Jam & Lewis

Jeff Mao

Our lecturers today are a songwriting and producing team from Minneapolis, Minnesota, that you may have heard of. They happen to be two of the best to have ever done it. So please welcome Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. (applause) Thank you for being here.

Jimmy Jam

Thank you for having us.

Terry Lewis

Yes.

Jeff Mao

We have a lot of music to talk about, a lot of things to talk about. I would love to just have us listen to something first so we can all reset, clean our ears from whatever else we’ve been doing. I want to play something actually from an album that you produced with Janet Jackson last year, this is a cut entitled “Broken Hearts Heal.” Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Janet Jackson.

(music: Janet Jackson – “Broken Hearts Heal” / applause)

Not bad, huh? It’s OK. There are more popular songs off of this album. It was a very popular album, very successful album. But there is a story behind every song and I was curious to know what the story behind this song was, if there is one that you want to share with us.

Jimmy Jam

Yeah well “Broken Hearts Heal” was, remember Janet hadn’t made a record in seven years and we hadn’t worked with her for probably nine years. I always like to say we hadn’t worked with her for about 15 years and by that I mean we hadn’t had a chance to make a record with her that was just us. I hate to use the word record company interference but at a certain point in time, after we had made a bunch of successful albums for some reason, there was a certain point people like... they had to go get involved and I don’t really know why. I think they all had good intentions but I don’t think the results were the greatest. This was a chance on this album to go back to just the three of us making music in a vacuum. The record company didn’t even know we were making a record, that was the greatest thing about it.

This particular song, “Broken Hearts Heal”, was: Janet really had never addressed anything about her brother Michael dying. If you know Janet and you’re a fan of hers you know that she doesn’t speak a lot but anything you want to know about her and how she’s feeling always are in the records. If you listen to her records she tells you exactly how she’s feeling. This was her opportunity to talk about his memory but to do it in a celebratory way. The way the song lays out for us was it was just a matter of starting off very simple about her reminiscing about them together as kids and the things that happened and the way she remembered. We remember Michael as superstar Michael. For her, that’s her brother, she grew up with him.

We tried to start the song like that. As the song goes on and builds it becomes celebratory in a way that we should celebrate life and we should celebrate the legacy that he left musically and all of that. At the end of the song it’s almost for us like they’re together singing. She purposely sang this song kind of in his style but at the end of the song he’s almost rising, he’s almost leaving. That was kind of sonically what we were trying to do. Actually there was a thing that happened in the song where she was singing it, and Michael always had a habit of being not great in the studio as far as discipline. In the studio, you guys are probably learning all this stuff, you’re supposed to stay the same amount from the mic and not wear jingly stuff and not stomp around and all that. Michael, when he gets in the studio all of that goes out the window. He’s dancing and making all kind of rackets, snapping his fingers, clapping his hands and all that stuff. That becomes part of the magic of the track.

Now Janet is very disciplined in the studio. She has great studio habits but on this particular song every time the second verse would come she would start snapping her fingers. Then she’d stop and she’d go, “Sorry, sorry I don’t mean to do that.” Finally we said, “You know Janet, you know why you’re doing that? Your brother used to do that.” This is really about him and it just felt right. So the snaps that you hear in there are her actual snaps that we just left rather than filter them out or something. It’s just a very personal song I guess, would be the best way to put it.

Jeff Mao

Yeah and a beautiful song. How do you know when you have a good match between a melody and an emotion for the song you want to write?

Terry Lewis

I guess the easiest way to find that blend is to feel good. When we usually design music for an artist, like Janet, we’ve been working with Janet for many, many years and we know her personally and we know her family personally. You get into it as a person that knows them that way. We kind of tailor every individual song to that particular artist. In this case knowing Janet, we know what works for Janet. We knew what kind of worked for the song. Actually this song was written I think a short time after Michael passed. We held onto it and held onto it and it finally came to pass that we got to produce it for Janet. You just kind of know. It’s feeling, an equality, don’t question yourself about that. You know what feels good and that’s what works, what comes from the heart reaches the heart.

Jeff Mao

You guys obviously go back, you guys as a team and Janet and you have that 30 years or whatever it is of trust built up. Some of the folks in this room haven’t had 30 years to be around one another, we’ve had about two weeks...

Jimmy Jam

Or have been around 30 years, most people in this room.

Jeff Mao

That perhaps as well. How would you suggest, in terms of collaboration, starting to build that trust in a little bit more abbreviated amount of time?

Jimmy Jam

First of all we are huge fans of collaboration; obviously we have collaborated for a long time. But I think just looking at the way we met and all and the whole thing... First of all we met in school. We met educating or learning to educate actually. We were in a program called Upward Bound and it was about peer teaching of kids about how to actually do math, which I was horrible in math but I thought if I could get in a program to teach math maybe I’d learn it better. Not very successful, but it did put me together with this brother which is a great thing and we come together over music and listening to music. For us our first collaboration was we put a band together, Terry put a band together and I played in the band. That was our first collaboration but then when we wrote we had a lot of trouble because I come up listening to pop music and Seals and Crofts and American and Chicago, stuff like that. He grew up listening to P-funk, Earth, Wind & Fire, that kind of stuff. When we tried to write together it never worked but we trusted the process and over time as we got to know each other better we figured out finally how to make that work.

How to make his funky bottom and my pretty top or whatever you may call it to work together. I’d say in any collaboration trust is really important but I think naturally you will figure out the right people to work with, the right combination of things. I think it is important too, we have a saying where we just say, “We have no slack,” meaning we both know what we good at but we both know what we are not good at.

The things that Terry is good at I let Terry do them, I’m not trying to do them. At the end of the day the best idea wins. It’s not about whether it's his idea or my idea, it’s about the best idea. As long as you trying to get to the best idea it doesn’t really matter who comes up with it. First you got to put your ego aside I would say, and then you do have to trust, whether it's for a day or a week or whatever. I think that’s really important.

Terry Lewis

The idea of right and wrong you just have to throw that out of the window. Best always wins.

Jeff Mao

You mentioned Upward Bound, this is summer of 1972. What was your impression of one another? Jimmy what was your first impression of Terry and vice versa.

Jimmy Jam

Well my first impression of Terry would be the equivalent of love at first sight. (laughs) Really. The cool thing was that we were staying in dorms and I’m like 13 years old, he is like 15. We’re like young, junior high kids and it was so cool. We’re walking through the doom and everybody’s dorm rooms are open like the first day. I walked past this dorm room, door’s open, I'm hearing Kool And The Gang playing loud and I walk in, I see a brother with a red, black and green bass playing along to Kool And The Gang, playing all the parts.

I’m looking at this dude, it’s Terry, and am going, “Look at this dude, man.” I’ve never seen nothing like that in my life. I have family but I have half brothers and sisters that are older than me so I basically grew up an only child. Seeing him, I was like I got to know this dude like he was going to be my older brother or my best friend or something. I just knew when I met him and the music was so good, he looked so cool and when you’re 13 somebody 15 that’s a big deal, you know. That was my impression when I first saw him, I gotta get to know him.

