The first of L.A. Reid's 3-part QLS recalls his childhood in Cincinnati, playing the Indianapolis club circuit, working with Midnight Star, and meeting Babyface.
Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
What's Up?
This is Sugar Steve from questlof Supreme. Anybody who knows this podcast is well aware that our interviews can last for hours, so often we split them into two parts. It also gives listeners a suspenseful reason to come back next week or check their podcast feed for more episodes. Back in twenty twenty two, we sat down with la Reid for what became a rare three part interview.
Part one of La.
Read's three part QLs recalls his childhood in Cincinnati, playing the Indianapolis club circuit, working with Midnight Star, and meeting Babyface. This classic episode was taped in July twenty twenty two. Please rate, like, and subscribe to this on your podcast feeds, check back for new episodes, and follow our new YouTube page at QLs.
You know good and well, you might as well get some water. Dog. I'm gonna Memphis for all I can, and you need some snacks or something.
Br All right, ladies and gentlemen, I was already told at the top of the show, make.
This quick, quick on this one. I'm going all right, ladies, ladies and gentlemen.
Uh, this is another episode of Quest Love Supreme.
How are you guys? That's nice anyway.
If you know me based on the show, you you know there's a particular type of interview that I that we all love the nerd out on, and this is no exception, I guess today. You know he is former super executive chairman CEO of Epic Records, former chairman CEO of def Jam, former president and CEO of Arista, and also his own uh in print record not to mention, oh, former award winning songwriter and producer and former drummer and probably the most moisturized band of all time. Yeah, not to mention. I mean, look, y'all know me. It's gonna take forty five minutes once I started reading off the accolades. Look you already know it, man, like you literally know it. Two occasions. This guy a girlfriend, This guy Ronnie rock with you, don't be cruel. This guy into the road, this guy I love should have brought to you home last night, this guy not to mention the Axie sign. Name him Tony Brason, Damien dam Goodie Mom, Jermaine Jackson, us outcasts. I can name them all, ladies and gentlemen. We finally have him. I feel like this is the sequel to the baby Face episode.
It really is.
Nah, this is the baby fake, the Baby Safe episode that was breaking bad.
This is better call Sault exactly. There you go, yo.
This this guy is so legend that he even dropped me from the label and took me back.
On my birthday. Yo.
I got dropped the morning of my birthday and came back the night of my birthday.
Is gonna be a long one.
Yeah, please welcome l A Reed, Thank you, thank you, welcome.
That's accurate, but well, you know, dramatic.
Richard Nichols was so maybe rich was just using a Jedi mind trick on me to get that I'm done. Rich woke me up for my birthday and six in the morning, like a mirror, the brooch just got dropped off.
Def jam. I was like no, literally, I was all depressed. And then like I we met, didn't we?
I called you up and I literally called you up and I left the message.
I was like, come on, dog, guess my birthday. Man. Ah God, that's my favorite story of all.
Look, every every artist has a CEO executive story, and I'm glad that's my story because it could have been with you hanging me out the window of.
My ankles or something, or.
Or any any other unsavory CEO story.
How are you? How are you doing? I'm good, man, I'm good. I'm entertained already. This is already fun.
So la where right now? Where are you speaking to us from? I am in Los Angeles in the studio. We have a studio in Studio City, and I'm I'm I'm I'm in the studio, all right, my favorite place.
Dare we ask you what you're doing in the studio?
Is this top secret? No?
You know, I'm always digging and just I love the idea of being around people. And I just have a lot of writing camps and some writers and producers come by meet with people. I'm just always looking for music, you know. But right now I'm actually working.
On Usher and it's so good. Yeah, this is camp Usher time, Camp Usher. That's right.
Usher's tiny desk performance is probably a pleasant, well needed jolt in the right direction of reminding people. And I'm also I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that The Versus Comedy Hour also played a part.
I missed it. I heard about it. Comedy show in history.
Needles to say happy to hear there may be a Chris and Usher versus that is the three four hours, six hours, seven hours.
I think sometimes people should set those out. That's my opinion. I don't think that. I don't think they're for everybody. I think because I don't know.
The way that initially came to us, I wish it would have stayed there, which was mainly about like two producers working on beats at the same time, you know, like the Buster and what Alchemists was the first one or was it not the Buster Alchemist?
The just Blaze, Swizz and Swizz and ten that was first. Yeah, just Blaze and the Alchemists.
I remember, if we're talking about verses, how versus started, that was.
Well, I meant the the pre versus there was like there was this thing where like just Blaze and Alchemist would do this back and forth thing.
You don't remember remember the yeah yeah right.
But for me, I was kind of hoping that that was more of the modus operandi where it wasn't about you know, winner take all. But I think, you know, once the pandemic started, people just want to entertainment, and that seemed like a logical way to keep people entertained, of course with the best aless talent, but eventually you're gonna run out of a list talent, right, and then what do you do.
It was supposed to be the classics too, It was supposed to be like up into you know, a certain age kind of era range. I felt like too, and they kind.
Of well, now, just think it's finding somebody that has had ten to fifteen notable hits, right, which is that that was going to run dry quickly, you.
Know what I mean?
And so that's funny because I don't always like to bring light to it. But the truth is, we're hard pressed to find artists with fifteen to twenty hits sacks.
That's hard, it is, and those that have it aren't with us anymore, right, And so the well is, I mean, we're in we're in a place right now where it's diminished returns, and you know, you gotta let people in the door. Like lately, I will say, for my own group, you know, we've been having this sort of conversation with the powers that be at least the last five to six years, like you have to let us in the door, Like who the hell is left?
You know what?
