Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Music Series 6: Adam White / MoTown Roots / Rhythm and Blues / Backdoor Talent

Transcript

Music Series 6: Adam White / MoTown Roots / Rhythm and Blues / Backdoor Talent · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together
• 0:15
  and We're Live Adam White. Mr. White, how are you?
• 0:18
  I'm so happy to have you join me today.
• 0:19
  Light was good to be here for him.
• 0:21
  Thank you, I'm good, I'm good. It's an early evening in London.
• 0:25
  Looking forward to dinner shortly.
• 0:28
  There you go. Wonderful is is the is it as
• 0:33
  common in London to have a pint of Guinness as it is in Ireland
• 0:37
  as on like a frequent basis just to catch up with someone on the
• 0:40
  street or something like that? It's probably more common in
• 0:44
  Ireland. I mean, it certainly happens
• 0:46
  here. That's it.
• 0:48
  Of course, I don't drink Guinness, so how would I know?
• 0:51
  Well, there you go. OK, you don't drink at all.
• 0:54
  You just don't drink Guinness. No, no, I just, I don't like you
• 0:57
  don't never enjoyed beer. You know, I see wine and
• 1:00
  spirits. Wine and spirits.
• 1:02
  OK, well then what works works is what I think I I've been to
• 1:07
  Dublin a couple of times and I've I started off had a friend
• 1:11
  of mine that plays music in Orlando and Irish guy Shane
• 1:17
  Farrell and I hope to actually recorded him soon too.
• 1:20
  He's a fascinating, fascinating fungi and you know, and, and,
• 1:24
  and he, I used to, when I was single, I used to go to Orlando
• 1:27
  for business quite a bit. And I'll get a hotel, especially
• 1:30
  during COVID, it was quiet and it was cheap.
• 1:32
  And I'll go to and I'll go hear some live music at Raglan Rd.
• 1:36
  where, you know, I could, I could count, I could count all
• 1:39
  the time. I just great music being there
• 1:41
  and I would be there. I was, I was single and I and
• 1:44
  everything was locked down around me and I was, you know,
• 1:46
  and I was dying for some, you know, relationships and some
• 1:49
  really, you know, some life and, and I'll go and then I'll get
• 1:53
  exposed to all these great Irish tunes and all these, you know,
• 1:57
  folk songs and, and that started me down a whole fun path and it
• 2:00
  was really, really cool. Yeah, Dublin is a great city, It
• 2:03
  really is. Yeah, wonderful.
• 2:05
  So I'm reached. I reached out to you because I
• 2:08
  have a music series and I love to learn the background of music
• 2:11
  and learn go in depth as to, you know, not just experience great
• 2:15
  music and not just hear it, but also I think that once you get
• 2:18
  to know it on a more personal level, get to know it a little
• 2:21
  deeper and it cut was our appreciation for it and it helps
• 2:24
  develop a real relationship. Ted and and also I think that we
• 2:29
  find that I I when I think of music and I, I tried teaching
• 2:33
  this to my students a little bit, my high school students who
• 2:35
  are very reluctant to listen to my old music and I I say it's
• 2:42
  like meeting, listening to new, new music is like meeting
• 2:44
  someone for the first time. You know, you have an initial
• 2:47
  judgment based on like what your initial, you know, what the
• 2:49
  first thing you see is and like you're processing something new.
• 2:52
  And then as it becomes a little bit more familiar, then you
• 2:56
  could start noticing a little bit more detail to that person.
• 2:58
  Oh, you know, I, you know, he likes, he laughs the same jokes
• 3:00
  with me. You know, we both like the same
• 3:02
  football team. You know, we both, you know,
• 3:03
  whatever it might be about drink Guinness, you know, and, and,
• 3:07
  and then as you, and then you get to know someone and then you
• 3:09
  really build a relationship with them.
• 3:10
  And then you can have really wonderful things happen,
• 3:14
  obviously in relationships. And I think that happens with
• 3:16
  music too. So the more we get to, the more
• 3:18
  we're exposed to it, the more we could recognize the depth to it.
• 3:22
  And then I think that learning about the music and the genre
• 3:25
  and the history also helps in that way.
• 3:28
  Yes, I mean, I think, you know, most people just enjoy music for
• 3:32
  what it is. I, I think I've come to believe,
• 3:35
  whereas, you know, whatever the percentage is, maybe 20% of
• 3:39
  music lovers want to go deeper, want to know more, want to know
• 3:42
  everything if they possibly can, because they're so moved by the
• 3:46
  music that they need to know how it came to be.
• 3:49
  Whereas most people, I think are quite happy just to hear it and
• 3:52
  enjoy it. It doesn't invalidate their
• 3:54
  enjoyment, but they treat it in a different way.
• 3:58
  And so I, I agree with you. It is, it is fascinating to dig
• 4:02
  deeper. That's really what happened to
• 4:04
  me when I first, you know, got into music was you you start,
• 4:08
  you appreciate it. And then you want to know much
• 4:10
  more. You've got to know more.
• 4:12
  It, you know, who are these people?
• 4:14
  What how did they do this, all of that?
• 4:17
  Yeah, I, I recognize that, that very much.
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  Yeah, yeah. And it, and you know, for a long
• 4:23
  time I was, I was specifically, I appreciated the lyrics for
• 4:29
  music. I'd listen to music for lyrics.
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  So I'd find the best poets that I could find, the Van Morrison's
• 4:33
  and the Bob Dylan's. And, you know, and even, and
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  even as I ventured off towards like the more musically inclined
• 4:41
  music, so the jam music or the Blues or whatever, you know,
• 4:45
  even then I would still kind of keep an eye out for the ones
• 4:48
  that had deeper lyrics that I could speak a little bit more
• 4:50
  closely to. But then I started understanding
• 4:53
  music. And once I started playing
• 4:55
  guitar a little bit, I started appreciating the music as the
• 4:58
  music and as the language in and of itself.
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  And I wasn't counting on just the lyrics to, to speak to me,
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  but I'm counting on the, on the musician to speak to me.
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  And, and, and that's, and that, that was a real transformation.
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  And, and you know, and it's funny because I have a hard time
• 5:15
  receiving recommendations from people.
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  So I was like, you should listen to that.
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  Like, you don't even know what I like, man.
• 5:21
  I'm not going to try this out. But as I as I learned to
• 5:26
  appreciate music as the music, I found myself much more willing
• 5:30
  to kind of open up to it. Yeah, yeah, I can understand
• 5:33
  that. Certainly playing music, you
• 5:36
  know, is very different. You know, it takes, it takes you
• 5:39
  to a different place and and you appreciate things that
• 5:43
  previously you had no idea about.
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  So yes, I completely agree with you.
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  Of course, there are those who might, might not accept that
• 5:51
  drummers can be musicians, which was what I was.
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  But I want to talk to you about that.
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  I think that aside for the moment.
• 5:59
  Well, the drumming or that conversation.
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  Well, how long did you play drums for?
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  Probably about four years or so, I was in a band.
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  It was in my hometown of Bristol, in the West Country of
• 6:13
  England. And I always had a sense of
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  rhythm. And, you know, I was always
• 6:18
  tapping on the table when I heard music.
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  And then I figured I'd be quite interested in seeing, you know,
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  seeing what it's like to learn to be a drummer, which is what I
• 6:27
  did. And then we joined a band that
• 6:32
  was resident in a club in Bristol.
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  It was, you know, we played R&B, the three Jamaican guys and us
• 6:40
  and two white guys, me and the keyboard player.
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  And the club there called the Bamboo Club was, you know, very
• 6:47
  hip in, in a part of of Bristol. And you know, we played R&B and
• 6:52
  jazz for the most part. That's so cool.
• 6:55
  And it, you know, it was, it was wonderful.
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  And then then we got offered a tour of Italy and I really
• 7:03
  didn't want to go tour Italy, so I left.
• 7:05
  Really. Yeah.
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  You passed up a touring gig? No, no way.
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  Interesting. Well, can I ask?
• 7:14
  I mean, so you took you did it for about a couple of years.
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  What? Why would people you think
• 7:21
  musically kind of give drummers a harder time about the fact
• 7:25
  about not being clinical musicians?
• 7:27
  Just, you know, for people to that that don't that aren't
• 7:29
  musically inclined understand. That's a good question.
• 7:32
  I think, I think it's in the, you know, in the rhythmic nature
• 7:36
  of drumming as opposed to music and notes and harmonies and, and
• 7:40
  melodies. And I think that's, that's got a
• 7:45
  lot to do with, you know, and drummers are always sort of made
• 7:49
  fun of and not least of all because, you know, they're
• 7:52
  usually the last to leave the stage because they got to
• 7:55
  dismantle the kit and take it out to the van and all of that
• 7:59
  stuff. It's become stereotypical in a
• 8:01
  way. But you know, you if you have a
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  sense of rhythm, so much music is is predicated on on rhythm.
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  And so you understand it in a way better, I think than than
• 8:15
  many can not musicians, but you know, civilians if you like so.
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  And I guess you know, my my interest in my ability and
• 8:28
  rhythm also has a lot to do with why I was drawn to Motown,
• 8:31
  because arguably the finest rhythm section in in popular
• 8:36
  music for many years. Yeah.
• 8:38
  Yeah, yeah. And well, yeah, let's let's talk
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  about that because, oh, man, there's so many, there's so many
• 8:45
  fun places to go. I want to talk.
• 8:47
  Well, why don't you tell me a little bit about where, about
• 8:50
  how you got exposed to Motown, if you don't mind?
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  Because my understanding, at least my superficial
• 8:56
  understanding, is that England was primarily or for a long time
• 9:01
  influenced primarily by the rock and Blues scene, right?
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  Motown was AI. Maybe You Can Tell me was a
• 9:12
  little bit more R&B and almost gospely almost, I had a bigger,
• 9:17
  much more bigger brass sound and almost a bigger.
• 9:21
  It had a bigger sound, I think than a lot of what people would
• 9:24
  associate with Blues or rock, which are typically just, you
• 9:27
  know, a three or four or five piece band and a much more
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  stripped down sound, you know. Right, Yeah.
• 9:32
  Which were, you know, those kind of bands were very popular in
• 9:35
  clubs, you know, they were part of nightlife, etcetera,
• 9:38
  etcetera. Well, yeah, Motown was, was very
• 9:42
  different. I think what an, an important
• 9:44
  thing to realise if you're going to put it into a British context
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  is that, you know, we did not have radio in, in Britain,
• 9:52
  commercial radio like the, the US.
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  There were no radio stations all over the country.
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  We had the BBC and it had a a channel network called the Light
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  Programme and it would play some pop music at certain times of
• 10:06
  the day. So that was the primary source.