Terry Lewis

My first impression I walked through the lunch room one day, it was before dinner but after lunch. In the lunch room we had a piano, a little upright piano, and I walked up through and I see Jimmy Jam with a crowd of girls standing around him serenading the girls and I said, “Man this dude is kind of cool.” At that time I didn’t know he was a drummer so at the end of the project for the summer we had a dance and so I asked the counselor, “Can we put a band together and play some songs?” He said, “Yes.” I had a little band together, David Eiland who was a saxophonist and Jellybean Johnson who was a drummer, he was the drummer in The Time. So I went and asked Jimmy, I said, “Hey man I got this little band together, you wanna put something together for this little thing coming up? Would you like to be in the band?” He said, “Well you want me to drum?” I said, “No, I want you to play keyboards.” He said, “I don’t play keyboards I play drums,” and I said, “Well your dad plays keyboard, you can play keyboards, I heard you playing.” So he considered playing, we went and stole his dad’s keyboards and we got together and terribly played the little gig and we have been playing together ever since off and all.

Jeff Mao

You mentioned actually your father who was a musician, Jimmy. Did you have the bug then early, as far as becoming a musician and having musical aspirations?

Jimmy Jam

Yes, I was that kid you hear about that was always beating on stuff around the house and that was me. My parents got me a drum set when I think I was three, they got me a drum set and I used to bang around. Then they got me a more professional set when I was about 8 and I used to blast records and play along with them all the time. My dad had a band, they were basically a trio. There was always a guitar player and my dad played the keyboard and there was a drummer.

The thing is he could never keep a drummer, every week there would be a different drummer and he would have to learn the whole set and the whole deal. So one time I was probably 12 at this point in time and we used to go watch him play on the weekend, me and my mom. And somebody from the audience, not even from the audience… Actually the guitar player in the group said, “Why don’t you let him play a song with you?” And I was like, “Yes I can do it.” And my dad was like, “Nah, nah he’s too young,” whatever. He says, “He knows your whole set, he is here every week.”

So I came in, I sat and I played the song, crowed loved it. Next week drummer didn’t show up, I played the whole set and then the guitar player said, “Why don’t you just put him the band? We are just playing weekends anyway.” Ok, cool, so and he tried to give me five dollars or something and then my mum stepped in and said, “No you have to pay him like you pay a regular musician.” She was like my agent at that point in time, that’s how that happened and that’s how I started playing drums. Literally every week I would play drums for my dad and I was only like 12, 13 years old and it was fun 'cause I was in a club and all that. It was a great experience, loved it.

Jeff Mao

And Terry was music your first love or something else?

Terry Lewis

Music wasn’t even on the cards for me, I mean I grew up in a family that loved music but no one was musical. I had a stepfather who played guitar, very badly I might add, but he would always break the top two strings and that would leave the other strings there, so I used to pick up his guitar and that’s why I am a bass player to this day. I was an athlete and a good student. I wanted to be a doctor actually, so I really always loved medicine and my senior year in high school I got injured playing football. I had a lot of time on my hands and I started picking music more and more, and music bit me and can’t get rid of this bite now, actually I love music. So that process kind of took me into all the other things I did because as an athlete I was always a leader or a person that would grab people and put them into something, the right position or whatever. And actually I used that skill in having a band, putting people in a position to succeed is almost like coaching, and kinda where we are now.

Jeff Mao

You mentioned that you guys joined a band together however you also had separate bands, and I would like to sort of give people in here an idea of what that sounded like. This is Jimmy Jam, then known as James Harris with the band Mind & Matter, 1977…

Jimmy Jam

Oh no! (laughs)

Jeff Mao

And the song is entitled “I’m Under Your Spell,” written by James Harris.

(music: Mind & Matter – “I’m Under Your Spell” / applause)

Jimmy Jam

You get the idea. Let’s just say I was very influenced by Philadelphia and everything I tried to do was either Gamble & Huff or Thom Bell or the Spinners or the Stylistics or Blue Magic or whatever, that was my group, that was what I loved.

Jeff Mao

Now you were a teenager. When did you write this song? How old were you?

Jimmy Jam

Probably 16, yeah 16, 17.

Jeff Mao

I know you’ve done a lot of things in your career. That’s really impressive at 16 to be able to write that, just that alone.

Jimmy Jam

Well it’s funny because as I’m listening to the record it’s reminding me… First of all the guys singing were amazing guys. I met them because I had a high school counselor that… He had a piano in his office just by mistake. He ended up getting a piano room, so he had a piano in his office. I walked in one day and I said, “Oh, you got a piano in here.” He said, “Oh, you play?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well I sing.” I said, “OK cool.” That’s how I met him and he introduced me to all the singers in the group. I was a 16 year old kid and all these guys were in their 20s and I was writing all the songs and producing everything and doing it. It was crazy because in my world I didn’t have any responsibilities, like, I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have nothing, it was just I wanted to do music all day.

I never could understand like, “How can you guys be late to practice?” I had to be this annoying ass kid. That was when we made the record and I’m remembering the drummer always sped up, he could never keep a beat. I’m hearing the bells in there, it’s real glockenspiel, I went and got from the band room. I stole from the band room, like a glockenspiel, (makes sound) if anybody knows what a glockenspiel is. Anyway, so but that was my best Gamble & Huff attempt.

Terry Lewis

You did good.

Jeff Mao

It’s funny because you were doing some of the choreography moves. We’ll show just a little piece of this, if we could just go to the first video, number one and we’ll just show a bit of it not the whole thing. This is Mind & Matter performing live. (laughs)

Jimmy Jam

They didn’t tell me it was going to be a roast, come on man!

(video: Mind & Matter live / applause)

Jeff Mao

Alright, so who’s the guy with the keytar?

Jimmy Jam

Yeah, wow, this is off to a rocky start is all I can say. (laughs) This is just not what I signed up for. This is like, This Is Your Life or something. Somebody’s going to come parading out from the balcony or something. I had this keyboard, it was my very first keyboard, it was a Roland SH-1000. I had seen somebody on a show, probably on American Bandstand, because that was like the show, somebody had a keyboard around their neck. I was like, “I got to get one of those.” Of course they were way too much and I couldn’t afford it. I took my little keyboard that I already had, my little Roland, and I put guitar screw pegs on the side of it and a guitar strap and I used to wear it around my neck. That was my thing, so I made my own keytar and I still have that synthesizer as a matter of fact. They just… Roland refurbished it for me, which was very nice.

Jeff Mao

That was at a place called Uncle Sam’s which turned into...

Jimmy Jam

Which turned into First Avenue.

Jeff Mao

Which is featured in the film Purple Rain.

Jimmy Jam

Now it’s a game show. It was featured in the film.

Jeff Mao

Mr. Lewis, so you...

Jimmy Jam

Yeah now I want to see what they got for Terry, this is going to be good. (laughs)

Terry Lewis

Whatever it is it’s going to be good.

Jeff Mao

Let’s put image number one up on the screen please. (laughs)

Terry Lewis

Yes. The funk is in here!

