Among the artists who committed to the show was the elder statesman of Africa’s Paris-based musicians, Manu Dibango of “Soul Makossa” fame, a vocal-instrumental Afro-beat rap hit that went to number one on the charts at the beginning of the 1970s. “Makossa” was a major dance-floor craze. We had the Fania All-Stars, which featured the cream of Latino-Salsa musicians such as flutist Johnny Pacheco, percussionist Ray Barretto, keyboardist Larry Harlow, Celia Cruz, the queen of salsa vocal artistry, trombonist Willie Colon, and vocal master Cheo Feliciano. We booked more than thirty other acts, including Bill Withers, the Spinners, Sister Sledge, Miriam Makeba, the Pointer Sisters, B.B. King, Etta James, and the Crusaders.
We traveled to Los Angeles and tried to get Stevie Wonder. I’d first met Stevie in 1966 at the Queens Road house I lived in with Susie and Stewart. He had come over with Martha and the Vandellas, with whom he had become tight when he was a kid and Martha worked as a secretary at Motown. I had just recorded Stevie’s “Loving You Has Made My Life Sweeter Than Ever,” which was a big hit for the Four Tops. He was curious about me, and arranged a meeting. Stevie sang us song after song at my baby grand piano, and later on regaled us with funny stories and engaged in spirited boxing matches with all three Vandellas. He amazed us by blocking all their punches. We took to each other very quickly, and he was keen to learn the Xhosa language of clicks. It really fascinated him. The following year I opened for him at Lincoln Center. Over the years, Stevie and I would become fairly good acquaintances.
We traveled to try to get him on the Zaire bill, but it turned into a hand-in-hat opera because his two most recent albums, Talking Book and the double album that followed, Songs in the Key of Life, had been such blockbusters. He was now surrounded by a large entourage outside of his brother Calvin, who always guided him around and who was on very good terms with me. The stumbling block was Vogoda, Stevie’s manager, who had one of the nastiest dispositions I have ever encountered. Sarcastic, cynical, and dismissive, he wouldn’t let us begin talking to Stevie, who kept us at bay by playing us tape after tape of his countless beautiful compositions. Stewart and I became very frustrated. Vogoda just wouldn’t laugh, regardless of how funny the situation was. We followed Stevie to his house in Beverly Hills, his offices in Hollywood, and his studio in the Wilshire neighborhood. He just kept encouraging me to “come over and let’s talk about it some more,” but nothing came of it. But I still loved Stevie.
He invited me to a party one night where Richard Pryor was also a guest, and they talked so much funny shit we just could not stop laughing. I’d first met Richard Pryor during my engagements at the Village Gate when he was appearing across the street at the Cafe à Go Go. At the time he was still doing hilarious takeoffs on nursery stories like “Rumpelstiltskin” and “Rapunzel.” We would run across Thompson Street to catch each other’s performances, forming a mutual admiration society of sorts. Offstage, Richard was very shy and quiet around people he didn’t know. He moved to Los Angeles around the same time I did, and turned out to be an old friend of our pianist Charlie Smalls. He was a regular at our Whisky à Go Go gigs and just cutting his teeth on the L.A. scene. Now, six years later, Richard and Stevie had changed considerably and I could hardly remember how they used to be.
After a week of giving us the runaround, Stevie and his manager promised to get back to us. We never heard from them. That week we also tried to get Barry White, who was at the highest point in his career. Barry was on the eve of a major American and European tour. He couldn’t make it to the Rumble concert, but he was a real gentleman about it. Still, we flew back to New York empty-handed. Lloyd, Stewart, and I had several meetings with Cecil Franklin, Aretha’s brother, to try to arrange for Aretha to play the festival. He also led us on, but ultimately Aretha would not be coming to Zaire. There were never any real reasons given, nor was money ever the problem. Lloyd and I went to see Gamble and Huff about trying to get the O’Jays on board. They were cooperative and even got Harold Levert to meet with us. He expressed interest, but in the end his enthusiasm fizzled into thin air.
