Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis

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Speaker 1: The Quest Left Show is a production of iHeart Radio.

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Speaker 2: So I'm just slowly realizing that I've not done my elaborate intros. I'm so busy in preparing the interviews. But this is the Quest Left Show QLs. And in case you're later riving to us, what can I say, ladies and gentlemen, this is the Ernie and Bert of funk, the Shields and yard Nw of soul.

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Speaker 1: Features in herb of the Get Down.

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Speaker 2: You know, the Sherlock, Holmes and Watson of BOUCHI A wow, wow. This is the Lennon McCartney of Jam and Lewis. I can't believe this moment is happening, but it is happening. Forty top ten hits, sixteen of them, number one producer of the year, accolades, anything that we can award them.

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Speaker 1: They've accomplished. Members of one of.

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Speaker 2: The last best funk bands that matter pre hip hop.

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Speaker 1: I have to make that distinction.

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Speaker 2: And it's telling that you're the last album that you two participated and literally is the blueprint of hip hop. I mean, there's ghostwriting, there's digital programming and technology, there's extended jams, there's edit mistakes, there's dirty mixing, There's Pimpson Jigglo and Ho Talk.

00:01:39
Speaker 1: There's Hyja daughter Hodja, datis there here? Designer fashion disc tracks, comedy skits, thoughts on the police, songs about new dances, affirmational songs about wanting.

00:01:56
Speaker 2: To live the good life like it's literally what time is it to me? Is the blueprint of hip hop? And here we are in twenty twenty six. I can't believe I said that twenty twenty six six. Taping this in the month that will mark the fortieth anniversary of their landmark production of an album called Control thought would be rather apropos as they're celebrating the beginning or promoting their Nothing but Hits residency in Las Vegas with Ruben Stutter and Shanice Wilson, and I cannot believe this is happening. Jimmy jam here Lewis, thank you for doing the Quest Left show.

00:02:34
Speaker 1: Thank you for being here. At that long intro that I just have to bring.

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Speaker 3: Up the top of mind, believe it.

00:02:39
Speaker 1: That was a great That's a great intro. I like that. Real what do we do? Ernie and Burda, the Ernie and Burda funk?

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Speaker 3: Wow?

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Speaker 1: I like that it's a new Moniker bird.

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Speaker 3: That would have been good man, that would have been good.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: All right, So when did the conversation start of wanting to do a residency.

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Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you for me.

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Speaker 4: The conversation started a long time ago when we when The Time performed on the Grammys with rihannat I was the fiftieth anniversary of the Grammy. So what eighteen years ago? I guess yes. And I was a chairman of the Recording Academy at that point, and I remember after we performed with Rihanna, everybody backstage said what are you guys going to do next? And we were like next, No, this is just we just a one off. We just got together. But there was a guy in Vegas that saw us, and Tony Braxton was doing shows at the Flamingo and she was having some health problem, so they wanted to get somebody in there to you know, take some of the dates, and so we ended up as the Time going in and doing three weeks of residency there and we loved it.

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Speaker 1: We loved it. We totally got why.

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Speaker 4: You know, Celine Dion was parked there and you know, don I think Donnie and Marie were coming in after us, you know, so we totally we and Donnie would come to our shows like he loved the time. So anyway, I will say the seed got planted there just then that we liked the idea of doing it, got it.

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Speaker 2: I'm laughing also because you brought that up. And first time a rental car mine never got towed. I parked in Donnie spot at that residence.

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Speaker 3: Anyway, So no, I love that.

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Speaker 4: So to fast forward when we went in the Songwriters Hall of Fame that we were asked what do we want to do? What do you want to do that you haven't done yet? And Babyface happened to be on the red carpet right next to us, and we said, well, we'd like to do a record with Babyface. So we did that, which I went off the list. Yes, we said we would like to finish the album that we started, you know, thirty years ago or whenever. It was the Jam and Lewis Volume one album, which we did, so we checked that off. The third thing we said was we'd like to go and perform our catalog, which we've never done, and we would like to do that. And so you know, I don't know some I don't know, seven or eight years after that, we now have the opportunity to do it and for us to return to the roots unintended of where we started as musicians. Before we were songwriters and before we were producers, we were simply guys in a local band playing everybody else's hits. So now we get to be guys in a local band playing our own hits. Got it, And that's the fun of it. I know it's one step out of time.

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Speaker 2: But you guys also have a catalog that is jukebox brought wayworthy. Have you planned talking segments on like, well we did this song in nineteen eighty five, and.

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Speaker 5: Well we certainly do that, you know, okay, Jimmy jam is one of the greatest orators in YouTube.

00:05:42
Speaker 1: Terry Lewis, by the way, in history. You know, I talk hell, you talk great.

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Speaker 2: Actually, No, My favorite part of doing press for the Slime Stone, which I had to thank you both for doing. My favorite part of doing the press junket for SLY is when people realize that you two were three thousand miles apart, and literally there were points where we could sync up your answers and it was like you're the run DMC of documentary interviews. Also Okay, now, but you're always Jimmy David Terry Lewis.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Well, you know, the experiences are the experiences. I mean there's a three size to every story, his side by side of the truth, right like in Somewhere, we park it in the middle, somewhere, gotcha and we figure it out.

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Speaker 1: Well.

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Speaker 4: I think the thing with Terry is that Terry I always say that what it takes me a paragraph to say, Terry can say in a sentence. And that's what makes him such a great lyricist, his efficiency of words, because I tend to be long winded. But the other part about that is if something's important to Terry, he will talk. When we went in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Terry talked. I was the most I heard him talk. But his mom was out there, his family was out there, and that was a really meaningful moment. And the fact that he's here with you now, questlove doing this show.

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Speaker 3: I can't believe it, believe it.

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Speaker 4: It's things that are important to Terry. He has a great filter for that, and this is and doing your show today is very important.

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Speaker 5: So that's why part of my filter is I have no filter, you know, I just I see it, tell you how I see it.

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Speaker 1: I accept that, and I'm good with that.

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Speaker 5: You know, and I'm okay with being challenged. But I'm also going to challenge whatever.

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Speaker 1: To be prepared for it. Yeah, yeah, right, you.

00:07:31
Speaker 5: Know, because my mother always told me, she said, you got one mouth, two of everything else. Make sure you use your mouth accordingly, you know, So everything else.

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Speaker 3: Is double time.

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Speaker 5: I'm watching, I'm listening, you know, I'm contemplating, I'm doing all those things. You know, I'm breathing good everything, but my mouth is gonna stay shut because everything else has to work double time.

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Speaker 1: Okay, how do you guys decide on a song list? Well, deciding is kind of what's happening. It's still happening right now.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's still happening right now. I think there's the obvious songs that we want to do that we not only were successful chart wise and in people's minds, you know, are culturally significant to people, but also our fun to play.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 4: God, there's some songs that are probably big hits that probably aren't that fun to play honestly, and we don't maybe feel we do them that great but I think that's kind of the way we'll start. I mean, we'll start with the there's some of the obvious ones, particularly when it comes to the storytelling of it, right, you know, just be good to me, tell me if you still care. Back in that in that era, Encore, which was our first official Billboard number one song on the R and B charts, you know, Tender Love, which was our first top ten pop record. And then obviously we have to cover you know, the Janet Jacksons and new additions, the voice to men Sarelle and Alexander O'Neill, you know, and all of those things. So those are the things that will go in there. We'll throw a couple surprises in there. And it hasn't been mastered yet.

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Speaker 1: No.

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Speaker 4: We did a kind of a test run. Terry called it the Folo test run, which was a fear of looking old. Terry said, I don't want to be on stage looking old. So we ended up doing over the past couple of years. I think we've done sixteen shows in Japan. We did a festival all.

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Speaker 1: Right, to work out the key. Yeah, we gotta we got it.

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Speaker 4: We had to see whether we could do it, and we were doing two shows a night, two nine minute shows a night in Japan at the Blue Note at the Blue at the at Billboard Live with the glass behind you.

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Speaker 2: Yes and okay, yeah yeah that used to be Blue Note, now it's Billboard.

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Speaker 1: Okay, you're right, Okay.

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Speaker 4: So anyway, we you know, that kind of gave us the proof in the pudding, so to speak. Uh, and then the kind of curation process happened in Atlanta. We did a show and we had everybody from you know, Yolana Adams to Deborah Cox to Chante Moore to Jordan Knight from New Kids on the Block. Yeah, I mean it was it was an amazing show and show. Yeah, And what happened was things like, for instance, we started performing one of Usher's songs, but Usher was sitting in the front row. So Ruben Stuttard, who's one of our singers, he walked over to you know, over the ushers, right, So Usher comes up and hits bad Girl and hits you Remind Me and you know that kind of thing. So we've kind of all taking all of those things together is kind of what we want to try to pull off in Vegas because it'll be us. But then you know, we always say you never know who's gonna show.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so this is what I have to ask about curation. Am I the only person that works backwards? What do you mean if it's an album or now movie or whatever or setless? The first thing I want to know is what is the song I'm gonna send them home with and how I want them to.

00:10:52
Speaker 1: Feel as they're walking to the car.

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Speaker 2: So it's almost like, in my mind, I feel like the first fifteen minutes people remember, you know, you describe it, and then Michael Jackson floated in from the Free Exposing or earth Wind and Fire whatever. And in the case of Root shows, I mean we've had disaster ass all right, too much patron for that person.

00:11:13
Speaker 1: No, but I find that the last.

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Speaker 2: Ten minutes of the show, it's almost like the Men in Black flashy thing that will make you forget you saw a kick ass show. So that's right, But right now you're just trying to figure out the perfect ninety minutes and yeah, okay.

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Speaker 4: We we know what we like to end with or kind of the feeling, and we do want to leave the audience with a kind of an elevated feeling. So obviously optimistic is going to close the show. Maybe maybe well, we have other songs that kind of do that same thing.

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Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, okay, and.

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Speaker 4: We've actually used some of those different songs and you'll be surprised how effective they actually are.

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Speaker 2: So, I mean, unlike the Gamble and Huff or the Motown Catalog whatever, I'll say that, you guys are probably the first super catalog that we also have sort of visual and very specific sound patch memories with. So I don't think I can ever listen to if it isn't love and in my head start doing the dances that they do, which obviously that's not there, But like, is it intimidating for the artists that you guys are having to handle the duties to also think about the fact like, okay, am I gonna have to put my hat on my foot at the end of this performance?

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Speaker 4: Or no, I don't think so. I think some things lend themselves to the live performance. God, and some things because of like you say, the choreography or the visual memory that you have of certain things, we have to figure out clever ways to do that. But you know, we have you know, a huge screen, oh yeah, visual and we have you know, so we're able to.

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Speaker 1: Use the visual stuff that we have.

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Speaker 4: And by the way, a song like if it is in love, for instance, the audience will do the choreography. We don't have to do the choreography. Okay, they know how to do that, but yeah, each song. We treat it, each song differently and try to present it in the best way. And one of the things for me and I guess people will call this like, well, it's not even a humble brag, but it's the thing I like about our show and what we've been able to do thus far, is it's the most true reproductions of the songs. You know, obviously, you know, whether you're going to a Janet show or a New Edition show or Mary J. Blige, you're gonna hear our songs, got it. But something about the way we perform them and the way we create them on stage, I think is a little different because we know it's like the chef's kitchen. We know how those sounds were derived, and we know the mix that's supposed to be there right on those So as you're watching a live show, part of the thrill hopefully is hearing these songs the way they were really intended to be you know, you hear the production, and you hear the things we can put into it, the spices and little things we can put into it to make it really come to life.

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Speaker 2: In the pre pro toolslization and pre ninety five, I mean, it's always happened, but in that era, in the beginning era, let's say between eighty five and ninety five. Okay, So there was a particular monster successful funk band whom I found a clip of their concert in nineteen eighty five, and they're performing it as a band, but none of the patches that are familiar there, so it's not giving me that omph. Now, one of the things that I was worried about when I first saw the Rhythm Nation show in nineteen ninety, I was like, man, they're not going to get the patches right, Like there's too many trademarks and all the little or the snapping next noises you guys have for snaps or whatever. And I was shocked that, you know, I didn't know about I don't know how the technology was executed backman, as opposed to now where this is on.

00:15:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, on.

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Speaker 2: Stage, but when you guys send your acts out into the world, and I'm talking about Alexander and Charrell and SOS band in addition to Janet, were you guys also on hand for their bands and the musicians they chose, and here's the patches you'll need to pull these off or you.

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Speaker 5: Just in the early days we kind of were especially for like Sharille and alex Okay, we would.

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Speaker 1: They would rehearse at our.

