Brian Jackson

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

All right, greetings and salutations everybody welcome to the first lecture of … what is it, Tuesday... Tuesday, yes Tuesday. If you are familiar with the work of Mr. Gil Scott-Heron then you are by definition familiar with the work of this gentleman right here. He and Gil Scott-Heron formed a potent musical team for many years. He is a producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist. Won’t you please welcome Brooklyn’s own Mr. Brian Jackson. Welcome, sir.

Brian Jackson

Thank you, I’m happy to be here.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

We are happy to have you. You were part of a very strong team, what is the thing that is important to maintain a strong team, just as an initial question for you?

Brian Jackson

I think the most important thing that probably drove us and kept us working together for almost ten years was that we had a similar goal. Maybe we didn’t talk about it that much but it was urgent in a way for us to be able to deliver news, be a spokesperson for what was going on at that particular time. We are looking at the ’70s, it was a time of turmoil, it was time when a lot of things needed to be interpreted. We were just beginning to see how pervasive the atmosphere of control was becoming. It’s not that it hadn’t already happened, it was just we were in our 20s and we were just figuring it all out.

Every time we came up with another realization, we decided that the best way to articulate it was to share with our peers. The way we did that was musically. I had read a book called, Subliminal Seduction and another one called, The Hidden Persuaders. They were books about how Madison Avenue was using the popular music of the day in order to sell their products, it’s a common thing now. In order to advertise something you target the youth, you target the pop culture at the time and you just drive the point home with sales.

We began to understand how that worked. We decided, why not do it ourselves? Instead of trying to sell French fries or whatever, why not try to sell consciousness and awareness? That’s what we decided to do, it’s “Well, let’s try to package some of these things that we are learning about life, about ourselves and about the common things we are all going through together and market it as if it was Madison Avenue.”

To the extent that we were able to do that, we did it without compromising. We weren’t going to completely jump into the pop world because we didn’t feel like there was a lot of substance going on there. How can we do that and at the same time be true to ourselves and the result was what you hear.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How would you define consciousness as far as arts and music?

Brian Jackson

I define consciousness as being aware of one’s surroundings, of being honest with who one is and what are the dynamics between … the interpersonal dynamics between people, between ourselves and between ourselves and society.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I want to play a little bit of music just to get us all on the same page. We’re talking about some concepts but this is also coming right down to the music. This is something from you and Gil, it’s from an album called It’s Your World and we can talk about it after we can listen to a piece of…

(music: Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson – “It’s Your World”)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I play this song for a reason because Gil Scott-Heron of course known as one of the great writers and lyricist of our times but he did not write the lyrics to this song. Who wrote the lyrics to this song?

Brian Jackson

I did.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

In this partnership, was that an unusual thing for you to bring lyrics to Gil and how did that feel?

Brian Jackson

The process was like this … oh, and first I just want to say a couple of things about that song. That dude that was singing high, that wasn’t me. I’ve never sung that high in my life, I probably been that high when I sing but … the other thing was that I did write that song. It’s about spiritual real estate. Basically it’s about having your own sense of yourself and not letting anybody … allow anybody to take that away from you. It was a common phrase at the time, in the ’70s people would say, “Hey, baby what’s happening, man,” [and you’d say], “Hey man, it’s your world.”

We used to do that. We used to take common phrases from the time and incorporate into a larger understanding. To answer your question, the process was like this in the beginning. I would write the music on the songs [for which] I wrote the music. I would say, “Hey, Gil man, check this song out.” He would listen to it and then he would ask me the first … the first thing he would ask me is … he asked, “What were you thinking about when you wrote that?” or “What were you feeling?” I would have to explain it to him, “It’s about alienation” or “It’s about tribute to the ancestors.”

There was a song that we wrote called, “A Toast to the People.” I told him, “It’s about all the people who have worked for freedom. It’s a tribute to them, it’s a toast to the ancestors.” He took a pencil and five minutes later we had a song called, “A Toast to the People.” A lot of times that’s how the process was. It started with the music, the next that would happen is that we would discuss it a little bit and try to figure out what it is that we wanted to say. Then came the marriage of the lyrics and the music.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Was there a particular time when he might have surprised you with something that he came back with that you weren’t expecting? I’m just wondering what the dynamic was as far as the creative process. It sounds pretty interesting as far as him going back and taking in a certain vibe or a certain general idea and then seeing what he came up with.

Brian Jackson

It was always a surprise because I was always fascinated by how quickly he could flash out a theme. That was amazing. Sometimes I think one of the things that I wasn’t so always so thrilled about was … Gil’s tendency was to bang people over the head with a message. I was more from the school of oblique … I guess you can say maybe more allegorical referential type of writing, the kind that didn’t actually call a ball a ball, like described it in another way which he was also very … which Gil was very skilled at.

One of the things that he would always say in his teaching writing was, “The best writing is always about not saying what you are saying.” The best way to write … not the best way but one way is to write about something without calling it what it is. For instance if this is a room, we can describe this as a room without actually saying that we are in a room.

There’s so many other things that we can say about it, we can talk about the chairs, we can talk about how we are all arranged, we can talk about the lighting, we can talk about the walls, we can talk about the floor, we can talk about everything, the furniture that’s in here without actually saying it’s a room and by the end of it of course obviously you know it’s a room and that we are all in it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Let’s go back just a little bit. As we mentioned, you are from Brooklyn.

Brian Jackson

Do-or-die, Bed-Stuy. Which is not actually true, I lived most of my life in Crown Heights.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Alright. How did you get into music and how did jazz become the main musical driving force in your life?

Brian Jackson

That’s easy, both of my parents were jazz heads. From the time I can remember I was being flooded, inundated with music in my house. My house was a place where there was always going to be some music going on, whether it was Ella Fitzgerald or Ahmad Jamal or Miles Davis or Max Roach and Clifford Brown. Sometimes the music would go off for like two seconds and then she would come back and they would come back and there would be some Beethoven or Tchaikovsky for a minute and then we would go back to bebop again.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

At what point did your interest in music … I guess how did jazz encapsulate the black movement of the ’60s and the civil rights movement, how did those things merge for you?