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  And you know, you could hear some of the hits of the day that
• 10:14
  way. But the other one, and I'm
• 10:16
  talking about the early 60s, was something called Radio
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  Luxembourg, which was a commercial channel that was
• 10:24
  beamed out of continental Europe.
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  And from 7:00 to midnight, they played, you know, lots of pop
• 10:32
  records basically that's what it was.
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  And the programs were sponsored by record companies.
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  So there'd be an hour of of stuff from EMI and an hour of
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  stuff from Decker and so on. But it was the only way for the
• 10:44
  every night to hear the latest hits.
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  And so I think a lot of how why it took longer for Motown to
• 10:55
  connect in the UK is as much to do with that.
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  And in particular, when pirate radio started in in the UK, they
• 11:05
  were playing lots of Motown and that's when it began to take
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  hold. Up to that point, it was
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  relatively obscure. There weren't many outlets for
• 11:12
  it. You know, music people knew that
• 11:14
  that The Beatles, among other bands, were influenced by
• 11:18
  Motown. You know, The Beatles notably
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  because they had three Motown songs on the second album.
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  So that was an, you know, awareness of it.
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  But you know, in the wider popular audience, there really
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  wasn't much record. People didn't hear it.
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  It was as simple as that. And you also had to remember
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  that, that, you know, the first half of the 60's, The Beatles
• 11:43
  rolled everything and everything that came with that.
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  The beat boom, all of the other bands, the Stones, The Who, many
• 11:51
  other more obscure ones, a lot of that was was predicated on
• 11:55
  influenced by American R&B. So and that dominated
• 11:59
  everything. So you know that that's all you
• 12:01
  would hear and that's all people wanted to hear.
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  It was, it was exciting. It's very different to the way
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  it had been before. So with the new generation
• 12:10
  growing up, they were very taken with that.
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  And so it took longer for Motown to breakthrough in the UK in
• 12:16
  part because of that. Which, uh, which Beatles songs
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  are the are where the Motown covers that were?
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  Maybe that's what I want, which was original.
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  Barrett Strong. You've really got to hold on me.
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  By the miracles. No way.
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  And please, Mr. Poston, by the Marvelous.
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  I love that one, by the way, Was that, umm, remember that scene
• 12:36
  in the Scorsese movie Mean Streets where De Niro gets into
• 12:42
  a fight in the pool club and he's and, and, and Mr. Postman
• 12:47
  comes on and, and honestly, I've written actually, I've read a
• 12:52
  couple of, of creative poems about that because about, you
• 12:55
  know, around college time and it's such a fun like, I think
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  it's one of the early uses of that a director would make take
• 13:02
  music and have it be a, a polar opposite of the vibe of the
• 13:07
  actual scene that he's shooting. Right.
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  So the the bar fight, you don't expect to have Mr. Postman
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  playing in the background, but it it almost, but it does
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  actually what it what it what I think it does is it reinforces
• 13:20
  what the provide the people that provoke the fight.
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  It helps understand their mentality.
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  You know which it hey, this is like, you know, there's every
• 13:29
  day we're off and tumble guys. You know, you want to get in the
• 13:31
  ball for you go to fist fight, get in the fist fight.
• 13:32
  You want to crack a poke you over someone's head.
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  You do that if you feel like it. It's the same.
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  You know, it's business as usual and it creates a lighter
• 13:39
  environment of a of a violence that you can't really put into
• 13:43
  words, but you could direct. Yes, yes, I can see what you
• 13:47
  mean. Yeah.
• 13:47
  That's very cool. That's very cool.
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  So, so it took some time. Yeah.
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  I, I, because my association actually with England and, and,
• 13:56
  and music in the 60s is, I imagine like the first that
• 14:00
  wrote the first Rolling Stones album had like I think 6 or 7
• 14:04
  Blues covers on it. And I remember reading, like you
• 14:09
  said, that early 60s that The Beatles dominated England.
• 14:14
  I believe I read, and perhaps you could confirm or not, or you
• 14:18
  know, or contradict past this account that The Beach Boys were
• 14:22
  just as popular or potentially more popular in England than The
• 14:26
  Beatles were at that point, and they're constantly going back
• 14:29
  and forth in popularity. No, they were not on that scale.
• 14:33
  I mean, they were popular and they had hit records, but but
• 14:36
  nothing on the scale of The Beatles.
• 14:38
  No. You know, if you think about the
• 14:41
  impact The Beatles had in America when, when they came in,
• 14:44
  in 64, you know, we had two years of that kind of total
• 14:49
  domination by The Beatles and, and, and to a lesser extent,
• 14:52
  some of the bans that came through while that was
• 14:55
  happening. But you have to realise that The
• 14:58
  Beatles were such a contrast to what had gone before, much as
• 15:02
  rock'n'roll in America in the late 50s was, you know, when
• 15:06
  Chuck Berry and, and, and everyone else Bill haded, when
• 15:09
  that all exploded, it was so very different to what had
• 15:12
  happened before in popular music.
• 15:14
  And the The Beatles and everything that went with that
• 15:17
  in the UK, in Britain, that was the same impact.
• 15:19
  It, it closed down a generation of, you know, music makers
• 15:24
  because they weren't young and hip or they were young, but they
• 15:27
  were old school, you know, singing ballads or they were
• 15:30
  just, you know, cool guys. But a band like The Beatles, it
• 15:34
  changed everything. And, and so that really was a
• 15:37
  very powerful force in the UK from, let's say, you know, a
• 15:41
  well throughout the 60s. But it, it blew up in 62 and
• 15:44
  that sort of 62 to 65 period. There was nothing else going on
• 15:49
  but those bands that impact that, that will change.
• 15:54
  Gotcha, Gotcha. Gotcha.
• 15:56
  Yeah, yeah. And then OK, so then tell me.
• 15:59
  So tell me how you got associated with Motown and how
• 16:01
  you ended up really becoming I guess a scholar and and what is
• 16:06
  OK? How about what is Motown to
• 16:07
  start for anyone that doesn't know?
• 16:10
  Gosh, I was afraid you're going to ask me that.
• 16:13
  So not what is. What is life?
• 16:16
  You know, life, Yes, I mean, it became a cultural force later in
• 16:21
  its life. But at the at the beginning it
• 16:24
  was just exciting music of the kind that hadn't certainly in
• 16:29
  this country hadn't been heard before.
• 16:32
  You know, at its base, it's, it's rhythm and soul, you know,
• 16:36
  it's, it's the finest musicians you could possibly imagine
• 16:40
  playing on records sung by artists and musicians, many of
• 16:46
  whom had a gospel background and therefore had a sound that was
• 16:51
  certainly to, to us in England, unique.
• 16:54
  You know, we, we'd not heard anything like this before.
• 16:57
  So it in the the impact in the US and the UK are quite
• 17:03
  different because again, as partly as I was saying before,
• 17:09
  look at radio means you, you know, you heard a great deal of
• 17:11
  popular music. We didn't get to hear that in to
• 17:14
  the same extent. So something like Motown really
• 17:17
  was a bit of a revelation and it was new and different.
• 17:23
  But it's pretty hard to, you know, put in into words what it
• 17:27
  was beyond the incredible, you know, musicality of it.
• 17:33
  The singers, the band, the songwriters, all of those things
• 17:37
  coming together at that point just was, you know, was
• 17:42
  extraordinary. Yeah.
• 17:44
  So would you call it that? Would you say that it was a
• 17:47
  particular point in time or we just say it's a genre like from,
• 17:50
  let's say a collect, a collective collection of
• 17:54
  musicians or artists from, you know, 60 to 70, sixties to the
• 17:59
  70s? Or would you say that it
• 18:00
  continued to today? How did you?
• 18:02
  How do you feel about it? Well, the 60s were a very
• 18:06
  specific sound, which was a result of, of what Motown was,
• 18:11
  you know, record company with, with everything it needed itself
• 18:15
  to make music, you know, its own studios, own musicians,
• 18:19
  everything that was self-contained.
• 18:20
  That was a very important part of Motown.
• 18:22
  It was self-sufficient. About the only part of Motown
• 18:26
  that it didn't have itself was distribution.
• 18:29
  So it depended on distributors in the US.
• 18:32
  To. Get the records out there.
• 18:34
  But everything else you think about it, it had in house and
• 18:37
  that was not unusual and certainly as what created the,
• 18:41
  in the beginning, the family vibe.
• 18:45
  And that's why all of those artists felt very much part of
• 18:48
  one thing. They're all collab, they're
• 18:50
  always collaborating, right? All the artists.
• 18:53
  And just to tell some artists that are associated Motown for
• 18:56
  people, for anyone that doesn't, you know, an audience that might
• 18:58
  not. Yeah, yeah, of course.
• 18:59
  Well, I mean, I think the big four really are Diana Ross,
• 19:02
  Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye.
• 19:05
  Those are the Titans of Motown. Sure.
• 19:08
  No, and that that wasn't necessarily the case at the
• 19:11
  beginning. It took Stevie a while to to to
• 19:13
  get to that point, but in the 60s, those artists and others at
• 19:19
  Motown were very much part of the machine that was creating
• 19:22
  that music. When the 70s arrived, Marvin and
• 19:27
  Stevie in particular, you know, wanted their own.
• 19:30
  They wanted control of their own music.
• 19:32
  Up to that point, most of the artists had depended on the
• 19:35
  musicians and the songwriters and the producers within Motown
• 19:39
  to make those records. Didn't write the songs, with the
• 19:41
  exception, obviously, of, of Smokey, but most of the artists
• 19:46
  who recorded were singing other people's songs.
• 19:49
  That changed in the 70s with with Marvin Gaye and with Stevie
• 19:53
  Wonder because not only did they write their own material at that
• 19:56
  point, they were changing in line with the politics and the
• 20:00
  culture and what was happening in the world in their world.
• 20:04
  And that that was a very different creature than Motown
• 20:09
  in the first it's 1st 10 years. Arguably more influential or but
• 20:15
  certainly creatively as exciting as you could imagine.
• 20:19
  Sure. But it it's almost sort of
• 20:23
  better not to compare the 60s and the 70s because they were
• 20:27
  two very different machines. If I can use that, can use that
• 20:33
  word again for motor. But yeah, those are really the
• 20:38
  big four. And clearly there were other
• 20:39
  acts. The temptations were were huge,
• 20:43
  always bigger in America than in Britain and The Four Tops who
• 20:47
  were bigger in Britain than in America.
• 20:50
  And and you know, a fair number of other artists going to start
• 20:53
  in the pips, you know, people, others that people will know.
• 20:57
  But the big four really Diana Ross.
• 20:59
  And you could add to that The Supremes, Smokey Robinson,
• 21:03
  Miracles, Barbie Games, TV. Was there was there any kind of
• 21:08
  pushback in England or stigma because music was predominantly
• 21:12
  black and based in black culture?
