Glow
Page 28
“Bring on the Love” takes a serious turn. It’s a meditation on violence in the ghetto, a lament for those children killed by stray bullets meant for gangstas. It also gives voice—my old voice—to those poor souls still screaming for crack, indifferent to the deadly consequences of the drug.
I had long wanted to write a song about my mother. My only regret was that when I finally recorded “Mama’s Eyes,” Mom was gone. I wanted her to see my recovery and rebirth into a world of freedom. It’s a song that tells Mom, who’s now living on the other side of time, that I love her more than life itself—and that all is well. I put a muted Miles-like trumpet behind my voice, reminding me of that time that Mom snuck me into a club in Buffalo to see Miles and Trane.
The other woman whose spirit demanded her own song was Tanya. I called hers “Soul Sista.” It was written at Folsom on acoustic guitar. When I got to the studio, I used lots of instruments but somehow the feeling got drowned. So I went back to simplicity. I see love as simple. I call Tanya “the queen of my soul, the queen of my heart.”
I did a small-scale tour behind Urban Rapsody with a band I put together with cats from Buffalo. The big warm-up gig was at the House of Blues in L.A. All Hollywood turned out—all my friends, like Wesley Snipes, Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney, Chris Tucker, Denzel Washington. It’d been over ten years since I put out a new album. That’s a long fuckin’ time in the record business. I was nervous as hell, sweating bullets. I had flop fears. I worried about whether I’d be remembered. I worried about whether I’d get over. I didn’t need to worry. The place was packed. Thousands of fans couldn’t even get in. The evening was a triumph.
Urban Rapsody put me back where I wanted to be: in the middle of the mix. After it had been extinguished by the evils of cocaine and the confinement of prison, I had my glow back. In 1999, Eddie Murphy helped tremendously when he got me a role in the movie he did with Martin Lawrence, Life. I played the part of a big-time gangsta. Reviews were positive and one critic saw a movie career in my future. I had no doubt I could act. I’d been acting my entire life. Hope was—and remains—everywhere in my world.
All this leads to my saying that at the end of this, my story so far, I’m still glowing. I’m still thinking that I have a long life in front of me and good times ahead. I know I have the right woman, and even though my track record at long-term relationships isn’t great, I’m believing this time will be different.
This time I’ve become a grandfather. My beautiful daughter, Ty, has two beautiful daughters of her own—Jasmine and Charisma— the bright lights of my life. My sons, Rick and Taz, mean the world to me. Family has never been more important. Family keeps me anchored in the reality of love, and love keeps me from straying off into the darkness that I know all too well.
Will I return to that darkness? In the words of Brotha Guru, will the Me Monster get hold of me again?
I can’t make any guarantees. Who knows what direction I—or, for that matter, the world—am going in. George W. Bush is our post–9/11 president. He reminds me of Reagan. I don’t like the guy and everything he represents. Feels to me like he’s using this terror scare to rob us of our liberties. I hope we survive him. I hope the president who comes next has a clearer vision of the world situation.
I’m back in the studio working on Deeper Still, an album for my own Stone City Records. It’s bad. And probably its baddest joint is a funky thing called “Stroke,” an autobiographical groove that has me talking about my prison past as well as my promising future. “Stroke” lets you know that I got my stroke back.
In terms of my personal situation, I’m feeling pretty steady. I’m not back on crack. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t think about dabbling, but I’ve avoided it. An occasional joint, a sip of wine—nothing more. If I start to forget what blow did to my brain, all I have to do is the read the words that I have written here—my own horror story—to remember the pain and suffering. I don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past. I don’t want to lose the glow. I pray that the glow will be with me forever, in this lifetime and the worlds that follow.
EPILOGUE
In bodily form, the glow was extinguished on August 6, 2004, when Rick died of a heart attack at age fifty-six. The coroner’s report indicated nine drugs in his body, including cocaine, Valium, Vicodin, and methamphetamine. He had been diagnosed years earlier with diabetes and had suffered a mild stroke in 1998. He had also been wearing a pacemaker. Since leaving jail eight years earlier, his health had steadily declined. His effort to find sobriety became a study in frustration.
“I never got more than a few weeks clean before I was looking to get high again,” he told me. “I wanted relief from all sorts of pain, and the high was the quickest way.”
“Rick called a few months before he passed,” Jan Gaye told me. “I was in my car driving from LAX. He said he’d gone out on drugs but now was back and recommitted to sobriety. He sounded great, full of determination. He said that he had missed our deep discussions and was looking to reconnect with the people he called his intellectual friends. I was flattered. I was eager to renew our friendship. As he began describing this new awakening, I drove through a tunnel and lost the connection. I tried calling him back but didn’t get through. That was the last time we spoke.
