Black Music Month QLS Classic: Jimmy Jam Part 2

Black Music Month for Questlove Supreme nears its close in style. In part 2 of his epic interview, Jimmy Jam spoke about making Prince jealous, the studio secrets behind his recordings, how he made all those hits with Janet Jackson and much more.

 

 

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Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hey, what's up y'all?

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Questlove And as you noticed throughout June, we
are celebrating Black Music Month by releasing an episode every day.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
So every day you're either going to hear a specially
pick QLs classic and on Wednesdays we're dropping new two
part episodes with Wade Brady and James Poyser, both of
which were filmed in studio, so make sure you also
watch us on YouTube. Now we're part one, Part two,
and part three of my all time favorite QLs episode.

(00:45):
This is the legendary Jimmy Jam. What's up y'all?

Speaker 1 (00:52):
This is Questlove and this is QLs Classic, And this
is the second of our three part series with producer
Jimmy Jam. Last episode we explored his life in Minnesota
and enjoining the group at the time and getting fired
by Prince. And now this episode we talk about working
with artists like Charelle, Alexander O'Neil, Patty Austin, New Edition,
the SOS Band, the Human League, and also Jane.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Jackson, all Top ten artists.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
We also discussed the creative process in songwriting and producing
and becoming businessman.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
This is a really, really great episode. I hope you enjoyed.
All Right, let's go.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
So obviously you guys go to get Alex back. But
how did Charelle?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
We do? So?

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, so actually yeah, so Charelle's the next one. So Charrelle,
you know, after So West band jumped off, Clarence had
signed Charrell. She was from Detroit. He said, I signed
this girl from Detroit. So she's kind of young and raw,
but I think you guys could do something with or
whatever whatever. I remember we met her, we hung out
with her, loved her, you know, and I remember it
was a reason we moved back. Cherot was the reason

(02:01):
we moved back to Minneapolis. We were working in a studio.
I don't remember what studio was, but she had always
done backup singing, not a lot of lead singing, and
it was just a very nervous thing. We're always watching
the clock and you know, cockness and of the of
the budget, and it was just this kind of pressure thing.
So we knew these guys in Minneapolis had had a
studio down their basement, and we said, maybe we'll go

(02:22):
back to Minneapolis and record it'll be like a less
pressure and whatever, whatever, whatever. And I remember the very
first day we walked in the studio. It was called
Creation Audio and it was down the basement of a
little house. First song we did was didn't mean to
turn you on? Wow, And when that happened, we were like,
Terry just said, we need to just move back to
Minneapolis because we can make music anywhere, but we should

(02:45):
just do it this kind of environment where we can
just create and not worry about the high pressure, you know,
and the high prices.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Of la you recorded in that basement. Yeah, Okay, Now
I'm gonna start with the creative process.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Okay, how does Jimmy jim on that?

Speaker 2 (03:03):
By the way, on this various yeah that is that
didn't mean to turn you on?

Speaker 1 (03:09):
How does Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis construct a song?

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Who does the lyrics, who does the There's a lot
of different ways that it happened.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Okay, so let's take I didn't mean because what I
really want to get into is that's the point.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
That's the song that I felt that you.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Really started coming on your own as a drum programmer,
especially assuming that did you guys do your own remix
edits and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yes, okay, which also.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Qlis listeners continues the theory that all really masterful, great producers,
awesome DJs. So this is the doctor dre theory all
over again. So, because you're doing a lot of intricate
stuff there, and I was kind of saying this question
for the Control album.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
But who's teaching you? I mean, who's teaching you these patches.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
And these programming stuff? I mean I still barely get
past page three on the Drummer's Manual of any drum
machine I ever get, and there's no pro tools and stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Are you editing and cutting tape? Or like, what are you?
How are you doing this stuff?

Speaker 3 (04:25):
Well, a little bit of everything. So didn't mean to
turn you on though, was real simple. So the DMX,
that's a DMX drum machine, Yes he was, And so
I learned the DMX drum machine really from Leon Silvers.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
He had one.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
He was he was one of the people that just
there was always a drum machine laying around the studio,
and he met a certain point he made a transition
where he would cut things with the drum machine. But
then the drummer from lakeside, and I can't remember his
name was amazing. He would come back in and play
real drums because because Leons still liked the idea of
real drums. But he had a metronome and he could

(05:00):
just lock right in. Not all drummers could do that,
could play with a drum machine, but he could. But
he always had one around, so I just would always
mess around with it. And so uh, same thing with
the lin drum. Prince always had a line drummer around,
So I just would always mess My whole thing was
I would just pick up stuff and just start messing
around with it. And I think because I was a drummer,

(05:21):
it all just made sense to me. But I never
but and it's funny, you said, you don't get past
h page three. I never picked a manual up. I've
never read a drum machine manual in my life.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Man bragged.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
I'm not bragging. I just I just it doesn't make sense.
It's just kind of trial and errors. Just you just
kind of mess around and until you come up with
stuff that did make.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Sense to me.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Well, I'm asking because like even like in the bridge
of that song, like these these roles that you're programming yeah,
and the various handclaps, yeah yeah, the s billets and
all that stuff towards the end. I'm assuming that that
stuff has to be pre programmed, as in your thinking

(06:03):
in your head. Okay, four of bars from the beginning
or even the beginning before this song starts, Like again,
is this without pro in the age of pro tools? Now,
I could just punch anything in, yes, one, and then
copy and paste and do whatever I please. But you
didn't have it then, right, So are you sitting there

(06:24):
with the map of the format of the song?

Speaker 2 (06:27):
No?

Speaker 3 (06:28):
No, My thing was always I would always put the
drum beat down. That would always be the first thing.
And I knew that sometimes there was a format, like
I knew on that particular song, I kind of knew
what the format was in my mind. So but I
wouldn't ever program a song from start to finish on

(06:50):
the drum machine. I would physically put in a pattern
like the beginning of that song, which is just a handclaps.
I think that would be one pattern. Then I'd put
the next pattern in, which was the main you know,
whatever that was. Then the change was the boom boom,

(07:12):
That would be another thing. So turn the tape on
press play, go to my thing. Then as the song's playing,
I'm thinking in my head, okay, now it sounds like
it's change here, and I just go to the change
and then I go back to the main part and
I go to the change.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Now, most of the time it worked pretty good because empty.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
No not locked to Simpty at all. I used to
drive people, know, No, I used to drive people crazy
with that because crazy because because engineers would get get it.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
I'm looking at Steve right now, like, see, I'm not alone, Steve. No.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
We'd send stuff out to get remixed, and they'd always say,
what's the SIMPTY start time?

Speaker 2 (07:53):
And we go, we don't know.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
It didn't lock the Simpty were just just play. You
turn the tape on and you play, and that that
was the way we always did. It didn't mean.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
To turn you out.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
Was interesting because that song was very heavily influenced by
the system.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
I can see that the systems.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
The system did a lot of that and that kind
of stuff. The difference was they hooked everything together so
that it was sequenced, and I didn't do that because
I didn't know how to do that. So I never sequenced.
There was never a sequenced keyboard.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Not even if you synthesize it work and your base
were No, they're doing that by hand, by hand. It
sounds like a minute yeah song like Innocent Yo, Yeah,
the whole Innocent suite twelve minutes long.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Yeahs twelve minutes playing for twelve minutes. And and also
and that's and that's an interesting and and and Innocent
is an interesting one too, because that's one where we
put the drum part down first, and then we had
to figure out what we were.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Going to put on top of it.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
You know, that made sense, But that I got from Prince,
because Prince would do that.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Can you ask you a question for me?

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Even though I don't know if you were, Were you
ever physically there.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
For time recordings? No other than they sing or anything? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
because that's the thing.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Like a song like the Walk, which is nine minutes,
how does he know? And bar one seventy six Mayor's
wait mother like that part? Like does he map out
even the dialogue?

Speaker 3 (09:25):
And no, you put the groove down, so like literally
on the Walk, it would basically be him on the
bass and Morris on the drums and they would just
play for nine minutes. And so Prince would kind of
in his mind think, well, this might be a verse,
this might be a chorus, whatever, this might be just

(09:47):
a jam session whatever. Then there'll be you listen to
it back, you put the chords over the top of it,
and then the little horn stabs and stuff you do
based on the breaks and some of that other stuff.
He knew, he didn't know what everything was gonna be.
You just kind of created as it's going along and
let the drums and the bass line dictate what you

(10:08):
then put on top of it. So it's very spontanous.
Whether it sounds so spontaneous because it literally was spontaneous.
Now you could go back and do it like if
you like, if there's a lick that Morris would do
a ko on the drums and then you'd hear it
and you go, oh, let's put a horn line on it.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Cling okay, okay, right.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
But you just kind of took each piece of the
song until it was filled, until it was a full song.
So we kind of took See that's the thing, if
you think about it, we took a lot of lessons
from what Leon did, what Leon Silvers did. We took
a lot of lessons from what Prince did, and then
we took a lot of lessons from just listening to
records that were out and things that we liked, and

(10:49):
just applied them to the way we record.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
You know.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
But we had great teachers. I mean, we had great teachers.
There were great records. Not to mention all the records
growing up we listen into, you know, so you know
that to me, it is kind of the thing and
so for us.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
But I I couldn't sequence. And that's the thing.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
I never opened up emanual, So I didn't know. I
had a d m X drum machine in ob eight. Okay,
they're supposed to talk to each other through the d SX,
which was the right sequence.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
We have a d s X has never been never
been touched because I know how to hook it. I
don't know. I never knew how to hook it up.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
I I and to that and tell you the only
reason I ever even started sequencing at all was one
I had a drum programmer, uh uh, or just a
programmer in general named Alex Richberg.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
It was from New York originally, and wait, how do
you know?

Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, yeah, and he was the one that got me
into well he was he was the one that really
started putting. We were talking earlier before we started the interview.
We were talking about how hip hop influenced R and B.
But he was a true hip hop head that was
incorporated into our camp, which really he had the whole
kind of hip hop sensibility from the MPC. That's he

(12:09):
introduced me to the NPC drum machine and all those
things and the idea of that type of sampling because
I never sampled in a drum machine. I usually just
used like a little AMS sample or something like that.
So he was the one that really opened my mind
up to the incorporating hip hop into you know art
the way we did R and B records, particularly with Janet,

(12:29):
but with a lot of other you know acts too.
So he was a really important part. But up until
I met him, and that was, like you said, Velvet
rope era so ninety seven, I guess or something like that.
I never And even after that, I remember he would
hook stuff up so it would be like ready for
to sequence, Like what was the one that we did? Oh,

(12:49):
god till it's gone, God till it's gone. He hooked,
He hooked everything up together, and he said make a
record and don't do it in this box, don't do
it outside of the thing. And the reason the record
sounds the way it sounds, it's because I did the
simplest thing I could possibly do, which was called blunt blunt,

(13:10):
blunt blunt, right, because that's all I knew how to do.
And it was like okay, and I said, okay, here,
I got some men, Now what do we do now?
And it's like, okay, now we'll We'll make the song. Yeah,
but you know what I'm saying. But that's why that
turned out like that. And literally, when that song was done,
I unplugged all that stuff and said, I'm not making
records like that no more.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
I couldn't. I couldn't do it.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
You got a hit out of it, got a hit
out of it, and and and and the only thing
after that and and and when I discovered logic. See
when when garage band came out, I thought, oh, this
is cute. But then when somebody said, oh, logic, it's like,
do you know how to work garage band?

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (13:43):
But that's when I said, oh, wait, okay, I can
do this. This is this makes sense to me because
he always used logic back in the day when it
was hard to use. So I said, oh, I can
figure this out. I know the theory of this. But no,
all of those records all just played by hand. Like
I remember what was one we did. Oh, I just

(14:05):
heard it the other day. Tell me Houston used to hotel. Yeah,
but that's all.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Right, that's by hand, by hand, whole record. Just be
good to me.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
That's not no, no, no no, that's all played every
all of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Borrow, that's a long that's long to be.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah, but I had but I had great chops then
because that stuff compared to what Prince had us going
through and rehearsal. See, Prince prepared me for all that stuff.
You know, Prince would have me uh like seven seven
seven that's famous. Well, I don't know if that's a
famous story. I told it to a bunch of people though.
You know, we're doing seven seven seven ninety three eleven

(14:51):
and my part was just doubling Terry's uh basseline uh
with this kind of ob eight sound right, and then
I'd do like a little string part and that was it.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
Right.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
So I remember we were rehearsing a song and Prince goes,
Jimmy jam, what are you doing with your left hand
and I said nothing, Prince, I was doing the bassline.
He said, he said you should done. He says, do
the bassline, but then you should do the chords with
Monty oh. And I said, well, it's not like that
on the record. And he says, it's got to be
better than the record. That was always his Thing's got
to be better than the record. It's like, okay, cool.

(15:23):
So now I'm like, right, I'm cool, like cool.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
So we finished the song. He says, what note are
you singing on the course?

Speaker 3 (15:34):
And I said, I'm not singing a note on the chorus.
I said, Monty singing, and Terry singing, and Jesse's singing,
and then Morris got the main note. Whatever, find a note?

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Like okay.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
He says, got to be bigger than the record. He's like, okay,
bigger than the record. Okay, cool. Right, So now I'm
playing through the seven seven seven ninety three eleven.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
So I'm singing right, I'm good. We finish.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
He goes, why aren't you doing the choreography, Jimmy dam
I'm not gonna dance, I said, Prince, I'm standing at
the keyboard. What I'm supposed to It's simple choreography, you
should be able to do it. So I'm like, okay, cool.
So I'm like doing so. Now I'm trying to do
the like the little four corner steps, and I'm trying
to do my hands and I'm trying to sing the note,
and I'm frustrated. I'm just so pissed off. I cannot

(16:16):
do it right. And I'm just I'm pissed off. And
I think about it all night and I'm just pissed off.
So the next day we come back to rehearsal. He
says seven seven seven ninety three eleven, and I'm just like, oh,
here we go. I start playing perfect by about the
fourth run through of it. Now I'm tipping my hat,

(16:36):
I'm taking my hand, wiping my face. It became so easy.
And that taught me work ethic. That that was the
thing that taught me that he had a belief, like
a good coach, you can always do more. You can
always do more. You can't settle you, you know. But
he saw that I could do more and push me
to do it. So from that moment on, all stuff

(17:00):
in the studio where you can make a mistake and
who you know, whatever, But no, I mean that was
simple to play. To play ten minutes out of the song
was easy because forget about the rehearsals working fad.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Question since you brought it up, Yeah, has jelly Bean
ever played it proper once in these shows?

