QLS Classic: The Family Stand Part 1

Best known for their early 90’s international hit single “Ghetto Heaven,” the trio of Sandra St. Victor, Peter Lord and V. Jeffrey Smith tell their story of coming up as musicians and songwriters in the 80s and more!

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Granger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  I turned off news altogether.

• 0:38Speaker 03

  I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

• 0:43Speaker 04

  It's the rage bait.

• 0:45Speaker 05

  It feels like it's trying to divide people.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  We got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little.

• 0:55Speaker 06

  NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts, let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America.

• 1:05Speaker 00

  Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:13Speaker 00

  Hey, what's up, y'all? This is Questlove with another QLS classic. Back in April of 2020, Team Supreme and I had a two-part conversation with the Family Stand, the wildest episode we ever, ever taped. In that chat, we got Peter Lord, V. Jeffrey Smith, and the always, always entertaining Sandra St. Victor. You know, we go back where the music found them, in Brooklyn, Dallas living room, and Harlem house party. They tell how three busy session players became one band, meeting through Will Downing, of all people, and a 1986 Luther Bandro show. And then pushing back on the stiff productions of the era

• 1:58Speaker 00

  to keep their own energy intact. They bring the receipts, Ghetto Heaven, of course, producing Paula Abdul's sophomore album Spellbound, that immortal sax solo, and Billy Ocean's Caribbean Queen that Jeff never actually played straight through. Surprise. Anyway, that was part one, and I hope you guys enjoyed this. It was a really crazy episode.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  So.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  Ladies and gentlemen, sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Steve's looking mad nervous right now because we're not following the rules of the show from an engineer's standpoint. But, I don't know, I just felt the need. We don't have to do roll call every time. I will say, yes, first off, if you're tuning in late, this is Questlove Supreme on iHeart Radio. And we're still here with three Supremas, because I have them locked in chains. See what I did there, guys, locked in chains?

• 3:06Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  Boss Bill, Lian, and Sugar Steve are with us. Apparently, unpaid Bill met a woman named Lady Sunshine. And he left us a Dear John note that said he ain't never coming back. Fonticolo, apparently, is still smoking very strong cigarettes, and he said he'd be back for visitation Sundays in a month. Indica.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  What I will say is that when time has passed and the smoke is cleared, I really hope that the storytellers and the history makers and the history tellers will be kind to our next guests, whether as a collective or as individuals, as an artist, producer, songwriters, or just plain old session musicians, or just three really talented musicians. Our guests today have made impact in history, and they marched to the beat of their own drum, their own weird drum, whether we know it or not.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Sing it, Steve.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  And I'll be honest, I think Bill can agree with me, Boss Bill can agree, that the gems of the discovery for this episode alone rates a 10 on the O'Ship Meter.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  And we graciously thank them for doing us the honor of celebrating with them 30 years of true weirdness, cleverly hidden snark. Hello, Vanna White, how you doing? Zero compromises, as far as I know. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the one and only Peter Lord, V. Jeffrey Smith, and Sandra St. Victor. A special treat for all you music experts and nerds and connoisseurs out there professionally known as the Family Stand.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Now, every intro has to be like that.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  No, right, right? I think a new standard has been set.

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  And I really had a good roll call, but, you know.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  Me too. I had two of them, because I knew one of y'all was gonna steal one of them.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  Now, see, I wasn't even gonna do the obvious one. I have to say that this is one that I didn't see coming.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  Really, why?

• 5:17Speaker 00

  I didn't see coming. I just, now I see it coming, I appreciate it. You know, just when your name appeared on the wish list of, oh, Family Stand wanna do Questlove Supreme, we're like, thank you.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  What are you talking about?

• 5:32Speaker 00

  I'm happy. Boss Bill's happy, everyone's happy.

• 5:36Speaker 05

  I'm not worried about a thing.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  You're not worried about a thing.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  That's what's up.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  So, has this always been this way with you guys? Like, you just?

• 5:46Speaker 04

  Pretty much, yeah, no doubt.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Breakout, and is that the bond that kept you together?

• 5:50Speaker 04

  The music. The music has always been the thing. I mean, we can hang out and have good fun, and, you know, we are compatible outside of music. But the thing that always brings us back is that music. Because we are like, I call them my musical soulmates, and I mean that sincerely. They literally are, I mean, I've never been connected or bonded with anyone the way I am with Peter and Jeff, and I call them my powers, Towers of Powers. Towers of beat. The Towers. When I'm between them, I'm the safest that I am in the world.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Well, here, this is a tradition on Questlove Supreme, because any guest that comes on the show, I always wanna find out what brought them to where they are now. You know, the first question I always have, there's three of you now, so this is gonna be an extra-long episode. This might be, this might tie Jimmy Jam's record.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  Can I take my shoes off?

• 6:45Speaker 00

  For six hours.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  That's why we brought you to Reservoirs, this is home. Make yourself comfortable.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  You got feet made for radio, so it's all right. I got radio feet, I'm good. Thank you, sweetheart.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Brothers.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Thank you, they know.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  What I'll do is, I'll go from my right to left. My first question for you, Pete?

• 7:04Speaker 04

  Yes, sir.

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  First, where were you born?

• 7:09Speaker 04

  I was born in Brooklyn, New York.

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  Really?

• 7:11Speaker 04

  I'm from Brooklyn.

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  Okay.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  Same hospital as Michael Jordan.

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  Nice, okay.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  Off Atlantic Avenue.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  Okay, wait, what hospital was that?

• 7:20Speaker 04

  What'd you say? What hospital is that? I think it was St. Joseph's, or something like that. Off Atlantic? Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Okay. And Sandra, where were you? Dallas, Texas. I know, yes, I know, you were, of course. Yeah. And, all right, so you're the big D, and then Detroit's the D. Okay, the D, that's another thing. Okay, so the big D.

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  Ride that D.

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  HR.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  This is XM radio, or Triple X.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, Triple X. And V. Jeffrey?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  I was born in Harlem, Harlem Hospital.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Really?

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, the old one. I'm a man of a certain age, so.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  The old one as opposed to?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, the one that's here now. It was one on 30th, 135th and?

• 8:06Speaker 00

  Lenox.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  No, it's not Lenox, I think it's a little further over. Yeah. It's the old one. Like I said, I'm a man of a certain age, so. I don't think people even know about that, that one.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  An older, okay.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  An older Harlem Hospital.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Like Frederick Douglass was born there, right? Same time?

• 8:29Speaker 04

  Here we go.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  We can't wait.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Here we go. Y'all in the right place, that's all right.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  So then, so then I'll ask, what year?

• 8:36Speaker 04

  He flew all the way for that.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Sandra, what year did you come to New York City?

• 8:41Speaker 04

  1982.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  Visiting a few times, or you've officially just?

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Nah, that was it. I just rolled up, and it was a crazy roll up. But yeah, I rolled up in 1982.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  Really?

• 8:54Speaker 04

  It was crazy.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Kind of the opening to a song that wasn't written yet, Welcome to the Jungle, like you got off the bus.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  It was freaking nuts, you know, it was a Roy Ayers roll up, so.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  He's had a setup, and it was, there's a whole thing there, but yes.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  I got it, okay, okay.

• 9:07Speaker 04

  We got time.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Now, no, no, I'm gonna get to that. So then, I'm just, my first four questions are always just the basic foundations of who you are as individuals before we get in the collective. All right, so what is, Peter, what is your first musical memory?

• 9:25Speaker 04

  Very first musical memory, this is gonna give away age, but this is why we're all related, because.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  We're all mature here.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're all mature, that's right. The first song I remember hearing was Hit the Road, Jack.

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  Okay.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  And that's my first musical memory, Hit the Road Jack.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  And, uh, and then I remember being, my sister having a party at around, I think it was nineteen sixty-eight or nine, and she played that Sly album, and my life was never the same after that. Though I didn't realize it yet. And, but the really reason I got into music industry was be- was because of, um, of Satan. And that was because-

• 10:15Speaker 01

  He follows you till this day.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  And I tell you why, I know a lot of us, you know, um, um, people of a certain hue would like to say that God, Jesus got into music, but Satan got me into music because of the movie The Exorcist. And I'll tell you why. Because the movie came out, I was so afraid to go to sleep, I started playing the radio every night. And the, ah, that's- I went tangential. I went tangential. All right. Yo, we went tangential. All right. So I, so I was, so that's, every shadow was like, you know, Linda Blair turned her head around. So I started playing the radio every, every night. And so I wake up in the morning, I got this new song. "I'm so tired of being alone." I thought about that all myself.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Really?

• 10:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, oh, that was Al Green. Oh, well, but, you know, but then I kept hearing Stevie and, and those people doing the radio during that. I'm like, oh, I think I like music because I'm hearing songs in my head.

• 11:04Speaker 00

  Wait, I gotta say something. I don't think I've ever shared this story before, but, uh, now, now that makes sense, because when you think of the boogeyman or whatever,

• 11:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

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  the first thing you want to do is distract yourself from whatever you think is under the bed or in the closet. So you put music on to-

• 11:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

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  be an invisible roommate. Frank Zappa had, um, did a film, a short film with Bill Plimpton, uh, yeah, nineteen seventy-three, whatever, and it came on midnight special, but this thing, like, he turned into a demon. I mean, if you know Frank Zappa's music, it's like-

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  Like, four fingers turned into seventy-five billion fingers. And I had nightmares of Frank Zappa forever. And so thus, my mom, I totally forgot, that's how music really, I had her on twenty-four seven because I was scared of- Frank Zappa getting me.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was it, see? We connected, bro.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Sandra, what, what was your first musical memory? In addition to the first music that you purchased or owned? And the moment that changed your life and brought you to music?

