Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll

by Ben Fong-Torres

  Rickie says she's lost nearly twenty pounds in the last two years. She became a compulsive eater in Paris, where she'd gone to start work on The Magazine. By then she'd controlled her usage of drugs, but she stepped up her drinking until one night, six weeks into the bottle, she somehow came to her senses. That left eating: "I ate with the same fervor that I took drugs."

  She went to a counselor and relearned eating. Now she eats lightly and exercises regularly. After a mentally exhausting tour for The Magazine, she spent twelve carefree days in Tahiti, getting golden and watching the native women outside their homes play with their babies. Rickie lets out a primal roar: 'Ahhh! I was so happy. I said to myself, `You know, I'm not able to work this stuff out with me, but I think I could have a baby here.' I was of the opinion before that if you're gonna have a baby, it should come out of a relationship. I changed my mind. I'm not gonna keep trying to squeeze this out of a relationship. Suddenly I went, 'You can't do that anymore. There's nothing to be had from people. No one will end or begin any stories. They are only friends."'

  The last time out with a man, says Rickie, they even got engaged. And she was shocked when he broke it off. Nearing 30, she found herself thinking about commitment, about patience. "Before," she says, "I was just a giver-upper. You know"Rickie's suddenly in a domestic fight; her fists are clenched-"'Fuck this, I'm leaving!"'

  Again, Rickie calms down. We've decided against the beach and are back in the car, headed to her rented house in Laurel Canyon. "I want to learn to do this loving correctly," she says softly. "I'm going real slow now. I've loved really easily, and that's okay. What gets tricked or fucked up is when you start going, `I'm scared; what're they gonna do to me, what do I want and I'm not gonna get it.' I can't even articulate it that much, but it's fear that starts getting in the way of the things you feel. 'Cause your feelings will change. Everybody changes."

  Finally, she lets the subject go. "I don't know, man. I have no answers. I have no fucking idea. I'm doing it one day at a time."

  And yet, she says as she pulls into her garage, love does inspire stories. Her falling out with Tom Waits motivated most of Pirates. Now another movie is beginning to play in her head, "about the times at the Troubadour and all the creatures there, Tom and Chuck E. Weiss."

  Rickie Lee Jones' house is a mess, given completely over to musical instruments, books and several typewriters. The necessities of life-food and clothing-can be found, in various states of use, in almost every room.

  She sits at a corner of a sofa, but when I ask what it meant for her to turn 30, she slides up the back of the couch, leans back and considers herself.

  "Yeah," she says, "it means something to me sexually or in the woman role in me. I feel better." She lets out a short, nervous laugh. "I don't know why. I feel older, but it feels better. I feel real strong. I feel directed and confident-I feel something that's okay about being a woman that I didn't have before. I was like a tomboy before. Thirty isn't a kid anymore, and I guess in my head I go, `Oh...' and it took ten years to say I guess I've grown up."

  Five years ago, she says, "I was a lot older; I looked older. I grew backwards, truly. I know time is not linear. In some line I've grown older; in some line I've grown younger.

  Not that Rickie wants to stay where the two lines have met. "I don't want to stay anywhere," she says. "I like growing. It's impossible to stay anywhere, so I'm not gonna want to."

  Time may not be linear, but try telling that to the airlines. For our goodbye, she pulls me to her for a kiss on the cheek. She's the boss. Then she plops down on her front doorstep to unwind. As I leave, Rickie is looking idly at the long and winding road in front of her.

  -July 1985

  GQ

  Lames Brown:

  THE GODFATHEK'S BACK, WITH A BULLET!

  ould it be true? I was going to have a chance to meet the Godfather of Soul? In 1986, after almost two decades of writing about pop, rock, and R&B artists, I heard that James Brown was coming to town, to play, of all places, the Venetian Room in the Fairmont Hotel.

  I'd been a fan since who knows when. Brown was ageless, and, from the first time I heard him, singing "Night Train" and "Try Me"-please stop me before I start writing like one of his MCs-he was timeless. I played his record on my college radio station, and on KSAN, and at home.

