Shining Star: Braving the Elements of Earth, Wind & Fire

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Shining Star: Braving the Elements of Earth, Wind & Fire Page 20

by Bailey, Philip


  Touring was a lucrative but also an expensive proposition. Maurice—or more specifically, the band, through its revenues—shouldered a lot of the financial responsibility. At that time we hadn’t yet attracted significant corporate sponsorship to help offset our touring costs. Our three ring circus/Mardi Gras atmosphere onstage—along with our outrageous, glitzy costumes—had helped put us on the map. If we had been more frugal and cut corners, we might never have made it. We needed to spend money in order to make money to keep the show on the road, and at the time we were just one African American group competing with a cascade of established white rock and roll bands that had an economic advantage over us in terms of access to financial and tour support.

  The people who were disgruntled about our stage crews weren’t aware of the bigger picture. Our management responded to the NAACP’s charges by reminding them that EWF regularly collaborated with many African American promoters in copresenting our concerts. The problem of black promoters getting edged out has been a touchy issue in the concert business for years. Maurice and the Earth, Wind & Fire band and management regularly used black radio programmers as cosponsors of our shows. We didn’t hesitate to turn to noted African American promoters like Billy Sparks, Quentin Perry, and the late Louis Grey to help present our concerts. The anger from the NAACP would subside later, and in 1994 Earth, Wind & Fire would receive an NAACP Image Award and be inducted into their Hall of Fame, which honors outstanding people of color in television, movies, music, and literature.

  With the 1980s creeping up on us, a new musical invention called the Linn drum machine would greatly impact the process of recording popular music in the studio. David Foster was the first guy to take Roger Linn’s prototype over to Maurice’s place to have him check it out.

  “This is the future of recording,” David told Reese, and with one press of a button, they marveled as a clear, piercing, and snappy synthesized snare drum hit emanated from the digital machine. Maurice and Foster were fascinated with the device, and Maurice would use it for our next album, Faces. From that point on technology would profoundly influence Maurice’s methods of production, and the new era of drum machines and polyphonic synthesizers would greatly affect our communal vibe as a studio band.

  With the multiplatinum success of I Am, and for all of its hits and crossover success, there was discord brewing within the band. I Am had more of a pop sound than some of the musicians were comfortable with. Al and Larry felt that we were shedding some of our identity, drifting away from a more dominant R&B sound with the increased use of outside session players. Given I Am’s Grammy awards and accolades, many music fans view it as the pinnacle of EWF recordings. Others within our inner sanctum look back on earlier albums, like That’s the Way of the World, with much more fondness, not only for its strong repertoire and arrangements but also for its era of close band camaraderie. Personally, I choose That’s the Way of the World as our definitive release.

  Faces was recorded during 1980 with Maurice back at the producer’s helm alongside engineer George Massenburg. As usual, Maurice was thinking big. Faces was an ambitious seventeen-song, double-set vinyl extravaganza cut in various studios in Los Angeles and Hollywood, as well as at The Beatles’ producer George Martin’s opulent Air Studios in Montserrat in beautiful tropical Antigua, nestled in the West Indies. While we recorded at Montserrat, I took time out to teach my older son, Sir, how to swim in the warm West Indian waters.

  The rhythm tracks on Faces were intricate, sometimes complicated, but built on a nice solid groove. Our signature horn parts were punchy using Jerry Hey’s arrangements. As on I Am, lots of outside players returned, including percussionist Paulinho da Costa and Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, keyboardist David Paich, and the talented Porcaro brothers (Jeff on drums and Steve on keyboards and synths). David Foster also returned to contribute on a few tracks, but did not participate to the extent he did on I Am. Meanwhile, band members muttered that Maurice’s sessions were beginning to sound overproduced with his growing legions of string players, background vocalists, and percussionists. The title track, for instance, is a sprawling tour de force of exotic, driving rhythms and big-band sounds—much like the CTI records I enjoyed as a youth, featuring dozens of players and singers.