• 21:14
  Not really. No, not to the to, to the extent
• 21:18
  that it was in the States. It, it was more in, in the 60s
• 21:23
  in particular, more a degree of curiosity because, you know,
• 21:27
  most, most Britons certainly are.
• 21:29
  You know, someone like me, at that age, we hadn't been exposed
• 21:33
  to black culture. We had absolutely no idea what
• 21:35
  it was. So it was completely new.
• 21:38
  You know, not everyone wants to sign up to something new, but it
• 21:41
  was totally new. And you know, Britain was
• 21:46
  changing and you know, there were more black immigrants
• 21:51
  coming, particularly because the government, you know, subsidized
• 21:56
  and wanted a lot of people from, you know, citizen from Jamaica
• 22:00
  to come and work in the UK. They needed in the post war
• 22:03
  period needed people to do the rebuild the country if you like.
• 22:09
  So that brought, you know, Jamaican culture into the UK,
• 22:13
  but it took a while for that to to sink in.
• 22:16
  So at the beginning really, and I'm talking about the 60s, it
• 22:19
  was a curiosity. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't
• 22:23
  the same attitude. We hadn't lived with it, which
• 22:27
  isn't to say there wasn't racism and prejudice, but it was pretty
• 22:30
  small potatoes and it was more interesting.
• 22:33
  I mean, the irony is, you know, in as no time started to break
• 22:38
  come through and one of the most popular television shows on
• 22:41
  British TV was the Black and white Minstrel Show.
• 22:45
  I mean, really, you know, you got these people dressed up and
• 22:50
  painted up as black and. Women.
• 22:52
  Really. Yeah, I didn't know that.
• 22:54
  Huge albums, number one albums. I mean, it was extraordinary.
• 23:00
  But I also remember when interviewing Mary Wilson one
• 23:05
  time at The Supremes, she told me that when they first came to
• 23:10
  the UK, they found little or no evidence of prejudice and
• 23:14
  bigotry and racism. They, you know, it was it, it
• 23:18
  just wasn't there. And so, you know, they, they
• 23:22
  enjoyed coming here for, for that reason, much of the same
• 23:26
  way as American musicians had for decades been going to
• 23:29
  France, because France was a very hospitable country to black
• 23:33
  musicians And, and, and more so it wasn't to the same extent.
• 23:38
  There was more curiosity about it was a novelty rather than
• 23:42
  something that had all of the other implications, political
• 23:45
  etcetera, that you had in the US at that time.
• 23:49
  Yeah, that's really what's interesting to me is because I
• 23:52
  think that a lot of the a lot of the result the the culture that
• 23:58
  existed in the 60s from my understanding.
• 24:01
  And I could I could really see this even with my own family, my
• 24:03
  grandparents and parents and aunts and uncles and that the
• 24:06
  previous two generations, especially because I I my my
• 24:09
  grandparents are very conservative Holocaust
• 24:13
  surviving, you know, Polish immigrants or German immigrants.
• 24:17
  And, you know, there's a very particular the the the
• 24:22
  conservatives, the the, the type of conservative is very, very
• 24:26
  much a don't do, don't look at anything else kind of
• 24:29
  conservative, you know, you know, very it's it's very
• 24:32
  restraining. And and I think that a lot of
• 24:36
  the great music that exploded out of that was almost out of
• 24:39
  defiance of saying, yes, don't tell me what I could look at or
• 24:42
  what I can't look at. Don't tell me what I put,
• 24:44
  whether or not and you'll listen to that push back that conflict,
• 24:47
  you know? Yeah, until when I want to
• 24:49
  extend. That was a generational thing.
• 24:51
  Yeah, kids who were. Born in, in the post war period,
• 24:54
  such as myself, you know, we had a completely different view of
• 24:58
  the world and, and, you know, we wanted our time in it.
• 25:01
  Yeah, yeah. You know, as you say, don't tell
• 25:04
  us what to do or what to think or how to behave.
• 25:07
  We're, we're going to figure it out for ourselves.
• 25:09
  And creatively in, in Britain as in other parts of the world, it
• 25:13
  was a very exciting, innovative time.
• 25:16
  Yeah, yeah. And you know what, I actually
• 25:19
  don't think it's dissimilar from today.
• 25:24
  I, I think that there was something about, and, you know,
• 25:28
  to, and I'm not trying to say this in a particularly political
• 25:32
  way or not, but something about the lockdowns of COVID and
• 25:36
  something about the corporatism of, of woke ideology, I would
• 25:41
  call it just applied in a, in a Corp university corporate
• 25:45
  environment. Was it inherently, I think very
• 25:47
  restrictive for a lot of people. And whether whether their
• 25:50
  justifications for it or not is totally up to, you know, like
• 25:54
  it's not my place to talk now, but it was restrictive like by
• 25:57
  definition. And I think that we're, we're,
• 25:59
  we're, I think that there's a, there's been a kind of explosion
• 26:02
  since then of a pushback of don't tell me what I could do or
• 26:05
  not, don't tell me what to think or not.
• 26:06
  And I think that it's actually also manifesting in music
• 26:09
  because it's been a very creatively fertiled underground
• 26:13
  music time and a lot of quote UN quote strange genres that have
• 26:16
  not been universally or historically very popular that
• 26:21
  are coming to light now. And it's really, really cool.
• 26:23
  It's a lot of fun. Also, those that music, those
• 26:26
  styles, those innovations have avenues and exposure that didn't
• 26:31
  exist before. Yes, certainly.
• 26:33
  Part of it you. Know I listen to every Billy.
• 26:36
  I listen to pretty much every Billy string show now because I
• 26:38
  have nugs.net and I and I sign up and I pay 20 bucks a month
• 26:42
  and I and I could listen to all his live shows as they're
• 26:45
  happening in video or an audio and then I listen back to it for
• 26:47
  the weeks following and I keep up with the band.
• 26:50
  I'm like, you know, and you can hear this show was awesome.
• 26:53
  Hey, you want to hear like a great malfunction junction?
• 26:55
  Listen to the one from November, you know, 19th.
• 26:59
  And it actually took, and I think enormous part of that was,
• 27:03
  was so popular about the Dylan world and the dead world and the
• 27:07
  in the spring and, and the people that would bootleg all
• 27:09
  their albums is it creates this little vibrant community.
• 27:13
  And I know that it began in in the 60s and 70s with people
• 27:16
  trading tapes and records and, you know, and you just, you'd,
• 27:19
  you'd get a hard copy of it somehow.
• 27:21
  You just mail it around to your friends, you know?
• 27:23
  Right. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:26
  Well, I mean, I used to tape music off the radio.
• 27:30
  And bear in mind that we didn't have radio stations in the music
• 27:33
  radio like you did in the USI would, you know, a reel to reel
• 27:37
  tape recorder in front of the radio with a microphone, which
• 27:40
  is, you know, that was how you you kept the music that you
• 27:45
  wouldn't necessarily buy, couldn't afford to buy or it
• 27:48
  wasn't available. Revano's consume.
• 27:51
  Revano's expensive. Was what?
• 27:54
  Oh, yeah, not particularly. I mean, you know, when you're a
• 27:58
  teenager, you haven't got any money anyway, right?
• 28:01
  So you're you're very careful what you spend your money on.
• 28:06
  I see. At least that was my experience.
• 28:11
  But yes, I think that that point about music today is is is very
• 28:16
  interesting. The other extraordinary part of
• 28:19
  that is virtually all music in recorded music history is
• 28:25
  accessible, you know, because of streaming, because of those that
• 28:30
  simply wasn't the, I mean, that wasn't the case 20 years ago,
• 28:33
  never mind 60 years ago when I was growing up, you, you didn't
• 28:38
  have access to, to all of that extraordinary talent and
• 28:42
  creative and recording recordings that existed.
• 28:46
  So I think the other thing about today is that people have the
• 28:49
  opportunity to be educated or learn or curious about music
• 28:55
  that existed before in a much, you know, in a much more
• 29:00
  exciting way than used to be the case.
• 29:16
  Ology and the neurochemistry between music and and and our
• 29:19
  bodies, by the way, makes a very, very interesting argument
• 29:22
  that drumming is actually the healthiest as you as you get
• 29:26
  older for cognitive well-being to actually drum because it gets
• 29:29
  blood flowing from all four limbs to your brain.
• 29:33
  Really, really excellent for Alzheimer's, short term memory
• 29:36
  loss, Tourette's syndrome, Parkinson's, all of this.
• 29:40
  I mean it's it's incredible that so there's a lot of but you know
• 29:44
  to talk about your ability to dive in.
• 29:46
  He was talking about how there's a part of our music from
• 29:50
  melodies and words and you could feel it.
• 29:52
  You don't necessarily need to fill it in and still keep up
• 29:54
  with it, which is like scatting and skin, you know, scatter that
• 29:57
  about a bloop. And and he said, case in point,
• 30:01
  Ella Fitzgerald in this famous concert in Berlin in 19, you
• 30:04
  know, whatever it was, I think like 5068 or whatever said, you
• 30:07
  know, did this during Big Mac the knife.
• 30:10
  And I literally I read that paragraph.
• 30:13
  I pulled out my phone. I put in Ella Fitzgerald, you
• 30:16
  know, Berlin, it came it up. I found a the exact thing that
• 30:19
  he's referring to and it was incredible.
• 30:21
  And I was like, this cool Is this is such a great time to be
• 30:24
  a music lover, you know, It's so great.
• 30:26
  Previous generations have never had that opportunity.
• 30:29
  They would, they wouldn't. They couldn't dream of it.
• 30:31
  But you know how to do that. I.
• 30:33
  Mean, you know, you could read about things you could, you
• 30:35
  know, you could learn, but but hearing it was something else
• 30:40
  completely different. It is remarkable.
• 30:43
  And that would change the nature of music and musicians.
• 30:45
  It just it will, yeah. So I agree it's a very exciting
• 30:49
  period. Plus the technology that exists
• 30:52
  that enables you to do a great deal more than you could before,
• 30:55
  although that's a you know, it's it's it's argumentative, of
• 30:58
  course, because because of technology creating music as
• 31:02
  opposed to people. But that's what do you think
• 31:05
  about that subject? What do?
• 31:06
  You what do you I actually, so I, I hosted last week the entire
• 31:10
  week with my 10th grade class, a host of AI debates, 5 minute
• 31:15
  debates based on different AI topics and each member of the
• 31:18
  class, you know, would pair up and, and when we pro 1 would be
• 31:21
  anti. And one of the things we talked
• 31:23
  about was music, music and AI. And I, and actually no one
• 31:28
  wanted to defend it. So I defended the, the, the, I
• 31:33
  guess allowing AI to kind of flood the music marketplace and,
• 31:38
  and what do you, what do you think of it?