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Speaker 5: Place, yeah, and we would help them choose the band and give them patches.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

00:16:02
Speaker 2: So when Prince broke up the Revolution eighty six, his first move was she would take me to the Bay Area and let's get the baddest musicians ever. And then I'll say, in the early arts, Philly had that reputation, you know, like between Bill Jolly or Washington or Adam Blackstone, Omar Edwards shout out to man Man. They were pretty much like I know at least seventy Philly musicians that are actively working until there were no more. And then I'll say, like glassper put On for Houston, they were next twenty thirty musicians from Houston and now kind of running. But who were in eighty five when you were like, yo, these guys will kick ass, Like where's the hot bed of the best musician's hands down that you guys would pick, or were you loyal to Minnesota?

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Speaker 1: Was there expectation for you guys to look out for all the bands from the north side Minneapolis and stuff?

00:17:01
Speaker 5: But that's all you knew, Like that was our world, Like we never knew how we compared to everybody outside of Minneapolis. We only knew how we all compared to each other.

00:17:12
Speaker 1: But then we all laugh at LA musicians. At one point we never went to.

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Speaker 5: LA because we were in Minneapolis, and that's what we couldn't afford to get to Alis. Okay, we were just young, broke, and you know, we were playing in local bands, competing against each other for the same the same opportunities got him, and so that was the pot, you know. So was the crabs in the barrel, and one crab got out. Prince was that crab.

00:17:41
Speaker 3: And then he.

00:17:41
Speaker 5: Reached back down and he brought a few guys out with him and then gave us all hope, and then yeah, so on and so forth. Cynthia Johnson, who was in Flight Times, got out and she sang Funky Town. You know, it was the number one song in the world. It's like, well, maybe we are kind of valid here. Maybe we do have something special here. But there was always jazz musicians and other people in Minneapolis that would play and they were super dope.

00:18:11
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:18:11
Speaker 5: Yeah, Craig Peterson, Peterson family, I mean not even not even talking about that Peterson family, about the black Craig Peterson's black Peters.

00:18:23
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's a black Peters. Okay, just like there's a black O'Neill.

00:18:28
Speaker 1: That's right. What is the Irish?

00:18:30
Speaker 5: Yeah, But you know, we were just comparing ourselves to each other because we didn't know, and we weren't white, so we never got into the white gloves right, And they would get in the clubs and play black music, but they were never as funky as us, but they got the gig. So I guess we thought we weren't good enough.

00:18:50
Speaker 1: I have to say that.

00:18:53
Speaker 2: Maybe once or twice a year I have to go to Minnesota and kiss a specific ring to get clearance in person. Most times I make a weekend of it, and on Sundays I go to where Margie I used to sing bunkers, Yes, bunkers, And I don't mean it's an insulting way, like I love the fact that it's still.

00:19:17
Speaker 1: Like ninety one in there.

00:19:19
Speaker 2: Yeah it's as it was, yeah, which I kind of dug and but even as funky as it was, Like, was that just the normal?

00:19:29
Speaker 3: But no, that wasn't it?

00:19:31
Speaker 5: Oh?

00:19:31
Speaker 1: Okay, that was so not everybody was Sonny Thompson.

00:19:34
Speaker 4: No, no, oh god damn certainly not Sonny Thompson. Hell no, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love no Sonny times in the debot of Funk like he puts then, because.

00:19:49
Speaker 1: He's the nicest guy to be in DMS and all that stuff, I'm.

00:19:52
Speaker 5: Like, overly ridiculous. As a musician. Yeah, wow, he's a savant as a musician. He was playing the based upside down, played the guitar upside down. People don't know he's a great singer. I spoke to him a few weeks ago. It's like, man, people don't even know, like all your talent. Yeah, Prince made you a bass player, but that's not what he.

00:20:13
Speaker 3: Taught Prince how to play.

00:20:14
Speaker 1: Get just what I was gonna say it.

00:20:17
Speaker 5: Okay, So that was different because they were the different guys. Sonny was one of those guys, Prince was one of those guys, and everybody else was kind of regular. You know, you had Andre Simone, who was a great musician, you know, just all the charisma in the world, could play his ass off, you know, look good, you know, but on the stage with Prince, who was super dope in every way. He's gonna give Prince some competition, you know, because the girls are gonna be hollering for Prince, but they're gonna be hollering just as a loud for Andre Simone.

00:20:49
Speaker 1: No, yeah, I can attest you. O.

00:20:53
Speaker 2: Why was Shanese and Ruben perfect fits for this particular review? And how many music are there in total for this project?

00:21:03
Speaker 1: Oh?

00:21:03
Speaker 4: In the band? Okay, so yeah, the band is real. We're leaning. Mean we got literally drummer, keyboards and guitar. Terry handle's the bass. I handled the keyboards, and then rub one keyboard player, one keyboard player, and then myself. Oh yeah so that's too.

00:21:19
Speaker 3: I count myself as a one keyboard player. That's super dope.

00:21:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, super dope and dope. He's mushysical director. Yeah, okay, I mean what else you know, like somebody got pressed.

00:21:30
Speaker 4: Exactly. So here's the thing. Because of the range and repertoire that you have to do if you're looking for someone that can sing and make and convincingly sing by the way. It's not like copying the way it was sung necessarily, but who can sing it make it their own, But you know, give it that respect of you know, hitting those notes correctly and hitting those things the way that people want to sing along with the song, because that's the thing you you want to give people the memory of what it is. So you need somebody.

00:22:00
Speaker 1: He was versatile and Ruben stuttered.

00:22:03
Speaker 4: Besides obviously being an American Idol winner, the first one, which is pretty cool, he can handle when we say we're gonna do an Alexandra O'Neil song, We're gonna do an Usher song, we're gonna do a New Edition song, We're gonna do Johnny gillsong, so on and so forth, and he can handle it all. And he can handle up tempos as well as ballads. And he's a great entertainer. I don't know you've ever seen his Luther show that he does, but he's a great entertainer. He's great with the audience. They fall in love with him, and so he was perfect for the male side of it. For the female side, the toughest person to sing is Janet. Janet is very specific in the way she breathes, in the way she finishes her notes, and all that kind of stuff. Shawnee besides being a Star Search winner, which is interesting because Star Search is now back, but she once starts when she was, you know, ten years older whatever, She was really young. But she also then signed to A and M Records. John McClain signed her to an M Records, the elusive John MacLean, the elusive John McLain. And so so she was like a Janet disciple, like she knew every Janet note, every run, every choreography step. She knew everything. And so once again, when we're trying to do those songs and we need somebody that can really dig into those and know the detail of the way the phrasing happens and all that, Johnice was the perfect person. But also you can throw her, you know, Yolanda Adams, right, you can you know, you can throw her Mary J. Blige, or you can throw all these different singers, and she's got ranged she can do it. So they're the perfect foundation for what we do. And they have no fear, like literally we'll switch a song or an arrangement up on the day that we're going to do it and they're just into it. They're just like, Okay, yeah, we got it, you know, so they're perfect.

00:23:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:23:59
Speaker 2: When I found that Shiness was the singer, I was like, oh, this is per actually weird enough. I think I found out about the residency the day that Brian Lauren passed away yes and shout out to So I went back to listen to first record and realized like, oh man, this is like the.

00:24:15
Speaker 1: Perfect choice for this review.

00:24:18
Speaker 2: All right, So I have questions to ask about a few and yes, I'm not going to do the twelve hour jamming lewis what I really want to do, but I do have a few questions about some of your clients.

00:24:32
Speaker 1: I want to start with that. So best band.

00:24:34
Speaker 2: One thing I always wanted to know was, like, you know, eighty two eighty three for me was like a transitional year, especially for.

00:24:41
Speaker 1: The Black band.

00:24:43
Speaker 2: And this is a band that had three albums previous before you guys came to them, and they were a band in the studio. If you listen to those first three records, I think right now we're dealing with to AI or not AI.

00:24:58
Speaker 1: The nineties was like to copy pas or not copy paste? All right?

00:25:01
Speaker 2: You did the course once and we'll just you know, right in the eighties was to sample, not to sample, But do you have to explain to a band like we have drum machines now and technology that you're not needed not not needed for it, but for you to work your sauce? Like do you have to convince them that you don't have to play this as a band it will sound better the way that we're presenting it to you.

00:25:23
Speaker 5: I don't think we ever had to do that. I think we just had ideas, concepts. So we were fans of SOS. I mean, take your Time to do it right was a huge hit, yeah right, you know, but past that, I mean I don't even remember another song. And so we had our ideas as fans of take your Time doing writ in the SOS band and Mary Davis in that voice kind of what we could do, and at that time we it wasn't even an eight h eight I think we had I think it was a three or three. It was a little tiny, little tiny drum machine that make basically the same sounds stay.

00:26:00
Speaker 3: Eight oh eight.

00:26:01
Speaker 5: But when we went to try to record it, we could only do it out in stereo.

00:26:05
Speaker 1: Out we could are not individuals.

00:26:07
Speaker 5: We couldn't stem it out and there was no midy for it, and so they brought an eight o eight and that's how we got into doing eight o eight.

00:26:16
Speaker 2: When the eight eight first arrived to you guys, is it like well, I mean, you came from Prince World, so obviously you know what a Len drum machine was.

00:26:23
Speaker 1: Yes. Yes, But were you.

00:26:25
Speaker 2: Guys totally one with us or was it as controversial as AI is.

00:26:30
Speaker 1: Now like musician.

00:26:32
Speaker 5: No, it only really factored into a drummer's world because some of the drummers were you're gonna use that drum machine and hating on it just because they were threatened in terms of the usability of it, because that that meant that you didn't need a drummer, got it. But as a bass player, I never liked drum machines because.

00:26:53
Speaker 3: It doesn't move. It doesn't let me be slippery.

00:26:56
Speaker 1: You have to be married to the drumm.

00:26:57
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's gotta I gotta stay right with the beat that that I can't got it.

00:27:02
Speaker 3: I can't move it.

00:27:04
Speaker 2: Okay, So I have to ask a question about and I joke with you in this upside down with a side. When Mary Davis got just be good to me? Was she fine with it? Only because I think one day it hit me that, like she's basically like I forgot who I said to So Mary's cool like her man having side chicks or whatever.

00:27:28
Speaker 1: It's like, as long as he comes home to her, that's all she said. Wow, she co signed that.

00:27:33
Speaker 2: And the weird thing was someone listed like at least five other songs like that, one of them being upside Down by Dinah Ross. But at the time was a song just so irresistible that there wasn't a protest for Mary's in Like, wait a minute, I.

00:27:48
Speaker 5: Don't think Mary ever protests did anything that we, okay would suggest. But I think the sign of the times, bro like just the women that I grew up, right, is like I was raised by women, got it?

00:28:02
Speaker 3: All the women were side.

00:28:03
Speaker 2: Chicks, Oh dude, A product of.

00:28:08
Speaker 1: Both of my parents, right, So.

00:28:12
Speaker 3: Like I don't I don't know any different.

00:28:15
Speaker 5: It's like that was accepted, you know, bring the check home and I'll see you monday.

00:28:20
Speaker 1: You know.

00:28:21
Speaker 5: I was like this, they come home on Friday, drop off the check, and I'm where you're going. I would be out in the streets and then that's that's what it was. But you know that's also where that that song Who's making Love to the Old Lady? While you was out making.

00:28:36
Speaker 1: Love every joy?

00:28:37
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, all the jos out there, Yes, right when you guys were taking on full albums entire projects. Was there ever like double lapping in other words, like when you're doing your fair album, are you also subsequently working on heartbreak? Or was it always a role of just one project at a time with our client and when we're done, we'll book another.

00:29:01
Speaker 5: It started out that way. It started out that way, is you know, there wasn't that much work. I mean, we were just doing the work that came, the opportunities that came.

00:29:10
Speaker 3: We try to meet the consideration at that point.

00:29:14
Speaker 5: But it became a time where it was coming so fast where we had to pull in friends and give other opportunities out and we had to split.

00:29:22
Speaker 3: Up sometimes, you know.

00:29:24
Speaker 5: And sometimes I have this thing about being the sixth toe, because I think you have though it's a bad thing if you stay in that shoe too long, because it doesn't allow like an artist like Janet to grow and become the writer that she's become. So for me, writing everything for Janet is not good because I want to I want to hear Janet's voice, even if we have to do things to alter to change it or correct it or make it work, I still want to hear her voice.

00:29:54
Speaker 3: I want her ideas to be interjected, so you.

00:29:57
Speaker 5: Know, her ownership of a project, or Usher's ownership of a project.

00:30:02
Speaker 3: It is just more involved. You get people like Maria.

00:30:05
Speaker 5: Who just naturally is a great writer, or she learned over the years I'm sure from somebody, but when we start working with her, she was already accomplished, and that was a whole different thing. So you don't need to feed into it. But when I'm the sixth toe, I try to move out and do something else.

00:30:23
Speaker 1: Yep.

00:30:24
Speaker 2: So there have been situations where you just work on the music and be like you take it first and then see what you get or.

00:30:31
Speaker 5: Let them take it, yeah, and then see if I can get something better.

