by Rick James
The songs I wrote reflected my relaxation. Instead of my usual nine or ten songs, I recorded only six. Motown insisted I give them more material. I refused. I wanted this record to be sparse, not crowded. The stories coming through me were all about the sea and the sand and the beauty of the islands. I put in the sound of the waves and gave the tunes titles like “Island Lady,” “Summer Love,” and “Gettin’ It On (In the Sunshine).” I wrote motifs and melodies that, to my mind, were some of the most haunting I had ever composed. I called the album Garden of Love. I was dead certain that I was presenting a side of Rick James that the public would like to know.
I was dead wrong. The only single that made any noise was “Big Time”—and it wasn’t written by me. The deejays saw the other songs, the ones I viewed as so precious, as filler. The album barely went gold. By then I was so used to multiplatinum that gold equaled failure. Even worse, the album generated such little heat that the big Funky Island Tour I had planned for America and Europe was scrubbed. Promoters had lost their faith in my ability to draw big crowds.
I had to scratch my head. One day I was on top and then, with one underperforming record, the bottom fell out. Had my arrogance finally caught up with me? Was I too cocky for my own good? Had I lost my glow?
I decided I needed some time to reassess. Hawaii seemed the right place to do just that. I went to Maui, where my agent, Shep Gordon, had a house on the beach. During my stay he had a poolside dinner party. Among the guests was Salvador Dalí. I knew a little about art and was familiar with Dalí’s far-out paintings. Like me, he had a crazy imagination.
During dinner he kept staring at me. I got a little uncomfortable until he finally blurted out, “Señor, I am mad about the way you look. Please allow me to sketch you.”
“Hey, man,” I said, “I’d love it.”
He took his napkin and spent fifteen or twenty minutes doing this groovy portrait. When I saw it, I felt that he’d captured my soul.
“You can keep it, señor,” he said.
“Wow. Thanks.”
“You better be thankful,” said Shep. “No telling what that thing is worth.”
Next morning I awoke, fired up a joint, slipped on my shorts, and took a long walk along the beach. The waves were calm and the breezes delightful. At one point I decided to take a short dip. Soon as I dived into the sea, though, I had a terrible thought—that these were the shorts I’d worn last night. Dalí’s portrait was still in my pocket. When I got out of the water and took out the napkin, Dalí’s portrait was unrecognizable, just a pattern of blurs. They say pot destroys short-term memory. I sure could have used some sharp short-term memory that morning. Without it, I ruined the only known depiction of a famous funkster by an even more famous surrealist.
For the rest of that trip I discussed my career with Shep. He had lots of ideas for me. He thought I should be more pop and less street. He thought I should write songs that sounded more like Lionel Richie, who was threatening to be Motown’s next big solo star. I thought Shep was wrong. I was convinced he just didn’t get me—and I fired him.
My intention was to fly back to Buffalo from Hawaii with a very brief stopover in L.A. I hit my favorite spot, Carlos and Charlie’s on the Strip, where I was greeted like a conquering hero. I wasn’t sure what the hell I had conquered but that didn’t matter. It was vintage champagne and primo blow. When I drove down Sunset Boulevard—I called it Ho Stroll—the ladies waved at me. I was their hero.
“If you’re feeling so good,” said Mom, calling from Buffalo, “why do you sound so bad?”
“My record flopped.”
“Not every record can be number one, son. You been on a streak. All streaks come to an end.”
“But I loved the last record, Mom. Didn’t you?”
“I love everything you do, James, but I can see why it wasn’t as popular as the others.”
“Why?”
“You’ve been off the streets for a while.”
“Wasn’t that always the point of getting rich, Mom? Didn’t we always wanna move outta the ghetto?”
“Sure we did. And it’s fun to go sailing around those islands. It’s fun to go to Hawaii. And I know that Hollywood is fun. But when I was out there with you, son, I saw how alone L.A. can make you feel. No one’s on the streets. They don’t even have sidewalks. There’s something about them streets, boy. You don’t ever wanna forget the streets.”
