My Life with Earth, Wind & Fire

by Maurice White

At this point, whenever I could, I would spend time at the compound in Carmel. It was a beautiful, well-appointed, very relaxing place to be.

  What I came to cherish most about Carmel was its silence—and its solitude. The quiet mountains seemed to help me hear things that the static of life drowned out. Listening to the quiet helped me to relax. I had accepted a long time ago that I was highly strung. Carmel’s muted atmosphere seemed to release some tension. At night it took on an added still beauty. The stars and moon seemed so near, shining off the deep blue ocean far in the distance. This beauty had become my safe refuge from Los Angeles. I had been meditating for some years, but Carmel’s very mood took me to another level. I breathed more deeply; I seemed to relax in a way that had been elusive to me. Its rolling hills were becoming my sanctuary.

  At the same time that my place in Carmel was ready to be lived in, Marilyn told me she was pregnant. I was excited, then nervous, then excited, then nervous. The reason for this roller coaster of feelings was that Marilyn and I were on very shaky ground. When she moved out in 1977, we never lived together again. Naturally, I told her I was happy, but as with my daughter Hemeya’s birth, it pained me subconsciously to know my child wouldn’t see much of me. My son Kahbran, his name derived from Kahlil Gibran, was born August 1, 1978. When I saw my newborn son, it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

  That fall there was another beginning: my label, the American Recording Company, or ARC, was officially launched at the CBS Records Convention in Los Angeles, although the label’s first release wouldn’t be until early winter. It was an exciting and ambitious time. The initial artists on the roster were EW&F, of course, the Emotions, D. J. Rogers, Weather Report, Deniece Williams, Reggie Knighton, and Valerie Carter. The label would get off to a great start, but one of the first blunders I made was that I did not hire a strong musical A&R executive, someone to sign and develop artists and produce them if necessary. It’s not that I didn’t try. I wanted the writer/arranger/producer Jerry Peters to run the label, but he turned me down. Still, he did produce some of our artists, like D. J. Rogers. Another problem was that I was on the road with Earth, Wind & Fire all the time. The band was my baby, and I would always give it the first fruits of my musical and business energies.

  Verdine and music executive Carole Childs, who was working with Cavallo at the time, introduced me to two young and highly creative people, Allee Willis and David Foster. I had heard a few things Allee had written, and I liked her style. Allee was eclectic in her look and creative expression—a true one-of-a-kind. She was a stickler for details who cared about every word she put down on paper. I thought that if she got a little exposure to my world, we could do something special.

  We were scheduled to rehearse in a studio in Hollywood. Allee was nervous when she arrived. We had been playing what would become “September.” Taking a break, Al McKay, Allee, and I went into a separate room. I told her this song was the last in a trilogy of songs Al and I wrote, which were all coming from the same groove and feel. Those songs were “Sing a Song,” “The Best of My Love,” and now “September.”

  In short, even though I had reservations, I told Allee that I wanted her to help write the next EW&F album with me. I had developed a very bad habit of saying I wanted to do this and that, throwing my words around when in actuality I wasn’t sure. I gave some artists and writers expectations that I could not deliver on. I just didn’t have the time. Life and business were always changing quickly, and it was challenging to keep up. However, I did want Allee’s lyrics to succeed because she was earnest and so sincere.

  “What do you know about Eastern philosophy?” I asked.

  “Nothing, really.”

  “I’m going to write down a few books I want you to check out.”

  She looked at the list. I could tell by the bewildered look on her face that she thought she was in over her head—but I knew she wasn’t. I underlined The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino.

  Ironically, the first song Allee worked on, “September,” didn’t have anything to do with philosophy. It’s a very simple lyric—yet it took about a month for me to calm Allee down about “September.” She detested the ba-de-ya hook in “September,” thinking it should be a real word, and perceived it as a slight to her lyric-writing abilities. Ba-de-ya overwhelmed her thoughts. She rode my back for three long weeks, finally protesting, “You can’t leave the ba-de-ya in there, it makes no sense!”