Speaker 3 (17:15):
No, he can't. He can't play it. I've never heard
a drummer play it correctly. The drummer that plays that
the closest is is Morse Wow. Really because yeah, because
Morris is a David Garibaldi fanatic guy and that Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
For our listeners that haven't seen any other interviews, we
won't mention.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
David Garibaldi.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
I guess principled a Swiss beat and just broke our
hearts by using the stock program.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
Do you know what number it was in the in
the drum No?

Speaker 3 (17:48):
I heard it was like it's one of the high ones,
like seventy seven or eighty something or.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Program still, but it wasn't.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
No, it was different different drummers. When different drummers had
different beats in that drummer shap oh, that was that
was part of the whole kind of selling point of
it was they gave it to different drummers, and different
drummers program their own beats.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Do you still have the drum with those programs in there.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
It exists.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
I'm sure it exists, but we we never had it.
That was always that was always Princess. That was always Princess.
Yeah one, but yeah, I know David Garabaldi, but but
but yeah, that was Morris's.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Dude.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
If you ever hear Morris play the drums, that's he
can do all of that tower of power stuff, like
just crazy, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
I didn't know what a drum machine was at the time,
so I spent like all of eighty two doing the
hand claps and the drum machine. And someone told me
that's a drum machine. That was heartbroken because I thought
all that stuff was real.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
So you came back for Alex. Was he happy to
see you guys? Or was it like it's about town?

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Well, no, it was at working at this Perkins restaurant.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
Okay, So the Alex thing was so after Charrell, after
we did Cherrell and Charrell was successful. The next artist
that Clarence brought us was a guy named Jeffrey Robinson.
And this guy was.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
He's been stumped.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think. I don't think
anybody ever heard of him again. But and I don't
even know where he came from. We were in Minneapolis
now at this point because we'd kind of moved up
and we were working at this creation audio place we
talked about earlier.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
So, uh, anyway, Jeffrey comes to town. Nice looking guy.
I remember he had an ascot. He was very.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Sophisticated in the whole thing and whatever. Now we had
already done the tracks. We had already done you know,
if you were here tonight, and I think we had
done that. Look at us now in another track I
can't remember. Do you want to like I do? We
had done those three tracks with Monteex Baltimore. So we
showed him the songs and we said, okay, come on,
here's what we're gonna do.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Now.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
We figure he's going to come in and kill it, right.
So he comes in and his voice cond of he
had one of those voices with there's a real fast vibrido.
So everything was like everything, yeah, exactly, and it was
a little weird and we were like, okay, well whatever,
and he said, yeah, my voice is skipping. He said,

(20:29):
you know, we'll do it to anybody, have tea anybody,
you know whatever. So it's like, okay, te whatever came
back the next day is the same thing came back
the next day it was the same thing. So we
called Clarence and we said, Okay, this dude you sent
up here, I'm not sure, man. He's a nice looking dude,
nice enough cat. I said, I'm not really sure. And
so what do you want to do? And we said,

(20:50):
there's this guy named Alexander O'Neil and he said, hu,
Alexander o' neil was he irish.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
He said, no, Clarence, he's a black dude, man.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
And I said, but you know what, God the name
was O'Neil for a black man, I said, I don't know, Clarence,
I said, but I said, can we put him on
the songs?

Speaker 2 (21:06):
And he said, yeah, yeah, put him on there. I said, okay, cool.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
So he went over to Alex's gig and Alex was
finishing up like one in the morning or whatever it was,
and we said, Alex, I said, we got these songs.
I said, can you come over and sing them? Like?
I can't remember when we did it that night or
the next day, but we like literally did the three
songs the next day, like he sang them all the
way just like that, like just sang them right. We
sent him to Clarence. Clarence said, who's this mother brother,

(21:34):
said Alexander Neil. He said, man, he said, bring him
out here. So we did. We brought it, got a plane,
went to La Clarence signed him on the spot.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Did you talk to alex Versus and said, don't.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
You know, I think I think he knew got that.
I think he knew. Yeah. We didn't have to say
a thing, but anyway.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Yeah, but anyway he got he got signed off of that,
and I don't know to this day what happened to
Jeffrey Robinson, but he was perfectly nice guy, but he
just he just didn't have it. So we took those
same songs, we added uh, you know, broken Heart can
Mend and and and then we figured out we knew
from working with perfect album opening.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
By the way, I love the nerve of you guys
starting out records albums with mid tempo stuff like I
would never thought to were you guys also sequencing the
records once.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Were totally Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
That was one of the great things about doing records
for Clarence because he totally let us. We did the
album opens out really all the space, We did all
the we did all of the Yeah, we did all
the all the that cover with the diner and the
whole thing. We did the video, like we conceptualized all
of that stuff. I mean, obviously we have people do it.
I think a guy named Craig Rice did the video.

(22:46):
Who's does a bunch of stuff for HB stuff? Now right, Okay,
he did the actually shot the video, but it was
all our concepts. I mean he basically just let us
do and so we got really got spoiled. I mean
Clarence was amazing, you know, just because we told him.
Clarence had gone in a whole bunch of different things.
He was doing oil company and he was doing all
these other different things, and we said, Clarence, you need
to be doing music and we're gonna make music fun

(23:09):
for you again, you know, because at a certain point
he wasn't having fun doing music, and we said, we're
gonna make music fun for you again.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
And I think we did that. Well.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Who who opens an album with mid tempo stuff? Because
like even with sl S Band, I think no.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
One's going to love you opens up sands the time,
Sands the time. Yeah, like that's a risk.

Speaker 4 (23:29):
Knowing that was the jam though, because we kind of did.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
It with with what do you call it? What's the string? Yeah,
hanging on the string, contemplating.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah, but it's like loos ends totally. Yeah, Nick Martinelli,
biggest bier of all time.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
No love lo.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
No, my thing, my thing, my thing with Nick because actual,
you know, I've never met Nick Martinelli in my life.
He's just a name on a liner note to me.
And I love hanging on string and I love loose sins.
It was the fact that I remember I read they
were asked about it and they were like, oh, it
sounds nothing like, it doesn't have anything to do with it.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
And I just was like, oh, come on, really, yeah,
that was the thing to me.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
It's like, come on now, I'm an admit that at
least if I was influenced by some I'm gonna throw
it out like we just like we just said, you're
talking about the kick drum.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
I'm like, no, the system, man's I.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
Mean, but I'm saying, I mean, you know, you could
your lawyers just could have been.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Stand by.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Yeah, I just I just I mean to me that
that was the thing with that. But no, the Luciens
Records were amazing, the fifty second Street Records. I mean
a lot of that, I mean, and that's when we
knew that our influence wasn't just in America, that it
was to the UK and it was like a whole
bunch of different places.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Wait, you didn't do tell me how you feel? No,
Nick Martinelli did that.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
Did BBQ Band's genie it's not uh yo, which is
I don't know who did it they were. I think
they were self produced. I think bbqban bbn q ban
because that always when I first heard, I thought it
was you guys.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Well the first see the first I don't know which record,
but the first ones were done by the guys that
did the Change record, which was the first ones, which
was a guy named Mario Malavesi and Jacques fred Petres.
They did the BBQ band so because to me it
sounded like the Change record when I heard it, But yeah,
they were.

Speaker 5 (25:38):
We got to get the Change too at some point.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, Change was that was an interesting what was it?

Speaker 2 (25:45):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (25:46):
No, because we was I heard you guys never got
paid for those somethings, that is that is correct? Well
we did eventually it came out of somebody else's budget though,
which I don't know remember who it was, but but no,
we did. We went over to Italy to do the
Change record. We were asked, you know, would we like
to produce the Change album and we said, yeah, we'd.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Love to from Italy.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
The the no, the musicians are actually from America, from
mostly New York musicians as a matter of fact. But
the guys that produced it, it was this is Jacques
fred Petris and Mario MALAVESI uh, they were I don't
know whether they were Italian. I think we're French or
Italian or whatever. But the studio they recorded at was

(26:27):
in Italy. It was actually in Modena in Italy, home
of Ferrari, which I did.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
I didn't know back then.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
I saw, I saw we would pass by this place
it said Ferrari, and it didn't even dawn on me.
That's like the actual Ferrari place, because you know, one
hundred fifty dollars a week.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
I wasn't, you know, I wasn't thinking about it Ferrari,
but it was.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
It was a great experience where there was a villa.
I remember the first day we got there, they had
you know, they cooked everything for you.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
They did everything right.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
So the first day they brought out pasta. Right, we're grubbing,
and we kept saying yeah, more and more, and they're
like looking at me more like yeah, yeah, yeah, And
we get done and we're like sitting back and then
they bring chicken and we're like, we didn't know about
the whole courses and the whole thing anyway, but the
change record was cool and we did it. It was
like a farm in the middle of nowhere in this villa.

(27:15):
We were totally bored to death. We would have really appreciated,
and I wish it would have happened when were a
little older, and we really would have appreciated how cool
of a situation it was. But what it did is
it introduced us to Otari tape machines because they had
Otari tape machines. Everybody had student tape machines. Right this
place had Otari and we loved the machine and we thought, wow,
this is a great machine. So there's all kind of

(27:38):
a little It's funny because every story there's some little thing
that has influenced or something that we've done that's been significant,
and that was a significant thing for us to find
those tape machines because we couldn't afford a student tape machine, right,
And when we found those tape machines, we got a
great relationship with them and it turned out really well.
There was a guy in Change though named Timmy Allen

(28:00):
who later on Today and R for Jive Records, but
he was the bass player. He wrote the song true
Love and he wrote on that album.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
And a couple other things.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
Could have been more talented guy, nicer guy, and uh.
That was a great experience making that record. And then
we mixed with Michael Brower in New York. And we
were always used to mixing like one song over a
day or two with Steve Hodge. Michael Brower was banging
out three songs a day. We were like, oh man,

(28:30):
I mean it was amazing. Yeah, but he was doing
all the Luther Van Draws mixes and we wanted that
Luther van Draws sound for the Change.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Oh my god, Okay, Mike, were you did you see
the snare drum? He has Yogi's drum set from Never
Too Much. I'm trying to purchase it. Yeah he yeah,
he knocks him out. He also did Hollero's Private Eye
album and yeah, I'm trying to buy that the never

(29:01):
too much.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Matter of fact, I think searching.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
I believe he said that everything that Luther's ever singing
one that was that was a yeah, that would make sense, Yeah,
trying to get it.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
That would make sense, trying to get it. So he
knocked it out in three days. Yeah, three days, we said,
We said that three songs, three songs.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
A day, and I think there was nine songs on
the album. And you were satisfied with what it. Mixes, Yeah,
the mixes were great. I thought they were great. I was,
I was. We were just shocked because we we didn't know.
And that's when we kind of learned the pace in
la versus the pace in New York. You know, it's
a whole different thing, and that that was one of
the ways we.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
But can you trust it?

Speaker 1 (29:43):
I mean, have you how many times do you have
to recall a mix as in.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
In that day?

Speaker 3 (29:49):
None we recalled it. None, No times that that was
the mix. We very rarely recalled mixes. I mean we
once we got it to where we liked it, we
liked it. We very rare recalled mixes. Okay, very rarely.
We would leave mistakes in there, and we would leave
you know, we'd get it to a certain point and
we just kind of feel like, you know, we'd always joke,

(30:12):
we go, okay, what five people aren't gonna buy the
record because of this thing that only we hear.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
It's like does it feel good? And is it? Yeah,
it's it's good.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
And back then, mixing was very collaborative because you know,
you had to have four guys with their fingers on
the board and they weren't automated.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
No, not the way there.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
Well some of them were, but the one we were
working on in New York was not automated. So we
literally did the mixes and and the one that we
uh even the ones that like we did at Creation
Audio in Minneapolis, so Alexander O'Neil and Charrell and Shane
well with the recording of Change, although we mixed in
New York, but those records, know, they was all done
people on faders and everybody man. You know, somebody would

(30:56):
be in charge of the mutes and somebody would be
in charge of whatever. So it was a performance and
it was just about getting the best performance. It wasn't
even about recalling the mix. It was just making a
great performance. And I missed that that that was actually fun.
I enjoyed that part of it.

Speaker 6 (31:10):
Okay, well let's talk about your early forais into hip hop. Okay,
let's talk about Captain Times, yeah and the Iced Tea's Cold.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
So those records were basically because we would hang out
at a studio in l A called Studio Masters, and
that was where Leon Silvers did a lot of his records.
And I remember there's this guy named Cletus Robinson and
he owned a record company called Saturn Records as the
exactly and this dude looks like lives like his name

(31:43):
sounds is how.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
This dude and.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
This dude had I don't know he had this record
and he just said, man, you know, the track ain't
happening on you know, we need a track for this
you know, record and stuff. And we were like, okay, cool,
and we just moved into the eight and the and
the lin drum and just got down and you know,
once again, Bad Times is another perfect example of just

(32:08):
I just played that start to finish, the baseline, there's
nothing sequenced, and just played it from start to finish,
and we didn't hear the singing and all that stuff
and the rap, which nobody really used the rap everybody flipped.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
It over to the right.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
But the girl's name was Kim Ball and she was
who was her story? She was signed to a group
that was signed to United Artists. Remember the group Enchantment. Yes, okay,
so she was in yeah, Gloria right. So she was
involved with somebody there, Mike maybe Michael Stokes, maybe his
girlfriend or or something. And uh, anyway, so they said

(32:45):
this girl kim Ball is gonna sing. We said, okay, great,
and we didn't hear it until it was actually done.
All we did was go in and put the little
track together for it, and we loved it. We were like,
oh man, this is funky. And we were trying to
make I was trying to make a D Trained record,
quite honestly, because because Hubert Eves was from Minnesota and.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
I did not know, well what, yeah.