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Okay, well, so the first and the last question are probably about the same. And that's the first musical memory, I, I, my parents and my aunts tell me about stuff that I did when I was two, like playing the piano, and they said I was fiddling around, playing skate, and I figured out that the scale was joy to the world. So they said, but dude, I was, they said I was two. I'm okay, I don't remember this, but they tell me, said you were two and you said,

• 12:42Speaker 01

  and I said, "George to the world, the Lord has come." So, it was George to the world.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  I don't recall that. But my first musical memory is, um, I was, I had chores and I had to clean, dust the, these, these coffin-looking, bedazzled lamps in the, in the living room. And, uh, as I was

• 13:04Speaker 01

  consoling myself, while I was cleaning, I started singing. And as I was singing, I said, "I'm a singer." I was like eight. I said, "I am," I didn't say I don't want to, I didn't say I want to sing, I said, "I am a singer." And it's new, and it's never changed from that moment, never, anything else. Um, and, uh, so yeah, that was the first, that's like the first real solid memory. And that also is the last question, when that's the thing that changed my life as far as, I, it was no question at that point who I was in my own, you know, in my own, you know, skin. I knew from that point. I forgot your second question, though.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  The first record you purchased?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Ah, okay, so yeah, ah, uh, the first thing I probably purchased was Songs in the Key of Life or Larry Graham's Mira. That's the first thing I probably purchased.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Damn. Yeah, because I, I was young, but I had a little allowance and, and that was about that time. And those were the first albums I had. Songs in Key of Life and Mira.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  The Mira. Yeah, I love that record.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Jeff, what was your first musical memory?

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Around my house, there was a lot of music, because my mother, she sang, and she used to have like these parties, well, I don't, I don't want, I don't know exactly what to call them now, because, uh,

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  Was there a card game? Was there a knife?

• 14:30Speaker 01

  There was a lot of stuff going on.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  In gin?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  There was a lot of stuff going on.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  A blue light or a red light.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Me and my sister was, was under a chair, watching them play music all night. But at, at the same time, the music that we would listen to was, uh, things like Brooke Benton and the first thing that, song that I remember is Booker T. and the M.G.s. What's the song that, but, uh?

• 14:52Speaker 00

  Green onions?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Green onions, right?

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  And till this day, I say Stevie probably copped that with, um-

• 14:59Speaker 00

  Oh, for Higher Ground?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Higher Ground. Because when I first heard Higher Ground, I said, "Stevie, Stevie jacked that song." You know, I mean, he added his little twist, but that's probably the first memories of- And also, um, I was made to love her.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  That was, but this, but the music that really changed my life was Music of My Mind.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  Really?

• 15:32Speaker 00

  There's another, uh, observation I'm making right now that's rare for our guest. It sounds like that at a very early age,

• 15:42Speaker 00

  music isn't, uh, an obstacle in your households. Usually with our guest on the show, there's like Charlie Wilson, like, people have to sneak to listen to records, like, the only secular record they're allowed to listen to is What's Going On? Or that sort of thing. So you're saying even at an early age and discovering music, your parents were-

• 16:02Speaker 01

  No doubt.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  More than okay? Well, what type of parents did you guys have that were so open to?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Well, I had a parent.

• 16:08Speaker 04

  As a can of worms. Well, my mother was a nurse and my father was a communist, so that creates an artist. So he was open, he was open, he was open-minded to begin with, a little bit too open-minded. But, um, so, and my oldest sister, uh, was into music and my father sang. So we weren't, we weren't, and I was baptized Catholic, so we weren't like a, um, a religious Baptist, you know, music is evil type of fam, you know?

• 16:37Speaker 00

  So you had an alternative, uh-

• 16:40Speaker 04

  Semi-alternative.

• 16:41Speaker 00

  Well, different from what most black people at the time?

• 16:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. Because my fa- my father was, uh, actually, uh, he went to, uh, he graduated from Harvard. He, uh, he was a lawyer, he was a, um, a columnist at a major paper and, and a professor, but he was seriously a communist and got caught up in the nineteen fifty's scandal. So his whole career ended up being a teacher in, in Jersey City. Um, so my parents got divorced around nineteen sixty-three. This is when the violins come in. And, um-

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Well, explain, explain to me the repercussions of that. If you, if the, the government was trying to vent out who was a communist based on-

• 17:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. So, so even though he had, like, he was, he had a Harvard Law degree and was a doctor of philosophy and wrote books about history, the fact that he was a communist, he got outed and was, and he was taught at a school in Albany and was forced to leave there.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Ah, cool. Is your dad Paul Robinson?

• 17:32Speaker 04

  No, you know, he hung with Paul Robinson. There's a picture of him, there's a picture of him and Paul Robinson and Joe Louis and this big, you know, party, uh, back in the, like, late forties. He had me, like, late, later in his life.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  I mean, were his beliefs that he was just anti-capitalist or just-

• 17:48Speaker 04

  Um, he was, he, uh, he was an atheist in, in fact, but my mother wasn't, uh, even though she wasn't necessarily religious, but she went just, and my grandmother, um, Jamaican and very religious, wanted to make sure I didn't-

• 17:59Speaker 00

  How did that work?

• 18:00Speaker 02

  It's a lot of conflict.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  I was about to say, most Jamaicans I know are like-

• 18:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  That close to God.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  That's why he's a genius, because they're crazy. Crazy.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  So, so my-

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Are you Gemini?

• 18:09Speaker 02

  I was just about to ask.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  I'm a Leo. Leo. Yeah, he's a Gemini.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  You better be a Gemini, because I think your album is-

• 18:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, so they were open-minded in terms, in terms of, in terms of that, in terms of music. So they, you know, they loved music. And she actually wanted me to, I think she wanted me to get into music, but my sister was actually, went to music and art. And I didn't go. I went to Erasmus High School in Brooklyn. And, oh, actually, no, I didn't. I was, went to Wall Wimper Junior High School in Brooklyn, and to make sure I didn't have to fight the same people I did in Wall Wimper, when I went to Erasmus, I made sure I passed that test to go to Stuyvesant High School. So that's what I ended up-

• 18:42Speaker 00

  Isn't that a tip story as well?

• 18:44Speaker 04

  It sounds familiar.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  That's crazy.

• 18:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, uh, yeah, so I ended up going, but I wasn't, uh, in music, but music wasn't such a, there wasn't a block to music in my house and that, so that was fortunate.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  So was there a, uh, most, the, the, the, the sort of hip-hop, uh, narrative is basically with gang activity in New York in the seventies and sort of waning out in the eighties, but was that an everyday thing in your, your teenhood? I hear it a lot in the West Coast, but you rarely hear it for-

• 19:17Speaker 04

  Well, the thing is, uh, let's say I was a different type of kid. So, uh, so, yeah, so-

• 19:23Speaker 00

  So, yeah, I want to know how you survived and navigated this.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  Actually, I kind of ignored a lot of stuff. Uh, and I don't, not a conscious thing, I mean, I just wasn't into it, you know what I mean? So I was, I just wasn't, just definitely into gangs or fighting and all that stuff.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  But how do you avoid it? Because normally they choose you.

• 19:42Speaker 04

  I, I guess they thought I was so weird, they didn't know what to do with me, and I just didn't, you know, you know.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  The mirror out.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, the me, I was just, yeah, I was just, just so kind of out, you know, and that, I had like a weird kind of childhood, like in Brooklyn or, and, and so there was a lot of fights and stuff. And, but I was, as opposed to getting to the fights, I was, I was kind of stupacating in a way because I was scared of people I should have been scared of because I had a bunch of brothers and I had no brothers. But one day, one day, I found out Lady was the biggest bully in the neighborhood, took my, we used to play this game, people don't play anymore, called Punchball. It's kind of like baseball, he thought of it as punchball. So, so this guy, this guy took my ball, and I said, "Give me my ball." He said, "No," and I punched him in the face. And then everybody said, "Do you know he just punched you in the face?"

• 20:29Speaker 00

  You're the biggest prisoner. Nice.

• 20:33Speaker 04

  I punched him in the face, but, but, but then it was, but then it was like, "Do you know he just hit him?" And then after realizing who I hit, then I was scared.

• 20:42Speaker 04

  But then the guy became friends with me and looked out for me.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  He didn't mess with you no more, right?

• 20:46Speaker 04

  But he looked out for me for a bunch of other kids who were really tougher than even worse he was, so.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  Well, I'm glad you have that, because I can't imagine a childhood growing up where you don't have that one person that's like, "I'm gonna get the fuck you up."

• 21:02Speaker 04

  Oh, no, I didn't, yeah.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  I never had that, so I just ran home with the quickness. So Sandra, in Dallas. Okay.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  Is... What was Dallas at the time in your childhood? Because I think of Austin as a blue city in a red state. Or at least they would like to paint that.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Or now it is.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  Or we don't even know now, but...

• 21:33Speaker 04

  Texas trying to go blue, right?

• 21:35Speaker 00

  But, but I'll say that the times that I've went there, at least with my gracious host, El Head Rapo.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Is that me?

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, you.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Oh, Erica, I'm done.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Head Rapo. El Head Rapo.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  We all were.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  She showed me sides of Dallas that I didn't even know existed. I've been there plenty of times, and I was like, "Oh, there are people like me down here." What was it like for you growing down there? Yeah, it was like the two sides of the tracks, you know? And my dad, who came from, like, him and his brothers.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  Him and his brothers, I mean, the first gun I saw was my dad's, okay? My dad was like a pimp back in the day, right? And, you know, I stumbled upon those pictures. But so Dallas, when I was growing up, was very divided. So he had, he had decided at some point that he was gonna, you know, leave the gang life behind a little bit, you know, at least, at least on the front. I wanted to use this.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  You can, you can, you can, because trust. Because, let me tell you something, my daddy didn't really leave that shit behind. So what I'm telling you is, what I'm telling you, so he kinda like, you know, so we got a great job. He, you know, moved up first, black supervisor at the phone company, all kind of crap. But, but my, like, my mother's family lived on the other side of tracks. So when we had to go visit them, we said, "Oh, snap, this is the real, the real," right? So they lived in West Dallas and South Dallas and, you know, in little trailers and like 12 people in one house. And, you know, we went to visit our country cousins, they didn't have shoes. So like, you know, we was like, "Oh, damn, we're middle class." I mean, I didn't know the term for it then, but I look, now I look back on it, you know, I grew up middle class.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I would say lower to middle, middle class. Yeah, close. You know, upper middle, middle class.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Working class.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Working class.

