My Life with Earth, Wind & Fire

by Maurice White

  In fact, those decisions were increasingly left up to whoever was hired as the arranger, whether it was Tom-Tom Washington, Bill Meyers, David Foster, or Jerry Hey. Some arrangers preferred the white mob on certain songs, some preferred the Phenix Horns. I’ve said it before—this wasn’t personal.

  Despite the tensions with the horn players, the Raise! tour had some special moments for me. Beloyd Taylor was on the road with us, doing background vocals and playing percussion. I noticed that every night he would leave when we were getting dressed before a show. One night, early in the tour in Greensboro, North Carolina, I followed him into the bathroom.

  “Why are you disappearing, Beloyd?” I said.

  He sighed. “Reece, you know I’m handicapped.”

  “I know, but I don’t know if I would label it handicapped.”

  Slowly taking off his shirt, he revealed one shoulder that had no muscle. It was severely deformed.

  “Man, I was teased my whole life because of this deformity, and I don’t want to dress in front of you guys.”

  “Beloyd, never be ashamed of what you think is your shortcoming. As much talent as you have, you should never be ashamed of anything like that.”

  What I didn’t divulge to Beloyd is that I could somewhat relate. Being teased as a kid is something I knew intimately. Yellow boy, half-breed—all that shit had its effect on me too, though at that time I had too much pride to admit it to Beloyd.

  The US leg of the Raise! tour ended in Denver on January 7. We then went to Europe and finally back home. The Complex studios and offices were busy around this time. George Massenburg’s custom-designed recording studios were up and running, and there were many artists coming in and renting the studios. Prince, Lionel Richie, Quincy Jones, and others were also renting the soundstage for rehearsals, as well as for the new world of music videos.

  But it was the 1980s, and there was a lot of cocaine around the Complex too. In the early college tour years of EW&F, some of the guys had smoked pot, but that fell by the wayside. Philip stopped smoking because he felt that it affected his vocals. As our live shows became more complicated, the remaining cats who were still doing a little weed had to stop. Between magic, choreography, and explosions, our shows required focus.

  Now, though, around the time of Raise! and the subsequent tour, it became apparent that my brother Fred had developed a substance abuse problem. Fred had always had a daredevil spirit; it was what made him a great drummer. He had also started out very young in the music business. He became a professional early, so he was always hanging out with cats ten, twenty, thirty years his senior. This is not an older brother making an excuse for his younger brother; it’s just to acknowledge what I believe to be the full background of the issue.

  Throughout his period of drug use, Fred missed only two gigs, one in Oakland and one in London. On both occasions Ralph Johnson, being the reliable foot soldier that he was, came to our rescue and stepped in to play.

  Everyone in the band was supportive of Fred and hoped he would get clean, but there were grumblings among the band about my blatant nepotism. They knew that anyone else would have been fired—and fast. Ordinarily Fred would have been fired too. Yet, beyond the fact that he was my baby brother, I retained him because of his monster talent. As hypocritical as that sounds, it overrode everything—the public image of the band, my own feeling toward drugs, and my integrity as a bandleader. Fred was the brick wall. He provided a rock-solid tempo and a rock-solid feel, priceless qualities in a drummer. He was one of the best things going for us. In those days in the studio, if your drum track and groove weren’t killing, you had nothing. There was no way to salvage the record. Now you can cut and paste, quantize—electronically correct—rhythm, and do all kinds of computer manipulations. But back then, he was the foundation. I had to have it. Despite Fred’s temporary troubles, he never relented in kicking major ass on the drums. I chose the groove.

  27

  Black Tax

  I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.

  —Booker T. Washington

  MTV debuted in August of 1981, and overnight it became the premier way to promote a music act and give a high profile to a hit record. Problem was, the network was unapologetically racist. Rick James and EW&F had two of the biggest records in the country at that time—James with “Superfreak” and us with “Let’s Groove.” Despite our outcry, MTV refused to play either video. In other words: “Get to the back of the bus.”

  Michael Schultz directed the “Let’s Groove” video, using the then-state-of-the-art visual effects created by a visionary Ron Hays. It would be the debut video on BET’s new show Video Soul. This wasn’t our first video; it’s just that before MTV truly exploded, videos were just called “promotional clips.” We made these clips for earlier songs like “Serpentine Fire,” “September,” and “Boogie Wonderland.” They were not elaborate in any way—usually just us on a soundstage, lip-synching to the song. The video for “Let Me Talk,” the first single from Faces, had been our first with effects and more complicated editing.

  MTV tried to hide behind the lie that they played only album-oriented rock (AOR), as an AOR radio station would. But it was clearly playing pop music too. God bless Rick James, because he was out front on this issue before everybody, including me. He and I appeared in a segment on Entertainment Tonight on the subject of racism and MTV. Bob Pittman, then head of MTV, said in the segment that EW&F and Rick James videos weren’t played because we were clearly middle-of-the-road (MOR) artists. That was complete and total bullshit, since MTV was playing MOR music. On the day of MTV’s premiere in 1981, it played “Is It You” by Lee Ritenour, which is so R&B/pop it’s ridiculous. But it also played “Rapture” by Blondie, which is pop, funk, new wave, and rap. Both of those artists got a pass because they had white skin. Hall & Oates and Phil Collins were MOR artists too, and they benefited greatly from early MTV exposure. I said much earlier that historically our best foot forward has meant a subservient, lesser foot forward—that’s the black tax. Here I was, after all: despite Earth, Wind & Fire’s worldwide and crossover success, we were still shut out.