  We had always been big fans of the Great American Songbook and classic twentieth-century songwriters like Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Jerome Kern, Hoagy Carmichael, Irving Berlin, and Richard Rodgers. We weren’t so caught up in ourselves that we didn’t recognize the need for outside help, and we used some very fine lyricists to cowrite our tunes. When crafting tunes like “Fantasy” from All ’N All, we often wrote with lyricists like Brenda Russell and Eddie del Barrio after we had finished the basics of a song. Those were the days when our songs had three or four different sections to them, so we wanted to keep the quality of our lyrics edgy and forward-moving. On Faces Maurice and I concentrated on our craft as songwriters by collaborating with talented wordsmiths like Roxanne Seeman to polish our songs and take them to the next level. Roxanne Seeman cowrote “Sailaway” on Faces with me, and we would work together on more songs later on.

  For all its grandeur and glory, Faces was not a financial success for us—and it wasn’t because we didn’t get the promotional street support from Columbia Records. In terms of quality, it’s a great record. But as a double album, it got lost due to its sheer volume of material. Although Faces became a gold record, it didn’t have an identifiable smash single; audiences had trouble finding a simple sing-along hit like “September” or “Shining Star.” Looking back, we should have concentrated on cutting that elusive, radio-friendly, catchy song and then released half the material from Faces in order to make it one great album.

  Also working against us was the fact that in 1980 the entire radio and music industry was in transition. The megahits and multiplatinum sales of Michael Jackson’s 1979 album, Off the Wall, would later affect our own standing and status at Columbia. Jackson’s tremendous dominance of pop culture throughout the 1980s was just beginning, and as a result (and partially to our detriment), the executives at the Sony label group were starting to mobilize behind him.

  Plus, during the making of Faces, disharmony had begun brewing within the band. Shortly after the album’s November 1980 release, Al McKay became increasingly more vocal about his unhappiness with Maurice. As a result, session players Steve Lukather and Marlo Henderson performed many of the guitar solos. McKay’s presence was felt less and less, and through his discontent I could see cracks in the band’s infrastructure. Al was unhappy that there was now a very evident large financial abyss between Maurice and the other band members, and he felt that the rest of us weren’t getting paid enough. He would often try to gauge the other guys’ reaction over the matter and once pulled Larry Dunn aside and said, “You know, if we all pull together, we can get on Maurice and nip this whole inequality thing in the bud!”

  Larry, being the youngest member, responded that he didn’t care about the money; he loved the music. Besides, Maurice was such a nice guy.

  It turns out that Al had a point. We signed a separate EWF production contract. That meant that technically, we were signed as a band to Maurice’s production company. Al was the first to say, essentially, “Hey, guys, we better go and have a talk and let Maurice know that this arrangement has got to change.”

  Al knew more about the pitfalls of the music business and what to watch out for than I did. He was the first to see that our situation might not be as rosy as we thought. For my own part, I didn’t realize what was happening. I just knew that life as a musician was grand. I was making money playing in front of thousands and thousands of people, attracting fame if not fortune. At twenty-nine years of age, I wasn’t thinking enough about the business end. I figured that while Maurice took most of the financial and creative risks, things would take care of themselves.

  Some of the band members took offense at Al�
��s awakening. Earth, Wind & Fire was their life’s passion. They loved Maurice and believed that everybody was going to become a millionaire. As long as band members could buy houses for themselves and their parents and loved ones and drive nice cars, we were satisfied. Some went to Maurice and warned him that Al was causing trouble within the ranks, but by then it was too late: Al was on his way out.

  We were in Argentina on a South American tour in 1980 when Al announced that he intended to quit. It was raining like crazy that day, and we were sitting around the hotel, playing chess. Al told Andrew and Larry, “This is my last tour. This is it.”

  Andrew and Larry looked at Al like he was nuts. “Are you crazy?”

  When we flew to Mexico City for the next step of the tour, Al passed separately through customs along with my wife, Janet, and Larry’s wife, Debbie. Afterward the promoter, along with a hospitality interpreter, came and rounded up the rest of the band, took our passports, and walked us through customs. Nobody came over and told Al to join us.