THE STREETS
New York City is bigger, Chicago is windier, Atlanta is warmer, but of all the chocolate cities, Buffalo may be the baddest. You’d have to compare it to Detroit to get a sense of the down-and-out feeling that hangs over the inner city. Like Detroit, Buffalo was once a booming Great Lakes city. But unlike Detroit, it never even began to forge a comeback. It’s the filthiest buckle in the center of the Rust Belt. The steel mills are shut down tight, the jobs long gone. The ghetto is one nasty liquor store after another. The bars are dirty holes-in-the-wall where the patrons are drinking themselves to death on cheap gin and rotgut wine.
When I got to the city of my birth, I gathered up my hair and hid it under an old baseball cap that had BUFFALO BILLS written across the front. I pulled it down on my face. I put on a sweatshirt, some old jeans, and hiking boots and went down to the old neighborhood. I walked through the projects and all the central scenes of my childhood. Places, people, and smells came back to me. My mind was flooded with memories. I heard the music coming out of the ghetto blasters—Larry Graham’s “One in a Million You,” George Benson’s “Give Me the Night,” Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration,” the Gap Band’s “Burn Rubber on Me.” I absorbed all the sounds—the kids crying, the moms screaming, the dogs barking, the cats fighting. I absorbed all the life around me. I didn’t judge it, didn’t see it as good or bad. It just was. It was where I came from. It was me.
I made four or five of these secret trips, always in disguise and always alone. If I had gone with my entourage, everyone would have guessed that some big shot was coming through. For me to ingest what I needed to ingest, I couldn’t afford to be a big shot. I had to be nobody. The only person I told about these excursions was Mom. After all, it was her idea.
“When I feel myself getting a little crazy,” she said, “I go down there to where it all began just to look around. I’ll just stop by some bar and hang out for a minute. I’ll watch the number runner do what I did for so many years. Seeing that makes me smile. Can’t explain it exactly, James, but you know what I mean.”
I did. Mom was leading me back to the path where I’d begun. I needed to reconnect, remember, and write.
I could have written Street Songs in Buffalo, the city that inspired me, but after revisiting my old haunts I realized that I needed to distance myself from the memories. I needed to isolate in a setting where I wouldn’t be disturbed. The Record Plant in Sausalito, where I’d cut the successful Fire It Up, seemed like the right spot. The studio prepared a bedroom where it was just me and my guitar, my bass, and a drum machine. I lived there for a week, writing nonstop. That’s where I composed the core of Street Songs, a concept album that mirrored my life. The subjects were sex, drugs, fame, frustration, police brutality, passion, and determination. Marvin Gaye was still my idol, and I wanted to create something along the lines of his What’s Going On—only with more of an emphasis on sex.
“Give It to Me Baby,” the first of several smashes off the album, was written first. If you read between the lines you’ll see that the subtext concerns my problems with sexual performance. Some cats can screw on coke like there’s no tomorrow. I can’t. Because I love both fucking and coking in equal measure, it was a struggle. At a younger age, I managed to combine them. But the longer I snorted, the more it impaired my ability to ball. Many cats in the ghetto had this problem but lacked the guts to admit it.
Stevie Wonder, my other idol, came in and blew harp on “Mr. Policeman,” the story of a friend gunned down in Buffalo by the cops. I gave it a reggae flavor because I had recently watc
hed Jimmy Cliff’s The Harder They Come for the second time. It’s one of my favorite movies, filled with Jamaican grit and Jamaican grooves.
After one of my tours I’d flown to Paris, where I’d met an Ethiopian princess. I’ve always adored African women, and I was under this lady’s spell for days. Her body was a living miracle. We didn’t make love; we made a new universe in which she was queen and I was king. I wanted to bring her back to America but she knew I wouldn’t be faithful. She saw me for who I was—a man incapable of fidelity. I give her credit for her intelligence and insight. But that same intelligence and insight made me want her even more. She left me in the Paris hotel, and though I was crushed, I knew I had met my match.
The whole episode came back to me that week I was writing in Sausalito. The experience became “Fire and Desire.” I heard it as a duet and naturally thought of Teena, whose star continued to rise. When Teena arrived at the studio, though, she had a bad fever and couldn’t sing. She went right to bed. When the doctor said she could be out for a week or more, I found a local singer who could do the job. Someone told Teena what I was about to do and, just like that, she got out of her sickbed and showed up at the studio.
