There was a great deal of creativity and rock-and-roll energy in LA. It caused a migration of sorts, as all of the important musical and business talent moved to the West Coast. Even Berry Gordy moved Motown’s operation to the City of Angels in 1972. Great, beautiful recording studios such as the Village in West LA, Kendun in Burbank, the Record Plant, Devonshire, and many others were just being built or starting to hit their stride.
I loved LA, with its eclectic people, eclectic spirituality, and, most important to me, eclectic music. Albums like Carole King’s Tapestry could play side by side with Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew on the new FM radio dials. I believe this was changing listeners’ tastes. I also believe it was changing the mind-set of music business executives. It was signaling that people wanted to hear and buy all kinds of music, not just the Top 40 stuff that dominated the dying AM radio dials.
We—me, Wade, Don, and Yackov—would eat at this place called Organicville on Beverly Boulevard. Organicville was a restaurant, health food store, and bakery wrapped up into one. I can still smell that fresh-baked banana and pumpkin bread. I started to drink their fresh wheatgrass juice, and bought organic honey for the first time. Practically every inch of space in the small-aisle store was stacked to the brim with all things healthy. This was my introduction to a higher level of healthy eating. Since 1966 I had been reading Back to Eden by Jethro Kloss. At Organicville I was finally able to achieve what Kloss called a “clean diet.” I could buy herbs and all kinds of soy-based products. I started calling myself a vegetarian.
We visited Organicville almost daily. I’m sure we stood out, as the other guys in the band were dressed in dashikis, necklaces made out of African bones, and leopard-looking pants. I, on the other hand, was dressed in jeans and a turtleneck. I probably looked like an insurance salesman compared to them. The cashier was fine as hell. She had long hair and a hippie-looking floral top that showed off the beautiful olive skin that peeked through. I widened my smile and approached her. I found out her name was Marilyn Orefice. Our private smiles and quiet flirtations went on for many weeks. One day I asked if she had time for a break.
“Sure,” she said.
“Come walk with me out to my car.”
Once she got into my car, I could smell her perfume, which was sweetly fragrant to me. I looked her dead in her eye and said, “Let me introduce myself. My name is Maurice White. I am a musician. I have a band called Earth, Wind & Fire. You haven’t heard of me yet, but you will.”
I learned that she had a man in her life at the time, but I knew we had a strong connection. Her eyes said that she liked me. We were both twenty-eight. Marilyn was sort of a hippie compared to me. Most people in the circle I was rolling in had Volkswagen Bugs and flowers in their hair. I had my big burgundy Buick Riviera. Marilyn named it “Jerome.” She was a great communicator, with a loving spirit. She was also on a spiritual path that she took seriously, which gave us a great deal to talk about. I was persistent in getting with her, and she eventually relented.
The EW&F lineup I brought to Los Angeles consisted of guys who were my contemporaries. Whitehead, a keyboardist, played a little bass, but we didn’t have a fully dedicated bass player. I thought my nineteen-year-old half brother Verdine might be up to the task. What he lacked in maturity, he made up in enthusiasm.
My brother Verdine Adams White was remarkable. Earth, Wind & Fire would have never become Earth, Wind & Fire without him. A huge part of what built EW&F was our live show. Verdine, the ultimate Leo, had the energy to sustain us. Verdine came to LA eager and ready for anything. He arrived with an Ampeg B-50 bass amp and an eggshell-colored Fender Telecaster bass. The Telecaster was a huge bass, and against Verdine’s skinny black frame it looked odd and cool at the same time.
Even though Verdine and I were not raised together, and we’re years apart in age, there was an enormous psychic bond between us, even beyond the blood of our mother. Yet we are different in personality. Verdine’s lively charisma onstage is still intact offstage. His vibrant, overshadowing personality gave me even more permission to be my naturally introverted self.
Apartment 119 at the Landmark was the soil in which EW&F took root. Walking into our crib, you would see a couch to the left and Verdine’s bed to the right. We always had incense burning and little tablas (Indian drums) sitting in both corners of the flat. I slept in the bedroom in the back.
