One of the great personal joys of this tour was that I took everybody, band and crew, to Egypt for some days of sightseeing and rest. We left Paris on Monday, March 19, 1979, and arrived in Cairo on a clear sunny day. We went to all the great sites—most notably the pyramids and Great Sphinx at Giza and the Abu Simbel temples, which had been the inspiration for the All ’N All album cover.
It wasn’t a secret to anyone that I was fascinated with Egypt. But this trip was jolting for the band. This was not the Egypt of our album covers or the Egypt of travel brochures. Cairo was chaotic—crowded, noisy streets and people hustling us for money at every turn. I believe it was a letdown to many of the guys. We were over there to see the foundation of civilization, but the people of Egypt looked at us like we were tourists looking at the names of the stars in the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard. The band had been around the world a time or two, but they weren’t that worldly. I wanted everyone to enjoy this as much as I did. Some of the guys did, and some did not. Many of them just stayed in the Mena House Hotel or its beautiful grounds. I believe some of the cats saw me as imposing my interest on the band, but that wasn’t the case. I just believed that it would be something for them to look back on with joy. I could have just taken Verdine and a few others who were interested and left the rest of the guys in Paris—which might have been fine with them.
For me, my time in Egypt was a historical as well as a spiritual pilgrimage. Walking into the pyramids gave me a feeling of destiny. The instant the guide motioned to me as if to say, Come this way, I got a feeling that I was stepping into my heritage, my DNA, my ancestors’ true greatness. It validated my inclination to link the public persona of EW&F to the planet’s ancestral home—black folks’ ancestral home, my ancestral home.
We went back to Egypt and Israel some time later. Fifty of us went on that first trip to Egypt—five went the second time. That pretty much says it all.
By 1979, our music was selling well in America, and in many cases we were even stronger sales performers internationally. In Germany, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Canada, and especially Japan and South America, I Am was breaking new sales records all over the world for CBS International. It was our biggest album ever.
It seemed like nothing could stop us.
Part V
The Changing Times
24
All in the Creator’s Hands
Choose rather to be strong of soul than strong of body.
—Pythagoras
When we went to Mother Dear’s Christmas gathering a few months earlier, Verdine had brought Shelly Clark to Chicago to meet Mother Dear and Dad. I know it made Mother Dear happy that Verdine was ready to settle down. I think every mother wants to see her son find the right girl, and Shelly and Verdine seemed to be such a good energetic match. It didn’t hurt their relationship that she had a show business history of her own. She was the lead singer in the Honey Cone, who scored a huge No. 1 pop and R&B hit with “Want Ads” back in 1971. Verdine, Shelly, and Mother Dear came to Carmel often in the early spring of 1979. There was a sense of family that maybe I hadn’t experienced before. Marilyn and my son Kahbran occasionally came up, as well as Patt, Fred, Monte, and Geri. I can’t remember everyone who was there, but it was a special time. Mother Dear was well enough to explore the grounds of the compound. She loved that place. I believe its expanse and fashionable decor gave her a feeling that her and Dad’s journey had been blessed. It’s hard to put into words how beautiful that time of year was in the Carmel Mountains of California.
When Mother Dear returned to Chicago, she became ill. There were times she felt good, then bad. It was back and forth.
The last time I saw Mother Dear, she was in the hospital. It was bedlam. Somehow the word got out that I was coming, and the corridor was so jam-packed with people that they had to call the police. I had a good friend, Fred McKinley, who worked for the Chicago Police Department and would kind of take care of me when I was in Chicago. He rushed there and rode with me up the elevator. People actually clapped when I got off the elevator and entered the hospital corridor. It was an insufferable display of fan rudeness. It’s a hospital, for Christ’s sake! Where was the professional dignity? For the first time I felt how disruptive and destructive success could be.