I mean, so it's sort of like I'm not saying that there was a begrudging all right, come in, you know, like that sort of thing.
But could battle, y'all. That's kind of hard. That's hard anyway, that's a.
We're not even built like that. Yeah, we we did. We did get in, we did get an offer once. I guess I could mention it now.
Yeah, please tell everybody, because you're totally the.
Roots and Goodie Mob had a versus on the table that we weren't able to do and really wow, But you know, I mean that.
Is I get it, though, I actually get it. As odd as it is, I kind of get it.
Well, I meant, but you guys don't have rivals.
The truth is you don't have rivals because we don't live in an erab for there's no black bands. First of all, you're an only black band that and and forever, so you you would actually have to go back and battle like like cameos.
I would have actually we talked to our last episode was with Larry.
Amazing episode, by the way.
No, I think probably if it were to come down to that, we probably would do like d'angela did, which is like have roots and a whole bunch of friends come by and so fun. Anyway, Jo, we're wasting time here, La. What was your very first musical memory.
Sh first musical memory ever, like.
Ever, your first thought of music? What like what it might be?
It might be a little hazy, but I think that it was growing up Cincinnati, Ohio in the kitchen, small kitchen, transistor radio in the window, and I think it was It's My Party, and I cry if I want to. Yes, I think it was that because for some reason I remember that name, Quincy Jones. Don't know why, but like I knew that name as a baby and it never left, you know. I think it was that, or it was something from Motown, right, like one of those dancing in the streets.
So I can't exactly. I was very young.
But the one that the one that got me though, the one that, like the life changing moment, was when I heard give the drummer some and and cold sweat James Brown. That moment, like that was that the world stopped. So speaking of Cincinnati. Oh, by the way, uh case our listeners don't know not many people know that Quincy Jones produced Leslie Gores.
It's My Party, that's his very first.
Very first hit as a as a pop producer. I was going to say that I noticed, at least from what Bootsie told me and just from observing that anyone who's in proximity of King Records and their whole operation had their life changed, either as someone that works inside of King Records or the studio or the factory, or someone like Bouotie Collins did hung in the alley way and just hoped maybe one day we'll get used or something like that.
Yep.
But because there is a five year of five to ten year age discrepancy of you and Boucie's generation, right, how did the James Brown Ohio effect? And plus this also explains why Ohio is the funk capital of the United States, because I mean, basically, King Records moved their operations to Cincinnati, and basically at a time period in which the ripple effects started happening even in other cities like Funk just spread throughout Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland, been all over. So just as a ten year old, were you aware of James Brown's presence in the city.
I feel like I didn't know it officially, but I felt the presence like The first Concenter ever went to was a James Brown concert at the Cincinnati Convention Center, and I hung outside and I met mace O Parker and that that was a big deal for me, like literally walking down the street outside the convention Center. And also King Records was like a few doors down from like my karate school as a kid, right, so I would go to karate school, but when I wait on the bus, right, take the bus home afterwards, and I knew that that was King Records. So I never saw a soul, but I would just stare at it. I felt drawn to it. But then as I got like slightly older, all the musicians in Cincinnati were all so impacted by Bootsy and James Brown, but more Bootsy to be honest, right, James was like the godfather of soul, but Bootsy was our local superstar. So everything that Bootsy did, we all, you know, aspired to do. Bootsy holds his base this way, so you hold your base like Bootsy. Right, Bootsy wears these kind of shoes or he has these Everything was about whatever boots he did was the magic, you know, and he was like a god to us.
James Brown needed Booty more than Boots. He needed James even though Bosi needed that guidance, right, Yeah, James Brown needed that validation of you know, the next generation respecting him. And this was the first song super bad, very first song with sex Machine. Sex Machine was boosy, very first one. Yeah, okay, you got it. There's there's an amazing all right. So they did that song in two takes and there's a there's a really amazing, rare dialogue for James, Like if you listen to James's outtakes, normally it's sarcasm or I mean not like mean spirited, but like if they mess.
Up or whatever, you'll you'll you'll you'll hear them.
Like chass Tis the engineer or something like that. But when they do the second take of sex Machine, there's like a forty five minute conversation of James just like you hear him walking in the studio and tell them like like being encouraging almost, like which is rare for James Brown. But he's like obviously knows like these these six seventeen eighteen year old kids are really really scared right now, and he's just oh no, you got it, man, like you can do it, and da da D d like, which is oh wow, compared to the rest of what James does, like on the other takes or whatnot. Like, it's almost like he knew that he was dealing with children, you know what I.
Right, So, yeah's some sensitivity and he was, yeah, that's great. So you're a drummer, sort no, you're you're a drummer. I played the drums.
Well okay, well, first of all, your home situation. What was your domestic home situation then, like, was your family musically inclined?
Your parents and my immediate family meaning my mother, my sisters. We had a stepfather there. I never knew my father, but we had a stepfather there. Occasionally he was there, I'm being me, and he was there. But they played music because they had poker games all the time, right, So they always played music and it was always kind of a The weekends were festive. And eventually I became.
Like the guy to play the records at a very.
Young age, right, And I could play what I wanted to play, you know, So I played slat in the family stone, or I played war or I played you know, whatever I wanted to listen to at the time. And James Brown and you know, King Floyd.
I remember that song.
Was it a situation where you where they say, let me see what you got the first record?
No, it's just like the record player would stop and they're all and they're all into the game. So I just walk over and play what I wanted to play and no one said anything.
Okay, So question for them for that music. And at that time, would that be the equivalent of say, like my nephew or my guy kids putting trap music on? When say the adults in the room when he hears something older, yeah, more Ray Charles.
