Latest / The Right Time with Bomani Jones / Spencer Hall on Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life at 50 | 10.13

Transcript

Spencer Hall on Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life at 50 | 10.13 · The Right Time with Bomani Jones

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Right Time presented by PrizePix.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Beaumont E.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Jones.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: give us five stars. You only give us four stars.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. It is
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: a time machine Tuesday. I got Spencer Hall with me
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: and I'd OK, the guys that have people out here listening,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: you may be a little salty with me in a way,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: but hear me out. I was a little reluctant to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: do this episode because we had already done an episode
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: that was very similar to this one a couple of
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: years ago where it wasn't a plan, but it turned
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: into a broad, sprawling Stevie Wonder episode. That is quite
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: literally you guys favorite episode that we have ever done
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: on this show this month. 50 years since the release.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Saul's in the key of life. And so me and
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Spencer are here to discuss those two discs with you guys.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: And brother, I don't know about you, but I spent
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the last 48 hours listening to a lot of Stevie Wonder.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: A lot of Stevie Wonder. I don't know if I
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: have prepared more directly for an episode of this show,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: more so than I have for this one right here.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: I watched three documentaries. I bought a subscription to Rolling
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Stone so I could read four different articles out of
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: the archives. including the original review that they did, along
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: with a couple of others. And I got into various
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: internet archives to read other original reviews. We've done a
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: little bit of legwork on this.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: We did. Mine was deep vinyl diving, not just of
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: songs in the key of life, but I took it
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: all the way back to music of my mind to
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: get us in 1971 to get us to 1976 to
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: get a handle of the progression not just thematically not
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: just in terms of skill but a big part of
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: this story is about the gear that was used I
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: would try my best not to nerd it all the
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: way up when we talk about this but I was
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: thinking okay I feel like I kind of want to
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: start with how we got to songs in the key
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: of life, try to make it as quick as possible,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and then we kind of song by song it and
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: we go by feels. Does that seem okay?
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you know the history as well as I do,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: maybe in some cases better, so if I get it wrong,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: let me know. The big thing for people to get
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: is when Stevie was coming up on 21... He was
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: holding a couple of records hostage because he wanted to
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: get a new deal with Motown. And the big thing
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: was this. I got two albums right here ready for you.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: What do you think? What are you going to say?
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Okay. Got the deal. They gave him the creative control.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Those two records were Where I'm Coming From, which by
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: and large sounds like a Motown record. It's like Stevie
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: in Charge, but Stevie in Charge of the Motown band.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: The next one is Music of My Mind, which sounds great. Nothing.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: It's a whole nother situation. That's the one that's got Superwoman,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: I Love Every Little Thing About You, Sweet Little Girl,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: all those tracks, right? The tech part of that that
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: is interesting is that Stevie had come across this album,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I forget what it's called, but he asked these two dudes,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: how in the world did you do this? And the
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: thing was, they had built this system called Tonto. And Tonto,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: long or the short, gave Stevie the ability through synthesizers
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: to create any sound that was in his head. Cook
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: it up. They twist the knobs and the oscillators and
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: all this shit and everything coming up with it. And
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: so what you then have is a run of four
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: albums that don't sound like anything else ever just because
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: he was cooking it up in his head and he's
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: playing everything on them, right? So that gets you Music
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: of My Mind. That gets you Talking Book. That gets
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: you Inner Visions. That gets you Fulfilling This First Finale.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: The other thing about those records are they are a
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: bit dark. Once you get past Music of My Mind, Intervisions,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: you got the car accident while he's making Intervisions. Fulfillment's
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: first finale is a bummer by and large. He's trying
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: his best, but that one's a bummer. Intervisions is like, yo,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the world, it's kind of fucked up, right? It's a
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: bit of a bummer. It's all of those things. 1974,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: after he's won the Alameda Year Grammy, Back to Back
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Times in 1975 or whatever year it was, when Paul
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Simon pulled up and thanks Stevie Wonder, for not making
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: an album this year so that he could maybe win
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: album of the year while he was putting out heat,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: by the way. There's two years between Fulfillment's first finale
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and Songs in the Key of Life. And those two
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: years in that time may have been like the Guns N'
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Roses Chinese democracy wait.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: It may as well have been like waiting for detox.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: It was forever. How many songs did it record?
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Two hundred? Almost 200.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, almost 200 songs. And I was talking to Matt
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Norlander about this and the point that he makes about
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: songs in the key of life that we have to
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: remember when you think about why it's so outsized in
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the public's consciousness. It lived up to the hype. People
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: had been waiting so long for this record. Even if
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: it's not your favorite Stevie Wonder record, it lived up
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: to the hype.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you have to remember the framework where he's,
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: the historical framework he's working in here. So, All of
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: these albums, if they're dark, they're made after the assassinations
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: of MLK and Malcolm X and RFK. Whoever inspired you
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: was probably shot at that point. We thank Kent State. Yeah,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Kent State. You've got a lot of choices here for
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: your bummer of choice. The Vietnam War is scaling down
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: but ongoing. Watergate happens. Watergate happens this whole time, right?
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: And Stevie is thinking about leaving the country and going
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: to Ghana specifically, quitting, just getting out, right? How much
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: of this is actually in motion at any point is
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: a big question. And you need to know this. I
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: watched the documentaries really sort of fill in the space.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: And so does a 1975 article written by Rolling Stone.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: I think it was meant to, if you read it,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: it feels like it was going to be a making
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: of And they don't get that because Stevie is so
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: chaotic at that point. You get, you're in this hotel
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: room with him in New York. There's a bunch of
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: people who are, you know, like hooking up wires on keyboards.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: He's getting electronics, like just thrown in the door. Like
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: people are just throwing like radios at him. Right. Because
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: at this point, you should also know this. You say,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: you mentioned Tonto, his creative process, totally chaotic. He would
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: stay up for two or three days writing, writing, writing, writing, writing.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: He would send session players home during this. And then
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: call them at 5.30 and say, I need you back
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: for this.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Or 3.30.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or 3.30. Yeah. The bass player for the whole
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: album is Nathan Watts, and he remembers being called back
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: in at 5.30 a.m. Because Stevie thought, ah, I finally got–
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: I've got the line for I Wish. So here, you
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: need to come back in. And he'd just gotten out
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: of the studio. But you also need to know that he–
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: people would give him things. Once Tonto– once the sort of, hey,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: this guy works with electronics– came out, people would just
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: throw additional stuff at him. There's stuff that appears on
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: this album that really doesn't appear a lot of other places, right?
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: We'll get to some of the geekery here, but what
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: you need to know is that on this album, there
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: is a synthesizer of which there are only 13 outside
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: the nation of Japan, and Stevie owned two of them.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Is that the Yamaha, the GX?