  Now, I was going to interview him. It didn't matter, either to him or to me, that it would be at the Fairmont, which had begun to book pop acts that had-shall we say-begun to appeal to people who'd come of age in the sixties.

  Brown was riding high on a new hit record, and I was riding high on the idea of meeting this icon of American music. This way Ray Charles, all over again.

  As things turned out, the visit, stretched over several events-rehearsal, press conference, personal interview, and showtime-took a couple of contentious turns. And, when all was said, I felt that the Chronicle article, with its space limitations, didn't reflect the many shades of Brown. I welcomed the opportunity to rewrite the piece for BAM (BayArea Musician), a local magazine with which I'd become friends. In fact, when the publication decided to launch an annual awards show to celebrate our music scene, I was one of the first hosts. And when, one particularly sad month, it found itself without any possible subject for a cover story, BAM plastered my photo on the cover, and tried to turn my career into a story, down to details like the green BMW I was driving.

  It was an Audi. Damned irresponsible journalists.

  "CALL H I M M R. B R 0 W N, " a colleague advised me on the eve of my first meeting with James Brown. "Or he might not talk to you."

  I put "Mr. Brown" right on top of my list of the things James Brown has been called, or has called himself: the Godfather of Soul, the King of Soul, the Living Legend of Soul, Soul Brother Number One, Mr. Dynamite, the Sex Machine, and the Hardest Working Man in Show Business.

  But it'll be Mr. Brown to me. After all, I've heard a few stories about the man. Legend has it that he's a General Patton of music. He runs a tight band, levying fines for showing up late, dressing wrong, or fluffing a note. In fact, during a two-week engagement at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, he fired and rehired a horn player within an eight-hour span. James Brown is the boss of bosses.

  But if the man demands respect, he also deserves it. Brown is a true pioneer of rock and roll and R&B. He mixed gospel and jazz in the mid-fifties and came up with a sound that's been echoed by several generations of musicians. He blazed more trails with his fiery stage show, a mix of the intensity of Baptist evangelism and the raw animalism of sexual abandon. His spins and knee-drops; his ritual exits with the routine of the coronation by capes; his absolute control of the big band and singers, added up to theater of blood, sweat, and tears.

  In recognition of his influence, so obvious in such peers as Prince and Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger and Tina Turner, Sly Stone, Parliament Funkadelic, and a host of urban, funk, punk, rap, hip-hop, Afro-pop, reggae, Salsa, and fusion musicians, Brown was one of the first ten musical acts inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last month.

  This month, thirty years after his first record, he is on top again, with his prefight appearance in Rocky IV, and, especially, with his song from that film, "Living in America."

  But the James Brown story spins beyond musical credits. He's a symbol of black achievement.

  He was born into a poor family in Georgia nearly fifty-six years ago; to make rent money, he danced at an army base at age 9, raising the $ 5 he needed for the family, and going to the show with a few extra bucks. It was 19 39, and it was James Brown's first taste of show business. But before he reached the stage, he'd spend some time in a work camp for stealing a car at age 16; in detention, he excelled in music, boxing, and baseball. Released, he sang in a gospel group that ultimately became his backup, the Famous Flames.

  In 1956, his first single, "Please Please Please," did well, but it'd be nine years before he crossed over to the pop charts with "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag."

  In the si
xties, he sang and spoke out for civil rights, called for peace amid the Watts riot, and encouraged black capitalism. Besides Lear jets and Lincolns, he bought three radio stations. He hobnobbed with the likes of Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey; today, he considers himself a friend of President Reagan.

  In the seventies, his music went into a monotonous funk, and he cut records with such all-too-revealing titles as "Sex Machine Today" and "Original Disco Man." He's been married at least three times (and is today). He's working on a biography.

  First visit: 10:30 A.M., Nob Hill Suite, Fairmont Hotel.

  JAMES BROWN OPENS TONIGHT in the hotel's posh supper club, the Venetian Room. In his two-floor suite, complete with baby grand, Brown is guarded. In public, he's always surrounded by attendants. Here, he maintains a polite distance-even after I've called him "Mr. Brown" several times.