Speaker 4 (33:06):
It makes sense now that you say it, but I
hear it from Chicago, but.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
I don't know. That's amazing.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
Well, we knew Hi from Minneapolis because I remember we
got a D Train record. I have no idea to
this day where it showed up, but it was on
our time tour bus and I remember seeing the record
and it said D Train and we all looked at
it and it was a white label and we were like,
D Train, What the heck is D Train? And then
we started hearing the record and I said, oh, this
is the record we got And I looked at it
and it was Hubert Eves and I said, oh, this

(33:33):
is Hubert E's record. And we just knew him from Minneapolis.
We were like, oh, there's Minneapolis boys. So we were
always you know, like happy and proud of the stuff
he did. So yeah, so I don't know, man, but yeah,
that was that. And and the same thing with the
Coldest Rap and that we didn't know we did the track.
It was one of those things where you know, we
just kind of went in and did it. I think
we got five hundred bucks for it or something.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
And that was and that was didn't know they were
going to be a rap record. We didn't know what
they were going to be.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
It was just going to be it's gonna be put
put a track together, and you know, it is what
it is. I think we knew, yes, I actually I
do think we knew they were gonna be rap records,
but we didn't know, you know, Iced Tea. We knew
the names sort of Captain Rap. I knew because he
had done some other stuff. I think I used to
play one of his records even before that, if I'm

(34:19):
not mistaken. So I ran into him by the way
at the New Edition Star ceremony. He came up to
me and he said we worked together before, and I
said we did. He said, yeah, he said on that
on that Bad Times, I was the rapper on that.
I said, oh, that is nice to meet you.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
It's very funny man.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
So yeah, but no, that that was kind of our
first our first for ran into hip hop, and I
had it as interesting.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
I remember I was coming from.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
American Music Awards or something, and uh it was when
Kid Rock was really jumping off huge and I remember
we were walking into a door at the same time
and Kit and uh, he runs into me. Kid Rock
runs into me and he said, oh, Man, sorry, sorry man.
I said no, no, I'm sorry, man, after you?

Speaker 2 (35:03):
After you?

Speaker 3 (35:04):
And he said, hey, man, Jimmy Jam And I said, hey.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
What's up man? He goes, I can't stand he said.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
I said, man, you know that song? He said, Man,
I'm from Detroit know all of y'all shit. I said, okay, cool,
you know. So it was very cool man, But that
record to this day, Man, we were just in Japan
and Korea and they were.

Speaker 6 (35:31):
Talking about that record over there. Where did those two
records come in the timeline? Like, were those before we were?

Speaker 3 (35:37):
Yeah, they're probably before SOSH, Yeah, before before so OS
because it's probably we were still working like real to
real first climax stuff, dynasty stuff. So this is more
of an eighty two type of thing, and SOS was.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
More of a machine bedtime.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Yeah, it's a distorted Oh you know, No, it wasn't
a line drum. What the heck was that thing? That's
a great question question. I can't remember what the heck
it was. It was something so distorted and wrong.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
No, it's right, right, right, I.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
Take it through that record, But you're trying to figure
out how you trying to figure out what drummer scene
you used for that?

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (36:23):
What was that thing? It was whatever was laying around
that day at the studio. It wasn't anything that we brought.
It was whatever was laying around.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, I brought it. Now can I jump in nineteen
eighty six? Thank you? It's a big Jim.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
So, how's the idea even come up that Janet Jackson
wants to work with you guys.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Okay, So the story there is there was Okay, so
John mc lane, who was a R guy at A
M Records, he had called us to work on Howard
Johnson and uh yep, so which so fun is one
of the best records of all time to me. I mean,
this wasn't quite an amazing record, but anyway, so this

(37:17):
was like the follow up album and they he called
us and said, you want to do some stuff on
our Johns and we said, yeah, yeah, that'd be cool.
So anyway, we did a couple of things on him.
It didn't jump off big or anything, but it was
great working with him.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Very talented dude.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
And I remember we were really into Steve Arrington at
that point, and so we did this record called n Yeah, yeah, yeah, no.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
It worked.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
So anyway, so then the next thing he asked us
did we want to do? He said, Hey, the girl
an Atlantic star is going to make a solo album.
Do you want to work ban? Do you want to
work with her? And I said, oh, yeah, we love
Sharon Bryant. Yeah that was cool. So we you know,
we were like, okay, we're excited, we know, we're ready
to go. So then we get a phone call and

(38:02):
he goes and we started working on tracks for her
and stuff. So and he got a phone call and
he just said, hey, you know, I don't know how
to say this, but you know, she doesn't really want
to work with y'all. Got yeah, she's got another producer.
She wants to work with her whatever. I guess her
boyfriend or whoever was at the time, right, So we
were like, so we were like, okay, cool, you know,
that's that's cool whatever, And he said, man, he's not embarrassed, man,

(38:24):
he said. So he said, what is it? Is there
something else on it? You know that you would like
to work on for us, you know whatever? And we said, well,
send a roster. So they sent a roster and me
and Terry looked at the roster and we're going down
the names, and then Janet Jackson. We both stopped on
Jana Jackson and looked at each other and said Janet Jackson.
So we called John and we said John, we want
to do Janet. And he says, oh, okay, yeah, that's cool.

(38:46):
How many songs you want to do?

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Three? Four songs? I said, no, we want to do
the whole album. You do. Yeah, was that even option
back then?

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Because as far as I know, we're ill man esque
productions a thing on R and B Records.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Back then there were different producers.

Speaker 5 (39:06):
I mean the first two albums.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Okay, you're right, you're right, you're right.

Speaker 6 (39:10):
Speaking of uh, did you guys, did you guys choose
Janet because of Jesse working with her on the previous Jesse.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Jesse had yes, because what happened was we actually went
we're in a session with her on the first album
that Renee and Angela did half of it and I
think Leon Silvers at the other half, and we were
actually in the session with her and actually, don't give
up this good thing. Yeah, don't give up this good thing.

(39:37):
And the one I loved was come come give your
love to me. Yeah, that was the one I loved.
And so we knew she was cool. She was big
fans of the time. She sat front row and we
played Long Beach when we couldn't play the Forum and
played Long but she sat front row with her mom
and she came back after and met us and stuff.
She was so sweet and all that. So anyway, so
we knew already, we felt like we already kind of

(39:58):
had a little bit of a relationship with there. But
when Jesse did Fast Girls and that, we just thought, wow, Okay,
that's more. She's got like a little attitude to her
because we knew young she had an attitude because when
she was doing the whole May West thing and doing
the variety show stuff, she always had such a personality

(40:19):
and sassy, right, So we were like, that's what needs
to be happening with her to me, is that kind
of thing. So that's what me and Terry were both
thinking that same thing. So that was kind of the idea.
So we said, Okay, cool, that's that's what we're gonna do.
That's what we'll do.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
And so we had a meeting and I remember at
the meeting.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
It was her dad and her and John and I
remember they played Heat of Heat by Patty Austin, which
was the current record.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
We had just done. And she because she has such
the craziest as you I wouldn't know.

Speaker 3 (40:59):
How to go that level, you know what, though she
it was funny. We didn't know her well enough to
know her sense of humor.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Yeah, she did.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
She did those three songs in like a day. Oh
my god. We were sitting there. She's because we booked
three days. We figured we'll do a song a day,
and she tore through whatever. The first song we did,
she tore through it the leads in the background so fast,
and me and Terry are sitting there looking at each other, going,
is there something else to do?

Speaker 2 (41:31):
Patty? You want to do the next song? Yeah, let's
do it. Okay cool?

Speaker 3 (41:34):
And then we did it, and then we were like, uh, okay,
well we'll do the next one to marrow.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
I guess it's.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
Because we read unbelievable. I never heard somebody sing that fast.
But so we didn't really get to know her, like,
she had a great personality, she was very nice. We
were just too young, nervous doing something for Quincy Jones.
Oh my god, we're trying to do string arrangements and
we're trying to like, oh, we got to impress Quincy
because he trusting us with this even at this point,

(42:02):
Oh my god, yes that's Quincy Jones.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Man. Come on, But.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
I mean, at what point we all like we jam? Yeah,
like one point, were you like, all right, kiss my
ass princes?

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Uh? Control? No?

Speaker 3 (42:19):
Never, really, I don't I don't think we I don't
think we've ever felt that way, because.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
To me, were you in the audience the night that
he was telling you guys about I want to hear
this on your records?

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Yes, I mean I never took it as a real insult.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
I just like, Okay, he's giving you guys props, like,
what did you.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
I took it as an insult because, yeah, because he
he came by. He came by. I remember he drove
by my house right after the Control album came out,
and uh, he like threw the CD out the window
or did something you yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
You yeah, legendary.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
Yeah, so it was. It was weird and I remember
thinking that because I used to like it. Right well,
I realized my mom told me. My mom was the
one that would always say, you know, when people do that,
it means that they're really they're jealous of you for something.
And I'm going because I'm always thinking to myself, how
the hell is Prince jealous of me? I said that
dude is the most talented dude ever in the history

(43:22):
of people period. How is he jealous of me? I
can't even I'm nowhere near him.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Because you're you're inside the bubble and couldn't be outside
to see it. But yeah, well that literally took over
black music.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
No.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
I get, I get the result of what it was,
but I never I never felt like I just felt
like we did our job, like we like we set
out to do, Like what the Control album, our whole
thing was. And I think I've been quoted on this
a few times. In our neighborhood that we lived in
at the time, there was in l because we were
we were we had a still had a place in
LA and we would drive up the street and you'd

(43:59):
hear music blasting out of everybody's homes, right, and we
just wanted to be that record that everybody was blasting
out their home, and so it had to be funky,
it had to be aggressive, it had to be loud.
There was already, I mean, females weren't really making those
kinds of records. Those records were all rap records or whatever.

(44:19):
And we wanted to make that kind of record because
we felt she had the attitude to pull it off.
And so that was the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
And so.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
One of the best days of my life was actually
when the album came out, and I remember driving up
that same street and hearing that record blasting out of
everybody's house, and at that point, forget whether where we're
at the charts or where we're at at sales. I
felt like we did what we accomplished. I mean, we
accomplished what we set out to do, and I hadn't

(44:51):
really felt that way honestly as a producer. I never
felt like we The first record we did that actually
turned out in real life the way we heard it
in our heads was The Finest by the s O
s Oh Wow.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
That record.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
We heard it in our heads because we said we
got to switch up from the eight oh eight thing
we did browed love on that album, right, because they
said because the record company is like, well, you got
to have another one that sounds like and we said, okay, fine,
we do, We'll do that. But we got yeah, but
asked for like a yes, yes they did.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
They did, Yes they did. They said you got yeah,
No they did.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
It was and and so we were like, okay, yeah,
we'll do that, but that's not what we really hear
for them. And when we did The Finest, it was
like in our heads we were like, this is the
cut for them, like good boom boom, boom boom.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
It was about the space of that song. My favorite
part of that song is just the fact that it's
right stops right.

Speaker 5 (46:03):
Well, that's the finest.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
Yeah, I mean, there's something about see because that song sophisticated.
I always thought the s O S band was really
sophisticated because even from taking your time to do it right,
you're not hearing songs that have Glockenspiel in it, you
know what I'm saying. So that was the thing. But
that record actually came out the way we thought it would.
We wanted it to come out.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
What is it about?

Speaker 1 (46:23):
I think this is one of the first questions I
asked you on Twitter when I realized that that was
actually you.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
Hey, I finally got verified by the way, Yeah, I
saw you. We did that really Yeah, Okay, okay, damn funk.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Uh What is it about E flat? I know you said, like,
you know, whatever the song calls for in my head,
that's what I make it.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
But I mean a lot of your is there by this.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
Do you feel that that that E flat minor is
like the Black the Black Black Key, like that experience? No,
I mean some of your your your best funk songs.
For what have you done for me lately to the
finest two. You know a lot of your grittier, funkier
songs are done in that key, which I mean that

(47:23):
it allows you to just hit all the black keys
and not it's never a wrong.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
Key, that's right. But what what D minor was for
James Brown?

Speaker 1 (47:34):
Almost feel like E flat Well that I used to
identify as Stevie Wonder's key, but now that's the jam
and Lewis key to me, Like, is it something about
or is it just the singers you pick?

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Their range is strictly in that that particular or am
I overthinking it problem? Let's go with that. I dont no,
you're not over You're not overthinking it.

Speaker 3 (48:06):
But the simple, the simple answer is because it's a
funky ass key. It's it's it's funky because E traditionally
was always the lowest note on a bass, on a
traditional bass, if you go one half step lower, it's
even funkier because it's all about just the lowness of it,

(48:27):
and it was something that a key, as a keyboard player,
see bass player couldn't do that. They could tune down,
I guess if they wanted to, but no, the bass
player couldn't go to E flat. But a keyboard player
could so because most of our stuff was that's right.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
All your E flat joints are a keyboard. They're all
key Wow, Okay, that makes sense. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
I I have a personal disdain for for week E
minor songs like you know, because basically it's like, okay,
thank you for letting me be myself.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
I'm taking rhythmation out of this. I'm not trying to insult.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
I'm just saying that that's such a mountain to climb.
I feel like everybody that does anything in an E
minors like that, they're they're they're the mountain Fiji, the
mounta Fiji to them is thank you for letting me
be myself. Okay, I'm in here from get the Funk
out my Face to all those songs yes in that key, yes,

(49:30):
which I mean there's some cool ones like maybe Glide
by Pleasure or that sort of thing, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
I'm not a fan of funk bands that.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
That do songs in that key. Right, And I know
it's supposed to be in that key because it's easy
to play.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
It's the lowest, but it's also the lowest. It's the lowest,
so it's just it kind of turns out to be
the funkiest key. But so the idea of going a
half step lower was always just something about it fakes
an E flat and I think fakes right. Yeah, And
I think Encore is in e flat too.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yeah, sure, they are like a lot of your dance
classics are in the key, which I just think it's
a funky key.