• 23:36Speaker 00

  But dad, um, dad, dad's, dad's, dad's like, you know, sort of gangster side never left. I mean, for example, I remember I was with this dude. Oh, no.

• 23:53Speaker 04

  Here we go.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  I know where this is going.

• 23:56Speaker 04

  And the story begins.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Bill it, Sandra, let's go.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  Let me just tell this cute little, I mean, so, and, and, uh, you know, he wasn't treating me right. And he actually, like, he actually slapped the shit out of me one day. And I like, and I was so stunned. So I got on a flight, and I was in New York. So I got on a flight, and I just went back home. My dad always picked me up at the airport. And he picked me up at the airport, and I was just quiet. And he was like, "What's wrong with you?" I'm like, "Nothing." And he was quiet, it was a 40-minute ride. We almost home, he said, "Did he lay his hands on you? He just guessed it." And I was like, "Why?"

• 24:32Speaker 00

  But a bean, but a boom. No. Son, so, so we got home, he was, I never saw him get that red. He was like, lights gang job, he was like, he got home, he picked up the phone.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  He called dude. He didn't say shit to me, he just, he just picked up the phone, he brought my suitcase, he didn't pick it up.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  Said, "I'm on my way."

• 24:55Speaker 00

  He said, he said, because that dude's named Clark, he said, "Clark, this is Mr. Matthews." He said, "If you ever lay your hands on my daughter again, New York won't be big enough." I was like, "Ding."

• 25:16Speaker 00

  Are you all like?

• 25:16Speaker 04

  That's so romantic, I'm so unprotected.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  I just want to know we ever heard from Clark again.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  No, actually.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  I didn't think we did, yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 00

  We did not.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  All right, that'd be enough for you, Sandra.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  No, I mean, like, is he alive?

• 25:30Speaker 00

  I really could not answer that question, honestly, I do not know. I just know I did not hear from Clark anymore. He shut him down. So, I mean, he's done that kind, that's kind of thing he does. I mean, you know, he got cute when he got older, when he would just meet ladies. All my girlfriends, who I introduced, he would flirt with and, and tell them, "I'm not a dirty old man. I'm just a sexy senior citizen."

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  Oh, even now.

• 25:56Speaker 04

  Oh, shit, I'm making no effort for next week.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  You're gonna use that line? Pull that one out, that was my dad and his brother.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Did you learn how to handle a pistol?

• 26:05Speaker 00

  Oh, I did, actually. Well, she from Texas.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I assume, but I was like, I don't want to.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Is that, okay, I don't want to make any assumptions about Texas whatsoever, but can I assume that that's as simple as breathing air or water? At least we're taught to think. Shooting? I would say, uh, I would say 70%. I'm not gonna say everybody, you know, I mean, because everybody, most people don't know how to gun. But I knew how to shoot, or the parents definitely had guns. Right. So you, you, you come across it, you know what I mean? So I came across the gun in my, my house. My dad used to keep it on top of the refrigerator. I'm like, "Why is it on top of the refrigerator?" That's where the gun was. So when he saw me like find it, and he was like, "Okay, well, if you gonna do the gun, you gonna, you know, let me show you how." So... Were you the only sibling?

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I had three. We were all adopted, by the way, three siblings, yeah. You were chosen. Yeah. Nice. Three chosen kids.

• 27:02Speaker 04

  I almost shot my sister.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Wait, what?

• 27:05Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no, let me tell you what happened. We were kids, right? And me and my sister were in my, my, my stepdad's, I mean, I wasn't like

• 27:16Speaker 04

  familiar with my biological, so my mother had remarried, right?

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  And me and my sister were, was playing in her, in their room.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Found a gun.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  And, uh, so we was reaching, you know, trying to look for things, and we see this gun, and I'm thinking it's a toy gun. So I pointed at my sister and clicked. And then I pointed at the ceiling and it went off. They came in and they said, I didn't know what was happening. They said, they was wondering if something had happened upstairs. I was wondering why they were...

• 27:46Speaker 02

  They were tripping.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  They were tripping. So I didn't know it was a real gun, you know? I was like, that's one of my earliest memories, because I don't remember much before I was nine.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Well, that's Questlove Supreme, ladies and gentlemen.

• 28:01Speaker 00

  Good night. Steve is sober now.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Ain't nobody carrying right, you know, the family stand, you got an ass now.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  That's scary. Yeah, that's, that's, that's scary. I mean, I remember, that's like kind of a weird kind of thing, it's...

• 28:17Speaker 02

  It's a blessing, like, you blessed, like, because your life would have went differently.

• 28:22Speaker 04

  Well, I don't, you know, I don't believe in luck or anything like that, but that was a... Yeah, I mean...

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Somebody was looking out.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Somebody's looking out.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel. That last year, finishing that record was the hardest experience of my life. To find your creativity and to believe in yourself, because somewhere in the midst of it,

• 29:05Speaker 01

  I stopped believing that my voice mattered and that I could find it again. That's a challenge. I was not feeling very confident creatively, only, uh...

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Again, defiant in my belief that what this is about is express something honest. Say something honest.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Experience before the moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Jonas Knox from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop

• 30:12Speaker 01

  toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  Bringing you guys to New York now. What year did you guys meet? Not even as a bit, but like-

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Eighty-six.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Okay, you talking about all of us?

• 30:31Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Okay, let me take, let me, let me take this one.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  Go ahead, break it down.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Peter and I met through a mutual friend, Will Downing.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Me and Will Downing, we used to do a lot of work together. We were writing sessions, all that stuff. And, you know, Will used to come over my house and, you know, we used to write. And so he, one day he told me that he knew that this guy needed a flute player on a song that he was writing, right? And I never forget, the song was "In the Thick of It," right? That's the name of it. I never forgot the name of that song. So he let me hear the song. I said, "Man, I gotta, I gotta meet this guy." So he said, "I'll bring him over." So Pete came over my house, you know, I, I said, "That's Pete?"

• 31:19Speaker 00

  He's weird.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  He had this like, Larry, ninety-six, five. I'm like, so we started working together. And at the time, you were, you had a group, you were with Renee and Angela?

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Renee and Angela, right? He was doing them at first.

• 31:37Speaker 00

  Oh, I can't wait for the stories. We're not even, we're not even gonna get to Family Stand yet. This is your collective experience. Oh, she's shaking her head no already? Every Renee story is terrible.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, so-

• 31:49Speaker 00

  I'm ready for this. I'm ready for the-

• 31:52Speaker 01

  So it was Renee, it was Renee and Angela, right? They were producing the group?

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  So somehow I convinced Pete. I said, "Pete, man, you know, we could do this ourselves." Because I was always into, you know, having, being in control of our own music. So, you know, we started working together, doing a lot of productions and stuff. And so we had a bunch of singers coming and doing demos for us. Because at the time, we were doing stuff for Silver Your Own, Merlyn Bob, and-

• 32:20Speaker 00

  Mickey Howard.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Mickey Howard, you know, we did Mickey Howard.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  It's all the Weezer stuff?

• 32:24Speaker 04

  The Mac Band.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mac Band. We did, we did productions on them. And we had different singers singing our demos. So Lisa Fisher was one of the, one of our singers. Now, I knew Lisa from, I met Lisa in nineteen eighty, eighty-three on a session that I was doing for Billy Ocean, right? So she was in the studio, yeah. She was in the-

• 32:49Speaker 00

  That's him. You said that's so casual.

• 32:52Speaker 04

  That's his saxophone.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  So, you know, I met Lisa then. So we kind of established a relationship over the years. And then she started, she did some demos for us, too. And so, did we get offered a deal, or we just started?

• 33:10Speaker 03

  No, first, first we met before you guys got the offer for the producers deal. Because Lisa, Lisa had to go do Luther.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  She had to go Luther, yeah.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Right. And so then she, she pulled me in. Because I met Lisa when she was doing the Crystals, and I still lived in Texas, and I was doing Lazy Fair. And so we hooked up before I moved to New York and-

• 33:29Speaker 00

  The Crystals?

• 33:30Speaker 03

  The Crystals. She was, she was in The Crystals.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  The Doop?

• 33:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. She was doing The Crystals back in the day.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  Wait a minute.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Just traveling, as not as the original.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  No, no, I know this, but that's, that's my era, like-

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, no doubt. So it was like one original Crystal and the other two, and Lisa was one of the other two.

• 33:49Speaker 04

  Shit, I did shows with Lisa Fisher and I never knew it? Yeah. Oh, when you were a kid with your dad, you're talking about?

• 33:54Speaker 00

  Dude, we did mad shows with The Crystals. My dad was like a Doop legend, so-

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so anyway, we were using Lisa and a bunch of other singers. And we told Lisa that we needed a singer. And she said, "Oh, my girl, Sandra lives in Dallas, and I could hook you up with them." And at the time, we were producing this group called The Mac Band.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  Who was out of Dallas, yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Who, I think Babyface, they produce-

• 34:20Speaker 00

  Roses are Red.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Roses are Red, right? So we were producing some songs on that record. So we had to go to Dallas to produce them. And that's where we hooked up with Sandra at-

• 34:29Speaker 03

  At a Luther Vandals-

• 34:29Speaker 01

  At a Luther Vandals show.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  I'll never forget it.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Lisa invited us to a Luther Vandals show.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  What year was this? Eighty-six?