Brian Jackson

I don’t know if they did. What happened to me was that … let me put it this way, okay. When I was young there was a whole black consciousness movement that was coming up in jazz. People like Max Roach, people like Horace Silver, in a sense even the Art Ensemble of Chicago. I think that music is … and particularly jazz had always been a mirror of what happens to the people who play it. As change was affecting everybody, that change was reflected in the music itself. I came along at a time when black consciousness was engrained into music.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Did you find it engrained into popular music to the degree that you wanted it to be at that point?

Brian Jackson

I didn’t see any type of consciousness engrained in pop music, at least what I consider to be pop music because there were people out there that would do it, there was like Stevie [Wonder], Earth, Wind and Fire and even Gamble & Huff were involved in consciousness music. There were a lot of people who might have been considered pop artists or pop writers or producers that also have that same consciousness.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You attended Lincoln University.

Brian Jackson

Oh yeah, in Pennsylvania. I was warned against it, but I went anyway.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Why did you attend Lincoln University?

Brian Jackson

I went to Lincoln University because I had heard of several of my heroes who had attended, the main one being Langston Hughes. I had heard that Langston Hughes went to Lincoln University. As far as I was concerned I only had two choices, I can either go to Brooklyn College or Lincoln University – which was about 90 miles away. Hey, I’m 16 at the time, I’m like, “Well, let me go 90 miles away and see what’s going on.” We had lived in Brooklyn all my life, let me see what’s going on over here and then I found out that Langston Hughes had gone there, Oscar Brown Jr. had gone there, Thurgood Marshall had gone there. I decided that that’s where I wanted to go.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you remember the day you first met Gil?

Brian Jackson

Oh yeah, that was funny. The guy with a high voice is named Victor Brown, I used to spend a lot of time in the practice rooms even though I wasn’t a music major. I spent most times in the practice rooms than I spent studying. I happened to be in there one day... it’s just a little booth with a spinet piano. I wouldn’t say it’s sound proof but anyway, a knock on the door, there’s a dude in the window, I motion for him to come in.

He comes in and he tells me, “Hey man, you must be a freshman?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He says, “Well, you probably don’t know about this but there’s a talent show that we have every year at Lincoln University, there’s a prize and the prize is $100. I’m going to be in it, I heard you playing outside man and it sounds pretty cool. I was wondering if you would like to play this one particular song that I want to do, my boy he couldn’t really figure it out but I think maybe you could.”

I said, “Well, what’s the song?” he said, “It’s ‘God Bless the Child,’ the Blood, Sweat and Tears version of ‘God Bless the Child.’” I said, “Oh yeah, I know that.” That was actually one of the songs that I said, “Let me figure this whole song out.” I played for him and he’s like, “Oh my god, that’s it man, can you do that with me?” I was like, “Yeah, but we splitting the money or what?” He’s like, “Oh, yeah, yeah.” I said, “Anyway, what’s the second prize?” he said, “There is no second prize.” He said, “If they like you, you get to play your whole song. It’s like a mini Apollo, if they don’t like you, they throw pennies up on the stage.”

I was like, “Okay, yeah sounds like fun, let’s do it.” He said, “Okay.” I said, “Are you just doing one song?” He says, “No, I’m actually doing another song, my boy over in the next room is playing it.” I said, “Who’s that? I would like to meet him.” He says, “Oh good, I’m glad that you said that I’m going to bring him over.” He goes and gets him, they are both standing in the doorway, I look at the doorway and all I see is a fro, this huge fro, I’m thinking, “How the hell did this guy [gonna] even get in here?”

He comes in, then he goes, “Yeah man, what’s happening man.” I say, “Yeah, what’s happening man, I’m Brian” and he’s like, “Yeah and I’m [mumbles].” Victor says, “Yeah, this is my friend Gil.” He said he actually wrote another song, I said, “Yeah, I would like to hear it.” He sits down to the piano and he plays a song called, “Where Can a Man Find Peace?” His playing was cool, it was basic but it was cool but his lyrics were off the chain, it was like one of the most beautiful songs that I’ve ever heard. I was like, “Wow, this guy can write some lyrics.”

After he played it and I closed my mouth, I said, “You know what I have all of these songs, I can write lyrics but it will take me like two years just to write one song. Maybe you can do it a little bit faster and probably better.” He said, “Oh yeah, let me hear it.” I sat down and I played this song. After it ended he said, “What were you thinking about, what were you feeling when you wrote it?” I told him … that was our first song we wrote together it’s called, “A Toast to the People.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What else struck you about Gil’s talents? You said he is a great writer, what was about his sensibility that really hit you?

Brian Jackson

I feel like he was a very direct person, he wasn’t for a lot of bullshit but he was also very, very warm and funny a person. His sense of humor came out in a lot of his songs. I feel sometimes a lot of people that he came in contact with didn’t really understand the depth of his sense of humor. I think one of the reasons that we got a long so well was because I did and we kick it like on another level of humor. He was a great pun master, he liked to throw puns around, it just clicked. It’s one of those things that if you work with somebody and it clicks, that’s it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, let’s listen to something that retains some of those qualities. It was written before you guys became partners but I think you brought something to it…

(music: Gil Scott-Heron – “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Brian you were just saying [while the song was playing] about the references, the pop culture references [in those lyrics].

Brian Jackson

Every line was a reference to a commercial or an ad that was going on in the day. A tiger in your tank was for a gas company, giant in your toilet bowl was a reference to a bathroom cleaning product. Every line was a reference to some advertising campaign that I’m sure none of you ever heard unless you just happen to see it by accident on YouTube. I was just saying to Jeff, funny it is, that all of these references are like way dead and gone.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

This particular album which is from, Pieces of a Man, or this particular recording rather which is from the album, Pieces of a Man, was your first opportunity to record formally. You are surrounded by some pretty accomplished people. What is it like as a very young person to be surrounded by or working with people of more established stature, how did you deal with that situation?

Brian Jackson

It’s fucking terrifying man. Here we are, I was 19 years old, I get my first recording session and Bob Thiele who was the head of the label says, “Okay, who do you want on the album?” As it turns out, I get Ron Carter on bass, that wasn’t me playing flute that was Hubert Laws and Bernard Purdie on drums. I brought my boy Burt Jones (who ended up playing guitar on Saturday Night Live for the first five to ten years) to play guitar with me.

I’m in the studio … you want to hear this story? I think I told you this story, I’m not sure. I’m in the studio and we are working on a song, I think it was “Pieces of a Man." Ron Carter, he’s a funny guy man. There’s a right of passage that you have to go through sometimes as artists. Somebody is always going to be somebody who tests you, who questions your ability to do what you do or to know what you know. This is what happened in the studio.

