaker 2: be sounding like another Brothers Johnson record. So I didn't
Speaker 2: want to even acknowledge. It wasn't that I needed the money,
Speaker 2: but that was in my contract. My lawyer said, they
Speaker 2: could have paid you your two point three million you
Speaker 2: just walked away from.
Speaker 4: Back in.
Speaker 2: Or the eighties. So, I mean it was a lot,
Speaker 2: you know, I had to deal with politics that I
Speaker 2: was very frustrated. I kind of knew that we were
Speaker 2: locked in. That's why I was kind of teaching them
Speaker 2: and showing them back in what I had, picking singles
Speaker 2: Janet Jackson, whatever you've done lately, nasty. You know, the
Speaker 2: Human League thing I got Slide for John McClean, and
Speaker 2: Slide didn't want to do it. I twisted his arm
Speaker 2: to do it. So it was a lot of things
Speaker 2: where I was the person that could get the job
Speaker 2: done even without Quincy. But Quincy, when uh what's his
Speaker 2: name over at Warner Brothers had bought Quincy's contract from
Speaker 2: A and M because he ain't even have a million
Speaker 2: dollars in Boston, and he gave Quincy put up two
Speaker 2: million dollars to get out of the deal with A
Speaker 2: and them. Okay, okay, when he left A and M,
Speaker 2: then they told us that we were going to get
Speaker 2: sued if we talked to Quincy, you know, any of
Speaker 2: that go down, I called Quincy said, what the hell
Speaker 2: is you know? A and M fuck A and M records,
Speaker 2: you know, and the damn attorney who I couldn't stand,
Speaker 2: you know, melt Old melt Old Olton Olin something like that,
Speaker 2: and you can tell him, I said that still it
Speaker 2: can kiss my ass. That is a quote for you,
Speaker 2: melt melt Olin.
Speaker 4: So at the end of the day, with all of
Speaker 4: these demos and ideas lying around, like what this phase
Speaker 4: of your life, like, what do you want.
Speaker 2: Your legacy? Well, it is what it is. And when
Speaker 2: I put out my book, which maybe we'll talk because
Speaker 2: I might go through you through make it an audible thing,
Speaker 2: see what I'm saying, And would be would love for
Speaker 2: you to do to do that as basically a starter
Speaker 2: for this interview, and you know.
Speaker 4: I could.
Speaker 2: I could split it with you, yes, because you're you're
Speaker 2: getting stuff that people really want to hear from us
Speaker 2: because they haven't and you are getting it. So that
Speaker 2: actually would cut the chase through me writing, which I
Speaker 2: was gonna do anyway. And since it is audible, you
Speaker 2: already have it, Mike, So I would definitely give you
Speaker 2: the pronounce it. So I mean to make it. We
Speaker 2: can deal with it, and you know, I give you
Speaker 2: my numbers and stuff.
Speaker 4: And well, yeah we're family now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to make it an audible book.
Speaker 4: So try what what what's next for the down the
Speaker 4: pike for you.
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 6: Just uh continuing to create. I've been doing a lot
Speaker 6: of artists develop.
Speaker 7: One of the recent things I did was this boy
Speaker 7: band called why Don't We who just signed the Atlantic
Speaker 7: Records last summer, developed them all last year and just
Speaker 7: kind of you know, I think it's just one of
Speaker 7: the things I picked up from being around it because
Speaker 7: it was real like as you you know, just heard
Speaker 7: a lot of development going on and to to kind
Speaker 7: of create this uh legacy. It wasn't just like you know,
Speaker 7: throwing stuff against the wall, see was stick. It was
Speaker 7: like work, real work, real work.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've seen what he could do and heard his shows
Speaker 2: and share things with me, and I give him the
Speaker 2: best advice of you know that I can. And we
Speaker 2: haven't even begun because I still have some teachings. I
Speaker 2: told him, you know, I want to just layer it
Speaker 2: on him that I've learned from Quincy and Bruce, and
Speaker 2: we haven't begun that we're going to start that today
Speaker 2: or tomorrow. Wow, Like I just let him grow and
Speaker 2: I tell him, you know, we'd work on projects together.
Speaker 6: Yeah, actually did a I did a record.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 7: This is one of the early records I wrote with
Speaker 7: Solange for Kelly Rowland's first album, simply Deepest Joint called Obsession,
Speaker 7: and uh my dad came and play guitar on it.
Speaker 2: It's fun Yeah, but I'll do that and I do
Speaker 2: nothing else for somebody else. It could be bigger.
Speaker 7: It's funny because he like it's crazy, like he actually
Speaker 7: like it's true, like they got this especially like with
Speaker 7: a lot of the old school cats.
Speaker 6: It's just this camaraderie that's just like unrivaled.
Speaker 7: Like I remember when you know, even though I've known
Speaker 7: you know, the Knowles and you know all them like
Speaker 7: for some time now, and work quite a bit with Solange,
Speaker 7: like I never really you know.
Speaker 6: Obviously, Beyonce is like a huge star.
Speaker 7: I remember one time one morning, like met her in
Speaker 7: passing one morning, Like I get this call from the
Speaker 7: eight three to two number, and I'm like, what you
Speaker 7: know whatever before three o'clock in the afternoon, the hell
Speaker 7: must speak.
