How did the first records do?
They started after we did "Contract on Love." That made a little noise. "Fingertips" was after that. That was a biggie.
The first production credit you were given was on the Signed Sealed and Delivered album, but that wasn't the first producing you did.
Well, that was the first that was released. I also did a thing with the Spinners, "It's a Shame," and the followup, "We'll Have It Made." I wanted that tune to be big. I was so hurt when it didn't do it.
You also produced Martha [Reeves] once?
Yeah, they never released it. Called [sings, snapping fingers], "Hey, look at me, girl, can't you see..."
And one on David Ruffin.
Yeah [sings], "Lovin' you's been so wonderful..." In the midst of all that, I was in the process of gettin' my thing together and decidin' what I was gonna do with my life. This was like I was 20, goin' on 21, and so a lot of things were left somewhat un-followed up by me. I would get the product there, and nobody would listen, and I'd say, "Fuckit." I wouldn't worry about it.
This was around Signed Sealed and Delivered...
It was a little after that. Signed Sealed and Delivered was like the biggest thing I'd had.
Then you went into a lull.
Yeah, we did Where I'm Coming From-that was kinda premature to some extent, but I wanted to express myself. But "Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" came from that album, and "If You Really Love Me"...but it's nothing like the things I write now. I love gettin' into just as much weird shit as possible. I'll tell you what's happening. Syreeta's album is better than my last two albums, man, shit [laughs]! No, but it's cool...
What are the difficulties, if any, in producing your ex-wife?
It's still going through things.. .but I'm always a friend. It's kinda hard for friends to understand it; women think, "I know you guys are here, so I know you're gonna get back together." But if your head is really cool.. .like I used to always worry about when I used to go with someone, about them doing something with somebody else....
You were always the jealous type....
Well, not really. I wouldn't even show it-but I was.... This is like one thing that I've tried to do, and I think successfully, that when you realize that nothing really belongs to you, you begin to appreciate having an understanding of just where your head is at, and you feel so much better.
That's easy to say.
I know, but I'm telling you, I'm doing it, man!
How long did your marriage last?
A year and a half.
I've never dealt with a woman on the "Stevie Wonder" level. When you meet someone and begin to like them, then you do let them know you even more personally than the public knows. There's not really a difference between me and "Stevie Wonder"-only thing is I'm not singing "Fingertips" or "Big Brother" or "Superstition" all the time. There's other things, listening to other people, and going to the park or seeing a movie or going bowling.
But the public Stevie Wonder is a lot of ideas and images that people have of you, regardless of what you actually are.
I know there are thousands of images of me. There was a guy one time, I heard: "Hey, uh, Stevie Wonder told me to come and get this grass from you, so where is it?" He said, "Stevie Wonder told you? He didn't, man, 'cause I'm his guitar player, and he doesn't even smoke grass. He doesn't even get high." I guess people expect or figure me to be a lot of different things.
You never got into drugs?
No.
Never?
I smoked grass one time, and it scared me to death.
Put images into your head?
Well, things just got larger. It was something new and different, but I found I'm so busy checking things out all the time anyway that I don't really need it.
Are there times when you wish you could see?
No. Sometimes I wish I could drive a car, but I'm gonna drive a car one day, so I don't worry about that.
And fly, too?
I've flown a plane before. A Cessna or something, from Chicago to New York. Scared the hell out of everybody.
Who was your copilot-God?
No [laughs], this pilot was there, and he just let me handle this one thing, and I say, "What's this?" and we went whish, whoop...
You've actually said that you considered your blindness to be a gift from God.
Being blind, you don't judge books by their covers; you go through things that are relatively insignificant, and you pick out things that are more important.
When did you discover that there was something missing, at least according to other people's standards?
I never really knew it. The only thing that was said in school, and this was my early part of school, was something that made me feel like because I was black I could never be or would never be.
So being black was considered to be more a weight....
I guess so [laughs]. This cat said in an article one time: "Damn! He's black! He's blind! What else?!" I said, "Bullshit, 1 don't wanna hear that shit, you know."
So you wouldn't even bother having people describe things to you. Colors and...
Well, I have an idea of what colors are. I associate them with the ideas that've been told to me about those certain colors. I get a certain feeling in my head when a person says "red," or "blue." "green," "black," "white," "yellow," " orange," "purple "-purple is a crazy color to me...
Probably the sound of the word...
Yeah, yeah. To me, brown is a little duller than green, isn't it?
Yes, you got it...What about sex;
What about it [laughs]? It's the same thing, Jack! As a matter of fact, it's probably even more exciting to the dude. Ask my woman what it's like...No, no! [laughs] I mean, you just have to get in there and do that shit, you know. That shit is just fantasticness!
I used to live on a street called Breckinridge. They just tore my house down. I wish I could've gotten a few pictures of it, too...but...
So you didn't miss a thing.
We listened to Redd Foxx and did all that stuff! We tried to sneak and do it to little girls. I used to get into a lot of shit, Jack! I got caught trying to mess with this girl. I was about 8 years old. It was the playhouse trip. And I really was like taking the girl's clothes off and everything, I don't understand how I did that stuff, you know. I mean, I was in it! I had her in my room with my clothes off. And she gave it away 'cause she started laughin' and giggling 'cause I was touching her.