I was in the studio, I had the charts … actually Johnny Pate had done the charts but I dictated them to him. Ron is looking at the charts, I’m on this side, I’m way down here, say this was the studio, I’m way over there with my piano and my Rhodes and they are all, all the way on this side for the sake of separation the bass, the drums and Hubert they are all over there together like the jury. Ron says to me … he looks at that chart and goes, “Hey, this chord right here … Brian, Brian, this chord right here, it says C11, that’s a C11, is it C11?” I said, “Yeah, it’s C11.” He says, “Oh, because I thought maybe it could be a C7, do you think it could be a C7?” I was like, “No, it’s a C11.”

Now me, I’m 19 years old, okay, I’m telling Ron Carter about a chord. I’m just thinking about all of these songs in my head that he’s on with Miles Davis and everything. “No sir, it’s a C11.” And he goes, “Oh, Okay because you know it could be a C7.” I’m like, “No …” then of course there my doubt comes in and I’m like, “Maybe it could …” in my mind I’m going, “Damn, did I write it wrong?” I said, “Oh well, I mean, do you think it should be a C7?” We go back and forth it is. Finally I say, “Well, can we just try it as a C11?” I look at him, I just glanced at him for a second and he’s looking around at Bernard Purdie and he’s looking at Hubert Laws and they are like …[imitates laughing] it’s like one of those tests that you go through. You all, we all have you go through it at some point.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You just mentioned the Rhodes … did you play the Rhodes on Pieces of a Man?

Brian Jackson

I did, I played the Rhodes, it was like one of my first encounters in a studio. It was my first encounter with the Rhodes in the studio. For instance the song, “Home Is Where The Hatred Is,” that was the first time I really put my hands on the Fender Rhodes.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What is it about the Rhodes that’s special to you?

Brian Jackson

Oh, wow. It looks like a piano. You play it like a piano but it is nothing like a piano. The first time I heard it I expected it to sound like a piano but it didn’t sound anything like anything I’ve ever heard, it didn’t sound electronic, there were other keyboards at the time that were electronic but none of them actually had physical components they actually were electronic. It was actually like not even accurate to call the Fender Rhodes an electronic piano because it had … if you open it up it’s got middle parts, they are not strings but they are metal just like strings are. Then I flipped the vibrato all around the room, after that I was finished.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I think we’ve got something up here maybe [of interest] [gestures to Fender Rhodes].

Brian Jackson

Yeah, I see that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Want to show us what you are talking about?

[Brian moves over to the Fender Rhodes to demonstrate]

Brian Jackson

That song was “Home Is Where Hatred Is” and it kind of went like this …

[Brian plays the first verse of “Home Is Where the Hatred Is”]

That was the first one. I don’t know, this has been used a lot, hasn’t it? I think that was used … I think Kanye actually sampled that or something.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Yeah, yeah, he did. We’ve talked a little bit about Winter In America – the album after [Pieces of a Man]. That really gave you a lot of room to stretch out with the Rhodes.

Brian Jackson

The intro [to Winter In America] was something like …

[Brian plays the first verse of “Peace Go With You Brother”]

I had to do it manually … that was one of the Rhodes pieces on there. There’s another one that was pretty popular … I played flute on this, I also played piano on it as well, like in shows I couldn’t play flute and piano. Still trying to figure that out …

[Brian plays the first verse of “The Bottle”]

That was the other Rhodes, we used Rhodes on that whole thing. Winter in America was supposed to be a book. We wanted to make it an audio book combining Gil’s talent for novel writing and for writing songs together. We thought, “Wow, that’s a really great idea, a novel idea.”

We had made about four thousand dollars from the work that we did with Flying Dutchman on Pieces of a Man and Free Will, not from record sales but from royalties or whatever, from gigs that we would do. We decided to invest … after that contract was over with Flying Dutchman and Bob Thiele. We were like, “What does a producer actually do?” Because when we were in the studio, we would see Bob in the studio, he was smoking his pipe and he would go, “Yeah, do what he said.” [We thought] anyway we can do that.”

We decided we could be producers. Wow, what an eye opener that was. We dived into it and we were lucky to have a guy who owned a studio in Silver Springs, Maryland, his name was Jose Williams. If there was another producer on that album I would have to say that it was him because he guided us through the studio process, something that we knew nothing about. We just knew what we wanted.

We tried the album once and we spent most of our money on that album, doing this audio book type of deal and we had a lot of songs. Basically in a nutshell what it was about, it was about a guy who had just … I think we had just seen that Richard Pryor movie, which way …

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Which Way Is Up?

Brian Jackson

Yeah, yeah, where the dude had come back from Vietnam as a soldier, we just made it as dark as we possibly could. The guy came back, he was hooked on drugs, everything was there … also Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On. Those were reference points but we just made it dark as we possibly could. Dude was … he was strung out and at the same time he was reminiscing about his childhood, we had a song there called, “Very Precious Time” which is about the first time falling in love.

The album was called Supernatural Corner, it was all about some of the things that he saw being strung out and being on the corner and checking out the community life from their perspective. That’s how “The Bottle” came about and that’s how “Very Precious Time” came about. There were a lot of references to that kind of thing. In between each song there was a little vignette where Gil would do this monologue, it’s like, “Who is he talking about.”

When you listen to his monologues, you think, “Who is he talking to?” It’s like in the background I’m playing something like … [plays notes on Fender Rhodes] By the end of the album it drives you crazy, “What the hell is going on?” Finally at the end you find out that the dude is actually … he’s not talking to anybody really, he’s like he is in a mental institution, he had lost his mind and all the stuff he’s talking about in the album is just … it’s all from his head, he’s not actually talking to anybody and all of these experiences are just constructs of his insanity.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

That did not actually happen then?

Brian Jackson

That didn’t happen man because it was too dark, man. After we finished it, we went home and we listened to it, we were like, “Damn man, this is too depressing, this is really depressing.” We kept the ones that were least depressing and that turned out to be “The Bottle” … If you listen to the lyrics of “The Bottle” it’s kind of depressing, it really is. “Don’t you think it’s a crime where time after time after time people in the bottle.” That’s not a happy thing. We had, “A Very Precious Time,” “Back Home,” it’s all about reminiscing

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

All right. A couple of things about this project before we [move on]. Obviously, “The Bottle” was a huge success, your biggest song to date.