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, the GX7.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, we are going to get to the GX
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: part when we go track by... Oh my God, I'm
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: so excited about this. An observation that you made, and
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: then we're going to get into. Unlike the others, this
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: is a band album, right? And at first I was like, yeah,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: but it's still a lot of Stevie. And then I
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: go through and listen to it and I'm reading the
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: credits and I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no. It's
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: a band album and it's an important shift because I
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: noticed this from my Prince affection. When Prince does the
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: whole thing, there's... Now Prince is a little different also
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: because he's playing the string instruments and Stevie's thing is
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: really controlled by synthesizers. But there's something to be said
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: about when a guy plays everything, there's never much of
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: a need to show off on anything because you're the
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: whole thing. You're the entire composition. So you don't necessarily
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: have to flex on it or anything. When you get
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: the band, I think that that shows a certain level
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: of growth from Stevie as it did with Prince once
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: he got more into his band eras of thing. The
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: willingness to say, you know what? Maybe I don't have
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: to do everything. Maybe I can allow somebody else to
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: come into this. But it's also combined with that synthesizer
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: that you talk about because the rule on this album
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: basically is, and it doesn't work absolutely, but the rule
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: on this album basically is, if it sounds like a
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: band thing, It's a band.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: If it sounds like an orchestra, it's Stevie. That keyboard
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: allowed him to create orchestra sounds by himself on three songs.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: If you know the album, you can guess. But anyway,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: all that gets us here to where Stevie is on
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: this record. And you and I talked about this both
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: where we're trying to figure out of the four sides,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: because I think you do have to conceive of this
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: as a vinyl record to really appreciate the sequencing and
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: everything else. It's a slow starter album. with uh loves
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: they need a love today and in fact i went
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: to the songs in the key of life tour that
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: he had in 2014 you know they're doing it again
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: now but in 2014 and it was very interesting because
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: you could tell who was there because it was stevie
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: and they didn't quite know the record and it's taken
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: three tracks before it really gets dialed up because it
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: starts with loves they need a love today and people
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: are kind of like oh this is a little bit
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: slow and dirgy but it's set.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Up and uh And conceptually, that's the part that on
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: my first couple of listens.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I struggled with.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Like that's like when I was a kid, you know,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: you just flip it. I was like like straight, I'd
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: go to contusion. Right. Cause I have no attention span. So, um,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: and it was worse when I was a kid. So
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: he would start and it's a convocation. That's you have
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: to understand he was raised in the Baptist church and,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: and this is the come together. This is the end
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: statement of purpose. That's how, you know, you're in for
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: like a concept album, right? Yes. Um, everybody in soul
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: ended up doing a concept album. Marvin Gaye did a
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: concept album. Curtis Mayfield did several concept albums. Everybody had
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: their own spin on it. And Stevie's is so.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, Bill Withers. The divorce concept album.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: The most divorced man ever in the history of music.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: That's the most... Are you okay? I'm not asking for you.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I'm asking for her. Are you okay?
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Is everyone... Do we need to intervene?
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: That... This is– because Stevie is so straightforward. This is–
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: do you know how hard– I'm going to say this
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: a lot. There are a lot of things that are
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: very simple and very, very difficult at the same time.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: It is very hard to be that sincere and not
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: put everyone off immediately. Right. But that's it, right? He says–
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: and the statement, first words on the album, you know,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: good morning or evening. It doesn't matter when you're listening
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: to this.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yes. I have some bad news for you. Yes.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Serious news. Serious news.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Serious news, right? Like it's a grabber, right? Oh, okay.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: All right. Yeah, sure.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Hold on. What I'm about to say could mean the
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: world's disaster.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Turn tears and laughter, joy and laughter into tears and pain. No, man,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I just got here.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Right. And additionally, I think when you think about how
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: he's introducing himself, It's the Fender, right? He's over like
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: a Fender Rhodes. So this is very much, you know,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: one like stage, spotlight, one guy, usual instrument that you're
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: used to hearing, right? Start with that. The producers talked
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: about this is how they started most songs on the album.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: So it's fun that the opener starts the way most
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: of these songs start, which is Stevie and a keyboard
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: of some sort, right? Talking directly and sincerely to you.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: I will also state this. This song has only gotten
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: better the more I've listened to it. Like it is
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: not one of those that has ever really kind of waned.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: It's only kind of continued to wax because if you
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: listen to the song, which is exactly what it's about, right?
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Love's in need of love today. Think serious. Uh, the
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: world's bad. You need to, you need to focus on love.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: It's a thesis statement because it's taken me, um, cause
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: I'm a slow learner. It's taken me the better part
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: of 40 years to figure out what this album is 100% about.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Cause there's a lot in here. But I should have
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: just looked at the first track. This is an album
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: about love. Like that is fundamentally, this is an album
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: about love. And it's right there. It's a thesis statement. Bing.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: First song.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: It's funny you mentioned that because that. You go back
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: to fulfilling this first finale and Smile Please is the
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: first song on it. And it is basically, hey, man,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: it's all bad out here. Smile, please. And just about
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: every track is some form of that kind of emotional
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: space of, oh, I'm down. But all right, I'm trying.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I'm going
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: to keep going. I'm going to keep going. And this
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: one is, yes, love needs love, right? That's how down
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: bad this whole thing is. Because Stevie has a bit
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: of that Kendrick Lamar, I went to a church with
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: no windows thing. in him, right? Like, his interpretation of
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: God is typically a very punishing one. Like, his God
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: got teeth.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: In the documentary, it's very funny at the end, because
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: he's talking about pastime paradise, I believe. And he said that,
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: you know, he gets to this larger point about, well,
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: you know, when I go, like, when I die, I
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: hope I've done enough good so that I didn't end up.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: And then he goes, there's a lot more people with
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: a lot more money who haven't done anything I wonder
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen to them. And then he does
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: this little, ha ha. The implication of hell is always,
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: to be clear, this is a very Protestant, like, hell
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: is right there and it is a real place. And
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: it's something you better worry about.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Steve is like, jokes on you, bitch. But it's
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: such a smooth record and it is... this is with
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Nathan Watts on bass and Michael Cimbello, who we'll talk
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: about on guitar, but there are flourishes that we'll talk
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: about with them. But by and large, the mix on
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: this is really interesting where nobody, nobody's showing out at
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: any point. Like there's incredible bass play on this that
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: you really need to pay heavy attention to, right? It
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: is everything's in concert on every track. And we get
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: to the next two. There aren't a lot of those
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Stevie one man band tracks. They're only really like three
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: or three, right? And then like, like some three in
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: a possible, right? type situation but the next two have
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: a talk with god which is a like i feel
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: like that is very in the way that i feel
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: like led zeppelin's the ocean is kind of a proto
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: hip-hop where it feels like somebody's bringing the beat back
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: right now the ocean is weird because it's got that
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: crazy timing right where it's like wait a minute this
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense but this one is the same
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: way like boom like they're bringing it back and it's
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: got these dark sounds but it's honestly as optimistic a
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: record as there is on here right if you feel
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: your life's too hard just go have a talk with god.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Well and and this is again like i i always
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: thought like side one is the church service right and
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: and i think you can not that this is the
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: plan right i think that stevie's a little more random
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: than that but the whole record kind of plays in
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: the same order as the church service right It starts
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: with this and it will end with the ride out. Right.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: It will end with like praise breaks. That's what you'll
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: get at the end. But in this this song, I
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: like that it is it is, again, ridiculously straightforward. And
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: it is a an answer to the track before. Yes.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Like what is OK? Problem stated. What is the solution?
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: And I think it's a great indicator that this song
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: you can get through it and like it and enjoy it. Um,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: even though you're an atheist, like if you're like, you're listening,
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: you're like, that's a great idea. Like I, I, I
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: am not religious, but I listened to this and I
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: was like, you know what, Stevie, that is a fantastic idea. Also,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: also this is, you say it mentioned this being a
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: band record. You know, this is not just a band record.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: I think it's the by-product of, he did a whole
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: lot of touring. You can find some higher live clips.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: from 72 to 74, 71, 74, including the Sesame Street
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Superstition track, which is like my favorite Stevie Live track ever.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: He just pulled up the whole band and all the stuff.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: It was like, these kids deserve a show.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: These kids got to what? What do you do on
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Sesame Street? Oh, I got a three and a half
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: minute long single that I can play. What if I
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: did it for eight minutes? And what if it's a
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: horror movie? What was the song about?
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Dark shit, man.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Dark shit. But you look at the kids are like,
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: hell yeah. Yeah, that's right. But there's a lot of
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: good live clips. And it occurs to me like listening
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: to this, like the bass on this. That's Nathan Watts, right?
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Like that's who's ending up playing on bass on all
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: of these tracks on an earlier album. That might have
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: been Stevie's left hand. Yes. Right. So I think there's
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: a lot of there's a lot of things undergirding how
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: consistent this entire album is. And one of them is
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: that same bass player, same bass player on every track. Right.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: That has a bass player. There's a couple that are
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: just Stevie. But and additionally, he's more comfortable with the
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: band than I think he has been at any point. Yeah.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: And I think that becomes important when we get to contusion.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: I have observation I would bring up on that because
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: you mentioned have a talk with God being an answer
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: to loves they need to love today. We're a village
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: ghetto land. to me, is the answer to both of those, right? Like,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: do you see what's going on out here? Tell me,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: would you be happy if this was the life that
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: you were living? You're out here talking about, we need
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: to be loving each other. Love this. Show me where
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: this is. People eating dog food in the streets, right?