• 31:42
  Have you have you listened to AI generated music or, or did you
• 31:45
  know, do you have any kind of philosophy or idea about how how
• 31:48
  you think it could go or whether it's good or not?
• 31:53
  The answer your first part of the question is no.
• 31:55
  I've had no made no effort to to listen to that.
• 31:59
  The second part, I tend to see it in the way that technological
• 32:05
  developments have occurred in, in the past, in, in the 20th
• 32:09
  century, which relates to music. Technology changes things.
• 32:13
  It it just does. And, you know, technology
• 32:17
  changed the way that music evolved from from acoustic to to
• 32:22
  electric. It it changed, you know, when
• 32:26
  records went from 70 eights of vinyl to to cassettes to CDs
• 32:32
  Technology changes things. Electric guitars change.
• 32:36
  I mean, there's any number of instances where technology
• 32:40
  changes the means with which people make music.
• 32:44
  And that's perfectly normal. You know, it's a debatable it
• 32:49
  it's, it's argumented now because one point of view says
• 32:54
  that it is taking away from musicians.
• 32:57
  Yeah. But I'm, I'm not, I don't
• 33:00
  necessarily subscribe to that. It's at the early stages.
• 33:04
  And clearly, you know, there's, there will be some impact, but I
• 33:07
  don't actually believe it will in the long term be, be anything
• 33:11
  but good for music and musicians and for the audiences.
• 33:15
  Listen, you know, file sharing was considered negative when it
• 33:20
  first began. It was all about, you know,
• 33:22
  theft and, and, and, and musicians not earning what they
• 33:25
  should from recordings. And, and now you know, the
• 33:29
  evolution of file sharing into digital streaming means that the
• 33:32
  world have a has access to all the music it could ever imagine.
• 33:36
  And the whole model of the industry flipped on its head.
• 33:39
  Exactly. So technology changes things and
• 33:44
  it, I, I think ultimately it will be good for, for music.
• 33:48
  It'll, it'll be difficult for some people and parts of it, no
• 33:52
  question about it. But ultimately I think it will
• 33:55
  evolve to to a level where people will accept it and and
• 34:00
  then exploit it and make it work for them.
• 34:02
  Sure, sure. And my, my argument I think
• 34:07
  would be end up being, I guess too too thoughtful about it.
• 34:11
  I didn't think too much about it.
• 34:12
  But I would imagine that this would actually be much more
• 34:16
  beneficial to performing artists than not.
• 34:19
  And the artists that depend on the studio and a lot of editing
• 34:23
  and a lot of heavy editing are going to be in a lot of trouble.
• 34:26
  But the artists who make their living on performing great music
• 34:31
  in collaboration with other people in a band with that
• 34:35
  magic, with that magic, I think that's going to become almost
• 34:39
  like the top. That's going to be a top tier of
• 34:43
  of music experience. So you could have like the
• 34:46
  what's your music that you just have to throw on while, you
• 34:48
  know, while you're while you're jogging and you don't really
• 34:50
  care what you're doing. You just need something to get
• 34:51
  you going. And then there's the musical
• 34:53
  experience that you want where you want to be with the crowd,
• 34:55
  you want to be with your friends.
• 34:56
  You want to experience of watching a band riff with one
• 35:00
  another, you know, and watching the improv and watching it
• 35:03
  happen live and participating in it.
• 35:05
  And I don't think that's going to go away just because AI makes
• 35:07
  music too, you know, like if anything, it's even more in
• 35:10
  demand. You'll be like, hey, I want it,
• 35:12
  I want to see more of that. That's awesome.
• 35:15
  Wow, awesome. So so Motown and R&B were your
• 35:19
  two are your two your two loves, I suppose.
• 35:23
  How do they in what ways are they similar?
• 35:26
  In what way are they different? And people I feel like now
• 35:28
  associate R&B, or I do at least with rap.
• 35:32
  And so I have to say rhythm and Blues whenever I say rhythm and
• 35:34
  Blues because I say I, I, I tend to think rap nowadays.
• 35:38
  Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.
• 35:43
  Well, I mean, you know, there was a time when I thought of of
• 35:48
  Motown really is all part of an R&B genre, but it carved out an
• 35:55
  identity for itself because it had a distinctive sound.
• 35:59
  But there were many wonderful R&B artists and, and, you know,
• 36:03
  because I started to listen to music in the early 60s.
• 36:09
  You know, the R&B acts around at that point were some of the
• 36:12
  exciting ones from the likes of Atlantic Records.
• 36:16
  You know, Ray Charles, The Drifters, people like that,
• 36:18
  James Brown. I love The Drifters.
• 36:21
  But yeah, you, you know, there was, it was exciting.
• 36:26
  It wasn't as polished or produced or necessarily, as I
• 36:35
  was going to say, distinctive. That's perhaps not the word, but
• 36:37
  it was different to Motown. Motown had a sound.
• 36:40
  Used was a good way to put it. I think produced Motown was like
• 36:43
  a performance. Every song is like a show, you
• 36:46
  know? Yes, but there was so, so many
• 36:49
  wonderful acts that came through in the in the late 50s and the
• 36:53
  early 60s particularly as some of the songwriters and producers
• 36:59
  and musicians had access to the tools that would make the the
• 37:05
  sound, make their music as modern as anything else that was
• 37:08
  around. Right.
• 37:10
  So, and, and you also have to remember, as I said before, a
• 37:13
  lot of those R&B records, not just Motown, but a lot of those
• 37:17
  R&B records, you know, influence bands that broke through in, in
• 37:21
  the 60s from this country and elsewhere.
• 37:23
  Yeah. So I was, I had a, you know, a
• 37:27
  parallels set. Motown was my primary point of
• 37:32
  interest, but I was of course taken with the stuff that was
• 37:35
  coming out of stacks, the stuff that was coming out of Atlantic,
• 37:39
  you know, some of them very obscure.
• 37:40
  Curtis Mayfield in The Impressions.
• 37:42
  I adored that music. It was extraordinary so.
• 37:46
  Ready is one of my favourites. Oh man, people get ready.
• 37:49
  Is is too stunning, too good. Stunning.
• 37:53
  Yeah. And, and a good example of how,
• 37:55
  you know, those gospel roots. I mean, it's, it's a gospel
• 37:58
  song. It's a church song.
• 38:00
  Yeah. Mayfield was, was one-of-a-kind.
• 38:03
  So there was a lot else going on in in what it at the time was
• 38:06
  sort of was actually called new wave R&B because it was
• 38:11
  different to what had existed in the 50s, more bluesy, you know,
• 38:16
  the 50s stuff, more jazzing. Clyde R&B in the 60s was
• 38:19
  incredibly sophisticated, produced indeed by all sorts of
• 38:23
  interesting people. Jerry Ragavoy, Bert Burns, all
• 38:26
  sorts of people like that. But that was really, in a sense,
• 38:29
  all part of the same innovation and excitement that was coming
• 38:35
  out of of black music in that decade.
• 38:39
  Yeah. Later in the 70s, it was Gamble
• 38:41
  and now founded Philly. And then as you carried on,
• 38:45
  eventually yeah turned into into rap and hip hop.
• 38:49
  Yeah. But I wonder why it changed and
• 38:53
  I don't know, I'm curious why and how it changed because it
• 38:57
  feels like such a dramatic change.
• 38:58
  I mean, if you, if you think back to the music that's be it's
• 39:02
  considered R&B today. And then you go back to like,
• 39:05
  you know, the names that you mentioned, like Ray Charles,
• 39:07
  like, I mean, you know, I don't, I, I, I don't know if I even see
• 39:12
  the, the only roots that I could potentially see, And this is the
• 39:15
  only place perhaps even as a drummer, and you might, you
• 39:17
  might understand more than me, is that if, if R&B is really
• 39:21
  about rhythm and Blues, then perhaps emphasis on rhythm with
• 39:24
  the rap, with rapping is what the new age perspective is.
• 39:29
  Is that right? I think that's, I think that's
• 39:31
  right there for him. Very much so.
• 39:32
  I mean, you know, rap, the whole thing is predicated on rhythm
• 39:36
  being rhythm of lyrics or, you know, rhythm of a track, right?
• 39:41
  Oh, absolutely. I, I think I, I have a view that
• 39:44
  one of the reasons it came through, broke through and
• 39:47
  became so important was that in the late 80's, the 80s and the
• 39:56
  late 80s when I was working in the States, a lot of black radio
• 40:01
  was playing. Softer music, It was adult R&B.
• 40:05
  It was, you know, Anita Baker, singers like that, which I think
• 40:10
  the kids found it pretty hard to relate to.
• 40:12
  It was. It was a more sophisticated
• 40:14
  sound. Interesting you think music got
• 40:18
  older and the audience and the audience got younger.
• 40:20
  I I think that's what really happened.
• 40:23
  And to an extent that that was the case because the music
• 40:27
  getting older appealed to older or the boomers, you know, there
• 40:31
  we were getting older. So we wanted to hear Atlantic
• 40:34
  Star or Anita Baker rather than, you know, some, some 17 year
• 40:39
  old. Right.
• 40:41
  And radio, by the way, of course, had it's eye on the
• 40:45
  boomers because they had money. Yeah, they bought things.
• 40:49
  So radio, advertising, all of that.
• 40:52
  It's an economic force as much as anything.
• 40:55
  And I think that's one of the reasons rap came through and and
• 40:58
  redefined music, including black music, because the kids, you
• 41:03
  know, the young are always the ones who drive it ultimately.
• 41:07
  And, and they didn't want to listen to, you know,
• 41:10
  sophisticated R&B. Yeah.
• 41:13
  How much you test me on that theory, But I, it is something
• 41:16
  I, I do believe. And that's in part because when
• 41:20
  I was working at the business that, you know, that was a sense
• 41:23
  I have of R&B getting more adult.
• 41:27
  Yeah, which I'm curious about how many of the R&B artists
• 41:30
  would be pissed off to hear their music be called adult, you
• 41:34
  know, or called, they're called sophisticated.
• 41:36
  And they'll be like, you know, there's nothing sophisticated
• 41:37
  about us. We're just a bunch of kids being
• 41:39
  around, you know, it's very funny.
• 41:44
  It's like, yeah, I can't imagine if someone told me, hey, you got
• 41:47
  to listen to this sophisticated show, this guy frying Hersh
• 41:49
  right now. I'm like, dude, what are you
• 41:51
  talking about, man? You know, I mean, there's
• 41:53
  nothing, you know, I mean, we, I like to have a good time, but
• 41:56
  you know, I'm not looking to be sophisticated.