“No way I’m gonna let some other bitch sing that song,” she said.
“You sure you can handle it, feeling the way you do?”
“Just play the track, Rick, and give me the headphones.”
Still sweating from her fever, Lady T marched into the booth and tore that shit up! I mean, she delivered a vocal performance that folks gonna be listening to as long as human beings are capable of love. I realized I had written a good song, but Teena turned it into a great song for the ages. More than a hit, it was soon put into that one category all songwriters dream of; “Fire and Desire” became a standard.
There were other songs on the record that I felt told my story—“Ghetto Life,” “Below the Funk (Pass the J),” “Call Me Up,” and “Make Love to Me.” I looked over the tunes and felt that I was nearly finished. I had seven strong songs. Even though some of them were long-form, they could each be edited down for under-four-minutes radio play. But satisfied as I was, I knew something was missing.
It was about three in the morning. We had just put the horn parts on “Give It to Me Baby” when I was sitting in front of the console with my bass. I wasn’t trying to write. I was just noodling. This bass line came out of nowhere. Four descending notes. Nothing particularly striking. It was cheesy, but it was also catchy. I couldn’t stop playing it. At the same time, I started singing, “She’s a very kinky girl . . .” I was about to stop—the whole thing sounded a little dumb—when one of my cats said, “Cut it, Rick.”
“You crazy?” I asked.
“No man, it’s cool. It’s hypnotic.”
I kept playing the riff and realized that it was hypnotic. Right then and there I had the engineer hook up a mic and started singing the story as it came to me—this story of a super freak. I never wrote down a word. Made it up on the spot. It just kinda grew out of me.
When I started arranging it, bringing in the musicians and calling out their parts, I began to see that I really did have something. I got excited. Rather than call in the usual background singers, I used the greatest singing group in the world, the Temptations, to sing behind me. I told them, “It’s not as funky as my usual stuff, but maybe that’ll mean white people will dance to it.”
Alonzo Miller, a deejay friend, said that the lyrics were too raunchy to get airplay and helped me clean them up. Ironically, after “Super Freak” was released as the second single off Street Songs, Alonzo got complaints from prudes and took it out of his rotation. I raised hell until he started playing it again. When he did, his request line blew up. “Super Freak” became the crossover hit Motown had been looking for. I was suddenly a crossover artist. Suddenly I had more white fans than black fans. Suddenly I had shown that Garden of Love, with its poor sales, was just an aberration. Not only was I back making hits, I was making history. Motown hadn’t seen sales like this since the days of Stevie’s Songs in the Key of Life. I had reclaimed my glow—and then some.
The question became, how much bigger and brighter could my glow ever get?
At Studio 54 in New York, I had carte blanche. The new owner, Mark Fleischman, treated me like royalty. Grace Jones was my best friend. Peter Max was my best friend. Tanya Tucker was my best friend. Iman, the gorgeous Somalian supermodel, was my girlfriend. I had walked through high cotton before, but this was the highest.
The acts I was developing were also super-hot. I helped my protégée Teena Marie with her fourth studio album, It Must Be Magic, though it was mainly her production and her songs. “Square Biz” was a huge hit off the record. Along with New Edition, the Gap Band, Luther Vandross, and Grandmaster Flash, Teena became one of my opening acts.
Then came Funk Fest, George Clinton’s operation, a battle of the bands. I did several dates in stadiums that held sixty thousand people. I remembered how George had forgotten to help me back in the day, so when I agreed it was with a reason. Other acts were on the show—Bootsy, the Isley Brothers, Maze, Con Funk Shun—but it was George’s ass that I was after.
These groups were great. After all, they were the culmination of the Golden Age of Funk, which, like the Big Band era of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, brought out the best musicianship. Everyone was throwing down. I loved these groups but was not intimidated by any of them. I wouldn’t have minded following any of them. But I did have a goal—and that was to go on before Clinton. If that could be arranged, I’d wear out those fans with the most ferocious funk the world had ever heard. I’d hurt them so bad that they’d have nothing left for George. And that’s exactly what happened—not once but twice. By the time Clinton’s funksters wandered out onstage, the exhausted crowd was on its way up the aisles and out of the stadium. Once they heard our jams, they’d heard enough.