So like they love Bobby Womack. They just like, you know, communications album. I think it was like they they like they like things that felt more like the blues, more soul, blues and and funk.
Was the music of the kids?
Yeah, yeah for your people from Ohio.
Yeah, everybody's from Ohio. Yeah. So I have an uncle. I had an uncle. He passed away, and he's a drummer.
He is a jazz drummer, right, And I remember him taking me to jam sessions with him when I was very very young, and he set up a set of drums in his uh in his apartment and he lived in an apartment so you couldn't like, you couldn't really play. So I was just playing with my fingers, but I was playing James Brown.
That's the best I could. And he was like, that's not music. Oh man, that's not music. Yeah, that's music.
Jazz guy, A jazz guy like that.
Okay, I got it.
So I knew early on, like, okay, I see, I see what the purists are thinking here, you know, versus.
That was commercial. James Brown was commercial. And by the way, your music, your real music college can ask your question. So did Miles Davis? Now who ripped off? Who? But h so what? Yo?
So what Miles was first? Pee Wee pee Wee Ellis?
Yes, yeah, I went on record to say that you know all those and actually all those guys start alongside your uncle, as in, I'm a jazz musician, but let me just make some money on the side and play this pop stuff that I don't care about, and then I'll have a jazz career. And basically, Pee Wee Ellis would basically steal jazz arrangements that he liked and incorporated James Brown.
So the whole cold sweat is essentially what.
Right? Right? Okay? Yeah?
Yeah, And so that's that's that's weird for me because like I know, and that's the thing where even today, like just to fight my urge to not say something derogatory to you know, another generation about their music. You know, like for instance, like trap is about to be old school and now drill is replacing that and right, and so the temptation to not roll my eyes in the air right is heavy, right, And I don't. I don't want to be the guy that's just like performatively co signing everything just to make.
Me look young and me look hip. Right.
But you know, it's it's weird how the timeline of music lasts, whereas something could be totally foreign to you but seems like so innovative to the next generation.
It's funny because they both share regional commonality too, because a lot of New York is jazz musicians. Because my dad is eighty something, he was a jazz musician. They thought James Brown was country, just like how some New Yorkers may think about trap and you know other music.
That's right, Yeah, definitely that.
How old were you when you felt that you really developed your drumming skills.
I was probably about fifteen, and I actually liked the story.
I was in a choir class.
Interestingly enough, I was the only one in the choir class that didn't have to sing.
Right.
My music teacher was incredible. His name was Terry Brown, and he was the choir teacher. And he had a class that all the talented people in school were in this class, all the singers, all the you know, the performers, the guys that knew how to do the harmony. And I was just drawn to the class and he liked me, and he let me hang out in the class although I wasn't in the choir and I ended up like.
Standing there for hours and hours day.
But he had a group outside of school called the Mystics, and it was a three man singing group. It was Terry Brown, it was Gerald Brown, and I don't remember the third guy's name. And one day I'm walking down the hall. I'm probably I'm about fifteen years old. I always carried my sticks in my pocket. I bet you can relate to that, right, I just always kept them with me, right, And he stopped me in the hall and he said, hey, you have you have a set of drums. I was like, yeah, what are you doing this weekend? He said, I want you to audition. Bring your drums to Mary Junior High School. I forgot the time, and I want you to audition. So I walk in and there's three other two other drummers. I'm sorry, there's three total. There's two other drummers and there's one guy. This guy he has he looked like he looked like he was.
Going to kill it. He had a beautiful, big afro.
He had a double bassed drum and the most beautiful kit in the world. And I came in with like this little ricky dick that's what we call it. I don't know if you guys know I came in with. I came in with the rinky dink kit, right, with like one crash symbol, one ride symbol, and some my hats one time, and this dude intimidated me. But when he started playing, he wasn't good, and I was like, oh, and.
We were playing.
I remember the audition like it was yesterday, and we were playing the o Jays.
The OJ's had.
Backstabbers nine hundred and ninety two arguments. Yeah right right, that's that's Philly music, right, And but it was my turn, Like I knew those songs cold, and so I aced it and I got the gig.
So that weekend.
The following weekend, he took me to Chicago and we played, uh the weekend gig at a place called the Skyway.
And I was fifteen years old.
So you were just allowed to leave the crib.
My mom was okay with it, like I talked to her. She trusted my teacher, and we drove to Chicago from Cincinnati, did two shows, and came back and had about seventy five dollars. Mom was okay with that real money. Yeah, okay, that was pretty good money. That was seriously some good money.
That was awesome money. And that was the beginning that your daddy paid a mere He paid what was.
My rate In nineteen eighty I made one hundred dollars a night. So at the end of the week I make six hundred dollars. Wow, I was rich for like an elementary school kid. I want too many records. By the time I became his band leader, you had me somewhere in between. I think in the eighty three I started at one hundred and fifty No, one hundred and twenty five bucks a show, and then by the time the very last show before I I, you know, the roots went to live in London. I think what was I making man? Maybe like three seventy five. So yeah, but like you know, four days with my dad. You know, that made me very popular lunchtime. At lunchtime, you buy me a cheese steak a bit like.
I love that? All right.
So in Cincinnati, are there any other notable musicians or songwriters or your fellow crew that we would know that was coming up with you at the time.
Most of them you won't know.
But the most important are the members of the group Midnight Star, And that would be Reggie Callaway and Vincent Callaway and Melvin Gentry and Bo Watson and Belinda Lips London and yeah, and they were serious. They were very serious, and they were the first ones. Oh and there's also my friend Toughie who played he's a keyboard.
Player and he played with Zapp.