00:30:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:30:36
Speaker 4: Actually, Janet and Usher are great examples of kind of the way that some of that would work. Now, we would pretty much clear the calendars for Janet just because we were always doing the whole albums. A lot of times with the artists, we weren't doing the whole albums with Janet, we were, and of course doing it under a lot of scrutiny and a lot of you know, and a lot to follow up, you know, because once you have that first one, the follow up is always the toughest.

00:31:02
Speaker 2: Is there ever a deadline as far as I mean, obviously I was assuming Janet, it's over when it's over, Well, well no, but we.

00:31:10
Speaker 4: Always tried to adhere to the deadlines. Now, back in those days, you had to be done with the album like three months before it actually came out for the press.

00:31:18
Speaker 1: I remember.

00:31:19
Speaker 4: The thing that was the most frustrating part of that was not the recording, but the credits. There was such a premium on making sure that the credits were correct, and that was the thing. It's like, we don't need you to turn in the actual music yet, but we do need the credits, and it's like, and what if you.

00:31:38
Speaker 2: Switch up last minute. I've been in that situation.

00:31:41
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:31:41
Speaker 3: So that was just because the artwork had to be done.

00:31:44
Speaker 1: Artwork, yeah, all those all those things.

00:31:46
Speaker 3: That's funny.

00:31:46
Speaker 5: Once you pressed up a bunch of artwork wrong and you have to change it, there's just a lost leader.

00:31:52
Speaker 1: Like got it gone?

00:31:54
Speaker 4: But I think with Janet I think Terry in some ways, and I hate to even use the now, but I think in some ways he looked at Janet and I and we had such a close kind of relationship, in a close kind of bond that Terry would always kind of be like, I'm here when you need me. You know, I think I told you the story about living in the world. They didn't make. So Jane and I were in the studio working and then we saw some stuff on CNN about a school shooting, right, and we're trying to figure out, Oh, we got to write a song. We got to figure that out. We got to figure that out. Terry walks into the studio. He was building our new studio at that point in time. He walks in with a carpet sample in one hand and a wallpaper in the other hand, and he goes, Hey, which one of these do you think is the one. We're like, no, no, Terry, we got this song, man, we got this idea. You know, it's the kids, man, The kids are mess you know, they're getting messed up and it's not their fault. And we give this whole, big long dissertation of what the song is, and Terry just goes living in the world.

00:32:50
Speaker 1: They didn't make.

00:32:52
Speaker 4: Who said yeah, and he goes in the conference room about five ten minutes later, hands us the lyrics and goes, okay, now which wallpaper and.

00:33:02
Speaker 6: So.

00:33:03
Speaker 4: But that was a case where you know, we said, oh, we need Terry for this, like we're not going to be able to figure this out. Vice versa with Usher. So I worked with Usher first on the Kazam soundtrack on Shack's movie. We did a song called swear I'm in love Usher.

00:33:22
Speaker 1: I've been on an airplanes so you know, there you go.

00:33:27
Speaker 4: So Usher came up literally for the day and we just did the song real quick, and Terry wasn't there, and we did the song real quick, and so fast forward maybe a year later or something like that, or maybe a little later, and Terry literally came into my office and said, Jim, I think I'm ready to retire. M I was like, I said, yes, yeah, I'll let Terry tell the story and then I'll wrap up the analogy.

00:33:50
Speaker 2: Because music wasn't using English by this point. Well, no, you come with your complete sentences in your poetry.

00:33:57
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm simply complex. It's like just check it out.

00:34:02
Speaker 5: Like I just started feeling like people were just phoning it in. Nobody wanted to really work, nobody wanted to explore, nobody wanted to do things outside.

00:34:12
Speaker 3: Of the box. They just everybody was just phoned it in. I didn't feel it anymore.

00:34:17
Speaker 5: And you know, I'm one of those kind of people where I feel like, if I make the perfect record, that's the day I retire. And if I don't feel like I can better what I used to do, then I'm going to do something else because there's a lot of things to do. So I just felt like I wasn't progressing and nobody wanted to kind of inspire me to do anything different. So I was like, yo, man, I can I can do something different. Jam was like, well, not me. I'm loving this whatever. But I told him that, you know, just being candid, Man, I can't remember it.

00:34:51
Speaker 1: I can't.

00:34:52
Speaker 4: I'm going to put the well the album, I'll tell you the album that derived from it was the eighty seven on one album.

00:35:00
Speaker 1: I said, it's yeah two thousand and one in the title. Yeah, there you go.

00:35:06
Speaker 4: So I said to Terry because he said nobody was inspiring him and we and that's one of the things. I mean, really the songs that we write come from the inspiration of working with the artists, and I mentioned Usher to Terry. I said, man, you got to get with Usher. I said, this dude, you'd love him, You'd love him. And I remember we had Usher come to town actually initially to finish a song that he had already started, and then that turned out so well that I'm telling you.

00:35:32
Speaker 1: When Usher and Terry met it.

00:35:34
Speaker 4: Was like literally, you know, like love at first sight got it because Usher had all these ideas and Terry could, you know, even though he he has no filter, but he can filter other people and he can go no, no, no, Let's focus on this lyric and this melody and this kind of stuff, right. And then there was a song we had written for actually a girl that we ended up not working with that. Terry said, Jim, remember that song we had with that melody that went to dun and whatever it was. I said, oh, yeah, I remember that. He said I'm gonna do something with that. I'm gonna do something with that.

00:36:05
Speaker 1: Well.

00:36:06
Speaker 4: By the time that evening ended, which was kind of the three of us. The next day, when Usher came back to the studio, I took my ass to the other room because I did not need to be there. They needed to have their time together. So in that case, I was a six toe. And it was interesting because Usher spoke on our There's a jam In Lewis documentary that's being done, and one of the things I heard Usher say that I never really knew until I heard him say in the documentary was he thought I didn't like him because I was never around.

00:36:38
Speaker 1: And he would go to Terry. He go, Terry, where's jam An He'd go, oh, He's over there. He's over there.

00:36:44
Speaker 4: He's like, why did he never come around? He never comes around? And then one day he wanted to do a song that was like he wanted to do kind of a tender love type of song, and he said to Terry, man, I want to do one of those tender love type, you know, ballads with the piano and stuff. And then Terry goes, oh, you got to talk to jam I'm about that, and so then he sends, you know, Usher over to me and we ended up doing a song can you Help Me God, which was yeah. So at that point was when Usher realized that it was just one of those things where I'm around if I'm needed, but you guys don't really need me. You know, you guys got it. You you have that that that magic.

00:37:31
Speaker 2: When you take on a client. Do you have songs already and like hear these songs? What do you think? Or is it like do you do it on the spot with him? Like do they want the horse and pony show or that it's the mirrors of it all.

00:37:44
Speaker 3: Definitely a combination.

00:37:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we we always prided ourselves on the best comblem we could ever get from an artist. When would be when an artist would say, oh, I love this, this, this is the way I should sound. And I remember the best one though was Berry White. I remember on Barry White. We were working at that point. We still had Prospective Records, but we had taken over the whole Black department of A and M Records because they were shutting at that point, they were shutting down all the black departments. This is like mid nineties, and so they said, we'll keep the Black department if you guys want to run it, and we didn't want to run it.

00:38:17
Speaker 1: But wait, they.

00:38:19
Speaker 4: At the time was there, Yeah, but it was happening. It was it was a industry wide thing that was happening. They were getting rid of the black divisions at all the labels and so oh yeah, because.

00:38:31
Speaker 2: We were the getting pigs for Hey, we're going to start a black division. So I just thought like there was a fever out there. I didn't realize that there was a drought.

00:38:38
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, No, there was definitely a drought.

00:38:40
Speaker 5: And so well, black music had become pop music at that point too, got it. So the pop department was taking all that revenue and shoving it back into their department, and they were getting rid of the urban department because all of us pop anyway got it.

00:38:57
Speaker 4: So we ended up on Barry White. We said, well, produce a couple of songs on Barry. And we did these two songs, and I remember, you know, I would always do the demos of the songs, right, So I'm on there like yeah, baby that I'm doing my very white voice the whole thing.

00:39:14
Speaker 1: Right.

00:39:15
Speaker 4: So he comes to town, we play him the song and when the song goes off, he just doesn't say anything. And we always called him mister White. He was never buried. It was mister White. He said, mister White, what do you think. We sat there for a second, then he reared back with this big laugh. And he said, oh, sounds.

00:39:35
Speaker 1: Like me, and we said, sounds like me.

00:39:41
Speaker 4: That's what you want all artists to feel if we wrote a song for them, we would want them to feel like that's their song. And he felt like that's my song. When he said that, you knew that was the green light.

00:39:51
Speaker 1: Yes see, I would have been scared because I wanted to say it feels like me. Yeah, so okay, he says, sounds like me.

00:39:58
Speaker 2: I'm about to say you nailed it, actually, and how you guys captured it was you took it from a very specific sounding Barry White song that wouldn't be captain obviously. I think anyone else would try to instantly try to bow chick awhow out their way and said I'm going to love you little yes, yeah, like if it were Dan Hartman. Oh God, you know that I got you.

00:40:22
Speaker 1: I got you.

00:40:22
Speaker 2: You feel your gravity record with Jess Brown exactly. I actually thought it was very tasteful for how you you guys handled that we had.

00:40:28
Speaker 4: I'll tell you one more quick one that we felt the same way about was we love the Isley Brothers and Chris Jasper for me, keyboard wise, moviie, that's my my guru as far as writing an inspiration for the way that I did chords and all that stuff. And I remember when the Isley Brothers were going to come to town and we had this song called.

00:40:48
Speaker 1: You're All I Need.

00:40:49
Speaker 4: And I remember I hadn't even sung the demo to it yet, so when we started playing it, I started singing, and so it was Ernie and Ron in the room and I start singing and I go, dad.

00:41:04
Speaker 1: Like that, and then Ron goes like he knew where it was going. I got it.

00:41:10
Speaker 4: And then Ernie goes, you got an acoustic guitar. It was like yeah, and he starts playing, and that's when you knew you nailed it. And that's one of the things I think is probably our superpower as writers and producers is being able to analyze what somebody has done before, what worked, what didn't work, and then making that song it feels like them Linel Ritchie was a funny one because you didn't realize we did the players right.

00:41:38
Speaker 1: There's two versions of the chat. Yeah. Now I feel bad that he's not in the chat.

00:41:43
Speaker 2: I have a chat group of every producer known, but I made a specific one just for him to come in and whatever but when we listened to I Want to Take You Down, I was actually mad as shit, Like that's the first time I got mad at you guys. And why would they give him such a banger like that.

00:42:04
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's just like, but.

00:42:07
Speaker 4: See the first song we did with Lionel, because we said with Lionel, we want to take you back to the Commodore's days.

00:42:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we did a.

00:42:14
Speaker 4: Song called Don't Want to Lose You the Soul Train video, Yes, exactly, and.

00:42:18
Speaker 1: He when he heard that song, he once again he just was kind of like he just kind of listening.

00:42:23
Speaker 4: And I'm like, oh, oh girl, and I'm doing basically Lonel Richie and he goes man, he said, y'all literally just wrote like my song, Like I know that's my song, but I couldn't write it because I've already written that song.

00:42:36
Speaker 1: But you guys wrote a new my song. You know, got it.

00:42:40
Speaker 4: And that was always the best compliment to me that you would get from people with any any artists.

00:42:45
Speaker 2: Okay, so when you take on a client, and I know sometimes a client will come in with a team, a best friend, a sibling, a manager micromanaging an r or whatever. I'm certain now you're your Jedi mind trick games are like superb Yeah, I was going to say, without naming a name, how do you communicate with each other when you want to have a conversation, but you have to communicate without letting off that you're going to Jedi mind trick them, or you know, just do one more take or.

00:43:23
Speaker 3: Just let it flow.

00:43:24
Speaker 5: Man, you know you don't Jedi mind trick that that is the Jedi mind trick. Oh yeah, okay, you just let it flow. Like I'm not looking for anything perfect. Everything to me is perfectly imperfect anyway, So that's just part of what it is. And we just let it flow. And what's best wins. So I love when artists think they know, are you either give somebody some rope to the.

00:43:51
Speaker 3: Man, I'll let you go out there, I'll let you go and I'll listen.

00:43:56
Speaker 5: And I said, okay, one more time, one more time, ten more time. Pretre is it how you like it yet?

00:44:02
Speaker 3: M Oh you got it? Okay, why don't we try it my way?

00:44:06
Speaker 1: All right?

00:44:06
Speaker 3: So let's get it. That's how I am.

00:44:09
Speaker 2: I'm that way with usher, by the way, but that's just on the But who is a stubborn artist that you don't mind saying is stubborn as far as like wanting to do chase perfection or this isn't right.

00:44:20
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, hey, Shaka was the other way. I did enough, that's enough, but it's not right.

00:44:27
Speaker 1: Baby.

00:44:27
Speaker 2: Oh I forgot those Oh you forgot. There's there's the one or two takes and that's it.