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. This is not Stevie's lyrics, by the way. These
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: are not Stevie's lyrics. Really? No, they are not. Stevie
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: does not write the lyrics himself. on uh or solely
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: write the lyrics the lyrics on this are done by
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: a guy named gary bird oh yes that's right right
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: and you need to know a story about this that
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: gary bird wrote steve was like hey man listen i've
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: got this concept and it's called village ghetto land here
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: it's like all right he's working as a dj but
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: he also does a lot of spoken word um and
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: he and stevie i imagine have had the loopiest possible
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: conversations leading up to this right Like wherever their brains
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: go is some sort of stratosphere that we're only occasionally
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: invited to. Very right-brained kind of guys, right? And he says, okay, cool.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: I need you to write this down. This is kind
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: of how Songs in the Key of Life was made.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: He goes, I have this synthesizer and I'm going to
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: make these arrangements because this synthesizer allowed him to do strings.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: It allowed him to do gorgeous arrangements that were not
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: just a single note. but were chords. And he was
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: able to integrate those into like a whole seamlessly. Did
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: he know how to do this by the way, before
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: he started? No amateurs take note. Stevie is not a
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: trained musician, right? He took theory classes later.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: That was during the, during that break. We talk about
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: around the record deal expiring.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: He took classes at UCLA. And he obviously is an autodidact.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: So when they threw technology at him, A lot of
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: these uses are very innovative because no one told him
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: what to do. He just started fiddling with it. And
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: that's one of the reasons this thing took two and
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: a half years because people kept throwing new toys at
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: him in four different studios with all of the money
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: and all of the permission granted in the world to
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: manage his own creative affairs. What Gary Bird was told was,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: I need you to write lyrics for this. And he goes, okay, cool.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Took him three months to write the first verse. And
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: then Stevie, three months later, calls him and goes, hey, man, listen,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: I'm putting Village Ghetto Land down. Who decided when? Stevie did.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Stevie was like, okay, today's the day to do it, okay?
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: And Gary Bird's like, okay, cool, cool. All right, all right.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: The lyrics are at my house, but I'll go get them.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: He goes, okay, cool. Gary Bird had a verse, and
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: he reads it over the phone. Stevie goes, okay, that's great.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: I'm recording the whole thing right now. Can you get
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: me the other verse? So the first verse takes three
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: months to write in the chorus, and then the second
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: verse takes about five minutes because Gary Bird is under
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: the gun because Stevie's like, yeah, I need the second
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: verse now. And then he just writes, And hands it in.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: And Stevie hears it and goes, oh, that's perfect. Thinking
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: that Gary Bird had written the whole thing in three months,
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: whereas he wrote half of it just then. But that
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: was how Stevie worked. He's like, hey, I need you
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: to write the second verse of a classic for me immediately.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Well, he's got a lot of Quincy Jones, where you
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: told me that story about with the drummer, I'll rock
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: with you right before they go on. And Quincy's like, hey,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: I need you to play an intro that people are
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: always going to remember for this song. Three, two, one.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: He's just like, yeah, man, you'll be fine. Make me
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: a hit.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: Three, two, one.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you can do that. By the way, not
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: terribly dissimilar to the approach of the right time when
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: it comes to guests.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Or no paralysis by analysis. No paralysis by analysis.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Just jump on. Just jump on.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Hey, listen, go look it up right now. We're going
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: to tell you a lot of things. There'll be a
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: lot of sources in this, okay? But I'm going to
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: try to point you in the right direction. Will Smith's
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: story about how The Fresh Prince was made. Yes, amazing.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: A drunken Quincy Jones yelling at lawyers and Brandon Tartikoff going,
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: no paralysis by analysis.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: You're going to do it now. You're going to do
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: it now. Or you can wait and he'll do this
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: and his kid can't make it. All this stuff. Village
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Ghetto Land, you mentioned the tech. Thunderstealer motherfucker. You mentioned
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: the tech. Here's the thing about that tech and it's important.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: And I did not realize this until getting into this
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: for this for this episode. There are no strings on
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Village Ghetto Land.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Nope.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: So where I say that if it sounds like a band,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: it's probably a band. If it sounds like an orchestra,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: it's Stevie. This and Past Times Paradise. Past Times Paradise.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Those are Stevie on the Yamaha creating an orchestra. I
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: don't fully understand, and we can't get too deep in
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: the weeds, the idea that the old synthesizers only allowed
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: you to do monophonic. They don't let you do the
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: one sound. But now he could do these chords, and
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: that sounds like a full-on orchestra. And it's just Stevie Wonder.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: And then leads into the bandiest song on the whole record, Contusion,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: which I have to admit, it had always been my
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: second to least favorite song on here, just because I'm not...
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: I'm just getting to the jazz, and the fusion isn't
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: necessarily my thing, and it was holding up what we
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: were getting to. But this is a vinyl all-star, Jack.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: I put that bad boy on the table. And I
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: had not listened to this on vinyl very often because
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: it's one of those annoying ADBC records where the first
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: side and the last side are on the same record,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: so you have to get up extra times. And it's
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: just like, man, I ain't going through all of that. Dude,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: contusion was jumping out of the speakers this time where
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: I'm hearing it. It's crazy from everybody. And we learned
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: in the course of this that there are heavy metal
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: people who believe that Stevie invented something fundamental about playing
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: drums in metal on this song.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, so metal metal. Yeah. This is contusion is
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: first of all, the by-product of, of the moment, like Stevie,
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: you have to know that like he used to say,
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: leave a little space on the record. So, uh, God
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: can walk in the room. Like that is, that is
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: also very important here in the band concept because, um,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: that went for his listening habits too, because once you
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: get into contusion, which no vocals, no lyrics, just, just jam. Right. Um,
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: It is also possibly a reference to his brain injury
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: from the car accident that he was in in 1973
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: because he did suffer a contusion to his brain laying
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: there with his head five times the size it normally
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: is according to the people who were taking care of
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: him in the hospital. But there's a big like Chick
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Corea influence on this. Like there's a lot of L.A. fusion. Remember,
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: he's living in L.A. a lot of this time. It's
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: recorded at four different studios, but I believe three of
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: them are in California. Or two of them are in California,
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: two of them in New York. And he is hearing
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: all of this stuff. And a lot of the guys
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: that he's playing with are obviously just, you know, extremely
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: vibed on this stuff. He's very tapped into that. He's
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: very tapped into jazz. Herbie Hancock's on later, right? You know,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Sir Duke is obviously entirely about jazz and big band.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: But on this song, right, when you're listening to it,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: it's concise, right? It's very tight, and it never really
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: wanders too far into that noodley fusion kind of stuff. No. Nails.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Michael Cimbello, the guitarist on this, the guy who sang
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Maniac on the Flashdance soundtrack much later. Michael Cimbello is
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: a peak session guitarist at this point, and he is
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: nails on this. Just unripping.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Cookin'. He's nails, and I think something that gets forgotten
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: in the Stevie process, because we always see Stevie sitting
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: at the keyboard whenever he's doing a live performance, is
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: that Stevie's not only playing drums on all of this,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: but Stevie has a very distinct drumming style that is
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: very jazz-influenced and marked by the fact that he hits
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: hi-hats as hard as he hits snares. But you have
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: to think about when you're imagining these sessions on a
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: song like Contusion where Where is Stevie? Stevie's not playing
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the keys. That's a patch. You don't play that with
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the band. We need a drummer. He's the drummer in
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: all of these sessions with all these dudes in there,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: and he's going to work on every single track. The
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: drums on Stevie Wonder Records don't sound like drums on
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: anything else, but on this one in particular, this is
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: one where you're like, yo, who's the drummer on that? Stevie.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Stevie. So on this and a couple of other tracks,
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: one guy who's the drummer for Dark Angel and later
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: the drummer for Testament says that Stevie invented the blast beat,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: which the blast beat is a foundation of modern metal.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: And he's like, yeah, Stevie did it. Oh, I listened
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: to a lot of tracks for this. OK, I can't
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: find where he's talking about this, but he's not the
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: only metal drummer who says this. Also, metal guys love
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Stevie Wonder, love him. And it's very interesting because. I
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: think rhythmically they like that because a lot of metal
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: drummers love jazz because they love fills and they love
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: rolls and they love keeping off time. And if you
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: want to learn how to play weird time signatures, start
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: with jazz, then do metal.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, jazz drummers are better than all the drummers.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: They're better than all the drummers. They're the fundament. They
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: are either the thing you're playing with or playing against, right?