James Brown was very keen to go to Zaire, a country he’d visited before. But he spun out dozens of unexpected demands and conditions. His manager, Mr. Bobbit, was an old friend of Lloyd Price and an extremely amicable negotiator. But his deep respect for, and fear of, James Brown always came through when we met with him. “Well, the King insists that he be the first to board the plane with his principal band members, and he must also be the first to disembark at Kinshasa airport after the plane lands in Zaire. The King wants to have the majority of the seats in the first-class cabin of the aircraft for himself and the principal members of his group. Furthermore, Mr. Brown wants a Mercedes-Benz limousine to be made available to him on a twenty-four-hour basis. He has to have an audience with President Mobutu, and he demands a luxury suite in the hotel, with adjoining rooms for his valet and master of ceremonies. Finally, Mr. Brown’s entourage will be continuing on to Gabon after his Kinshasa performance. Because of this, the King insists that his equipment for his Gabon performance be accommodated on the plane that will carry us to Zaire. Mr. Brown also requests that he be paid one hundred thousand dollars for the Rumble in the Jungle performance.” James Brown was at the peak of his career, and we needed him badly because in Africa he was the most popular American performer. Although we thought some of the demands rather unreasonable, we agreed to all of the terms.
Through Ray Lofaro, we hooked up with filmmaker Leon Gast, who agreed to direct the movie of the project. Leon selected twelve film crews, mostly black, to cover the happenings. All the print media were fascinated with the project, and we had journalists bombarding our offices around the clock. Quincy Troupe was assigned by Rolling Stone to come down with us. Hunter S. Thompson would come on board later for the same magazine.
With the contracted lineup of entertainers beginning to attract more media coverage than the fight itself, Don King began to draw much closer to our office operation, and took us out for drinks every evening, making sure that we reported every new development to him. He picked up all the food and drink bills and literally began to tell us how the entire festival production should be handled. Miles Davis was very keen to be in the festival, but I was the only one who favored his inclusion; everyone else gave him the thumbs-down. I hadn’t seen Miles in almost seven years. He had sent his manager’s personal assistant to talk to me. She was very determined, and came around to the office at the end of almost every day. She told me that Miles was very disappointed that he could not come along. I was so overloaded with work that I hardly found any time to go and explain the situation to him personally. However, Miles was going through his most avant-garde, ultramodern, impressionistic era, and the general consensus was that his type of music at the time would have been totally out of context with the festival’s R&B and mainstream jazz, ethnic, and urban-African theme.
A few months earlier I had worked for a week with La Belle at the Apollo Theater on a Curtis Mayfield show. The ladies wanted to be part of the festival. I thought it was a fine idea, but was overruled by Lloyd Price and company. Patti La Belle never seems to have forgiven me for passing on them at the time.
Don King’s partner Hank Schwartz invited Stewart and me to fly to Zaire to check out Kinshasa’s infrastructure, interact with those Zaireans we would be working with, and examine the accommodations for the thousands of people we were expecting to come. Stewart and I passed through Monrovia to give Steve Tolbert a report on his investment. He was pleased with the progress. This festival was to be his entrée into the entertainment business.
Our Air Afrique flight from Liberia to Zaire resembled a freight train that makes frequent stops. We boarded about nine in the morning and stopped in Banjul, Gambia; Dakar, Senegal; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Accra, Ghana; Lome, Togo; Cotonou, Benin; Lagos, Nigeria; Douala, Cameroon; Libreville, Gabon; and finally Kinshasa. Each stop was for an hour, and all passengers had to disembark. Stewart and I drank cognac and beer at every airpor
t bar. We finally arrived at our hotel around 2:00 a.m. After showering and changing clothes, Stewart and I hit the Un, Deux, Troix Club in Matonge. Feeling no pain, we grabbed a trumpet and saxophone from two of the band members and jammed with the TP OK Jazz Orchestra until near dawn.
