My Life with Earth, Wind & Fire

by Maurice White

  Columbia did have a Special Markets Division. It was the department where EW&F landed after signing on. Back then, the Special Markets Division didn’t mean that much to me, positively or negatively. They may not have been too knowledgeable in handling black music, but I didn’t care. It was more important to me to be free of Warner Bros. Records. Columbia Records had commissioned the Harvard Business School to do a study in 1972 on black music and where it stood in the marketplace. Bottom line: the Harvard Report instructed major labels that if they wanted to get in on black music, they would have to buy their way in. Eventually Columbia did a distribution deal with Stax Records. Everybody in the business, including my best friend, David Porter, who was a big part of the Stax family, saw it as a disaster.

  In late July of 1972 CBS Records had its international convention in London. We were invited to perform. It was a big deal because it was a sure sign that Columbia was committed to us. It was also an indication that we could possibly have worldwide appeal in our future. The four-day event featured several other acts: Azteca, Johnny Nash, Loggins and Messina, Argent, Loudon Wainwright, Maynard Ferguson’s big band, and Andy Williams.

  In the early 1970s, passengers still dressed up to take a flight. However, this was a plane carrying quite a few rock and rollers. Some of the cats from the other bands were loud and boisterous. Some were drunk. Some tried to feel up the stewardesses’ skirts—very bad boys indeed. Conversely, my band members were all quiet and definitely not drinking. I knew I had a crew who, as they used to say in Memphis, “had home training.” We arrived and checked into the prestigious Grosvenor House, which is where the convention events were taking place.

  People like Ringo Starr and George Harrison were in the audience when we played in the beautiful hotel ballroom. We opened up with “Power” as Clive Davis introduced us over the low rumble of our already-playing music. Clive stepped up to the microphone in a houndstooth sport coat and gave us the most wonderful introduction. He said, “This group is going to be around for a very long time, and they are going to make history.” From the moment he left the stage, it was on.

  Onstage, Verdine didn’t have on a shirt, of course. Jessica wore a headband and a beautiful outfit that had an open midriff. Philip and Jessica did this great ad-lib exchange on the Bread song “Make It with You” that turned the crowd absolutely out. We were a force. We killed the crowd. Before the convention Azteca was the group everyone was talking about. Pete and his brother, Coke Escovedo, had just left the hugely popular group Santana, and consequently they had a huge buzz on their new band. However, after our performance it was Earth, Wind & Fire that had all the buzz.

  I got back from London in early August of 1972. Marilyn had taken the trip with me. We were becoming closer. It had taken a little doing for us to get it together. From the time we met, we fell apart a few times, sometimes her fault, most times mine. By the fall of 1972, we were moving to solid ground. One of the reasons our relationship was working is that I think she discovered early on that I felt like that great bandleader Duke Ellington, who said, “Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.” In the early days, the band had to spend at the very least two hundred days a year on the road, which made it challenging to maintain a romantic relationship. But Marilyn endured right along with me.

  I was excited by the response we had gotten from the London trip. Encouraged by this success, I called Clive Davis.

  “You guys made me so proud, the energy, the movements, just outstanding!” Clive said. “I believe in your band, Maurice. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I need an equipment upgrade. High-grade amplifiers, stuff like that. Our gear is getting raggedy.”

  “Done.”

  I immediately asked Verdine, “What kind of amps do you want?”

  He didn’t skip a beat. “I want those Acoustic amps like Larry Graham”—slap-bass pioneer bassist of Sly and the Family Stone, and later creator of Graham Central Station—“has, the ones with the horn drivers and the built-in fuzz pedal.”

  Around this time, Ronnie Laws decided he wanted to leave Earth, Wind & Fire. When I presented him with my production company contract, it forced him to think about what he wanted to do with his career. I thought he really wanted to be a solo act, but he confessed that he had received an offer to play with Hugh Masekela. It was a childhood dream of his. Still, I was not happy. I loved Ronnie’s playing and believed it was critical to our sound. I let him know my disappointment. Leonard, my enforcer, called Ronnie for weeks even after he left, continuing to express my disappointment that he hadn’t signed my production agreement, asking him repeatedly, “Why would you just walk away like that?” But I had to get over it pretty quickly, even though I truly missed his playing. Years later I would come to call him “Little Coltrane.”