Oh okay, right, and he sung he sung the song all right, It's going to be all right? He sung lead on that, right. So, so there was the Midnight Star crew and Roger and the Human Body or Roger and Novels or Zapp or however you might know them. That was that crew and the and we always felt that we felt the energy of Parliament funkadelic somehow, some way, Like I remember going to Club Diplomat and it was a bunch of musicians that looked like they might be in Parliament right right, and they smelled like they might be in Parliament, and.
It was broken and they had a lot of groups.
There was one called the Over the Hill Gang, but they all it was a whole funk movement. I just remember like it felt like they were on some tour because it was so many of these guys and they just kind of stopped at that club played that night, so we were around them all.
But the most.
Important and meaningful were Midnight Star, and those are the guys that we actually wrote with and they produced our first album with my band and kind of taught us the art of songwriting.
Walk us through the process of what it took for a band to get local gigs. Are you localized as in Cincinnati only, or do you have it so that you can go out of state and.
Those types of things.
We were Cincinnati for the for the most part, and then Indianapolis, which was one hundred miles away, and it was kind of a strange phenomenon when when we started, when we were ready to play in the club, music started to change.
And this was probably like.
Seventy seven something like that, seventy six seventy seven, and Cincinnati was slightly more progressive than like Indianapolis, which was, like I said, one hundred miles away and disco was taking over. So there were no gigs in Cincinnati. I mean, we played the clubs in Cincinnati, like there were like four or five clubs that we would play weekends. But somebody turned me on to a club called the Zodiac Lounge in Indianapolis.
This was life changing.
I drive, I drive to Indianapolis with my band members, go to this club, see the club owner, and they hired us to play six nights a week. That didn't happen in Cincinnati. So now we're doing six nights a week, four shows per night, like four forty five minute sets per night, six nights a week night.
And you're doing one hundred miles each each.
Well, we literally ended up moving there. We got an apartment there. Okay, we got the gig, went back, got our gear, came back, stayed in the hotel for a couple of nights. Really bad cheap hotel. I forgot what it was called. Maybe it was the Rego eight something like that, right, or the Motel six You're in trouble, Yeah, yeah, right, it was those. So we got a little apartment and we ended up staying there for three or four, about four years, playing clubs, and it went from one club to the next and all over the city. And that's where we really kind of learned.
So what was it about that particular environment that was a jackpop moment as opposed to, you know, the city that we would expect right wide, open door of music to come from.
The difference was entertainment nightly, right, and so that meant it was no longer a weekend thing.
That it wasn't.
It was which weekends could that could be hobby even though we were serious, that could be deean hobby, whereas six nights a week, that's your job.
Okay, So you're saying before seventy seven, a Monday night party somewhere wasn't a thing. Thursday night party wasn't the thing. Only Friday, Saturdays.
And Sunday Saturday, Friday Saturday for the most part, right, and then and then there might be an occasional wedding fashion show something like that.
But but for the clubs were only weekends. Uh.
And we went to Indianapolis and it was like it's like seven or eight clubs that had entertainment every night and all the bands were competing. And that's when I met some That's when I realized that there was a different caliber of musicians. Like in Cincinnati, everybody was funk. We were all funk musicians and some people could you know, maybe jazz influenced, maybe a little blues influence, but we were all funk. When I went to Indianapolis, which is where Babyface is from, and Reggie Griffin you might know Reggie Griffin and Rayferl Griffin his brother who's like this incredible fusion drummer, right, and it was just a it was an entire community of really really gifted musicians. I realized then that I wasn't long for drumming, right. They put us to shame. It was insane.
The thing is, I would think that if you're there for the specific duty or task to make people dance intricate arrangements, would that matter. I mean, unless you're doing unless you're trying to do like get Away by Earthwood and fire or something, I mean, right, and also what's the rehearsal regiment like, and are you guys able to nail every song that comes down the path?
It's cover songs, right, obviously it's all cover songs, so you know, you know, you learn all the Rick James songs or whatever is how you know. And we would do that in the daytime in the basement, you know, or or at the club, you know, when we lived in the apartment, we would do it at the club during the day. Eventually we got a small house and we had a basement that we could rehearse in and try to record. But yeah, it was still all you're right, it was about dancing. But we have four sets, so the first set you could do whatever you wanted to do because the club wasn't crowded yet, so that's when you could do experimental stuff and try out a new song that you may have written or or pretend to be returned to forever.
I was gonna say, you're gonna say return to ever in like five seconds?
Yeah, you know, right, I knew you. I just knew it. We played at it, you know, we never play.
All right, explain one thing though, because I think for every musician they're either Team Weather Report or Team Turned to Forever.
Now that's great in my real life.
In my real life, I've okay, So amongst a certain cowbird musician friends I have, I've I've gone on record to say that, you know, I feel like a bad Philadelphia because I'm not exactly on the Stanley Clark bandwagon as I.
Should be right as in Philadelphia.
Like the song of his I love the Most is so on Him, which is the heaven sent joint with Howard Hewitt. But what was it about return to Because I was always Team weather Report? But what was it about return to Forever that had you guys' attention? Because literally everyone your age, anyone born the latter half of the fifties beginning of the sixties, there's a love for return to Forever that you know. And no, no, no, I'm not even asking as adversarial, because yes, Lenny White, I love Chick Carea. But I just never had someone explain to me what was it about return to Forever?
So it was first it was Chick Corea.
It really was chick that that led that because the way he composed it felt like obviously it was jazz fusion, but there was this classical element.
And it was this classical element and.
The way that they would play, the way that they would like play riffs together, you know, like everybody sort of playing the same riff. You know, nobody else played like that like uh. And they found a way to do that and be and groove and be in the groove.