I used to hop barns with all the other dudes. You know those small sheds they used to have in back of houses; in the ghetto where I lived, we'd hop atop them from one to the other. I remember one time my aunt came and said, "Okay, Steve, Mama said don't be doin' that," and I said, 'Aw, fuck you," and there're some neighbors out and they said, `Aw, child, you oughta be ashamed of yourself, I thought you was a child of the Lawd, you out there cussin' 'n' everything." That was like back of our house in the alley, you know, so I just kept on, just hopping the barns, jumping around and everything, till all at once I jumped and fell right into my mother's arms. The ironing cord, the whipping. The Magic Ironing Cord Whipping.
You've mentioned in various interviews that you feel like you haven't paid a lot of dues. You were talking about Ray Charles, how you can sense the pathos in that man's voice.
I heard a lot of things, you know, the way people really did him in, but I think he's doing a lot better now.
People did him in?
Well, they knew like when he was on drugs. A lot of people would like bust him, just to get money, or they would put him in jail in some of the southern places just to get some bread.
In school, what subjects did you like best?
History, world history, but it got kind of boring-I guess because of the way it was put to us in books. The most interesting to me was about civilizations before ours, how advanced people really were, how high they had brought themselves, only to bring themselves down because of the missing links, the weak foundations. So the whole thing
crumbled. And that's kind of sad. And it relates to today and what could possibly happen here, very soon. That's basically what "Big Brother" is all about.
I speak of the history, the heritage of the violence, or the negativeness of being able to see what's going on with minority people. Seemingly it's going to continue to be this way. Sometimes, unfortunately, violence is a way things get accomplished. "Big Brother" was something to make people aware of the fact that after all is said and done, that I don't have to do nothing to you, meaning the people are not power players. We don't have to do anything to them 'cause they're gonna cause their own country to fall.
"My name is Secluded; we live in a house the size of a matchbox." A person who lives there, really, his name is secluded, and you never even know the person, and they can have so many things to say to help make it better, but it's like the voice that speaks is forever silenced.
I understand that when you don't hear anything and you hear this very high frequency, that's the sound of the universe.
Or a burglar alarm, which takes some of the mystery out of it.... Tell me about your experiments with electronic effects and music. First, have you listened to Beaver and Krause, or Pink Floyd, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, or Walter Carlos?
Walter Carlos, yes, but for the most part I've listened to just what's in my head, plus Bob Margoloff and Malcolm Cecil-they are responsible for programming, and I just tell them the kind of sound I want.
How about the Bag [a throat-sound amplifier made by Kustom]? What does that do for communication?
It creates an emotion in that the voice is low. And it frightens you a little. We used it on Syreeta's album, "She's Leaving Home," I was just playing the ARE not really singing, but playing the note and moving my mouth.
What else are you checking out these days?
There's this string instrument made in Japan. You tune it like a harp to a certain chord scale. It takes you somewhere else that's sort of earthy and in the direction where my head is slanting-like going to Africa. Maybe I'll take a tape recorder over there and just sit out and write some stuff.
In concert, your opening number includes African scatting.
I got that from this thing called The Monkey Chant that we used in different rhythms, and we came up with [chants in speedtime] ja ja-ja-ja-ja-ja-ja-ja ja...And there are three pairs of drumsticks going. It's like fighting. I'd love to go to Ghana, go to the different countries and see how I'd like to live there.
Do you know Sly Stone?
I've seen him a couple of times.
He influenced you to a degree.
...Ah...I think there's an influence in some of the things I've done, like "Maybe Your Baby. " But I can hear some of the old Little Stevie Wonder in a lot of his early things [Stevie sings a bit of "Sing a Simple Song"]. It used to tickle me...
You've said that your writing was influenced by the Beatles.
I just dug more the effects they got, like echoes and the voice things, the writing, like "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite."
Did it make you feel that you could be more loose yourself?
Yeah. I just said, "Why can't I?" I wanted to do something else, go other places. Same thing about keys. I don't want to stay in one key all the time.
"Blowin' in the Wind" and 'Alfie" were unusual songs for a Motown artist to be doing back when you did them.
Most of them came about from doing gigs and wanting certain kinds of tunes. Clarence Paul, who was my arranger and conductor when we had the big group-we would work out doing tunes, ridin' in cars like in England around '65. We'd think of different songs like "Funny How Time Slips Away" or "Blowin' in the Wind."
Writers are so important. I think a lot of our artists could have been more successful if they had other writers, besides Holland-Dozier-Holland, because then they would have found their identity-and that's what everybody needs.
So you can understand why groups like Gladys & the Pips, Martha & the Vandellas, the Tops, the Spinners left.
I do; when you become just one of the others, it's difficult to be a sustaining power for a long period of time. It's like a person comes out with a beat, and you keep on doing it and doing it and driving it to the ground.
Did you play in sessions outside of Motown,'
No, but I have now, recently.