  The dispute turned the R&B/pop world upside down. A few white artists publicly came to black artists’ defense, David Bowie and Keith Richards most notably. But only two long years later, in 1983, when Walter Yetnikoff finally threatened to pull MTV’s access to all CBS’s product, did MTV cave. The result was that Michael Jackson got to sit at the front of the bus. Overnight, MTV claimed that “Billie Jean” was suddenly in their format. Now if “Billie Jean” is album-oriented rock, not R&B /pop, the sun won’t rise in the east tomorrow. Michael’s album Thriller went from being just a good follow-up to Jackson’s Off the Wall to the record-setting Michael Jackson phenomenon of the decade.

  The exposure of artists on MTV made a huge difference in sales and visibility. Our albums of the early 1980s—Raise!, Powerlight, and Electric Universe—would probably have fared better with MTV’s support. By the time “Billie Jean” desegregated MTV in 1983, Earth, Wind & Fire was slowing down. Not too long after the racial walls at MTV came tumbling down, I put the band on hiatus. Timing is something else.

  Life teaches you many things. One of the big lessons of the MTV battle was that we are not going to get very far on racial equality if the starting point is that we’ve already gotten past the original problem. This touches a raw nerve. It was fascinating to me that nearly twenty years after the civil rights movement, something so blatantly discriminatory could operate out in the open. MTV had the attitude in 1981 that racism was yesterday’s news. In a way it was like a return to the segregated record business of the 1950s. No apologies, just irrational justifications.

 
The questions raised by the racist roots of MTV are still with us. They largely hinge on what is pop music and what is black music. Why are certain acts labeled pop, while others are labeled R&B? Today, like then, sometimes the musical distinctions are negligible. Is a white face on a black-sounding song pop, and a black face on the same song R&B? As the Internet changes the game, maybe there’s hope. Unsigned young artists—and established artists, for that matter—no longer have the mass media gatekeepers between their music and the public.

  Race has colored so much of my business struggle. MTV’s brazen racism really hurt the band at a very critical time; that can’t be denied. And the segregated world of record promotion was a battlefield I had to fight on my entire career. Since we were crossover maestros, many thought pop radio was in our command. But it was surely not. We still had to go through the rear door called R&B radio before we had the opportunity to be heard on pop radio. I was vocal about it, and I got the feeling that people in the music business thought my global success meant it was wrong for me to be so vocal. I was not deterred. My feeling was, If not me, then who?

  Furthermore, we were mostly nominated for Grammys in the best R&B group category, not the pop group category. It was another black tax. Since the mid-1970s, many of the R&B Grammys were given out in the pre-telecast, so they were not broadcast on TV. After a while, we stopped showing up. In a twist of racial fate, one year George Massenburg was at the ceremony, and he went up to accept our award in our absence. They got pissed off and snatched the Grammy right out of George’s hands, because he was white and didn’t look like Earth, Wind & Fire.

  I was catching it from both sides of the racial divide. Early on, after we had a few hits, we put most of the black concert promotion talent in America on the map, pretty much single-handedly. Yet we were called into a meeting in Philadelphia, hosted by the black promoters’ association. A bunch of big and little acts were there with their managers. It was clear they had summoned us to put Earth, Wind & Fire and our white booking agency in its place. They wanted to boycott Madison Square Garden and some other venues unless we used black promotion talent. I just listened, but Leonard Smith, who was with me, was absolutely fuming. He’d had enough. Standing up after someone had taken a dig at EW&F, he asked to be recognized.

  “Earth, Wind & Fire is a California corporation, a member of corporate America,” Leonard said. “We have a product for sale. If you like it, you can buy it. If you don’t, you can pass on it. No one has the right to tell Earth, Wind & Fire how to operate their business.”

  Gradually Leonard then went down the line one by one, pointing people out by name, reminding them how we helped them when they couldn’t get any piece—not even a morsel—of the arena rock pie. We had given them a piece of our concert promotion dollars because we, as independent free black men, knew it was good business. It would assist us in reaching our core audience, as well as being the right thing to do. Now they were going to try to hold us hostage? I didn’t mind helping in any way I could, but I damn sure wasn’t going to be told what to do. Leonard was more than great that day. He didn’t take any shit, even from his own people.

  At the same time, some black folks, in the business and out, were upset because I had white management and associates. They were misinformed. I wasn’t some black man who became famous and then switched to a white manager. Bob Cavallo was with me almost from the start; we rose up together. I hired magician Doug Henning because he was the best at what he did; he also happened to be white. I hired choreographer George Faison because he was the absolute best, and he happened to be black. Bill Whitten was black. David Copperfield was white. Excellence—not pleasing the black or white establishment—was always my goal. My attitude pissed a lot of people off, for a long time. I got the label of being a bit of a highbrow, and it didn’t help that I was introverted.