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: You go, okay, that's a jazz drummer. I'll play the
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: opposite and that's how I'll do this. You know, he... Also,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: like guys who were influenced by– Bran Dowler of Mastodon
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: has said that not only has his drumming been influential,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: but metal chords. If you listen especially like modern metal
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: where you get these rich, complex chords, right? A lot
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: of sevenths and minors and things. That– like a lot
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: of them got that from Stevie. You go, oh, man,
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: were you listening to classical? Were you listening to jazz?
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: They're like, no, man. We started with Stevie Wonder. Yeah.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: They started with Stevie because of the drums. And then
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: that got them into the chords. Yeah. And then they
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: sort of put that in their own blender and came
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: out with a lot of sort of more exotic metal arrangements.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: So the influences here that you take away from this
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: go to some very weird places. One more metal guy
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: who absolutely loves this record, Slayer's Phil Anselmo. Absolutely. He
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: says Stevie Wonder is perfect. That's the guy who– Angel
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: of Death himself.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think this track also points out something that
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: to me makes this record interesting and important in the
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: progression of the Stevie Wonder career, which is when you
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: really think about the fact that he did not have
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: bass guitar on very much of what had come the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: previous four years. The bass guitar, with all due respect
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: to the 808, the bass guitar is the best way
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: to come up with the bass sound, right? That's the
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: biggest reason we did this. Stevie had never taken that
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: club seriously. Out of the bag is having that sound.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: And Sir Duke, look, everybody's playing that same line on
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: the hook of Sir Duke, right, or on the bridge.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: But the bass line on Sir Duke, which is just
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: a perfect record. Like, I feel like that's the one
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: that we can almost talk about the least because it's
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: such a big thing. One, I would just like to
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: say people need to get back to making music about
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: how much they love music.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: But.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Hey, man. And that's also one where Stevie does not
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: play the drums. And it is a drum line that
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: maybe he could play, but it's not a Stevie Wonder
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: drum line. Like that one's a little bit different, has
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: more like the kicks have that feel to start off with.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Because I would not argue Stevie's the greatest feel drummer.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: He's not Carly Barrett in terms of that.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: No.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: But he's a great feel guy, right? Like sounds very unique.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: But this right here was, OK, let somebody else come
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: in and get this. A dude named Ray Pounds.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: They wrecked it. Yeah, your drummer's named Pounds, by the way.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: He's going to be a boss. Yes. The horn section
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: on this is what steals the entire track for me.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: There's two miracles here. One, that I'm getting lectured and
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: I don't mind. Stevie does that a couple times on
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: this record where he's just telling you facts and you go,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, sure. I'm fine with that. The second thing
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: is the horn section. He records horns and arranges them
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: in a manner that is so unique because to me,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: they're sax-led. And that's hard to do because sax is
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: a woodwind and you've got brass playing over it, but
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: they're always balanced. And it gets this like timber that
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: I absolutely love in that, you know, this is also,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: by the way, it is jazzy, but it's not that hard.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Like I played an arrangement of Sir Duke when I
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: was in a band and Sir Duke is fun. It's
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: got little challenging bits, right? It keeps you awake. But
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: on the whole, this is a pop record. Yeah. It's
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: a pop record about the jazz of the 1940s.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: What right that's insane i want to point i want
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: to put a little stake here okay keep remember this
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: stevie is writing every genre of music on this record
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: yes in there right this is.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: The great american record because it puts a little pin
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: in so many different things. And if you think about
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: it that way, if you're listening to this for the
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: first time, and kids, if you're listening to this, just
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: go give it a spin. You might be confused. Some
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: of these songs are confusing when you hear them the
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: first time. I need you to think of them, the
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: broadest possible spectrum, the broadest possible audience, and the broadest
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: possible set of references. That's what we're working with here.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: And by the way, contusion serves as a bit of
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: a palate cleanser because you get from the kind of
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: chaos of that to this perfectly tight contained beat of
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Sir Duke, which then, you flip the record, it gets
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: you into I Wish, which I feel like is a
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: bit of a continuation, but now, like, things are, even
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: though it's in a retrospective sense, things are a little
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: bit sunnier, right? It's like, I wish we could go
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: back to what it used to be like, but it
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: is at least giving you something, right? We're not just
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: talking about what's wrong with now. We're like, okay, this
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: is what it could be. Like, I love the jazz
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: of back in the day. That's another, like, retrospective sort
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: of thing, but also I feel like it's still... With
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: an eye to the future. That's another band track that
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: then leads, and I'm only doing this fast because I
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: realize Spencer got a hard out. We have so much music.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Knocks Me Off My Feet comes. Knocks Me Off My
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Feet is a goddamn banger. That's an all Stevie, by
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the way, right? It's been covered to death. I'm not
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: making some observation that nobody has ever made before. He
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: wrote his ass off on that one, along with singing
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: it to death.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know how anybody could have a problem with
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: the lyrics on this because that is one, by the way,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: problem that is identified. The review, if you read it
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: in Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone's had some trash-ass reviews. It
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: is the music. But it's the magazine of the period, right? Yes.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: It's not now, but it was of the period. And
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: the review there is like, well, you know, his lyrics
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: can sometimes be kind of treacly or cliched. And I'm like,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: first of all, lyrics serve the song. I'm not one
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: of these lyrics first people. I don't really care if
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: you write clever lyrics at all. I never care. I do.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: There's a long digression. We're not going down that road.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: No, we're not.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: No, we're not. Because I'm talking about an actual genius here.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: But the verse where it opens with the broadest, like,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: I see us in the park strolling the summer days
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: of imaginings in my head and words from our hearts
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: told only to the wind felt even without being said.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Who said that wasn't good? Who said that wasn't good?
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: That's because you've never sung to a woman in any form.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: How do you not understand love after hearing that?
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: By the way. That's an incredible line.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Great piano play, right? Great drums, great synth bass, great...