  After Ronnie split, we needed a soprano sax player fast. I wanted someone as badass as Ronnie. The soprano sax was an integral part of our sound in the early days, before our big horn arrangements took over. It’s featured on “Power,” our quintessential concert opening song. Just because someone is a great alto or tenor sax player, you can’t assume that person will be a great soprano sax player. It’s a slightly different set of sensibilities. Philip reached out to Andrew Woolfolk and asked him to join up with us. After some persistence he came to LA for an audition. He played only one song, but that was all I needed to hear. He was in. Woolfolk was short but powerful. He was proud of his physique and worked out a lot. Beyond his playing ability, he added raw physical energy to our show. With him and Verdine on the two ends of the stage, we had vibrant energy encased by powerful bookends.

  Not long after Ronnie Laws left, Roland Bautista did too. We weren’t earning enough money to keep the guys committed. Moving forward, I would keep at the front of my mind the lesson I’d learned from Squash Campbell many years ago in Memphis.

  To keep a band together, you have to have gigs.

  9

  Trusting in the Process

  Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

  —Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

  I met Albert Philip McKay in Seattle, Washington, at the famous Black and Tan Club. The club’s name came from the mixture of black and Asian folks who patronized the establishment. I was playing with Ramsey, and Al was playing with Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band. During my early days in Los Angeles we did a session together. In my search for a new guitarist, I thought it was some kind of metaphysical sign that when I found Al, he was in Memphis working with my old friend David Porter’s writing partner, Isaac Hayes. I told him about the EW&F concept. In another divine sign, it turns out that Jessica Cleaves, his high school classmate, had been filling him in all along. He agreed to come to an audition with us.

  Al’s audition was so easy, so natural. He just fell right into Larry, Ralph, and Verdine’s vibe. It was like two rivers merging and strengthening as it flowed. I immediately understood Al’s gift and his power. He was probably the most percussive guitar player I had ever heard. His strong wrist came from being a drummer all through junior high and high school. He also pulled and plucked his strings a lot, which added a push in his rhythm. The gig was his.

  Al was born in New Orleans and spent his first years living above a bar, his bedroom right above the stage. He ingested a lot of that New Orleans Dixieland swing. Although he was later raised in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, that Dixieland groove never left his spirit. As a kid, he fell in love with Elvis Presley, who was instrumental in him picking up a guitar. He knew Elvis’s history so well that the band teased him about his reverence for the King.

  Al quickly proceeded to change our rhythm section. We were jazzier and had more Latin influences than McKay’s usual world. Al’s powerful playing complemented that sound, giving it a more pop/centered feel. He played rhythm guitar differently from James Brown, Sly Stone, or Motown guitar players. More in between the grooves than on top of them, he redefined the role of rhy
thm guitar in pop, R&B, and soul music. Al could play a song but then lay his guitar groove back just a hair. This gave our music a unique feel. In our up-tempo and mid-tempo hits, Al’s guitar polyrhythms can be heard chugging our grooves forward. Musically placed within the foundation of myself or Fred on drums and Verdine on bass, that core element became our musical Gibraltar. From “September” to “Love’s Holiday” to “Turn It into Something Good” to “Boogie Wonderland,” our music sounds like a boiling stew. I can say this without any egotism, reservation, or exaggeration: we became the best rhythm section in music. At our peak, I would put us up against any rhythm section before us or since, in terms of feel, lock, and power. But at that time, we were just beginning to develop a groove that was steady, bouncy, and driving.

  That groove was in full swing as we were doing one of our many East Coast swings of maybe twenty college gigs in thirty days. We had a show somewhere out west, San Francisco I think, when Al informed me that he couldn’t make it because he had another gig. While playing with us, Al was still simultaneously working off and on for Stax Records, based in Memphis. As the music contractor, he hired all the outside musicians on Wattstax, the classic documentary film and concert, and he can be seen playing in Isaac Hayes’s band in the film. Al was in demand. I was paying what I could. Since I couldn’t allow anyone to miss a gig to play with someone else for more dough, I had to let him go.

