by Sheila E.
It felt like only yesterday that I’d been fighting in gangs and miserable at school. All of a sudden I had my own record with a picture of me on the cover and was garnering some serious respect in the very community I was in awe of. I could hardly get my head around it.
What on earth would happen next?
14. Stick Grip
The style in which a drummer holds the drumstick
I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.
ROSA PARKS
Before I even had time to consider the answer, along came George Duke, another legend in the world of jazz fusion and a man who’d worked with Frank Zappa, among others. George and Billy had a band together called the Duke Cobham Project—later known as the Billy Cobham/George Duke Band—and when George heard me playing congas with Pops, he decided that he wanted me to go out on tour with them.
When he asked me, I was thrilled, but then my heart sank. I was playing pretty much full-time with the Pete Escovedo Band by then. My father and I had a record out, and things were good. Going on tour with George would mean walking away from all that for a while, and I’d be abandoning Pops the way I’d left Grito for Azteca.
I knew I’d have to prepare myself for that conversation with my father before I went on tour with George, and I felt bad. In the end, I lost courage and asked George to speak to Pops for me.
The two of them had a man-to-man chat, and George promised that he’d take good care of me. (He talks about his conversation with my father to this day.) Pops knew I could take care of myself, and said he was fine about letting me go.
“This is a great opportunity for you, honey,” he told me, but I felt like his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
He was so much a part of me and my career that I was heartbroken at the thought of leaving him. It took me years to shake off my guilt about “abandoning” Pops to work with other musicians. He had given me the gift of music and he’d taught me everything I knew. Thanks to him I’d been able to play and start to make a name for myself. It felt like a betrayal to move on without him.
Pops was right, though—the George Duke tour would really open doors for me and expand my musical horizons well beyond the Bay Area. We took off almost immediately for Europe before coming back to do shows across the US. I couldn’t believe that I was a real professional musician, touring the world in my teens, playing percussion and singing backing vocals.
I flew home every now and again to make a second record with Pops and Billy at Fantasy, which was entitled Happy Together. It was eventually released in 1978, when I was just twenty years old. Pops and I also went on to play on a few more of Billy Cobham’s albums, Magic and Inner Conflicts. I was offered other opportunities as a studio musician, too, recording on Con Funk Shun’s Secrets and their later Loveshine.
The George Duke tour consisted of back-to-back gigs; one day melted into the next. We’d play and get on a bus, or play and crash at a hotel, then set off again early the next day. I didn’t know which city or even country we were in much of the time because of the time-zone changes and strange hours. I’d send postcards to my family, telling them how much I missed them or about the crazy new world I was in with its different food, music, and cultures.
The physicality of playing every night took its toll on me, too. One morning, I woke up to discover that I could hardly move. My hands were bleeding after every show. At night I’d have to soak the open sores on my palms and fingers in Epsom salts. And the next day, to warm up, I’d have to slap them against the wall until they went numb. I’d welcome new calluses, because they at least provided a little protection.
It was a lot to take sometimes—along with the drugs and the infidelity all around me. In a couple of towns I actually tried to keep the groupies away from the guys. I’d shut the dressing room door and try to keep out the women who wanted to come backstage and hang out with all the guys. “We need some privacy in here!” I’d say, hoping that the men would take the hint and at least not betray their wives (most of whom I knew) in front of me. I never succeeded, and I hated knowing how these musicians behaved away from home—yet another dirty little secret I was expected to keep. In what was then Communist Yugoslavia, I developed strep throat and felt wretchedly homesick. I had a fever, and my throat was so sore I couldn’t even swallow my own saliva. I lay sweating in a skinny little twin bed in a tiny hotel room with bars on the windows. In my feverish hallucinations I dreamt Dracula came through the window to feed on me. Byron Miller, the bass player, stayed with me until the doctor arrived with a needle as long as my arm.
“Shoot me, doc,” I told him, knowing that if I didn’t get better I’d have to fly home. That was one of the most painful shots I’ve ever had, but by the morning I felt so much better. Rain or shine, strep or fever, the show must go on.
In Germany I turned heads, but not in a good way. I wore my hair in braids by then, with beads jangling. Strangers stared at me in the street, pointing and wanting to touch my hair as if I was a circus freak. They were laughing and saying things I didn’t understand. I’d never experienced anything like that; it was as if they had never seen a woman of color before. Moments like those made me long for Oakland, where my color wasn’t unusual and my braids were considered cool.
George Duke, who was only eleven years older than me but seemed like a father figure, kept his promise to Pops and protected me from physical harm. He couldn’t do much about the men who kept hitting on me, though. Every day I found myself navigating the choppy waters of inappropriate assumptions and attitudes.
It usually went like this: a musician might initially be rude to me and doubt my ability to hang with the group musically. Then, as he realized I was talented and worthy of playing with them, he’d become more comfortable with me, even friendly. And then he’d get a little too comfortable, so to speak. He wouldn’t see me as a musical equal or a buddy but as a possible one-night stand.
I wasn’t down with that.