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Everything about this song is great. To me, this is
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: the most perfect song on the record.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: It is... I have a couple of candidates for this,
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: but this is the one that is just... This is
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: the one that feels dropped. Like, it just drops out
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: of the ceiling, and it's perfectly formed. Like, I can't
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: see the seams on this song at all. Right. Period.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: It is also the song that I feel like is
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: probably most tied to the first three albums.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: Or maybe even like the Signed, Sealed, Delivered era. Like
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: it is, Stevie has a kind of classic ballad that
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: pops up once or twice on any of his records.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: And this is This is the one. If I was
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: going to pick which one is the prototype, it's this one.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's an advancement of those because I
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: say Stevie writes the best easy breezy love song of anybody.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: You are the sunshine of my life. I love every
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: little thing about you. Straight to the point, but still clever,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: still has a vibe, still something that not just any
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: old body could wind up doing. This one he did,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: and then he stepped up the lyrical complexity a little
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: bit without weighing it down. Because when he gets to
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: the hook, I don't want to bore you with this,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: but girl, I love you. It gets right back there.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: And then he goes and bums us out a little
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: bit with Pastime Paradise. Again, not an orchestra, just Stevie
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: with the Yamaha. But again, it is with an eye
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: as to what we could do. We spent way too
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: much time on this dumb shit. Let's start living our
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: lives for future paradise.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: The great documentary on this, the 1997 documentary on this
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: is fantastic because They get all the musicians back in
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: studio for this and they talk about how they made it.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: The chanting that you hear are a bunch of Hare
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Krishna that they pulled off the street. Yes. Outside the studio. Yeah, literally.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: They just pulled them in and thought, you know, hey,
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: this would sound cool. There's also another choir on that
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: if you want to talk about weird arrangements. The lyrics
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: of this one, though, are, you know, it's a very
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: cliched thing to say, well, you know, this album is
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: still fresh today. No, no, this is bad that it's
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: still fresh. Yes. because wonder in the documentary also says
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: that he wrote this song, the past time paradise about
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: people being, uh, living in the past for a dead
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: culture or a dead idea or loyal or enthrall to
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: something that is no longer there. And it's only serving
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: the purposes of power or cruelty or evil. I love
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: this song because I love it when Stevie writes about evil. Yeah.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: He writes like he does too.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, he, like, I think superstition is– that's what
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: makes it so powerful. Evil, literally.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Yes, the actual song Evil.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: The actual song Evil. I love Mr. Know-It-All because he's
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: writing about a supremely cynical person, Richard Nixon.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: They won't go when I go?
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: They won't go when I go. Like when he flips dark,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: it's so dark.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: And it's so good. It's not even– to me, it's
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: almost like not a bummer because it's so– arresting when
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: he does it. And I think that's, there's a lot
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: of people who can write about sunshine. A lot of
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: people can write about pain. There's very few people who
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: write compellingly about evil and he does it beautifully.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: But it's funny you mentioned that because the next two
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: tracks to me are kind of sunshiny painful. Yeah. Like
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Somersault and Ordinary Pain, neither of them are about happy things,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: but they don't feel sad. Like the, every time he
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: gets into the hook on Somersault, it soars. Those are
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: banned records, Jack. But it soars and it rises and he's,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: you know, you flew by April and she's gone, right?
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Ordinary Pain, which of course has like on the back
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: end where the woman gets to spit her shit right
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: back at him. These are not happy records, but they go.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: This is where, by the way, Ordinary Pain is where
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Chicken Heads meets Stevie Wonder.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: It's like Otis and Carla Thomas Tramp.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Tramp, yeah. It's the chance for, hey, this is
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: an interesting song. It'd be really funny if we just
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: turned this around and let the girl flame me.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Hold on. You're such a masochistic fool. You went through
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: all this, spitting what you think is the heartbreak of it,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: and she's like, you're such a masochistic fool.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: If one ain't good enough for you, go do yourself.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: See how you do.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: What?
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Like, if you want to know, like, Stevie's been married
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: three times. Yes. You know, this is a very full
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: spectrum take on the person, but it's probably the point
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: besides lately where you get like the. biggest window into, Hey,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: some really kind of complex messed up shit is happening
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: in my personal life.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Hey man, super woman, you listen to that and you're like, Oh,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: wait a minute. Stevie's a self-absorbed dick.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can't see that's all.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Barry Gordy gave him $ 13 million in two and a
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: half years. What do you think he was doing? Yes.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: Like there's the, and you can, you can stay awake
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: for two or three days in the studio and, And
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: take a nap. But you need a minute to do
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: something else. Who knows what the hell Stevie was up to, right?
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: He didn't drink.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: He didn't do drugs. I'll just note, for whatever it's worth,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: all his lady friends seem to be very attractive. Almost like,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: you know, visual aesthetics matter to him in a way
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: that one would find surprising given, you know, what we've
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: been told.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: I think that man could tell whether somebody was pretty
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: from the minute they opened their mouth. Apparently. I think
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: he just heard it and was like, yeah. These two songs,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Somersoft is the one that this time, like when I
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: was prepping for this, Somersoft was the one that really
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: caught me because it's it sounds like they're just jamming
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: it in the studio, right?
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Like, okay guys, here's how the riff goes. Riff starts, right?
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: And here's how the verse is going to go. And
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: he almost sounds like he's, cause Stevie will do this.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: If you see him in clips, he won't sing the
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: lyrics because he doesn't have them or doesn't remember them.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: So if he goes, well, the song kind of goes like,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: it goes, it just sounds like he's kind of working
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: through it. And then the band picks up on it.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: And they keep going up, right? This is the, this
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: is the love on top key change, right? That just
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: keeps going up, up, up. Um, and, It's so spontaneous.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: But by the end of the song, you're just like, oh, no, no, no.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: This is a song that has been rehearsed and played
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: to sound spontaneous and loose. But this is not. That's, again,
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: another thing that's real simple, but it's actually very difficult.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: Coming up, disc two. Football is heating up and everyone's
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: pulling up because PrizePix has all your picks in one place.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: New users, get yourself a head start with prize picks
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: best offer yet. If you win your first $ 5 lineup,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: you'll get $ 150 in lineups. That's right. New users get
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: $ 150 in lineups. If you win your first $ 5 lineup
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: prize picks is available nationwide. So what are you waiting for?
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: Lock in for a kickoff with prize picks. What am
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: I on this season? They say defense wins championships, but
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: that certainly doesn't apply to America's team. So I'd select
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: more for their opponent basically every week. PrizePix has an
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: improved search functionality and live box scores to track your
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: picks without having to leave the app. Plus, with their
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: social feature, you can find popular picks that users love
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: and copy them in just one click. You can find
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: everything in the PrizePix app. So pull up this football
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: season and basketball season. Download the app and use code
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: BOMANI to get $ 150 instantly in lineups if you win
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: your first $ 5 lineup. Download the app today and use
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: code BOMANI to get $ 150 instantly in lineups if you
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: win your first $ 5 lineup. Prize picks. Run your game.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: All right, we are back with Spencer Hall talking songs
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: in the key of life. Now we're talking about this too.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Isn't She Lovely has historically been on my, I mean,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: it's cool, Stevie list.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Number one, this is another one where the vinyl does
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: great things for it. Because again, the mix on this is,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: the digital mixes on this are not nearly as good
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: as it is when you hear it on vinyl. But
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: number two, when I saw Stevie live, my brother had
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: told me this because he had seen him first. He
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: was like, man, Stevie's got the best voice I've ever
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: heard in concert. And I think we underrate the quality
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: of singer that Stevie is. And there are a few
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: like outright vocal exhibitions. This is one of them. This
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: is one of the probably two or three best vocal performances.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: That he offers. it is, if you have kids, this
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: is just a torpedo. Like, it just, it doesn't matter
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: if it's not a daughter, right?
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Isn't she lovely, he said, as he held that baby
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: toward his face, but certainly did not look at her.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Isn't she lovely is, I'm a sucker for it. I've
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: always been. It just sounds like joy. You know, this
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: is one of the, like, that's, Again, this is Stevie
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: being very, very sincere and straightforward in a way that
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: very few people can get away with, right? All while,
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: by the way, of course, using some of that tech
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: because this is just a fluffy synth riff. There's no bridge. Yeah. Right?
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: We're just playing the same thing the whole song. There's
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: a little hook that restarts it.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: This is not a band record, by the way.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: No, no, no. This is just Stevie, right? And I mean,
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't say that. There are two different babies on
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: this track. That's correct. Because the first one that you
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: hear to open the track is not Aisha, his daughter.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: That's later on. and the recording giving her a bath.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: That is the sound, which I also have to say
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: as a parent, yeah, you're going to put your baby
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: on the record, right? Because if you think you get
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: emotional listening to this, imagine how Stevie feels, man.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: He made it.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: That's his kid.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: The girls love that stuff too, you know what I mean?
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying, it's a dashly world. Joy aside, my
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: tears comes next. So this is where I am honest.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: This stretch from Isn't She Lovely through I Am Singing
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: for me, has historically been the you can keep it stretch, right?