Through Hank Schwartz we connected with a dapper young official named Lunkunku, who took us to all the available hotels, the stadium, the government transportation authorities, and the ministry of culture. We planned to have music, dance, and drum ensembles performing in the streets every day during the month of September leading up to the fight. These troupes would be strategically placed throughout the city, beginning at the airport and at the hotels. In Kinshasa, I also ran into Nga Machema, my South African guerrilla-fighter friend, who was recovering from a shrapnel wound incurred during one of his military missions. He was going to be in Kinshasa for the rest of the year, so we set him up as our head of security, another logistics problem solved. We returned to New York in possession of all the important details we would need to make the festival a success.
The months I spent in New York leading up to the fight gave Jabu and me time to rekindle our romance. She worked as a librarian at the New York Times, which was not far from my hotel. Sometimes we had major disagreements and she would take off in a huff. We wouldn’t see each other for a few days, and then I would call to apologize. I could be careless with her sometimes, and she could be moody and temperamental. Things could be rocky, but I was happy to be with her again.
Being across the street from the Plaza Hotel, we would run into some of Alan Pariser’s big-time friends who would be staying there from time to time, like Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, and some of the Rolling Stones. Alan also had a large circle of friends in the music world whom he met when they first came to Los Angeles to play and needed to score something for the head. Later they not only became close friends, but would also depend on him for business decisions in connection with property and car purchases or financial investments and legal representation. Pariser was an expert in these matters. One evening Mick Jagger, Ron Wood, and Carol Cole, one of Nat King Cole’s daughters, came to visit Alan while we were getting high in his suite. Jagger was keen to meet Don King, this new giant of boxing. Alan called King’s suite. Lloyd answered the phone. He said we should all come up and have a drink with them, because they were having fun with some babes. When Lloyd opened the door to Don’s suite, we were shocked to see Lloyd and Don in their birthday suits. There were at least four very well endowed, nude black amazons in there with them, lounging on armchairs and couches. We were shocked at first, but our hosts seemed very laid back and relaxed. We declined the drinks we were offered and kept standing while Don’s party were all sitting cross-legged. Jagger came down hard on Don King, telling him how disgusted he was to find someone of his stature receiving guests he didn’t even know in a state of undress, surrounded by sleaze, and that King should be ashamed of himself. King hit back, recalling some of the scandals he had read in the press about Jagger. Jagger said the tabloids made shit up, but this was disgustingly real, and people like King didn’t have a leg to stand on when condemning musicians while they were carrying on in that manner. While the debate was going on, Carol Cole pulled me out of there and we ended up in my suite. I never found out how the argument ended.
Six weeks before the festival, Alan Pariser and I flew to Kinshasa to begin preparations for the onslaught of artists. We practically took over the Intercontinental Hotel. Lunkunku helped us prepare to accommodate the needs of the hordes of artists and technicians who were due to arrive soon. Nga had secured troops from the Zairean army as security. Last-minute renovations were being made on the stadium and many portions of the city. The whole place was abuzz with excitement. Chip Beresford Monck, who had once been Miriam’s tour manager and had since become a top lighting, sound, and stage technician for mammoth rock tours, arrived with his crews to begin preparations for the events. Leon Gast also sent half of his film crews for reconnaissance and preproduction. Lloyd Price’s assistants Rudy Lucas and Nate Adams arrived two weeks before the festival. It had been agreed between Steve Tolbert’s Festival Productions representatives Steve Dunbar and Ian Bradshaw, Don King and Lloyd Price’s office, and our company Ace, that a ten-dollar charge to see the stadium performance would help toward recouping Tolbert’s investment. However, people in Kinshasa were hardly buying any tickets. President Mobutu told King and Schwartz that ordinary Zaireans could not afford ten dollars. Not even one dollar.