I learned fast to set my boundaries and walk the fine line of a female musician in a male-dominated environment. I was surrounded by lots of amped-up, lusty guys who thought it was just a matter of time before I accepted their advances and slept with them. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
George was always supportive if I needed him. “I had to keep the hounds away,” he reported to my parents later, laughing. He’d promised that he’d keep me safe and comfortable, and he did. But I didn’t like relying on George or anyone else to fight my battles, so I learned quickly how to project strength and self-protection. Soon enough I had built an invisible wall that was so impenetrable, guys just stopped trying.
Part of that self-defense mechanism had undoubtedly been forged in my childhood, allowing me to create the necessary arm’s length between me and anyone whom I sensed could pose some sort of threat—sexual or otherwise. Another part of that wall’s strength had to do with the influence of my family. I grew up with a deeply ingrained sense of my gender and the feeling that I had the right to hang with the guys as much as anyone else.
Out on the road in an all-male band, I realized once again that some people saw the drums as something only a man should play. The Gardere in me immediately bristled. I wanted to tell them, “Let me play my music and make the rest of you sound better. Your beliefs and assumptions about why I’m here or how I compare to a man don’t interest me. Nor do I want to sleep with you afterward!”
Fortunately, the guys had all seen how hard I beat the drums. They knew I was fit and physically very strong; I was probably at the peak of my physical health back then.
The signal I put out was: “Don’t mess with me. I may be sexy, but I have a powerful right hook.”
That’s not to say they didn’t try to get away with things, but I wasn’t interested.
Music was my date.
It consumed me, as did the humbling certainty that I still had so much to learn. I’d never really played
fusion music like that before, which had different time signatures. I had to listen very closely and learn fast, because everybody read sheet music except me.
I felt like I’d enrolled in music school, but everybody was collaborative and encouraging, offering up ideas and giving me the chance to suggest a melody that someone would write down or pen some lyrics to. I learned a great deal working with George and later cowrote a song on his Master of the Game record.
Due to his versatility, I had the opportunity to play all kinds of music. His shows and records integrated a little bit of everything—funk, R&B, jazz. I really appreciated his approach to Brazilian music, which I’d never played before, and I grew to love its intense and distinct chords and voicings. They were so sensual and passionate, completely different from all that I’d known.
When George’s R&B song “Reach for It” became a crossover hit, he picked up a whole new following. We were asked to play at a lot of festivals where I came across even more great musicians like George Benson, Teddy Pendergrass, and the O’Jays—to name just a few.
I also met a successful husband-and-wife singer-songwriter team named Ashford and Simpson. I grew up listening to their music and had so many of their records, including “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand),” and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.” They listened to me play and said, “Hell, girl, where did you come from?” I was delighted, and it seemed I was getting a whole new audience.
Testing the waters musically taught me so much about different styles and tastes. I discovered that there was intense rivalry between the East and West Coast bands, especially when it came to salsa or Latin music. The New York musicians played more traditional Afro-Cuban style, which is based on the clave rhythm pattern commonly used in rumba, congo mambo, and salsa, to name a few. Bay Area musicians didn’t always apply the clave to their music. I also discovered that some of the East Coast musicians looked down on us because Pops didn’t play traditional salsa but rather Latin jazz, which was freer and more spontaneous and not locked into the clave. Our view was that there were no rules, and Pops taught us to express ourselves in that way.
In keeping with that spirit, I just loved playing, whether the venues were big or small. People kept telling me that I’d get my “big break” any day and “make it,” but I didn’t know what they meant. As far as I was concerned, I had made it! I was completely fulfilled and would have been content to continue playing in bands like that for the rest of my life. I never dreamed I’d be the leader of my own band one day, or have any sort of name in the industry.
To my delight, the George Duke Band was invited to Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and, later, to Wolfman Jack’s Midnight Special on NBC—the definitive Friday-night pop-rock variety show. That show featured all kinds of artists, from music to comedy, including a young Chevy Chase and Steve Martin. It was like American Bandstand, The Ed Sullivan Show, Soul Train, and Saturday Night Live all rolled into one.
When we arrived at the studio in Burbank to tape in front of a live audience, I was nervous but excited. I’d played on television twice before—on a local Bay Area program on KQED with Grito, and then with a band I’d set up briefly called Cho Cho San (with my brother Peter Michael, Cat Grey, and Wayne Wallace), but these national television specials were something else and would bring me to a whole new level of attention.
The famous DJ Wolfman Jack announced us, and when it was our turn to go on I played percussion and then switched to drums when Ndugu Chancler, the drummer, went up front to rap. I knew Moms and Peter Michael and Zina were all watching us back home on the old Zenith TV set, along with the extended Gardere and Escovedo families in their various Bay Area homes.
Playing and singing along, on congas and then on drums, I looked at the giant television camera pointed at me and I grinned right into the lens. I wasn’t even a woman yet, but I’d already achieved one of my childhood dreams.
I was playing music inside the box, just as I’d always wanted, not outside looking in.