When I walked into Mother Dear’s room, the sight of her shocked me. She looked weak, and was heavily bandaged. I reached for her hand, saying, “I’m here, Mother, I’m right here.” She responded some. I just caressed her hand while looking into her eyes, trying to provide any comfort. I knew I was helpless. It was all in the Creator’s hands.
Mother Dear made her transition on July 16, 1979. She was only fifty-six years old.
My biggest regret in life is that I didn’t spend more time with Mother Dear. A few years before all this, she and Dad were supposed to move to California, but Dad changed his mind at the very last minute. I wish to God I had pushed Dad to do otherwise. It’s human to assume you have more time than you do. My mother’s mortality, her vulnerability, is a part of me. In many ways you see a mirror of yourself when your parent dies. Her passing reflected back to me that my own time on the physical plane is limited—everybody’s days are numbered, and Father Time has the last say. The morning of her funeral, Verdine and I played a particularly vigorous game of tennis on top of the hotel to try to clear our minds—to no avail, of course. But we talked in a way we had not talked in a long time.
In the corner of the tennis court on that sad morning, our very private and personal conversation revolved around what Mother Dear meant to us personally and what her loss meant for us collectively. I revealed to Verdine how much I had connected my career aspirations to creating a sense of family for myself. Family had eluded me, but since I was a boy, my musical pals had always been its substitute. Along with the pain of her loss, there was the pleasure that she had witnessed her family become successful. With Mother Dear gone, I probably had a deeper appreciation for what EW&F had become. Even with all that psycho-emotional reality, I really didn’t have time to grieve—we were moving so fast. She died on a Monday and was buried on a Friday, and we were back in Los Angeles rehearsing on Monday. In my usual way of not showing much emotion, I didn’t cry at the funeral. One year later, almost to the day she died, I cried. And I cried all day.
When someone you love dies, it’s like there is a void. In many ways the underlying core reason for my hard-driving ways was to please Mother Dear. When I moved to Chicago from Memphis, I wanted to show her that I could make it. She of course saw me as a mother would, with her baby ready to be gobbled up by the usual suspects of the street and the Chicago music world of the 1960s. When I started to have success at Chess Records, and then with Ramsey Lewis, and finally with Earth, Wind & Fire, she had become proud of me. Her pride did everything for my manhood, my drive, my faith, and my perseverance. Her absence left me without that unspoken primal motivating factor.
It was decided that it would be best for all concerned to move her youngest children, Karen (sixteen) and Margie (eighteen), to Los Angeles. Karen moved into my home, and Margie moved in with Verdine and Shelly. I believe it gave them a much-needed fresh start. I couldn’t have done this if Patt hadn’t been there; I was gone so much, and frankly, Karen needed her big sister in a host of ways that I could never provide. Patt and Karen living in my home all those years also gave me a sense of family that I’d never had. By the same token, despite all my need for freedom, space, and solitude, in these years family would be a large component of my life—a component I was comfortable with.
On the other hand, I used my new living situation as an excuse to keep any woman from ever trying to move in with me. I wanted my home to be my sanctuary, unencumbered by my romantic life.
25
Don’t Make My Band Your Crusade
Fifty million voices mumbling from the street
Talking about the eighties and who it will mistreat
—“Let Me Talk,” Faces, 1980
T
he music business began changing in 1980. The change was precipitated by a decline in music sales overall, starting in late 1978. In the summer of 1979, CBS Records had massive layoffs; by year’s end, all the majors were cutting back on personnel, promotion budgets, and manufacturing. Even though all the majors were having a dry spell, EW&F’s fortunes seemed to be unaffected.
Our releases in 1978 and ’79—The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1, with “September” and “Got to Get You into My Life,” and I Am, with “Boogie Wonderland”—had been the best sellers of our career. We started 1980 with “After the Love Is Gone” from I Am becoming another huge hit.
EW&F had done well enough over the years that I always had a blank check for our recording budget. It wasn’t a big deal for me (or any major white act) to spend a million dollars or more to record an album. There was no interference from the record company. When I delivered an album, they would promote it with all the resources within their power—even if the reach of those resources was segregated.