Jeff Mao

Who’s in the center here of this photo?

Terry Lewis

That happens to be me.

Jeff Mao

OK, now this is the band Flyte Tyme which is… You would adopt as the name of the productions you’ve been doing for all those years.

Jimmy Jam

And they were our rival band, so you can see we had two different approaches.

Jeff Mao

Right, let’s listen to a little bit of Flyte Tyme, this is entitled “It’s The Things That You Do,” co-written by Terry Lewis.

(music: Flyte Tyme – “It’s The Things That You Do” / applause)

Terry Lewis

It is a roast.

Jimmy Jam

It is a roast.

Jeff Mao

No, it’s not a roast. I genuinely love these recordings in addition to all the other things that you guys have done. I think it’s important just to illustrate, you know we may know The Time, but you guys come from a band history, playing in bands...

Jimmy Jam

By the way, I just want to mention, so Cynthia Johnson is the voice of Lipps Inc., you remember the song “Funkytown”? (sings). That was her singing, she was in the band. I played on that even though it was Terry’s band just because, like I said we were rival bands but we were always friends. Even though this was Terry’s band, he called me and said, “Will you come in and play keyboards on this?” We always had the connection.

Terry Lewis

Please note, back in the day, 'cause we were so broke we couldn’t pay attention, we would do everything live. We’d play in the studio, we’d go in and we would record the song one time, that’s it. That’s what all those recordings were.

Jeff Mao

How competitive was the band scene in those days in Minneapolis?

Terry Lewis

It was absolutely competitive, I mean cutting heads was what we used to love to do! And so many times Jimmy used to hand it to me where I used to get so heated. He would come, the guys would show up, a couple of times they ambushed us. We played a gig one time and he showed up, they had all their people there in the front rows and everybody… I think it was a snow storm or something that night.

Jimmy Jam

Yeah probably so. Not the Dinner Theater. What was it again?

Terry Lewis

Supper Club, it was downtown.

Jimmy Jam

Yeah downtown.

Terry Lewis

Yeah, and so we set out to play and it was the Battle Of The Bands because we used to always do that, that’s how you got people to come out. And they went on first and everybody was there and hollering and screaming and when we came out... And this was one of the weakest points of our band, because we lost our horn section and probably a keyboard player or something, and Jimmy came out and they smashed us. We got up there and everybody walked out, so I was like devastated. So I think two weeks later there was a festival outside at a place called The Way, community center, and so I went on a hunt and I picked out some more people. We got in and we wood shed-ed and we came out and we stomped everybody at the festival. I mean it was Jimmy’s group, it was Prince and Morris’s group and we came out and we got this guy named Greg Williams who was a really great singer. They came out and just killed everybody. It was over.

Jimmy Jam

Then the thing I remember about it was, it was funny because so at the dinner theater gig, basically our band won. He was right, we had our whole family and all our friends, like we had our whole cheering section. And we killed it, I mean we killed it but his band was at their lowest point. Because his band was always really good and I remember telling my mom, “No we got to stay and watch Flyte Tyme”, and she is like, “OK”, and I’m like, “They’re really good, they’re really good”, and then they came out and I’m like, “Where is the horn section? Wait where is their keyboard player? Wait what?” And they were terrible. My mom looked at me and she was like, “Flyte Tyme huh?” I was like, “Damn!” So he’s right, two weeks later we played the gig and it wasn’t one of our great gigs for whatever reason, we just weren’t on it and they came out wearing them costumes like in that picture and came out with the P-funk and he had the Mu-Tron hooked up to his bass (makes bass noises) I was like, “Oh hell yeah.” But I was looking at Terry but it wasn’t, it wasn’t hate. It was like, “I love this motherfucker, I love Terry Lewis.” Because Terry was looking at me with the face (makes face) with that face, and I was like, “OK this is a good ass-kicking.” But it was always cool, we always, like I said we were just, we were connected. We were just connected.

Jeff Mao

You mentioned Prince, I guess Prince Nelson in those days, when did you first encounter him? Where was he as far as this point in the scene in Minneapolis?

Jimmy Jam

Well I actually, I met Prince in junior high school. Actually we were in a piano class together and it wasn’t really much of a piano class. It was kind of a way to get out of school for an hour. You’d go and they had this keyboard lab set up where there was a bunch of keyboards and stuff, and the teacher would give you, you know “Mary Had a Little Lamb” or you know “London Bridge is Falling Down.” They’d give you the sheet music and they’d ask you to learn it. So we go, “OK teacher”, and then we’d just sit it there and kind of… And then when the teacher would leave we would just be in there just jamming. I remember, I thought I was a pretty good keyboard player at that time but I remember Prince could just play rings around me. Like he was just a whole 'nother thing that he had. And I thought I was good and he could just do stuff and I just was like, “Man this dude’s nuts.”

I remember that year they put together a band for, like a play or a musical or something. And they said, “Who wants to be in the band? And I said, “I’ll be in the band.” And they said, “OK what are you going to play?” And I said, “I’ll play drums.” “OK cool. Prince what are you going to play?” I thought that he was going to say keyboard, he said guitar, “I’ll play guitar.” And I’m going, “I didn’t know that dude could play a guitar, oh that’s cool.” And we had a bass player and keyboard player, so OK we’re good. So we’re practicing, we’re doing our thing, it’s all good. So then we take a break. So Prince starts playing the guitar solo from this song called “Make Me Smile” by Chicago and back in the day that was like the quintessential guitar solo. Like if you were a guitar player, you needed to know that solo. He note for note just ripped it off. Killed it. I remember going, “Damn, wow that’s good.” So I go to the bathroom, I hear somebody on the drums. I’m thinking it’s the band teacher on the drums, I come out it’s Prince on the drums. Like I don’t even want to sit down behind the drums anymore, it’s like, “Dude you’ve got it man.” I mean he was such a phenom and then he had this band called Grand Central, which Morris was the drummer, Morris Day, was the drummer in that band. André Cymone was the bass player. They were a really good band but honestly our bands would kick his band’s ass. But he himself, you just knew he had something. He started doing demo tapes and stuff, there was a studio called Moon Sound and he would go to the studio, 16-track studio, and do these tapes and he’d do them all himself, every instrument. Go in and play the drums, play the keyboard, play the bass and he’d do everything himself. So his whole thing was, “I’m going to make it, you know I’m going to get up out of here.” We were all rooting for him because we were like, we knew how talented he was and we knew that if he got out that gave all of us a chance. So we were actually rooting for him to get out.

Jeff Mao

So when he signed his record deal, was that seen pretty much as a lifeline then for the rest of the scene? I mean did you guys have a plan in order of what you wanted to do and how you wanted to do it?

Terry Lewis

I think everybody had their own idea of what, at that time we used to say “getting over”. But really back in that day it actually meant getting better. I think getting over turned a different way later on. But it was always known that Prince was going to be a phenom because he was the only guy that could just take anyone’s instrument and play it better than him and that was just kind of the standard issue. Play it like this (makes sound) and you’d say, “I can’t play it like that.” (laughs) But we were just happy for him to get out. Because other people had gotten out of Minneapolis but none that close, nothing that tangible. So what it did was it gave everybody hope. So at that point everybody just committed to being better musicians.