Speaker 6 (50:15):
It is before we get back to Janet, and this
is going to circle back around, can we talk about
the Secret?

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Sure?

Speaker 6 (50:22):
What was the secret? And where did all those songs
end up that we're going to be on that project?

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Hah okay?

Speaker 3 (50:29):
So when we so when we were booted from the time,
the thing that people always ask were I was when
are you guys going to put another band together? And
our answer always was never, because we've already played with
the best band we could ever play with, So we're
never going to put a band together. However, we will
do a project and it'll be me and Terry and

(50:51):
we'll probably add Our fantasy at that time was to
add a guitar player girl, and we were going to
be called The Secret, and we did. We started recording
tracks for what we thought was going to be a
secret album, probably around eighty four, eighty five, something like that.

(51:14):
Some of those tracks have seen the light of day.
What Have You Done for Me Lately was a secret track. Whoa,
there's another song on that same album called You.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Could Be Mine. Yeah, that was a secret track.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
And as a matter of fact, I'll tell you, I'll
tell you that what have You Done for Me Lately?
In our story. So, we had done the album. The
album was totally done. We sent it in. John McClain
listened to it and as all in our people always
say I just need one more, and I'm like, going, John,

(51:50):
you got control, you got nasty, you got what I
think of you. I mean, you got your singles. Man,
what do you need? I just need there's something more.
I need one more. So anyway, you planned on a
four four eight song? Yeah, yeah, we were done. We
thought we were good.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
In your mind? What was the fourth song on sad Ay?

Speaker 3 (52:09):
That I don't know because we didn't know because we
hadn't at that point, we hadn't sequenced it. It was
not sequenced. It was just that we just felt we
were done. We got enough, songs were good.

Speaker 6 (52:20):
Okay, So did you record any extra or were those
nine songs it.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
We did record actually extra we recorded a song. Actually
there was a guy named Hammy Uh that played with Yeah,
it was with Real to Reel. He played with Real
to Reel and he actually did a song called the
Hungry for Your Love that we recorded with Janet.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
It's really good.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
It's it's very come give your love to me. It's
kind of been that vain because we said, can we
get a song that has that kind of you know,
that kind of new wave pop type of thing.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Yeah, exactly didn't get replaced by he doesn't even know
my life.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
No, he doesn't even know I'm alive. Can I askfore
you mentioned? Yeah? Can I guess? Was that the first
song you guys worked on? Yes, fucking I'm a genius,
Gus okay, thing you have a radio sh.

Speaker 4 (53:26):
Shut up, Steve, Okay, that's all I wanted to know,
steveson ship for three hours?

Speaker 2 (53:32):
How do you tell that was the first one?

Speaker 4 (53:34):
Like it just sounds so different from it just felt like,
but the thing is still filling each other out, Like
he doesn't even know I'm alive is probably the only
thing that's really close to like Bookie. Oh okay, Like
that felt like it could be released in eighty three.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Like it could have been on one of the first
two hours.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
I almost didn't believe you guys did it. And all
right to slight confession. When I was working at music
Land at sam Goodies in high school, this cat named Spencer, Yeah,
have me believe that he was the Spencer Bernard that song?

Speaker 2 (54:11):
My god, that's great. Yeah, but you just having to
work with me. Yeah, I was gullible in high school.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
Okay, but yeah, it it fit for a reason. It's
a like he doesn't even know why I'm alive was
I felt that was the blackest record as far as
the two step barbecue boogie, like it felt like on
the beat by the bb Q ban or that sort

(54:39):
of thing, whereas even though the other songs were relentlessly funky, Yeah,
it was class and polished, and I felt that you
guys are really planting your flag in Minneapolis and saying
now we're the standard.

Speaker 6 (54:54):
Yeah, and it's a great bridge between you know, the
songs and then the two songs and end the record too.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
Well okay, so yeah, so you're absolutely right. It was
the first song we did, and what and how it
happened was when we knew we were going to record
Janet Spencer, Bernard uh and Lisa Keith were married.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Ah and uh.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
So Spencer did production and writing and stuff for us.
He had his own band called King's English that never
ever saw the light of day, but was great, very
very Duran, Duranish type type of stuff.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
They were doing.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
White dudes is white, white, Spencer's white.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
That's yeah. Wait, you completely her.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
Super Yes you you finally I didn't know that.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
Yeah you should. Actually, her solo album is very good.
It's very good. She's an amazing singer and.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
The first time. No, I'm just happy I know she is.
And she sounds so black when she sings. That's hell yeah,
because Janet is singing backgrounds on that, right.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
Yea, Lisa they're singing, Yeah, that's Lisa's lead. Yeah, they're
singing together on the background.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Damn thought Lisa was like.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
So Lisa was like our backgrounds our background, secret weapon.
Like she was on a ton of records, if you
remember the criticized yes.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Yeah and yeah she's white.

Speaker 7 (56:30):
Yeah, like Bobby call well.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
Yeah records. Why should I cry known to him? That's
her on that And uh, I'm trying to think there's
another one that she's pretty really prominent on too. Uh
she's I'm blanking now, but no, she she was like
the secret weapon.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
She was used to that heroin. Was that heroine Pillow
as well on her album was on that one. Yes,
yeah Pillow, yep record, yep, Jesus Christ. Okay, so thank
you very much.

Speaker 5 (57:04):
We only made eighty six.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
Yeah, so so he doesn't know him alive. Just to
just wrap it up. Yes, So we said to them,
we're gonna be doing Janna Jackson and if you guys
got a song, do it. So they wrote it, she
demoed it, and for us it was it became the
song that when Janet came to town and we you know,
the story is that we didn't do anything in the

(57:27):
studio for like four or five days. It's absolutely true.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
She came, hung out, got to know her, talked, so
that's important. Yes, yeah, research research, that was to dinner tonight.
That was.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
No, that was that was that was the key to
that and and and and so so truly she came.
I mean, we went to movies, we went we hung
out at the lakes because the lakes and Minnesota are
amazing and in summer time and this was like June,
and we just kind of hung on and then after
about three or four days, she said, when are we

(58:07):
going to start working? Yeah, and we said, uh, well,
we've already been working and we showed her the lyrics
to Control Wow, and she said, oh wait, this is
what we've been talking about, because she told us a
whole story about leaving home and she's going to get
her own place and this whole thing. And we just
worked making mental notes and then Terry would go home
and like jot notes down and stuff, and we started like, okay,

(58:28):
let's figure this out. And so when once we said
that to her and she says, well, wait, so the
album's going to be like whatever we're thinking about, and
like whatever, I think that's what the album's going to be.
And it's like yeah, it was like a light bulb
win in her head. She was like, Okay, well I
want to talk about this and I want to do this,
I want to do I mean, it's like it was
like because think about her albums before and we're all

(58:51):
Leon did a bunch of songs going and sing them,
you know, Jesse did some songs going and singing.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
Jojio Moroder did some or people, a lot of whoever
was going and sing them. I mean, that was it.

Speaker 3 (58:59):
We were actually asking her input and she and it
was at a point where she really had something to
say and she didn't think of herself as a songwriter
and technically she probably wasn't technically a songwriter. But the
ideas and what we talked about were what became the records.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
I mean the credit on the record.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
Oh, absolutely, because the records wouldn't exist without her. We
wouldn't write, we wouldn't write control without her.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
So what point are you guys actually in a room
together as U three and writing songs.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
On that album? Not at all?

Speaker 3 (59:29):
Okay, No, No, that album was sitting in a room
like this, telling stories and like you would say something
and we go.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
That's cool, and we write it down.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
And then our wordsmith's sometimes who's oh tell Terry's Terry's
Terry's I call him lyric masters.

Speaker 5 (59:49):
See the rhyming dictionary up there.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
Oh my god, you're right.

Speaker 7 (59:55):
Okay, So did Nasty come from like a funny story,
because I'm trying to figure out these are okay.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
Yes, nasty.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Nasty came from one of the first days we were
hanging around so there were there was.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
A club James Debart's story.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
There there was a there was a club downtown Minneapolis.
I can't remember what it was called. And we were
all hanging out and we were actually we weren't even
in the club. We were just kind of it was
kind of in a building, uh that was like an
office building, so that you could just hang in the lobby.
You never had to really go in the club. You
could just hang out, right, So we were all just

(01:00:28):
kind of hanging out, and these guys came up and
started talking to Janet, and uh, they were kind of
saying some kind of interesting things to her. Right, So
we're kind of watching. We're you know, we're just kind
of watching. We're just not doing anything right, and she
keeps looking over at us, like would come over and
help me look, and we just kind of stand there

(01:00:48):
and we're just kind of looking at her. And then
people start saying to us, I think those guys are
bothering her, Why don't you you're gonna go over and
say something.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
We're like, well, we ain't gonna let nothing that we
got an eye on it. We're all good.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
So after ten minutes or so, she comes over to us,
and she goes and she's funny because you got to
remember it. So she's like eight, I think, just to
turn eighteen. At that time, it was still very sheltered,
very like this little girl. And she said, did you
see what those guys were doing? And we were like, well,
they were talking to you, Oh my.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
God, but the things they were saying, and oh my god,
why didn't you come over and help me?

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
And Terry said, well, obviously you didn't need any help.
You're not standing right here right now. And she said,
oh yeah, I guess that's right. So those kind of
moments needed to happen for her to get to that.
But she said, I don't like nasty boys. I don't
like nasty something something, and Terry's like, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
And that's it. I mean. So that was the way.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
So the hanging out part where we weren't working, we
said to her, you know, we're already working.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
So we need a life experience for you to sing,
to sing about.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
It exactly, because that's what that was. What's gonna make
the album believable, It's gonna her yeah, And and that
was the whole thing. So he doesn't know I'm alive,
was basically because it was already done. When we went
into the studio, we said, okay, we got a song free,
and we just went in and sang it. It was
already demoed, it was already done, and that gave us

(01:02:15):
our insight on what note she could hit, what couldn't
she hit, just all kinds of things, the kind of
right kind of mic to use on her. It was
almost like the test ground for her, but also a
song that we all liked. So from that point then
everything else kind of jumped off from that.

Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
How did you, Oh, I was gonna say my question
for you about Janet her background vocals. You talked about
how you were a big fan of America and all
that stuff. To me, that was always her superpower, more
so than even the dancing and all of that. Like,
her background vocals was always amazing, Right, So did you
guys did you arrange it? Was it just by ear

(01:02:55):
or as a keyboard player? Did you like actually play
it out and say, okay, this is your note, Janet?

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
That would with Janet I would always do. I would
always have her sing the notes in the chord, which
isn't the normal way to stack vocals because what happens.
Of course, when you're playing amount of keyboard, you have
notes that are dissonant to each other where they're right
next to.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
It, and it always singers are they can't hear that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
Most of the time. It throws them off to hear that.
And so but we worked up over time, we worked
up a thing where she would just trust me, like
I'd give her a note.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
And it would totally sound so wrong.

Speaker 6 (01:03:31):
But.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
Without using great example, A great example, that's a great example.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
Loves you as well, yeah, oh Jesus Christ.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Yeah, So so that was the thing. But she would
she would just do it, and I got a certain
point she would quit going. She wouldn't even say that
doesn't sound right. I would just go trust me, and
she goes, oh I trust you, I know, and I'd
be okay. And she also had the stamina where she
would stay in there for hours and hours and hours,
and we'd stack every note at least four times.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
So if it was a you know, there were times
that note at least yeah. Wait, there's no pro tools though,
well okay, so.

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
No, because we didn't start with forty we only had
twenty four. So what we would do is you would
make we would take the vocals, but everything would always
get bounced down on the spot. So we would and
it was it was always strategic, like you you could,
you could have we'd make a work we'd make a
work tape. Remember we're not going off of we're not

(01:04:29):
using Simpty, all right, so we so you can, So
you could do that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
You could do the track.

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
And let's say you used I don't know, nineteen tracks
or whatever. You could take those two tracks, bounce them
to two, bounce them to two tracks, right, put them
on to a half inch tape or whatever. Play the
half inch tape back to the twenty four track, and
now you have two tracks. Now that leaves you with
twenty two tracks to work with technically twenty one because
you couldn't go on the Simpty track and you weren't
supposed to go to the track next to the Sempty

(01:04:58):
twenty three.

Speaker 2 (01:04:59):
But we always he still did that rule.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
Yeah, we broke that rule. So anyway, so that would
give us a thing. So if we did a harmony,
so let's say we did sixteen tracks of a four
part harmony, four times sixteen tracks, we'd take that harmony,
bounced it too, two tracks. So now it would just
be a stereo mix. We couldn't change it, and we
would always trust that it was good, that it was
okay yea. And so it was great though, because you

(01:05:24):
couldn't go back and do stuff, and normally the decision
you made on the spot was always the best decision.
It wasn't about going back and tweaking it and oh
we should have done it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
You know, it has a song bit you in the
ass during the mix down, like a damn like uh.