Brian Jackson

DJs are still playing it to this day.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Sampling it and reusing the ideas. I know that you’ve talked about this before but there was some irony given the subject matter don’t you think?

Brian Jackson

Because it’s a song about addiction, there were a couple of songs about addiction like “Home Is Where Hatred Is,” was about addiction. Are you talking about that irony because that’s …

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

There’s that as well. Given what we know now, was there a reason these songs about addiction were so important and so vivid at that time?

Brian Jackson

At that time if you would have asked Gil about the lyrics that he wrote about a lot of things, for instance, “Your Daddy Loves You” for instance – which was about a guy who has just broken up with his partner. He’s in a room with his girl telling her that, “Regardless of what you see or what you hear I love you.” He didn’t even have a kid. A lot people to think that that song was written to his daughter who actually was not yet to be born for another seven or eight years at least.

The song is like “The Bottle” or “Home Is Where The Hatred Is,” people think, “Okay, Gil must be a drug addict because how can anybody dive into the emotions that you have to get into to be able to write a song like that.” And in reality as far as I know he wasn’t a drug addict at the time. In a sense it kind of became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I just think that he was a person who could actually really get into... It’s a talent that he had to get into something from the other side and report back without actually having being there.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Because of the success of “The Bottle” you wound up signing to a major label as a remedy to a bootleging situation or an imposter type of scenario with that record.

Brian Jackson

All right, we were on a small label called Strata East and they were never set up to be a major record distributor. It was actually formed by some jazz musicians who just really wanted to be able to put out their own music and profit whatever share and whatever profit there were. The deal was you will do your own album, you will produce your own album and then you would turn it in to them and they would handle the pressing and distribution. This was like maybe one of the first P&D deals but here’s the catch, the catch was that the musicians got 85% and they only took 15% which in retrospect probably wasn’t a great idea for them.

They weren’t about making a profit, there were just about just creating the possibility for artists who probably couldn’t be signed to make an album. We jumped on that. Somebody approached us, a few people approached us about the possibility … We were always down at The East. In Brooklyn there was a club called, The East out of which Strata East and a lot of the artists that used to play there [emerged].

Okay. They offered us that deal and we jumped on it with our four thousand dollars production, this was a perfect opportunity for us. Little did we know “The Bottle” was going to be such a runaway hit. One time I was walking down the street in Harlem and I heard “The Bottle” playing out of the store there. Another time I was in Brooklyn. The famous store Birdel’s was playing it and I was like, “Wow, I must have made it.”

Frankie Crocker jumped on it, the famous DJ from New York, Frankie Crocker jumped on it. Once that happened that album was so much in demand that it was impossible for Strata East to fulfill that demand. What we ended up doing was getting albums and putting them in our kitchen. We would tell the retailers to call us. They would call us and we would ship them out like a box. But how much can we really do? We did what we could but it wasn’t enough.

One day we woke up and we heard “The Bottle” on the radio but it wasn’t our “Bottle,” it was a track that sounded exactly like our “Bottle,” all the licks were the same and everything but it wasn’t us, it was a group called Brother to Brother. It was on All Platinum Records, that wasn’t really just a name because it ended up selling platinum. They sold a million copies of that, they weren’t very sharing [laughs]. We tried to get that [rectified]. But it was a label that you might go there and talk to them about that but you might not leave. We left it alone. Behind that is how we got the deal with Arista Records.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

That started a new phase with you guys, Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson as a team on Arista Records?

Brian Jackson

Yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What do you think was the high point was for you in that era?

Brian Jackson

The high point for me in that era was … there were several. First of all being in a major label, that was awesome because we got into a whole other area of listeners that we could have never reached. We ended up playing on Saturday Night Live, Midnight Special and we ended up going over to France and playing on a show with Ray Barretto, Joe Cocker, Larry Coryell and all of these great artists that we usually weren’t known for playing with.

Eventually we ended up doing shows with Earth, Wind and Fire, with Weather Report and opening for Herbie Hancock and all of those. I don’t think any of those things would have probably happened for us without the big muscle behind Clive Davis and Arista Records.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Did you feel as conscious artists, as topical artists that you were seeing with this new platform, did you see the change … did you feel like you were seeing change affected by what you guys were doing?

Brian Jackson

[long pause] No, not really. I know that a lot of people came to our shows because it was conscious, it was like to be seen at one of our shows meant automatically that you were conscious, like you didn’t have to do anything other than just go to one of these shows. If you were seen at that show, that already meant that you were part of the intelligentsia. It took a little more than that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You mentioned playing on Saturday Night Live.

Brian Jackson

Yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I think we actually have some evidence of that taking place. Can we run that video, is that possible right now?

(Video: clip from Saturday Night Live w/ Richard Pryor’s introduction)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Richard Pryor introduces Gil Scott Heron, holds up Gil Scott Heron’s album…

Brian Jackson

And he holds it, he holds the album, yes.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Gil Scott-Heron’s new album, everybody is visible in the band except …

Brian Jackson

Except for moi.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Except your hands.

Brian Jackson

Yeah, my hands were visible, I call that my “man in the shadows” video. It’s a funny thing about the music business. How many duos can you think about, how many groups can you think about who have actually made it without having one of the artist being singled out and made as the focal point of the band and eventually maybe even taken away from the band and becoming a solo artist. I have found over the years that the record business, the music industry seems to have a hard time counting past one.

I experienced this, gosh there’s so many examples, I don’t even know where to start, Diana Ross and the Supremes … it’s just a phenomenon that I think it’s easier to market one person than it is to market two or three or four. That’s a phenomenon that you guys probably also going to have to deal with or have dealt with, it’s just something to keep in mind. I’m not angry about it but I know how it works, I understand how it works and that was caught up in it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Was there any point where it was explicitly said to you at Arista Records, “Hey, let’s be real, Gil is the star, he is the focus, he’s the charismatic front person …You do the music, that’s cool …”

Brian Jackson

Not even “you do the music, that’s cool.” Basically what happened … and that is true that Gil was the charismatic front person and it was something that all of us in the band had decided was the case. When Gil went to … our managers went to Arista Records to sign us, Clive Davis point blank said, “Well, I’ll sign Gil but I’m not signing him.” Gil said, “Well, but we are a duo. We write together, we do all the stuff together. If you are not interested in that, then go fuck yourself.”