00:44:32
Speaker 1: That's it. You know you got it.

00:44:34
Speaker 5: But yeah, but your timing is bad and your pitch is bad. And certainly I can tune it, but you can sing it faster than I can tune it.

00:44:40
Speaker 2: Can you say that what you pulled on punches? No, you're the good back cop of being back cop.

00:44:46
Speaker 3: No, I'm just honest. You know, you know, fact doesn't care how you feel.

00:44:51
Speaker 5: I'm gonna say what I got to say, and you could take it out you want to take it now.

00:44:55
Speaker 3: This is gonna be your record forever.

00:44:57
Speaker 5: Yes, I'm gonna be done with it in a couple of hours here, if this is what you're gonna give me.

00:45:01
Speaker 1: Have you said these words of people? Yes, yes, I'm not.

00:45:05
Speaker 5: I'm not trying to argue with people about stuff this arm Well, we all try to win the record game, like we all try to make the best record we possibly can.

00:45:14
Speaker 1: I asked Sting.

00:45:15
Speaker 5: We work with Sting on some products, okay, And I asked thing. I said, well, how many times do you like to sing something? He said not very many? And I said, all right, bro right, So that's that's what that's whatever it is, that's what it's gonna be.

00:45:29
Speaker 3: So this is the best we gonna get.

00:45:32
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, okay, I've not heard this song. Oh it's called my Funny Friend in Me, Oh from the kitchen, you know what? I think I went to the premiums Premier No, No, what's the Disney theater on? Yeah, the El Capitan, right, I think.

00:45:49
Speaker 2: I went there once because I didn't know this existed, and I had to go to Disney.

00:45:54
Speaker 1: For some reason. I didn't know the whole thing, like they do a magic show, none of that, like ladies and gentlemen. Sting and he came and performed this song. We performed with him.

00:46:02
Speaker 3: Did I see you?

00:46:03
Speaker 1: Guys? You saw us?

00:46:04
Speaker 4: And that was the thing. When the movie ended, the screen came up right and we started playing. I didn't know you were there? Yes, yeah, because my son was there. Tyler had just been born. He was maybe four years old.

00:46:14
Speaker 1: Five years old. I had to pull for some reason. I don't know what it was. Yeah, but okay, yeah, how about that? Wow, I didn't realize it.

00:46:21
Speaker 2: Sting is one of my favorite incorrect harmony person if you're a fan of the Police, his harmony choices are so they're correct, but they're incorrect because he doesn't do the full chord.

00:46:33
Speaker 1: He might do like the yes, the.

00:46:35
Speaker 2: First and the fifth and the seventh chord. That's flash yes, but I love it.

00:46:39
Speaker 1: In that case, if someone has a trademark or something like that, like again, do you just let him roll with it or absolutely?

00:46:47
Speaker 5: That's the style matters more than anything to me. I mean correct, not correct. You know that's arbitrary. But you know, if you got a style, man, if people can recognize your work right away, they hear a few notes and they say all that, and then you got something. Now we got something to work with. Now let's figure out how to make that style into something cool.

00:47:11
Speaker 3: You know.

00:47:12
Speaker 4: I think when we were working I remember when we were working with Mary J. Blige, and I remember we played her a bunch of songs because we had done a bunch of whole all kinds of different kind of sounding songs for her because we were trying to expand you know, what she was doing, and she didn't like any of them, and she was just like and we.

00:47:27
Speaker 1: Were like, well, Mary, what are you looking for it? How do you take rejection? I'm cool with it?

00:47:32
Speaker 3: Absolutely.

00:47:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, we never took you don't have someone has someone turned down a song that like you later gave to someone else's like it worked?

00:47:41
Speaker 1: Probably it?

00:47:42
Speaker 4: Probably so, although we didn't do a lot of that because we were so specific in making our songs for a specific artists. The one I mentioned earlier that ended up with with Usher, which ended up being a song called Towirk It Out, which was a pretty big record for him just as an album cut, But that was for another artist. But it was just a melody and we had never really got with that artist other than we did get it was her artist. We got with her one time and just were like, it just was it wasn't compatible.

00:48:12
Speaker 1: Got it.

00:48:12
Speaker 4: It was one where somebody thought it would be a great idea if we got together and it just wasn't.

00:48:16
Speaker 1: How long in the process do you know if it's not going to work?

00:48:21
Speaker 4: I think you know pretty much immediately. But we would do our homework before we would even work with an artist, we'd always have long conversation or we'd try to meet with them and we would try to see I mean, and having conversations with them. Everybody has their own dialect, their own way that they talk, their own phrases and those kinds of things, and we would always kind of sit and talk, and as the talking was happening, there'd be certain phrases or certain ways they say, or certain subjects they'd want to talk about, and then we would then you know, Terry would be writing stuff down. I might be sitting at a piano and just playing some chords, and if if all of a sudden in the conversation, they'll go.

00:48:56
Speaker 1: Wait, what's that? What's that?

00:48:57
Speaker 4: What's that you just played? Be like, oh, that was just this, and then Terry will go do you hear something for that? And they might hit a little bit of a melody and something, and then Terry would go, well, that sounds like, you know, I love something blah blah blah. And so when those kinds of organic things happen, I think that's when we would know that, yeah, this is the right artist. But we would also have to feel like we were the best people for doing that.

00:49:22
Speaker 1: Artist got it.

00:49:22
Speaker 4: There were so many artists that we kind of turned away. A big one because he's on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ballot this year is Pink.

00:49:32
Speaker 1: So Pink you know.

00:49:34
Speaker 4: Roger Davies, the manager, he wanted her to come to Minneapolis because she was making this rock record and they were scared. They were like, you know, we got to put some R and B songs on.

00:49:43
Speaker 1: Here, so we cool. So Pink comes up.

00:49:47
Speaker 4: We instantly wrote a song something about girlfriend, but I just can't remember what it was. But we instantly wrote a song and it was it was cool. And then we said what are you looking for? And she said, oh, the record company just feels like, you know, I'm gonna lose my audience and whatever. We said, oh wow. We said can we hear what you've got so far? And she said, okay. So she plays us the record and it's all the Linda Perry stuff. There's some Dallas Austin stuff. I think it's brilliant, and so we're like, you don't need us, you got your record and she said, yeah, well La read kind of feels like whatever.

00:50:20
Speaker 1: Whatever.

00:50:21
Speaker 4: We said, Oh okay, I said, we'll call La. So I called La and I said, hey, man, let me have a comment. Oh, he goes house, Pink coming, Hou's Pink coming. I said, La, it's coming.

00:50:30
Speaker 1: Cool.

00:50:30
Speaker 4: But I said, you don't really need us on this project. He said what do you mean? And I said, let me give you two examples. I said, there was a girl in Canada. She was okay, she was selling records. She was, you know, nice pop star, nice thing. Said she came to America. She made a record called Jagged Little Pill. He said, Atlantis Morris that. I said, yeah. I said, Then there's this guy.

00:50:47
Speaker 1: I said. He had a you know, like a double platinum album, like a top ten single. You know he's kicking butt. You know it's going to be great.

00:50:54
Speaker 4: And I said, the next album comes out with some leg warmers and a trench coat and bikinis.

00:50:58
Speaker 1: And he goes Prince and I said yeah.

00:51:01
Speaker 4: And I said okay, now, because I told him, take your record company hat off. And I said that and then I said now, I said take your record company hat off.

00:51:11
Speaker 1: So he says, are you telling me you think Pink is Prince.

00:51:15
Speaker 4: And Alanis morriseaid a star, yep, and I said yes, And I said now put your record company hat back on. You have your first single, and he said, what's that. I said, get the party started. And he said why. I said, because get the party started.

00:51:29
Speaker 1: See it at the.

00:51:31
Speaker 4: Time, Well, at least that wasn't what he was telling them, you know, And he said, I said, because, I said, it keeps her old audience. I mean, they won't be offended by that record, but it will bring in her a new audience for her in the direction that she wants to go. And I remember then, you know, three months later, four months later, the album comes out and everybody called us because this is pre internet and all that stuff, So we were getting phone calls what y'all do on pink sut So we didn't do anything on her album. They said, well in the credit she thanks you. She says thank you Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis, and I said, oh, we made a phone call. So we had a lot of situations like that where we turned something down, or we said ABC, the English Group after we did the Human League ABC, they were trying to make. They said we're trying to make a Jam and Lewis record. We said, okay, cool, and we said play us what you got they said, we want you guys to produce this song.

00:52:26
Speaker 1: We said, okay, cool. We go there.

00:52:28
Speaker 4: I think we're at A and M and they play this song and we're like listening to it and Terry said when the song went off, Terry said, I got four words for you, and they say, what's that?

00:52:41
Speaker 1: He said, put that shit out? Oh, and they said, what do you mean put that shit out? They said, we said, put that shit out. You don't need us on this record. They were like, oh, well, we don't know.

00:52:52
Speaker 4: It was How to Be a Millionaire ended up being a huge record for them, but it was one of those things where you know we're not I'll give you one last ample of it. Well, I'm thinking about it. Clive Davis calls us to New York. He says, I'm working on a Wreatha Franklin record and we think, you know, we'd like you for you guys to do and Clive's thing was do but we just need if you do demos of whatever, And we'd always go Clive, we don't do demos. And we said who else is on the record and he named a couple people, right, and then he goes and then there's this young fella Oh, he's kind of new uh narrati Michael Walden and we.

00:53:27
Speaker 1: Said, oh, he's the one, he's the one. Michael. Well, he's kind of untested and he's kind of what I said, untested. I said no, no, no, no, I said no, he's a serious musician. He's the one. Fast forward three months later, Free Way of Love. You could have been on a whom zoom and who.

00:53:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you know about the intimidating factor of wreatha Franklin.

00:53:47
Speaker 1: Back then, No, we had a whole concept of what we wanted to do with the wreath.

00:53:51
Speaker 4: Well, he's eighty five pre control like and you were fine with just being like em were.

00:53:57
Speaker 1: Good because not everything was meant for us. I don't know how I say the words no. I'm learning now. Yeah. Yeah, but it's also like my thirty fourth year in show business. Well, but it wasn't for us.

00:54:08
Speaker 4: It never was no. And by the way, the no for us it was always a no with a butt no. But you know who would be really great for this would be this person or you should go see this person. We did a lot of that, and even with Lionel Ritchie when he first called us on the Dancing on the scene Land album is when he first called us and we said he wanted one record. He said, I just need one record, and we're like, nah, come back when you need three records.

00:54:38
Speaker 1: He just didn't want a one off. No, we didn't want to do a one off.

00:54:41
Speaker 4: We wanted to do We wanted to explore him, and we were a fan enough where we felt we could tell a story in the three songs we did got you know whatever. Those three songs were four songs, So that was the way we looked at it. And we just never felt like we had to be the perfect person for it, and if we saw somebody else that was the perfect person, then that's what we try to you know, moving in that direction.

00:55:01
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:55:02
Speaker 5: And the other side of it too is that we've never been afraid of being rejected, Like that's how we got to do Janet.

00:55:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I'm sorry. Laugh The sharing story Sharon.

00:55:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, boy, we got rejected.

00:55:18
Speaker 1: Have you I'm not mad?

00:55:20
Speaker 2: Guys ever came across there after that, yes, yes, yeah, And did she sort of say like damn.

00:55:27
Speaker 4: She didn't say this directly to me, but what I heard from someone who is a relative of hers was that she was intimidated by us. She didn't feel she was worthy of us, and at.

00:55:39
Speaker 3: That time, there was not much to be worthy of.

00:55:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we had a couple of hits, but yeah, it was Yeah, it was nothing to be afraid of. Yeah right, yeah, nothing to be afraid of. And I think people were maybe, I mean I think she was a little intimidated.

00:55:52
Speaker 1: Yes, when people getting their own way. Man.

00:55:54
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you know, like I said, we're boys from Minneapolis, man, like we're used to rejection.

00:55:59
Speaker 3: That that was just part of the day.

00:56:14
Speaker 2: When Mary is saying like I don't like this, I don't like that if you're creating on the spot, I guess as a drummer, I feel like everything for me has to be the feeling the pace and the pulse and the drummer. So you know, when I'm creating stuff, I'm on drums. But like, how do you make the person see the vision if it's just like you gotta procure them something real quick and you know the exact drum patches you want to use.

00:56:39
Speaker 4: Well, so with Mary in that particular case, So in Mary, like I say, we had put together a bunch of tracks just to have some ideas, just to play her, just to get a feel of what it was she was trying to do. When she didn't like the three or four things that we played her, we said, what is it that you're looking for? And she said, I want something that's sounds like me. And we were like, okay, something that sounds like you. Okay, cool. Well we got this other track here, and we played the track with the child no no, Love is All we Need would end up becoming love is All We Need. And when that record came on, boom boom butter the boom to boom, the doom to doom, and she got up and started doing the Mary J. Blige dance her and her sister. Yeah, she started hitting that dance and she said, oh, hell yeah, this one I'm talking about, this one I'm talking about And we said, yeah, but isn't Puffy giving you songs like this?