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
No, actually not not really. We had we had an
engineer back in the day. We had an engine named
Tavey Mote back when we were doing a song called
Heartbreaker with Climax, which I'm not even sure of that
song actually, yeah, I did come out.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
I think it did, but.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
It was on one of those twenty four hour sessions.
And he decided that he could spot RaSE something on
the tape on the master tape of a vocal thing,
and we were like, no, it's okay, Tobby, we can
just mute it on the board.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
No, no, I can do it. I can do it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
And so normally on tape what you do is you
put the tape into the position and then you'd hit record.
But you wouldn't go play the tape, you just hit
record and just get rid of that one little spot.
He said, no, I can do it on the fly.
So it's like okay, And the word was the word.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
Was fresh, let me get this ready. So the lyric.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Was a heartbreaker, so fresh right, and then there was
like a fresh click, so he said, I get rid
of it. So he goes, we do it a heartbreaker,
so fresh click. I missed it. It's okay, man, we
can just mute it. No, no, I got it a heartbreaker
so fresh click.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
Ah, man, I missed it again.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
Now it's okay, Tobby, really now I got it this
time our break, So.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
I think I think I got it, and we're like, yeah,
you got it half of words.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
And it made us change the song so that instead
of instead of it's saying that, it would say it
every other time. Well, so we would just go U,
I'm so good, I'm such a mess, and then we'd
leave it blank. So I mean, so no. But but
you know that was a crazy mistake and that never

(01:07:34):
happened again, and we never worked with Taby again.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
Wait a minute, wait, you just said something though, So
if you really didn't believe in Sempty and weren't lining
up stuff. Then how did those cool summer mixes turn
out so perfect?

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
Because we would wild sync.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
I'm a DJ, I can hate you right now, man,
So so it was Clive the mix. Yeah, the cool
summer mixes were fun, so hell yeah, we were fun. Yeah,
so we would. So we would just take I usually
would take like the eight o eight or something, and
I would just sink it like so, I would just
have the eight o eight on a track or two
tracks or whatever. I'd play the original tape right and

(01:08:17):
then I'd uh, and then I turned the drum machine
on at the same time. I'd kind of adjust the speed.
When it locked up, i'd hit record. When it drilled,
i'd stop and then we'd started up again, and when
it hit and then I'd go in.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
So it just it just was a process. We had it.
We had it down a DJ. Yeah, I was I
can't do any of that stuff anymore, but but no,
I can match.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
I can match. I can match that kind of stuff.
And then we go back and then and then you know,
just re record the keyboards and stuff on that. I'll
tell you an interesting uh, I'm sorry, every story veers
off the cool summer mixes is the reason we ended
up working with George Michael.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
So when we did Monkey.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
Monkey, if you remember, he had Monkey on the album,
the record right right, and he called us and he said, hey,
I want you guys to do a remix of Monkey
and we said, okay, cool, and we said, well, what
do you want?

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
What are you looking for exactly? He said?

Speaker 3 (01:09:19):
He said, Okay, you know those cool summer mixes you do.
He says, you know how you put chords on it,
but it still stays funky. He said, that's what I
was trying to do on that record, and every time
I tried to put chords on it, it wouldn't be funky.
And we were like, okay, yeah, cool summers, Okay, yeah, yeah,
we got it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
We can do that, right.

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
So then when he heard what we were doing, he said,
oh no, I got to re sing it now. And
so that's how it turned from a remix to a production,
and that's how it ended up going. If you have
the version of the album that was made after I
don't know a million copies or however, they yeah, it
had our version on it, because that was what he
always envisioned the song as being and have.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
You heard the Nasty Cool Summer mix.

Speaker 4 (01:10:00):
I mean they released it on the on the talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
The Herb remix and I was talking about the Diamond
Diamonds Nasty.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Yeah twelve Okay, totally.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Like yeah, yeah, anyway, yeah damn this cool Summer mix.
Are there mixes that didn't see the light of day
that you guys did?

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
No? I don't. I don't think so. So I think
I mean we pretty much did them. We always do.
I mean, I love doing it. It was always a
lot of fun, and I always liked the idea of
it was really two chains of thought because sometimes remixes
back in the day, your remix was just you know,
the drums would be fatter or which it would literally
be a remix where you wouldn't really be changing a lot,

(01:10:50):
but just more the sounds you echo here, you do that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
But I felt that was the.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
Best lesson you guys learned from Prince because the first
time I heard someone totally like that little Corvette remix
that totally, I was like, Oh, you put something in
the relative minor and make it a whole new song,
and that's sort of thing, and that's what you guys
were doing to like those songs, like totally making them
new again, right, which I thought, Okay, now, maybe she'll

(01:11:18):
do this in concert that way and that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
Sometimes she did, actually sometimes she did, which was kind
of cool.

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
But no, I I enjoyed doing that. It was just
a cool creative way of doing it. I remember we did.
Like one of my favorite ones was Crucial Addition Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:11:35):
Yes, yes remix, Yeah yesh re released.

Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
They just put out yep. Yeah see, I like that
kind of stuff. Was always really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
That one where Ll wrote Mike Bivens rhyme and he
gave him a shout out for Okay, I have.

Speaker 6 (01:11:50):
Two things we need to talk about really quickly. One, uh,
my favorite remix you guys ever did was were twelve
inches Schrelle's Fragile Handle with Care with the extended percussion.
This is a gift from God, Thank you very much.
Second new Edition Heartbreak album. The interlude, What is what
is Ralph saying? Yo, jam hit the button?

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
Now?

Speaker 3 (01:12:13):
Okay, so what he's saying is he's saying the Alps button,
the Alps button, right, But what it actually is is
the OX But it sounded like that because they never

(01:12:35):
called it the OX button. They just knew in the
ALPS button, so they knew in the middle of the
board there was the button that you pressed when you
wanted to hear it loud over the speakers whatever we
were mixing, and there was this button and it said
OX on it, and that was what it was. You
pressed that button and then everything came back loud and

(01:12:56):
on the big speakers. So that was the whole thing.
So every record, when we got done, they would say
and then just turned into this kind of running thing,
and we just said, oh, let's put that on that
on the record because it's just kind of funny.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
But yeah, I figure that wait now, okay, okay, okay,
I see now I gotta hear Jill, Mike don't even
sweat it. Jim hit the out button. So that's funny.

(01:13:28):
But no, we we we love doing once again. That
was an album.

Speaker 3 (01:13:33):
The great thing about that album we talked about hearsay.
We didn't talk about it, but we talked about it offline.
Those records. We controlled those records, the sequencing of the records,
all of the songs, even if we didn't do them.
We were like the executive producers, and so the ability
to put to humanize those records by putting little things

(01:13:54):
like that into it, or the interludes on Hearsay where
they're at a party.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
And the whole thing. You know, Yes, I hate to
be the bear of bad news exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:14:04):
So I mean that to me was why those albums
they were actual albums to me. And that was always
like a running concept exactly, and that was that was
always the goal, and the sequencing was always really really important.
And at a certain point when everything became very piecemeal
and you did your one song and you really had
no say so. I I never liked the idea of that,

(01:14:27):
but I mean it is what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
You just do what you're You're asked to do two songs,
so you do your two songs.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
But I like the idea of I always wanted to
know why with the Human League's record, was it that
concept not allowed to fly?

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
Like? Was that more of a tug a war situation or.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
Just Human League was interesting because there was a lot
of uh, well okay, So first of all, Human League
was a.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
Guys get the swing. They were they were up for anything.
I mean that that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
They were very cool, I must say, uh and Phil Okie,
particularly the lead singer was amazing, dude, amazing dude. You
guys were there to do it or no, they flew
to us, Okay, So it was weird. So you got
these guys coming from England, not even London, England, but Sheffield, England,
which is you know, small town coming to Minneapolis and

(01:15:21):
the dead of winner. Uh to work with you know,
two blokes, two black blokes, I guess, uh, you know,
it was a bit of a culture shock, I guess,
I would say. And Uh, the underlying kind of elephant
in the room that whole record was that Phil the
lead singer, was going out with one of the girls

(01:15:43):
in the group.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
And so I think it was Joe Anne, I think
the darkhaired girl.

Speaker 5 (01:15:51):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:15:52):
So it set up this interesting thing because they had
already written a bunch of the songs themselves and they
just wanted us to produce them and that was great,
but then they wanted us to add our own songs
to him. So it was like, okay, cool.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
And uh.

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
That was the first album that Steve Hodge actually engineered
for us, because we engineered the Control album basically ourselves,
and Steve kind of fixed it because we recorded it
totally wrong. When we did it, but he fixed it.
But he said, I'm gonna come up and show you
guys how to record. So that Human League is actually
sonically is probably one of our best albums because it's

(01:16:27):
really done well. But the idea of creating was interesting
because you know, we had the songs. They were down
with the songs, but in particular Human Terry did the
vocal on that song, produced a vocal on it, and
it was like a week at least a week of
every day because think about you almost have to unteach
Phil how to sing because Phil was always very robotic

(01:16:49):
and always very stiff.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
And you know what I'm saying, you made them sound human, yea, yeah, human.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
But that took.

Speaker 3 (01:16:57):
It took a lot of so Terry, that was a
Terry Lewis masterpiece to me. And I remember hearing the
finished vocal and just going, man, that's amazing. And I
remember watching his face as he listened to because after
he did the vocal, then Terry comped the vocal and everything,
and I remember watching his face and he just was
like amazed how we sounded right. And so we went

(01:17:21):
and when we did the backgrounds, actually the backgrounds on
the song is Lisa Keith and Terry. They're the ones
that are doing the ooh human. That's a combination of
those guys. Because Terry used to also be mister background.
He used to call him mister background. So anyway, I
remember we played it and philm was like, Wow, that's
really good. We were all like, wow, that's great. That

(01:17:42):
sounds great. And I remember the girls being like, who's
that other girl singing on the track and we said, oh,
it's yeah. We said, oh that's Lisa Keith.

Speaker 7 (01:17:54):
Hmm.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
Not sure. We like that.

Speaker 3 (01:17:56):
Not sure, we fancy that such and such and such
and such, you know, we we didn't get a chance
to sing, and you know, whatever whatever whatever. And we
were like, okay, well, you know, we'll figure it out
tomorrow or whatever whatever whatever. So they left and Terry
was like, they can't sing this and so and we're like, yeah,
we know. I mean, it's not that they couldn't sing,

(01:18:17):
but for this particular song that texting them we're trying
to do, it didn't fit. So that's when Terry came
up with the idea, is I'm going to give him
a spoken part that was the olive branch. So we're
gonna do this, we're gonna do the spoken part. But
before the olive branch happened. Oh, the next day Phil.

(01:18:39):
The next day, Phil came back to the studio and uh,
everybody was with him, but only he came in the
room and he kind of walks in the room and
he has this look on his face and we said,
what's up, Phil, how's it going. He says good, good,
and uh, we said what's going on? And he goes,

(01:19:00):
I just have to say that we're against the other
girl being on the track. And Terry and I said huh,
and he says, I just have to say we're against
that other girl being on the track. So me and

(01:19:26):
Terry look at each other and he says it again.
And then we said, oh, oh, okay, you just have
to say you're against the girl being on the track.
And he says, yes, I have to say. I mean

(01:19:48):
we said we got you, we got you. Don't worry
about it. We got it because we know what went home?
He went home with the girl, you know, to the hotel,
and she was in his year all night or whatever
the heck it was.

Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
They didn't get a smoke. Then no, I would have known.
I would have not known any different than you know.

Speaker 3 (01:20:07):
It was very funny. So he did his thing. It's like, okay,
fill you're off the hook. You told us what you
needed to tell us. What she said, you tell that's great.
We came in, uh we did you know? Terry showed
the girl joeanned I think did the part and she said,
here you go, this is the part you're doing right,
We're done with the song. Song's totally done. I don't
know at that point whether they beefed to the record

(01:20:29):
company or whoever it was, and we just said okay,
and we've I don't think to this. I don't remember
us ever ever doing this on any other project, certainly
not to that point. But we just said, here's our thing.
The songs that they brought that they did, they can
mix them however the heck they want to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
They got it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:51):
The songs that we did were mixing exactly the way
we want them, and as far as human goes, if
we don't get to do it the way we want
to do it, we're just taking it off the record.
And they were like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
you really did hit the but.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
But that might have been the only time that that happened.

Speaker 3 (01:21:14):
And it was interesting because I've read some articles where
Phil has talked about making the record now and he
says we were puppets and whatever. He has a whole
different kind of recollection of it than we do, and
you know, hey, that's the way, you know. But it's
like you hired us to make your record. You had
made your record basically as demos, and you wanted us

(01:21:36):
to do it our way. So basically it was like
taking what they did and then I would play the
parts or I would have them play the parts or
whatever it was. But it was just you hired us,
We did what you hired us to do. There was
no puppet anything to me. And that was the only.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
So I can assume that they didn't write I Need
You Love, Oh no, no no, But did they write
the last song, the song that closes the record? Nothing
else even matters or a yeah, okay, yeah, so yeah.
But I was gonna say, like, if you're given the
Human League and you know their history, it's it's very

(01:22:13):
telling that you really brought them to your side of.

Speaker 5 (01:22:16):
The fence, brought them down to our.

Speaker 1 (01:22:18):
World, as opposed to because I would have figured that
you guys would have been like all right, announced, all right.
So Prince's concept with the family was you wanna get
some of that Duran Durram money, right. You didn't think
at one point like, yo, now's really time for us
to show cash me off all the all the all

(01:22:38):
the Middle America, like all the Middle America am radio
shit that we've learned, we can now use them as
the calling card.

Speaker 3 (01:22:46):
But no, because we didn't feel that they that was
what they necessarily were. I mean, they had obviously big records,
but there was a reason that they had come to
us anyway to me, even with the big records that
they had, because I remember Fascination was one of my
I mean, Don't You Want Me was great, but Fascination
was my record.

Speaker 2 (01:23:03):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (01:23:05):
So to me, the fact that they were coming to
us was you're coming to us for a reason, and
it's not to make a pop radio it's to make.

Speaker 2 (01:23:12):
I'm just saying, like a song like I Need You Loving.

Speaker 1 (01:23:16):
Yeah, you don't think Alex would have tore the ship
out of it?