  It looked like the revolving door was destined to keep spinning. There I was again without a guitar player, and I had several gigs booked. There was a cat in the band New Birth who had been telling me about Johnny Graham for a while. I gave him a call.

  “Hey, man, I’m Maurice White, and I have a band called Earth, Wind & Fire.”

  “Fire who?” Johnny Graham had never heard of us. I gave him an abbreviated version of the concept of EW&F. He politely listened and then said no. He felt it was better for him to stay in junior college. To my complete surprise, Johnny called back a few days later and said he’d had a change of heart and wanted to give it a shot. I sent him all of our albums and made his travel arrangements to come to Los Angeles for an audition. Verdine and I auditioned with him. Johnny had a beautiful short-scale Gibson 345 stereo guitar and a Vox Super Beatle amp. Johnny’s style was firmly rooted in the blues. While he played, he would stick his right foot out in front of his body. Clenching his teeth, leaning his upper body back, he would squeeze the neck of his guitar, pulling tones straight out of the Delta. His sound reminded me of watching a Muddy Waters recording session at Chess. Johnny Graham was in. I had learned my lesson: I signed him on with at least a year’s commitment.

  Johnny was a different kind of cat. He kept to himself. When he first joined us, he would wear this big Afro wig, which he never took off. I asked Verdine, who roomed with him, “Does he take it off when he goes to bed?”

  Verdine said, “No, man, he’s sleeping in it too!”

  After Johnny arrived, we got on a roll. We were cleaning other groups’ clocks every night. No band could match our pure energy onstage, or our left-of-center performance style.

  The new rendition of EW&F had been together for almost six months. One Saturday night, at the Armory, right next to the old RFK Stadium in Washington, DC, we opened for Funkadelic. The Armory had a huge arched ceiling. On that evening, the pot smoke rose up to that ceiling like a San Francisco fog. I yelled, “Everybody out there high enough?” This dude in the front row yelled back: “Damn right, motherfucker! Play some music!”

  Funkadelic rolled over us that night. They tore our asses up. We completely bombed. We had that flower power, acoustic guitar, and peace and love vibe. George Clinton and the funk mob came out there with that BAM! do do doot doot BAM! do do doot doot BAM!—serving up that superstrong emphasis on the downbeat of one. They would play one groove for twenty minutes. It was like a slow freight train with a beat just rolling down the track. We were shell-shocked. We were the ones that were always rippin’ other bands’ asses. We were packing up our equipment while Funkadelic was still onstage. Their sound from the cavernous arena was muffled, but as soon as we opened the door to load a piece of equipment into the station wagons, we heard BAM! do do doot doot BAM! Every time we opened the stage door, that funk groove slapped us right in the face, pouring salt in our wounds. I don’t think we ever packed up our gear so quickly.

  A spanking can be a good motivator. I was eager to get back to Los Angeles and rehearse the band with a new imperative. I wanted to emphasize the basics. I reminded them of how vital a raw, animalistic, and tribal backbeat could be in moving an audience. Still, I had no desire to morph into a funk band. We were a world music band, full of rhythms from all over the world, especially Afro-Cuban.

  The disastrous night at the Armory also made me realize that we needed Al McKay back. His funky rhythmic guitar playing provided a harmonic and percussive presence. Our grooves were tighter when he played with us. McKay glued our rhythm section together. I was pleased when I reached out to him and he agreed to come back to the band after he finished his commitment to Isaac Hayes. He missed us too. There was a brotherhood around the band that was fun, exciting, and unique.

  Even after that early spanking from Funkadelic, our star was slowly beginning to rise. We sweated month after month in diligent rehearsing. We were pulling out all the stops onstage. During all of this time, we tried to keep an optimistic mind and spirit. Our rise wasn’t necessarily due to the support, or lack of support, from Columbia Records. Despite the newness of the Columbia deal, my attitude about record labels hadn’t changed much. No matter what things appeared to be, I knew I was on my own. We were gaining momentum as a result of our sheer sweat, hustle, and hard work. We also benefited from Bob Cavallo and Leonard “Bafa” Smith’s willingness not to question me, but to work like crazy in charting a way for the band. They stood right beside me, whether I was turning down gigs or spending money they didn’t feel necessary.