He came back and he told me that and I said, “Yo, man, this is a huge opportunity for us, whether I’m signed to the label or not, it’s still a huge opportunity for us. We are about trying to get as much exposure as possible to what we are doing. Maybe you need to consider that offer even so.” He was adamant about it, he was like, “Well, yeah but that is going to mess up our vibe.” I said, “Well, what about this, what about if you go back to him and say that Brian is okay with not signing but will you put his name on the albums, will you put both of our names on the albums?” He did agree to do that.

All of the albums from 1975 to 1979 … except for the first one, which was Gil Scott-Heron, Brian Jackson and the Midnight Band, all the rest of them show the artists as being Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson even though I wasn’t actually signed to the label.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Did that create situations between you guys at a certain point?

Brian Jackson

No, not at that point. It was the ’70s, it was all peace and love, we trusted each other, we split 50% of everything. Everything that came in went down the middle 50%, we had a joint bank account, we both had checkbooks. We did whatever we felt, there was never any argument or discussion about how that went down.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

One of the things that I’m sure made it more difficult to market you – but for the fans of this music keeps it timeless is – that is defies easy categorization genre wise. When these records were new in stores you would necessarily find them in soul or jazz or rock.

Brian Jackson

That was always a big problem, where do you put it? I would go to one store and it would be in the pop section, when we go to another store it would be in the jazz section, another one would be in R&B section or sometimes it was on all of them. We were always against categories but that’s another thing about the music business. Not only isolating one individual artist but also putting music into a box, you’ve all dealt with this. Somebody would say to you, “Well, I’m doing this project or I have this project,” the first thing outside most people’s mouth is, “What kind of music is it?”

People ask me that, what I say now is, I say, “It’s good music, you listen to it and if you like it it’s your music, the shit you like.” I don’t know how else to categorize it, I think that we are doing ourselves all the disservice by allowing others to want to categorize our music and yet it is an important tool in being able to market it yourself. That’s the big dilemma for artists, especially now. Much less when we were coming up, we can slip by that question a lot. Even though we slip by it, we’re still foisted upon us whatever anybody wanted to call us.

When we did Saturday Night Live we were a pop group, when we did the Apollo we were an R&B group, now I don’t know, what is it now, soul, what are we now? It’s hard to … conscious soul, I don’t know, it all depends on the perspective but for me … Duke Ellington once said, “There’s only two types of music, good music and bad music.” I thought that was really hip, when I thought about it for a little while I thought, “Well, that’s entirely subjective.”

Actually, I want to modify that a little bit with all due respect to the great Duke. I want to say that, “There are only two kinds of music, music that you like and music that you don’t like.” For somebody, the music that you like might be the most horrible thing they have ever heard. For some people, the shit that you are into might be totally just garbage.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I just want to play another thing real quick. Just speaking of different instrumentation, and keyboards and colors.

(music: Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson – “We Almost Lost Detroit”)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

To me, that’s when you hear Gil’s voice and your keyboard work really interacting … [laughs]

Brian Jackson

You want me to say something there?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Firstly, what are you playing?

Brian Jackson

We were just having a conversation about the beginning of that song when you here that … that’s actually a Rhodes also, where the Rhodes going through an Echoplex. My thing that I would try to do was to musically paint pictures. The picture that I was trying to create there at the beginning of that … this song was about a nuclear power plant. The image that I was trying to invoke was one of a nuclear power plant bubbling off nuclear waste, science fiction kind of feel of what that could be like.

The instrumentation was really cool because that was our first time using the studios of Malcolm Cecil, one of the great producers and pioneers of the synthesizer. He had a system that he had put together called T.O.N.T.O. which stood for The Original New Timbral Orchestra. It was a room maybe a bit smaller than this full of Moog modules, ARP modules, Buchla modules, all kind of … I don’t know how he did it but he and his partner Robert Margouleff actually put all of these synthesizers together.

At the time I was talking about monophonic synthesizers. How do you leverage the tone producing qualities and the filtering qualities of all of these unique instruments while behind all of them. Somehow they were able to do it through a series of patch panels. What they ended up with was this custom made unit of all of these synthesizers put together. It was basically a room … it looked like a spaceship. That was my first time … Stevie Wonder had used it on Music of My Mind for instance I think was the first one that he had used it or maybe it was Where I’m Coming From.

The Isley Brothers had used it, Billy Preston had used it, Joe Zawinul and Weather Report had used it. I was one of the people who were fortunate enough to go in and work with that. It changed my life, it changed my life. I already had a Moog synthesizer, you saw it, I had a Minimoog but this was a whole new level. Just to be able to go in there and experiment with those things was amazing. I ended up … Stevie was one of my favorite … Stevie Wonder was one of my idols, my favorite artist.

I had fooled around with synth bass and this was my opportunity to do that. When we started recording this album we had our bass player, it just seemed that the direction was somewhere else. Our first song on the album is called, “Hello Sunday! Hello Road.” We had tried it with the bass, it was just not enough … I don’t know, there wasn’t enough movement, there wasn’t enough difference in this song to make it sound like we wanted to. We sent the guys home, I jumped on the synthesizer and ended up doing the basslines on the synthesizer for most of that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And you continued to do that, right?

Brian Jackson

I continued doing that , I was addicted. I was addicted at that point during “Angel Dust,” “Race Track in France,” God – everything.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

The last album that you and Gil worked on officially was 1980.

Brian Jackson

Yes. 1980.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What precipitated the dissolution of that official partnership?

Brian Jackson

I still think about that today, I wonder what it was. The only thing that I can think of is that when you are in a partnership, a musical partnership, any partnership but specifically a musical partnership it comes a time in your life when you might have aspirations outside of the musical partnership that you want to build and you want to work on, it doesn’t mean that you want to abandon the musical partnership.

As more of us, as our spirits grow, our ideas grow and we end up wanting to try go in different directions, that might not be appropriate for that musical partnership. In my case that also happened. I expressed a desire to do that. I just think that Gil probably took it the wrong way. If anybody has read his book there was a part where he said that I wanted to go out on my own and do my own thing - which is true, but we had to put it in context.