00:57:35
Speaker 1: She said, I ain't working with Puffy. Got it?

00:57:38
Speaker 4: And then we said, oh okay. Well then we got this other one, which was everything, and she heard that and she was like, oh my god, this is it, this is it. So those are the kind of things that that kind of happened. So when we gave her exactly what it was, she wanted. We thought she was already getting that from someone else, so we were like, Okay, well we'll try to take her in another you know, Puffy's got that handled.

00:57:57
Speaker 1: We'll go in this direction with her.

00:58:00
Speaker 2: Your post heartbreak phase, were you two at all concerned? And I look, I know the correct answer is yes, we have to go linear and change with the times and not be sentimental and move forward, move Ford, YadA, YadA, YadA.

00:58:12
Speaker 1: But there are.

00:58:14
Speaker 2: Especially after nineteen ninety five, in which I'm getting you know, it's one thing where you have an album and you read credits and all that stuff. But during the CD era, occasionally I read the books or whatever. But I honestly didn't know that y'all did Bad Girl, or like half the stuff y'all did. I didn't even realize it was you guys until like years later, Like.

00:58:37
Speaker 1: That doesn't even sound like them.

00:58:40
Speaker 2: Was there ever a conversation that you two had like we have to modernize and be present with where music's going today.

00:58:51
Speaker 5: I don't think we ever think like that. Okay, what feels best? You know, I never think about modern or any that. I mean, if you keep up with technology, I guess you'll be modern I guess to a certain degree, but you know, I have a way of thinking about things, you know. I know most people don't know what they like. They like what they know. So if you can get something that they can recognize as part of their DNA, then you got something or the start of something.

00:59:22
Speaker 2: So I thought Love he was very smart because that wasn't a captain obvious sample, right unless you have the Globe record.

00:59:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, that's right, you know.

00:59:32
Speaker 2: So even to me, like I was like, okay, well they're going there, but they're going to another.

00:59:39
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:59:39
Speaker 3: But that's how Jam samples.

00:59:41
Speaker 5: He he samples different, but other people, I mean, his loops are just different, by.

00:59:46
Speaker 4: The way, I will say on that record when you're talking about somebody that isn't quite bringing the performance. So the interesting thing was when Nas came up to do is rap, and I remember it was the first time. I mean, we terry and I don't drink so, but I remember there was all of a sudden, a bunch of guinness at the studio, okay, and I remember Nas went in to do his rap, and you know, we didn't fancy ourselves as rap producers. But he goes in and does his rap and he does, you know, three or four takes and stuff, and Mary's like, yeah, yeah, this is great, this is great.

01:00:22
Speaker 1: And we're kind of going. We're like, dude, are you sure you want to do another one? He's like, no, no, this is it.

01:00:27
Speaker 3: I got it.

01:00:28
Speaker 1: I got it. Cool. Okay cool.

01:00:30
Speaker 4: So we mixed the record, we send the record and he goes, oh no, hell no, I got to come back and do redo that rap. It's like, okay, cool, and so he did, and of course he killed it when he came back. But that was kind of interesting. I mean, because I'm not going to say to nas. I mean, we weren't experts in rap, so it's like, if you think this is good, I mean, you know your standards. If you think this is up to your standards, then we're not going to argue with you.

01:00:53
Speaker 2: Hasn't a rap group ever approached you guys, a rap artist ever approached you guys about producing them?

01:00:58
Speaker 4: You know, Snoop did, and we had some great ashes for him. Oh my god, when he wanted the eight oh eight and he won. I don't even know what he wanted. I just remember we had like I thought it was like a magic session, like it blew his mind, like, because we were just coming up with song after song, track after track, and he was like, oh man, yeah, yeah, okay, I gotta really think on this. I gotta really think on this. So maybe he didn't really like it. I don't know, but we never ended up doing a thing on him. Let's see, we were in the old studio, so two thousand and eight, maybe seven, two thousand and eight, around that period of time.

01:01:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to say, yeah.

01:01:32
Speaker 4: And we did, and we had I don't know, we probably did ten tracks on him something like that, and.

01:01:38
Speaker 1: They're still in existence. They're on a hard drive somewhere.

01:01:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, somewhere, yep.

01:01:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, are they timeless enough to still come out now?

01:01:45
Speaker 4: Or I'd have to listen to him. I don't remember him. I just remember the vibe was great because we wanted, you know, we kind of felt like we always wanted to blow the artist's minds when they came in. We wanted to surprise him, and you know, whatever their expectation was, we wanted to try to blow them away. And snoop, we were such big fans of his and we knew we always treated it like we're fans of the person that's coming in. So what would we want to hear if we had gone to the record store and picked that record up or that CD up? What would we want to hear on that CD? And now was the songs we would try to create?

01:02:20
Speaker 1: Got it?

01:02:20
Speaker 4: And we did that with Snoop. But we had some great stuff. But we you know, we actually forged a great relationship because of that.

01:02:26
Speaker 1: I have a question about Charelle's product. Would you say that she's kind of the testing ground for jam and Lewis, because you know, I listened to her entire discography that you guys did in the last two weeks and noticed that you guys used way different drum machines, different ideas. Where that saxophone come from? I never heard this before? Whatever?

01:02:51
Speaker 2: So was she always a testing ground for you to see how far you can push.

01:02:57
Speaker 1: Ideas? Or was that a mental telect No.

01:03:02
Speaker 4: No, it's a it's a great question, great observation.

01:03:06
Speaker 2: The other thing is, because I know that you're also responsible for the secreence thing, I forgot to ask you this on a fair by then I was in Columbia House, so I got affair. The first week it came out, Discreet had a different intro on it. I have a version of a fair where Discreet has her and a party talking to her girlfriend whatever at the intro and then now on streaming, Discreet starts with her saying backwards, what's the next song?

01:03:36
Speaker 1: Jimmy jam? But yes, it's backwards. Why were there two versions of that? Was that?

01:03:41
Speaker 4: I have no idea. I'd have to hear the one the other version that you have. You know there's two off the walls, right okay?

01:03:47
Speaker 1: I mean I know there's with.

01:03:49
Speaker 2: You without the collapse, and there's Get on the Floor without a guitar part, and then like there's two uh, there's two talking books?

01:03:55
Speaker 1: Right.

01:03:56
Speaker 4: Wait, isn't there with You at the Sunshine of My Life? Because there's the ones with the horns and that has the horns dun d d and there's the one the original album didn't have those horns sections.

01:04:07
Speaker 1: I gotta check that. Okay, I didn't know that, but no, I was just wanted to know was their method of did you hear mid thing? Like, ah, that's the wrong version they put keys up version and did you switch?

01:04:20
Speaker 4: I don't remember, So now I'm gonna have to jog my memory and find out about that.

01:04:24
Speaker 2: And because you guys also handled the sequencing of the record. Why is Everything I Missed at Home like whenever song is like the fourth song on side too? And this is also from a guy whose biggest single was the third to last song on.

01:04:40
Speaker 1: Like an hour into it. Why did y'all put that so late?

01:04:44
Speaker 2: When I figured Everything I Missed at Home would least be on side one and hit him.

01:04:49
Speaker 1: With it, But because it was kind of its own thought.

01:04:52
Speaker 4: And when we sequenced albums, I mean, we use different philosophy for different artists, but I know on a lot of times we would put the up tempos up front and we would try to in some way segue them together, which I think I know on the Affair album we did that. We segued the first three songs together, And so I think I don't think. I think Everything I Missed at Home was the first song on the B side, if I'm not mistaken, though I think it did lead the B side.

01:05:19
Speaker 3: You asked something about like Sharill.

01:05:21
Speaker 1: Was she.

01:05:24
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, And I have to say to a certain degree yes, because she had was fine with this.

01:05:31
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, she actually revered it. Yes, she was a guinea pig for a lot of stuff and was happy. Yeah.

01:05:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, we learned how to work a studio recording her album. We actually tried to work hard to find her songs because she's such a quirky person her personality, and she has a quirky voice, so you have to find the songs that fit her personality.

01:05:56
Speaker 1: Got it, you know.

01:05:57
Speaker 4: So we had an engineer walk out on us when we were doing the album that was just Saturday Love on it, and the engineer just walked out on us, and so we had to figure out how to record ourselves. And we just said, we're never going to be dependent on somebody because of late hours or it's just no, it was a business. It was a business thing we were gonna They wanted to be partners with us on a studio and so we were like, okay, great, let's do it.

01:06:21
Speaker 1: And so we ended up its Steve.

01:06:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was different Steve.

01:06:26
Speaker 4: Well, different Steve. No, it's a difference, not Steve No, no worries. No, it was a different Steve and his partner and they had actually creation audio down their basement of their house, and that's what we did. Didn't mean to turn you on. We did the Change album, Change a Heart down. A lot of it down there anyway, our member, our accountant.

01:06:45
Speaker 3: No, it was I did the numbers.

01:06:47
Speaker 5: I showed them the Clarence and good motherfucker, you can't have an old studio, Puncy, don't don't have a studio, Clarence. These are the numbers. And if we're bringing the work, we need a studio, we're gonna pay somebody for a studio. Look at the numbers. He looked at him, said, you know what, you're right. Fuck ship. So you know he's pissed about it. So you know, we went back to the guys and told him like, okay, so your expertise, we're still willing to work with you. You know, you could be studio manager, you could be engineer, whatever, but we're not gonna co own this thing.

01:07:29
Speaker 4: And they weren't, but they know they weren't. But see they weren't bringing anything into it.

01:07:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:07:34
Speaker 3: Our thing was we're buying the building.

01:07:37
Speaker 1: We're buying the building, we're buying the equipment that's going in the building.

01:07:41
Speaker 3: You can manage it for us.

01:07:42
Speaker 4: So and because that was the thing. So what I was gonna say was the accountant we had at the time was actually Byron Frank, who is you know, the girl runs First Avenue. Yes, her dad okay, it was her dad. He was our first accountant and he and I know, he said, well, wait a minute, if it's a partnership, you guys are buying the building, are they bringing their equipment? And we're like no, no, we're gonna buy equipment. And then he said, so what are they bringing. They're not bringing anything, and so that was the thing. So anyway, so Steve Wese is his name, So he was cool with it. He was like, well, you know what, I'll just engineer. That's fine. But his partner, I think maybe felt left out in the called and so with solidarity to his partner, he just walked away. And we were in the middle of working on the Charrell album, so Charill became literally the guinea pig.

01:08:29
Speaker 1: Like she'd put.

01:08:30
Speaker 4: Headphones on and we go take your headphones off, all we plug in these this is Did you.

01:08:34
Speaker 1: Have enough knowledge on how to run it? That's a funny thing about it, that.

01:08:38
Speaker 3: Basic knowledge from live performance.

01:08:41
Speaker 5: Yes, okay, so you know you know how to patch this here and get this here and we blew up some speakers and some headphone.

01:08:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, we definitely did.

01:08:48
Speaker 5: But you know, plugging in the wrong stuff and we recorded everything too hot.

01:08:53
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:08:54
Speaker 4: But but the thing about a patch bay is like you have to almost learn it hands on, to watch an engineer do it and know where to plug that in and then plug that in and all that looks like spaghetti junction, right, And that was the thing. Once we figured out how to do it ourselves, we were then self sufficient, and all the other writers and producers that we would bring in, we teach them how to do it and we go, You guys can run your own sessions because we never wanted to be dependent on anybody else.

01:09:24
Speaker 1: Pretty much in a lot of.

01:09:26
Speaker 4: Ways because because it's one thing to tell somebody what you want to get. Like, particularly when we do vocals, Terry always runs his own vocals. He never has an engineer, because you could have an engineer and you go grab that again or get that one part or whatever, and it's like, no, just do it yourself. You know what it is you're trying to get.

01:09:42
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:09:43
Speaker 5: We learned in the destructive years, like you were recording to tape, yeah, and so if you punched in on something it was officially gone sound heavy, yes, But when pro tools came, you know, you could make a mistake, punch in anywhere and be you know, fix it later.

01:10:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll pull it out later.

01:10:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.

01:10:03
Speaker 2: All right, So alexandro Neil I already know the Sambo's pancake story best story of all time. However, you know, listen to Innocent. I always wondered, like, okay, so what in an alternate universe if Alex was the leader of the time, do you think that Alex would have actually air quote played ball at least enough to get through the first two albums? In other words, knowing Prince's task master reputation and already what you've said about Alex and the whole deal at the pancake spot and him walking out or whatever. Listen to Jam's nine hour interview based on Alex talking himself out at the time. Do you think you would have wound up with the same results if Alex Because if you listen to Innocent, which is an o my age or not to get it.

01:11:00
Speaker 1: Up, Yes, I was like, yeah, this I could see it working.