Speaker 3 (01:23:20):
Of course he would have. Yeah, Okay, yeah, I agree,
I agree with that. But it was fun. They listen,
they we played them stuff and they picked the stuff
they like, they liked that song, they loved they loved
that record, and we like the idea of doing a
record like that on them because it's not the kind
of record you would expect, you know, to hear from them.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
Yeah, I did not expect that. Totally did not expect that.

Speaker 4 (01:23:42):
Me and Zoe we covered Humans some years back on
the on our eighties record because.

Speaker 2 (01:23:48):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
So with It's weird though, because it's like I felt
like Control was your most important record, but I actually
feel like Heartbreak was your make or break record because
what that allowed you to do.

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):
Was really crossed the.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
Bridge into what young people were you know, are into,
which you know, not even I don't even consider it
as like, oh can jam and Lewis handle new Jack Swing?
But more or less like the standard of it, you
know what I mean? Like it, I felt like that

(01:24:46):
was a real make or break record for you that
allowed you to then grab folks that are even younger,
like did you see that? Did you even see that
as a challenge or was it just like, Okay, well
we're just getting new addition, and.

Speaker 3 (01:25:02):
Yeah, I think we just thought we just were just
do a new addition. Like it's like in the moment.
I don't think it's easy to look back historically and
go and you know that that was some sort of
turning point. I mean, it was the first time that
we really it was probably the first time we really
adopted a lot of hip hop into what we were doing,

(01:25:24):
or at least a lot of that kind of sound
and a lot of.

Speaker 1 (01:25:27):
You know, was it a discussion between you two, like, Okay,
now our straight up funk might be dated by eighty
eight eighty nine. We gotta figure out what's going on
in New Jack Swing and that sort of thing, Like
what was your impression like when you first heard the
Guy record and the Key Sweat record and.

Speaker 3 (01:25:45):
Love at first to listen, absolute love. Matter of fact,
I remember having a conversation when the Key Sweat record
came out. I remember having a conversation with Babyface about that.
We were at a club somewhere and I remember we
were talking about it. I said, Man, you heard this dude,
Keith Sweatman, And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I

(01:26:08):
love that record. I love that record. That record sounds
like y'all's record because it sounds because it was if
you think about it, to me, the New Jack Swing record. Now,
I don't know what the first new Jack Swing record,
but the first for me, one of the first New
Jack Swing records was actually nasty and the kind of
fluty string sound on that to me is what I

(01:26:31):
want her was. But they were using Teddy was using more. Yeah,
but that was that same thing. And I remember we
were talking about that, and I remember Facer might have
been La said, well, you know, Keith's cool, but you
know who the real dude on that record is. This
is this kid, Teddy Riley. He's like the dude. And

(01:26:52):
we're like, oh, really, who's it? Oh he produced the record,
and we were like, oh shit, okay. So we went
then out of Teddy Riley quest at that point and
trying to find you know, other you know, more records
that he had done because it was just still brand new.
But that was that was an amazing record, an amazing
album too. I mean, so yeah, no, we love that.

(01:27:15):
We've always embraced pretty much what's out there. We've never
really had the attitude of I mean, we certainly have
things we personally like and don't like, but we've never
had the attitude of.

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
You didn't scoff at some of the patches like some
of those like Stanley Brown cheesy saxophone, like I think.

Speaker 2 (01:27:35):
Of the saxophone like the greatest love of all.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
Yeah, Like like you weren't scoffing at some of the patches, like.

Speaker 2 (01:27:43):
All right, it was a little amateurist, you know. No,
well I don't think so. I think patches were always classy.

Speaker 3 (01:27:51):
Like you guys always use just presets though, right, Like, yeah,
I was. I was a big preset guy.

Speaker 2 (01:27:56):
Mie.

Speaker 3 (01:27:56):
I said in an article a long time ago and
Keyboard magazine that somebody would give me a keyboard because
because the companies would start was at that point where
people would just give us keyboards, right, and they go, man,
this one's this one's great, man. And the great thing
about it is, man, you can really tweak the sounds.
And I said, I don't want to tweak sounds. Somebody's

(01:28:16):
getting paid a bunch of money to put really great
sounds in this. I shouldn't have to tweak it. I
should go through the presets. And when I go through
the presets and I don't come up with a song idea,
that keyboard is going back.

Speaker 2 (01:28:29):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:28:30):
So if I get so, if I get a keyboard,
like so we're you know, uh, probably one of my
favorite all time was in Sonic. And you know, in
Sonic's funny because in Sonic got no respect as a
keyboard company. Anne, but control the horn hits the horn

(01:28:50):
hits Son. When I think of you for a mirage,
the sound on Nasty, the goo goo going on that mirage,
the little fluty sound on Nasty mirage, the Janet Jackson's signature.

Speaker 2 (01:29:05):
Really because I was really the barage.

Speaker 3 (01:29:09):
So I said in an article I just mentioned, I said,
oh yeah, that's a mirage.

Speaker 2 (01:29:13):
Pset, like I could have those noises.

Speaker 3 (01:29:16):
Yeah, yeah, they're actually floppy this because they're samples. They're floppy.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
D'Angel probably got this. Just wait for that.

Speaker 3 (01:29:24):
They're not bad, yeah right, So I mean that was
the thing. So that keyboard inspired there would be wouldn't
be nasty without that sound. Okay, so these the keyboard
inspired that sound. So I was in a Sonic keyboard
fan just from that. I remember they sent us a
whole bunch of other keyboards, but the one they sent
us was this keyboard called I think it was called
an MR seventy six and not to skip around, but

(01:29:49):
velvet rope.

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
Ninety percent of that.

Speaker 3 (01:29:53):
Is Mr seventy six keyboard, the drum loops, all the
road sounds, all the you use, all the stock stuff.
I use all the stock stuff, yes, because to me crazy, Yeah.
But the thing is to me is and obviously and
did not and I can't diminish it. I mean I
can't not diminish it. I can't put enough importance on

(01:30:16):
Steve Hodge mixed it. So Steve Hodge made it sound
the best that could sound. But a lot of stuff
we talked about, Uh, let's see body that loves you
we mentioned earlier. I'm trying to think of another song anytime,
any place, for instance. Part of it is the way
that you play the patches. You know, a sax patch

(01:30:37):
can sound totally cheesy if somebody plays it, if they
don't play it like a sax player, Like I'll tell
you that one.

Speaker 2 (01:30:44):
I'll have to give you one. That's the way love goes.
So the the guitar part that.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
Goes bank bink right, No, it's a S three.

Speaker 1 (01:30:59):
I don't even have an always say that I'm sorry,
this is all I got, my god really yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31:08):
So, but but the way you play it, if you
play like it, yeah, but if you play it like
a if you played like that's.

Speaker 2 (01:31:13):
A keyboard, yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31:17):
And so if you somebody, if you play it like
a guitar player would play it. And see that's where
Terry would come in, because Terry, if I did something
like that, he'd say, guitar wouldn't play it like that,
or bass player wouldn't play it like that. And so
he always kept me. So whenever I played him a
track and I did like guitar, my little fake guitar
stuff on it, if he said, oh man, who did

(01:31:40):
you get to play guitar?

Speaker 2 (01:31:42):
I knew I had something.

Speaker 3 (01:31:43):
So anytime any places one where there's it kind of
sounds like a jazz guitar. This guy goes plute, it
sounds like a like a.

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
Uh Wes Montgomery. I was thinking of Ronnie.

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):
He just passed away it. No, no, no, not even
Ronnie Foster. He's from London, he told me from.

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
Damn Yeah, Ronnie Jordan's. I don't know Ronnie Jordan's keep
saying he passed away. Yeah. I thought, like, you guys
have Ronnie Jordan's or somebody that.

Speaker 3 (01:32:40):
Know every like on that particular song. If I'm not mistaken,
I think every instrument on that song is from the
same keyboard and it's all it's all uh, it's all
stock sounds. I'll give you one more like that. If
no guitars on it.

Speaker 4 (01:32:57):
Wow, just think of the opening.

Speaker 2 (01:33:02):
No guitar okay, I can put the whaling guitar.

Speaker 5 (01:33:07):
Guitar okay.

Speaker 3 (01:33:08):
So you kind of you you mentioned something which tells
me that there's still a level of respect between you two.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
But what song have you two done and which.

Speaker 1 (01:33:20):
It could have gone to humanly confrontational levels?

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):
Have you t ever argued Terry and I Yes, No,
what No? Have you ever ever this far?

Speaker 3 (01:33:33):
No, not even close. We haven't even raised We've never
we've never even raised our voices at any.

Speaker 1 (01:33:40):
At least passive aggressive, like we're passive aggressive, like POKEM
in the eye or anything.

Speaker 2 (01:33:50):
No, we never have.

Speaker 3 (01:33:53):
It's you know, it's a it's a unique relationship because
it's over the years it's just kind of evolved into.
First of all, there's we're not joined at the hip.
There's a thought that were joined at the hip and
we do everything together, and I think if we did,
there would probably be more of a you know, a
friction or something that could just happen just because of

(01:34:15):
being in proximity to somebody so much. But we live
different lives. We have, you know, for instance, I you know, well,
here's a good example. I do an interview, although Terry's
actually under under the weather today. But I like talking
music in that and Terry does too, but not to

(01:34:36):
the degree I do, you know, But it's what makes me.

Speaker 2 (01:34:40):
Be out after an hour have this. Yeah, oh yeah,
he would have been. He would have been long on long.

Speaker 3 (01:34:46):
He would have actually, he would he would probably enjoy. Well, no,
he wouldn't, but he would no, but he he, he
would enjoy. He would enjoy talking to you if we
were at dinner and we were just hanging out and
having dinner and talking, you guys would have a great
conversation with him. He because he's such an amazing mind,

(01:35:09):
and also talking about his lyrics.

Speaker 2 (01:35:11):
See.

Speaker 3 (01:35:11):
The thing it's great about lyrics with him is that
part of the beauty of a great lyricist is you
can say what you need to say in a few words.
And I'm very long winded, and so that's the reason
I think I'm not necessarily that good at lyrics. I
can say what I want to say, but it just
takes me too many words to say it, okay. And

(01:35:31):
a perfect example is the Janet record of Living in
the World they didn't make, and we had been watching
it looks like the way see it looks now pretty
much honestly, but just all kinds of just craziness in
the world and school shootings and just all kinds of stuff,
and we just felt like we got to do a
song that addresses that that it's not the kid's fault,

(01:35:55):
it's the world that we've built as adults for the kids.

Speaker 2 (01:35:58):
Right, what does that song need to be? So we're like,
we need Terry, right.

Speaker 3 (01:36:05):
Because it was just me and Janet talking about it,
and Terry was actually at the time at our then
our new studio putting you know, we were building it
at the time. So Terry walks in the door of
our old play we're still at our old place. He
walks in the door with like carpet samples and all
kinds of stuff. We're like, jan what do you think
about the carpet sample and then whatever whatever? No, no, Terry,

(01:36:25):
we need lyrics, man, we need lyrics. He said, okay,
what's the concept? And I said okay, because man, these kids,
man parents are making the bad decisions, and the adults
are making the bad decisions, and the kids pay for
the mistakes that we make and such and such, and
I go into this big long thing, and Terry at
the end of it just goes living in the world
they didn't make, walks into the room ten minutes later,

(01:36:47):
hands Jenet the lyrics and goes here you go wow,
so damn yeah, so that's and then he goes no,
which Carpet staw no and s And Terry is a
really good multitasker too, so he could he could do that.
His brain could work like that.

Speaker 2 (01:37:05):
But that was the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:37:07):
But because we're not joined at the hip, and we
each have things that we do really well. Even in
picking projects very much like picking you know, what radio
show to do, for instance, or podcast or whatever, whatever
the decision is, sometimes we if we neither of us
feel it, then it's just a no, you know. If

(01:37:30):
one of us feels it, then it's like, you know,
we'll explain to the other why we feel good about it,
and we just kind of know now, you know. I
remember I mentioned your show to Terry, you know, three
four or five months ago and stuff, and I said,
you know we should do Questlo show, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever,

(01:37:51):
you know, what's the show about us? So it's just
like it's really good, it's really in depth, and you know,
it's kind of cool. He said, oh yeah, okay, yeah,
it sounds okay, it's interesting. You know, it's like here
he goes, but I love I love quest Love. Yeah, okay,
but not I love I'll do it. I just I
love quest Love.

Speaker 2 (01:38:08):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:38:08):
So cool, Okay, so I know that going into it,
it's like okay, no, So then I'm like, okay, is
that something? But no, I I really want to do it,
and I and I think it would be interesting to
do it, would be a great conversation whatever. Okay, So
that's why. But we do projects the same way. And
I swear to God, there's there's there's people that will
swear to God that Terry does all the work and

(01:38:31):
I don't do a thing. And there's and there's people
that will swear that Terry doesn't do a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:38:38):
I feel like your pen and he's teller, like no, no, no,
I think he doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (01:38:47):
But because we don't have a gauge for his personality
that I'm just trying to figure out. Okay, Penna Teller
is an interesting and now I thought you were the
lyrics guy because you talk to the most of the two.

Speaker 3 (01:39:00):
Right, No, I'm not, I'm not. I remember one of
the songs I actually did a lot of the lyrics.
Song was just be good to Me. And I remember
thinking the whole time I was writing it, this is
way too long.

Speaker 2 (01:39:13):
And six minutes. Yeah, I remember that.

Speaker 3 (01:39:17):
I remember that, and and I remember it was funny
because I also remember like Saturday Love, like I came
up with the hook on that, and I was like
so embarrassed, like when I was at my house. And
matter of fact, that the piano I wrote it on
is the piano that's downstairs, which is also the Tenderlove piano,

(01:39:37):
by the way, But I had it in my little apartment.
You know, I had my first little apartment stuff, so
I had the piano in there.