• 41:58
  I'm not looking to not appeal to teens or to, you know, the youth
• 42:01
  or anything like that, if anything.
• 42:03
  Remember the quiet storm radio format?
• 42:05
  You know, that broke out. That was, I don't RMB basically
• 42:08
  was softer black music, R&B, whatever, you know, from a
• 42:13
  Smokey Robinson song. But you know, if you're 18, you
• 42:17
  can't relate to that. Yeah, but someone did at some
• 42:20
  point and I don't know whether it's because it's new and
• 42:23
  rebellious in that way or whether it's that the taste in
• 42:26
  music or the appreciate or, or what the music would even imply
• 42:29
  or lead to or how it related all all changed, you know, And umm,
• 42:34
  and like what we said, music, I think for a lot of people,
• 42:37
  whether they realize it or not, is a lot about relatability and
• 42:41
  like be feeling like someone speaking your language in some
• 42:44
  form or another. You might.
• 42:45
  Probably be more. Yeah.
• 42:46
  And that's that's really what happened with hip hop.
• 42:49
  I mean, that's how it was a new generation.
• 42:52
  When you're young, you want to define yourself.
• 42:55
  Yeah, right. And you're looking for things to
• 42:57
  define you and you. Don't want to be told you're
• 43:00
  this, you know, kind of like this.
• 43:02
  I can exactly. Right.
• 43:05
  And, and by the way, that's what happened to me when I was a
• 43:08
  teenager with with Motown. I was living in a country and
• 43:13
  The Beatles and the Stones and all of that were in this
• 43:16
  capable. I hated them.
• 43:18
  I didn't, I didn't want to hear any of that stuff, partly
• 43:22
  because they covered a lot of American R&B stuff and I felt
• 43:26
  that they were stealing from the originals, but also because I, I
• 43:31
  was trying to define myself and I didn't want to be like all the
• 43:34
  rest. I found Motown.
• 43:37
  It's like nobody knows what this stuff is.
• 43:39
  Oh, this is pretty cool. And I, you know, that happens
• 43:42
  with every generation. You want something to help
• 43:45
  define yourself different to what went before.
• 43:48
  So great, so great. So maybe it's a good thing that
• 43:51
  Motown stayed in the 60s and 70s seventies then, because I think
• 43:54
  that it's, I think that there's a beauty to, you know, it's
• 43:57
  almost, I'm sure you're you're, you're, you're familiar, but I
• 44:00
  grew up a huge Calvin and hops fan, Bill Waters famous cartoon.
• 44:06
  And he was depending who you're talking to, infamous or, or or
• 44:10
  famous for never publishing, you know, another cartoon.
• 44:14
  Once he decided that he was done, he was like, I, I gave
• 44:17
  what I had to give. Anything more would be
• 44:19
  cheapening the brand. Anything more would be hurting.
• 44:23
  You know, the what everything I put into this, he didn't allow.
• 44:27
  He he staved off, you know, people trying to make movies and
• 44:30
  sell their merchandising and he and he just pushed it out
• 44:33
  everything away moved to the middle of Ohio and disappeared.
• 44:35
  And like he's like, listen, this is where this was for a
• 44:38
  particular time and place. If you like it in 20 years from
• 44:41
  now, great. You know, if not, like this was
• 44:43
  what it's for. And I feel like that's really
• 44:45
  cool that a musical genre almost, because Motown
• 44:49
  definitely is a genre. You look it up and I mean,
• 44:51
  you're going to get enough eclectic musicians, studios,
• 44:55
  producers, I'm sure that that are all, you know, either
• 44:59
  wanting to be or under the Motown genre.
• 45:02
  Well, because of the calibre of the of the work.
• 45:05
  I mean, that's the point. It, it wasn't just that it was,
• 45:08
  you know, an intriguing, fascinating, attractive sound
• 45:13
  there. There were the calibre of the
• 45:15
  musicians and the singers and the songwriters was so good.
• 45:19
  Yeah, that was an important, but it wouldn't have lasted if it
• 45:21
  hadn't been for for the calibre of the work.
• 45:25
  Yeah, and it was. Well, actually I wanted to talk
• 45:26
  to you also about because I there's also almost a great
• 45:31
  Motown or R&B songbook. And, you know, it's funny
• 45:35
  because I don't think a lot of people associate that
• 45:37
  necessarily. But, you know, for example, most
• 45:40
  of the songs people don't know that Frank Sinatra would sing
• 45:43
  were just covers, were just part of, you know, covers in the
• 45:45
  Great American Songbook. Yeah, and and.
• 45:47
  Then you listen to the rest of the Rat Pack.
• 45:48
  You listen to, you know, people offered listen to listen to any
• 45:53
  of the guys and. You marked into Amy Davis?
• 45:55
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 45:56
  Same with the exactly and and they're all covering the same
• 45:59
  songs. They're singing the same songs
• 46:01
  with their own little twist on it.
• 46:03
  And there's, and I, and I didn't realize this, but there's a lot
• 46:08
  of in house great Motown songs. Everyone covers, you know, that
• 46:13
  like whether it's Aretha Franklin, whether it's, you
• 46:16
  know, whether it's any of the Motown Motown artist, Curtis
• 46:21
  Mayfield, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, they all sing
• 46:24
  variations of that same song. And there's a lot of really
• 46:27
  great ones that I think people don't realize are just like this
• 46:29
  Motown songbook. Yes, I couldn't agree more.
• 46:33
  What are some of? Your favorites of those?
• 46:38
  Well, I, I was just going to point out an example of a song
• 46:41
  that I discovered relatively late in life, a Motown song, but
• 46:45
  it was written by Smokey when he was, it was like 20 or
• 46:49
  something. And it, it's a, it's a fairly
• 46:51
  obscure song, but it's called Your mother Called on me today.
• 46:55
  And it's about a, you know, a girl and boy girlfriend,
• 47:02
  boyfriend and the mother of the boy doesn't want him associating
• 47:08
  with this girl because he wants she wants her son to be a
• 47:13
  doctor, to be a, you know, grow up to be a professional.
• 47:18
  And she thinks that the girl is not good for him with that goal
• 47:22
  in mind. And it's it's wonderful story.
• 47:28
  Lyrics are so clever and I'm thinking, I remember when I
• 47:32
  heard it, which for the first time was probably about 10 years
• 47:34
  ago, because it wasn't never recorded by anyone who meant
• 47:38
  anything to anyone. I thought, my God, how can a 20
• 47:40
  year old write a song like this? How can he be so sophisticated,
• 47:44
  so clever when you had little or no life experience And it was a,
• 47:50
  it was an example of, of his real talent.
• 47:54
  And the original, you know, the song was written in whatever it
• 47:57
  was late 50s and you just think, my goodness, this really was a
• 48:03
  remarkable man song music man songwriter talent.
• 48:09
  And and there were others as well at Motown, but he, you
• 48:14
  know, Stevie obviously came along a bit later.
• 48:18
  But again, go back to that point.
• 48:20
  The calibre of the songwriting. I mean, what it says.
• 48:24
  I mean, you can you can drill down to the roots of it.
• 48:26
  Troy was a very schools that taught music to a greater degree
• 48:33
  than many other cities. It had fabulous, you know,
• 48:37
  schools as far as music and musicians making music was
• 48:41
  concerned. There was a big retailer that
• 48:45
  sold pianos and every home had one of these pianos.
• 48:50
  So it was incredibly musically creative city, which is why
• 48:56
  there were these extraordinary music musicians and singers who
• 49:00
  came out of it and and, you know, Motown gave them the
• 49:03
  opportunity. So it was, you know, combination
• 49:07
  of, of good luck, of of what how these people had grown up, what
• 49:12
  they had learned as they were kids and growing up with music.
• 49:15
  And then someone smart and fortunate like Berry Gordy, who
• 49:20
  knew how to tap into that and build a company that could make
• 49:26
  turn those those youngsters into stars.
• 49:30
  Yeah, yeah. There's a lot to take in there,
• 49:33
  I accept. Yeah, it is.
• 49:34
  It is. I I, I, I was thinking more
• 49:38
  along the lines though, because especially as you differentiated
• 49:40
  between the 60s and the 70s with the 70s was a little bit more
• 49:43
  songwriting and create independently creative as
• 49:46
  opposed to the 60s were more kind of get it.
• 49:50
  A song would be a production. It would be that, you know, it
• 49:52
  almost be done in house. I think you said like that kind
• 49:55
  of you take like all the stuff would be under the the brand and
• 49:58
  like you'd bring the best singer into the best, you know?
• 50:01
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 50:04
  Songs like, you know, so Smokey Robinson has a bunch of songs
• 50:07
  that everyone plays, you know, or has a couple of songs that
• 50:10
  everyone sings and did you. Is that just collaboration?
• 50:17
  Is that collaborative? Is that is there you think that
• 50:20
  energy of like jealousy or is there more like I'm I'm lonely?
• 50:24
  Yeah, person and try copy it. Yeah.
• 50:28
  I mean, Motown was incredibly competitive in in, in its
• 50:33
  structure. So do you imagine, you know,
• 50:36
  Berry Gordy used to have these weekly quality control meetings
• 50:40
  when people would vote on records that that were in
• 50:43
  production or that songwriters and producers were making.
• 50:48
  So it was incredibly competitive, which of course
• 50:50
  elevates the the work because people wanted want to be the
• 50:55
  winner, they want to win. So they work harder at it.
• 50:59
  And he had that because it was very much, you know,
• 51:03
  self-sufficient. I mean, it was if it was
• 51:06
  considered a family atmosphere. So people all work together, but
• 51:10
  they were also encouraged to be competitive.
• 51:13
  So the quality of the work was, was extraordinary and was also
• 51:16
  self-contained. And one of the important points
• 51:19
  about this was Detroit was really not considered key part
• 51:23
  of the music business at that stage in in the early 60s.
• 51:27
  OK, being a great jazz city, which of course is why the Funk
• 51:30
  Brothers was, was so extraordinary.
• 51:32
  You know, it comes, it comes with everything in jazz in
• 51:36
  Detroit, but as part of the music business, it really
• 51:40
  wasn't. It wasn't as important to
• 51:42
  Chicago, New York or even LA. So they were able to do what
• 51:46
  they did. And this was an important point.
• 51:48
  Motown was able to do what it did without too much messing
• 51:52
  from the outside world. They were self-contained.