I wanted to do that but I did not want to stop what Gil and I were doing. People interpret things differently. I know a lot of situations where people who worked for other musicians took a gig in a down period where they took a gig with another artist and when they got back they found out that they didn’t have their regular job anymore. Egos and sensibilities and fragile sense of self can do that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You went on to produce independently artists like Will Downing, Gwen Guthrie. You played with Roy Ayers, Kool and the Gang, Phillys Hyman, various other folks. This classic period of you and Gil, this is the thing that people know you for. Occasionally Gil would ask you to come back to play [in his band] … of course, this was not as an equal partnership, I’m assuming. Was that awkward?

Brian Jackson

Whenever we got together again it was magic, there’s no other way to say it. Sometimes you have chemistry between people on a personal level, on artistic level, Gil and I always had that sense of magic that always happened every time we got together. Businesswise, there were a lot of obstacles, let me just put it that way.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

When did you see Gil become something that you didn’t recognize, not the person that you knew before?

Brian Jackson

That probably happened around the late ’80s. We had a confrontation about 1979. I was the music director, basically I was the one who was making everything happen on stage and in the studio. One day I looked up and I realized that Gil was trying to control that and that was something that he never tried to do before. I said … one day I just confronted him and I said, “Man, what’s going on?” He said something like this, he said, “You know, I’m a simple guy, I’m a bluesologist, I like simple music. Everything seems so complicated now, I just wish it would go back to the way it was.”

I felt this feeling in the pit of my stomach, I was like, “Wow, man, I’ve actually failed him, I’ve actually failed my friend.” It really made me feel bad, I really felt like I had really gone beyond what was my intention because my intention was to make sure that everything that we did was honest and the important things that he had to say were not masked by any of my own ego or anybody’s ego. For him to say that, it just really left me with a feeling that maybe I had gone too far. I said, “Wow, maybe I shouldn’t be the music director.”

Again, people’s interpretations of things can lead to disastrous results. I think that what he heard was not my honest attempt to try and go and get back to where we were realizing that maybe I had gone too far … well, think that I had gone too far but it was interpreted as abandonment. That was the last thing I wanted to do, in the end it seemed like that. Things went downhill from there.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What advice would you impart to folks in partnerships when you reach to these difficult moments?

Brian Jackson

In any partnership, whether it’s in life, whether it’s in relationships, whatever it is, they are going to change. We like to think that when we get into relationships and when we get into partnerships we like to think, “Well, this is what we enjoy, this is what we are enjoying, this is what we are loving and this is what we want to hold on to.” The reality of it is that it’s going to change, it’s definitely going to change. Whether you want it to change or not, it’s going to change.

What’s going to happen is you will either be able to deal with it, the other people that are involved in it are going to have to be able to deal with it, are going to have to deal with that change. It’s not going to be the thing that drew you together, it’s going to be something else. The test is whether or not you can deal with that. You’ve got to have to find something else within those relationships that motivate you to keep it together or not.

Ultimately just realize and be prepared for the fact that at some point, what you are enjoying right now is going to be something else. You either have to learn to enjoy that or move on.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

When Gil went through the things he went through, what was that like to witness when you were performing with him or from afar when you were apart?

Brian Jackson

People had said … I hadn’t actually seen Gil from about 1981 to about 1994 and people would ask me, “I saw Gil on the A train, he looked really bad.” People would tell me, “Did you know Gil was on heroin?” I’m not a big person for hearsay, I have to see for myself, I don’t get into those games. In 1994 out of the blue I got a call from Gil: his pianist wouldn’t be able to make it and he asked me if I was able to fill in for her at S.O.B.s in Manhattan.

I went down there, I had heard all the stories and they weren’t good. I was there, Gil was late which was something that I heard happened a lot. We walked through some music, we were going through some stuff and all of a sudden I heard somebody say, “Oh, he just walked in.” I’m like, “Where?” He gets up on stage and I realized, “Oh, that’s Gil.” He looked like my grandfather and we are only three years apart, he is three years older than me.

I looked at him and I couldn’t believe it. At that particular moment I realized that all the stories were true. That was difficult because this was … at some point in my life we were best friends, this was my best friend. Things do change like I said, they change and you’ve got to deal with them and move on. We tried to do a couple of projects together. We actually did try to deal with some projects, but there was always the 800 pound gorilla in the room, that was to do with … I don’t know. I can say it … it had to do with publishing.

Publishing is obviously … you guys know and maybe I was among the first of the generations to know ... by the way publishing is the most important thing as far as creating music that you have to be able to maintain a lot … some of the rights to what you do. It’s a lot easier said than done, of course we all know that. It’s probably the thing that you really have to be conscious of at all times. In that particular era of time like I said, peace and love, we are all brothers. Sometimes it should have been more of a written thing, it has to be.

No matter how well you think you know somebody, you know them now, you don’t know them 20 years from now but we still wrote that music. No matter what kind of friends you are, just make sure you dotted your i’s and you crossed your t’s.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You retired from music for a bit.

Brian Jackson

Yeah, ’94.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

For a bit there, right?

Brian Jackson

For a bit, from ’94 to like ’98.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And then you continued again?

Brian Jackson

Yeah. I had to, otherwise I was going to die. I had a bunch of music equipment, I had like an 8-track recorder, I was doing a lot of productions in my house. People from Brooklyn would come in and I would record demos for them and stuff and produce and record demos for them most of which was never released. There were some... I kept busy but at some point I was like, “You know what man...” I had a bad experience with a writer who had been using my... we had written all this stuff together.

That person came back to me and said, “This deal is going to be 60, 40 for music, I’m going to get 60 and you are going to get 40.” I was like, “What the hell are you talking about, we wrote these together.” He said, “Well, yeah but I had to write the lyrics and the melody.” I said okay. At that point I had been around the block a couple of times and I said, “You know what, I’m done. I love music, I love to write and I love to improvise, it’s my favorite thing to do.” I couldn’t take it anymore, I jumped out for about four years until I couldn’t take that anymore. I really couldn’t take that. I’m back, I’m ready to take whatever comes my way

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Because it never leaves you?

Brian Jackson

It never really leaves you if it’s in your blood. Those days of being in my crib listening to Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis and stuff that was always in me.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Does anybody have any questions for Brian?

Brian Jackson

Awkward. [laughs]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

One over here, we have a microphone.