  Sorry, Charlie. I should have told her from the start that I was never going to change it; I just tolerated her emotions to be pleasant. Try as I might, I couldn’t get her to understand that good music is all about the vibe, and some things work better toward that vibe. Still, she was almost in tears. I just put my arm around her and said, You gotta trust me on this one—I can’t let a bulky lyric get in the way of a melodic groove.

  One thing that I wanted Allee and all the people who collaborated with me to understand is that non-conformity and curiosity always lead to a heightened creativity. The reason I wanted her to read certain books was twofold. One, it was not so much to hip her to this or that as just to expose her to different things, break her out of the norms of conventional thinking. Inhibitions kill imagination. Mysticism helps keep it alive. Secondly, I wanted to give her a language that would hip her to write lyrics in a philosophical manner, even so-called love songs. That language would really manifest itself in the song “In the Stone.”

  “September” was the American Recording Company’s first release, and an across-the-board smash. It would be the leadoff single to our first greatest hits package, The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1, and it continues to be one of Earth, Wind & Fire’s most memorable songs. Al McKay’s distinctive guitar-string pulling in the introduction, coupled with Tom-Tom Washington’s horn arrangement, gave the song a Latin fanfare appeal that perfectly complemented the nonsense ba-de-ya melody. It has all the feel-good, anthemic qualities that we were working hard to achieve in song and on the stage.

  I was now calling this feel-good musical quality “spectrum music,” because it touched all the music of the world: classical, soul, pop, blues, Dixieland, African, and rock. But all music is folk music to me, in that it all springs from a primal root. For Earth, Wind & Fire, that root was an emphasis on the musical feel or groove, and on maintaining a level of quality in our recordings and performances. We were winning. In late 1978 Bruce Lundvall, president of CBS Records, told me that by every measure—record sales, Grammy and American Music awards, touring numbers, and worldwide acceptance—we were the biggest band in the world. No one could touch us.

  Although we were the best, period, matters of blackness still could not be avoided. Many of the rock critics didn’t get us. If you’re black, seeking excellence, that’s a hard pill for some of them to swallow. We were successful, yet to the press we were elusive, and consequently we were often seen as uppity, pseudo-spiritual Negroes wrapped in shiny outfits. Some of that is a reflection of the gaudy 1970s, but some rock critics wanted to label us as just another funk band. Funk was more in line with their caricature of black music; it was something they could at least pretend to understand. In their minds, black music of the 1970s was good-time music, something to shake your ass to, not to be spoken of in serious critical terms. Our up-tempo grooves did indeed feel good, and they may have made people want to move, but our lyrical content, vocal harmonies, musicianship, instrumentals, interludes, orchestrations, and polyrhythms were wrapped in a musical setting that some critics couldn’t easily explain.

  Many of our white competitors and acquaintances—the Eagles, James Taylor, Paul Simon, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, and Led Zeppelin, to name a few—were looked at as “real artists” with “real artistry,” by contrast. They received critical acclaim as well as commercial success. But in many cases music writers couldn’t give us an honest critical assessment; they talked about EW&F only in terms of funk because they could not grasp the internal complexities of our Afro-Cuban, jazz, gospel, pop, L
atin, and R&B influences.

  22

  A Hell of a Left Hand

  Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

  —Bernard Williams

  I was perpetually on the lookout for new songwriters. Many times I’d hear, “I have a great song for Earth, Wind & Fire,” and most times it wasn’t much. Carole Childs, an unsung EW&F hero, said there was a young session ace who had a song for me. We were up at Sunset Sound, recording, and in walked this skinny kid, David Foster. I didn’t expect much. I could tell he was nervous, and I tried to put him at ease.

  David sat at the piano and launched into “After the Love Has Gone.” I liked it immediately, and knew it could work for the band. What I really dug was his playing, the way he voiced his chords. Over and above all of that, he had a hell of a left hand. Most pianist have a good right hand, but what separates the men from the boys is when you can play bass parts in your left hand with the same precision and dexterity as you have with the right. David had that in spades. I made a decision on the spot that I wanted to write more songs with him. And unlike some other snap decisions I’ve made, I knew this one was right.