• 51:55
  They could develop, improve, challenge, innovate without
• 52:00
  having lots of other stuff going on from other company record
• 52:03
  companies in the city because there weren't any to to for the
• 52:07
  most. You know, we had that period
• 52:10
  where they were doing it all for themselves and that was that
• 52:16
  helped to that extraordinary creativity that came out of West
• 52:19
  Grand Blvd. Yeah, and I, I think this
• 52:22
  because there's two different ways to look at this and I think
• 52:24
  there's two potential responses. The first one is the value of
• 52:28
  being small and relatively ignored and relatively not
• 52:31
  dependent on anyone is how you have a scrappy company like a
• 52:34
  Pixar become, you know, the company that makes a movie like
• 52:37
  Toy Story. And Disney had, you know,
• 52:40
  immediately saw it like they have something that like they
• 52:44
  have this quickness and nimbleness to them that they
• 52:46
  can, you know, be much more quick and witty, you know,
• 52:50
  without being a behemoth, you know, the way that we, the way
• 52:53
  that the rest of the company was.
• 52:54
  They were dependent on other Yes, yes, they could do.
• 53:00
  A keeper break. There was nothing there is that
• 53:02
  the whole world was open to them, right?
• 53:04
  That's it's it's amazing. And on the other hand, though,
• 53:06
  with the with the sense of competition, right, Denver, what
• 53:10
  do you think? You've watched the movie
• 53:11
  Whiplash with JK Simmons and Miles Teller.
• 53:15
  No. Oh.
• 53:17
  I know of it. I don't think I've ever seen.
• 53:19
  It well, I recommend this. I cannot recommend this strongly
• 53:24
  enough. The movie Whiplash is about I
• 53:27
  believe is a jazz drummer and and here's wait a.
• 53:30
  Minute, I have seen it, of course it is.
• 53:31
  Yes, Yeah, I have seen you mentioned the drama.
• 53:35
  Feature that gets that gets this incredible performance out of
• 53:37
  him and like the whole movie. Yeah.
• 53:39
  And you don't know you don't know what you think of the guy.
• 53:42
  You don't know is this guy reaching for absolute greatness
• 53:45
  or is this guy trying to mentally really shatter this
• 53:47
  poor kid and he gets the best performance but at the cost of
• 53:50
  like, literally breaking him. I mean it.
• 53:53
  So so I, you know, and you read accounts to people kind of doing
• 53:58
  that to themselves and I feel very differently.
• 54:00
  For example, Springsteen in a boy to run when he was laying on
• 54:04
  jungle land took like days to get, you know, Clarence
• 54:08
  Clementon saxophone solo down. Listen, if you're going to push
• 54:13
  yourself because you're going to push yourself and get want to
• 54:15
  get the best record you can do, you know, I'm all for that even,
• 54:18
  you know, I mean, I think I would tell you that I take a
• 54:20
  break, but you got to do got to do.
• 54:21
  But if for someone to do that to someone else, a teacher to do
• 54:24
  that to a student, a producer to do that to an act you know, or a
• 54:28
  music manager to do that someone else, I think is a little bit of
• 54:31
  a different story. Yeah, I think, I think you're
• 54:34
  right. I mean, Motown was absolutely
• 54:36
  that way. It was built that way.
• 54:39
  You know, they had, they had artist development, they went to
• 54:42
  lessons to be taught how to perform on stage, right, You
• 54:46
  know, and how to get in. You know, the Maxine Powell,
• 54:49
  the, the, you know, the sort of etiquette manager, etiquette
• 54:55
  manager taught the women, the girls how to get in and out of
• 54:59
  cars. You know, when they're wearing
• 55:01
  fortress, I mean, how to behave. If you're going to be a star,
• 55:05
  this is what you need to know and this is what you have to
• 55:07
  learn. So all of that, in addition to
• 55:12
  songs and music and musicians, they, they were creating stars.
• 55:17
  They were teaching them all the things they needed to know to
• 55:21
  succeed in a way that really hadn't been done to any extent
• 55:25
  before. And that was, that's the other
• 55:27
  thing about Motown, because it was self-sufficient.
• 55:30
  It basically taught them how to how to succeed or how to behave
• 55:35
  or how to be stars. Yeah, yeah.
• 55:37
  So the. RCA Records didn't do that.
• 55:41
  Columbia Records didn't do that, you know.
• 55:43
  But they had to answer to what the quarter quarterly earnings
• 55:46
  would be or how many, how many records they saw that month.
• 55:49
  And I don't know if there if Motown was under the same type
• 55:51
  of scrutiny at that point. It wasn't.
• 55:52
  It simply wasn't. Yeah.
• 55:55
  Yeah, I've also read accounts of the CIA, which is the famous
• 55:59
  Creative Artists Agency, and that company got started too
• 56:02
  with Michael Ovitz. And I mean, they're essentially
• 56:05
  their thing was like, you know, they started off in the mail
• 56:09
  rooms and they started off in this big industry.
• 56:11
  And then they, and then they basically said, we know, like
• 56:15
  we, we, we let's all start our own, you know, our own show, you
• 56:18
  know, we'll do our own thing on the side.
• 56:19
  But we have from, we're going to every single aspect of our life
• 56:23
  is going to be uniform and professional.
• 56:26
  So are our cars going to be the exact same cars whether you can
• 56:29
  afford them or not? They're going to have the same
• 56:30
  license plate whether you can afford them or not.
• 56:32
  You always pay for your clients, whether you can afford it or
• 56:34
  not. And like, like there's certain
• 56:36
  like stand and like, and then they, and then they created that
• 56:38
  tone. And then they would just train
• 56:40
  agents like that until they became this enormous machine
• 56:43
  that they are today. But now they can't do the exact
• 56:46
  same thing they used to do. So it's almost better to, to
• 56:49
  retire. You know, I think I would rather
• 56:52
  retire at my creative peak than to, than to judge.
• 56:57
  You know, it's the famous Marvel line.
• 57:00
  You live long. You, you, you die here.
• 57:02
  You live long enough to become the villain.
• 57:04
  Yeah, Yeah, it's, yes, that's pretty interesting.
• 57:10
  It, it's also, I think to some extent part of American culture,
• 57:17
  you know, because it, because America is a young country and
• 57:20
  people want to get ahead, whatever it takes to get ahead.
• 57:25
  There's not as much ambition is perhaps too limited a word, but
• 57:31
  but it's, there's a different attitude to that in Europe.
• 57:34
  And that's the generalisation, of course.
• 57:36
  Yeah. But you know, what you're
• 57:38
  talking about is in part a reflection of the relative youth
• 57:43
  of of America and how people want to succeed, they want to
• 57:46
  get ahead, they want to define things.
• 57:48
  They want to, you know, discover it all for themselves.
• 57:51
  It's what's given. It's, you know, economy and and
• 57:54
  and and everything extraordinary power.
• 57:58
  But but it is in some ways quite different to other parts of the
• 58:01
  world. It's very different.
• 58:02
  I feel very frequently like we're, we're toddlers that just
• 58:05
  learned how to run and we're just like zipping around and
• 58:08
  people trying to keep us out of the street and, you know, like
• 58:11
  that's all we're trying to do but it.
• 58:14
  Should be very exciting. It is, it really is.
• 58:17
  And, you know, and, and with listen, freedom, freedom in
• 58:22
  general, you know, whether you're talking about a national
• 58:24
  level or a personal level is a pays a very, very heavy price.
• 58:28
  And the toll is not something that I think most people, if you
• 58:31
  actually, if they knew what it cost, would not necessarily
• 58:35
  want. Yeah.
• 58:37
  Can I, can I ask you about because you had some really
• 58:40
  wonderful opportunities to interview some, some of your
• 58:42
  heroes or some of these musical heroes rather I would call them.
• 58:46
  And what was that? What was that like?
• 58:50
  What was it like to feel like? Was that enormously validating?
• 58:53
  Did it make you feel like your career was somewhere to able to?
• 58:57
  You know, I mean, I just saw the list of people that you
• 58:59
  interviewed on your website and I mean Lionel Richie and Smokey
• 59:02
  Robinson and Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye.
• 59:05
  I mean, like these are names that are historical, you know,
• 59:10
  that are, that are greatest of, you know, musical influences
• 59:13
  some of all time. Yes, and, and, and it was
• 59:17
  extraordinary to have that opportunity.
• 59:19
  Having said that, I got more of a kick out of talking to the
• 59:24
  backroom believers. Yeah, because the artists, for
• 59:27
  the most, most part, tell you the same stories.
• 59:31
  And, and that's in the nature of stardom.
• 59:34
  You know, they're doing 6 interviews today and they'll
• 59:36
  have 50 this week. They for the most part, they say
• 59:40
  the same things. You, you and I would do it if
• 59:42
  just to keep some sort of mental stability because you're often
• 59:46
  asked the same questions, so you come up with the same answers.
• 59:49
  Smokey Robinson's a perfect example of that.
• 59:51
  He tells the same 6 friggin stories you can imagine.
• 59:54
  I know them all. I heard them 20 years ago.
• 59:56
  Come on, I know you know more. And that was the thing that I
• 1:00:00
  used to find the the advantage of talking to the backroom
• 1:00:04
  people, the songwriters, the producers, the label people, is
• 1:00:08
  they haven't. Told the the those stories to
• 1:00:10
  within an inch of their life. They sometimes they haven't told
• 1:00:13
  the stories at all. So you're learning stuff by
• 1:00:16
  talking to those people. And that's what as I got into
• 1:00:20
  the business, particularly working for something like
• 1:00:23
  Billboard when you have access to the backroom people.
• 1:00:26
  Yes. That's what made it in a way
• 1:00:29
  more exciting because, and you know, and then this is not to
• 1:00:34
  diminish what, what artists have to say, but they say it a lot
• 1:00:38
  and you can read it. They're all over the place.
• 1:00:40
  But what I found when I moved to New York, particularly because I
• 1:00:44
  had for the best part of 15 years studied the back of the
• 1:00:51
  backroom of the business, Americans who were in those jobs
• 1:00:56
  when I came to interview them for Billboard, were often
• 1:00:59
  surprised that I knew as much about them as I did.
• 1:01:03
  And it, it makes for a very productive and pleasant setting.
• 1:01:08
  It's like they're flattered because you firstly, you, you
• 1:01:10
  know, you know things about whoa, somebody cares.
• 1:01:14
  And then they like having the opportunity to talk about this
• 1:01:17
  stuff because generally they're not asked about it.
• 1:01:21
  So I, I, you know, I would get more of a, I was going to say
• 1:01:26
  with Curtis Mayfield, actually, I mean, Curtis is a God, but I
• 1:01:29
  used to get as much of A kick out of talking to the guy who
• 1:01:35
  ran his record company as, as talking to Curtis.
• 1:01:39
  And, and that's what also what I found in doing the Motown book
• 1:01:44
  Ephraim. And then earlier I did a book
• 1:01:46
  called the Billboard Book of #1 Rhythm and Blokes Hits and and I
• 1:01:51
  tried first and foremost to talk to the songwriters and producers
• 1:01:55
  and musicians as much as the stars.