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Nineteen eighty.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Eighty, like eighty-six? Had to have been eighty-six.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  Had to be eighty-five, eighty-six.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Eighty-seven.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  No, because eighty-seven-

• 34:44Speaker 01

  It was eighty-six, because I met Pete in eighty-five.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  Was there air conditioning on in the stadium when you went? Yo, wait, the eyes that-

• 34:51Speaker 04

  Because Sandra said, "I'll never forget." We want you to ever forget, Sandra.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  He was shady.

• 34:57Speaker 00

  I was minding my own business. She, you know, she, she, we said hello, and maybe because she was used to men melting over her, as rightfully so. But she just said hello. And I said, "Oh, how you doing?" And she thought I was being cold, but I think I just had some indigestion that day. So I didn't feel- Just like me and my story. I think my stomach was hurting, like, "Oh, who's he think he is?" I'm trying to say Victor.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, that sound familiar.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  It's good to see another dynamic. I'm trying to say Victor. Yeah. Who's this little Peter Lawrence? Six-five. She talks, he's like, she's giving you commands or anything?

• 35:32Speaker 03

  Come on, he looked down his nose at me. Jeff was like, "Hey, how you doing?"

• 35:36Speaker 00

  Well, he's like six foot billion.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  But you know, he could like, look at me, but not look-

• 35:41Speaker 00

  I was looking at the rest of you, baby. You had it going on.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Nice shoes.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  Nice shoes. Good one. HR, but good one, good one.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  It was the eighties, really, really, really.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  Say that kind of shit.

• 35:54Speaker 00

  Okay, this is the thing. I'm, I'm really excited that you guys are on the show, simply because the one story that I've, not story, but just the one narrative that I never ever got to wrap my head around was, what was the environment like for, I guess, the black musicians in, trying to navigate through the, the mid-eighties, like, the Marcus Millers, the, the Bernard Wrights, the, the Twatha Gs? Like, what, what is the stratosphere of you guys?

• 36:29Speaker 03

  Well, see, you know, all those people you mentioned. So basically, all those people came out of the session scene, right?

• 36:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  So, so the session scene was thick. It's not anymore, right? But back then, you had your West Coast session folks, and you had your East Coast session folks, and all the people you mentioned, Marcus was more West, but-

• 36:48Speaker 01

  No, Marcus is East, Jamaica Five.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  Going back, yeah. But so, so, so, I mean, those people are mostly, mostly East Coast people. And they came out of session. And record labels were looking to like, you know, put, push people to the front, like M2M and, and Twatha out of M2M, from, from these, from that session scene. So that's why you got the Mick Murphys, and, you know, the Bernard Wrights, and those folks that came from that scene. And also Pete and Jeff, you know what I mean? They, they were offered this producers deal out of the, because they were doing all these sessions. And-

• 37:21Speaker 00

  But was there a collective where like, I mean, I'm talking even deeper, like with Shaka's brother, like Mark Stevens, and then all, like, all these monsters, Lenny White and all those cats?

• 37:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, they, they, we, we used to hook each other up, man. I mean, definitely.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  There was a real camaraderie with folks. I mean, like Lisa and Brenda White King put me on, you know, because Lisa knew me before I moved, before I moved here. And she and Brenda, and they all sort of took me under their wing. And they, they, they put you into the, the situations you need to be put into.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  So what was your apprentice situation? Like, if you say that Lisa was a Luther disciple?

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  Who was your apprentice situation?

• 37:59Speaker 03

  That would probably be Roy Ayers then, because, you know, that was how I first got up there, up here. Where am I now? New York?

• 38:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  And so, yeah, so it was Roy Ayers.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  You started to tell that story a little bit.

• 38:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I got a lot of Roy stories.

• 38:12Speaker 04

  But you said something like, when you came to New York and you were with Roy, like, that's when you knew, things were different. Like, the way you entered New York was different than just-

• 38:19Speaker 03

  Oh, it was wild as fuck.

• 38:20Speaker 04

  No, it was wild as fuck.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  No FCC here.

• 38:25Speaker 03

  Okay, okay, cool, cool. Okay. Yeah, no, it was definitely a-

• 38:29Speaker 00

  Put your clothes back on, Sandra saying Victor now.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  Clothes? We have to keep clothes on?

• 38:34Speaker 01

  You have to keep clothes on?

• 38:35Speaker 03

  Darn. I was trying to let the girl free.

• 38:39Speaker 04

  I gotta love that song.

• 38:39Speaker 00

  Another Me Too moment, or Too Me moment, I don't know which one.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  Too Me. Oh, I like that. Too Me.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Hashtag Too Me.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  Songs come up right there. Okay, so, but-

• 38:53Speaker 00

  We'll get to that, too.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  So, so, so Roy, so Roy, he, I met him in, when I was in, playing with a group with Zachary Bro. I don't know if y'all know who he is. And we had to use his equipment. So we get, he came to our show and stuff. And after the show, he was like, "I want you to come to New York. You want to be in my band?" I was like, "Ugh, dirty old man," you know? That's kind of what I thought it was.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  He said, "Okay."

• 39:19Speaker 03

  That's kind of what, no, I was like, "Ew."

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  She's from Dallas, Jeff. Good girl.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, but yeah, I thought he was, you know, just, you know, pushing up, really. So I went and told the band, I'm like, "Roy Ayers asked me to, you know, come to New York." And they were like, "Yo, let's go." And so I was like, "Wait," I wasn't really planning on accepting. They were like, "No, you gotta just go." So then I reached out to Roy and I said, "Roy, so the whole band was going to be..." He says, "I don't need the whole band."

• 39:47Speaker 03

  So-

• 39:48Speaker 04

  I want you.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  That's gonna be-

• 39:52Speaker 04

  I love you too.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  I was like, "That's gonna be awkward, because they got the van, they got transportation to get me there." So, so-

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Sounds like someone else we know.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  I'll give you a ride home.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  That is also the D'Angelo story.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 40:08Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. So, so I went, the whole band decided to come. I said, "But he said he doesn't really need..." So we got there, and he took me and Zachary Bro. But when we got there, he had set us up to stay at William Allen's house. William Allen is an arranger, string arranger.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  For all of those beautiful ubiquity arranged songs, he did all those string arrangements. And we were staying in, I was, no, Zach and I were staying at William Allen's apartment in Harlem. It was February twenty first nineteen eighty two and it was like, you know, forty seven inches of snow on the ground. And the cab like picked it.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  Is that a gift of yours to recall dates?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  I remember this definitely.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  Oh, just this story?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  I remember a lot of things like that, that like, you're like, well, things that terrify you, you have a tendency to.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we, we, we passed, I mean, I'm from Dallas, okay? We have nice, large streets and stop signs and lights, everybody follows the rules. So we got here, we passed by like two blocks, I'm like, sir, I think we passed the, I think it was back there. He just said, okay, put it in reverse and, and just like sped backwards. You know, like two and a half blocks in the snow and, you know, on a one-way street. And I was just scared shitless and we got there and we stayed at Williams and, um, and, you know, there was, he didn't have a bed for us, he could barely walk through his house because he was a hoarder.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  He had no food and we were like, what can we eat? He said, whatever you find in the pantry, open the pantry, roaches dropped out. It was like, this is mine.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  That was like my introduction to New York.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, back off.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  I imagine a much freakier story.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  Back off.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  No, I got a freaky story for Roy, but that's later.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Oh, that's why I thought you.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  I got a roach story.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  I got another freaky story.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  Roaches freak. Freaky dingy, go ahead.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  It's a whole nother freaky Roy story, he's crazy. Roy was.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  He is, I know.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  Oh, you heard the story, Jeff?

• 42:13Speaker 02

  We should have mentioned that.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, go ahead, tell it.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  No, that's okay.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  No, Roy is nuts, but yeah, that was.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Okay, all right.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that was just my introduction to New York story, that's.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  All right, so you, I mean, this was obviously just a conversation between the three of you. And you're saying that you met at this Luther Vandross show?

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Met Sandra, he and Pete met.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Few years before that.

• 42:40Speaker 04

  Well, we were gonna try out different singers, but, I mean, I, I wanna backtrack. Actually, because you didn't ask, the person who was kind of really my mentor in a way was Jeff. Because he didn't know that, but he was kind of my.

• 42:56Speaker 00

  Somehow, he's finding out right now.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  He's finding out right now.

• 42:58Speaker 00

  How many interviews have you all done together?

• 43:00Speaker 04

  Well, in a way, can you talk about, well, the thing is, because I, like, I had just come out of, with the Howard University.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  You know, with the Howard U.

• 43:08Speaker 04

  And, uh, so I was there around the same time as Wayne Lindsey and, uh, some other people and, uh.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  What year, what year?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Half the way.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  I graduated, I graduated in eighty two.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Was Leroy Hudson, uh?

• 43:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  Was he a teacher there as well?

• 43:24Speaker 04

  Yes, he was a teacher, he was a teacher there.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Leroy Hudson?

• 43:27Speaker 04

  I think, I think, I think you're talking about, yeah, I think, yeah, uh, I think it's, if, if that's who you're talking about. But I wasn't even in the jazz band, but I, I'd, I'd been, uh, how the Renee, Renee and Angela thing, right? I think right, if I graduated or right, something like that. Um, I was working with a friend who was a, who was the, who was a singer named Raymond Reader, a great singer.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I remember, that was his group, right?

• 43:49Speaker 04

  Right, yeah, and, uh.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  You had a female too, right?