One change that did affect EW&F greatly was that Dick Asher was brought in from CBS International to rein in the budgets. The domestic division had been losing money badly. The mild-mannered Asher was given the title of deputy president and chief operating officer of CBS Records Group. I think the corporate suits were starting to view Walter Yetnikoff as wild and loose in his management style. Although I never witnessed them, Yetnikoff’s temper tantrums were legendary. Now, I could not have cared less about what Yetnikoff was doing because up to that point he hadn’t given me any grief. After all, he and Bruce Lundvall had given me ARC. But if I was at the top of the heap, that heap was still the black heap. After all the crossover success we had, we still had to do it like every other black act on the planet. Our records were first shipped to black radio and promoted there. After they reached the top ten on the black charts, they were then promoted on pop or white radio. This meant a lot of independent promotion. Now some of that “independent promotion” for all intents and purposes was a form of payola. But even in 1980, independent promotion was segregated because a lot of the process was relationship based. All the indie promoters and radio station program directors involved felt safe passing an envelope of cash to one another because it had been done by the same people over and over, year after year. It could be very expensive; paying $50,000 to $200,000 for one single song to be promoted nationally was not uncommon.
Under pressure to cut costs, Dick started snooping around in the financial books of CBS. The high expenditure of independent promotion immediately popped out. If he could rein in that mammoth price tag, Dick wouldn’t have to lay more people off. He wanted Earth, Wind & Fire to be his first test case. Why? Because he figured we were enormous enough to overrule the stations’ allegiance to independent promoters—that radio would have to play EW&F whether or not these promoters paid them cash. Essentially, he planned to use EW&F’s next single as a test case—or a hostage—on black and pop radio.
When I got wind of this, I immediately flew to New York. I went straight from JFK to Dick Asher’s office at Black Rock, the CBS Records headquarters at the corner of Sixth and Fifty-Second Street—unannounced. Dick shook my hand and then sat down, making small talk.
I abruptly interrupted him. “What’s this mess I hear about changes to my independent promotion?”
“Well, Earth Wind & Fire is so great, Maurice, you don’t need these promoters anymore.”
“Dick, you’re a decent guy. I actually like you—but this experiment to end Earth, Wind & Fire’s independent promotion, I cannot accept. Go on and do your experiment, but do it with someone else, like Springsteen, James Taylor, or Aerosmith.”
Yes, there was definitely a racial connotation in my communication. All those artists I mentioned were white. EW&F was probably the top moneymaker for Columbia Records, black or white. Why experiment with us? Walking out of Asher’s office, I turned, looked him straight in his eyes, and said, “Don’t make my band your crusade—you got a hundred other acts, but I have only one career.”
Whether Asher was going to lose or win the battle with Yetnikoff over cutting independent promotion—and ultimately over control of CBS Records—was out of my hands (he ultimately lost, and Yetnikoff won). What was in my control was that, since EW&F was on my own label, the American Recording Company, Asher could go on and do what he wanted—but I could get around it. I hired my old pal from Chicago, Ron Ellison, to become vice president in charge of marketing for ARC. He could keep a close eye on what was going on with the independent promoters. This way I would always know if Columbia was trying to slight me. By 1980 ARC had about twelve artists signed and maybe fifty employees. Also in January of 1980, “Rappers Delight,” considered to be the first rap hit, rose to No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100.
I have learned in a long life that knowing what the word acceptance means becomes paramount. We have to accept that the ties that bind are often beyond our understanding. In retrospect, the passing of Mother Dear was a brief resting time for Earth, Wind & Fire at the top of the rock-and-roll mountain. We had started to climb that mountain in 1973 at Caribou Ranch Studios in the Colorado Rockies, but soon we would start our long traverse back down the cliffs.