01:11:06
Speaker 2: Mars is also a character and whatnot, and there's humor and all that stuff, But is Alex easily mouldible and the way that Prince groomed Mars into the character that he was.

01:11:16
Speaker 1: Would Alex had been that mouldible.

01:11:18
Speaker 5: No, no, no, but Alex would be flexible. You understand, Alex is probably one of the most versatile vocalists that I know. Like, if there was one male vocalist I could choose to be, Alex would be the guy. Got it because he can rock up tempo the same way he can rock a ballot, and he could go across genres. He could do country, he can do pop, he could do new wave at that point in time, and the time was supposed to be a.

01:11:51
Speaker 3: New wave band.

01:11:53
Speaker 2: Okay, I know there was a period in eighty one, especially when you watch the bus boys and trading places and everyone was doing the Carlton.

01:12:00
Speaker 1: And all that stuff. I almost feel like the black version of a New Way.

01:12:05
Speaker 2: And you know, I've watched Ozone, Alligator Woman by a cameo and whatnot, and look, Okay, after high School was like one of my favorite time songs, like it's associated with the good memory of my life. But like, did you guys really think that, like, okay, this new wave thing is really going to stick in this is were you really prepared to the new waves?

01:12:33
Speaker 1: Seemed like a Noah's Arc that was going to that you were going to hang on to. I don't think we think.

01:12:38
Speaker 3: Of genres like that though. I really don't.

01:12:41
Speaker 5: I think where we were, all that stuff was budding and spinning in our orbit all the time. I mean, the least amount of things that we would get would probably be R and B. There was always pop, pop, rock, rock, you know, new wave, grunge. All that stuff was coming out of Seventh Avenue was seventh at.

01:13:05
Speaker 3: First Avenue.

01:13:05
Speaker 2: But was there a passion for it like for some people, yes, did you see it as like people saw hip hop, I gotta do some new Jack swing?

01:13:14
Speaker 5: For for us, I'd never seen saw any of it as like the holy grail of anything.

01:13:21
Speaker 3: It was just music, you know, So you like this if you don't like that.

01:13:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, we liked playing that song. I remember that we played it on the first tour and we loved playing it. But yeah, I don't. I kind of agree with Terry there. I don't really think and we weren't thinking. We certainly weren't thinking in terms of, oh, this is going to revolutionize where music is that kind of thing. We just thought it was a great album, and our whole thing was like, let's learn these songs, but let's do them better than the album, you know, and better subjective obviously, but that was our whole.

01:13:56
Speaker 2: So part two that question is because I can't imagine just Alex, you know, the way that the first Time album was made with just Mars and Prince in the room together. I can't imagine Alex and Prince just being like in that sort of intimate setting. So I would almost think that he would want the band there at least bounce off of to awkward with that lead singer. Do you think that maybe perhaps you guys would have had a different presentation of the music. Yeah, it had Alex been it would be different, better, not as good.

01:14:37
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, would have been different.

01:14:39
Speaker 5: It would have been different, and not in a bad way, just different.

01:14:45
Speaker 1: You know.

01:14:45
Speaker 5: Mores Mores even developed into that personality that made those songs work, and so by the time the album was yelling into an album, Moors was the personality that was being structured within those songs. Had those songs been done for Alex, Alex already.

01:15:04
Speaker 3: Had a personality, got it okay?

01:15:07
Speaker 5: And so Alex was a bad He had some songs that he had done with other people that were very very new wave songs.

01:15:18
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he sure did.

01:15:19
Speaker 5: Yeah that that were good and we performed some of them sometimes. So yeah, that that was just part of the DNA of the day. It's like, that kind of stuff is happening. And if we can play that stuff and get in and play Seventh Street entry Ship.

01:15:36
Speaker 3: We can get in there and get a gig. We're gonna play that, like just like we play some poker.

01:15:42
Speaker 6: I was going to say, you had to do whatever you had to do to get the gig if you're in Alabama or if you're in Houston, are they like okay?

01:15:57
Speaker 2: Only because I know Princess rockabilly Elvis thing. I've seen many a time show where you guys, do everybody dance to the beat? Which is the most untime sounding was that ever recorded on?

01:16:10
Speaker 3: I think a live version?

01:16:13
Speaker 1: Okay?

01:16:14
Speaker 2: But like do they if you know, Minneapolis is open to it, maybe New York and LA are open to it.

01:16:20
Speaker 1: When you go to Black Towns or whatever.

01:16:24
Speaker 4: Well, you know what was funny was would the reaction be different if you do something outside of the funk genre. I just remember the reaction that we did. We did a you know, we call it the Chitlin Circuit tour, and it basically was two station wagons and we were down south. We were North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia. You know, we were doing all those dates down in that area. And I remember the well, the first date we did, the club had a big pillar in the middle of it that was kind of on the stage, and we had our manager road manager was named Jamie Shoop.

01:16:56
Speaker 1: I know Jamis Jamie.

01:16:58
Speaker 4: Jamie came in there and she was trying to get them to take the pole away and they said, no, that's a load bearing call. That's holding the roof up, like, we can't get rid of that. And those are the kind of gigs we were doing. They'd be like literally like if you were More's day, I'd be sitting here at the table, Terry'd be sitting here at the table, and the girl would be in the front up right where you are, and the girl would be sitting there look watching you sing and you hit like the fiat baby.

01:17:27
Speaker 1: Nigga.

01:17:28
Speaker 3: Don't you do that that?

01:17:32
Speaker 1: Oh man? It was. It was the craziest thing.

01:17:35
Speaker 4: But I remember when we got about three gigs in, we got to one club was so messed up. They wouldn't even let us play. They didn't they didn't even let us get out the car, you know, and we still we still snuck to the club to see what it was like because we were just headed. But in none g Greensboro, North Carolina, Cosmos.

01:17:57
Speaker 1: Okay, that's my home, my dad's home down.

01:18:00
Speaker 4: Okay, what happened? We turned that place. They loved us. They loved our guitar solo, they loved our makeup, they loved our permed hair, they loved everything about us. And it was the first time that it felt like, oh, okay, this could work, this could work, this could work other than Detroit. Well, Detroit and Detroit came after that because we did we did the Chilin I think we did the Chilin Circuit tour first, right, and.

01:18:27
Speaker 1: Then I think we did Detroit or do we do Detroit? You're right, because we only had the single out. We get it up.

01:18:32
Speaker 5: Detroit first and that was wonderful. Detroit was and then we went everywhere else and it wasn't so wide, it wasn't so wonderful. So that's that's why I always tell you.

01:18:42
Speaker 3: Don't get you can't get good.

01:18:45
Speaker 5: You gotta get booed to get good because you've got to let you know what you don't have.

01:18:49
Speaker 1: So you've had some audiences with indifference.

01:18:53
Speaker 4: Inference Atlanta, it was like it might have. And we were so excited to get to Atlanta, particularly after Charlotte was so good, Greensboro was so good, and then Atlanta was like the next gig, and we were like, oh, we're gonna kill Atlanta.

01:19:10
Speaker 1: We're thinking, oh, we're gonna kill Progressive.

01:19:13
Speaker 4: I swear to god. Atlanta was like cardboard cutouts. Like we look out in the audience and it was like everybody was just like this.

01:19:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, because Atlanta has its own thing.

01:19:24
Speaker 1: But what was hitting in eighty one in Atlanta?

01:19:27
Speaker 7: Not only people, not us. You might be some zapp you stand on your head with the jocks. Oh yeah, I'll tell you rogers killed. They would kill us in the South. That show would kill us Texas.

01:19:38
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, Okay, So I saw a recent performance of heat Wave. There's an entire heat Wave concert on YouTube about an hour long. They did everything but like the cheerleading stuff from Yeah. I mean at one point they did a human pyramid thing where they're like standing on each other's soul.

01:19:54
Speaker 1: That's right. Was there ever talks like yo, we have to do acrobatics and and no, no, not at all. But y'all look so cool.

01:20:04
Speaker 2: One, you look conservative, and I know Black people are very conservative.

01:20:08
Speaker 1: You're wearing church gear. You look coolish. That didn't fly at all.

01:20:13
Speaker 3: No, I think we look good.

01:20:15
Speaker 1: Yeah it was Martins. They good with hecklers. We didn't have. Yeah, we didn't have hecklers.

01:20:21
Speaker 3: We did. We just did our ship man.

01:20:23
Speaker 1: They were just cold.

01:20:23
Speaker 4: We didn't have heckler's. It was more just that they they just didn't look there. We don't know, they just yeah, they didn't get it.

01:20:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was that.

01:20:30
Speaker 4: Why is the guitar player wearing all pink with a pink guitar eyeliner with eyeliner on doing a crazy ass solo?

01:20:39
Speaker 1: Like what is that? Black people don't do that?

01:20:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, we need some fault.

01:20:43
Speaker 4: Well, it's just like the way that just the way you you talked about how SLY was so different from the other acts that were out. That was the way the time was to people, particularly like in the South, like Detroit loved us.

01:20:55
Speaker 2: They tot I literally thought you the purpose of you guys was to spread the gospel of old boy in the most conservative, safe way. No, I didn't mentioned in that doc that Prince was last. I know that the Time got my attention first. Yeah, and then okay, well let me round it off and listen to Prince, see what he's up to you.

01:21:22
Speaker 1: And then it was like, oh shit.

01:21:23
Speaker 5: But you know why Prince wanted to do the Time anyway, It just became his alter ego product. It's like he had an outlet. He wanted to do R and B and new wave and all those different things, but he was going in the rock direction, pop direction. He didn't want to be down in this slumming with us, but he still had the need to do that because he loved it, and so we became that alter ego band.

01:21:47
Speaker 2: I'm just shocked that even then. I'm not saying that all that you guys were safe. You guys were in w A at least of my parents. You were in w and but at the full army, you guys would probably be safest gateway drug.

01:22:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we were first.

01:22:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was gonna we were first, But we were also very down to earth because Prince, if you think about the controversy tour, even by that point, in time. Prince was about. He was about being a rock star, got it. We were just about going out and kicking some mass. We're just gonna play. I remember with very first gig we ever did, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I remember we got in like the day before and we're just walking around downtown. You know, we got our coats on, got our hats on, were walking around downtown.

01:22:32
Speaker 1: People are going, ain't you all the time? All six of y'all, all six of us, ain't you all the time? Okay?

01:22:39
Speaker 4: And we go, yeah, the only got no bodyguards or nothing. We said no, and y'all walking down just Pittsburgh, just downtown Pittsburgh.

01:22:49
Speaker 1: We're like, yeah, They're like, oh, these motherfuckers are crazy, you know.

01:22:53
Speaker 4: So we already had that reputation, like, oh man, these dudes are crazy.

01:22:56
Speaker 1: They walk in.

01:22:57
Speaker 4: I saw them walking down at the mall. Man, they didn't have no curity, they didn't have nothing. But we didn't think of ourselves like that. We were just like out exploring. But people had that, you know, that thought about us. I'm a project kid, so I'm not. I'm never afraid of black folks, got it.

01:23:12
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, so I can go anywhere around black folks and I'm okay, got it. Okay, So I don't care if I'm in Pittsburgh or Chicago or wherever I feel comfortable in my own skin, because I'm going to be aware. I know what's up. But you know people are not used to artists being like that.

01:23:30
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, because they weren't asking for autographs. No, they were just like, y're.

01:23:35
Speaker 3: Just out here around, y'all, just out here. I remember we used to have to go to wash our clothes.

01:23:42
Speaker 5: Yeah, because you know, at that point, we were making like less than one hundred and fifty bucks, and so we would have to we were on tour with dirty clothes we had to wash.

01:23:51
Speaker 3: We know, we had to go.

01:23:52
Speaker 5: Man it got draws too many, but we had to go to the laundry mat sitting a love. We didn't have people to wash our clothes and stuff. We had to go do that stuff ourselves.

01:24:07
Speaker 1: That still happens.

01:24:08
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:24:08
Speaker 1: I was in Philly once literally happened to be at a red light, looked at my left one off I said, was that Amy literally Amy Winehouse doing her laundry in downtown Philadelphia, And I was like, the hell are you doing here? She said the same thing, like I don't have a staff yet I still do my clothes and so that that's still that still happens.

01:24:30
Speaker 3: That's what's real.

01:24:32
Speaker 1: Like it is, are you singing harmony on seven seven seven?

01:24:48
Speaker 3: Yes?

01:24:49
Speaker 1: Agony? I'm going through whatever. Yeah.

01:24:50
Speaker 2: I was like, that's one voice I don't know at all, and that for the longest that didn't know who that was?

01:24:55
Speaker 3: All right, that Prince told me to go in and do that.

01:24:58
Speaker 1: Got it?

01:24:58
Speaker 2: Okay, So I'm gonna name seven songs funny, how time flies. There is a question I forgot to ask some days to night the body that loves you rope burn, love scene, especially love scene, would you mind?

01:25:16
Speaker 1: And warmth? Do you know what these songs have in common? Which one of you?