Uh.
And I was I like Stanley Clark, but not like Jacko Pastory. It's like not even close for me personally, I'm not gonna get in trouble for this, but I'm I'm team weather Reporting. That conversation like easy, easily and Joe Zawana was way more soulful than like than Chick Korea. So I mean he did mercy, mercy, mercy for canniball. I mean, this boy, this man is no joke. So I'm really probably a Weather Report guy, except that Lenny White, you know, was just so bad man.
You know. But if I had to pick, I couldn't take. I couldn't. I'm glad I don't have to.
You said you mentioned having a band, but what was the band's name.
My band was called Essence.
My band was called Pure Essence at first, and and pure essence was it was some kind of take on Stylistically, it was somewhere between sliding the family Stone, earth Wind and Fire with the love of fusion music, not the ability, but the.
Love that was that was a great way to smooth it out.
All right.
So let's let's move forward to your your in Indianapolis now or you're in Indiana right. How did you How did you meet Babyface?
So he had a band. He was in a band called Manchild. Yeah, and they were really good and they were like stars.
Man.
Everybody in the group was like looked like they was six foot and and and weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. They looked like just like everybody in the band looked like Mick Jagger. I mean, there's a fox start. Look at these guys. Man and Kenny was in the band. It's a guitar player. I didn't meet them when we when we were in I didn't meet him when we had the band Essence, my first band. I literally met him after we started the group the deal, right, because a quick story was we sort of ran my band Essence kind of ran out of gas. We got became complacent, we didn't renew we didn't refresh, and eventually we kind of got kicked off the circuit. And this club owner, I got to tell you this. This club owner tell me his name is Walt Manning. He owns a club called the Night Flight. The night Flight is the hippies club in Indianapolis. On one level it's a DJ and on the lower level live band. And the deal was, if you can get people to come from the disco downstairs, that's how you make your money. To give us a small advance. But we would get the door and it'd be like a thousand people upstairs and they play off the wall. They were playing down the summers. They were playing like disco. It was in full full till and we were downstairs and like fifteen people might come down. Half of them would like the people that we knew. And we had a couple of weeks off. I went to the club and asked the club owner, walked if I could get in it, if I can get one hundred dollars advance for my band so I could like pay the rent and give my guy some food. And he says, there ain't gonna be no advance because you're fired. And let me tell you why you fired. You fired because you guys suck your drop. You're boring. No one comes downstairs. You need to read news, you need to rip off a sleeve or die your hair or do something, because all of this, this socially conscious thing you're doing is completely boring. You're out of step with the times. And I mean, he just read me man.
Wow. I was like, WHOA, what year was this?
This would have been seventy nine, eighties something like that.
Oh, I'm like whoa.
And y'all were still hanging on to like got to give it up, like songs from like nineteen seventy six.
Yeah We're still, Yeah, we're there, and and early Earth Winning Fire like like the wrong Earth Winning Fire songs, you know.
And this guy just read man.
And then he goes into cash red aster, and he pulls one hundred dollar bill out and he throws it on the counter. He says, I'm gonna give you one hundred dollar bill, but I never want to see you again. And you don't owe me the hundred but you owe it to somebody, so pay it forward and get the hell.
Out of here. And fired us. He was drunk and he was an alcoholic, right.
Oh, I was going to say, that's the best firing I ever heard. I need to use that shit.
Yeah, yeah, he gave me.
So I got the hundred dollars now and I go back and I think about what the man is saying, and I immediately knew he was right. I immediately knew that we had somewhere slipped, and I was like, Okay, so I need to bust this thing up and start all over. And that's how we started the deal, right was So my bass player, his name is Ko, He's my best friend. Also, we let everybody else go. We said, you know, Ko, Ko plays on all the records, Face and Whitney and Bobby and all that shit. But he's really incredible, really really talented. So he and I started the band. We first let everybody go, say, guys, we're going to end the band and it's just not working.
It's run its course.
So we went back to our hometown of Cincinnati, and he and I just sett in either his mom's house or my mom's house, and we just kind of thought about, like, who are the most talented kids that we went to school with that also had the presence of a star.
Like we started thinking about it differently.
We started thinking about it beyond like who could be beyond talent? But that combination of talent and start them, that's when that really sort of first came into my consciousness. And so we picked a couple of guys that we thought were really good and we started the band, the Deal. We went back to Indianapolis. Well, we sort of getting kicked off at the circuit and I went to the club owner. I said, just give us a week, give us one week in the club, and I'll show you because they lost confidence in us. And that week, oh, I left something important out. The deal was a Prince copy band.
A copy band, not a cover, but just a copy.
Stylistically like, we wanted to look like them, we wanted to play like them. We did some of their songs, we did some of the time, some of the Prince right, and we were completely like Minneapolis kids all of a sudden.
Right, So can I ask is you know? And it's rare for me to ask someone who's actually of the age at the.
Time it's happening.
But when he came out like was it totally a this guy is just of a different ilk than everyone else.
It was so obvious, Like I didn't even know whether this records or hits or not. I didn't really look at charts and all this stuff, right, but it was so obvious that it was him and I was, and also so Bootsy co signed it. I was looking at black Beat magazine. I don't know, I forgot to know that.
Young he.
Said.
Bootsy said Prince is next. He said it in a magazine, and I was like, damn. I kind of thought so. But when he said it, that was like the validation, right, and there was no there was no turning back.
Prince was the Prince was the king.
I grew up an environment where he was taboo and you weren't not even you weren't allowed to. Every adult I knew hated Prince, right, So that just made it even more like, all right, well let me see what they're talking about. But I've just never been in an environment with someone who is an adult or of the age like teld the story of them seeing it and being like, yo, I like this.