Eventually I introduced Verdine to my world. One night we went to a party and met Jimi Hendrix. Another night we met jazz cats such as Buddy Miles. I also took Verdine to health food restaurants and metaphysical bookstores. We went shopping, and I bought him some hip clothes emphasizing what colors looked good with his skin tone. This was Verdine’s rite of passage to the California life. He quickly became a fixture in and around Hollywood, talking nonstop to everybody about everything. He was excited and completely open to his new life in California.
The group continued rehearsing and playing anywhere and everywhere we could. We even did a couple of bus tours. We added Michael Beal on guitar and a horn section with Alex Thomas on trombone, Chester (Chet) Washington on sax, and Leslie Drayton on trumpet. Leslie, a local trumpet legend, did most of the horn arrangements, giving me the bigger sound I desired.
Along with the expanded sound came the realization that I needed a manager. Not much later I met the one and only Jim Brown—the all-true man. Jim Brown is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, football players in history. When I first knocked on his door, Jim answered it buck-naked. Jim, being an athlete, was used to walking around other men naked; I wasn’t. His sculpted biceps were intimidating, making me wonder if this brother was gonna kick my ass on GP (general principle). After letting me in, Jim sat in a plush chair, crossing one leg over the other while pressing the palms of his huge hands together. Staring straight into my eyes, he began to speak with an eloquence not normally associated with a sports star. He said all the right things, not only about music but also about what blackness meant to him. For all his manliness, Jim was a smart, thoughtful cat. He understood creative personalities and the creative process. He also believed in what I was trying to achieve.
Jim Brown had an entertainment management company called BBC—Brown, Bloch and Covey. Paul Bloch was an entertainment publicist, Richard Covey, a lawyer. Jim was trying to help black men embrace their power. He was the person who got Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to meet with Muhammad Ali when he refused to enlist in the army because it was against his Muslim beliefs, and the US government was trying to put him in jail. Jim was not afraid to stand up for something. He is what I call a real black man, a man of courage, not posturing. Brown’s operation was professional, and he was not going to accept any sort of second-class treatment of black men. I signed a management contract with him almost immediately.
Jim thought power rested in personal dignity. He didn’t appreciate buffoonery in any way, whether it was onstage, in a sports arena, or at the supermarket. “Black dudes need to become sports agents and lawyers, not just players on the field,” he said. Jim believed in black ownership as the way forward for our race.
In the following months, things seemed to be going at a snail’s pace. It made me feel we were not getting enough managerial attention. I didn’t let on to the band that I was anxious—I already felt enough doubt from them. Wade Flemons demonstrated his apprehension by always being pissed off with me about something. I responded by trying to keep everyone’s spirit uplifted, even though some days I felt like a fraud doing so.
Soon things picked up, though. Jim Brown had set up an informal audition for us with Warner Bros. and RCA at his house in the Hollywood Hills. Present were show business stars large and small. In addition, Celtics great Bill Russell was there, towering over everyone with his magnetic smile. Women were vying for the attention of Richard “Shaft” Roundtree. Bill Cosby was in the room, too, chomping on a cigar. This was a Hollywood parrr-ttttay. There were two open bars and catered food. The room was full of sexual energy
given off by super-duper fine-looking women. Everyone, across racial lines, was mingling together, sharing information. The evening had an incredibly positive vibration. Jim Brown attracted that kind of stealth-level networking.
We performed on the balcony, overlooking the city. The scene was magnificent, with LA spread out in the background. It energized our playing. Since we rehearsed all the time, everything we did was tight. Verdine pranced around in a leotard and no shirt, giving a good show. Our driving percussive sound created high energy and raw musical power. RCA Records passed, but Joe Smith, executive vice president at Warner Bros. Records, really dug us, thinking we were “jazzy and hip.” Within a month, I signed a record contract with Warner Bros.