Jeff Mao

As a musician in Minneapolis, could you support yourself if you were a black band?

Terry Lewis

If you were a black musician in Minneapolis, you had very few options to play. So what we had to do was become entrepreneurs and create options. So what we would do is we would rent hotel ballrooms or wherever we could rent and say, “OK we’ll take the door, you take the bar and we’re going to have a gig,” and we’d have to counsel with all the five families and say, “OK we’re going to do like, everybody gets paid this amount and the winner of the battle gets this amount.” And so we’d be that way. There was a group called The Family, they were like gangsters. Before, I mentioned this place, I talked about The Way, community center, that was their home and they were like gangsters. You didn’t want to lose the battle because you would lose the war too, they start pulling out guns and machetes and everything else. When they got involved, then you’d always just let them win. Actually Prince ended up before he left Minneapolis, that was the band he was in. That was Randy Bar, Sunny Thompson, Joe Lewis. It was a great band.

Jimmy Jam

Great band, they were tremendous. Yeah it was very competitive and it was you know, if you’ve seen Purple Rain, the whole kind of idea with Purple Rain is there is one club and all the bands are trying to play in one club and they are like, “Well we’ve got four bands but only got three slots.” And that was kind of the way we grew up. It was very competitive, but it was good for us. Because it taught us that it doesn’t really matter how good you are if you cannot first of all find a place to play. So if you cannot find a place to play, you make your own place. And then the economics of it was we started pulling, you know, we would have a job and we would end up playing a gig and we would take all the people from all the clubs they wouldn’t let us play. The next thing you know, the clubs will be sitting empty and everybody would go, “Where is everybody at?” And they are like, “They are down watching the band you didn’t let play,” you know. So it became sort of a legend, our bands and stuff. Like, “No, no you got to down and see them, because it’s going to be a great show.” There was no internet obviously, there is no tweets or no nothing like that, so we printed up flyers and we put them on everybody’s windshield of their car and all that kind of… You just had to become a business person in addition to doing your music stuff.

Jeff Mao

So how did Flyte Tyme become The Time?

Terry Lewis

Well, there was a short transition period. Prince was out on tour and he took Morris with him to do some filming of his shows. During that period Prince was still working on some of his records and he did a song with Morris called “Party Up.” He told Morris… I’ll make this long story short. He told Morris that if he did the song with him, he could take the credit and get paid for it or he’d do a band for him. Morris chose the band and so at that time, it was a transition period for Prince also, because he was changing his band. Because I remember getting the call from Prince first and Prince asking me to be in his band, because André Cymone was transitioning out. He called me, said, “Terry Lewis.” I said, “Yeah.” “This is Prince. You want to be my bass player?” I said, “Uh, sure.” “Learn all my songs.” That was it.

Like, a month later, I get a call from Morris. Morris said, “Yeah, man, Imma start this thing. I want you to be the bass player.” I said, “Well I already talked to Prince about doing his thing.” He said, “Well which would you rather do?” I said, “I’d rather be with you,” because Morris was one of our guys. He used to play with us as well, so I chose to do that. At that point, I didn’t know exactly what it was going to be, and he said, “Well keep together the band you got,” and that band at that time, we had Alexander O’Neal was our singer. Jellybean Johnson was our drummer. Monte Moir was our keyboard player, and I was jabbing at Jimmy to get back in the group to get him to come and be the other keyboard player.

Eventually that happened, and so we went on for the next month and then came back and they started to record. Actually, the group was going to be called The Nerve at the time. We had a meeting. It’s the infamous meeting with Alexander O’Neal, Prince and the rest of us, and Alex couldn’t see eye to eye with Prince about the paper.

Jimmy Jam

“Prince, I need the paper.”

Terry Lewis

“I need some paper, Prince.”

Jimmy Jam

“I need a new house, a new car, swimming pool, things like that there.” (laughs) “This whole band thing is cute and everything, Prince, but you know, Alexander O’Neal need the paper.” (laughs)

Terry Lewis

Yeah, that’s right. “So I can’t get the paper so I just go and throw down the stake.” And so he threw down the stake and we left there, and so they went back out on tour. Morris called back. Said that I’m going to be the front guy, so put Jellybean back in. Jellybean was already our drummer, and that’s when it became The Time, which is just a derivative of Flyte Time.

Jimmy Jam

The only thing you didn’t put in there was Jesse, because Jesse had come to town... The guitar player. Jesse had come to town to audition for Prince. He thought Prince was looking for a guitar player, and Prince said, “No, I’m not looking for a guitar player. I’m looking for a bass player, but you should stick around in town, join one of the local bands, and just stick around town.” So Jesse went and joined Morris’s band, and everybody kept telling us, “Man, y’all see the guitar player Morris’s band got?” Because it was still competitive and stuff. We were like, “OK.” We went over and checked him out, and he was serious. Ten minute guitar solos and stuff, pink suit.

We were like, “Oh, man. This dude’s good.” So we recruited him. We said, “Come over and hear our band. Our band’s better than your band that you’re in.” He came over to our band. He watched us play, and then he called Morris and he said, “Yo, Morris.” He said, “Nothing personal, but I’m going to go join Flyte Tyme,” and Morris basically said to him, “That’s cool. Go ahead and join them, because pretty soon we’re all going to be one band.” And nobody knew really what that meant until Terry got the phone call that we were all going to be in the same band together. That was how we all came together.

Jeff Mao

You formed a band. Who was in charge then at this point?

Terry Lewis

In charge of...

Jeff Mao

The band and the material and what was going to happen. How did you figure that out and how did that get reconciled?

Terry Lewis

They say the best way to be a good leader is to be a good follower. At that time it was like whoever needed to lead would lead. We always knew that this was Morris’s thing, so Morris was absolutely the leader, and the producer of it all was Prince. Prince, in the early days, did all the music. That was just the way it was and we were absolutely okay with that.

Jimmy Jam

The one thing I will add though is that although Morris was the leader of the group, the real leader was Terry because anything that came up Morris would always defer to Terry and say, “Terry, what do you think?” The reason was is because Terry always, as he said earlier, Terry was always the leader whether it was athletics or whatever it was in his life. He was always the gatherer, the leader, the person to do that kind of stuff. Morris always depended on Terry to do that stuff, but I can’t say enough good things about Morris. That brother is... I’ll tell you the greatest thing. Not the greatest thing, but I’ll just give you one example that I always remember was back when we were in The Time, and of course as Terry said, Prince was doing all the music and basically doing everything, him and Morris. We were totally fine with that, but we wanted to get out on our own and start writing and doing things ourselves. Prince wasn’t always happy about that, but Morris was. Morris was always very encouraging to us and told us, “You guys go do what you do,” but then he called a meeting one day and told the whole band, he said, “Hey, here’s what I’m doing. I’m taking acting lessons because I want to do different things. Jimmy and Terry are out there writing and producing and doing their thing. The rest of y’all I suggest figure something that you want to do out, because this band ain’t going to last forever so everybody find something that you want to do and start doing it.”