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: I interpret it a little differently now as, like, sitting
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: there listening to it straight through. Did I tell you
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: about a couple years ago I got bored and decided
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: to try to watch ACDC at Castle Donegan? It's a
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: two-hour ACDC concert, and the problem with a two-hour ACDC
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: concert is two hours of ACDC, right? And every, like...
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: ACDC songs, it is not true. The songs don't all
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: sound the same, but they are all the same, right?
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: They all serve the exact same purpose. And after 45 minutes, man,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: I was just exhausted. I just couldn't do it anymore.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: I do realize after that first disc, It Isn't She Lovely,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: it is time for a little bit of a, okay,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: let's like take this down a notch. Joy Inside My
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Tears is sad, but again, with the optimism, I mean,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: the basic title gives it to you. I think the
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: reason I realized that these tracks didn't, like this one
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: didn't do it for me in particular, it was just
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: kind of some sense. Little bit of guitar in it
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: or whatever, but it's a mean ballad, right? It's just,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: something has to not be your favorite on a record
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: like this. That's where I am, but I appreciate what
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: purpose it serves in the continuation of the album.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: I think on a record where a room full of
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: Hare Krishnas are chanting over a $ 64, 000 in 1972 synthesizer,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: This is somehow the weirdest song. Yes. It is the weirdest.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: It sounds like they're playing it on the wrong speed,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: which I think is the coolest thing.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: It does sound screwed.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: It sounds. I'm going to go ahead. Let's just give
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: him credit. If he invented the blast beat, let's just
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: go ahead and say he invented Chopped and Screwed because
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: this song sounds chopped and screwed. It does.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: And it gets us into Black Man.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Okay. So you just mentioned that. Stevie lectured you a
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: couple times on this record. This is time number two.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know how this record lands with people who
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: didn't know what he was talking about. I already knew
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: all that shit, right? I appreciate it's factually correct because
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: there was that time that Nas was trying to teach
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: the baby falsehoods.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: He thought he was doing something nice, but he was
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: just I know I can. But you didn't. Anyway, Black
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Man is very similar to that. But you sent that
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: clip from that documentary. Black Man is a track like
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: instrumentally speaking. Nathan Watts is killing it on bass on this.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: And then the Stevie keyboard lines are so cold that
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: it becomes. Wait a minute. Which is the bass? Which
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: is what exactly do we have going on here? It's
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: too long. I didn't need to hear the kids do
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: call and response, but it sounds great.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: The same guy who did the lyrics for Village Ghetto
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Land does the lyrics on this one as well. This
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: is also Stevie being handed a toy, that little rhythm
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: track that starts it.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: That's a Marshall sequencer that I believe they just invented
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: and threw at him. Like at that point, that was
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: meant to sort of keep you on. It was meant
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: to be like a glorified click track that you could
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: play to. And Stevie was like, oh, that's a rhythm track. Again,
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: not using it really exactly for what it was meant
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: to do by putting it directly on the track. But
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: Stevie's like, that's dope.
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: Do it.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: Use it.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: And one thing to keep in mind, since he's Stevie Wonder,
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: he's getting to try out all the stuff. If people
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: find out that Stevie made records with this, imagine how
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: many copies will move.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: He's a test pilot. You know, you hand him the
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: SR-71 first and he figures out what to do with it.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: And if he crashes it, it's not a big deal
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: because he's got all the studio time in the world
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: to learn how to do it. Because Barry Gordy literally
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: has nobody else of the same, like, the same, like,
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: luster and star power on his roster. Which is another
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: reason he signed with Motown, I always think. But, you know,
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: it's like, who else are you going to go get?
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: That was basically it. Yeah. Oh, we have a relationship.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: I came up in the studio. That's real nice. you
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: need to pay me, by the way, $ 90 million. In
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: today's dollars. It's 13 mil then, it's around 90 mil today.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Well, there's also something to be said for somebody that
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: all he needs from you is to put the stuff out.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: There's nobody whose job it is to like, hey, keep
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: going with whatever Stevie's on.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: If this entire album, by the way, is a church service,
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: you go, okay, this is a little didactic. It's a
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: little it's a little on the nose. Well, most of
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Stevie's on the nose. And I like in 2026, hearing
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: somebody remind everybody, this world was made for all men, right? Yeah.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: This nation was made for all men. This was recorded
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: by the way, on July 4th, 1976. Yeah.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: They went in, they went and got kids.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: They went and got kids for this.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: So you hear it.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, even if you find this a little pedantic, um,
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: It seems utterly necessary. It's one of the– like, Past
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: Time Paradise and this, I will tell you, when you're
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: listening to it, kind of hit a little bit harder
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: than they might have hit even.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: They should not, but they do.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: This should be one of those, well, you got to
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: understand what was going on then.
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: Nah, I don't need to. I'm right here, big dog. Unfortunately,
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: this is still right on the line. But it is
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: saved by the fact that the rhythm track is– flames.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: It is it is it is i will also say
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: the next one uh as soon as story i am
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: singing yeah this is the weirdest one to me like
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: to me this is the one and this is not
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: a band track this is where not being a band
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: track i think actually kind of hurts like this type
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: of music he does a great job of recreating um
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: with synthesizers and i assume that stevie really digs latin
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: women Because he always wants to act like he's on
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: some South American shit. Like, don't you worry about a thing.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: Yes. Right?
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Like, that's his bag or whatever. He sings it very well.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: The story itself is kind of interesting. It's the weakest
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: track on the record for me. Just because that's the
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: one where it felt like, hey, man, I think you
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: should have called the boys in. And y'all did what
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: y'all could do.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: This is the best song on somebody else's record. Yes.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: And on Stevie's record, it is, I think. I think
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: we agree on that. We disagree on a lot of
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: these songs and sides even, right? Like side three is
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: the weakest for you. Side one will be the weakest
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: for me. And I say weakest because it's awesome. And
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: it's still the one where sometimes I'm like, I don't
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: need to start the church service today.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like, come on, come on, come on, come on, man.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Come on, come on, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Like from an ADHD perspective, side one can sometimes go.
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: It can go. Let me get my coffee, right? Or
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: I'll just go straight to contusion because I'm like, I
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: need to wake up. Versus, you know, that'll go.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Like I said, my thing with Side 1 in that regard,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: I am so intrigued by the sounds, particularly of Have
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: a Talk with God and Village Ghetto Land.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: And i've never heard anything that sounds like this before there's.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: There are so many things here like this song is
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: this song is fluffy it is very pretty i don't
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: skip it because i can just go it's the best
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: house cleaning song yeah on the record where i'm not
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: even focused on the music it's pleasant but it's not Yeah, it.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Makes you want to be in the house by yourself
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: going like this.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: A lilt.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: A lilt. Yeah, I love it when Stevie pretends that
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: he's Brazilian. He's like, on this track, I am Brazilian.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: You're like, okay, that's awesome. By the way, again, we're
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: talking about the big tent, right? Yes. How big can
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: your tent be? This song encompasses like two different continents, right? Yes.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: There's like little African elements and there's also like these
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: sort of Latin elements. So again, I'm never going to
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: complain when you're going big, son. Not if you're Stevie Wonder. Right.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: And so that is the thing. That is a point
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: that we have not talked about. And I know that
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: you and I, we talked off mic. a defining characteristic
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: of this record is how grand it feels, which is
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: interesting because it doesn't, with the exception of another star,
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: which we'll get to, it's not like it's big giant
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: collections of people here. Like the idea that Stevie could
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: create orchestra tracks by himself, the grandness of it is
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Stevie Wonder plus the things that other people have already.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: And now all of a sudden this thing gets huge.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: And somewhat ironically, because of the heart, You guys know
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: where I come from on harps. If it's magic, it
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: feels so big to me because it feels like it's
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: coming from your concept of heaven. It feels like this
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: harp is being played on a cloud, and his vocal
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: performance is so good, and it's so clear. And this
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: is a song that is not a happy one, right?