  Fighting the white record company powers that be, with their segregated promotion—and, to a lesser degree, some black folks—was draining. I didn’t let it get me down, though. I just kept moving forward, like Mama trained me to do.

  It was 1982, and I had turned forty in December of the previous year. I didn’t feel forty, or even thirty. As a matter of fact, I had never felt better. I was playing tennis almost every day I could, and, man, was I enjoying it. I had thoughts about being on some kind of senior tour one day. I was enjoying a more balanced life. I went to the movies more often. At Verdine’s insistence, I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark twice. I was still in demand as a record producer, turning down way more work than I accepted. I got to Carmel more often. Forty was fine by me.

  March 18, 1982: Wembley Arena, London, England, the final night of six sold-out shows for the Raise! tour. Getting ready to come home for a little while. Walter Yetnikoff, the undisputed king of CBS Records worldwide, reached me in London.

  “Maurice, Earth, Wind & Fire is receiving the CBS Records Crystal Globe Award for five million in sales outside of the US. Congratulations, Guru!”

  (“Guru” had become Yetnikoff’s teasing name for me.)

  “Thanks, Walter. You guys helped—a little!” I teasingly shot back.

  “You’re the first black act on the roster to ever do that.”

  Even with all the racial qualifiers and barriers, Earth, Wind & Fire had been one the biggest bands on the planet for about seven years. I don’t know if there was anyone, including me, that really savored what we had done. It was hard work, and the years went by in a flash. Just as interestingly, Ronald Reagan gave four EW&F albums as one of the customary gifts of state to the president of China. At the same time, in a twist of fame fate, Larry Dunn had a guy roaming around LA and NYC, impersonating him, taking advantage of women and freebasing cocaine in nightclubs. The FBI had to get involved. It was a mess. Additionally, EW&F, along with KISS, the Rolling Stones, and other rock acts, was accused of having demonic messages via backward masking on our recordings. For us, it was a damnable lie. They were actually going to pass legislation in California to try to prove it. All this happened within the first few months of 1982. It was the noise of popularity and the price tag of success.

  Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, the acceptance of EW&F made the Complex a pretty popular place to record and do music videos. In late 1982 and early ’83 George Duke was producing a new album for Deniece Williams and Philip Bailey’s first solo record, Continuation. David Foster was producing an album for the rock band the Tubes; Linda Ronstadt was recording with the great Nelson Riddle and a fifty-piece orchestra on the soundstage. Earth, Wind & Fire was recording a song for the animated film Rock & Rule. Cheap Trick, Debbie Harry, and Iggy Pop also participated. In addition, I was putting the finishing touches on Powerlight for EW&F. Next to Faces, Powerlight is probably one of our best and most overlooked albums.

  In between all of this, in Studio B, I was producing Jennifer Holliday’s debut album, Feel My Soul, for David Geffen’s label. Jennifer was the newest and brightest thing on Broadway. She had just been in Your Arms Too Short to Box with God and Dreamgirls, which made her a star. David Foster, Allee Willis, and I wrote a beautiful, theatrical ballad for her called “I Am Love.” She sang the hell out of it. It was a hit on the black chart, but it did not achieve the same level of success on the pop charts.

  I did have a certain amount of healthy pride in the Complex facility. While working on Jennifer Holliday, strictly by happenstance Quincy Jones, David Foster, Wayne Vaughn, and I all found ourselves at the Complex on a late Friday night in January. We were all working on different projects, and I had our staff chef prepare us a sumptuous late-night meal.

  “This is a beautiful place, Reece,” Quincy said.

  “Thanks, Q. It took a long time to get here!”

  “You know I know.”

  Q winked at me. His wink was an acknowledgment of what most black entrepreneurs know: to achieve anything in the white world, you’ve got to work that old African American expression of “making a way out of no way.” Quincy had been an early mentor, and now he was a gr
eat friend. He knew personally how difficult it could be to be a black achiever in America. He loved EW&F, and I loved and respected his chutzpah and his rich musical legacy. Years later, when he produced the Will Smith vehicle The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, he named Uncle Phil’s imaginary law firm Firth, Wynn and Meyer as a joke to me.

  The Complex was a fulfilled dream but, although busy, it was still running at a financial deficit. ARC, my record label, was failing too, largely due to the fact that the record business was failing. We had gotten $3 million for the label deal and a couple million more to build the Complex, which wasn’t anywhere near enough for either. And I was becoming an increasingly absentee landlord. I had a beautiful all-glass office that overlooked the soundstage. For all the years that I had the Complex, I can count on one hand the number of days I spent sitting at the desk from ten to six. One day I popped in to sign some papers, and as I was leaving, Art Macnow cornered me.

  “Hey, man, where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Maurice, do you enjoy this? Do you need this? Do you care?”

  “This what?”

  “The Complex, your office, ARC. Other than coming in to record, you’re never, ever here.”