  But when I appear to have some knowledge of his past accomplishments, he warms up. And when I tick off a tally of the musicians he's inspired, Brown's suddenly on fire. "You're well-versed!" he declares in a low growl. He helpfully adds Lionel Richie to my list, and he claims to have influenced fully 80 percent of the popular music of today.

  He wears shades, a light blue scarf, a silk robe over an aqua shirt opened to the waist, and sports slacks. The pompadour that used to pile high over his head is now generously settled over its sides.

  I mention his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "I didn't deserve to be in," he says. "I came with soul music. I did record 'Please Please' right in the rock and roll era, [but] I felt my career has spanned much broader than any entertainer that ever lived."

  "Living in America" happened, he says, because "Stallone wanted James Brown. They'd mentioned a couple of other artists-Lionel... Ray Charles.. .but he said, `No way; it can only be James Brown.' He felt that Blues Brothers and Doctor Detroit (in which Brown did musical cameos) were the beginning of what should have happened to me."

  For James Brown, these are the best of times. Besides the place in the Hall, the hit record and the life story, he's being sought for commercials. "Coke and Pepsi are fighting over James Brown," he says. "All the car companies want me.

  "You gotta admit one thing," he says. "God has been very good: something's been working in my favor, because `Living in America' is the biggest record I've had in four or five years."

  It's actually been thirteen years since Brown penetrated the Top 20 (with "Get On The Good Foot Part 1 "), but he doesn't admit to any dips in his career.

  Consider Brown's stand at the Fairmont (he was, in fact, the first act to bring contemporary music into the Venetian Room, in 198 3). When Tina Turner played the room, just before her Private Dancer album became a hit, she said she couldn't wait to escape the supper club circuit, to get back to the rock concert halls. The insinuation was that the Fairmonts were only a handy, rent-paying gig.

  Brown says he's not here to make money. "We do so much business here," he says. "My problem is we lose $100,000 a week when we play here, with my expenses." (A spokesman at the Fairmont disputed Brown's claim, but agreed that he might be earning more with separate shows in bigger facilities elsewhere.)

  At the Fairmont, Brown says, "You test your skills. The audience here is 75 percent the same as Vegas and Atlantic City. You play here and you're ready for those halls."

  So Brown isn't here for the money. Still, it seems, a year ago, he could have used some. Last January, he testified in a Baltimore court that he couldn't afford to pay $170,000 to creditors; that he ate at McDonald's restaurants. (In 1984, the IRS sold Brown's furniture and three cars to obtain $100,000 in back taxes.)

  Brown sits down to a breakfast of pastry, bacon and eggs, juice and coffee. He shakes his head at the unpleasant story I've just brought up. "Somebody came up with some bad information," he says. "I haven't been poverty-stricken since 1952. I haven't been off; I just went out of the country. Three years ago, we played twentysix miles outside Paris to a million and three thousand people, three times Woodstock." Brown is loved all over the world and has always made money, he says-at least "enough to stay out of unemployment lines. Somebody's trying to write me down."

  Somebody-Brown accuses an unspecified "they"-took his radio stations away "because I was a revolutionist. ..they're afraid I'd come back and do what I did in the sixties. The system thought I got a little too strong, helping communities survive, teaching kids, guiding them from what I did."

  Being friends with well-placed politicians was no help, he says. "The system works for or against you. It's something Hubert Humphrey told me. He said, 'James, there's no room for an independent. If there had been, I'd have been president.'

  "I'm very close to the Reagans," he says. "I converse with them a lot."

  Brown says he was one of the first people to call for a national holiday in commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Reagan, I remind him, was originally opposed to any such legislation. Reagan also made speeches on Dr. King's birthday this year representing himself as a longtime civil rights supporter; the record differs. "Somebody told you that I was poverty-stricken," Brown counters, "and we're playing to more people than ever in my life. Your information down the pipeline has been false.

  "I'm not political," says Brown, "but I give a man his due. Naturally [the press] attacks the President. But Mr. Reagan signed it into law. Did anybody else sign it?"