You were working with Jeff Beck last year; then he got angry at you because you put out "Superstition" as a single before he did.
Well, I'd written a thing for them-they wanted "Maybe Your Baby," and I said no, do this, this is even better, and I wrote "Superstition" that same night. And they wanted the track, which I couldn't give them 'cause of Motown. so I said, "I'll give you a seven [a 7 1/2 inches-per-second tape], and you all work on it and I'll play on the session, 'cause he said he'd play on a thing of mine. And I wrote another thing for them which was even more like Jeff Beck, a thing called "Thelonius" which they haven't done anything with, it's really bad [Stevie sings, scatting with triple-tinted knee slaps]...but I told him I was using "Superstition" for my album. The tune I wanted to release as a single was "Big Brother," but that was done too late to come out as a single. Motown decided they wanted to release "Superstition." I said Jeff wanted it, and they told me I needed a strong single in order for the album to be successful. My understanding was that Jeff would be releasing "Superstition" long before I was goin' to finish my album: I was late giving them Talking Book. Jeff recorded "Superstition" in July, so I thought it would be out. But I did promise him the song, and I'm sorry it happened and that he came out with some of the arrogant statements he came out with. I will get another tune to him that I think is as exciting, and if he wants to do it, cool.
After the Stones tour, there was a story in a magazine where the Stones-Keith Richards-was yelling about you, calling you a "cunt" when you couldn't make a gig because of your drummer. There were claims that you'd been partying instead of working.
If Keith did say that, it's just childish, because I love people too much to just want to fuck up and miss a show. And it's crazy, the things he said, if they were said-and if he did not say them, he should clarify them because I will always hold this against him; I can't really face him, I'd feel funny in his presence.
Was Keith pretty friendly throughout the tour,'
I had mixed emotions about where he was comin' from, you know, so I wouldn't be surprised if he said it.... What really bugged me about the whole thing was that our drummer was in a very bad situation, mentally and spiritually, and that's why he left. What climaxed the whole thing was, we got into an argument. I told him he was rushing the tempo-this was in Fort Worth, Texas-and he said, "I'll tell you what: You know how to play harmonica; you take the mike, you sing and play drums and all that shit at the same time, 'cause I quit," and he split. I called up the Stones and said, "Look, man, our drummer left, and we might not be able to make the gig, so we'll try to make the second one, but we won't be able to make the first show. " And they said, "Okay, that'll be cool." The next thing, I saw the Stones, and they heard the new drummer and said, "Oh, out of sight!" Then the next thing was I read all this shit.
Were you treated fairly, financially, for the tour?
It wasn't a money-making thing, that wasn't the idea-exposure was the thing. I want to reach the people. I feel there is so much through music that can be said, and there's so many people you can reach by listening to another kind of music besides what is considered your only kind of music. That's why I hate labels where they say, "This Is Stevie Wonder and for the Rest of His Life He Will Sing 'Fingertips ...... Maybe because I'm a Taurean, and people say Taureans don't dig change too much. I say as long as it's change to widen your horizons, it's cool.
-April26, 1973
Rolling Stone
TWENTY YEARS OF CLEARASIL ROCK
e's probably never believed it, but I always liked Dick Clark. As a performer-at the podium and in the bleachers on American Bandstand, and as host of his own Saturday night music show, he was humorless, but genial and oh, so smo
oth. He was a pro.
As the years rolled on, Clark not only refused to age, he accelerated his activities, moving deftly into television and film production while continuing on the air, as a game show host, product pitchman, and backstage interviewer-all on top of the weekend Bandstand and-oh, yes-a syndicated radio show here, a book project there.
He was the subject of my first little item for Rolling Stone. He was in town to promote a movie his company had produced, a hippie exploitation number called Psych-Out. That project placed Clark squarely into the enemy camp, as far as the emerging sixties generation was concerned.
Or at least as far as I was concerned. He was a capitalist, minus the hip.
That's how I approached him for this 1973 profile. I was also feeling pretty aggressive. In the spring of that year, the Watergate scandal was uppermost in the national mind, and journalists were flexing their investigative muscles at every opportunity. Mine came through Clive Davis, the powerful and sometimes imperious president of Columbia Records. A straight-ahead profile took a severe turn when he was suddenly dismissed, charged with misusing company funds. CBS was soon embroiled in something called "drugola," and although Davis ultimately had the charges dropped, and moved on to a successful new life at Arista Records, his story occupied Rolling Stone-and me-for weeks.
In the midst of the Columbia craziness, here was Dick Clark, gearing up for an August celebration of his twentieth anniversary as the host of Bandstand. I'd spoken with him just weeks before. His company had produced Soul Unlimited, a new show on Bandstand 's network, ABC, to compete with the popular syndicated Soul Train. "The network-powered new entry," I reported, "infuriated some of Soul Train's friends and followers." Those friends included the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Clark rightfully defended his decision, as a television producer and business man, to produce any show he wanted. But Soul Unlimited turned out to have its limits. After just over two months, it was cancelled. Now, to promote his anniversary, he agreed to meet-at his offices in Hollywood, and then at his home in Malibu.
Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll Page 23