  I invited David up to my place in Carmel. He got there in the afternoon, and we started writing immediately. I hate clichéd statements like “Magic happened,” because it diminishes the training and artistic openness it takes to create. But David had talent, diverse musical sensibilities, and so much enthusiasm that we just locked into a creative rhythm. Conversely, I think he correctly understood that I wanted every genre he could give—classical, pop, R&B, and rock. It was freeing for David to be given absolutely no rules. And the further I pushed him to go out of bounds, the more I loved it. He helped me to further expand our spectrum music.

  I don’t suffer fools well, and David was no fool. He was focused on creativity and not intimidated by my pushiness. David was a fool when it came to taking care of his body, though. He smoked like a chimney and ate poorly, which kind of drove me crazy. He had so much talent, and I didn’t want to see it squandered. To demonstrate how much we flowed creatively, I let him smoke in my house—and I never, ever let anyone smoke in my house! I offered him some food, but he declined what he later termed my “twigs and sticks” and went into town to get himself some “real food,” probably burgers and fries. When he got back, I had a few ideas. We worked nonstop for twelve hours, 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., starting the genesis of six songs that would become the core of EW&F’s next album, I Am. I would tap my palm on the side of the baby grand piano, setting the rhythm while he played and I sang. We recorded it all on a small handheld cassette recorder. The first songs we wrote were “In the Stone” and “Let Your Feelings Show.” It was a fresh experience for both of us, and our collaboration rolled like a raging river. Our compositions weren’t just harmonic and melodic; they were groove-oriented, too. David drew upon his piano skill and training—his left-hand bass lines added a lot to the way we could write—and I drew upon my melodies and groove.

  In the few days we spent together, the spirit was truly with us. I’d get up in the middle of the night, and David would already be up too, smoking and banging away on the piano.

  We were all in New York when I brought the material to the band. David boastfully asked, “You guys think you can handle these chords?”

  Verdine said, “Man, we can handle your shit. Chill out and relax.” No one was intimidated by the complicated music charts. The rhythm section is ground zero to everything, and that all starts with Fred. Baby brother was absolutely killing it on those recording dates. He laid down such a consistent drum feel throughout the entire album that it really made the music shine. David Foster, who would be part of our recording band for about a year and a half, played piano, and Larry played the Fender Rhodes.

  I, David Foster, and Allee Willis wrote the majority of the I Am album. The other writers were Eddie Del Barrio, Jon Lind (who cowrote “Boogie Wonderland” with Allee), and a young kid by the name of Bill Meyers. The limited number of writers is one of the components that made I Am a focused record. But that focus came with a serious price.

  Besides myself, no other member of EW&F composed a song on I Am. Especially since on our previous album, All ’N All, they had cowritten several songs, the other band members perceived this as a slight. All ’N All, with its distinctive sound, had turned out to be such a success that the band thought I would stay with the same process for the next record, especially when it came to the songwriting. Again, it was one of those things that weren’t personal. David Foster had simply brought me the goods, and I’d run with that. But I knew the cats were feeling very funny about it.

  I got the reputation—wrongly, I believe—for being autocratic with my creative choices, especially after Stepney died. I wanted EW&F to exhibit a musical innovativeness in the marketplace. I had to continually prioritize what that leading edge would look like. Consequently, I couldn’t listen to too much of anyone, the band included, for the direction EW&F was to go in. Philip hadn’t liked “September”; some of the cats didn’t like “After the Love Has Gone,” believing it was too schmaltzy. I also turned down some songs that became hits for other artists. After Skip Scarborough played “Love Ballad” for me, and I passed, it became a hit for Jeffrey Osborne’s LTD.