That's because you come from older music too, Because my mother loves fucking Prince.
As soon as he popped out, Oh my mom told me don't play that in her house.
Really, everyone thought Prince was the devil yo.
Yeah, she's a don't play them because he had a song called Ancestors Everything is said to be and she's like, you will not play that in my house.
Time out you, all right?
So when Dirty Mind comes out, Now here's the weird thing. I mean, when four You came out, you know, he was in right on magazine and all that stuff, and I have a sister who's slightly older than me, so her and her high school girlfriends were bored. And then you know, when the second Galm came out with I Want to Be a Lover and all that stuff, they were bored. Now the thing is when Dirty Mind came out, especially in Philadelphia, I swear to you maybe I heard Uptown once on the radio, right and besides right on magazine, I would have never known what Dirty Mind was. So it's almost as if Dirty Mind never came out, and we went right to the time and controversy and I didn't even catch I didn't catch up on Dirty Mind until after Purple Rain, when then it was like, all right, you got to be completest and get everything. But Philly radio was not playing anything off of Dirty Mind. And I think by then, like my sisters love of that type. You know, it just sort of waned a little bit. So, as far as I knew, he just disappeared all of nineteen eighty. Wow, So you're saying that when Dirty Mind came out in real time, Oh my god, it was guys got it and totally understood and got.
It everything about it, the way that they dressed everything, they talked about, party up and had and all these songs that we were deep, deep deep into prints, like deep into it and just thought he was the greatest thing ever.
Like in my mind, it was a flop and nobody was with it, right. He quickly crazy recovered, So we didn't. You know, what's crazy is.
That at that time we were so into Prince that we didn't judge whether something was a success or not because we were just so blown away by his First of all, he was playing everything and and and doing all that was that was, as far as I knew, that was unusual. And he was on this sort of punk thing, right, and that was he was.
He was borrowing from new.
Wave and and incorporating it into this sort of funk thing.
He was just an original. It felt like an original to me. Was he? So?
Was it done in a way because I also know that, you know, Rick kind of had a missed with or a miss with the Guard of Love record, which I mean, I don't know if Big Time really could have saved that record, but he was really Rick James was trying to like really make a statement like here's my my star moment and.
Really made a pop album. Right.
And what's weird is I can't wait to get lee Roy Burgess on the show because if you listen to the intro of Big Time, you can clearly hear that edit, like I know, the Leleroy Burgess part of Big Time versus Rick's portion, which is basically I see Leroy Burgess adding that it's like an eight bar piano intro that's clearly not Rick James, right, and then they slice splice the rest of the song to it. But I don't know for me, was was Rick?
Not?
Like in your mind, what was Rick James? Because he too was trying to establish pump punk and all that stuff.
Rick was a hit maker, right, Rick had the hits, you know, Mary Jane and you and I and he had the hits, but he didn't know to start him to us, right, He was actually a hit maker before Prince was right, but we didn't focus on him.
I don't know why.
In Cincinnati, Indianapolis, the local bands all played.
Rick James songs everybody.
Some people played them better than others, but that was in every local band in their set.
But you didn't look at it as innovative.
As I think back on it, it was, But at that moment I didn't think so. I thought it was just another guy making hits. I just didn't I've never focused on it. It was years later that I looked back on it and said, wait a minute, this guy's insane, right, you know, this guy wrote square biz like. This guy's like insanely talented. Didn't really know it at the time. This didn't quite catch it because there was something about Prince that just appealed to us more. And you know what I think it was like in Cincinnati, we heard black music, but we also listened to rock, right, We listened to a lot of rock music on the radio, like and so I think that that presence of punk rock and that presence of rock and that presence of funk that blend Prince. Prince kind of did all of that as one artist. Uh So, something about that that really appealed to us.
Wait, and now now I have to ask your audiences were they receptive to it as well? Because this is also Middle America, it's not exactly New York. How are they adapting to.
Because y'all had the eyeliner too, right, I thought, baby, say, y'all committed.
Like, No, we went all the way. I'll tell you we went all the way. His word glam not glam breed. That we were breathed.
You a breed, which meant the new, the new breed, the new breed. Right we were We were our generations version of whatever hip hop might have represented. Like we were, but except you had to be really bold and daring and audacious and brave to pull it off, because you know you're going to be criticized by everybody on a musician level, on a human level. Right, people are gonna question your sexuality everything. Right, You're putting a lot at risk here to be a part of the movement. So we went all the way. Eyeliner, the Jerry Curl, everything, you know, the makeup. We we went crazy with it. But but you know what's crazy is we didn't We didn't even audition for our record label.
We never met our record label We.
Literally sent a photograph and a demo of two songs, Body Talk, three songs Body Talk, a song called just My Luck their Face wrote, and a song called I Surrender. We literally sent three songs and a photograph and we got signed to dig Griffy.
No, we just we gave it to a man.
We had a manager, we shared a manager with Midnight Star's name was Pablo Davis.
And he went to turn In.
He went to Solar to turn in and no parking on the dance floor, which was nice, big album, and so we caught it. We caught a tail wind because in that meeting he said, Okay, I also have this man at a Cincinnati called the Deal and he shows them the photo, plays them the demo and we got a record deal.
Do you remember what was on the demo talk just my Luck?
And so the body Talk that is the demo? Is that the version we know? Or did you guys?
The recorded version is a little bit better.
It's a little bit better, like uh yeah, because you'd appreciate this. The demo was all the Oberheim drum machine, right and then not that one, No, the first that was one called the d X, the d M d M X yes, right, okay, and like it was looked like an Oberheim keyboard, and so that the the demo version was purely that the the recording had like real high hats and real crash.