I have so much respect for him doing that, because it was encouraging to us but it also got everybody else off their ass too, or at least the people that should’ve got off their asses. Some of them didn’t. Some of them bought VCRs, so it was like... That’s an inside joke, but literally when we were coming off of tour, me and Terry were saving all our money to buy equipment and stuff so we could come to LA and start doing demos and trying to do stuff, and everybody else was... Terry said, “Who wants to come to LA with me?,” and I said, “I’ll go.” Everybody else was like, “Man, you crazy, man. I’m saving my money for a VCR.” And it’s like, anybody even know what a VCR is? It’s funny, because back in that day, that was the coveted thing, a VCR, so we were like, “OK, cool.” But Morris told everybody, “Here’s what’s up,” and we took his advice to heart.

Jeff Mao

The Time put out some great recordings, but I think the legacy of The Time for a lot of fans is you guys as a live act, and before we move on past this, I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t a little bit of a look at that. So if we could look at the second video, this is The Time in 1982, live in Minneapolis performing “777-9311.”

(video: The Time – “777-9311” (Live) / applause)

Terry Lewis

That’s still fun to watch.

Jeff Mao

It’s amazing. How much work went into preparing that stage show? Which Prince, I think, described you guys as the only band he was afraid of.

Terry Lewis

And rightfully so. Because every day we tried to kick his ass. (laughs) He created the Frankenstein as far as work ethic. He had the work ethic, incomparable. You couldn’t compare it to anything else. I mean, it wasn’t even human. He would get up in the morning and come to our practice. We would practice a... We call practice at 10 o’clock and we’d practice from six to eight hours, right? He’d be there with us, just drilling us, “Do it again, one more time,” whatever. Then he’d quit and he’d go to his band practice and rehearse for six to eight hours. Then he’d go home and go to the studio and record 1999 and then come back to our rehearsal and jam with us and then do the same thing all over again. I mean he was an amazing worker. He infused that in all us. I thank you for the DNA Prince. Thank you, because it certainly changed our horizon, because we know how to work. I would definitely credit him with a lot of that.

Jimmy Jam

Work ethic.

Jeff Mao

By the same token, you were overworked to some degree on the road.

Terry Lewis

Not really.

Jeff Mao

You wouldn’t say so.

Terry Lewis

We were underpaid. We was underpaid, I’ll give it that. Our first, almost two tours we did, like a tour and a half, I think we made like $150 a week. But that wasn’t the point. For that high of that 30, 40 minutes that we got on stage was worth it, every bit of it. People call it paying their dues, I mean, I think it just taught us. It made us tight, it made us think about other things. For us it was the greatest thing because the thing that we couldn’t do before in terms of mixing the pretty with the funky, that’s where we learned how to blend it. It kind of created that happy place where we could go and just get away because all the other BS didn’t matter. We got on stage, it was just fun.

Jeff Mao

Did you a feel a part of this Minneapolis sound that was coming out, did you... From the inside, did you think of it as such or was that just that something that media, whoever, would conveniently place an umbrella over all of these different groups and musicians.

Terry Lewis

I think there was always a Minneapolis sound. I think if you want to define it and put your finger on one person you would have to do Prince as that person. But the funny part about it is, that as great as Prince was, he pulled stuff from all of us. There was a bass player that actually went on to be with NPG, New Power Generation, one of Prince’s renditions of groups, incarnations of groups. He taught all of us a lot. Prince played with him, he taught Prince a lot about guitar, a lot about bass. He taught me a lot about bass in terms of tone, you know, the boogaloo bubbly tone.

A lot of that stuff, Prince got after he heard some of my tone because I played with Sam & Dave for a short period and Sam & Dave, you couldn’t play the bass. They said, “You don’t play anything over the E string and the A string. You don’t get up to the G and the D. You don’t do that. You play the bass. You’re a bass player. Turn all that treble out of your bass.” That’s where I learned to tone it down. Because at that time the Brothers Johnson, all the trebly basses going on and the plucking and picking. They said, “None of that.” I was torn in between that and so they taught me that and they taught me, “OK, play behind the beat. Don’t play on top of the beat, you be behind the beat because you want to make that transient fat.”

That all came from that world and then Prince had his own world and so if you listen to his records, some of that stuff translates into his world. If you know anything about Sonny Thompson, listen to Sonny Thompson play and you’ll see why Prince got some stuff from Sonny Thompson. Which is why eventually he went back and got him, when he figured he could manage it all. Because that’s a big thing to get your mentor to come and play in your group. Larry Graham, another one. So we all borrowed from each other. He used to come to our practice and we used to practice and we used to practice, we’d use to always joke about it, say, “OK, tomorrow we’re going to hit out on Warner Brothers records and tapes.” Because that’s exactly what would happen but it was all good.

Jimmy Jam

We’d always say, “Prince, why don’t you go groove with your own band?” But our group, we were funkier. So whenever Prince wanted to work something out that he had in his head, he’d come with our band. He’d come over and he’d start jamming, we’d all start jamming and then back in that day it was a cassette. All of a sudden, somebody would press record on the cassette and then we’d play for an hour or something then we’d walk out. Prince would pop out the cassette and the next day we’d hear something very similar to what it was we jammed on. It got to the point where Prince would walk in to rehearsal, he’d start jamming and we all kind of go, “Yeah, I think I’m going to get something to eat. I think I’m going to...” You know, we’d be like... Because we were like... Or, I’d be noodling around on the keyboards, he’d go...

Terry Lewis

“Jimmy Jam, what’s that you’re playing?”

Jimmy Jam

“What’re you playing Jimmy Jam. What’re you playing?” “Nothing, Prince. Nothing, man. Just trying to get a sound up. Just nothing.” But Prince, I tell you, the work ethic story is funny. I can almost demonstrate it maybe, let’s see. Is this up? (tests keyboard) OK, so this is not the right sound. But I’ll just show you something real quick. We were just playing “777-9311,” right? Let me just show you real quick. Here was my lesson. I’m at rehearsal and by the way, these are the wrong sounds. We’re playing the song and Prince goes... I’m going like this because all I needed to do on “777” was just do a bassline and all I would do is... That’s all I would do. We get done with the song and Prince goes, “Jimmy Jam, what’re you doing with your right hand?” (laughs) I said, “I’m not doing anything, Prince, I’m just copying the bassline of the song.” “You should play the chords that Monte’s playing.” I said, “Monte’s already playing the chords.” “But you’ve got to play the chords because it makes it bigger.” It should sound better than the record, that was his thing, better than the record. OK, so now I’m playing... So now I’m... (plays keys) I’m thinking, “OK, cool. All right, I can do that. No worries.” “Jimmy Jam, what note are you singing on the chorus?” (laughs) “I’m not singing a part, Prince. It’s like a three-part harmony, Terry’s got his and I think Jesse’s singing and Morris, that’s it.” “Find a note and sing. It’s got to be bigger than the record.” So now I’m... (plays keys, sings chorus) All right. Now I’m like, “OK, cool. I can hit my note, I can play both my parts, I’m good.” “Jimmy Jam, how come you’re not doing the choreography?” (laughs / applause) “Prince, I’m standing at a keyboard, man. What choreography?” “Choreography is simple, you should be able to do the choreography.” So now, I’m like... I’m literally sitting out... I’m up there playing and now I’m trying to hit the little choreography and I’m trying to hit my part, and I’m “Seven, seven, seven.” And I’m so frustrated. Ughh. I’m just like, crazy. So we practice and practice and practice and practice, and I’m so pissed off. The very next day, come back to practice. There’s Prince. “777, let’s hear 777-9311, OK?” So we come in and we come... (plays keys, sings chorus)