Speaker 2 (01:39:44):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:39:44):
So anyway, I write Saturday Love where I have the
chords and stuff, and I got the Sunday Monday Tuesday,
and I'm jamming. I don't think, oh man, this is cool.
So I get to the studio and I'm like, Terry,
I got the song, man, He said, yeah, yeah, what
is it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:58):
And I said, it's like it's like the days of
the week. It's already sounded stupid now coming out of
my mouth, well singing man. And I said, okay, well
it's like Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. And he starts laughing. He says, oh,
that's funny. It's it's like Sesame Street.

Speaker 1 (01:40:19):
I said yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:40:20):
I said yeah, I said, forget it, forget it, forget
it anyway. He said no, no, no, it's cool. It's cool.
I get it, I get it, I get it.

Speaker 3 (01:40:28):
So anyway, we do the song. Here's what we how
much we really didn't think a lot of the song.
The first and second lyrics.

Speaker 2 (01:40:37):
Zach same exactly, second verse, the first second verse save
the first damn. Wow, yeah, why did you freaking see
it's the same, it's lazy afternoon. We just didn't we

(01:41:00):
don't know how to write hooks. It's like we got
to turn this record in tomorrow, just repeat it over again.
So yeah, so that that was the thing. So that
was what we thought of it.

Speaker 3 (01:41:13):
And even when we put it on the album, we
were kind of like, and we remember we released I
Think you Look Good to Me. It's the first single,
and you look good to me, was doing well and
it's moving up the charts, and it was everything was
doing well. And I remember it got to about I
don't know thirty or whatever, and it just kind of
started slowing down.

Speaker 2 (01:41:34):
And we were like going, what the hell is going on?
And so we called the record company.

Speaker 3 (01:41:38):
We said, well, what are we what's going on with
the record And they said, hey, man, everybody's jumping to
this Saturday Love.

Speaker 7 (01:41:42):
And I'm like, I told you because I remember too.
The challenge was if you could really get it in
the right cadence, like you felt.

Speaker 2 (01:41:49):
Good about yourself.

Speaker 7 (01:41:50):
I remember the time when I finally got I was like, yes, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Sday.

Speaker 2 (01:41:55):
Weren't you three when that came?

Speaker 7 (01:41:56):
Didn't remember singing?

Speaker 2 (01:41:58):
It was accomplished. Speaking of which, uh, I've seen Cherrell
open up for Nu Distion once. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:42:09):
Rick Rand and Dan were like dog They were so
freaking charismatic and their own How come Rick Rand and
Dan were not.

Speaker 2 (01:42:19):
Their own group? They were who is?

Speaker 1 (01:42:21):
Rick Randon was like like you remember when Prince had
his Jerome and the two bodyguards like as his pips.

Speaker 2 (01:42:30):
She had her own pips and they was like funky.
They were like straight up like I wanted them to
be a group.

Speaker 3 (01:42:37):
They were a group. Wait, Rick Rannon Dan, they were
a group. They were a group recorded them. Uh well,
we started recording them. You produce the song for Rick, Yes,
But tragically.

Speaker 2 (01:42:53):
Ran Randy uh died in a motorcycle accident.

Speaker 3 (01:42:56):
He was Charuelle's husband's I don't think they were married,
but her boyfriend.

Speaker 2 (01:43:01):
Yeah, Randy ran Oh, Randy who wrote That's Been to
Night for Johnna Gill. Yes. Yeah, so he was so
rand you know that. Yeah, one of my favorite albums.
I love that album. That's my job. I'm supposed to know.
That's why I got the redhead phones.

Speaker 3 (01:43:21):
When Randy Randy was amazing. And I remember Charelle introduced
us to him and uh she said.

Speaker 2 (01:43:28):
Yeah, I want you to meet my boyfriend. Uh, this
is Randy and he's got this group Rick Randon Dan
and whatever. Whatever. We said, Okay, cool, Well we'll check
him out. We'll check him out.

Speaker 3 (01:43:39):
And then so when we did You Look Good to Me,
we put him in the video. We put Rick Randon
on the video of You Look Good to Me. And
the plan was that, yeah, we were going to make
a record with him, like that was the next thing
we were going to do.

Speaker 2 (01:43:52):
They were the first cats I ever seen do the snake.

Speaker 1 (01:43:55):
Yeah, that's right, that's right, the first time I seen
that scene, and so training we all started doing this.

Speaker 3 (01:44:02):
No, they were they were crazy talented. Uh as a
group and uh. But but Randy as a writer and producer,
he did a lot of songs. He did Uh, I'm
trying to think I'm totally blanking, but he produced a
lot of a lot of songs for us back in
the day. Was very, very talented, super nice dude. But

(01:44:25):
he got a motorcycle man, he just was, you know,
and just a motorcycle accident.

Speaker 4 (01:44:30):
Yeah, I want to ask you about Perspective Records and like,
how did when you guys first started was Sounds of Blackness?

Speaker 3 (01:44:37):
You'll very first as Yes, that was very first, very
first act and it Sounds of Blackness was the story
with them?

Speaker 2 (01:44:43):
Was all forty of them signed that contract one hundred
a week. Yeah, yeah, that's right. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:45:01):
The ironic thing about that about that statement though, which
is very true, and it's one of the reasons that
we never criticize Prince's decision because you know, it's kind
of like, it's tough to criticize the boss if you've
never been a boss.

Speaker 2 (01:45:18):
And so.

Speaker 3 (01:45:21):
We didn't agree with a lot of things that Prince did,
but we were in the position we were in because
of the things he did do or you know, or
whatever those decisions were. We looked at where we were
at and realized we wouldn't have been there without those decisions,
even the decision to kick us out the group, which
was the best decision, Yeah, he could have made for us,

(01:45:42):
because we wouldn't have left the group on our own.
It's like, no, we love being with the group, so
you never knows, but yeah, you're absolutely right. That was that,
you know, Sounds of Blackness, Like, that's an expensive group
to get around, and we and we dug in our
pocket to do it because we believed in what it was.

Speaker 2 (01:46:00):
Janet was.

Speaker 3 (01:46:01):
Actually, we took Janet to a show when we were
working on uh Rhythma, and we took her to a show,
and the whole show she was nudging me because the
whole thing about Sounds of Blackness, it was all celebrated
all the different kinds of black music. It wasn't just
it was gospel, but it was jazz, it was blues,
it was everything, and every time they'd launch into a

(01:46:22):
different thing, she nudged me and go, oh they're doing
a jazz song. Oh they're doing a gospel song.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
Oh they're you know. And it was like, yeah, Janet,
that's what they do.

Speaker 3 (01:46:29):
Like we knew them because we would play like on
the same gigs as them, as flight Time, we would play.

Speaker 2 (01:46:35):
Like they were around that long. Yeah oh they yeah,
they were around the s Yeah that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:46:40):
Yeah, same members, same members, same same director and Nesby
and as Gary Hines.

Speaker 2 (01:46:46):
Yeah, they a nice fro Yep.

Speaker 4 (01:46:49):
They were like, guys, it's kind of like Ladiesmith Black Mombazzo,
like they were well.

Speaker 2 (01:46:53):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:46:54):
So so they they were around forever. So when we
started the label and and so Janet said, she said, wow,
you should sign them, and we thought, yeah, we should.
That's a good idea, we should sign it. And so
I remember we talked to Gary after that show and
we said, you know, we want to make a record
with you. Guys were starting a label. And our theory
was real simple to me, which was we wanted to

(01:47:18):
build a big tall building. But in order to build
a big tall building, you got to dig a foundation,
and Sounds of Blackness was our foundation. And Terry would
always say, you know, sometimes you got to give people
not what they want, but what they need, and they
don't know they need it until they hear it, and
then they go, oh man, I needed this.

Speaker 2 (01:47:39):
Yes, And that's what Sounds of Blackness was. Now.

Speaker 3 (01:47:42):
It was funny because there were you know, the business
always comes into it. So we were at A and
M Records, and I remember A and M was still
her Abalpert and Jerry Moss the original to A and
M guys, right, and I remember doing the record, and
I remember the A and M, the guys that were

(01:48:03):
kind of running it at the time. They said we
had them. I stink Sounds of Blackness was in I
want to say Philadelphia. I want to say for like
like a conference or something. Maybe I am or something.

Speaker 2 (01:48:16):
Oh yeah, I am. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:48:18):
So we had them there for the conference. So we said,
and it wasn't the whole group. We had a touring group. Okay,
we had a touring group of twenty of twenty. So
we said, let's we want to take them to New
York and you know, take them to some radio and
do some stuff. Optimistic had just come out as a single,
and they were like, oh, you don't have a budget
for it. There's no budget for that. And we're like, well,
we're already in Philadelphia. I's like, let's just go up

(01:48:40):
to New York. No, it's no budget for it. So
we're like okay. So we just went in our pockets
and just said here, here's what we're going to do.
We're gonna go to New York. And at the time,
I can't remember. I think Frankie might have still been
to beat BLS at the time, I can't remember, right,
And we just called the radio stations. It's like, hey,
it's Jam and Lewis. Can we bring a group And

(01:49:00):
everybody was like, yeah, yeah, bring them by. And we'd
bring them to the station and they'd sing and blow
everybody away, and then we'd be like we think we'd
be there for fifteen minutes. We'd be on there for
two hours, right, So we leave the station, the phones
would all be lighting up and stuff, and then we
go to like what Sylvia's I think was the place
back then, right, So we'd go to Sylvia's and we'd

(01:49:21):
and we'd eat, you know, we'd feed everybody. But then
they treat everybody to a show the chefs. We'd have
the chefs and everybody come out and stuff. And right,
So when we left New York and went back to
well to Minneapolis, actually not to LA. When we back
to Minneapolis the next week, the record got to like

(01:49:43):
I didn't know on both whatever the two outlets were
at the time, We're both like sixty seventy spins a week,
like huge, and they're all going, you know, all the
marketing and all the people that they're going, what happened
with this? What's going on with the Sounds of Blackness record?
I said, well, we took them to New York, like
we said, and you know they have that kind of impact.

(01:50:04):
We just need to get them out.

Speaker 2 (01:50:05):
So I remember Herb called me and he said he said, hey, Jam,
it's Herb And I said, oh, Herb, I said, great news, man.

Speaker 3 (01:50:20):
I said, we're number one most added this Sounds a
Blackness record and for this and that you know, we
got this many spins and we got whatever whatever. And
Herb says, I didn't call it here that bullshit. He said,
I called to tell you that I am so proud
to be associated with this record, and you guys that

(01:50:40):
you brought this gift to us at A and M Records,
And I was like wow, I said, okay, thanks man,
he said, that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:50:50):
So I called SO. I called SO.

Speaker 3 (01:50:53):
I called his girl, his assistant, who is still his
assistant to this day, and I said, yeah, I just
got a call from herb about the record.

Speaker 2 (01:51:03):
I said, is he is he there?

Speaker 3 (01:51:04):
I just forgot I was going to say something to him,
and she said, well, you know, it's the funny, funniest thing.

Speaker 2 (01:51:09):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:51:09):
He drove into work and I kept thinking, why isn't
he coming in, Like he's just sitting in his car
and he was just listening to it.

Speaker 2 (01:51:18):
And then she said and then when he came in,
I could tell he had been crying.

Speaker 3 (01:51:23):
WHOA right? And I was like wow, I said okay.
I said, okay, well thanks, don't bother him, you know,
I said, it's all good. We spoke already whatever. She said, okay.
But the fact that that record had that impact on him,
it said so much about to me that we were
doing the right thing, but also that we were with

(01:51:45):
the right partners who understood what it was we were
trying to do in our vision of what we wanted
to do and what we wanted the record company to be. Unfortunately,
PolyGram came in and bought him out, cashed him out
for I don't know, three hundred million or whatever he was,
and what I call the new A and M, which
was Al Kafaro and Milt Olan came in and honestly,

(01:52:10):
Milt was just a numbers guy, business affairs guy, and
everything was about how much something costs whatever. And al
bless his heart, was just a He inherited us, and
he looked at our deal and saw that our deal
was against his bottom line because our deal was it
was a huge deal because Herb and Jerry were like

(01:52:32):
we At first, they say, we can't afford you. But
then when they knew the PolyGram money was coming, they
called and said we can afford you now.

Speaker 2 (01:52:38):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:52:39):
So it was cool and but it never was the
same right down to the Grammys. I remember that year
the Grammys. A and M had They were in New
York that year and I remember A and M had,
I think the police are staying or whatever, and show
Crow and they had all these records that were up
for awards. The only one that won a Grammy that
night was the Blackness and I remember running into Milt

(01:53:02):
Olan on the in the elevator, you know, coming down
the stairs somewhere and uh and I said, hey, Milk,
I said, great night, huh and he said, yeah, yeah,
great for you guys. And I said, what do you
mean great for you? He said, oh, great, it's great
for you. Yeah, you guys want And I said, well
we want. I thought, we're partners. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:53:24):
that's true. Yeah, yeah, you're right. And I thought, man,
I thought, okay, so here's where we're at now. We're
from her calling me crying.

Speaker 2 (01:53:31):
To this and it was doomed. It was doomed mid conditions.

Speaker 3 (01:53:36):
I mean, the records that were successful were successful despite
you know, the folks that were there.

Speaker 7 (01:53:41):
As a Christmas record.