Another plan was that Stewart and our New York office staff would assist in logistics coordination. We wanted him to color-label the artists’ luggage according to their assigned hotel. That way, when they disembarked we could escort them to their assigned vehicles and on to their hotels. It was chaos from the beginning. James Brown arrived late to the airport in New York with tons of his equipment because he was scheduled to continue onto Gabon after the festival. The plane was overloaded, so the pilot asked all passengers to sit in economy class. Brown refused, protesting, “I am the King,” much to the discomfort of the other passengers. During a stopover in Madrid, Bill Withers apparently purchased a large dagger and put it to Brown’s throat, forcing him to sit in economy. When the plane landed, Brown insisted on being the first to deplane, again citing his kingship. With all the difficult conditions he had presented to us, plus the overweight equipment and the trouble he had caused his fellow passengers, I was totally disgusted with his demands at this point. However, all we could do was watch patiently as he walked slowly onto the top of the stairs that had been rolled up to the aircraft for the disembarkation. With pageant winners Miss Ali and Miss Foreman on each arm, he smiled triumphantly and waved at the large, screaming crowd lining the airport building’s observation deck, then slowly walked down the stairway. Nga, Rudy, Nate, Alan, and I watched with amazement as “the King” acted like a true brat. Exhausted as we were, we could not help but laugh. We had placed five different groups of performers on the tarmac to welcome the arriving group. Voodoo drummers and dancers, a traditional choir, a group of forest pygmies, a woman’s traditional healers’ ensemble, and Stukas, the leading Kwassa-Kwassa dance band, were all strutting and stomping their stuff. By now all 320 passengers were exhausted, and most of them were high. When the doors of the plane opened, they couldn’t wait for James Brown to finish doing his “King” thing. They spilled onto the tarmac like mad people. Pacheco, the music director of the Fania All-Stars, rushed toward the Stukas band, pulled out his flute, and started jamming. Mayhem followed, and everyone was dancing. All we could do—Nga, his soldiers, our office personnel, the guides, the bus and car drivers—was to just look on in despair as our elaborate plans went up in smoke. It took us all day and night to sort out who would stay where and then sort out the luggage and the artists’ equipment cases.
Once everyone was settled in, the mood was electric. The whole city was reverberating with music. Crowds followed Muhammad Ali and George Foreman wherever they went. For all the marijuana smokers, Nga had arranged for coconut shells to be filled with pot and placed in all the relevant rooms with rolling papers beside them. Many people had brought their own blow. We also had a considerable amount of cocaine stashed away for some of our staff that were users. Every morning after breakfast Ali’s corner man, Bundini Brown, and one of his sparring partners knocked on my door to hit on me for some blow. “Come on, Hughie, give up the fucking blow.” In general, most people were pleasantly bent out of shape most of the time.
The artists had a whole week free before the festival, and they spent it mostly on guided tours we had arranged for them to go around Kinshasa taking in the sights like the food and arts markets. With their Polaroid cameras they were able to barter for arts and crafts with the instant photographs, with which the Zaireans were truly fascinated. They loved to pose. The nightlife in Kinshasa was like manna from heaven for the artists, and they went club-hopping until dawn, dancing their asses off and making good friends with the local citizens,
who were naturally hospitable but had also been exhorted by President Mobutu to welcome the guests with extra enthusiasm. The hotels were all five-star, and the performers were having the times of their lives, with the production company footing the entire bill. I was sitting at poolside one day having lunch with my co-workers when Don King joined us and began to accuse me of being an Uncle Tom.
“I am really disappointed in you, Hugh Masekela,” he said. “You should be running this whole show, and instead you’re letting that white boy Levine order you around.”
Don was frustrated, mainly because Foreman was injured and the fight was postponed for more than a month. The festival had now taken center stage with the media. But I didn’t like him taking it out on me. I went off on him. “In the first place, you have been doing all the fucking ordering around and always interfering with everything we are trying to do here. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Don, but don’t you talk like that to me here in Africa, man. This is not fucking Cleveland! I will have you fucking wasted, man!” I was with Nga, who got even more infuriated with Don’s attitude. It took two days for me to regain my cool. I never spoke to Don King again, and he kept away from me.
Still Grazing Page 38