  We played a large stadium gig the next day in Mexico City, and the crowds went crazy. Since there were four days before our next gig in Mexico, the plan was for the group to fly back to the United States for some time off and then return to Mexico. Once we got to the airport, though, none of the band could leave Mexico, as our passports hadn’t been given back to us after we initially cleared customs coming in—that is, except for Al, who had his passport with him.

  When Al arrived back in Southern California, he was given strict orders to immediately fly back to Mexico and join the rest of the band. Al, not seeing the logic, didn’t pack his bags. Then he received a phone call from Ralph Johnson.

  “Oh, man, the Tunes is pissed . . .” (“Tunes” being short for Rooney Tunes.) Ralph handed the phone over to an irate Maurice.

  And that’s how it ended. Reese fired Al over the phone, and a few days later McKay got the letter informing him that he was officially terminated. In Al’s mind he had already quit and had anticipated his dismissal.

  After that tour we headed back to the States and then on to Montserrat to finish the Faces album. It was a sad time for us to lose Al, our “rhythm master,” but a relief to him, once it had gotten too intense and unbearably ugly for him to continue.

  25

  THE MEETING

  The three-album era between 1981 and 1983 proved to be a tenuous period for Earth, Wind & Fire. Guitarist Roland Bautista had rejoined the band in 1981 to replace Al McKay. With Bautista back on board, we recorded a dance number called “Let’s Groove” for the Raise! LP, our eleventh Columbia release. It was a catchy duet I cut with Maurice, whose voice was heavily bathed in synthesized vocoder effects. In June 1981 BET, the Black Entertainment Television cable channel, premiered its first entertainment series, Video Soul, and “Let’s Groove” was the first piece they played on the air. Raise! also included a silly futuristic song called “Evolution Orange,” cowritten by David Foster, which he says was one of the worst songs he had ever been part of.

  By 1983 the rest of the band members were finally waking up to the fact that EWF’s fortunes weren’t benefiting everyone in an equitable way. The more I looked into it, the more distressing the situation appeared. We were at the peak of our careers, selling out the Los Angeles Forum for five nights and scoring Grammys and other awards, yet I was making $2,500 a week, an impressive sum at the time, but small in the grand scheme of things. I didn’t have a clue as to how much money Maurice was generating from the total picture of record sales, publishing, ticket sales, concert grosses, and merchandising. Then one day I ran into a musician friend who was playing with Michael Jackson at the time. During our conversation he mentioned that he was making $10,000 a week working for Michael as a sideman—four times what I was being paid as a band member! And were the lighting guys, the bus company people, and the trucking employees making more than the band members?

  My God! I had no idea that other musicians were making that kind of money. I suspected that I fared better than some of the other members because I was getting publishing royalties from the songs I had cowritten. Also, at year’s end, because I was a key man in the band, when management dispensed annual bonuses, I would get extra compensation.

  Along with Michael Jackson’s meteoric rise in popularity, another awesome talent had appeared in our rearview mirror. Prince was a hot musical commodity, and many labels were courting him. One of the first people to spot Prince’s potential was my old friend Perry Jones. After Perry had briefly returned to work for us as a tour manager he departed again to strike out on his own as a concert promoter, helping Maurice and his booking agents stage some of our concerts in the United States. Around this time Perry received a call from Mo Ostin’s office at Warner Brothers Records asking if he knew about a rising young performer named Prince. Perry told Warner that he was familiar with Prince, whom he had met during one of our concerts. Perry did some advance work for Warner to help get Prince on their roster.

  By the time Perry made overtures to sign a management deal with Prince, the diminutive artiste had already migrated to—guess where?—Cavallo-Ruffalo! Once again Perry’s management ambitions were derailed by Bob Cavallo, Joe Ruffalo, and Steve Fargnoli, who had signed a deal to become Prince’s personal managers. By 1979, when Prince recorded his second album, it produced his first crossover hit, “I Wanna Be Your Lover.” (Fargnoli died in 2001.)