So the point of this story is I’m now… Not only can I do all of those things... I can take my hanky off, I can tip my head, I can peak over my glasses, I can put my hand in my pocket when I’m not playing, and the thing was... Is that that taught me, it’s like... You can do a whole lot of stuff you don’t even know you can do, but you need to work at it. I thank Prince for that every single day, because I never... He saw something in me that I didn’t see. He’s like, “Why can’t you do it?” And I’m going, “I can’t do that, Prince.” And it got to be a habit on all of the songs, you know? We would always find... Whatever he told us to do, we’d always then reach for the next thing, and that was why Terry said he created Frankenstein.

I’ll tell you a quick story. So, Morris was always... We called that jacket he always wore the Presley, right? So he got tired of wearing the Presley. He said, “Prince, I need a different jacket.” And Prince was like, “No, that’s what people expect to see you in, so you have to wear the Presley.” So one day Morris just said, “Man, I’m gettin’ me a new Presley.” So he had somebody make a new Presley for him. It looked like the old one, but a little shinier and a little nice and new. So at that point in the tour, I remember we were just firing on all cylinders, and we were kicking Prince’s ass every single night.

Terry Lewis

About to be kicked off.

Jimmy Jam

Yeah. Right. As a matter of fact, they were about to find us our own tour because it was getting a little too hot. So we came out. Prince watched our show. We absolutely killed the show, I remember. And Prince comes backstage, and sometimes he would... No, I’m sorry, it was before the show. Before the show. Prince would sometimes come to our dressing room and just kind of hang out, you know, right? Just kind of whatever. And we’d be like, “Hey, Prince.” Whatever, whatever. He comes into the dressing room and he goes, “What’s up with you guys today?” And Morris says, “Hey, Prince. I got something for you.” And Jerome hands him... It’s all in a thing. He unzips it. He said, “Look at this, Prince! I got a new Presley! Waaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” And Prince goes, “I created a monster!” And goes running out the room. (laughs)

And at that point, it was like, yeah, we’re about to get kicked off the tour because it was just... The heat was too much. But it’s like Prince created that, and I think there was a little bit... I used to watch him watch us perform, and he used to just try to hide off to side of the stage and he’d watch us, and he’d be out there cracking up. Morris would be combing his hair and Jerome would bring the mirror out and there’d be all this crazy stuff and he would love it until he saw that we saw him, and then he’d straighten up. Like, he’d get a real straight face. It was almost like he was our dad or something. It was like he was so proud of his kids, but then it’s like the kids shouldn’t be beating me, you know? It was interesting. Prince was the best. We were so blessed to be able to work with him.

Terry Lewis

Absolutely.

Jeff Mao

How did he find out that you were doing your own productions, then?

Terry Lewis

Oooh.

Jimmy Jam

Well... So we were on tour. This was ‘82, going into ‘83, and we basically had four days off in New York. We had met Clarence Avant, and Clarence Avant was the person that owned Tabu Records, which was where the S.O.S. Band recorded. Well, actually, that’s how we got kicked out of The Time. Is that the story?

Terry Lewis

Yeah, it’s the same story.

Jimmy Jam

The same story? OK. So anyway, we go down to Atlanta to produce the S.O.S. Band. We thought, “You know, this would be cool. We got the four days off. We’ll go in and for three days we’ll do it, and then the morning of the next show, which was in San Antonio, we’ll just hop a plane, go to San Antonio, no big deal.” So the morning we’re leaving, it snows. But I’m talking about... Now, we’re from Minneapolis, right? So snow is snow. This was what we call a dusting. Like, you might take a broom and maybe broom your sidewalk off, maybe, but it’s not enough to do anything. It shut the whole airport down. So now we’re in Atlanta at the airport, and the Atlanta airport was crazy because there was four different terminals. We were just trying to get any flight out that we could connect and get to San Antonio. The whole airport totally shut down, and at a certain point we realized we’re not going to make the gig.

So they went on that night and did the gig without us, which was interesting, but Prince played from behind the stage, because he, of course, knew all the parts, he did the records, right? So he played. Jerome, Terry’s brother, stood in Terry’s place and acted like Terry. And the gig went off, and I don’t think people to this day really knew that they weren’t getting the full group. When we finally got there we got fined. They said, “Oh, you’re fined $3,000,” which was laughable because we were only making $150 a week, so it’s like you’re fining us three grand out of what? It’s like, “We’re not making any money anyway.”

But that was kind of how we got found out. And so then there was a... We were still cool because nobody ... We were fine but the thought was that’s what you get for going down and seeing them girls. Everybody thought we went down to see some girls in Atlanta. So it was cool, but then what happened Billboard magazine came out and there was a picture of us with the S.O.S. Band, and we were trying to hide every Billboard magazine, because there was no Internet. It wasn’t like you could look it up on the net. You had to see the Billboard, and every time we would see a Billboard, we’d hide it.

Prince was like, “Where’s my Billboard?” “I don’t know, Prince!” We’d hide them, but there would be a ton of them. The manager would have one, and the booking agent would have one, and we were hiding them all. Of course, finally he saw our picture in there and he knew what was up. That summer we ended up being called to Sunset Sound to do, we thought, a Time gig, or a recording. We were supposed to be mixing the S.O.S. records we had done. We got in a room, and it was myself, Terry, Jessie, Prince, and Morris. Prince just simply goes, “I told you guys not to produce outside acts and you did. So you’re fired.” And I was like, “OK,” and I got up and left. Terry stayed in the room, tried to reason for a little bit. So now we’re outside Sunset Sound, as we call it, kicking rocks. You know, you’re just kind of out there moping around and stuff. We’re like, “What do you want to do, man?” And we were like, “Well, we still got the recording session up the street. Why don’t we go up there and see what’s going on?”

So we go up to this studio called Larrabee Sound. Steve Hodge is the engineer, and by the way, the only reason we knew Larrabee Sound and Steve Hodge was because of liner notes, which aren’t on records anymore for whatever reason. But on the liner notes, when we were kids and we would read, and we liked Steve Hodge and we liked Larrabee Sound. We liked something about that, so that’s why we picked that studio, just from off the liner notes. So we walk in. I don’t even think we had met Steve Hodge at that point.

Terry Lewis

We hadn’t.