That's the only difference. But it made it sound. It sounded better. Damn. I would like to hear that one, you know what I mean, Like you know that the d MS was the real heart was like it's a whole different.
Sound, right, and and and it moved differently.
You know, so you kind of skipped apart. Okay, how did that version of the deal wind up being that version of the deal with all the members that we know?
Because baby yeah, I was trying to get back to how I met face. So so that band is.
Playing the clubs and you know, unlike my first band, pure essence, Uh, the deal is packing the man, people are coming like this whole edge that we had and this androgyny that we seemed to have, and this music was, uh it was a sensation, a little bit a local sensation. And we went from having fifteen people in the room to like one hundred people and one hundred and ten hundred and fifteen hundred and twenty like and we start having lines around.
It was incredible that we had. We were a local success.
If that had been the Internet, we would have been trending, like you know, we had a little buzz. So one night I've met face Kenny at the time, and he came to watch our band and his manager introduced me to him. All I remember is us looking at each other saying hi. And then fast forward a few months later, a keyboard player friend of mine called and said, hey, man, Kenny Edmans wants to join your band.
And I said, Nah, he's not breed enough. Wow.
I was like, nah, he ain't got the thing, you know, he's like regular, he's normal, you know, you know. No, he didn't have and so I literally passed on it.
And then.
Midnight Star I hired their keyboard player, Bo Watson. I didn't hire, I asked him to come in and play a session for us because somebody paid for a session for the deal to record and I needed a keyboard player. So I called Bo Watson, who had known from the Indianapolis music circuit, and Bow came over and he listened and he played on the record with us, and he went back and told everybody in his bad like these guys are onto something. So the next day the manager comes, Reggie Callaway, everybody comes and hears us, and they say, well, we love what you guys are doing. We want to sign you. We want to sign you to our company called mid Star Productions. I was like, Okay, this sounds good, this seems this is a little bit better than playing at the club. Started liking this, so I go to the studio one night to visit them. They were recording, and there's this guy. It's dark, he's in the booth and I can't see the guy, but he's singing this song called play another slow jam, this time make it Sweet, and he's singing it. I'm like, who is this boy with this voice? Just like this tender voice, like sounded so good. He comes out of the booth as Kenny Edmunds, except he has got a trench coat, he's got the Jerry curR.
I made his breath. He's completely breathed, and I'm like, Yo.
This is the dude I just said he couldn't joined the band, and I mean he now he is.
He suited up.
And I'm like, and the most gifted of anybody I've ever met. I never met anybody that gifted right, that could really like write a song and make a demo and do all the parts and sing in the background, and and the lyrics.
Were like like really poetry.
I know.
Let anybody like him was a raincoat and some underwear and.
Jerry girl, Yes I had glasses.
You know.
That was it, man, And that's how we that's how that version of the band. So I asked him to join the band, and uh, he said, what will I do? I said, well, I'd like you to be the guitar player, keyboard player and and be a writer and like co produced, but you can't sing because we have to lead singers.
And he was like okay. So we went.
We went, made all our demos, got a recording contract with Solo Records, and uh, he didn't sing on the first album.
Wow, that changed.
That was a flex?
Was that you said that? When he said okay, you know, in the back of his mind was like, you'll be back.
He was already set on doing a solo album.
Honestly, even though he was in our band, he was already in his mind, I'm going to be a solo artist.
All right.
So look, I mean we've had everyone on the show, including non Solar signees. One of y'all are going to tell me a real damn story about grif.
All right, man, but I got you. Ask the ques, come on, talk to me. Talk What was what was outside? We outside?
First of all, you're you're you were in Indiana.
You're eventually gonna have to go to Los Angeles. Talk about the move to that.
But this is the thing, is I keep hearing like these nearest sub night stories of don't mess with Dick Griffy.
What was Dick Griffy like?
So the first time I met him, my first phone call after we put our record out, put out Body Talk and it's starting to climb the charts, and he calls our house. I never met the man, he said, whoever answer, He says, let me speak to Antonio. That's how he talked. By the way, I can imitate him really good. So I pick up the phone. Antonio, Dick Griffy, the record that Body Talk, the records a smash, right, and I just wanted to welcome you to the label. Everything was like kind of right.
So I went.
So after that, fast forward, I go to LA and I meet him and I go into his office with Reggie Callaway because we just mixed our album, went to turn it in and I meet him and him but I was asided.
I was just like the kid in the band.
It was Reggie Callaway and Dick Griffy's meeting, and Dick said he wanted certain things to happen on the record, and Reggie was like, no, we're not doing that.
So I immediately saw you.
Give me an idea of what his idea of what?
What did he want? I don't even remember what he wanted, like, I don't remember, but he.
Was giving creative advice.
Yeah, creative advice. It was really creative, very like he's yes, ok he was, but more than in that CEO way of that's a hit, that's not a hit.
What do you say, like the vocals it too loud, or I don't like those drums, or.
More like this is a hit versus or you should try this producer, or you should try this songwriter, or you know, putting Leon Silvers with Chalamar or like that kind of stuff. Okay, Yeah, he was good. He was really good. So so my first real encounter, my first real encounter was first album comes out, second album. It's time to make the second album, and we make it. We make the album in Cincinnati, in Columbus, Ohio or the studio, and we sent demos into Dick Griffy and he liked some stuff, some stuff. He questioned. He had a particular fondness for Kenny because Kenny would sing on demos and he was like, he thought he was really incredible. So the first, my first encounter was this song called Sweet November that Babyface did for the deal, right, and how.