• 43:51Speaker 04

  Right, they were gonna turn us into another Shalamar, okay? With Norma Jean. Yeah, so that's who, that's who, that's who we were gonna be, another Shalamar, right? All right, as you can see, it didn't quite work, but, uh.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  Y'all can't pop lock?

• 44:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, couldn't pop, yeah, six, five popping, don't really, you know, uh, uh, look like Pinocchio or whatever, trying to pop lock. But anyway, um, so, so I was in that band, but that situation didn't work out, I won't get into the gory details of it, but then it didn't work out. Then I went back to New York, but I wasn't really necessarily in the New York scene like Jeff was. You know, I would, sometimes I would hang with Jeff and he was, he was working with Keshif and I went with him up there. And a lot of people who were there were like, who, who's, who's the guy over there, you know, and he was.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  The weird guy.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  Who's the weird guy, you know, and Jeff, no, Jeff said, no, he's cool.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  That was the question.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  I don't even remember you going up there, you went up there with me?

• 44:39Speaker 04

  They only let me up there once.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 44:41Speaker 04

  But, but, but I, when I was up there once, there was a, Keshif had a whole bunch of songwriters. And they were like working on stuff, we can need to come up with these ideas, and they said, well, you write songs, right? I said, yeah, I know, I write a little bit. So, uh, so, right, and then we were kind of, we were kind of jamming our idea and I was like, oh, yeah, and I came, I started singing stuff and they're like, that's all right, that's cool. Uh, and then I left, I think about maybe a year later, I kind of heard what I was singing that day, but. And I'm not lying either, but, uh, but, but, uh, so there was a, like, a, uh, so I knew some of the people from Howard University, but in terms of like the New York crew and hanging and all the singers and stuff, I didn't kind of really know as much as Sandra and Jeff.

• 45:21Speaker 04

  Um, but as we got a chance, we produce records like Jeff was saying, we got to do some stuff with Merlin Bob and so we were on in Atlantic and they said, why don't you do, guys do a producer album, and that's how it came about finding a singer.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 45:32Speaker 04

  But the thing is, since I was the outsider and the, and the fuck, most fucked up one of the group, all right, they didn't know, know people, you know, the issue you're talking about that times and how people related and because I didn't.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  It was a clique.

• 45:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, it was a kind of a clique, I was never in kind of any, any cliques and I'd be like, Jeff, can I, can I go with you? He said, yeah, no, he's cool, he's cool, the tall guy's cool, you know, but it, but it, but it, but it affected kind of our sound in music because the eighties was a very unique time, I'm, uh, unique time, it's like the kind of bridge, as you know, between.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Transition.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  Transition.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  It was definitely transition.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  Transition, and all, and all I know is whatever the fuck was going on in the eighties for me personally, I wasn't fucking digging. But I hadn't really, but I hadn't really realized what that was yet, so, so there was, these, these singers were really great, but there was a certain sound. So we started to make our album, why Sandra fit in, all these singers, they would like, and it came from a little bit from the Keshif school, he made some real dope records. It was like, it was the type of singing back then with background singers, love come down, you know, that kind of.

• 46:35Speaker 04

  And they were, their shit was tight.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  This is my favorite episode of my podcast ever. This, this is my dream, this, this is like talking to three embers, like all this random information, I'm not just saying shit.

• 46:48Speaker 04

  She was like.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  But, you know, but, but Sandra, when she sang, she was like.

• 46:56Speaker 04

  She was a siren, she was that fucking Tina Turner kind of like, my shit is unbridled, I'm trying to be hee hoo hoo, but I wasn't really into that.

• 47:04Speaker 00

  So you didn't like the sheen and the professionalism?

• 47:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, I didn't know what that thing was and we were doing backgrounds of the album, I'd be like, can you guys not make it so clean? And they'd be like, what's wrong?

• 47:14Speaker 04

  That was a, a Jackie Leeson double take for those on radio who didn't see what I just did.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  I see, I see.

• 47:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, dad, who's Jackie Leeson? But anyway, um, so, uh, so in terms of Sandra just fit into an energy that, that we had and we knew naturally. And we need, and even with our first album chapters, we hadn't really locked in quite to what that thing was.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 04

  But all I knew was I didn't want to hear the shit I had been hearing.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:41Speaker 00

  Okay, okay, well, let's get to that, I think we could safely assume that the, the, the most defined sound of what the eighties was, at least for the beginning of the eighties to the mid eighties, I mean, was the kind of sound that Prince crafted, that Minnesota.

• 48:01Speaker 04

  Not for us.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  But there was boogie, I know, with, with, with the work that Keshif did and everything and Leroy Burgess and. Any Leroy Burgess, uh, well, VJ, you work with everyone, did you?

• 48:14Speaker 01

  I don't know, my life is a blur in terms of that, I mean, I, yeah, I have worked with a lot of people. I mean, the eighties to me, I mean, I thought, I think the seventies to me was like the best time for music.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  Of course, well, duh.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  But the eighties was transitional to me because the, the sound just changing and I thought people were just trying to figure things out in terms of, of the sound, sonically, everything kind of just sounded stiff and, and, and, and perfect. And we just kind of had to go through that, I mean, even today, as much as we can get to anything that we want, sometimes sonically, things just sound kind of over quantized to me.

• 48:56Speaker 00

  Hell, yeah.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything just sounds kind of over quantized and it's.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  Too processed.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  It's not bad, it's not good, it's not a bad thing or a good thing, it's, but it's a thing, so.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  It's numbing.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's numbing, you know, because the funny thing is, I went to, to visit my son over the Christmas holidays, you know, I mean, I don't really celebrate Christmas, but, you know, I had to go see my son, so we, he was taking me back to the airport and we were listening to all this music, right? And I'm hearing one song and everything sounds perfect, everything, you know, harmonies, big drums, everybody's into the loudness and the, you know, so this one song comes on by this girl, I forgot her name, but it sounded so soulful, harmonies. As soon as the song finished, me and my son started laughing at the same time. We started laughing at the same, now, you know, he's my son, but he realized that.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Everything sounded the same and there's always like just kinda one song that will kinda stick out and you realize how fucked up things have kinda gotten and everybody's kinda just playing the, you know, I gotta sound like the last thing, you know, so.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Well, that's the thing though, but in the eighties, you have to choose a path and.

• 50:12Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  It's like, there's boogie, there's the Minneapolis Prince Town.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  Um, there's also hip hop. How are you guys wrestling with what hip hop has become and the fact that you're developing a craft, but yet you're people that just seem to.

• 50:30Speaker 04

  Well, I think what the, what the key transition was for us and then how it leads musically is that there was this link with sixties and seventies children music. So within the music got electronic and slick.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:46Speaker 04

  But, but, but the bridge was, was hip hop. So hip hop was feeding off of that rawness from the James Brown, the drums and all that kinda stuff.

• 50:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:54Speaker 00

  And. In the late eighties though.

• 50:56Speaker 04

  In the late, in the, yeah, it was starting, yeah.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  In the mid eighties, like have you guys dealt with Larry Smith or just, I'm just throwing out New York names like.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know him, I mean.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know him personally.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  I don't know him personally, but I, I know of him. I know of him. I know of him.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  I, I, I think the thought was, what I was getting to is like, we did a session, I went to, I was following Jeff, carrying Jeff's bags to a session one day.

• 51:23Speaker 04

  And it was, and I would just, lots of times I would just sit there and be quiet and listen to people. They were doing a hip hop rec, hip hop record and I was listening to it and I was like, you know, at that particular time, I hadn't really heard yet somebody, you know, sensibilities of hip, hip hop, of the drums, what was happening underneath with a melodic song kinda at that particular time. So that concept of bringing that together and plus there was, there was starting to be on the, on East Coast, certain rock records that I heard that I liked and just, and then listening to more like soulful stuff and since we were called the stand, we were gonna become the family stand and change our name because

• 52:04Speaker 04

  Yvonne Jeffries in the stand was too confusing. Uh, that story we can get to at a later time. Yeah, but, um, um, that's what led to ghetto heaven. That, that idea of let me sing a song over this, within the context of this hip hop roar-ish type of beat.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  I'm gonna tell them how ghetto heaven came to be.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  What is ghetto heaven?

• 52:31Speaker 04

  Now, now.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  I love that we're gonna break down the song before I even get to how you guys got your group name, but.

• 52:36Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Let's go.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  You want me to tell you how the song came to be?

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  You know, um, Salam Remy?

• 52:45Speaker 00

  Yes, we do.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  He was kinda the inspiration for that song because when we were on our first album, you know, we did the first album, the record company, you know, we were like that group that they didn't exactly know what to do with us. So they kinda fucked us around and, you know, so I said, I, I knew.

• 53:08Speaker 00

  Who's your A and R?

• 53:10Speaker 01

  It was Merlin Bob. Merlin Bob, right?

• 53:13Speaker 00

  Y'all were on Elektra?

• 53:14Speaker 03

  That was Atlantic.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  That was Atlantic at the time.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  So Merlin Bob was at Atlantic first?

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Okay, I remember his electric phase with Sylvia.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  Sylvia.

• 53:22Speaker 00

  They were, they both went together. Okay, I forgot, I forgot.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they were getting us all, me and Pete, all the production work, you know.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  But anyway, after that first album, I knew, uh, Salam Remy's father because him and I grew up together. We did the Chitlin' Circuit, you know, we did a lot of sessions together. So I said, Pete, we need to go talk to my friend, uh, Van, Van Gibbs, right? So Van was over there on fifty fourth street and eleventh avenue. I said, I set up a meeting him so we could kinda talk because we were getting kinda frustrated with what the record company was not doing for us. And, uh, we had our little talk and then we heard this music coming in, coming from the basement. So I said, what's that? He said, that's my

• 54:12Speaker 01

  son. His name is, I knew, he, that's my son Salam. He's gonna be a producer. He said, you wanna, he said, you wanna go down and listen? So we went down and listened to the music and then Pete, listening to the music, he said, he came over and listened to me, say, I got an idea. He said, I got an idea. So after we left Van's, we went straight back to Ebbets Field and worked on ghetto heaven. Came up with a drum beat.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Came up with a drum beat. Now, if you remember the, the original version of Red Ghetto Heaven. With funky drama, came up with a bassline.