In early 1971 we started recording our self-titled debut record. The sound for the album we came up with was progressive, jazzy, and bluesy. All the songs were in tune with the concept of Earth, Wind & Fire: “Help Somebody,” “Moment of Truth,” “Love Is Life,” “Fan the Fire,” “C’mon Children,” “This World Today,” and “Bad Tune.” Every song had a theme of social justice, spirituality, and self-reliance.
Don Whitehead’s vibe was a big part of these songs. Head was more curious about world events than Wade and I, aware of what was going with Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, and even the work of Nikki Giovanni. Still, we all instinctively understood the black power philosophy that had taken hold. People were standing up for themselves, no longer waiting for white folks to give us a piece of the American pie. Our first album blended black power energy with a socially aware vibration, critiquing the political and social climate of the time. We also challenged our listeners to examine their inner life. I encouraged them to ask, What am I to do? Who am I to be? Where can I help?
After we completed the album, we began touring wherever we could play and for whoever would have us. We did several gigs at the legendary Maverick’s Flat on Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles.
One of the benefits of being with Warner Bros. was that we had the opportunity to rehearse many times on the Warner backlot. They were filming Bonanza on sets made of papier-mâché. James Garner and Lou Gossett Jr., who were filming the movie Skin Game, would regularly walk by our stage. While the atmosphere was exciting, being in the Warner family felt like purgatory at times: we were a black act and, in my estimation, treated as such. I wasn’t feeling any love when it came to promotional help.
When Perry “PJ” Jones joined Warner, there seemed to be the possibility of getting some real promotional support. Perry Jones was one of the handful of African American promotion men in the record business at a major label. The record business ain’t the record business without the promotion. His very first assignment was Earth, Wind & Fire. Perry was a hipster. With long superfly maxi coats, six-inch Afro, and knee-high equestrian boots, he was 1970s cool. He would wear driving gloves that went along with his racing Kelly green 1969 Triumph TR6. I don’t think Perry had ever met a cat like me. I was a young man in full—or full of it, depending on how you took me. Confidently, eager to share my dream, I preached my vision of Earth, Wind & Fire to engage his business mind and his heart. I wanted to let him know that EW&F was unique, different in concept from any other artist.
“Perry, I want to make it crystal clear that we are getting ready to embark on something that has no boundaries, no guidelines,” I said.
“OK, but what does that really mean?”
“Well, first I want to make music that is my spiritual truth.”
“And your truth is?”
“One, that music can uplift people, and two, that all spiritual paths, at their highest, have a unity.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“Yes, but I believe that’s a message that everyone can embrace, black, white, and everything in between.”
Perry nodded in agreement, his big Afro swaying and glistening with Afro Sheen. He stood up and started pacing the floor, back and forth, still nodding his head. I knew I had him. I would have never admitted it at the time, but I was desperate. I needed all the business help I could muster. An ally on the inside at Warner Bros. could reap some real benefits for EW&F. Perry wasn’t a vice president at the label, but having him as an advocate meant I got the skinny on what was going on at Warner.
My ability or lack of ability to persuade others was critical to my success in realizing Earth, Wind & Fire. I spent a lot of time relating my concept to Perry, the band, and anyone who would listen. My brainchild of hope, looking at life positively and believing in yourself, was one aspect of my soapbox. The other was to communicate in song recognition of our common humanity. I believed music was sacred—a powerful holistic vehicle that could carry us to a higher place, if we chose to use it that way. I believed then and now that humankind’s problems are rooted in our denial that we are not all the same. Separated by race, class, and religion, we make our differences the gospel truth of who we are as human beings. I had deeply internalized the belief that we are not citizens, nor Buddhists, nor Christians, nor Jewish, nor African American people. We are human beings—each one connected to everyone else.
I was fine-tuning this concept to the point where if someone shook me awake at three in the morning and asked what the concept of EW&F was, I could give them an intelligent and compelling answer in a split second. My struggle was to get the band and everyone else around me on that same page. Verdine got it, of course, because together we lived and breathed all things EW&F.
But in terms of the rest of the band, I just didn’t know. I knew from the mastermind principle in The Laws of Success that I had to harmonize the minds of everyone around me to achieve this goal.