M did that first?
I forgot yeah, yeah, okay, And so it's on the demo and Dick Griffy hears it. He says, who is that singing Sweet November? I said, that's Kenny. I want that on the album. I said, well, we had a problem. I say, what's the problem. But the problem is that we made a deal when we started the group that our two lead singers, Carlos and d would do all the vocals on the album. That's Kenny singing. And he was like, well, that's a stupid deal. And you put that song on the record or ain't gonna be no record?
Oh? I got it, Kenny, your songs on the album? You said, Tweet November maybe the album? Right. So that was my first sort of encounter.
How are you taking the unofficial I guess you're now the figurehead, the father of the group.
Yeah, I kind of always was. I don't know. It was my idea to go get everybody.
I put it all on my shoulders and said, you know, if you guys rock with me, I'll do my best to take care of you.
Ya.
It seems like you from as you when you're hearing this about you now, it makes sense that you were the one that kind of could bridge the gap between the business and the creative, Like you knew how to talk to both sides.
I tried to.
Yeah, yeah, because I had to negotiate with club owners right, you know, for pay and when they wanted to deduct expenses, and you know, I had to.
I had to do the tough guy work. But and they trusted me.
You know, all of us went to high school together, by the way, except for Babyface was in Indianapolis. But the rest of the band we all went to high school together. We were all in that choir class with mister Brown and you know, so we were all really like good friends and grew up together in the same neighborhood.
So there was a trust factor there.
Since you're talking about the The Material Things album.
Yeah, you know that album. I'm so impressed with you.
Man, I just got to tell you, I never met anybody with all of us. Yeah, but my my, my question about Material Things is, and I always I don't know why it is, but the the.
Tom tom programming.
I never heard a song in which the kick drum and the tom toms had to compete with the each other mix white, So I always wanted to know.
All that stuff, right, who gets the final word on a final mix? Because?
Okay, when I was younger, material things irked me because I was like, Yo, those tom toms are way too loud for this song. As I got used to hearing it in my older age, I was like, all right, well, you know, I'm I can see being innovative, but like, who who back for those records? Was the Callaway brothers that were leaning on the production? Was it were you guys allowed a word in edgewise?
Like? Just as far as structuring the albums full.
Disclosure, The first album, called Street Beat, was completely produced by Reggie Calloway and the songs were co written by the members of Our band and members of Midnight Star. Okay, when it was time to make the second album, Material Things, we had fallen out and Callaway Us and Midnight Start. We kind of falling out and Reggie didn't want to produce the second album.
So Dick Griffy said you produce it. So it was on me.
I'm like, so me, Reggie didn't want to produce it, or you guys didn't want Reggie to produce it.
We wanted Reggie, but Reggie didn't want to do it, and I didn't know why. I thought there was some It probably had something to do with money. Something He never said to me, like I don't want to produce your record, but it felt business y.
Did he have that option? Again?
Y'all still tell me nice guys stories about Dick Griffy, But does Reggie Callaway have an option to mess up the money by saying.
You know what, I'm not going to produce the second album?
Yeah, because he and Dick Griffy visited my apartment in Cincinnati and we played them demos that we worked on, and they collectively decided which songs we should record.
So he Dick gave him a past.
Yeah, he let him. He let him sit it out. So Kenny and I like co produced together. So all those decisions loud ass Tom songs too fast or that's all me and Kenny producing for the very first time in our lives and having following a hit record that Reggie produced. Now it's on us, and it was it was a complete stiff. Wow, it was a complete stiff.
That's a good lesson for class.
So that's that's weird. It's weird for me, all right. So here this is what I'm just learning.
And you know, I mean, I guess I alluded to the stuff I'm working on past Summer's Soul, but currently having made an official announcement, because you know, I will say that there was a popular dance show of the seventies and maybe other decades of which I'm learning that I'm learning that the host of said dance show has relationships with different CEOs and no matter what the state of the record is on the outside world, because there's songs that was played on this show so many times that I would instantly thought, oh, that's a hit one of them, which being material things like all of nineteen eighty four is season Like if you get four spots on the most important dance portion of that show, then to me, that was like, oh, you have a bona fide hit. And it was only later that I figured out that material things didn't get the same push that body talk in.
You know exactly. It simply wasn't good. It wasn't good.
Were you guys scared and were you afraid of getting dropped?
No?
I didn't even think about it. You know, by the way, I've been dropped and fired a lot of times. I never think about it, right, So.
This wasn't the first time.
I just got fired from.
I just got fired from the Knife Flight, right, So yeah, I'm meaning to it.
You know, I love it. You ain't nobody till you get fired from somewhere, that's what you say.
But no, no, we didn't think about getting dropped. All I thought about was damn this record. Just I couldn't get it right, man, I couldn't get it right. I just couldn't get it right. I tried so many times, you know, because the studio, I mean studio wasn't cheap, but we had it on lock so we could go in and mix it, press and acetate.
Go to the club. Played at the club.
It didn't sound right, Well, go back and try to a couple of days and we tried everything, and then when we thought we had it right and we turned it in, the label apparently agreed because they made it the single and it just didn't work, and it was just embarrassing more than anything. But it also put a fire in all of us, and I would say particularly myself and Kenny. It really put a fire into us that and we're competitive people, so we were like, we can't let Midnight Start be responsible for our success and then when.
We get the shot, we blow it right. Let's get to work.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, I know you don't like this when this happens, but you know we got more in store for you to stay tuned for two more episodes of this epic Question of Supreme with the Great La Reid. While you ad it, feel free to check out our other LS episode with Babyface as well.
All Right, see y'all next time.
What's Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.