01:25:24
Speaker 2: Okay, here's the thing, Like my friendship with jan has developed deeper, probably in the last six or seven years, where it's not fan worship. Like now we're like casual and you know, we crack jokes and all this stuff. But clearly there's a duplicitous two sides the Janet thing. And for someone who's notoriously publicly or I'll do the other peep performatively shy how do you track vocals when she's insinuating orgasms or it? And the thing is we're watching the evolution of her sexuality for each I remember interviews where she was like, I didn't play funny out times, and that's the safest of this what I mentioned. But each each album, you you push it further and further and further. So do you do a lights have to be completely off, Like when I'm doing vocals and I'm just doing like, uh whatever, everyone's.

01:26:19
Speaker 1: Out this montherfucker. They can go out the building, lights off, whatever. Even the engineer is like, out of there. I got to be alone. How do you.

01:26:28
Speaker 2: Build that trust one when she's tracking vocals, especially on the slow songs. Does she just program herself to execute it?

01:26:37
Speaker 1: Well?

01:26:37
Speaker 4: I think there's probably a little of both, but she definitely programs herself to execute it. The lights are all off and by the way, completely off, and there's no engineer in the room.

01:26:47
Speaker 1: There's nobody in the room. It's you know, yeah, only me.

01:26:51
Speaker 4: So you have to track the vocals, yes, unfortunately or not unfortunate, but yes, I have to do it.

01:26:56
Speaker 1: I have to do the heavy lifting here, yes, yeah, But you also have to mix the song and rewind and mix it and mix it and mix it.

01:27:02
Speaker 4: And that more than yeah, what do you call it? I have to comp the vocal right.

01:27:14
Speaker 2: Well, I think one time I asked I don't know if I think I asked Lawrence once like, you know, well, Prince play you guys everything. And I gave an example, like you know, when he made let's pretend and married, like he's like, yay, guys, check this out, or.

01:27:30
Speaker 1: Even do me baby, Do me baby? Is probably his greatest vocal per formance ever. I know there's a vulnerability and a drive to act like Prince, but then when the lights are out, you go back to normal or whatever. But like, does it not get awkward or with Janet? No, I know it wasn't ever awkward at all. It was actually funny. I mean a lot of those tracks. I mean I think you have a lot of those stems.

01:27:57
Speaker 4: She'll laugh at the end or she'll you know, it's just kind of almost like playing a part.

01:28:02
Speaker 2: You know, people like that. Scary people like that scare me where it's like I know one person like that literally by.

01:28:12
Speaker 1: Day, Hey how you doing to me? No?

01:28:13
Speaker 3: No, no, no no.

01:28:15
Speaker 1: And Richard Pride does this the next thing.

01:28:17
Speaker 3: Motherfuck it?

01:28:18
Speaker 2: Like literally, yes, And I just I just wondered about the psychology or at least the relationship or the trust that does it ever get awkward at all?

01:28:28
Speaker 1: No? Not really?

01:28:29
Speaker 4: And yeah, and I think trust is the word there. I mean, it's just if you think about the life and the evolution of it that she was going through, you know, forty years ago, control she was making that transition. But part of her transition I think we've talked about this is when she was going out talking about going out on her own. That trip to Minneapolis was her going out on her own. Where she had to drive herself around, was her and her girlfriend Melanie. She had to drive herself around. We gave her a Thomas Guide because there was no GPS point in time. She had to get from the hotel to the studio. She had to drive herself. We gave her a map to Blockbuster Video, We gave her a map.

01:29:07
Speaker 1: To the sushi place as she liked. And that was it.

01:29:10
Speaker 4: So all of this kind of going out on my own and being my own person and all that, that was all happening in Minneapolis in real time as we were writing the album. You know, Nasty about you know, guys that were bothering her and stuff, and people said, I think those guys are bothering Janet, you should whatever, whatever, and we're like, we're watching it.

01:29:27
Speaker 1: We're cool. And then she came over afterwards and she said, you see those guys were bothering me.

01:29:32
Speaker 4: Did you see those guys? We said, yeah, why didn't you come over and help me? And we said, well, you're over here now, so everything must have been okay. And she was like, oh, yeah, I guess. So, you know, it's like learn to take care of yourself. And so that was very much what it was. But because of that, that's how the trust developed over that, and then we gave her more responsibility on Rhythm Nation, we gave her even more responsibility. She got into the fact of knowing that she's going to be writing, like she's going to be a writer now, and came in with ideas and things she wanted to do, and the trust just grows and the next you know, the evolution of that was some days tonight, you know, where you know, I'd always say it'd be worth a weight well, you know, or sub day is tonight, you know, But yeah, it was just kind of the evolution of somebody kind of growing up.

01:30:17
Speaker 1: But there's no trepidation on her part, like, guys, I don't know if I should be doing this or no, she no, or she the agitator.

01:30:24
Speaker 4: No, she wasn't really the agitator, but it was I guess it was mutual agitation. Like it just was kind of I always liked the idea of that on the song and kind of laying yourself bare and being honest on the record. And you know, listen, sex was part of the record, so got yeah, I just but but no, it never was really awkward and we were, like I said, the lights were always out. We weren't looking at each other one that kind of thing.

01:30:49
Speaker 1: So I don't know if I ever shared the story.

01:30:51
Speaker 2: But right after nine to eleven, maybe a month later, the two thousand and one All for You, All for You, Yeah, it came to the WACOVI Center in Philly, and this is the first time I'm testing the waters to see am my niche artist or and my quest love like meet my peers or whatever. And you know, I had a friend that worked at Virgin because because of years with DiAngelo.

01:31:19
Speaker 1: Yes, I was like, hey can I can I get it?

01:31:21
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, my first free tickets and stuff and backstage injury.

01:31:24
Speaker 1: I was like, oh cool.

01:31:25
Speaker 2: And so I'm in the third row and I know what's coming. I've seen about four or five shows throughout the years, and I know, okay, there's there's gonna be the lap dance song or whatever the song is.

01:31:39
Speaker 1: Yes, And I just happened to be.

01:31:42
Speaker 2: Right in the sweet spot in the front row and she finishes the last three words of I Get Lonely and she entered the song, Oh h what is suspension.

01:31:56
Speaker 1: You? And I looking at me and I'm like about to get I was with James Poorser and we were literally freaking out like it was almost like a recreation of of What's Happening Gang at the Doobie brother Show. Yeah right, and I'm looking like uh and I head to the stage and the security guys like no him, and it's a guy behind me.

01:32:26
Speaker 2: But this is all on the jumbo trunk for all of Philadelphia to see the pie in my face moment.

01:32:33
Speaker 1: And yeah, to this.

01:32:34
Speaker 3: Day, you were imagining you on the stage.

01:32:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, like tying up and there.

01:32:41
Speaker 2: I love it all right, It never you know, it's weird. You remember ABC in concert. Yes, so I know this show was recorded because they showed four or five songs.

01:32:54
Speaker 1: You can not that particular song was shown somewhere in history. It's it's there somewhere. Then we're gonna find that.

01:33:02
Speaker 2: All right, I'm gonna do rapid random all right. What other talents do you guys have that we don't know about? What's your mean talent? Are you good cooks? Are you good at fishing?

01:33:13
Speaker 3: I can cook cause I like to eat.

01:33:16
Speaker 1: When's the last time you cooked for yourself?

01:33:18
Speaker 3: Probably the other day?

01:33:19
Speaker 1: What did you make?

01:33:20
Speaker 3: I made some Sloppy Joe's. Man, my wife was talking. Oh, my wife was talking about me like a dog.

01:33:26
Speaker 1: Can I tell you something?

01:33:28
Speaker 2: Because I have an office job and you know, currently dating someone that's like forcing me to really be a health nutting. Look, I can't afford to do my old ways, but I get a cheat day. And actually last week I had a craven. I've not had a Sloppy Joe like I think at all in the two thousands, Like there is some foods that escape the decades, And I was like, I remember Sloppy Joe's And I googled on uber eat who makes a lot, And sure, enough.

01:33:55
Speaker 1: I had my first sloppy joe like last week.

01:33:59
Speaker 3: Was it good?

01:34:00
Speaker 1: Yes? I miss sloppy It's great.

01:34:02
Speaker 5: That's what I'm talking about because my daughter and my wife talk about me like adult because I like sloppy Joe's. Make my ground turkey sloppy Joe's.

01:34:10
Speaker 3: It's very simple. It takes me about ten minutes and I have a pot of sloppy Joe's. I could eat it for the whole week.

01:34:17
Speaker 4: Well are you cook it all? Well no, not really. But the one thing I'll say about the sloppy Joe. So for my birthday every year, that's what my mom would always make sloppy Joe's.

01:34:29
Speaker 1: That was like my favorite thing.

01:34:31
Speaker 4: Yes, and I haven't probably had sloppy Joe's anywhere in the two thousands. But Terry Lewis, the next time you make sloppy Joe's, would you please bring them to please bring some to the studio.

01:34:41
Speaker 1: No, I love sloppy joe.

01:34:42
Speaker 3: I'll make a turkey burger or some chili by the way.

01:34:45
Speaker 1: By the way, turkey burger. So the funny thing was back in the day, so Terry was.

01:34:50
Speaker 4: I called him a chickatarian right because he wasn't a vegetarian, but he wouldn't eat red meat. And I was a burger fiend, Like I love burger, burger, burger right. And I remember I go to his house for a barbecue and he's on the grill and he hands me a burger and.

01:35:03
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, cool, cool. I bite into it. I'm like, oh my god, Terry, this is the greatest burger man. This is amazing. He said it's turkey. I said, there's no way, there's no way this is turkey. Because now because he had the consistency, I'm telling you, I've never had a turkey. That's the best turkey burger I've ever had in my life. Because he had it, the consistency of it. There was no false anything to it. Got it.

01:35:29
Speaker 4: And the same thing like his turkey chili. The one thing that Janet every time she comes to town, the turkey chili. She goes, Terry, will you make some turkey chili?

01:35:40
Speaker 1: Like she wants to the studio. He's serious at home and bring it. Yeah, Okay.

01:35:48
Speaker 2: The studio that you guys held the longest residency, and what was always the typical go to an electric lady all we ate was Chinese to the point where I had to stop eating it only because it's like so routine and every day. But like, what is the I mean, I've assume that your longest residency was flight Time Studios and Minneapolis.

01:36:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, oh that's interesting, man.

01:36:13
Speaker 3: We never really had a food habit.

01:36:15
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, I mean we in Minneapolis, our restaurant was Rudolph's.

01:36:18
Speaker 5: Yes, we will go to Rude because we leave and Rudoh stayed up in like til two or three in the.

01:36:23
Speaker 1: Mor Yes, exactly, Okay, yeah, that was probably spot or.

01:36:27
Speaker 5: If we needed something quick, Perkins was right around the Perkins was.

01:36:30
Speaker 1: Right around the corner of the other. But we used to right but we also used to hit Red Lobster.

01:36:35
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.

01:36:36
Speaker 4: And the funny thing is the waitress that used to get us at Red Lobster is now Byron Allen's wife. Wait, yeah, that one, Yes, she had yeah and she used okay, yeah, she came up, She came up.

01:36:51
Speaker 1: She was our waitress.

01:36:52
Speaker 4: She was our waitress at Red Lobster when we used to go over there because there was a Red Lobster just right up the street from the flight Time, our big flight time, the second flight we had yeah, yeah, so yeah, but I gotta go rd Labster, I know. Sorry, we want to Nickel Art Songs Art Songs Wings, that's right, Yeah, a place called art Songs.

01:37:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, that will wing place.

01:37:10
Speaker 2: When's the last time you two been the Oh god, how do you feel about Minnesota? I totally forgot that you guys are from the hot bed of all political activity.

01:37:22
Speaker 1: Now, when's the last time you guys have been to Minnesota? Like talk to family members?

01:37:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, well my dad is up there still and corn bread, having bread, still doing this thing. I haven't been up there since kind of all that stuff went down, got it. My dad's getting inducted in the Minnesota Hall of Fame, I think for music or something.

01:37:44
Speaker 1: I am going to go up for that.

01:37:45
Speaker 4: I am going to go up for his ninety ninth birthday in April, and so I will spend some time up there. But I haven't been up there since all that. But obviously it's heartbreaking because it's kind of like, you know, people coming over they weren't invited, you know, Yes, and Terry had I mean, I like he can say it better than me, but he had a great analogy. It's like, you know, when somebody comes over to your house uninvited, and you go, okay, you're not invited, and then they walk in, but they got mud on their shoes and now they're tracking through your house and it's like, okay, you know what, you weren't invited, but at least if you're going to come in, at least take your shoes, you at least be respectful. And I think that's the thing it's heartbreaking about. It has this inspired some sort of firing you guys to you know. I know sometimes people will be like, ah, there's a moment for an anthem and it never works. But I agree when watching it, was there something where you felt the need to.