  Cavallo now had a hot new star to look after in addition to Maurice and EWF—something Reese was not enthusiastic about. By this time solo acts were becoming a big thing on the urban music scene. While Cavallo still viewed Maurice as the visionary in our band, he regarded Prince as the most unique individual artist he had ever met. After securing representation for Prince, Cavallo attempted to sign him to Maurice’s ARC Records. Unfortunately Columbia dropped the ball badly when they sent a senior A&R representative from New York to Los Angeles to speak with Prince ahead of Cavallo. The executive made a major faux pas when, in attempting to woo Prince to ARC, he told him, “I can get Maurice White to produce you.” That remark killed the deal, since Prince had no intention of having anybody but himself produce his records. By 1983, with Prince’s career skyrocketing with gold and platinum records, Cavallo’s firm was entrenched in the arduous task of bringing Prince’s movie Purple Rain to the silver screen.

  Earth, Wind & Fire was one of Prince’s earliest inspirations. As a youth he had attended one of our arena shows in Minneapolis and was completely bowled over. Prince later admitted to Cavallo that upon seeing our concert, he was pushed back in his seat in amazement. According to Bob, he asked himself, “How could I ever equal this?” Later, when Prince came to Warner Brothers, he contacted Ostin and asked him to hook him up with the folks who represented Earth, Wind & Fire. Ostin referred Prince to his old friend Bob, which helped cement a professional relationship that would last for nine years. After that, Maurice White and Cavallo-Ruffalo would amicably part company.

  —

  Between 1981 and 1983 we released three marginal albums on Columbia. After Raise! came out in November 1981 we released two other albums on Columbia, Powerlight in March 1983, and Electric Universe the following December.

  After Faces the band had effectively become glorified session players for Maurice in the studio. All three releases were blandly flavored with Linn drum machines and Yamaha DX7 keyboard synthesizers. The rest of the band members were clearly disenchanted, and the vibe was not good. When we were together, the cold distance and isolation that had arisen was clear in everyone’s body language. We would drop in to cut our parts and split, and we spent less time on the road. The group camaraderie had evaporated, and Maurice called the creative shots. Even George Massenburg was no longer working with us. Maurice had also begun writing with other people, and since he and his new cowriters had already prepared the songs, I basically became just a session singer. Maurice and I would lay down our background vocals. Bang! Done! That was the
vibe through all three of those records. Although we won another Grammy award—Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group—for “Wanna Be With You” from Raise!, our momentum had stalled.

  I penned only one song on Raise!—a midtempo, loping, funky piece ironically titled “I’ve Had Enough,” which I wrote with Greg Phillinganes and coproduced with Maurice—and between Powerlight and Electric Universe, I contributed only one song. “Straight from the Heart” (another unlikely title) was a soppy ballad on Powerlight. After that record came out, Maurice cut the Phenix Horns loose. Don Myrick, Lou Satterfield, and Michael Harris were now free to tour and record with other major acts, and were snapped up by Phil Collins and Genesis. The party was over. After eleven years, were we lucky that it had lasted as long as it did?

  —

  All this creative inertia finally led to what is darkly described by Earth, Wind & Fire members as “the Meeting,” which was held at the end of 1983 after Electric Universe was released—and flopped horribly. There are varied accounts of the Meeting. Some say it took place over multiple sit-downs, others say it was one explosive event. Here’s how I remember what went down.

  In late 1983 Maurice summoned the entire band to the Complex. He began by saying, “Guys, I’ve decided that I’m going to put Earth, Wind & Fire on the back burner. We’re going to stop touring. You guys need to do whatever you want to do in the meantime. Columbia doesn’t want an album from us. They want me to do my solo album.” Maurice disbanded the group straightaway. It didn’t happen gradually over a few months. It was over immediately. That was it. The band members were caught completely unawares. We had no time to prepare.

 

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