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: If it's magic, why can't it be everlasting, right? Like,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: why is this supposed to be so good? Why is
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: it that I lose it? The harp, I'm always so
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: intrigued again when he picks instruments that he can't play.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: I always wonder, like, did you ever try the harp
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: and just give up, right? And just be like, okay,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: this is for somebody else. But that harp is so
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: clear and it's so good. And he sings this thing
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: to death where... It is an overall sad tone, but
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: there is still a certain bit of optimism. This is
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: how dope this feels, but damn, it's only a matter
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: of time.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: There's something that happens sequentially on this album that blows
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: me away, and it's that the last three songs are
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: heart-of-the-sun level examinations of love. Yes. And this is... If
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: it's magic, why don't we take care of it? Why
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: doesn't it last? And the harp player is a local,
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: a Detroit local that he loved. And the documentary says, oh,
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: she never got enough credit. I'm like, I mean, Stevie,
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: she's a harp player.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: What else are we going to do?
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: It's going to be niche, man. It's going to be
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: harp isn't exactly going off in the club, right?
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: Well, if you want to get your credit as a
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: harp player, you just got to go marry John Coltrane.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, I just don't know what we got for you.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: It's just that easy.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: Just go marry the other pinnacle musical genius of the 1950s, 60s,
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: and 70s. Yeah, this song, it took me, this is
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: another one that confused me when I was younger because
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: what the fuck is this harp doing here? And then
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: you realize, okay, big tent, big goals. This is a
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: Nat King Cole song. Yes. This is a lot of
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: Stevie's great American songbook style ballads. are firmly in that,
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: you know, guy and a piano somewhere in a jazz
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: club in the 50s, right? That's in his head, I think,
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: when he's writing this. And even the affectation to me
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: is very Nat King Cole-ish, right? Like he's got kind
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: of an open vocal effect when he sings this. And
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: it's also, again, simple but difficult. He's saying like, hey,
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: if love is so important, why is it so hard
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: to keep? And that is, that is, Again, last three songs, sequencing,
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: are just unfuckwithable. Because this goes directly into talking with
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: God and as God. Well, yeah.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: So that's the thing, right?
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: You're right.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: It is an interesting sandwich of three songs that you get.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: And I kind of, in terms of thinking of sequencing,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: maybe Stevie New with I Am Singing in this one.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: You needed a little bit of a break because we
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: about to crank this bitch up. on the way out
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: the door, right? How are we going to crank this up?
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: We're going to start with Az, and there's no way
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: that when Az starts, I think that you can have
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: really any handle on where this is going to go.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: I am fascinated by the second life that Az has
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: taken on in the better part of the last 30 years,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: where this was the fifth single off songs in the
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: key of life. I would say it was not a
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: defining song in the catalog, and then it got that
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: placement in the best man. And it has now become
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: like a consensus kind of top five Stevie song, which
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: I think is an appropriate place to put it. If
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: you so decide, it is such a good love. There's
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: such an incredible love song. And if you think of
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: it as the answer to if it's magic. If it's magic,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: why can't it be everlasting? We need to take care
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: of it. It's almost like here as if somebody's saying
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: that to Stevie and Stevie's like, oh, you want to
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: know what love is? I will explain to you how
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: much I love. I will tell you what my capacity
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: for love is. And it exceeds anything that you ever
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: thought anybody could ever write down.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: It is. I think he did this. He does this
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: on a couple of different songs. He does this on
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: his best songs on Superstition. he does this right. Um,
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: that he can start with a first person narrative, um,
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: and then switch to a third person narrative. And then
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: I think in the last part, we're not, that narrator
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: might be God, right? Like the Fozzie, the bear voice
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: when he's hollering, right? That might be God. It might
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: be a preacher. It's a little bit Stevie. Um, it's
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: coming from some other place and that's why his voice changes. Um, uh,
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: one of Anderson pox, uh, backup musicians is talking about
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: this in another documentary that you can watch on YouTube.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: about this. In it, he says that he, in talking
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: to Stevie, Stevie would switch to that voice when he
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: absolutely needed you to hear something. And he does this
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: on a couple of different songs when he's like hollering
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: at somebody, right? But on this one, it's to absolutely
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: pull that person in close. The song's over at 240.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: Like two minutes and 40 seconds into this, every element
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: has been introduced. We're going to do nothing new, you know?
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: And from that point forward, there's about 30 seconds where
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: you go, what are we doing? And he's so in
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: his bag that he just has everyone hum. Yes. And
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: it cooks. It jams. It's so good.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Because him and Herbie Hancock over there sitting next to
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: each other playing the Rhodes, right? And this is what
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: we called a drummer in, right? So you've got the
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: full band there. Dean Parks, who plays the guitar that's
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: at the end, who also played the acoustic guitar on Visions,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: which is bananas. But he talks about Steve with classic
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Stevie call. And he said, he just walks in and
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Herbie Hancock is sitting there playing the keys with Stevie
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: and they play the track. And he's like, okay, go,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: go play. Cause it's not the most, it's not the
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: greatest guitar line of all time. He just goes there,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: you know, you know, play. No, it doesn't. He plays that.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: And he's like, all right, that's good. Stoles him a
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: thumbs up.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: He rolls out and he's gone.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: Dean Parks, by the way, appeared on the two best-sounding
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: albums of the 1970s. He appeared on this, and he
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: appeared on Asia. Yeah. Which should tell you that if
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: you want smooth, you call Dean. And that texture, the
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: little acoustic layover here, I love that we're between ages here.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: We're between phases. There's an electronic music that's coming, and
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: then there's a completely analog music, an acoustic music, live music.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: And Stevie is layering the two. And that sound to
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: me is so compelling. Like I love live synths. I
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: love like synths over live drums. That's a great sound
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: to me. Yes. And that kind of like textural combination,
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: that kind of mixing is the thing that makes this
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: so good because you have this warm electronic Fender Rhodes.
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: And then you have Dean Parks coming in. So even
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: though there are points in this track where you're not
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: really sure where it's going, it's just the nicest place
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: to be. It's amazing.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Incredible bass play, incredible bass mix on the verses. You
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: have the best synth player in the world and Herbie
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Hancock together on the same song. And then, until the
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: rainbows burn the stars out in the sky. Until the
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: oceans cover every mountain high.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: Writing out of his mind. What?
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: I have to go. So many of them have to
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: go back to look and make sure I remember like
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: all the ones. This is like, cause I can do
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: it from memory. They have to go yet until the
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: dolphins fly and parrots live at sea. Until the dream
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: is life and life becomes, no, wait, is that the
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: next one? Yeah, until we dream of life and life
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: becomes a dream. Until the day is night and night
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: becomes the day. Until the trees and seas just up
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: and fly away. Until the day that eight times eight
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: times eight is four. Until the day that is the
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: day there are no more. Loving you until the earths
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: are turning right to left. Until the earth is for
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: the sun denies itself.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: What? What?
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: We're not done. Until dear mother nature says her work
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: is through until the day that you are me and
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: I am you. Now, ain't that loving you? Well, shit, Stevie,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: I guess it is. Like what did somebody say to
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: Stevie to make Stevie be like, all right, I ain't
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: gonna have to. I'm not trying to hear this from
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: you ever again.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: I don't think this is a, like, to me, like,
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: and not that a song is about one thing, but like,
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: this is about, this is about more than one person, right? Like,
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: this is to me, like, when it says, ain't that
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: loving you, that could be Job, right? That could be,
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: that could be like, what else can I prove, right? Like,
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: I will, like, this is about loving God. Like even
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: if that's in the form of a person, it has
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: to be bigger. And I only say that because it
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: is so huge and it is so intense. Right. Because
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: when you say ain't that loving you, I love the
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: interpretation that that's there's a little bit of doubt. Right.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: There's a little bit of doubt in there. Right. Like
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: I've done everything I possibly can.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: I'm going to love you for as long as I can.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: I'll love you as hard as I can. I will
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: love you until the conditions of my reality have changed
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: to a point where it is no longer recognizable. And
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: I don't even know I exist. that's bigger than just
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: one person, right? Like, this is the shot. If you
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: want to know, like, when a record lands a thesis, right?
