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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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Home - Artists - What's New - Links - FAQ - Theme - About Me |
"I didn't do it to cause any kind of trend or
anything, I was just comfortable with it. I had cut my hair in a certain kind of hairstyle
that I didn't like, and in order to get it back to the way it was before I had cut it, I
had to first to cut it all off. When I had cut it all off, it felt good and I just decided
to keep it that way."
"The thing is, God created sex and
that’s how we all got here. We did not come from the stork flying over and just
dropping us off at the door. I don’t understand how people, in certain religions or
whatever, can get so highly upset, when that’s how we all got here. I think it’s
a lack of understanding in their own beliefs and their morals."
"If you listen to 'Nobody But You,
Babe', that was (came out at) the same time that the Isley Brothers had 'It's Your Thing'.
We ended up in a lawsuit about that, but we won the lawsuit because I had written 'Nobody
But You Babe' and recorded it first, in 1964. It didn't come out good, I recorded at
Franklin Nellis' on a two-track studio, you know, your band on one track and your voice on
the other, so it didn't come out that good. And the Isley Brothers heard it and it was so
much like 'It's Your Thing' that they swore I stole it from them. But I was able to prove
that not only did I not steal it from them, I had written and recorded the song five years
before their record came out! I had just re-cut it in 1969. The lawyers took most of the
money cause it drug on and on, but we won the lawsuit on that."
"Uuuh, I've broken my
ass a couple of times.. I was just dancing and I slipped, that's how that happened. And I
rolled off into the pit, the first week of the play (Younger Man, Older Woman, the comedy
play/musical Millie starred in and toured with in 93-94). I rolled off the stage! There's
a scene where I'm going crazy and I'm rolling around on the floor and I rolled and got
disorientated as to where I was on the stage. So I rolled backwards a couple of times and
I rolled forwards and... 'BAM!'. Right into the pit, on top of the musicians and
everything (laughs). 
"I think my mother wanted me to sing more so than
I did. Because my mother used to force me to sing a lot! When I was younger, she used to
try and get me to do talent shows and sing in the school choir. I did sing in the the
school choir, but I never got any solos because I wasn’t that confident at that
particular time. But my mother always tried to get me to do talent shows and this and
that, and I would refuse to do it. I refused. I was like: 'No, only time a person’s
gonna catch me out there, out in public, singing, is if they know who I am' and I kept to
that (laughs)."
"He was extraordinary. He was a great writer. He
taught me everything I know about writing. He was very focused, some people thought he was
obsessive. He really was. The band was all he had. The idea of the Bar-Kays was all that
was in his life. He was not married, he had no children, the Bar-Kays was
everything."