“The day after his death, Linda Hunt, who’d worked for Rick for years, called and asked me to come to the apartment where they’d been living. It was the Oakwood, a complex of furnished apartments on the hill above Burbank next to Forest Lawn Cemetery. The place was chaos. The entire aftermath of Rick’s death was chaos. You die the way you live, and Rick lived in chaos. His family and friends had written an obituary to use in a program for the memorial service. They asked me to read it over. I told them that it wasn’t right. At their request, I rewrote it. I wanted it to be about Rick’s greatness. I wanted him to be remembered as a creative giant and a loving human being.”
The service was held in the Hall of Liberty at Forest Lawn, where, a little more than twenty years earlier, Marvin Gaye had been eulogized. Two prominent ministers from two different faiths spoke. Bishop Noel Jones, brother of entertainer Grace Jones and a brilliant rhetorician, spoke from a Christian perspective. Minister Louis Farrakhan, who was both restrained and eloquent, spoke from the perspective of the Nation of Islam. In addition, Rick’s sister Camille, a minister as well, described the disastrous effects of drugs on the life of her brother. Jan Gaye spoke lovingly of her dear friend, whom she called a student of all religions. Rick’s Stone City Band played. Stevie Wonder sang. Teena Marie compared her musical partnership with Rick to Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell and Donny Hathaway/Roberta Flack. Berry Gordy was in attendance, along with Smokey Robinson.
During the service, a giant joint was placed atop one of the speakers facing the mourners. Someone lit it. The smell of weed began drifting over the hall. A few turned their heads to avoid the smoke; others opened their mouths and inhaled.
In the open casket, dressed in a regal outfit of moss green and embroidered gold, the lifeless body of Rick James remained the focal point—a symbol of the turbulent relationship between excess and success.
He had lived a life of extravagant complexity. He had sought and won the attention of the world. He had made a permanent and important mark on musical history. He had struggled for clarity, and at key moments, clarity had been realized. But those moments were few. The excitement of show business, the thrill of adulation, the intoxication of wealth, and a battery of lethal compulsions had driven him to dangerous places. Lost in an emotional wilderness, time and time again he looked for a way home.
In the Hall of Liberty, he had finally found that home. Disembodied, his spirit was free to live outside of time and space, a steady and inextinguishable glow.
The glow lives on in Rick’s legacy. His place in history is secure. Fletcher Henderson is heralded for his seminal contribution to big band jazz; Louis Jordan is remembered as a forefather of small-group R & B; James Brown and George Clinton ar
e recognized as pioneers in orchestrated funk; and, in that hallowed tradition, Rick James stands tall. He fused these three strains—jazz, R & B, and funk—into a sound of his own. Like other idiosyncratic geniuses—from Louis Jordan to Jackie Wilson, from Elvis Presley to Chubby Checker—he forged a wholly original voice. He created vital dance music. His public persona—defiant, daring, hedonistic—touched a deep nerve of our pop culture. In short, he became larger than life. His undisciplined life is a finite story with a beginning, middle, and end. But his art, so strangely and wildly satisfying, has no end. His art lives.
Rick James and Art Stewart receiving Rick’s first gold album for Come Get It! with Skip Miller and Barney Ales, 1979.
Bobby Holland/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.
Fire It Up tour, 1979.
Paul Natkin/WireImage.
Performance in Los Angeles, California, circa 1981.
Michael Ochs Archives/Stinger/Getty Images.
November 7, 1981: Rick performs on Saturday Night Live. The episode was hosted by Lauren Hutton.
NBCUniversal/Getty Images.
Onstage during the Cold Blooded tour, 1983.
Paul Natkin/WireImage.
A performance at the International Amphitheater in Chicago, Illinois, 1982.
Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.
Rick James wins the American Music Award for Favorite Soul Album for Street Songs, 1982.
Time & Life Pictures/The LIFE Pictures Collection/Getty Images.
That signature Rick James stare.
Kypros/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Linda Blair and Rick, October 1982.
New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images.
Backstage with Grace Jones at the 25th Annual Grammy Awards, 1983. Earlier in the evening, Rick presented Marvin Gaye with a Grammy for “Sexual Healing.”
Ron Gallela/WireImage.
Rick with the Mary Jane Girls at the 1984 American Music Awards.
Ron Gallela/WireImage.
Eddie Murphy and Rick backstage following Murphy’s performance at Madison Square Garden, 1985.
David McGough/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images.
Rick and Teena Marie perform at the House of Blues in LA, 1997.
Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.
Onstage with Teena Marie at the Standing in the Shadows of Motown performance, 2002.
Michael Schwartz/WireImage.
Rick selects jewelry before his performance at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC, 1998.
The Washington Post/Getty Images.
Rick and his daughter, Ty.
Tyenza Matthews.
Rick, Tanya, and son Tazman at the studio, 1993.
Tyenza Matthews.
Rick’s letter to Tanya, written while serving time in prison.
Tyenza Matthews.
Clockwise from left to right: Tanya, Ty, Rick, Tazman, and Ty’s daughters, Charisma and Jasmin.
Tyenza Matthews.
Smiling on a Christmas morning.