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: When a record lands its topic, this is the core.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: And it's so, when he says, ain't that loving you,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: I've never listened to it and not gotten chills. Never.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: Just as hate knows love's the cure, you can rest
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: your mind assured that I'll be loving you always. His
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: turns of phrase are so perfect. At every step, right,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: no matter how many words he uses, the words aren't
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: wasted ever at any point. Like, there are some lines
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: that I might have been like, as terrible as this
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: sounds on ass, a couple of those. Like, the earth
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: for the sun deny itself. Hey, I might have said
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: to take that back one more time.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: But.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: We just can't be, we can't let no little shit
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: like that get in the way now, can we?
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: He's just, he's just going the fuck out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: Like you got it, dog. The trees and seeds just
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: up and fly away. Part of what I love about
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: the writing on that one is, is how formal it
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: is at points. And then when we're just throwing in
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: prepositions that don't necessarily need.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: To be there. We get, we get, so there's an
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: interesting incident that happens in the middle of the recording
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: of this. Herbie Hancock says that, you know, they were
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: on one of the Stevie's marathon runs and in the
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: middle of it, her Hancock and a couple of the
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: musicians who are Buddhists because Buddhism was a big in
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: the mid seventies.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: And, uh, in LA musician circles, um, Tina Turner. Yes.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: Is another one who, uh, was a convert and Hancock said,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: Hey man, listen, we, we wanted to just kind of
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: go out, you know, do our chance and, you know,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: do a little ceremony and then we'll come back. And
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: Stevie goes, Oh, oh, of course, of course, of course. Right.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: Because he doesn't know what time it is. As Dr.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: Dre said, five in the morning to five at night.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: What's the matter to Stevie?
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: What's the matter, Stevie? Right. And he's just, you know,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: he's and this is when they're recording ads. So for
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: all I know, Stevie is talking directly to God for
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: like weeks at a time. And Hancock says, yeah, we
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: need a break. And he goes, oh, OK, cool. Because, hey,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: can we come with you? And he goes, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: Come on. So Stevie goes and they go and do
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: this chant. And like it's crazy in that he did
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: participate some chants along with them and they do a
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: little reading and then they go back to the studio.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: The end of that song is one long chant. Yeah.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: Like we're just going to hit it again. We're going
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: to hit it again. And it goes with the idea
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: of a funk beat where, you know, you're coming back
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: to the one every time. Right. We're hitting the one.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: It's so repetitive and builds and builds and builds and builds.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: And I think that kind of like religious fervor, that
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: kind of like deep kind of trying to get to
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: a spiritual space. That's what like the last three to
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: four minutes of as are about. And the only like,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: and going back to like Stevie's background, this is about love, right?
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: This is basically like the end point of Corinthians where,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: you know, say, okay, well you're, you're left at the end,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: like at the end when all things are stripped away,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: you're left with faith, hope.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: And love.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: And what is the greatest of those? The greatest of
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: those is love. And he's like keeps coming back to
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: that no matter what happens, no matter what happens. And
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: that is that's the power of as lyrically is that
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: you can combine this kind of like extremely driving spiritual
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: space with the insistence that this doesn't like you can
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: you can kill me. Right. And this won't stop.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: And then it leads to another star. And you and
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: I talked about this off mic. where you felt like
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: as is the way to end the record. The reason
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: I think Another Star is, by the way, Another Star,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: which is the rare inspiring breakup song, right? Like all
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: that energy is all about there must be another star, right?
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: Like things have changed. There must be something else that's there.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: And to me, I feel like aside from just the
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: incredible instrumentation and like, hey, George Benson, want to fall
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: through right fast? And my general belief on music is
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: if the... If you got a flute, you're doing something right.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: Never heard a flute on a song that I was
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: not thrilled to have be on that song. And people
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: never put the flute where it's not supposed to be.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: Like you have reached your highest form of making music
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: when you say to yourself, flute, we need the flute.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: But another star to me kind of encapsulates what we
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: talked about from the very beginning, where it starts, love
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: is in need and love the day. Another star to
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: me is almost like, yeah, okay, look, It might not
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: be cool right now. I got you. But there's another star.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: There's something coming. We just we got to hold on
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: and do our part along the way until that next
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: star happens to come. And so for me, that's the
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: rap on top of the fact it makes it like
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: as makes you leave just like, oh, my God. Another
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: star makes you leave kind of like bouncing. Right. Like
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: we're going to march through all of this.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: We're going to tango. Yeah. Salsa. Do a little salsa.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: I love this.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: Also, incredible Stevie drumming. Incredible Stevie drumming on another star.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: You got George Benson and Bobby Humphrey just hanging out
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: in the back? That's nuts. There's 130 different. I also
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: want you to consider, we know these people's names. There
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: are 130 different musicians and engineers working on this the
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: whole time. There are very few productions in terms of scope.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: logistically that compare with this. Another star is awesome because
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: the fade out, the fade out is the fade out
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: is a seventies invention for the most part, right? We're
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: just going to like fade out the record. And there's
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: a lot of different ways you can fade out. When
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: you leave this record, you're dancing. Like, that's it. Like that's,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: that's the end over something, by the way, which is
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: like a little sad, right? Like a little happy, little sad, right?
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Like we're still talking about love. It didn't work out. Um,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: but we have to keep going. And that's, Over like
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: a fantastic, like there's so many different things in this track, right?
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: Like there's a Latin beat. You've got Stevie, you know,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: kind of laying this vocal over it, which is very like,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: almost like a Mexican ballad. Right. Almost.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: That really is.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: No, it's almost sounds like mariachi singing at times. Right.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: There's nothing like the doors open. Whatever was going to
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: blow in, Stevie's going to use. And that's the amazing
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: thing is that a lot of times when people do that,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: they have no idea what they're doing. Stevie has no
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: idea what he's doing and admits it, but it comes off.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: It's incredible.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: And everything, when you talk about the grandness of the record,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: everybody except for like George Benson, he's the only one
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: that's kind of like chilling out in what he's doing.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: Everybody else is cranked up.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. No, just ridiculous. And the mix on this
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: song too, if you don't know, they... made t-shirts toward
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: the end of this record that said, we're almost done.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: It's been so long.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: Stevie wore them into the Motown offices so that he
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: didn't have to answer any questions about it. They also
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: made another t-shirt, a little less popular and less common,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: that said, let's mix contusion again. Because apparently they mix
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: contusion like a zillion times.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: I wonder if Stevie picked out the font.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: He might have.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: It's on the board.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: Don't tell me this man can't do something. Just saying.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: Don't.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: Did you see Ray Parker Jr. tell the story about
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: one of them dudes got mad at Stevie during the
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: sessions and they staged a fist fight with him and
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: Stevie and they make it fair. They said they put
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: the other dude in a blindfold and Stevie wore his
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: ass out.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Stevie took his ass down.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: Listen, Rodney Crowell said he's seen Stevie do burnouts and
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: and spin outs in a car.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying, they owe that man a favor because
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: they made him put on a blindfold, but they didn't
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: put one on Stevie. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: And that, to me, sounds like a fight that might
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: not have been as fair as people make it out
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: to be. Hey, man, it's something key to life. Honestly,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: we could do this for another hour. As I thought
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: about it, I was like, man, we could have part
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: one and part two of this. But we did not.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: There's the other LP that has Saturn and Ebony Eyes,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: both of which I think are outright bangers.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: It's so much here. But this is Spencer Hall. Check
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: him out. Channel 6. Best college football writer in America. Brother,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: start that full cast. I appreciate you.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you. What a pleasure.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: on The Right Time. We do this four days a week.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Ryan Brumley handling everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: Hit the voicemail line 323-596-7767. Remember, follow The Right Time. Subscribe, like,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: a hater. We'll talk to you guys in a couple
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: of days. Take it easy.