Revenge. How sweet it is!
And yet, for all the satisfaction that comes with payback, I felt something missing deep in the center of my soul.
“It’s a soul mate,” my mother was quick to say when I told her that despite all the crazy success, I was still feeling a little down. “You need someone who loves you for who you are, baby—not for your money.”
Mom was right. My flings were all over before they began. I’d become Mr. Hit It and Quit It. My addictive mind was focused on good pussy as opposed to good women. I was looking at ladies the way I was looking at blow—as objects to consume. My thinking was fucked, and I knew it.
At the same time I was reassessing my messed-up approach to sex, I knew that Marvin Gaye and his wife, Jan, were splitsville. When I first met Jan in Marvin’s studio, I saw her as a princess to his prince. They were soul royalty. I was in awe of their great poise, charm, and intelligence. I was a gentleman in Jan’s presence but was secretly attracted to her. Who wouldn’t be? She was gorgeous, hip, and an altogether wonderful woman. I wasn’t about to hit on Marvin’s woman. But when I learned that they were living apart, I figured it was perfectly appropriate to invite Jan to one of my concerts.
I chose the biggest Funk Fest of all—the one at the L.A. Coliseum. I invited Jan to my trailer, where she showed up with two of her friends. I was disappointed that she hadn’t come alone but still happy to see her. I didn’t get into the details of what was happening between her and Marvin, but I could tell she felt neglected by him. I wasn’t about to neglect her. We drank a little champagne, shared a joint, and snorted a little blow. I made sure that she and her friends had the best seats in the house. After the show, we partied a little more and that was it. I gave her a hug and kissed her on the cheek.
“You’re an outta-sight chick, Jan,” I said, “and you deserve the best.”
“Thank you, Rick. Thank you for all your thoughtfulness.”
That was it. I could have asked for more, but I didn’t. Since she was still married to Marvin, I had mixed feelings. Motown was a place that fostered ferocious competition. I’d s
een that back in Detroit, where the producers, like Mickey Stevenson and Norman Whitfield, would fight like demons to get their songs cut by the hot artists. That didn’t change when Motown moved to L.A. Berry Gordy is the most competitive motherfucker the world has ever known. He was a boxer and views the music biz as one big battle. I fit into that mode myself. One of the reasons I prospered was because I wanted to take on cats like George Clinton and prove my funk was fiercer than theirs.
I say all this to admit that I had competitive feelings about Marvin. I saw him as the old prince of Motown. I was the new prince. In a good-natured way, he used to needle me that my songs all sounded the same. And in an equally good-natured way, I’d needle him that he hadn’t had a hit since “Got to Give It Up.” While I was going up, Marvin was going down. His autobiographical piece about his ex-wife, Anna, Here, My Dear, was an artistic triumph but a commercial flop. Because it was critical of Anna, the Chairman’s sister, it put him at further odds with Berry. He kept saying that he didn’t care about whether his shit sold or not; he just wanted to follow his muse. His muse had him writing strange songs about the end of the world and the nuclear holocaust. When I heard his new stuff, I knew he was lost at sea. No matter how loudly an artist claims that he doesn’t care about having hits, I know he’s lying. Everyone wants hits, Marvin Gaye included.
As Marvin’s musical mojo was dwindling and mine was expanding, he was also losing his personal mojo. He was sinking into deeper depressions and disrespecting Jan big-time. I saw an opportunity to move in. So before the start of my Street Songs tour, I invited Jan to meet me at a five-star hotel in Maui. She accepted, we became lovers, and it was a beautiful thing.
Because Jan is an intellectual chick with a strong spiritual bent, she brought out the best in me. We’d discuss movies and books, religion and politics. Her mind was as amazing as her body. She loved drugs as much as I did, but the drugs never stopped us from going deep into conversations about the heart and mind. I felt like this was a woman I could live with the rest of my life. The only problem, of course, was that she was still married to Marvin. Beyond that, she still loved the man. No matter how she cared for me, Marvin would always come first. If he hadn’t neglected and mistreated her, she never would have come to me for consolation.