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"He started offering
us huge sums of money. The more money you make for a company, the more power you have.
Isaac was able to offer a lot more money to Michael and Ben than they were making with the
Bar-Kays. Couple that with the problems we were having.. Stax didn't envision the Bar-Kays
as a band. To them, a band backed up people who sung, a band didn't become artists
themselves. But, yeah, Isaac took what we were trying do to, even to our look. He went on
to put the same leotards on, the same chains. Just think back now. He had never done that,
not until he saw that album cover (Black Rock), until he saw what the Bar-Kays were doing.
He got everything he could from the Bar-Kays. He got Ben, Michael, Willie.. And when we
got replacements that he liked, he'd buy them off too! (laughs)." "No, I haven't
recorded a new album since 'The Woman I Am'. Why? Because I wasn't ready to (laughs). I'm
not one of those people who releases an album every minute, you know? I do it when I'm
ready, that's all. And I think that's best. In that way things are better. I have, by the
way, recorded an entirely new album over the last couple of years and I have it on ice. I
just used five of the new titles on my latest album 'Epiphany', because I needed five new
cuts for that. But I decided to do this because I've been in the business for 25 years and
I said that instead of releasing a new album, I'll release something that talks about what
I've been doing through the years and what I'm doing now."
"There are a lot of
assholes in this business and that's one of the reasons why I don't have very many friends
in it." "Well, number one I
was too light. I know my pictures didn't show it, but I'm a very fair complexioned black
person and there was not a big market for black models at the time. And when they did
decide to hire black models, they wanted the world to know 'we have a BLACK model'
(laughs). I was not dark enough."
"I'm not married. But
I've got eleven children. They range from seven, the next is twenty and all above. No,
they're not in the business. I've got one daughter, Heather, she sings and dances with
James Brown. And I have son, Isaac III, who's gonna be into music."
"I'm really sick of
that song. But because I've had to, I've learned to live with it." "The record company
didn't like 'Black Rock' when we did it. Had they liked it, it would have been a hugely
successful album and Earth, Wind & Fire would never have come into being. They used
the formula that we used on 'Black Rock' to establish their band. If you think about it,
you'll notice the similarities. A lot of horn work, big productions, where the music was
as much part of the song as the singers. It was all intertwined. We were pushing for
something that the record label didn't have any faith in or didn't even believe in. They
half-heartedly released the album to pacify us, so we would leave, quit whining and
complaining and instead of them really going after 'Black Rock', they just left it alone.
It was sort of like when rap music came about, everybody was saying 'nobody's gonna buy
that stuff' . But Earth, Wind & Fire recognized it and used the same format and became
a hugely successful group."
"Yeah, I smoke. I'm
not an opera singer, OK? I'm a contemporary singer and I believe that my voice and my
power comes from another place, I really do. There are of course the physical attributes
(that can affect the voice), like if I don't get enough sleep, and so on. I try to take
care of myself, but I still smoke cigarettes and I like to drink my occasional wine and
nothing's happened yet."
"I got the idea for
'Clean Up Woman' from reading an x-rated magazine. There was a story about this woman who
was married to this wealthy guy and she was screwing around with the young guys around the
neighborhood and she would hire this young, black girl to baby-sit for her. So, this young
black girl did such a good job, and the rich mama was never home, that the kids started
calling the black girl mama. Finally, the dad sees how much the kids love this young girl,
so he ended up marrying her. At the end (of the article) the woman's talking about 'the
black nigger bitch she had hired to do the cleaning up for her that took her fucking man'
(laughs). That's what she said." |
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© Maria Granditsky
August 1997. |
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