Jimmy Jam

So we walk in, and he says, “What’s wrong with you guys?” And we said, “Hey, we just got fired from The Time.” He said, “Really? Wow,” he said, “Well, I don’t think you have anything to worry about because this record you guys got here is a smash.” And we were like, “Really?” And he had mixed enough to know, and he was right and it was a smash.

Jeff Mao

And what was that song called?

Jimmy Jam

“Just Be Good To Me.”

Jeff Mao

All right. Let’s listen to S.O.S. Band, “Just Be Good To Me.”

(music: The S.O.S. Band – “Just Be Good To Me” / applause)

Jimmy Jam

Somebody was singing that up front. I heard a little high-low unison going on.

Audience Member

Yay.

Jimmy Jam

All right.

Jeff Mao

Why do you think S.O.S. Band was such a great vehicle for your songs? This was the first, well not the first, actually, but one of the early, the biggest, the early ones.

Jimmy Jam

Yeah.

Jeff Mao

It set it off, yeah.

Jimmy Jam

For all intents and purposes, it was the first. Yeah. We did a song called “High Hopes” before that we didn’t produce. Actually, Leon Sylvers produced it. We wrote it. Actually, that song was the one that actually got us the meeting with Clarence Avant, which was so very pivotal, very important for us.

You know when I earlier was talking about, we were talking about the funky bottom and the pretty top? This was the culmination of that to me, first of all. It was the funky bottom. Then, it was the pretty melodies over the top and even glockenspiels on that record too. It was really a good combination of what it was we did or where we found our place. The other thing was we were always... One of our strengths as producers was always, if it was an established group we were working with, doing the homework and figuring out what it was that worked about what they did, and... S.O.S. Band had, I mean, “Take Your Time (Do It Right),” which was our first record, was just huge, and they weren’t able to follow it up. That’s pretty common. We listened so much to “Take Your Time (Do It Right)” that there were certain elements we pulled from that song, the glockenspiel, which was part of it, which was important, the repetition of the bassline, where it’s over and over and over and over, like there’s no bridge, there’s no nothing. It’s just the same thing over and over. We thought that was the key, all of those things. We thought those were important elements to making a great S.O.S. Band record. Then, at the end of the day, as fans of a group, because you have to be a fan to work with somebody’s, that’s always been our barometer, what would we like to hear them do? If someone said “Wow. There’s a new S.O.S. Band record out,” what would we want it to sound like? Then, that’s what we try to create.

Jeff Mao

In addition, was that little machine over there, which made its appearance on this record.

Jimmy Jam

The 808. The 808 drum machine. 808 is interesting, because, nowadays, people think of it as a sound. In any, really in all music, but certainly hip-hop music now, when you hear the low sine basses that go “boom, boom, boom,” those low basses, it’s all basically based off of an 808 sound. It was just the drum machine that, we wanted a drum machine, and they just brought us that drum machine. They brought us an 808, because we didn’t know.

Terry Lewis

We actually used a 303, I think, at first.

Jimmy Jam

Well, on the demo.

Terry Lewis

On “For Your Love” we did.

Jimmy Jam

Oh, you’re right. We did. You’re right. The 303.

Terry Lewis

Yeah. It was a 303.

Jimmy Jam

They didn’t have a 303, so they got us an 808. Was that what it was?

terry Lewis

Yep. Exactly what it was.

Jimmy Jam

That’s how we ended up with the drum machine, but it’s a very familiar drum machine. This one, I had programmed a beat. We did a song called “Tell Me If You Still Care,” and “Tell Me If You Still Care” was kind of the first time we really got a chance, the “Just Be Good To Me” beat was also done in the Roland but we got a chance to really mess with it and figure out little things that it did that I thought was kind of cool. “Tell Me If You Still Care,” we had the beat in it. (plays beat) We programmed the beat, and the beat was basically this, but what we realized was there’s a little switch on here that makes it to hand claps, so you end up with (changes beat). This ended up being the beat. As the tape, we’re just rolling tape, and then when the song would come in, we would just turn it back to that again. It was all just kind of done on the fly. Then, toward the end of the song, I kind of got bored, so I’m kind of messing around with the little switches, and there’s a decay switch on here. The decay switch works for the bass drum, so I just went (changes beat). That puts a little “boom boom” on it. When we did it, we didn’t know that that was going to become the thing. For us, it was just like “OK. Now we got to figure out what we’re going to do with that boom.” Terry said, “Lyrically, why don’t we just say ‘Listen to my heart beat, boom, for you baby.’” The engineer just put a bunch of extra little stuff on it, and that became the boom of the 808 sound. It became, obviously, associated with us and a whole lot of people, but the S.O.S. Band sessions were really the first time we had a chance to use it, and it really ended up shaping a lot of the songs and stuff that we did. We had no idea. This one’s in, actually, really great shape. We just had ours refurbished, our original one.

Terry Lewis

That’s in great shape.

Jimmy Jam

It was very cool, because the Roland folks actually... I guess there’s a chip inside of there that remembers everything you did, so the engineers that were refurbishing it were knowing all our beats. They were like, “Man, who did these beats?” “Oh, that was Jam & Lewis.” “Oh, man. They knew what they were doing on that.” It was like, “OK, cool.” That was kind of nice to hear from them. No, it’s been a great drum machine for us, for sure, over the years. Very influential.

We had a LinnDrum up here a little bit earlier, but the LinnDrum we used a lot back in that day. All the Prince records from back in the day were the LM-1. We had a LM-2 sitting up here for a minute. Then, the Oberheim synthesizers were a big deal. We have a OB-6 here, which is basically like a new version of what we had, called the OB-8. It’s a lot of familiar stuff out here, but kind of the sounds that we started off with. The OB-8, when you talked about the Minneapolis sound earlier, a lot of that was the idea of having keyboard players do horn parts on synthesizers rather than horns. A lot of that was that a lot of the horn lines we did on synthesizer instead, and I think that also probably contributed to what is known as the Minneapolis sound.

Jeff Mao

You, very early on, I guess, were successful writing for female singers and female artists. Was that just a coincidence, or was it something that you had about your craft that made it simpatico for those particular artists?

Jimmy Jam

Well, we like the ladies, so...

Terry Lewis

Love the ladies.

Jimmy Jam

Yeah. We love the ladies. We love the ladies. We’ll start off with that. I don’t really know. I don’t think it was so conscious. I think a lot of it was the first acts we worked with, we did Gladys Knight & the Pips, we did Cheryl Lynn...

terry Lewis

Klymaxx.

Jimmy Jam

Klymaxx. We love Klymaxx, because...

Terry Lewis

Patti Austin.