01:38:43
Speaker 3: It doesn't inspire song for me, got it? It inspires anger.

01:38:47
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like I still have a majority of my family there. I have sisters, son, nephews, nieces, grandson and just watching how the just disrespecting our community and where I used to live.

01:39:05
Speaker 3: They tried that ship, but they didn't they didn't last.

01:39:09
Speaker 5: It didn't work because you know, so everybody got guns, so nobody cares about that ship. Like okay, you pull it, We're gonna pull it, and you know they know where to go. It's like they don't they don't go. They don't come to LA and go South Central. They know East LA. They ain't going there.

01:39:27
Speaker 3: They y'all can y'all can play if you want to. Y'all could be Yeah, yeah, you could be tough over there, but over here.

01:39:37
Speaker 4: By the way, I will say about an anthem, which I thought was very cool because I was talking to John Landau about something that Bruce was doing for the Grammys, and literally the same day that he was doing the thing for the Grammys, which was a voiceover thing. The same day he was doing that, he actually recorded. That same weekend he actually recorded the Minneapolis song. And then I know in talking to Tom Morello that he was going to come up and actually do a show up there. And to me, musically, that was the statement that needed to be made. It didn't need to come from us. I mean we made a statement, I mean just a you know, a talking statement. But no, we didn't feel like necessarily inspired by a song. I mean, if we do, we'll definitely do one. But I don't think that was our thought.

01:40:26
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the thought is to try to help the people who need help on the ground, like they need financial help, they need sustenance, they need food, they need you know, day care, they need whatever. I mean, these people are invading the privacy of these people and people just losing out on life.

01:40:46
Speaker 3: And that's not right.

01:40:49
Speaker 2: Who's the sloppy one as far as what, who's organized and who's sloppy between you two? Just in terms of Tarik will clean higher tour bus with his two brush, organize everything perfectly. I'm the sloppiest disorganized human being on it can find.

01:41:08
Speaker 1: I have organized messes. I have a pile of stuff, but I know, I know it's in that pile somewhere. Okay.

01:41:16
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think he's more organized in his computer than I would be. Okay, but I have more stuff in my computer than he would, gotcha. But as far as cleaning, I mean, I grew up in Barnetta's house and then Barnetta's house man ship, and man I woke up every weekend. Man I was cleaning until like one or two o'clock.

01:41:34
Speaker 1: Got it.

01:41:35
Speaker 5: You know, I'm washing the woodwork, the walls, the cleaning the kitchen, you know, shoveling, raking, whatever.

01:41:44
Speaker 1: Who's the punctual one of you two?

01:41:47
Speaker 4: Terry definitely are you five minutes early before the meeting or an hour early before.

01:41:54
Speaker 3: It just depends on what the meeting. To be honest with, you.

01:42:01
Speaker 4: Choose your spots. Okay, I'm always five minutes later with ten minutes later. Just I don't know why, I just stam. Since eighty three, have you too, ever had a real argument. We haven't had a real argument since seventy three when we met. We've never had an argument.

01:42:18
Speaker 2: No, never, You guys never came close to fisticups. Me too, recat one fistfight. Okay, you've never had one.

01:42:27
Speaker 3: Who won?

01:42:31
Speaker 5: So that's the point, Like who won? Like nobody wins in that that's degrees are losing, right, got it? So that is not even an option. That's not even the mature way of thinking to me.

01:42:45
Speaker 4: We always think about it as the difference between an argument and a disagreement. So an argument is something you're trying to win. A disagreement is something you're trying to solve. So we look at yes we disagree on things, but we try to find whether it's my way or his way, but what's the best way? And once we figure out the best way, then there may be a discussion on the best way to get there to the best way. But an argument if I win an argument against Terry, why would I ever want to see my partner lose at something, and particularly something that I'm responsible for. Just doesn't make sense. So the arguing thing, we've never had an argument, okay.

01:43:25
Speaker 1: So what if there is a little bit too much words in the bridge or whatever, like, okay, it takes something out? Yeah, I mean what if you don't agree like no, I want no, no, no.

01:43:36
Speaker 5: If he feels that adamant about it, it's okay, put that shit back in, right, I don't care like that is I know my value.

01:43:44
Speaker 3: I value his opinion. I value it. It's okay, it's okay not to be right. It's okay not to be wrong.

01:43:52
Speaker 5: Let's just do what's best, what's going to work. Let's achieve a result that is desirable by all.

01:43:58
Speaker 4: I mean, we always go off of feeling, and the feeling is is right. And when we even when we're mixing or we're doing something and there might be a vocal and sometimes what will happen is because Terry tends to do I always call him vocal master, he ends up doing a lot of the vocals. By the way, I'll mention because we talked about usher a little earlier when we did You Remind Me with Usher. That was one where Usher had already done a vocal and la Reid said that vocal ain't good enough and he said, but the only I told him he has to go back and redo the vocal, and he said, the only person I'm going to do a vocal with is Terry Lewis. And so him and Terry redid the vocal and La Reid said, it's either going to be the first single or off the album. And of course it was the first single. And when number one, thank goodness for Terry Lewis. But Terry Lewis's vocal master. And it was funny because Mary J. Blige when we did what was the one on our album that we did Spinning? We did Spinning, and I remember Mary said when we sent her to the mix of the song, she said, I love this vocal on this song.

01:45:06
Speaker 1: This might be my best vocal. Terry Lewis killed me on this vocal. He killed me on this vocal.

01:45:11
Speaker 4: Said yeah, but that's what Terry's point like, I don't want people to be lazy. I want them to really, you know, give their best, you know example of what they do. Got it so all of those things are like really important. But at the end of the day, yeah, if we feel passionate about a thing. So sometimes Terry will do a vocal. There'll be two or three vocals that are really good, and at a certain point he'll go, jam, I'm listening to this and whatever, and he'll listen and sometimes I'll go, I love this line right here, but it's clashing with this other line. Well, of course, now we have Terry can go, oh, you know what, I'll just move this line up a beat or up a measure or you know that kind of thing, and somehow we just come to a conclusion where it all works, where it makes us both feel, you know, really good about it.

01:45:53
Speaker 1: Okay, last question, can you give me a really good jelly Bean Johnson's story? Well, what is this show?

01:46:03
Speaker 3: What is a good one? Oh god, how do we classify?

01:46:10
Speaker 2: First of all of all the time members, he actually has the funniest interviews because he just.

01:46:17
Speaker 1: Zero fuck's given. Yeah, and I feel like people respect him for that. If he's like that in real life. No, that's him, that's him.

01:46:25
Speaker 5: Yeah, He's he's jumpy, grumpy. He's the grumpy jumpy uncle. That's who jelly Bean is really yeah, you know, you know.

01:46:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, and then things like he we'ld always be cracking up. But like things like we'd go to a restaurant and order food, and uh, there'd always be a discrepancy on the solid. He never wanted a salad. They'd always go, what do you want a salad? What kind of dressing you want on your salads?

01:46:57
Speaker 1: I don't want no, mother want to salad rabbit. No.

01:47:04
Speaker 3: Jelly Bean was one of a time.

01:47:07
Speaker 1: Man. Okay, you can edit this out, but I am going to tell you this one story because.

01:47:11
Speaker 4: We were on the road back. It was a chilling circuit days. It might have been the controversy to our days. And he was seeing new girl, and so we used to listen to everybody's door to see whether they were there or not, because you know, never could really tell. And we heard jelly Bean, you know yeah, and he said, and you guys know, you guys can't use this.

01:47:35
Speaker 1: I can't.

01:47:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't do that.

01:47:40
Speaker 1: You got you got you gotta Yeah, I can't do it. Let him, let him because he'll come back. Jimmy jam.

01:47:52
Speaker 3: I heard.

01:47:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I ain't gonna say it, but anyway, but but Yeah, Bean was great.

01:47:58
Speaker 4: And you know, like I say, he's one that was responsible for me being a keyboard player because when I met Terry and we were going to put a band together and I was playing drums for my dad, you know, I was his drummer and Terry said, let's put a band together.

01:48:12
Speaker 1: I said, cool, I'll get my drum set. He said.

01:48:14
Speaker 4: Terry said, I oh need a drummer, and I was like, oh, it was jelly Bean Johnson. He had it as a drummer and he said, you should be a keyboard player. Your dad plays keyboards, you should be a keyboard player. I said, Okay, that's good logic, right, that's right. So that's why I'm a keyboard player to this day because of jelly Bean Johnson.

01:48:30
Speaker 2: Well, I think I've said everything I need to say about you guys, your absolute heroes, and I appreciate you guys taking the time out to talk with us.

01:48:39
Speaker 4: And I cannot wait. How long is the residency going for It's just a limited residency. It's six nights we're going to do between April seventeenth and April twenty sixth, so we'll have a couple of days off in between. But yeah, it's just going to be six days and it's an intimate space. It's a small space, beautiful space.

01:49:00
Speaker 1: It's it's gorgeous.

01:49:01
Speaker 3: I mean, it's elegant, totally totally yeah.

01:49:06
Speaker 1: Ok, yeah, you got to drink with the I wear my good crocks.

01:49:12
Speaker 4: There you go, you gotts. But but no, it's it's going to be a lot of fun and quest love. Can I just say yes? First of all, I'll just start by saying.

01:49:21
Speaker 3: How proud we are of you.

01:49:23
Speaker 1: Thank you.

01:49:26
Speaker 4: Just you know, when you talk about people that really elevate music and elevate culture, you're one of the people that does it in such a cool way. But I think I tried to articulate this to you before, and I'm probably not going to quite say it right, But because of your curiosity and your willingness to ask questions, people assume you know everything.

01:49:48
Speaker 1: And you know a lot. But the reason you know a lot is because you ask the questions you have.

01:49:53
Speaker 4: I'm a student, want to know, Yank, But for someone to be as elevated as you are as far as your knowledge, I hear you have conversations with people and you never make people feel like they're less smart than you, and there's a there's a tell that to the roots. I mean, yeah, but I mean, I just I just think that there's something so special about that. The people feel very comfortable. Thank you, and as watching you learn and going, oh, wait, he didn't know that, you know that kind of kind of what happened earlier. There was something we talked about and yes you didn't know that, but it's not like it feels right. It feels like, yeah, but now that makes you curious, and now I'm gonna find out about that. And that's the way we all are. So thank you for that, and thank you for having me back on again. I know, And we got him, and we got we got Terry Lewis, and thank you and I and thank you for allowing people to see the brilliance that I get to see every day with Terry Lewis. I mean, Terry Lewis is the most amazing human being I know. And I can't articulated enough. But when you see us together and you hear his thoughts and his way of going about doing things, you realize why I'm the lucky one here to have him in my life.

01:51:10
Speaker 3: We both lucky.

01:51:11
Speaker 5: Jimmy jam Yes, but but but I did come up with a jelly Bean story. Oh okay, well you're gonna really like this because it mimics you.

01:51:21
Speaker 4: Man.

01:51:23
Speaker 3: He lived and breathed music. He loved music more than he loved himself.

01:51:30
Speaker 5: And I mean there wasn't a true musician, just savant actually annoying artists, annoying music. Jelly Bean loved music, man. That's one thing I could say about Jellybean. Do youve or take some of the rest of the ship.

01:51:51
Speaker 3: But man, my brother, he was. He was true to the game, man for sure.

01:51:55
Speaker 1: That's all we need.

01:51:56
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he got me into the game because music wasn't my thing. I wanted to be a doctor, medical doctor, and I didn't know it. Yeah, but I was an athlete, you know. Was all city football, state track champion, played basketball, anything.

01:52:12
Speaker 3: With the Ball brothers.

01:52:14
Speaker 5: All right, Okay, they say Prince could play I wood Prince as any sport whatever, But that doesn't matter.

01:52:25
Speaker 3: What matters was that.

01:52:27
Speaker 5: These guys were all my friends, man, and we hooped, we played music together.

01:52:32
Speaker 1: Man.

01:52:32
Speaker 3: They taught me how to love music, and I really thank him for that.

01:52:36
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. Well, Terry Lewis Jimmy jim reversing it this one time only.

01:52:42
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. We definitely got our money's worth and Quest Love Showers. You got it and we will see you on the next go round. Quest Love Show, Thank You. Quest Love Show is hosted by Me Mirror Quest Love Thompson. The executive producers are Sean g Brian Calhoun and Me. Produced by Brittany Benjamin and Jake Payne. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown, Edited by Alex Conny. iHeart Video support by Mark Canton, Logos Graphics and animation by Nick Lowe. Additional support by Lance Coleman. Special thanks to Kathy Brown. Special thanks to Sugar Steve Mandel. Please subscribe, rate, review, and share The Quest Love Show wherever you stream a podcasts, and make sure you follow us on social media.

01:53:42
Speaker 1: That's at q LS. Check out hundreds and hundreds of QLs episodes, including the Quest Love Supreme Shows and our podcast archives, Quest Loup Shows and productions of iHeart Radio.