• 54:50Speaker 03

  That's, that came from, I, cause I was in love with Cool Mo D. And I said, Jeff, I was in love with Cool Mo D.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 54:57Speaker 03

  He had a song, The Wild, Wild West.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  So then I, that's why I said.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't even know that.

• 55:02Speaker 03

  You remember, I told, I said, I like that bassline.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  Why get the feeling y'all just mean each other right now?

• 55:07Speaker 01

  I know, but I didn't, I didn't know, I didn't know that bassline.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, so then you, you said.

• 55:17Speaker 03

  So, so he was like.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:20Speaker 03

  I was, I love that bassline. So then you like sorta fucked it, twisted a little bit.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  So the record company heard it.

• 55:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but see, here's the thing, here's the thing. See that, this is the piece, the, the, the piece that I always remember, the, the inspiration of ghetto heaven. Cause the Salam thing was part of that, but also the, we had gone to the label, we had submitted the whole record.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:40Speaker 03

  We submitted the whole album and they were like, yeah, this is dope, it's dope. We didn't hear no singles.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  So we were like, son of a, and so we were like so excited, we was excited about the album and we, and disappointed that they didn't hear, you know, cause we felt like there were singles, you know?

• 55:54Speaker 01

  There was chain, right?

• 55:55Speaker 03

  It was chain. So we like, I remember, I remember, you know, eventually getting back to studio was like, you know, it was just like, they just want nursery rhymes. They just want nursery rhymes. Those people were like, I know I love my baby. No, I love my baby. I remember that.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  He did the same thing with Rush Rush.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  With Rush Rush. Rush Rush was a dare.

• 56:19Speaker 00

  Wait, wait, wait, timeout. Was Rush Rush the last song done for Spellbound?

• 56:23Speaker 03

  No.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  No, it was the first song.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  You just did the same formula.

• 56:27Speaker 03

  Exactly, no, no, no, it wasn't, no.

• 56:31Speaker 04

  Well, you wanna hear the Rush Rush story?

• 56:33Speaker 03

  I asked you, I asked you, I said, you can't, you can't play, you can't write a song with just two chords. He said, bling, bling.

• 56:39Speaker 04

  No, no, that wasn't it. That was, what I was, that was. The other part was, no, at the time.

• 56:48Speaker 04

  What happened, what happened was, well, usually what happens is, you know, at the time, Babyface was writing a lot of songs. We would go back and, and Babyface is a great songwriter, of course, I love him. But I, but I would say to her, I can write those songs in my sleep.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  Wait, wait, timeout. So did you purposely use the DX seven patch just to, as a point of sarcasm or?

• 57:09Speaker 04

  No, it wasn't, it wasn't, but the sarcasm was, I literally said, cause I knew what his thing was. The thing was, it was the way he hit the beat. So I was like, I jokingly went to the piano and I said, you're the whisper of a summer breeze. You're the kiss that puts my soul at ease. And I was, I was like, oh, that sounds good. And that's the first two things I said. But there was a way he used, he would write songs that would kinda go.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  It's, it's a, it's a, it's a pocket to a, to a song and every songwriter has their pocket. So once you figure out what the Mofo's pocket is, he'd be like, oh, you wanna that type of song? You wanna that type of song? That's the pocket of that thing. So it's all of.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  Take that.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 58:03Speaker 04

  So that's it, my brother.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Yo.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Who you texting? I gotta do this. Who you calling?

• 58:10Speaker 04

  Babyface, yo, this two.

• 58:11Speaker 00

  I gotta do this. Wait, I gotta do this. She had him on the show though. I gotta do this. Hang on. Please pick up. What time is it on the, oh, it's, okay. Just pick up, please.

• 58:19Speaker 04

  I meant to tell him that when I met him too, but he wasn't.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  He was being a.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  It's not a butt down. It's an odd time. It's six o'clock. It's. Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it. I'm officially calling Jimmy Jam to let him know that he's officially my second favorite.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  You should have left him a message.

• 58:42Speaker 04

  Left him a message.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  You should have left him a message.

• 58:45Speaker 00

  No, he won't call back. I think he thinks that I'm butt dialing, but.

• 58:49Speaker 04

  Oh, I got Jimmy Jam.

• 58:51Speaker 00

  Just bring him.

• 58:52Speaker 04

  Bring him. No, I know, because it really was for Jimmy Jam, because the first song that I did, we kinda did it together, but I did this track with this song for this girl named Janice Christie. Heatstroke. Heatstroke. It's one of the worst songs I ever wrote, but it came a little bit of a hit. It wasn't a hit though. But it was a hit.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  What year was this?

• 59:13Speaker 04

  It's nineteen eighty-six or eighty-seven, something like that. Yeah, so Janet Jackson's record had come out, so everybody was trying to do that, What Have You Done For Me Lately? And what was that, what was, what was that song by that group? That album? No, but it was another group. There's another song that came out, Alice Be My Girl.

• 59:32Speaker 00

  Full Force?

• 59:32Speaker 04

  Full Force. Full Force had a record, right? That was really dope.

• 59:35Speaker 00

  I Want You Just For Me.

• 59:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, but so the bassline for Heatstroke was a kind of a combination of a ball for Jimmy. And they were like, so it was like.

• 59:48Speaker 04

  That song's kinda funky.

• 59:56Speaker 04

  You know, so, so it was that, and the song was horrible too. Heat up, stroke up.

• 1:00:05Speaker 04

  It was kinda fly. It was fly for the time, but usually in my joke songs, it's when it ended up being hits, my trying to be all. That's what happens. All the joke songs are the hits. Yeah. Ghetto Heaven, Rush Rush, all his joke songs. Like. Promise of a New Day. Even he is? No, no, no, no. I was serious about that.

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  He put that one out under another name.

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  No, you notice.

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  You did it Alan Smithy?

• 1:00:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was really dumb too.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  Why?

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  Because at the time.

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  Cause I never knew till now.

• 1:00:31Speaker 04

  Cause in two thousand, around two thousand and four, I'm like, they're not checking for us anymore. I'm checking my name to Joshua Nile. So they think I'm a new young hip hop cat. Which was the dumbest shit I ever did in my fucking, oh, sorry.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  Stop, stop editing yourself.

• 1:00:45Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Y'all know about Joshua Nile? Yeah, so I wrote.

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  We did our research.

• 1:00:50Speaker 04

  He is, and but the thing is, what inspired that was, again, going back to hip hop, what was, there was this record that I loved, Broken Language or Broken?

• 1:00:59Speaker 00

  Broken Language by Smooth the Hustler.

• 1:01:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, that track, it was like, so, so, so he was like.

• 1:01:06Speaker 04

  So I'm like, he is the dope elector, the dope detector.

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  Going on.

• 1:01:12Speaker 04

  So, so that's what I, so when you combine.

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  Motherfucker, I, yo, when I hear her that song.

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  You're right.

• 1:01:38Speaker 04

  Oh, God. So that's, oh, shit. Connection between, you know, the soul and hip hop.

• 1:01:45Speaker 00

  That was your R and B Broken Language by Smooth the Hustler?

• 1:01:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, basically.

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  Call Jimmy Jam back. Call him back. Call him back. It's your number two now. You know what? The interesting, the interesting thing about that project that I remember too is that I remember them taking a long time to get back to us about doing the song because, and we almost thought that they didn't want to do the song. And we almost thought that maybe they were trying to get somebody else to produce the song. And it was like, it was just kind of a weird thing, and I think we almost gave the song away.

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, the problem was they didn't, they didn't intend for the first single to come from us.

• 1:02:28Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. They didn't intend for the first single to come from us. And, and, and so. But they made the right choice.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  They made the right choice.

• 1:02:35Speaker 04

  Finally. But about that album though, is, and, and, and go back to Jimmy and Terry, cause we love, love, loved one of our famous. But that's their second single was, I wish I don't.

• 1:02:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it was called I Wish or something, but there's a song we had on there called Four Words From A Heartbreak. That was a really dope song that actually. Should have been the next single. Should have been the next single, but it was. They were gonna go that route. But it was a tie, so it was good, but we, but you know, there's a lot of times with music industry is politics and, you know. Yeah, and we, and we get it though, but, and the name, and we actually had offered this, so I think we had tried to get it to Whitney Houston, and then I think Satan, I'm sorry, Chris, Clive Davis.

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  Clive Davis.

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm sorry.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  You gotta let that shit roll in. That shit was great. The way you dropped it, it was just.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before The Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by my friend, John Legend. So you're helping Will I Am write hooks? What made Ordinary People become the one song from those sound checks you knew you had to make your own?

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  I was just writing for the Black Eyed Peas. I wasn't expecting to write something for myself in that session, but I wrote the hook for Ordinary People, and I recorded a demo, and I'm like, I would rather keep Ordinary People for myself. This station in Chicago, W G C I, they start playing it before we're promoting it. The song spoke for itself. It became the defining song for my first album. I knew it was special, but you never know how special it's going to be and how much impact it's going to have in people's lives. And you never believe that you're going to actually change people's lives with a song.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Experience Before The Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  Hey, what's up? This is Kelvin Washington from The Odd Couple with Rob Parker and Kelvin Washington. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it starts with a great deal on off-road-ready Tacoma or a half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shoptoyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 1:05:19Speaker 00

  Oh, wait, oh, yo, my mind is about to explode right now, cause we're all over the place. All right, so since we're, since we're, no, no, we're just being sporadic.