  Early in 1973, after a show, Leonard knocked on my door. He seemed concerned. “Hey, man, are you OK?”

  “I’m great,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “You disappear every night, and I was wondering, is something wrong?”

  “Sit down, Leonard. Man, I’ve been on the road for seven years straight, nonstop. That hanging-out-after-the-gig guy is not me. It never was. Look at the bed.”

  I pointed out three or four yellow legal pads, a couple of books, and several of those old clear plastic Bic ballpoint pens in red, blue, and black.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Studying and planning. I need my alone time.”

  “Hey, Maurice, I get it. You never have to worry about me asking again.”

  Leonard remained sensitive to our conversation. Going forward, he would always give me the option to hang out, even though he knew 95 percent of the time I would retreat to my room. The guys were younger than me, and if I were in their shoes, I would have been hanging out too. At that time, some of the guys smoked a little weed. Some were more girl-crazy than others, and the women were readily available. Mostly there was a lot of camaraderie. The guys never lost their sense of humor or general silliness. Larry Dunn’s antics were always in effect. He was like a standup comedian, perpetually delivering one-liners. We seemed to be always laughing about something or other. We were professionals and never took anything other than the music seriously.

  Earth, Wind & Fire’s worldwide success was built on our playing hundreds of college dates—small and large, black and white. Between 1971 and 1973 it seemed that we were always on the East Coast. Our career momentum started to rise from that. We spent a great deal of time either riding in those four station wagons or moving our own equipment in and out of venues. Me trying to meet payroll, the guys trying to hang in there with me—it was a bumpy ride, but we had fun. One of the results of that consistent work was that by late 1972, we had a huge underground following in the Philadelphia–DC–Baltimore–Virginia/Virginia Beach–North Carolina area. It got to t
he point that we actually talked about moving to Washington, DC, or the Hampton/Norfolk, Virginia, area. Some colleges we played several times at—Morgan State University, William & Mary, Temple, Fayetteville State University, Shaw University, Winston-Salem State University, North Carolina AT&T, Hampton University, Bowie State University, Norfolk State University, Virginia State University, Virginia Union University, and Howard University—many of them historically black universities.

  Bob was busy trying to get us exposure that I would go for. He would often say, “Maurice, you can’t be so damn choosy.” I would say, “Let me think about it,” which really meant no. I was cautious. It had to be right for us. One day he presented me with a television appearance. Soul! was a groundbreaking show produced at WNET in New York City. It promoted African American artistry, but not in a least-common-denominator way. It had poets, celebrities, political/activist voices, and of course music. Muhammad Ali, Maya Angelou, Curtis Mayfield, the Last Poets, James Baldwin, Pharoah Sanders, Donny Hathaway, and many others appeared on its five-year run from September 1968 to March 1973. We recorded our segment on December 16, 1972, and it was broadcast on January 10 the following year.

  On that show, we featured Verdine’s usual bass solo as a performance piece. He was like an animal or a circus freak, his body serving as an instrument. He laid his bass on the stage floor and dramatically stood over it. Straddling it, he started flaying his hand across the strings, producing thunderous tones. He was like an abstract painter. Even though I had seen him do this before, I watched in amazement. It was some of that real Verdine freak shit—shirt off, skinny as hell. As he was playing the groove, he danced. The studio audience was stunned. We also did this thing where we would be in a fiery, high-energy groove, and then suddenly we would stop playing but keep moving in a pantomime.

  Al McKay returned to EW&F in January of 1973, just in time for us to record our fourth LP, Head to the Sky. The album was a declaration of the band’s personal and professional transformations. We were shifting our ears toward jazz and world music. Latin sounds were also modifying our palette. The EW&F band in early ’73 had the musicality, youth, and hunger we needed to expand into new musical horizons. The fusion movement was expanding rapidly, particularly because of such giants as Miles Davis, Carlos Santana, and my good friend Joe Zawinul, with his band Weather Report. Head to the Sky, cut in only a couple of weeks at Clover Studios, showcased our musical diversity, which was there from the beginning, even in the Warner Bros. days.