It had been twelve years since I first saw Karen Carpenter playing the drums on TV and asked Pops why I couldn’t be on TV too.
“You will be,” he’d told me knowingly back then, and he was right.
15. Butterfly
A tenor crossover or sweep lick that produces a butterfly arm motion
Why we hide our feelings when we’re older
Is a movie I don’t want to see
Truth is all that matters in a month of Saturdays
When you’re seventeen
“TOY BOX”
SHEILA E
One of my family nicknames is Cho, short for Cho Cho San. It was given to me by Carlos Santana.
“It means ‘Madame Butterfly’ in Japanese,” he told me, flashing his soulful brown eyes. Since I always loved butterflies and I really liked Carlos, I was flattered.
When I was younger and buying his records, my girlfriends and I would sit around and giggle about which of our favorite musicians we would marry. “He’s soooooo cute,” I’d always say when I was talking about Carlos.
Once he got to know Pops, he’d come with him sometimes to watch me play in a couple of my teen soccer games, which was pretty cool. I mean, Carlos Santana standing on the sidelines and cheering me on? I like to think I played really well those days.
I loved his music, that Bay Area sound incorporating multiple percussionists into a Latin rock movement. And I always had a thing for a guy who could play a guitar. I mean really play a guitar. There’s something about guitar melodies that touches me in a unique way.
I’m intrigued by melodic expression, because rhythmic expression is a whole different world. It’s not that drums don’t sing—we drummers can absolutely make them sing—but I’m a frustrated guitar and bass player myself, always dreaming of translating my rhythms into melodic notes the way a good player like Carlos does.
I had just turned eighteen when I began my relationship with him. He was twenty-eight, tall and thin, with a gentle but powerful presence. I can’t remember how our relationship started. My family had known Carlos for years. Even before his band Santana, he’d come to see the Escovedo Brothers perform. Uncle Coke started playing with him around the time of Woodstock, and Pops began playing with him in the early seventies.
Once our romantic relationship blossomed, we’d date like any normal couple, seeing movies together or going out to eat, catching other artists’ shows, taking a picnic on Mt. Tamalpais, or enjoying beautiful road trips along the Pacific Coast Highway.
We had such happy times together. Every moment with him was beautiful. We’d talk about music, love, and life. He taught me about vegetarianism, meditation, and the peace of mind that comes with appreciating nature.
The first time he took me to his house in Marin County I felt like a queen—I couldn’t believe how clean and white that house was. I’d never been inside such a beautiful mansion my whole life. Having grown up sharing a bedroom with my brothers and living in cramped and noisy homes, I couldn’t get over how much space and silence he had at his disposal.
I fell for that handsome, loving man, and I fell hard. I’d never felt that way about anybody in my life. I thought music was going to be my only love. I didn’t think I had it in me to experience that intensity of emotion about a man, but Carlos opened my heart like a flower. Kind and sensitive, he showered me with affection and attention. Confident and wise, he seemed so much older to me than his twenty-eight years.
To complicate matters, my father and uncle worked for him, so he was effectively their boss. Once again, and for entirely different reasons, I was asked to keep yet another situation secret from my parents. I knew they’d disapprove of it because of the age difference and the fact that Pops worked for him. If it had been anyone else, I would probably have walked away, but I’d known Carlos for years and—I now realize—I’d always loved him from afar.
He was touring a lot at that time, too, and whenever he took off on the nex
t leg he’d tell me to “be good,” which always shocked me. I was a one-man woman. If he thought I’d see anyone else while we were apart, then he didn’t know me at all.
Turns out it was me who didn’t know something.
I had no idea at first, but I was participating in an extramarital affair. It was a devastating shock to find out I was deeply in love with a married man. Even though I’d known him for so long, he never spoke of his wife to me, and no one else did, either. I don’t remember how I discovered the truth, but when I did, I immediately told him it was over. A part of me had already starting pulling back anyway. As much as I was in love with him, I was still so young. About a year into our relationship, he’d proposed marriage to me—the first time anyone had asked me—but the thought of settling down with him was scary. It was so unfamiliar to lose my self in somebody, even somebody whose love of music was as all consuming as mine.
I wish my memories of this time were clearer. I don’t know why there are so many gaps, especially about something as significant as finding out I was the “other woman.” For whatever reason, while some images are as clear as yesterday, I seem to have blocked out a lot of the chronological details surrounding this time, maybe because it was too painful to acknowledge that I’d been the source of someone else’s pain. These are issues I’m still working through today.
What I do know is that Carlos told me he was in love with me and that he and his wife were essentially separated. I wanted to believe him. How was I able to be at his house so often and never see her, after all? It seemed to me like he was totally single. All those times he was taking me unusual places I thought he was sweeping me off my feet, not hiding me from public view.
Once I found out the truth, I didn’t know what to think. My world was shattered. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t sleep. I needed to leave him, but I also yearned for him to comfort me, to make my pain go away. It only made matters more difficult that Pops was in his band. Always intensely private about relationships, I hadn’t talked to my parents about our affair, and I certainly couldn’t once I knew there was even more to hide.