• 1:05:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  This is why I want to know, because when I got word that you guys were producing Spellbound.

• 1:05:37Speaker 04

  Paul Abdul's second album.

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  Yes, her second album, her follow-up to her, I mean, her.

• 1:05:43Speaker 04

  It was a massive record.

• 1:05:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, Forever Your Girl was more like an industry that built Virgin.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  And

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  opportunities like that don't come.

• 1:05:59Speaker 00

  They don't, that story doesn't happen. When I heard you guys were producing it and the lion's share of the record,

• 1:06:07Speaker 00

  I was like, yo, like.

• 1:06:09Speaker 04

  How? Yeah. That's from him playing in our house, playing the piano and.

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  How did that hap, how did it happen? Because I would have thought, okay, well, okay, knocked out. That was upstart L.A. Babyface, but now that they're the shit, let's, let's, like, she's in industry now.

• 1:06:28Speaker 04

  Y'all were doing Aftershock first, right?

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  She wanted to do, she wanted to do something different. She was, this is where.

• 1:06:33Speaker 00

  She wanted to make an artistic statement?

• 1:06:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, she did. She did.

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  She didn't want to feed the machine?

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  No, she didn't want to do, she wanted to do something different.

• 1:06:41Speaker 04

  To move past that.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That's why I give her.

• 1:06:44Speaker 00

  And they let her do that?

• 1:06:45Speaker 04

  Credit. She was big enough to make her own. And she's really underestimated in terms of her artistic intellect and, and discipline. So, well, she heard Rush Rush, so she flipped over that, and then, and we were working with a group called Aftershock, that we did an album for Virgin, so that's how she got to heard about us. And after she heard Rush Rush, she loved that, and then, what else did we write? Then I think Long Kisses In The Wind.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Long Kisses In The Wind, Promise Of A New Day.

• 1:07:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, Promise Of A New, and then.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  So did I hear?

• 1:07:14Speaker 00

  Promise Of A New Day was so dark, the way those dissonant strings came in.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  But, but, but the juxtaposition of the video being so sunny and everything, and everything, I was like, yo.

• 1:07:26Speaker 04

  Well, listen, the coolest song on there, I'm sorry, was Vibology. Oh.

• 1:07:33Speaker 04

  What, what happened?

• 1:07:34Speaker 00

  I think the MTV Award performance did it a disservice.

• 1:07:38Speaker 04

  Because literally the next day. Yeah, we were watching it. We're watching, well, oh shit. So the next day, radio, the, the managers told us, yo, ready is literally saying, you're not sending us the fat song, are you? He thought of it.

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  Yo, man.

• 1:07:53Speaker 04

  It's a radio, she wasn't even fat, but they're just the food.

• 1:07:56Speaker 00

  Can I put in context?

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  I gotta go look at the, I'm Googling the video.

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  So she, she, no, it's not even the video. She performed at the MTV Awards. And because, you know, I mean, pre-social media, I don't even know how people managed to, like, I knew the collective thought was that, oh my God, what happened to Paula?

• 1:08:15Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:08:16Speaker 00

  And they blamed the song.

• 1:08:18Speaker 04

  Right, they blamed the song.

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  And I liked the song.

• 1:08:21Speaker 04

  Single.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  What, what did they?

• 1:08:22Speaker 04

  And they, they like, they just.

• 1:08:23Speaker 00

  Vibology.

• 1:08:25Speaker 04

  It was, listen, you're a costume, you know, when you have like the.

• 1:08:28Speaker 00

  She had a weird costume on with some headlights on the ass.

• 1:08:31Speaker 04

  But it was a wireless microphone, I think something on the back or something that kind of made it jet out funny, so the angle scored it. So it made it look, she's two pounds, if that, and it made it look like she was three pounds.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  Three.

• 1:08:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. So literally, the radio was like, cause they were sending the single the next day, they were like, you're not sending us the fat song. And it just, they just, it killed the momentum of that song, and honestly, I mean, if I'm, if I'm gonna tell you, that, that perform, that, the backgrounds on that song for me is the most proud I am of any background I've done, recorded, in my career, because of the fact that I got to use my classical training. All of that. I did all of them voices from the bar to the, I did all of those.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Can we kinda ask you about that? Cause Bill sent a video, audio of when she was in high school, and I was like, this can't really be Sandra. It was like, it was like the opera.

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  I do, we're nerds. I know how to find things. Uh-oh, we're nerds. We're the government. Uh-oh.

• 1:09:30Speaker 04

  I'll be doing that Vanessa Del Rio tape.

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  Oh, that's, that's placeful now.

• 1:09:37Speaker 04

  I know, right?

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Well, wait, Sandra, same video, range, ma'am.

• 1:09:42Speaker 04

  Well, no, I mean, I was trained. I mean, you know.

• 1:09:44Speaker 03

  I went to like Music and Art where Erica went.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:09:47Speaker 03

  Where Roy Hargrove went, Norah Jones.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  All that shit went out the window when she met us.

• 1:09:51Speaker 03

  They told me to stop being so perfect. And I was, he, you know, it was like, oh, really? Okay.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  Rock and roll. I might did it in a race. Can you still hit the, you still got?

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, that's in you, you know. So the, the, the classical training never leaves you. But the, the, the, that's what I got. The, the, the, the best training I got isn't being in the studio of Pete and Jeff telling me. The feel is the most important thing. The feel. Don't lose the feel. I'm like, can I do that again? They're like, no, it felt good. You're not doing it again. I'm like, please, can I do it again? Like, nope.

• 1:10:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, they didn't, they didn't let me, you know.

• 1:10:33Speaker 03

  They don't let me perfect, perfect it. So, you know, they're like that.

• 1:10:37Speaker 00

  So after two takes, then it's like.

• 1:10:39Speaker 03

  Whenever the take is right.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Whenever the take is right.

• 1:10:42Speaker 03

  And I wanted to be like something else, but if it feels right, and they, they both end up, you know. They're like that and Mark Batson is like that. These are, those producers don't care if the note is right, if the, the, if the, if the, the, the. They want the take to feel right. That's the, the, the, the prime objective. So, you know, that, that's important because, you know, I listen, I was actually today, listened to a bunch of, like, you know, seventies and eighties. Stuff like Jane Khan and, you know, Enfrenize. And I'm like, she ain't singing it. It ain't like perfect. It's about the feel. It's about. You know, it's about where, where she's, where she's coming from with the note. It's not about where the note, what, where the note lands.

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  Where she come from.

• 1:11:28Speaker 02

  But it's funny because she still has a similar background as you where she knows how to do it classically.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. She's classically trained too. Yeah.

• 1:11:35Speaker 00

  Jeff, you're not getting away with this. I'm sorry.

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  Come on, man.

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  I have to at least back up the train at least fifteen years just to start. With, or first, for starters, you were taught by Yusef Latif?

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  No, I studied with him for a second in college. It, for a second in, I wasn't taught by him. I wa, I went to. Borough of Manhattan Community College for about a year. That was just my extent of college. Cause once I. Made it out of high school, I don't know how. I said, let me give college a try. So I got in there and. And I studied with him for a little while and he was, you know, he was showing me some things. In fact, I didn't even know he, he played flute. I didn't know the flute was his thing.

• 1:12:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  And, you know, I would just, once a week I go and he, you know, we just do some private lesson things and, you know. That's about my extent, the extent of me studying with him.

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  What is your preferred weapon of choice as far as your arsenal? Is it soprano, alto, tenor?

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  I've been playing a lot of soprano lately. Uh, I don't, I don't wanna.

• 1:12:45Speaker 00

  I mean, gun to your head, what do you, what's, what's your axe? Because you have so many. Don't say gun to.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  That one. Tenor, but I've been playing a lot of soprano probably the last. Maybe, maybe four or five years. I've been playing a lot of soprano, a lot of soprano.

• 1:13:15Speaker 03

  I love you on Barry though.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  I love me on Barry too, but that doesn't make me enough.

• 1:13:21Speaker 00

  Okay, so here's a question I have. So, our particular sax player, uh, Ian Hendrickson Smith. Formerly of the Dap Kings. And so the thing is that Ian hates when I make him break out the soprano. Now for us, it's hilarious, but he hates the sheen associated.

• 1:13:46Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, that and, you know, it's, it's almost like, I, I guess the unwritten rule is. Like after Coltrane.

• 1:13:56Speaker 00

  You know, is done with it. Who else wants to, and more power Wayne Shorter, more power to, you know, I know there are other greats that have touched.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  I didn't like Coltrane's sound on soprano.

• 1:14:07Speaker 00

  You serious?

• 1:14:10Speaker 00

  You are one of a kind.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  I didn't like his sound on soprano. Tenor, he's my favorite all time, but soprano, I didn't like, I didn't like his tone on soprano.

• 1:14:19Speaker 00

  Who did you like on soprano?

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  I like Wayne Shorter.

• 1:14:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, okay. So you feel the definitive sound of the soprano sax is Wayne Shorter?

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  No, not the definitive sound. I just, his sound just connects with me more on soprano. Coltrane, cause I think he got, if I remember correctly, that was something that was a gift from Miles, right?

• 1:14:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, he picked it up. I guess he was trying to do something, but I wasn't crazy about his sound, sonically his sound. I wasn't crazy about.

• 1:14:47Speaker 00

  So what were you looking?

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  I wasn't looking for anything. It just wasn't connecting me. It just sounded kinda.

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  Contrived.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  No, not even contrived. I think he was sincere about what he was doing, but it just didn't sound. It wasn't for me. That's the best.

• 1:15:04Speaker 00

  So what's your favorite period of Coltrane then?

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  Giant Steps.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Or even before that.