One bright spot was that Perry Jones continued to grow into my vision. He was becoming a believer. Raised in Des Moines, Iowa, Perry had not understood the level of struggle out there with civil rights. I helped him understand what it was to be black in the music business. I inspired him to ultimately want to transcend what blackness meant. I gave Perry all the promotional contacts I had from my travels with Ramsey and my days at Chess, in the hope they could help him promote EW&F. Our first single, “Fan the Fire,” had only moderate success. “Love Is Life” fared a lot better, getting up to No. 43 on the R&B charts.
With only 40,000 albums sold, things were good, but certainly not stellar. For a new act, a breakout album would hit the 100,000 mark. Still, we were given the go-ahead to do another album for Warner Bros.
In between albums, I met Melvin Van Peebles, the actor/director/screenwriter. He told me about a film that he was working on. He was extremely passionate, and his energy was hard to resist. I easily agreed to work on the music for the movie.
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is considered by many to be the first film of the blaxploitation genre. It tells the story of the evolution of a street hustler who tries to move from selfishness to something bigger than himself. Melvin had melodies and groove ideas about how he wanted the music to feel. He projected clips from the film he had already shot onto a wall in the studio. The engineer pressed record, and we played along to the clips. The images were violent, sexual, and dark depictions of black life. Over two days we recorded the entire score.
Few others could match what Melvin Van Peebles did on a shoestring budget. Melvin taught me about getting the shit done, even though the $500 check he wrote me is still bouncing! I was rewarded in other ways. Sweetback expanded the reach of the name Earth, Wind & Fire. Melvin, with his make-a-way-out-of-no-way spirit, sold the Stax Records–released sound track in movie theater lobbies.
On the downside, right as Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was being released, Verdine got drafted into the misguided Vietnam War. The draft was going strong by 1971. Vietnam was now firmly in the minds of America, and especially black folks, as a kind of death sentence. If you didn’t come back in a flag-draped coffin, you could come back maimed or, as some of my friends did, a heroin addict. We had to figure it all out pretty quickly; Verdine’s draft number had come up in February, and he was supposed to report in la
te April. The notice came from Chicago, so it would take eight weeks to process it. He could go back, get drafted, then go to Louisville, Kentucky, for basic training.
I was scared for Verdine, for Mom and Dad, and for myself. Even though I had gotten my deferment by performing the acting job of my life, a lot of other guys I knew were not so lucky. V getting drafted seemed more personal to me than my own experience. I knew intellectually that I had nothing to do with his number coming up, yet I still felt responsible—psychically and emotionally. I felt Verdine had been entrusted to me by Mom and Dad.
To avoid the draft, Verdine came up with an idea: he would stop eating. At twenty, he was skin and bones already. He fasted for something like forty-five days, getting down to about 110 pounds. When he stepped on the scale at the Los Angeles induction center on Wilshire Boulevard, the indicator went way up, then way down, way up, way down.
The officer said, “Hang on a second, young man.”
They put Verdine in a room while the officers whispered. The men had multiple beige files, which they opened and—stamp, stamp, stamp, and stamp, Verdine had a 4F. That was the Holy Grail. It meant he could never, ever be drafted. Ever.
Verdine called me afterward: “Come pick me up, I’m out! I’m out!”
Diving into the low front seat of my Buick Rivera, he kept repeating it. “I’m out! I’m out!”
I took him to a party that night, and he ate everything—I mean everything—in sight. I’m surprised he didn’t overdose on food. It was a comforting sight, watching him gorge himself. The previous forty-five days had made him look like death on a soda cracker.
With V out of the woods, we got back on the bus and started to play everywhere we could in support of our debut Warner Bros. album. One of our stops was in Denver, to play at Twenty-Third Street East. It was a typical gig, but it was where Verdine and I met Philip Bailey and Larry Dunn, who were part of a little group that opened for us. I thought they were good, especially the cat with the high voice.
My Life with Earth, Wind & Fire Page 10