In terms of popularity, accomplishment, and musical sense, we could do no wrong. We were international superstars, but tensions were building. ARC was floundering, and there was a lot of hope that Earth, Wind & Fire’s next album would be its salvation. That double album, Faces, is one of our best. It has it all—the polyrhythms of All ’N All, the sonic quality of I Am, and the supreme musicianship of the EW&F recording family. The artwork of the gatefold album cover, picturing many different races of people from around the globe, continued our effort to promote the family of man, the idea that we are all one.
In respect, to these changing times, this offering of our creative efforts is presented to acquaint man with his many brothers and sisters around the world. We live so close, yet so far away, fear has been our separator.
We live now in a new age dawning upon computer technology, higher consciousness, higher elevation of space, and higher ideas. In this age the true essence of sharing should be acknowledged.
It is time for man to understand that we share the same sun, and we all are essentially the same with different names. All around the world the most enjoyed vibration is that of a smile. Through our smiles we touch the heart of our fellow man. Together, let’s lift our planet to a higher vibration. In love we stand.
—Maurice White, liner notes from EW&F’s album Faces, 1980
Since we were big moneymakers at Columbia, I spared no expense taking the rhythm section, several of the outside songwriters, and George Massenburg to George Martin’s new recording studio on the Emerald Isle—Montserrat, West Indies. Montserrat is a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea, 1,350 miles southeast of Miami. Just as the isolation of Caribou Ranch was a turning point in the life of Earth, Wind & Fire seven years earlier, I hoped the white sand beaches of this remote idyllic paradise would be a new start for the band. But it wasn’t. This wasn’t Caribou Ranch and 1973; this was 1980. All the spoils of success were in place, as were its pitfalls.
Aside from all the life changes, music remained the emphasis, and we had some incredible sessions in the two months down there. We flew musicians and songwriters in—David Foster, Jerry Peters, Marlo Henderson, and a wonderful new songwriter, Garry Glenn, whom I would work with off and on in the mid-1980s. He would later go on to write the hit song “Caught Up in the Rapture” for Anita Baker. Outside songwriters as diverse as Eddie Del Barrio, James Newton Howard, Brenda Russell, and Ross Vannelli contributed songs with rich chords and global rhythms. Some of the charts were complicated, but there was a flow within the band that made those intricate songs easy. We were musically focused as never before. Often we would take a break in the sessions and walk out before sunset to watch the sun go down into the Caribbean Sea, the music from the day’s recordings ringing in our ears.
But the Faces rec
ording sessions were not without strain. Tensions were escalating between Al McKay and myself. Most of the conflict revolved around how the music was being produced, but there was an underlying current of built-up frustration. Al had had it with my leadership. We were clashing hard and had some serious heated disagreements. It got so bad that a few times we had to take it outside, so as to not completely ruin the vibe in the studio.
As much as I didn’t like the conflict between Al and me, I couldn’t help but believe that it contributed to the heat of the recordings. Our fiery rhythm section still prevailed. We returned to Los Angeles and finished out the album. With Faces mixed and completed, I tried to adjust to the changing financial winds of the music business. Columbia Records offered me much less tour and promotional support, and sales were still down at all the major labels. Some would call this era the rise of “corporate rock,” which I’m sure is true. As a result, I needed some additional funding. As fate would have it, a go-getter by the name of Jay Coleman reached out to me. Jay owned Rockbill, which was really the first company to merge Madison Avenue and the rock-and-roll business. Corporate sponsorships were relatively new in 1980. At that time—before Pepsi and Michael Jackson—Earth, Wind & Fire had the largest corporate sponsorship any band had received. I was all for this new way of subsidizing tours, as long as the product wasn’t something like alcohol, or overtly sexual. I signed on to a $500,000 television campaign, in which EW&F would endorse Panasonic products, and Panasonic in turn would use various vehicles to promote our latest release, Faces.
My Life with Earth, Wind & Fire Page 27