Brian Jackson

Yeah, yeah I know what you are going to say, so … no I’m just kidding.

Audience Member

I was just wondering when you and Gil Scott got to the higher levels of the labels and stuff did they end … like Gil’s lyrics are super next level … what’s the word I’m looking for? ... They are like boundary pushing I would say. Did they ever ask him to tone it down for the sake of greater exposure?

Brian Jackson

What they wanted him to do was to actually turn down the music. There were several attempts by Clive Davis to change the music, he felt like the music wasn’t commercial enough. He didn’t really have a problem with that Gil was saying, I think he loved what Gil was saying. He had a problem with the packaging and the marketing of it. That was something that he always saw me as standing in the way of. [inaudible from audience] Surprisingly enough, no.

I can tell you one situation which might explain exactly what I’m talking about. There was a song on Bridges called “Delta Man.” We used to go around to record companies and... not record companies, we would go to music stores, remember when they had those. We would promote, we would go there and do promos, album signings and that kind of thing. This guy who owned one of those record stores sent me a picture from a long time ago. ’77 or something like that it was him, the guy, the owner, me and Gil we were all posing for a picture.

Over on the side of us was a poster that was selling Bridges because obviously it just come out. There’s a song on the album called “Delta Man” and one of the lyrics in the song is, “Put a little revolution in your life.” I’m looking at this picture, I’m like, “Wow, it’s an old picture man, it’s cool.” I look over at this poster … this is a poster that Arista Records had created. It says, “Bridges,” then it says, “Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson, Bridges.” Underneath it says, “Put a little revolution in your life.” Then underneath that it says, “10.99.” I think that says it all. Although that’s humor, that summarized the whole deal for me.

Audience Member

Hi.

Brian Jackson

Hi.

Audience Member

Thank you for being here first. I heard a lot of … maybe of course there is a lot of influences in a lot of that music but I heard some Latin and salsa percussion going on there…

Brian Jackson

Yes because we live in Brooklyn … I mean we lived in New York …

Audience Member

Salsa is from …

Brian Jackson

Salsa man, I mean what I used to do when I was a teenager... there were transistor radios when I was a teenager I used to... even before I was a teenager. There was a guy named Symphony Sid in New York and he was a DJ. Late at night like two o’clock in the morning he would come on and do his show sometimes from the Roseland Ballroom which was a great place that they used to have a lot of salsa music going on. He would do live shows there, live DJ shows, whatever.

I would get my education with salsa. At two o’clock with my transistor radio under my pillow so it would amplify the bass and I would go to sleep. I’m sure that somehow through osmosis I probably picked up a lot of that.

There was any contact with one of the guys … you said you played with Ray Barretto of course, but any other?

Brian Jackson

Not specifically, but I can tell you that Burnett Williams who was the guy that you saw playing the shekere on the video he had built this organization in Washington D.C. called The Society for the Preservation of African Percussion. When I first met him, the thing that he did was, he played for me about three or four different rhythms from all over Africa and all over the world. He knew the traditional song that went with it and the traditional dance that went with it.

If you told him to play merengue or play a guaguancó then he knew what that was. He was the one who actually taught me and all of us about percussion and about rhythm. We had an expert in our band, we were very proud to have incorporated so many of those elements.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Anybody else?

Audience Member

Hello, good afternoon.

Brian Jackson

Hi.

Audience Member

It’s an honor to have you with us, I would like to say.

Brian Jackson

Thank you, it’s an honor to be here.

Audience Member

So my question is, during your major label years, I would assume that there was tension with the situation that was happening. I would just like to ask if that tension helped the music in any way or were you unaffected by that?

Brian Jackson

That’s a good question. I wouldn’t call it tension. I think the most tense people were the A&R guys and the label. They were the ones who … we were very resistant to any attempt to make us toe the line or to make us go and do what they wanted us to do. We would continually bring albums in to Clive Davis and we would sit in his office, he would listen to them and he would go, “Well that’s very nice but I don’t hear a hit.” We go, “We didn’t do it so that you could get a hit.”

He would always say, “If I don’t have a hit I can’t work it.” We would just say, “Well, do your best, bye.” I don’t know how much pressure that I was feeling, maybe later on … probably Gil was probably feeling more pressure than me because after all I did tell you I wasn’t signed to the label. That was a good thing and a bad thing I think but no it didn’t affect our music at all, we were very conscious not to let it do that at all costs.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Brian Jackson

Thank you.

Audience Member

Amen, first of all I don’t know if anybody from Detroit ever thanked you all for writing [“We Almost Lost Detroit”]. I’m from Detroit and I love that song. My boy Marques Porter and some of J. Dilla’s friends, they redid it and it was sweet.

Brian Jackson

I would like to hear it.

Audience Member

Yeah, okay.

Brian Jackson

Maybe you send that to me.

Audience Member

Yeah okay, we could hook it up but I wanted to tell you is somebody in here remembers what Green Acres is, though. It didn’t go by me.

Brian Jackson

Okay, I got you.

Audience Member

My question was, when he asked you, he said, “Do you think your music made a difference in an overall thing?” I noticed you kind of paused and hesitated, it hurt me too but I just want you to know it certainly did with many, many people. We weren’t with the lollipop thing either, it cut through all of the... with all the stuff having tried to get us, it cut through. I just want to let you know it cut through and it continue. I didn’t know all the synthesizer stuff that you did on “We Almost Lost Detroit.” It’s so weird because Detroit is all synthesizers with this techno stuff. It was a really strange and weird bond you just did and I just want to thank you for your work.

Brian Jackson

Thank you so much, I really appreciate that. What’s your question? [laughs]… thank you.

Audience Member

Hi, first of all I want to thank you for coming.

Brian Jackson

Thank you.

My question actually is, what’s your opinion on technical limitations and creativity. Because in the beginning obviously there was just the Rhodes, but in the ’80s you talked about that Moog. Today I often get the feeling like … ?

Brian Jackson

It was the ’70s actually.

Audience Member

Oh really, all right. Because today I often get the feeling there’s so many songs I’m getting lost in finding the right one instead of just writing songs. What’s the experience with that?

Brian Jackson

My experience is exactly the same as yours and, at some point, you just have to say...basta...enough. I think with every creative piece you can rationalize it to the end of the earth and back. I think I’ve learned that sometimes it’s better to go with the first thing that you like. The first thing that even just kind of makes you feel like maybe this could be the one, go with it. At some point you’ll know if it really is the one. We are perfectionists, to be a musician is to be a perfectionist.