Speaker 3 (01:53:44):
This sounds a blast, this yeah, soul holiday, I mean,
but once again it's I mean, it was like all
the things that we wanted to do, we just did them,
but we who no, because this was after that. This
was see we're talking Janet wo Divirgin in ninety three

(01:54:06):
Sounds of Blackness. We're ninety one. So but but that
was part of the problem is because we got asked
why when we brought Sounds of Blackness. The question we
were asked, not by Herb and Jerry, who Herb obviously
loved what we brought, right, but the Al Cafaro milk

(01:54:30):
Own regime ask we gave you all this money, why
didn't you bring us another Janet Jackson record or bring
us an act like Jana Jackson. And it's like, well,
because we have a plan of what we're gonna do,
We're gonna build that. I mean, just watch what we do.
Just let us do our thing. We know what we're doing,
at least we think we do. But we're gonna create

(01:54:52):
some great records for you. And so we did the
we did the Sounds of Blackness record. We follow that
up with the Men Condition record, the very first one,
first one, Yeah, meant to be meant so I'll listen
to that record. Said there's no hits on this record.
We said, wow, okay, So we said okay, So Sheila Eldridge,

(01:55:14):
who you guys probably know, So Sheila. We went to
Sheila and we said, Sheila, what can we do to
drum up some support for we got this single coming
out pretty Brown Eyes whatever, we're breaking my heart? And
she said, oh, let's do a uh, let's go to
the colleges in the DC area and stuff, and we'll
do like a video contest and whoever comes up with
the video remember that.

Speaker 7 (01:55:33):
Yes, And it was a Howard Girl, the Howard Girl
one yes, yes, but not for the second single for it.

Speaker 2 (01:55:40):
So that was the concept.

Speaker 3 (01:55:41):
So Terry went out with him in like a win
of Bago, like he was staying at like hotels and
didn't the fax machines.

Speaker 2 (01:55:47):
They didn't even have fax machine at the hotel.

Speaker 3 (01:55:49):
I'm like, hey, man, can I send the facts to you,
Terry Man, I ain't no facts of this roach motel.

Speaker 2 (01:55:55):
At the company. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:55:57):
So it was like one of those kinds of things.
So all of a sudden, I remember we're sitting in
the marketing meeting and you know, everybody's sitting around the
table and everybody's talking about you know, you name whatever
Indie White act. You could sold one hundred copies somewhere. Oh,
we sold one hundred copies in Des Moines. Yeah that's awesome. Yeah,

(01:56:20):
and then we got sticks and Stones over here and
they sold fifty copies in the in uh, you know,
min not North Dakota.

Speaker 2 (01:56:28):
Oh that's awesome. Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 3 (01:56:32):
What do you guys got end of the meeting, what
do you guys got And we said, okay, well we
have and the guy goes, oh my god, you guys
got seventy five spins at the pop station in DC.

Speaker 2 (01:56:47):
What is this song? Who is this great? We're like,
oh yeah, men.

Speaker 3 (01:56:52):
Condition oh my god, this record is How'd that happen?
And I said, well, Terry got in a Winnebago and
we did a video contest and they were like, oh
my god. And the next thing you know, we had
a top five pop record on the album with no hits. Literally,
we had to prove ourselves over and over and over.

(01:57:13):
No matter what we did, we came up with a
low key record next straight to number one on the
R and B charts.

Speaker 5 (01:57:21):
That's that.

Speaker 2 (01:57:21):
I got a thing for you. I got a thing
for you. You know something now that you mention it.
The first do you remember the first time we met? No?
Oh yes, at college at that college out door. Hey,
I forgot yes, yes, yes, what was the name India
little Red Boot? Yes? Uh, Angel Angel, that's right, Yeah,

(01:57:44):
I forgot that, you guys.

Speaker 1 (01:57:45):
And that's a thing when someone when the college promoters said, hey,
Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis out there, they want to
know if they can open for you guys real quick,
and we almost lost it life. Who that's like Jimmy
Jammin's lows want to open for us, Like we totally
didn't get the context that it was then, and I

(01:58:07):
was just mind blown that you guys were that accessible.
You were like, are idols freaking promoting with your artists,
Like I've never seen such a thing where.

Speaker 3 (01:58:18):
It's like, you know, we were always big believers in
that though, because even when we knew the perspective, we
knew we were done in perspective, our deal was almost up.

Speaker 2 (01:58:29):
How was the deal? Was it like for a number
of albums that tried to play with out No, it was.

Speaker 3 (01:58:33):
Just it was just a number of years, and it
kind of changed as it happened because when we first started,
we went in just it was a joint venture and
we went in and we basically were going to just release,
you know, three records a year or whatever. That then
turned in they were shutting the whole black music department
down of A and M. There was a there was
a whole thing where a lot of the companies started
just losing the black music department. So what they said

(01:58:55):
to us is, why don't you guys just take over
the black music department, which was great because we inherited
the Very White record, which nobody thought was a hit
and uh yeah with a practice what you mention all
that stuff right? And they said, oh, that's not a hit,
and we like took it over. And the funny thing
was we took the record over, but then when a
record went number one, yeah it was a and m
oh a and m yeah we did it, and we're going, okay,

(01:59:18):
well we actually Champion didn't work that song, but okay. Anyway,
so as we got toward the end of the deal,
we had this group called Solo. I discovered discovered a
Mona Street corner in New York, actually fell in love
with him, made the record, and that was the only
record probably I would say on an m that they

(01:59:40):
really I remember Alcafaro coming to town and saying, we
want you guys to stay and we're going to show
you what we can do with this solo record. And
I think we ended up doing like eight hundred thousand
units on that record, so it was a very successful record.
They actually got us our only time ever working with
Hype Williams. We actually got a real video budget and

(02:00:04):
you know, all of those things. But what we knew
we were leaving. So our whole thing was we had
an an Nesby record, and we had the Mint record.

Speaker 2 (02:00:12):
With uh what kind of man would I definition? Definition
of the band?

Speaker 3 (02:00:19):
So we had those records and we wanted to make
sure that when we left, those records were set up
as good as possible, like we can get you to
the goal line, you guys got to get it over
because we're not going to be there, but we're going
to get it as far as we possibly can. And
I remember we did we wanted to go visit the branches,
right because you know there's people that are working in
these branches, because this is still in the the physical distribution, right,

(02:00:43):
so you're taking records to stores, you're doing this right.
Our whole thing was, man, let's go visit these people,
and we'll take mid Condition with us, and we'll take
UH and Nesby with us.

Speaker 2 (02:00:52):
And well that's important. That was the it was the
most important thing. Well they didn't think it was important.
We thought it was important. So once again we've I
asked ourselves. We just did it ourselves.

Speaker 3 (02:01:02):
So what we did is we went We called the
brand and the branches were like, what do you mean
you want to bring them by? We said, we just
want to bring them by. Like what time do you
guys do lunch? You guys have like a lunch hour
or something, you have like a lunch room or something,
and they're like yeah, And I was like.

Speaker 2 (02:01:13):
Okay, we're coming.

Speaker 3 (02:01:14):
So the employees would all be in there eating lunch,
we'd all bust in. We'd go, hey, we're jam and
Lewis and whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:01:18):
And everybody.

Speaker 7 (02:01:21):
Started because started doing of course.

Speaker 2 (02:01:25):
Of course, because it was we did it too. It's
important though to me it's important. It's like because how
did you know? That was important?

Speaker 3 (02:01:33):
Because it was we were getting to the age of
it was fax machines, the beginning of the Internet was happening.
The idea of cell phones were beginning to happen. It
was kind of the idea that you didn't you know,
two way pages. It was the idea of personalization was
out of it, you know, where you weren't really spending
personal time with people, and to me, that was getting lost.

(02:01:58):
Plus there was it's kind of this thing where the
stars were here, but the people really in the trenches
that were doing the work were getting no respect. And
as people that we felt always felt we started in
the trenches.

Speaker 2 (02:02:11):
I mean, I'm the guy.

Speaker 3 (02:02:12):
Remember at the beginning of our thing, I'm at the
record store telling the guy order our thousand of these
and we can I'm putting up my little playlist thing
and I'm doing I mean, that was my thing, and
Terry the same way. We were like entrepreneurs. We were
like no, no, no, no, we got It's about the
personal interaction where if I tell somebody this record's going
to be a great record, they trust me because I'm

(02:02:33):
looking in the eye and I'm saying this. So if
we actually bring the talent to them when they're out
there fussing with an account about you know, well we
can only stock this many of them, and you've actually
met the person me, Yeah, it's like no, no, no,
we met these people.

Speaker 2 (02:02:50):
They actually came. And what we would do is we'd visit.

Speaker 3 (02:02:52):
The branch during the day and then at night we
would rent a club out and we'd have everybody come
to the club and we'd invite you know, we'd say,
bring your people, right, and then we do like a
full on performance and we went to like about six
or seven branches and we did that, and I remember
the day or the week we left. I remember, what
kind of man would I be? Was at number two?

(02:03:14):
It was already set to go number one. We already
had the spins.

Speaker 2 (02:03:16):
We knew.

Speaker 3 (02:03:16):
We were sat there Anne's record. I can't remember where
we were at with Anne, but she was like getting
ready to go top ten Urban like she was. She
was there, So we were good. And I remember we left,
and I remember the next week when what kind of
man would I be? When number one? I remember they
called Mint because Stokely told me and they said, see

(02:03:37):
what we can do now the jam and Lewis.

Speaker 2 (02:03:39):
Are off the way.

Speaker 3 (02:03:40):
Wow, I said so and we were laughed and we
were like because I remember they were at a studio
and we were laughing, and I said, okay, I said, well,
just remember we were in the winnebego with y'all, So
just just remember that when it came time to do
that next video, they told him there was no budget

(02:04:03):
for it. And they called us right up and they said,
they just told us there's no budget for the video.
And I said, yeah, they used to tell us that
all the time. They said well, our videos got made.
I said, yeah, because we took the money out of
our pocket and major videos.

Speaker 5 (02:04:14):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:04:15):
So that's what we that's what we dealt with.

Speaker 1 (02:04:18):
And and you know, can I ask though, so we
we did an episode with Babyface and he explained that
the only way for le Face to really be successful
was that those two had to separate. And you know,
Antonio stopped producing and become full time CEO of the label.

Speaker 2 (02:04:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:04:43):
Was there at any point where you thought, Okay, I'm
gonna handle all the music or you handle all the
music and I'm gonna go be Barry Gordy.

Speaker 2 (02:04:53):
Or Clarence Yeah president.

Speaker 3 (02:04:56):
Never, Yeah, never, because that would have been Terry. Terry
would have been the Barry Gordy. And he didn't want
to do it. He liked doing music too much. He
has the business mind and all of that to do it,
and he would sit on the marketing calls and sit
on the promotion calls. I mean it was great because
we learned. I mean, when we inherited the music department,

(02:05:19):
we learned every facet of the record company business, which
was fantastic. That was great. But we talked about it.
It was about one of the shortest conversations we probably
ever had. And it's like, Terry, would you ever think
that you would want to know?

Speaker 2 (02:05:36):
That's it? That was basically it.

Speaker 3 (02:05:38):
I mean that literally, that was basically the conversation because yeah, no,
he had no interest in doing that. He loved making
music too much, and so no, we never really had that.
That conversation and talking about perspective the thing. The thing
I remember too that I always thought, always felt very
proud of and this includes La to this day when
La talks about because the Face was very successful label,

(02:06:03):
but La to this day says to me, like, man,
y'all were like the label that everybody wanted to be
because y'all had sounds of blackness, like you had like
a real group that meant something, and you had, you know,
men condition like a real band, like the last real
band that.

Speaker 2 (02:06:23):
Was out there. And I remember.

Speaker 3 (02:06:27):
That other companies would call for our stuff, like our
promotion people and that you know, would be like, hey,
can you send me such and such and such as
we go who's that? Oh that's so on so over
at Atlantic or that's so and so over whatever, Like
the other labels had more respect for our product than
our own.

Speaker 2 (02:06:48):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (02:06:49):
So, I mean, it was it was a crazy time
and you know, but but it's you know, it's about partnership.
You know, there's a reason me and Terry get along
and and and we've been together for for I've known
term for forty five years, and there's a reason why.
There's also a reason why a partnership with Herb and
Jerry would have been great. We had a potential partnership

(02:07:12):
that we thought we were gonna have with Doug Morris,
and then Doug Morris got kicked way upstairs at Universal.
But Doug Morris used to be like somebody we really
vibed with. He had a piano in his office. He
was great music's music. Yes, yes, that's what I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (02:07:26):
Yeah, yeah, no, he was And that was the great.
That was cool.

Speaker 3 (02:07:29):
And when when back when we mentioned a little red
boat and when you talk about Angel Grant, that was
when we did the label with Universal. That was the
whole thing. That was Doug Morris's thing. And Doug loved
Angel Grant and he said, I love this girl. I
really get it. This is going to be great. And
he would fly when he was flying from LA to

(02:07:50):
New York, he'd stop through Minneapolis along the way, listened
to the.

Speaker 2 (02:07:53):
Sessions, that kind of thing. So he was into it.

Speaker 3 (02:07:58):
Around the time the record came came out, he got
kicked way upstairs to the head right because this whole
thing was Universal was just a little boutique label, and
his whole thing was I'm gonna show people how to
make a label. This is how you're going to do
a label. And so we were part of that kind
of master plan that he had. So when that happened,
all of a sudden, now we're dealing once again with

(02:08:19):
the business affairs guy. No, it wasn't Monty. He was
like the attorney and stuff. He like ran stuff for
a while and it was super nice guy, but just
no offense. He just wasn't the music guy. Like we
got into it to be like with another music guy
and that didn't happen. So, you know, it's just trying
to it's it's it's all about the partnerships and and

(02:08:42):
and the relationships. At the end of the day, it
doesn't really matter what the label is if if it's
the right people in there, it's anywhere as a great
home if it's the right people.

Speaker 2 (02:08:50):
But sometimes it's just not and then you find yourself.

Speaker 3 (02:08:55):
You know, you're just you just spinning your wheels basically
because you're working really hard on something that you really
believe in. But if the people aren't believing it with you,
then nothing's gonna happen with it doesn't really matter who
you are.

Speaker 2 (02:09:08):
And that's it for part two of our conversation with
Jimmy Jam. Thank you for tuning in. Guys.

Speaker 1 (02:09:12):
Join us next week for the third and final installment,
Quest Love Supreme. Flight Time Trilogy with Jimmy Jam. Quest
Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode
was produced by the team at Pandora. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

(02:09:36):
you listen to your favorite shows.