  I listened to every song the band and outside songwriters gave me. I also listened to just about every cassette tape that made its way into the Kalimba production office. Song selection was my job, and I took it seriously. I probably was more right than I was wrong. Whether it was esoteric lyrics as in “Serpentine Fire” or mystical album covers, I had to follow my own path. That does not mean, however, that anyone else but that band—especially that rhythm section—could have executed that direction. We could have given “Mary Had a Little Lamb” a smoking groove. We were that strong. But in terms of leadership, I needed to have the freedom to execute what I wanted to do and not have a debate about it.

  But even with my need for freedom as a leader, everybody in the band had a role, big or small. By 1979 those roles were defined. Johnny Graham continued to always tell me what he thought, bad or good, and a seemingly little thing—that he was always on time—played a huge role in the band; it set a tone. My baby brother Fred remained master of the groove. His feel was delicious and undeniable. Ralph Johnson’s consistency of personality and heart made me feel that I could always count on him. Larry Dunn was the quintessential peacemaker and very funny, always keeping things light. We were over in Germany, and two guys got into a scuffle over the same girl. When I heard what was going on, I ran into the room and exerted my so-called moral authority, saying, “Hey, are we out here for the music or the women?” When Larry replied, “For the women!” everybody just busted out laughing, and the two guys made peace, and that was it. Just as in a great championship sports team, what some guys do in the locker room is just as important as what they do on the court. Larry Dunn’s humor and Verdine’s inexhaustible “let’s go get them” energy were indispensable in the life of Earth, Wind & Fire.

  But from the band’s perspective, the more I used outside folks, the more shaky the band members’ indispensability seemed. David Foster and Allee Willis’s dominant writing contribution to the I Am album caused a rupture in the creative life of EW&F. In my mind at least, the rupture was minor. I felt I had always done things the same way. I was consistent. I was always bringing new energies to the band—whether it was calling in Charles Stepney to the scene, or getting Eddie Del Barrio, Milton Nascimento, and Eumir Deodato to help me with the Brazil vibe, or, now, using David and Allee as writers. Later it would be Wayne Vaughn, Beloyd Taylor, Martin Page, and others. Even musicians like percussionist Paulinho da Costa and guitarist Marlo Henderson made very significant contributions. Tom-Tom Washington gave us some stellar arrangements and introduced a fanfare to our sound. I believe these individuals greatly helped EW&F achieve its diverse sound. There were always a lot of writers, arrangers, and musicians around in the Earth, Wind & Fire recording camp. It was alwa
ys about enhancing and growing the band’s sound.

  David Foster’s horn and string arranging ability embellished our sound as well. But yet another rupture was created when he came in to conduct his first horn session for I Am. Being from Canada, Foster had to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. He was young, brash, and talented, a first-call studio musician desperately trying to become a first-call record producer too. He walked confidently into my horn session with all African American horn players and said, “All right, boys, let’s take one from the top.” Man, I saw the horn players scowl at him, and one cat pulled out a gun and just said, “Motherfucker.” I literally ran from the control room into the studio, grabbed David by the arm, and said, “Hey, man, let me talk to you.” I firmly pulled him into the Xerox room and shut the door behind us.

  “David, I know you don’t know this, because you’re from Canada, but don’t ever use the word boy again,” I said.

  “Maurice, I didn’t . . .”

  “I know you didn’t mean any harm. I know where your heart is, but there’s no way you know what that word means to black men like us.”

  When David came to Carmel months earlier, we’d had a heart-to-heart talk. He grew up on Vancouver Island, where there were no black people anywhere. He didn’t see one of us until he left. Growing up, he didn’t know who Marvin Gaye or Smokey Robinson was. But in Davlen Sound Studio’s Xerox room, I didn’t have time or energy to give David a lesson in the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the fight to be called a man and not a boy. The resentment we feel as blacks toward some of our white counterparts is well founded. Black folks don’t get the credibility that is afforded whites based on their skin alone. Racism is easy to understand for whites. Understanding white skin privilege is way more elusive.

  “Reece, what’s up with the white boy in the studio?” one of the horn players said to me at the end of the session.