I listen to all the things that I’ve ever done and I hear how I could have done them better. In retrospect... like they say hindsight is 20 – 20, it really is. We have perfect vision when we look back. At the time that we are doing it we couldn’t drive ourselves crazy. There are a lot of choices out there. There was a time that there were only presets in synthesizers … they weren’t presets actually. Just the opposite, there were no presets. That sound for instance that I used on “Johannesburg,” which was supposed to be an homage to B.B King for instance, I was trying to make this kind of blues guitar sound.

I had to actually write down all the parameters on how much resonance and how much … which ways to use it and all that kind of stuff. That for me it became … that was my preset. With synthesizers like that, with synthesizers in those days anything goes. Now we have presets, we listen to those presets, we think. “Oh man, if I just tweak it a little bit,” we will make ourselves go crazy to do that. At some point I think you have to say, “Okay, this is close, let me go for it.” The great advantage for that is that since everything is already MIDI’d we can go back and we can change it or add to it. We can have two and then decide later.

Audience Member

All right, thank you.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Anybody else with a question?

Audience Member

Yeah, I think I do.

Brian Jackson

I knew it, I knew it.

Audience Member

What do you think about the state of black music now and the stuff that’s going on in the neighborhoods, do it hurt you to see that the same shit is still rolling?

Brian Jackson

Longer pause. A lot of things that … yes, I think that really there hasn’t been a hell of a lot of change. Things that have changed I think they have actually changed for the worse. We have made a lot of progress but what is progress, what do you consider progress? The fact that more black people can walk into a bank and get a loan for an SUV, you know what I mean? What is actually progress? I feel like maybe we have more black people with masters degrees or PhDs but if they walk out of the house and they get taken down to the ground and choked to death, how is that progress? What good does it do?

Audience Member

Do you ever feel like the message you was trying to put into neighborhood got washed away but it travelled around the world maybe helped other areas?

Brian Jackson

Absolutely, absolutely. When I play music most of the times, I play music here [in Europe]. I’m not sad about that, it’s just that in my own country we seem to have less of a reverence for the past. That means that if we don’t respect the passion then we don’t respect them, some of the good work that had been done in prior generations then we are not going to receive the benefits of it.

Audience Member

Exactly. Do you feel radio is one of the biggest enemies to the black community?

Brian Jackson

That’s a leading question, I refuse to answer that. [laughs] There’s more availability with the net now, there’s more availability. People who are really consciously looking for music that fits their lifestyle and then fits their belief system can find it. We are no longer dependent on the radio like to hear what’s happening in music or what’s happening in art or what’s happening in anything, it’s just a quick click.

Audience Member

I know but in my neighborhood, they don’t even have the net, they don’t even have the neighborhood wired up for Internet.

Brian Jackson

Oh man, I feel you. I understand you. In that case yes. The answer to your question, is yes.

Audience Member

Did you notice how they knocked New York off the radio? Because when hip hop came it was Grandmaster Flash when they came with “The Message,” it hit really hard and then Eric B and Rakim and some of them guys … of course, Public Enemy but prior to them, my mom and I played you guys, Last Poets and Brooklyn … Brooklyn was deep and I felt like somewhere in the mid ’90s New York just got pushed off the whole board other than singing love songs and stuff like that. Do you think New York will ever get back and maintain its position as our conscience?

Brian Jackson

Remember what we just talked about radio having killed the consciousness of a progressive music, I would have to say the same thing about what’s going on in New York. There is a lot of really good music that is happening in New York and it always has, it’s not always available to us, it’s not brought to the forefront of our consciousness. I know personally several artists who are really doing their thing honestly and with force and with strength. Don’t feel like it’s dead man, it is not dead. We just have to look for it a little harder but it’s there.

Audience Member

We really need you all in Detroit.

Brian Jackson

I will come, I will come man, there’s no question. I know, I know.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Brian Jackson

Thank you.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

All right, we’ve got one more here on the side.

Audience Member

Hi.

Brian Jackson

How are you doing?

Audience Member

Thanks for coming. With the hindsight that you were talking about and these conversations with the label, the heads that you were working with … as an MD and a producer working with someone who has a lot of message, you guys had a message. Looking back, do you think you would have changed the way that you produced the music and the music that you wrote to help get the message further or is it like the music that you put with that, something like that, the message would have credibility?

Brian Jackson

I don’t know how much credibility it gave it but I think it was the only way that we could actually do it, the only way that we knew how to do it.

Audience Member

Credibility in the sense that that’s what you were feeling and you weren’t trying to do any other kind of music to try to fit with your message, you just did what you wanted?

Brian Jackson

A lot of people said when we started doing more synthesized work in the ’70s … in the late ’70s, a lot of people might have interpreted that as being a nod or concession to the industry that wanted us to be more commercial. Is that a consideration? Hell, yeah it’s a big consideration. You are an artist and you make your living off of this. The issue is, how do you do it and maintain your sense of self and your sense integrity. The answer for me was really easy because they put me in Santa Monica, in the middle of T.O.N.T.O. working with Malcolm Cecil.

For me it was really easy, I just went and I did what I do and it worked out. This worked out by itself, I didn’t ever stop for one second to think, “Oh shit, I’ve got to make this more commercial.” That was smart, Clive Davis was smart to do that, I can say that.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You did have a hit with “Angel Dust” which we didn’t play but...

Brian Jackson

Yeah, yeah it worked.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

It worked. Play it?

Brian Jackson

Play it. Oh yeah, I was playing flute on that one. It might not sound like it but yeah I was … it was run through a compressor that was cranked up to the max, almost make it sound like a guitar, that was fun.

(music: Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson – “Angel Dust”; Brian plays flute along w/ the track)

“Angel Dust” another song about drugs. We had tried angel dust once or twice. Probably around the second time we did it when I woke up with my head on the rock after we slept on that rock for about 10 hours. We saw this other friend of ours in L.A. who was a frequenter of angel dust, the next thing we know she had jumped off a building. That was some mean shit man, that’s what it was about.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So on that very positive note…

Brian Jackson

Yeah man, some evil shit.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I think we need to get to lunch, but before we do that I think we should say thank you one more time to Mr Brian Jackson.

[applause]