  James Brown is the Godfather to the hilt. When a room service waiter requests payment for breakfast, he pays, then gets on the phone, identifies himself as "Mr. Brown," and gently explains that he'd set aside $500 with the hotel for such expenses; that he was asked for cash. "I have a fellow interviewing me and it didn't come off right, you know."

  Returning to his table, he says, "It's not important, but sometimes it rubs me wrong."

  But appearances are important. When two of his longtime assistants enter the room, they are formally introduced, and Brown addresses them as Mr. Ray and Mr. Stallings. They, of course, call him Mr. Brown.

  He and his band are highly disciplined, says Brown, because "I watched the other way fail. Nothing that way ever made it. You don't see people marching, one with dungarees and one with shorts." He indicates Danny Ray (his MC, cape-draper, and road manager) and Henry Stallings (hair stylist and general manager). He says he trained Ray's voice (a booming echo of Cab Calloway at the Cotton Club) and spends hundreds of thousands on suits for his entourage. "Look how they dress," he says, while the two men sit silently. "I can send my men anywhere, and they can handle it."

  Brown may be self-absorbed, but he's also willing to give credit where it's due. His influences, he says, include Louis Jordan, the stylish blues and jazz artist of the forties. His cape routine, done to "Please Please Please," has its roots in church-and Gorgeous George, the colorful wrestler of the fifties. "I used to come back on stage carrying a suitcase, and they threw a towel around me; I threw it off. And I thought of Gorgeous George. He had capes, and that was flamboyant, so I put that in the act." It's still there. And at the age of 5 6 (Brown says he'll be 5 3 in May, but that's disputed by various biographical sources, and during our talk, he said he was 9 in 1939), he has no thoughts of retirement.

  "Retirement from what?" he demands. "When I see the president of the United States, or George Burns or Bette Davis.. .Thank god, I have the greatest track record in the world, and now I got the biggest record of my career. I just got started."

  Second visit: 2:30 P.M., the Venetian Room.

  JAMES BROWN WANTS TO TAKE CARE of the rest of the press in one loud, fell swoop. He opens his rehearsal to a group of reporters and sits for a quick interview. At the rehearsal, he noodles on the piano for the TV cameras while Maceo Parker, Jr., the saxophonist-who's back with Brown after a stop with Parliament Funkadelic- teaches a riff to the Fairmont Orchestra's horn section.

  For "Living in America," Brown wants a flag on stage to unfurl behind him as the song begins. But, given only a few hours' notice, the best the hotel can do is call up a modest-sized Old
Glory from room service and hang it up at the back of the stage.

  Brown repairs to a side room to talk with reporters.

  He is revealing. "My own [musical] arrangements hit a lot harder than `Living In America,"' he admits. "That was a lot softer, but it was good for airing.

  "It sounds so funny when I listen to my old stuff," he says. "Today's stuff don't drive as hard. I'd like to see music get back to that."

  He is generous. Asked how he feels about Prince's success with a latter-day version of James Brown, he says, "I feel good about that; I hope he and Michael Jackson and David Bowie and Mick Jagger and Tina keep doing a female James Brown actkeep on." It is clear that he's just listed some people he believes he influenced. For good measure, he adds, "Certainly the rap music didn't hurt me because I started rap a long time ago [with the record, `Brother Rapp,' in 1970)."

  Asked how his music has changed since "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," he says, "I don't see anything different; people are just late catching up. I was twenty years ahead of my time."

  Third visit: 9:45 P.M., the Venetian Room.

  THE FIRST SHOW OF OPENING NIGHT is stunning. Brown and his band-eleven pieces, a female singer, and the musical director-seem to be celebrating their success. They do "Living in America" not once, not twice, but three times. In the process, they run half an hour overtime, and get the audience rocking the Venetian Room as it's rarely been rocked.

  Onstage, Brown is in charge. His strong voice is gritty on the funk, high, clear and sustaining on the ballads: when he does "Try Me" from out of '59, I expect to hear scratches. His trademark moves have been cut back; short shuffles and shimmies have replaced the multiple spins, splits and one-legged, across-the-stage skittering of the old days, but even if he's just toying with a mike stand, he's worth watching.