• 1:01:58
  And you learn so much more. You're ready to and they,
• 1:02:01
  they're much more amenable to speaking, right, especially in
• 1:02:04
  more long form. Yes, Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:07
  And then, you know, and, and then they answer questions
• 1:02:11
  they've not never been asked before.
• 1:02:13
  So it's like, oh, nobody's ever asked me that.
• 1:02:15
  And and you get really get fresh insights into the way they think
• 1:02:20
  and create and behave. And for, you know, for, for
• 1:02:25
  someone who's a journalist, that's, that's the name of the
• 1:02:27
  game. You.
• 1:02:28
  You want something different, You want something original, You
• 1:02:31
  want something fresh. Yeah, yeah, I've found for
• 1:02:34
  example in that podcast. I feel very similar way, by the
• 1:02:36
  way, because you know, I, I, I'll find, for example, NO1IN, I
• 1:02:42
  love Hollywood. I've always been fascinated by
• 1:02:44
  Hollywood. You know, obviously Ben
• 1:02:46
  Affleck's not getting back to me quite yet, you know, but you
• 1:02:51
  know, the stunt, you know, but the stunt double, you know, for
• 1:02:54
  X amount of movies is going to get back to me.
• 1:02:56
  The music supervisor, the person that coordinates the music and
• 1:02:59
  in over, you know, 200 Netflix films is happy to talk about his
• 1:03:03
  experience doing this, this job that you said you don't even
• 1:03:07
  think the value exists until you think about it, you know, and
• 1:03:11
  like, you're like, wait a minute.
• 1:03:12
  Who does pick the music for the back, you know, for the movies?
• 1:03:15
  How who decides how that works? What about what's the difference
• 1:03:18
  between a score and a soundtrack?
• 1:03:20
  How does a movie movie studio decide whether what they're
• 1:03:22
  going to do about that? Or if you get a Led Zeppelin
• 1:03:25
  song in a movie, how much does that cost?
• 1:03:27
  Right. Yeah.
• 1:03:28
  What's the process of doing that?
• 1:03:30
  Yeah. Or did left or did Led Zeppelin
• 1:03:32
  refuse to let that song be used in that particular movie?
• 1:03:36
  Yeah. Exactly because they don't like
• 1:03:37
  the scene that he was in. Bother.
• 1:03:38
  A lot of times the last to see the movie scene beforehand.
• 1:03:40
  I read the script before I like, listen, you're going to tell me
• 1:03:42
  I got to find out what this is about.
• 1:03:44
  So interesting. Yeah.
• 1:03:45
  So yeah, we share that perspective.
• 1:03:47
  Yeah, yeah. And I've and, and that's the way
• 1:03:49
  that I learned about really all anything that anything that I
• 1:03:54
  love doing deep dives into you find.
• 1:03:56
  It's been so useful to find everyone on the peripheral
• 1:04:00
  because behind like you say, like behind every all these
• 1:04:03
  gods, all these forces, you know, with a small G and all
• 1:04:07
  these forces, they've only got X amount of time of the day.
• 1:04:11
  They're only dealing, you know, they have a million things on
• 1:04:13
  their mind. And I, I would never even
• 1:04:16
  imagine being in that. I can never even imagine being
• 1:04:19
  in that position, you know? But yeah.
• 1:04:23
  And that's why I've been having fun.
• 1:04:24
  I've been the hardest part of the podcast for me, actually has
• 1:04:27
  been thinking of enough fun, creative, out-of-the-box people
• 1:04:30
  that are peripherally aligned that I can get a lot of detail
• 1:04:34
  out of. Yeah, good stuff out of it.
• 1:04:35
  Yeah, my 2 two of my favorite Motown stories came from, you
• 1:04:43
  know, backroom people. In fact, you know, for me,
• 1:04:47
  obviously the guy called by the name Barney Eilis, who I wrote
• 1:04:50
  the Motown book with, he was, you know, he joined Motown in
• 1:04:54
  1961 as a salesman and he ended up running the company in in in
• 1:04:58
  the 70s. But because again, nobody really
• 1:05:04
  knew who he was and nobody talked to him, but I knew who he
• 1:05:07
  was and I knew what he knew and what he'd done.
• 1:05:10
  So when I had the opportunity to ask him all sorts of questions,
• 1:05:13
  it was wonderful. And two of my favourites which I
• 1:05:16
  was thinking about earlier today is 1, where in 1962, The
• 1:05:25
  Marvelettes, the original group that recorded these, Mr.
• 1:05:28
  Postman, were booked into a big gig in San Francisco in Cow
• 1:05:33
  Palace. And another Motown artist was
• 1:05:37
  also booked like Guy by the name of Eddie Holland, who
• 1:05:41
  subsequently became part of the songwriting team Holland Oja
• 1:05:43
  Holland. But they were booked to this
• 1:05:45
  show, Cow Palace, the Marvell X and Eddie Holland.
• 1:05:50
  And Barney said, OK, So what we did was we we booked the flights
• 1:05:56
  for Gladys Horton, who was the lead singer of The Marvelettes
• 1:06:02
  and for Eddie. And we hired 4 local Bay Area
• 1:06:09
  girls to sing behind Gladys because we couldn't afford to
• 1:06:13
  send the whole group from Detroit to San Francisco.
• 1:06:16
  No way. You know you'll love that sort
• 1:06:18
  of stuff, really. No way.
• 1:06:22
  These are the size of the audiences in case they don't get
• 1:06:24
  it. Right.
• 1:06:27
  And the other one I like was went before The Supremes broke
• 1:06:31
  through. And again, it involved Barney.
• 1:06:35
  They were a whole bunch of people.
• 1:06:37
  Motown people were at the wedding of one of the marvelets
• 1:06:40
  and one of the miracles. And Barney told me the story
• 1:06:43
  about how they were all in this Chinese restaurant in downtown
• 1:06:46
  Detroit and Diana Ross was in the in the booth next to him.
• 1:06:55
  So Barney was there with with some people and Diana and her
• 1:06:58
  then boyfriend, the guy who was the boat and engineer was in the
• 1:07:02
  booth next to him. And Barney spilled something
• 1:07:05
  drink on his tie. And Diana saw that and said, oh,
• 1:07:08
  let me get something for you. I can fix that because she'd
• 1:07:11
  previously, you know, worked in a, in, in a place that you had
• 1:07:15
  them clean clothes. And so Diana was there helping
• 1:07:21
  him clean the tie. And while she was doing that,
• 1:07:25
  she said to Barney, Barney, do you think we'll ever be as big
• 1:07:29
  as The Marvelettes? You know, and, and, and it's
• 1:07:33
  just stuff like that you can't make up.
• 1:07:35
  It's wonderful to hear those stories, you know, and that's
• 1:07:38
  the opportunity that you get when you talk to the backroom
• 1:07:42
  people, the stuff that hasn't been told and, and it's always
• 1:07:45
  illuminating, sometimes in a way you don't expect, sometimes not
• 1:07:49
  in a good way, but it's fret, it's different, it's new, it's
• 1:07:53
  revealing. And you know, we always want to
• 1:07:55
  know more, right? Yeah, definitely.
• 1:07:58
  So tell me about this book that you wrote.
• 1:07:59
  So now we can, we can finally get to your book about because
• 1:08:04
  what's, what's cool is it's a it's a visual book it and I
• 1:08:08
  actually think that, and I was, I was thinking about it as I
• 1:08:10
  was, I was, you know, looking at it and reading about it.
• 1:08:15
  I feel like if there's, if there's an industry in which a
• 1:08:18
  book could be, you know, told the story could be told and
• 1:08:22
  narrated without words primarily, you know, with
• 1:08:26
  pictures and editorials. This is a great industry to be
• 1:08:30
  able to do it, but it feels like an alternative form of
• 1:08:32
  storytelling for sure, right? Yep, and.
• 1:08:35
  Can you tell you what the process was like?
• 1:08:36
  How to happen? Well, it's funny it happened
• 1:08:43
  because in 90 on November the 13th 1966 I went from my
• 1:08:49
  hometown of Bristol to London to see the first time The Four Tops
• 1:08:53
  performed in in London. They performed at a theatre in
• 1:08:57
  in the West End called the Sable Theatre.
• 1:08:59
  How long is that train from Bristol to how long is the trip?
• 1:09:02
  From oh it's 120 miles. It's a 3 hour drive.
• 1:09:05
  I got my my best friend to drive me because I didn't drive.
• 1:09:09
  OK, gotcha. Down to London to go see the
• 1:09:12
  show. I had a front row ticket.
• 1:09:15
  I The Four Tops were my gods. I knew every song that they'd
• 1:09:19
  ever recorded at that point and I couldn't believe I was going
• 1:09:22
  to see them live. So it was just a stunning show
• 1:09:27
  and the following year I thought I had to go back and see another
• 1:09:31
  Motown act of the Saddle. So I went to see Glads the Night
• 1:09:34
  and the Pips. Same theatre but top of the
• 1:09:38
  bell. At that point were was a guy
• 1:09:40
  called Joe Tex who was pretty cool R&B stylist at the time but
• 1:09:45
  not very popular in the UK and I knew his records and liked them
• 1:09:49
  but I didn't want to see him. I, you know, seen Gladys who
• 1:09:54
  had, I wanted to see in the 1st place.
• 1:09:56
  So I left the theatre, went down the road to a pub on Charlesbury
• 1:09:59
  Ave. went into the into the pub and there I saw the guy I
• 1:10:04
  recognise being Barney Ellis, who was then the head of sales
• 1:10:08
  for Motown. And the only reason I recognised
• 1:10:10
  him is because I got my aunt in America to send me copies of the
• 1:10:13
  trade papers from time to time. So cashbox and Billboard and I,
• 1:10:17
  so I knew who this dude was. I knew he was the head of sales
• 1:10:21
  for Motown and I introduced obviously and I was a 17 year
• 1:10:25
  old, I had the hotspot to introduce myself to him, but he
• 1:10:28
  was blattered that somebody from London would recognise him.
• 1:10:32
  So that was a really good start to it.
• 1:10:34
  And then several years later when I joined Music Week, which
• 1:10:37
  was the trade paper in the UK at the time, it still is.
• 1:10:42
  And he came over to London to he, he'd left Motown for the
• 1:10:47
  first time and set up his own label.
• 1:10:49
  I got to talk to him again. And that was when we we really
• 1:10:52
  made a connection and became friends.
• 1:10:55
  And then when I moved to the States, I kept in touch with
• 1:10:57
  him. So about which is now 15 years
• 1:11:01
  ago, bit more than 15 years ago. You know, I'd always said,
• 1:11:05
  Barney, I want to write a book with you.
• 1:11:07
  You know you were on the inside of Motown.