Tyenza Matthews.
Early days in Buffalo.
Tyenza Matthews.
Rick with his beloved mother.
Tyenza Matthews.
Rick in his hospital bed.
Tyenza Matthews.
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
Albums
The Great White Cane, Lion, 1972
Come Get It!, Gordy, 1978
Bustin’ Out of L Seven, Gordy, 1979
Fire It Up, Gordy, 1979
Rick James Presents the Stone City Band: In ’n’ Out, Gordy, 1980
Garden of Love, Gordy, 1980
Street Songs, Gordy, 1981
The Boys Are Back: The Stone City Band, Gordy, 1981
Throwin’ Down, Gordy, 1982
Cold Blooded, Gordy, 1983
Meet the Stone City Band! Out from the Shadow, Motown, 1983
Reflections, Gordy, 1984
The Flag, Gordy, 1986
Wonderful, Reprise, 1988
Rock, Rhythm and Blues, Warner, 1989
Bustin’ Out: The Best of Rick James, Motown, 1994
Urban Rapsody, Private I, 1997
DVDs
Super Freak Live, Eagle Rock, 1982
The Best of Rick James: The 20th Century Masters DVD Collection, Motown, 2005
I’m Rick James: The Definitive DVD, Motown, 2009
RICK JAMES was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer, best known for being the major popularizer of funk music in the late 1970s and early 1980s thanks to million-selling hits.
DAVID RITZ is the only four-time winner of the Gleason Music Book Award. He has collaborated with Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, B. B. King, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Smokey Robinson, and Don Rickles. He also cowrote, with Gaye, the song “Sexual Healing.”
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
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authors.simonandschuster.com/Rick-James
authors.simonandschuster.com/David-Ritz
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@AtriaBooks
ALSO BY DAVID RITZ
BIOGRAPHIES:
Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye
Faith in Time: The Life of Jimmy Scott
Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin
with Tavis Smiley: Death of a King: The Real Story
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Final Year
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES:
with Ray Charles: Brother Ray
with Smokey Robinson: Inside My Life
with B. B. King: Blues All Around Me
with Etta James: Rage to Survive
with the Neville Brothers: The Brothers
with Jerry Wexler: Rhythm and the Blues
with Aretha Franklin: From These Roots
with Walter Yetnikoff: Howling at the Moon
with Robert Guillaume: A Life
with Laila Ali: Reach
with Gary Sheffield: Inside Power
with Felicia “Snoop” Pearson: Grace After Midnight
with Lang Lang: Journey of a Thousand Miles
with Don Rickles: Rickles’ Book
with Don Rickles: Rickles’ Letters
with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller: Hound Dog
with Paul Shaffer: We’ll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives
with Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats
with Tavis Smiley: What I Know for Sure
with Cornel West: Brother West
with Archbishop Carl Bean: I Was Born This Way
with Natalie Cole: Love Brought Me Back
with Janet Jackson: True You
with Scott Weiland: Not Dead and Not for Sale
with Ralph Branca: A Moment in Time
with R. Kelly: Soulacoaster
with Bettye LaVette: A Woman Like Me
with Scott Stapp: Sinner’s Creed
with Buddy Guy: When I Left Home
with Nik Wallenda: Balance
with Joe Perry: Rocks
NOVELS:
Search for Happiness
The Man Who Brought the Dodgers Back to Brooklyn
Blue Notes Under a Green Felt Hat
Barbells and Saxophones
Family Blood
Take It Off, Take It All Off!
Passion Flowers
with Mable John: Sanctified Blues
with Mable John: Stay Out of the Kitchen!
with Mable John: Love Tornado
with T. I.: Power and Beauty
with T.I.: Trouble and Triumph
INSPIRATIONAL:
Messengers: Portraits of African American Ministers,
Evangelists, Gospel Singers, and Other Messengers of “the Word”
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INDEX
A
A&M Records, 155
Adderley, Cannonball, 62, 93
Air Supply, 288
“Alice in Ghettoland,” 137
Allen, Debbie, 256, 266
Allen, Richard “Pistol,” 117
Allison, Mose, 73
Allman, Duane, 98
Allman Brothers, 139
“All Night Long,” 245
Alston, Oscar, 183
“Angel,” 200
Apollo Theater, 38
Are You Experienced, 79
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, 39
Ashford and Simpson, 196
A-Team, The, 271
Atkins, Cholly, 246
Atlantic Records, 138–40, 175
“At Last,” 200
Average White Band, 268
Aykroyd, Dan, 234
B
Bach, Catherine, 279
Bacharach, Burt, 118
“Back in the USSR,” 94
“Back in You Again,” 315
Baldwin, James, 48
“Ball and Chain,” 94
Basie, Count, 220
BBC, 235
Beach Boys, 64, 173, 235
Beatles, 65–67, 94, 112, 129, 173
Benjamin, Benny, 42
Benson, George, 170, 216
Berry, Chuck, 94