Speaker 6: To Troy, Like who is this this is B. Who
Speaker 6: the hell is B Beyonce? What's what's going on?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: You know, and she it was crazy, she was that
Speaker 2: just before you knew we were almost possibly related on
Speaker 2: my mom's side.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so she she wanted to uh, this was for
Speaker 7: her first solo album. She needed to do to clear sugar. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: no one could get in touch with like, no one
Speaker 7: knew where the hell he was, but they.
Speaker 6: Knew that that you know, got yeah, you know, and
Speaker 6: I was like, okay, cool, Like, well is this your number?
Speaker 6: Can I call you?
Speaker 4: Could we work?
Speaker 6: Mission was already accomplished.
Speaker 4: Done. You talked to her on the phone. You did
Speaker 4: more than most. Well, we would like to think y'all
Speaker 4: for coming on the show Man.
Speaker 6: Thanks education given us the time, Thank you for having.
Speaker 4: Thank you for coming so much. No, thank you both,
Speaker 4: thank you both. So on behalf. Oh wait, I think
Speaker 4: we should also play the initial Dibaco.
Speaker 6: Come so far.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, yeah, we might as well. Go ahead.
Speaker 8: We're going to fade out on the original Dibacco Roll
Speaker 8: call for you, roll call stands out there anyway on
Speaker 8: Behalf of the team, Supreme Fan take a little unpaid
Speaker 8: Bill Boss, Bill Sugar, Steve or the Sugar Steve Network
Speaker 8: CEO and his own brother.
Speaker 4: Sugar Steve appears courtesy of the Sugar and like, yeah,
Speaker 4: oh wait, you know what I didn't tell Wait? Can
Speaker 4: you hold up the cover real quick? Yeah? I always
Speaker 4: share a quest love childhood punishment.
Speaker 8: So usually as a kid, each year I picked a
Speaker 8: designated album cover.
Speaker 4: Right, but I'm just wanted to show I wanted to
Speaker 4: show you.
Speaker 8: All Right, ladies, gentlemen, go google right on time for
Speaker 8: the Brothers of Johnson album covering. So each year I
Speaker 8: would nat an album covered that I would emulate for
Speaker 8: every picture taken of me, you know, like I was
Speaker 8: in seventy four it was all the Chris Jasper poses
Speaker 8: from Living Up that was my thing. Or seventy eight
Speaker 8: was me making a Tommy DeBarge face from the Switch album.
Speaker 8: So seventy seven I decided, okay, all airborne jumping shots
Speaker 8: holding various pieces of furniture because I didn't have a
Speaker 8: base in seventy seven and somehow at my father's rehearsal,
Speaker 8: I saw my father's bass players base there and I thought, I'm.
Speaker 4: Gonna do what Louis Johnson does. So I grabbed the bass,
Speaker 4: I jumped and I dropped the bass nice and it
Speaker 4: was Tito Jackson time wait Joe Jackson. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 4: I'll see you later. Thank you very much. This has
Speaker 4: been quest up Supreme only on Pandora. We'll see you.
Speaker 4: Let me add this too.
Speaker 2: The album cover was shot out in the desert and
Speaker 2: it was around the time where the UFO start. Oh
Speaker 2: you know, the UFO era for us in the seventies
Speaker 2: was highlighted a lot. And that guitar right now is
Speaker 2: currently hanging a glass case in Troy's studio, just in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one. One Stelly Fender stratcast.
Speaker 4: Wow. Great, now we know who to rob. Thank you.
Speaker 6: If it comes up, it is locked though.
Speaker 4: Well, see you, ladies and gentlemen. We'll see you on
Speaker 4: the next go round.
Speaker 11: Suprema Supremo, Roll Call, Suprema Supremo, roll Call, Suprema Sun Supremo,
Speaker 11: Roll Call, Suprema Sound Supremo roll Call.
Speaker 5: Get on the ball, Yeah, get on the case, Yeah,
Speaker 5: get the funk, Yeah, Supreme Supreme Rose.
Speaker 4: My name is Prante.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm in the mix with thunder Thumbs Yeah and
Speaker 9: Lightning Licks.
Speaker 4: Are you are you? Roll car Suprema Supreme roll best
Speaker 4: arrest my case.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you don't agree with the boss Bill, Yeah,
Speaker 5: get the funk out of my face.
Speaker 3: Spre Supreme Supreme Rod.
Speaker 6: Yeah, oh yeah it's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Orge Johnson is here. Yeah, I'll be good to you.
Speaker 3: Roll Suprema Shut Supreme, roll call Supreme SUPREMEO.
Speaker 4: Roll call this Sugar.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The reason I write the ship ahead of time
Speaker 3: because I can't improvise.
Speaker 4: Fuck you again, Supreme roll Call Supremo.
Speaker 5: Role.
Speaker 2: My name is Yea Troy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we both like to talk, so hit us up tomorrow.
Speaker 10: Supreme Supreme roll Yeah, Supreme Supremo, roll call supre Wait
Speaker 10: a minute, I know this is a b We gotta
Speaker 10: redo it.
Speaker 3: We got to.
Speaker 1: What's Love Supreme is a production iHeartRadio. This classic episode
Speaker 1: was produced by the team at Pandora. For more podcasts
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