• 1:11:09
  You know everything. Yeah.
• 1:11:11
  And his son called me one day in about 2011 and said, you know,
• 1:11:16
  Adam, if you still want to write that book, you need to do it
• 1:11:19
  sooner rather than later. And at that point I realised he
• 1:11:23
  was right. So I just got down to it and I
• 1:11:28
  went out and interviewed Barney. We started the whole process.
• 1:11:33
  It took about 18 months. And I used to, when I was in
• 1:11:36
  London, I used to say I went to Detroit every weekend because he
• 1:11:39
  and I would do. And that a, you know, a call.
• 1:11:45
  What was that? There was that technology, phone
• 1:11:48
  technologies. No, before that, can't think
• 1:11:53
  what it was. You know, we could just talk
• 1:11:55
  online face to face. Video call.
• 1:12:00
  No, it shut down. Yeah, it was a video call, but
• 1:12:02
  it was a specific service. Can't think of the name of it
• 1:12:04
  anyway, but I went to the toy that.
• 1:12:07
  Weekend. Because I would sit and ask
• 1:12:10
  every question I'd ever wanted to ask about this guy whom your
• 1:12:13
  Motown inside out. And it was fantastic.
• 1:12:16
  It was really the most extraordinary opportunity to do
• 1:12:19
  it. And, and what was also important
• 1:12:22
  in the making of the book is because his stories hadn't been
• 1:12:25
  told before, whereas much of the Motown story had the combination
• 1:12:31
  of those, those photographs, the visuals and the back story with
• 1:12:37
  something different than another book about Diana Ross.
• 1:12:41
  And, you know, Stevie Wonder and, and, and all of the, you
• 1:12:44
  know, the glamour and the stardom.
• 1:12:46
  It's like how this all came to be because Barney knew how it
• 1:12:50
  all came to be. So it was a, it was, you know,
• 1:12:53
  good luck and that good fortune from seeing him in a in a pub in
• 1:12:57
  central London in 1967. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:01
  And it shows how many shows how you kind of have to take these,
• 1:13:03
  you know, well, A, you have to take advantage of these
• 1:13:05
  opportunities, but B, the fact that you're even passionate
• 1:13:08
  enough at 17 to be getting trade papers from your aunt in the
• 1:13:10
  States, you know, but that's a good thing.
• 1:13:14
  I think it's a really good thing.
• 1:13:15
  I I have a student that the other day he's I I, my first
• 1:13:19
  high school freshman class is graduating.
• 1:13:23
  I'd started teaching four years ago.
• 1:13:24
  Oh, right. Wow for.
• 1:13:26
  My students that were freshman and now seniors, and I'm talking
• 1:13:29
  to one of them who's been in my class for probably three of the
• 1:13:31
  four years of his high school career.
• 1:13:35
  He said. And and I hear him talking to
• 1:13:36
  his friend about who's going to be an accountant.
• 1:13:38
  I was like, dude, you're 17, you want to be an accountant?
• 1:13:41
  I said, you want to be an accountant.
• 1:13:43
  He's like, yeah. I was like, why?
• 1:13:44
  He's like, because my sister works in IT.
• 1:13:45
  She hooked me over the job. I'm like, you have to try like 3
• 1:13:50
  jobs before you decide that you want to be an accountant because
• 1:13:53
  you're 17 and like, you can do an internship this summer and
• 1:13:55
  anything that you want and you can do and you could try it now.
• 1:13:59
  Try like, you know, think about things that you that you love
• 1:14:03
  and and the earlier that you start, the more time you have to
• 1:14:07
  get lucky, the earlier. That you start, Yes, you're
• 1:14:11
  absolutely right. Yeah.
• 1:14:12
  And that's, and what's happened to me is a perfect example of
• 1:14:15
  that. You know, the earlier you start,
• 1:14:18
  the opportunities are there if you, you know, if you have the
• 1:14:21
  the appetite and the passion to do it.
• 1:14:23
  And it's extraordinary. I mean, I look back on my career
• 1:14:26
  and I still really can't believe it the way it would, you know,
• 1:14:29
  yes, it's been amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:33
  Well, it's it's it's a heck of a ride and I hope that you get a
• 1:14:38
  lot, you get a lot of pride from the great work that you've done.
• 1:14:40
  I. Appreciate it for him.
• 1:14:42
  It's it's just having that opportunity and it's, you know,
• 1:14:47
  to just to hear, talk to and understand these remarkable
• 1:14:51
  people both in, you know, front of house and back of house, if
• 1:14:55
  you like, you know, Marvin, you know, I mean, just interviewing
• 1:15:00
  Marvin. I got to interview Michael
• 1:15:03
  Jackson before, before Thriller, before it really blew up.
• 1:15:09
  So those opportunities. Do you have a question of him?
• 1:15:11
  When you when you when you interviewed him.
• 1:15:12
  God, he was as shy as you could possibly imagine.
• 1:15:15
  It was a dreadful interview because he didn't really want to
• 1:15:17
  do it. He didn't want to.
• 1:15:18
  Yeah. Umm.
• 1:15:21
  But you know what? I.
• 1:15:22
  Think of him. I don't know what I think of the
• 1:15:24
  allegations. I don't know what I think of the
• 1:15:26
  legacy. I don't know what I think of
• 1:15:27
  separating the music from the artist.
• 1:15:29
  Or, you know, I don't, I don't know what what to think about a
• 1:15:32
  lot of this stuff. Umm.
• 1:15:34
  But I'm conflicted enough that it unsettles me enough to not,
• 1:15:37
  you know, get too into the the particular song.
• 1:15:43
  But I don't know, I have a hard time with that.
• 1:15:48
  I just play a record and it all falls away.
• 1:15:51
  It's just amusing. Because I think I'm very, like I
• 1:15:54
  said earlier, it's very intentional to me.
• 1:15:56
  It's very personal, you know, So for example, if I hear
• 1:15:58
  Springsteen, you know, I mean, it's actually a great example
• 1:16:01
  now, you know, you hear him sing a song about what it's like
• 1:16:03
  working factory and then you know that he's got a billion
• 1:16:06
  dollars. I don't know if you're quite,
• 1:16:10
  quite something the same thing over here.
• 1:16:12
  But that's actually, it's funny because I, I, I, I was a huge
• 1:16:15
  fan. I discovered Springsteen and I
• 1:16:17
  think 2018 or 19 and then 2023, I think I got my first chance to
• 1:16:22
  see him live and I've listened to hundreds of hours of his
• 1:16:25
  concerts until then. And I went to hear him and I'm
• 1:16:29
  like, I'm chasing, I've been chasing some.
• 1:16:32
  I'm chasing a ghost because the Springsteen that wrote Thunder
• 1:16:35
  Rd. as a 17 year old poor kid whose parents just moved away,
• 1:16:40
  you know, is a very different Springsteen performance than 70
• 1:16:44
  year, you know, 72 year old guy. That's yeah.
• 1:16:46
  And and so I realized that I was chasing more of a ghost of a
• 1:16:50
  point in time rather than rather than an artist.
• 1:16:54
  I imagine it's. So that was a shocking for free
• 1:16:57
  too. And, and that's the virtue of
• 1:17:00
  recorded music is you, if you want to, you can just hear that
• 1:17:04
  music. And, and that's all that
• 1:17:07
  matters. If it has the power, if you are
• 1:17:10
  drawn to it, everything else falls away from the power of of
• 1:17:15
  the piece of music. Whether it's going to run or or
• 1:17:17
  heard it through the Grapevine or reach out, I'll be there or
• 1:17:20
  whatever it it has that ability to render everything else
• 1:17:24
  irrelevant in that moment. Before we go, before we come in,
• 1:17:28
  before we wrap up for today, This has been so much fun.
• 1:17:30
  Thank you so much for your time and stories.
• 1:17:34
  I would love 5 recommendations that you think that people
• 1:17:38
  should listen to from the Motown R&B genre off the top of your
• 1:17:42
  head that you think that people need to know or that people
• 1:17:45
  should know. Right.
• 1:17:48
  Always a tough question. Well, The Four Tops, of course,
• 1:17:52
  because they changed my life. And Ask the Lonely is is an
• 1:17:57
  incredibly powerful ballad of theirs which is not particularly
• 1:18:01
  well known, but captures the essence of the melancholy of The
• 1:18:05
  Four Tops. So.
• 1:18:07
  The Four Tops? Ask the lonely.
• 1:18:09
  Yep. OK, David Ruffin, walk away from
• 1:18:13
  love. OK, again, a 70s thing.
• 1:18:17
  But the voice, just that voice, is just beyond measure.
• 1:18:23
  OK, that's 2. David Ruffin, fall away from
• 1:18:25
  love. I think Brenda Holloway, Every
• 1:18:31
  Little Bit Hurts is one of those because it's almost isn't a
• 1:18:36
  Motown record, but it is wonderfully engaging and and and
• 1:18:42
  and different. OK, Brenda Holloway, every
• 1:18:45
  little bit hurts. Yeah, let's see.
• 1:18:48
  Well, Marvin and, and that's the challenge in a way.
• 1:18:53
  Look at well, because there are two Marvin's, OK.
• 1:18:57
  And and I had a hard time adjusting to the the second
• 1:19:02
  Marvin because I've been so devoted to the first.
• 1:19:06
  But from the first Marvin ain't that Peculiar is is again the
• 1:19:13
  quintessential Motown record of the mid 60s written by Smokey
• 1:19:17
  Robinson. So.
• 1:19:19
  OK, Ain't That Peculiar By Marvin.
• 1:19:22
  Written by Smokey Robinson. Yeah, and the last one number.
• 1:19:26
  Five, you know, I'd go back, although it's it's very obscure
• 1:19:31
  and and it ought to be findable online, but I would go back to
• 1:19:36
  that song of Smokey. Your mother called on me today
• 1:19:39
  and and it's important that the recording of it is won by a
• 1:19:45
  woman called Francis Burnett. OK, perfect.
• 1:19:49
  Because the second version which was added and Francis Burnett
• 1:19:53
  wasn't a Motown, but it was. It was a song that Smokey wrote
• 1:19:58
  before really there was Motown. There's a second version which
• 1:20:01
  is not quite as good, but just as an example of the calibre of
• 1:20:05
  his songwriting when he was young.
• 1:20:08
  OK, just keep. It for the music, keep an eye
• 1:20:10
  out for the lyrics, keep an eye out for the production and and
• 1:20:15
  see what the magic of this Motown foundation is.
• 1:20:19
  Yep. Well, very exciting.
• 1:20:21
  Mr. White, thank you so much. This is so much fun.
• 1:20:23
  Real pleasure, thank you for having me.
• 1:20:25
  Have a great day, take Care now. You too.
• 1:20:26
  So long.