• 1:15:11Speaker 00

  Spiritual or?

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  No, the, the stuff when.

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  You don't like the primitive and.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  The stuff when he started, I mean, I liked the, um.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  I mean, the stuff where he started going out, it just got a little bit too out for me, you know. But, uh. The era of Giant Steps before that, you know, stuff he was doing in the sixties with Miles was, I loved all of that stuff. I mean, he had like a sound to me. He just had, his sound just connected. I remember.

• 1:15:41Speaker 00

  So who's your sax god then? Cause I just naturally assume that everyone worships the Coltrane no matter what.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, Coltrane no matter what. I mean, I like Michael Brecker. He was like the, the, that cat to me.

• 1:15:58Speaker 00

  Unsonic hero, okay.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  You know, uh. I mean, those two guys, I mean, there's just so many guys. I mean, I could go back to Dexter Gordon and. Perez was his, had his own sound, you know, the smooth thing. Bird was just, Bird was fast. I mean.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Ah, man, Bird was just. I don't know, man.

• 1:16:24Speaker 00

  So explain to me, because the thing is, is that you managed to capture. The one, the one thing I always hear about when, uh, an iconic solo is captured in a song. It's always the same story. And the story is, okay, guys, I'm ready to cut it. Nope, we got it already. Thank you very much. I know that's your story.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49Speaker 00

  But are you, once, did you know that you captured Lightning in a Bottle with, with your saxophone solo on Caribbean?

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  No, no, that, that I have to give credit to, to producer Keith Diamond at the time. Because he was the one that, he knew pretty much what he wanted in terms of, of, of the song. So we would just take sections, cause.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  I mean, I went into the studio and I was just kinda get, trying to get a feel of what the song was and they had the tape rolling. He told Bob Rose to roll the tape while I was playing and I was in front of the mic. They were trying to get a sound. So I said, okay, I think I got something. And then he said, no, come on in.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  I was just warming up.

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  You didn't beg them to let me just do a take of it and?

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  No, no, that song, that song was pieces, cause he had the whole tape rolling. And he took pieces of what I played throughout the, from the beginning of the song to the end. I want you to play this part here. And we just kinda constructed the solo. And the, and the interesting thing about it is like after that song blew up, man, I was getting calls like. Everybody in their mother house was calling me and my friend Van, he said, yo, Jeff. You need to start charging people, cause I was undercharging people. He said, you know, your shit is hot. You need to get paid for it. So I just started charging people.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went up a lot more.

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  Steve can attest to this. So when Billy Ocean finally agreed. To come on our show, this is after six long years of begging him. Please come on the Tonight Show. Please, please, please.

• 1:18:44Speaker 00

  And he finally agrees to come to the show and we're losing our shit. And then I'm looking at Ian, our sax player. And we were like, dude, you have to do it note for fucking.

• 1:18:59Speaker 00

  And do we spend two hours just singing that shit to him?

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  Like between that solo and Carol's whisper.

• 1:19:11Speaker 00

  But here's the thing though, it's like, I know a lot of Tariq's lyrics.

• 1:19:20Speaker 00

  Tariq, you know, I mean, Tariq will, let me, let me not misrepresent him. I think the average person knows like, can, can retain like. Maybe seventy-five songs or seventy, those things. But it's just like. I mean, I know that song because I DJed so much. I, you know, watch TV all the time.

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  American, Americans who were born before eighty have to know that, that.

• 1:19:51Speaker 00

  Like she means, Chief is like deep, like he's like Doug Karn.

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:19:59Speaker 00

  It's not bougie. It's like, he's more avant garde. That's where his heart is. I mean, he made his meat and potatoes as the Dap Kings. So all that like.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  You don't think it's bougie when you don't know the solo to Caribbean? Come on, man.

• 1:20:10Speaker 00

  No, no, no. You know it, but I don't think, like, any, anybody that's on the Tonight Show now. Like again, my story is that I didn't grow up saying, hey, one day I'm gonna be the new Doc Severson of the Tonight Show. It just happened. And I'm prepared for it, but part of the job of being on the Tonight Show is that you. All the, uh, uh, pop culture sponging that you've done in your life, everything you've learned now gets utilized on the show. So.

• 1:20:42Speaker 00

  I mean, you know that solo, but it's like, now you gotta execute it perfectly.

• 1:20:46Speaker 03

  Executed. That's different.

• 1:20:50Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, that's, no, that's.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  That's Kev's whisper. I'm sorry, wait up.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  I love that solo, man.

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  Wait, wait.

• 1:21:04Speaker 00

  All right, now you're singing Sanford and Sonny.

• 1:21:13Speaker 00

  Can you still, when's the last time you had to play that solo verbatim? Or, don't tell me, thirty-five years ago after I did it, that was it?

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  When I had to play it?

• 1:21:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  I can't, I can't remember.

• 1:21:26Speaker 00

  You didn't tour with him at all, or?

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no, no. The only two times I, I really played with him was one night,

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  the week, the night, he was on Saturday Night Live. He did two nights at Radio City. Those were the only times that I ever played with, with Billy. And ironically, the, the last night that I played with him was when I lost the horn that, that I had, because we went out.

• 1:21:51Speaker 00

  Wait, you literally lost that horn?

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  No, let me tell you what happened. After the show, you know, because he sold out Radio City two nights, I sat in with him two nights. The second night, we went and we, after the show, we went to kind of celebrate, you know, went up, got a couple of drinks. I went down into the, after we were done, I went down into the garage.

• 1:22:12Speaker 00

  Don't.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  To get my car.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Um, the guy brought my car. My horn was in the back of the car. I didn't put it in the car yet. I paid, went and paid for the car and drove off and left my horn. When I got home, I looked in the trunk. I was like, oh shit. So I went back to the garage. Of course, they didn't see nothing.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  They didn't see, they didn't see, nobody saw anything. And so the only time I ever see that horn is for reruns of Saturday Night Live. And ironically, Mike.

• 1:22:47Speaker 00

  Somewhere in life, there's like some grandkid that got a saxophone for church.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:52Speaker 00

  Not knowing what they just got.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, well, somebody, yeah, some.

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  That thing should be in the Blacksonian.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  Blacksonian, yeah.

• 1:23:03Speaker 00

  So Sandra.

• 1:23:04Speaker 04

  Yes, Sandra.

• 1:23:05Speaker 00

  Okay, so your journey is just as rich as well.

• 1:23:11Speaker 00

  I'll tell you, we're not even going to get, properly get to the Family Stand. This is almost like a nine-part episode.

• 1:23:16Speaker 02

  Prequels.

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  Open doors.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  This is fun.

• 1:23:20Speaker 00

  How much pounding of the pavement did you do in New York?

• 1:23:27Speaker 00

  Oh, wait, can you wait one second, please? We're getting a phone call.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:23:31Speaker 00

  We're getting a phone call right now.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  Oh, are we?

• 1:23:34Speaker 00

  James Harris III?

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  Yes, sir. What's up, man?

• 1:23:37Speaker 00

  How you doing? I'm, I'm currently, right now, taping an episode of Questlove Supreme.

• 1:23:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:23:44Speaker 00

  Um, I regret to inform you of this, and I've, I've made it public. I've declared my loyalty, my allegiance to you since the history of my show.

• 1:23:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:23:53Speaker 00

  But you are now officially in second place as.

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  Did he hang up?

• 1:24:02Speaker 00

  You, you're.

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  Did he hang up?

• 1:24:05Speaker 00

  You, you've been, you've, you've been, you've been demoted to second place because the Family Stand episode is the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life.

• 1:24:16Speaker 03

  Is that right?

• 1:24:17Speaker 00

  Yes, I'm currently, right now, with, with V. Jeffrey, Sandra St. Victor, and Peter.

• 1:24:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:24:23Speaker 00

  And I, yeah, I had to tell you that live on the air that. We love you, bro, by the way.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  We love you, sweetie, you know that. Thank you for giving, giving the heads up on Prince.

• 1:24:32Speaker 03

  But I don't need sympathy love, though.

• 1:24:36Speaker 02

  Old Sandra.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  They gotta hit you on Sirius Radio, by the way.

• 1:24:40Speaker 00

  Now they're like, they're gonna do your show. Yes, I know.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We want to come on your show, too.

• 1:24:45Speaker 04

  We'll be there, we'll be there, just call us.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  More sympathy love.

• 1:24:47Speaker 00

  More sympathy love. I'm sorry, this is the craziest, the, the stories I've heard. It's, you know, like, we're very organized, we're going in chronological order. No, it's just going all over the places.

• 1:24:58Speaker 03

  I, I can't wait to hear it, man.

• 1:25:00Speaker 00

  Yes, man. Anyway, I just want to let you know, you're number two, but you're still number one, but you're number two now.

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  This ain't gonna be six hours.

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  What'd you say?

• 1:25:07Speaker 03

  I'm still number one as a solo, I'm still number one as a solo act, though.

• 1:25:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:25:14Speaker 03

  Thank you. I'm just gonna give my category together.

• 1:25:17Speaker 00

  All right, you're, you're still the number one solo act on Questlove Supreme. Thank you.

• 1:25:20Speaker 03

  Okay, perfect. Okay, thank you.

• 1:25:21Speaker 00

  All right, bro.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  All right, bro.

• 1:25:25Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 1:25:34Speaker 00

  Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

• 1:25:40Speaker 00

  For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, this is the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 1:25:47Speaker 06

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  Behind every chart-topping hit, you know by heart there's an original. Writing it someplace where nobody was listening. Behind the culture that marks a generation, there's an original. Already moving, already shaking things up. Behind every night that changed the room, somebody had to walk in first. Not knowing it would land, but doing it anyway. Originals are out there. Living stories worth telling. What's yours? Behind every original, live in Levi's.

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• 1:27:30Speaker 00

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