Jimmy Jam

Patti Austin. We love Klymaxx though, because they were a female band, and we thought that was so cool. One of the things we did with Klymaxx was that... They had a lead singer named Lorena, who was a really a good singer, but they had a girl named Bernadette. Bernadette was the drummer but Bernadette had so much attitude. The thing that we did, I think, for Klymaxx was put Bernadette up front and let her have the... We called her Berna Day, because for us, she was like a female Morris Day. She had all that attitude. When their hit records like “Men All Pause” and those kind of records, that’s all Bernadette saying that stuff with the attitude. Then, when they did a song called “I Miss You,” which was like their big ballad, the bass player, who is a girl named Joyce Irby, we put her up front as a lead singer, because we thought she had just a really cool voice. With Klymaxx, it was just a matter of, I guess it was sort of like coaching a team, like, you know you just moved a guard to forward. You moved a... We just rearranged the pieces. They already had the talent, and they went on and became very successful, so we always love doing that. Like I say, for someone who’s established already, we love going in and trying to figure out that formula to get back whatever it is that they need to do and for us it was just, they knew they were talented but they didn’t know exactly where to put the pieces of the talent, and I think we were able to do that with them.

Terry Lewis

And we also added for them a certain amount of freedom, which is something that we like.

Jimmy Jam

Yeah, ain’t that the truth?

Terry Lewis

We allowed them to just do what they like to do, whereas the record company tried to impose its will as to what a hit was or wasn’t.

Jeff Mao

I’d like to just go through a few songs, since there are so many, and this is from an artist called Cherrelle. It’s called “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On.”

(music: Cherelle – “I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On” / applause)

Jimmy Jam

Yeah, I like that one. That one is interesting because, and to talk about different influences. We were just talking about it. As we said, The System. There was a group called The System, and The System had a record out. I think it was called... Well, it’s called You’re In My System, right?

Terry Lewis

Yeah.

Jimmy Jam

It was their first one, or whatever, but anyway, the idea was that The System really was: Oberheim made a keyboard, a drum machine, and a sequencer that all went together and these guys basically put those records together doing that. I didn’t know how to work a sequencer to save my life so my whole thing was I just played everything live. I was thinking about it on the S.O.S. Band. You had that repetitive bassline, it’s like (hums bassline melody) I played that the whole 8 minutes of the song, straight through, and I’m going, “Did I used to do that?” And he said, “Yeah, we were in shape then.” I’m like, “Oh, OK. Yeah, we could probably get away with it.” But the same thing on “Didn’t Mean to Turn You On.” Other than the drum little turnarounds, basically everything was just played. That was the idea. So it just was dawning on me how much equipment changes the way you do stuff, and the fact that Oberheim, we had this OB-8 synthesizer, we had this ARP Omni, which was the string kind of sound on there, and all of those things coming together made that record happen. That was a cool one, and that was one of the first records we did back in Minneapolis, because we had moved to LA. We did S.O.S. Band in Atlanta. And Cherrelle, we were working with her in LA but she was a brand new singer and a little bit nervous, and the whole idea of studio time and all that budget and craziness. We went back and had us some friends that had a basement studio, and so this was the first record we did in the basement studio.

Jeff Mao

What was cool about working in Minneapolis? Because eventually you went back there and made that your studio setup, your headquarters, for many years. What was great about that?

Terry Lewis

It’s home. It’s comfort. Comfort is the number one thing. It’s the number one human want. Comfort. I’m around my family. I’m around my friends. I know how to access musicians. I know everything about this place, so when we went back there we were immediately comfortable. And economics, which allowed us to not feel like we were on the clock pinching pennies to get something done. It allowed us to just be creative and so we loved that so we never went back to LA to record anymore. We just stayed in Minneapolis, pretty much.

Jimmy Jam

The other thing I’ll add to that is that Clarence Avant in his wisdom, and he gave us so much wisdom and continues to give us wisdom to this day, told us about the Hollywood sign. He said, “Make sure you don’t get caught looking at the Hollywood sign when you’re driving, because you’re going to crash.” And that was good advice, and for a couple of young guys that were just getting out there and having a few hit records, LA was not the place we needed to be. I’ll just say that. There’s a lot of temptations and a lot of things going on out there. We needed to take our butts back to Minneapolis and then Terry was the one that really drove that decision and he was totally right. He was like, “We should go back to Minneapolis.” I’m like, “OK, let’s do it,” and it worked out very well.

Jeff Mao

These songs are very healthy with hooks, different types of hooks, but I actually want to play this and maybe have a little discussion about that in reference to this song. This is another Cherrelle song featuring Alexander O’Neal entitled “Saturday Love.”

(music: Cherrelle feat. Alexander O’Neal – “Saturday Love” / applause)

Jeff Mao

Alright, so, there’s a few different things here... There’s the main hook, the chorus, I suppose, but then there are all of these other things that stay in your head. I mean, one thing, arrangement-wise I always notice from your productions is there’ll be this drum and then there’ll be like a splash where the keyboards come in. Before you even get into the hooks... that had to be a very conscious thing that you injected into a number of different songs. But in addition to that, something so simple, days of the week, and yet, it’s all right there. To start it where it starts, and end it where it ends is... simple but also extremely difficult to do. What do you recall about making this?

Jimmy Jam

Well, the thing I recall about making it is that... I actually wrote the idea, the start of the idea, in my apartment. I just got my penthouse high-rise bachelor pad apartment in Minneapolis, and I couldn’t fit like a real piano in there, so I got a Yamaha CP-70. You know, it had real strings and stuff like a piano, but it was portable, right? I sat down and I just kind of came up with the little idea with the chords and stuff, and then in my mind, I start thinking, “Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, love.” I thought, “Wow, this is cool. This is great!”

I went to the studio later. Terry was there. I said, “Terry, got this idea!” He says, “What is it?” and I instantly thought, “This is the dumbest idea ever!” (laughs) “How’s it go Jim?” “Um, well, it’s sort of the days of the week! Like... Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.” I said, “Nah, forget it. It ain’t no big deal.” Terry’s like, “No, no, no! How’s it go?” and I said, “Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thurs... “ and I’m thinking this is Sesame Street this is so stupid! Terry says, “Play it! Play it!” so, anyway, I played it. He was like, “No, no, no. That’s cool. That’s cool. We can come up for somethin’ with that, OK cool,” and put the simplest drum beat... I mean, the drum beat took three seconds (mimics drum beat) I mean just real simple. We just played it and in our minds I don’t think we ever thought that it was that... I didn’t think it was that good, I just thought it was just... somethin’, right?

Cherrelle, we were working on her record, and Alex we had already done his record, and so we thought it would be cool to put them together. The thing about the song, and I don’t know whether you noticed this or not, but the first verse and the second verse are exactly the same lyrics. The only difference is the way they approach ‘em and sing ‘em but the reason it’s like that is because we never bothered to write a second verse. It’s one of those things where now you look back on it and people go, “Wow, that was so genius!” And it’s like, “Yeah, OK . Sure!” Right? “Let’s know how you… It’s the same lyrics, that’s so cool!” It’s like, OK.

I don’t know. I just remembered that about the song, and of course, I remember ... Alex’s voice man, it’s just... First of all, both of those guys. Cherrelle, first of all, was such a trooper... We were just learning how to record. We had a studio. We had built a studio, and then we had the engineer walk out on us, so we had to learn how to work stuff, and this was back in the day. It wasn’t plug-ins and all this computer stuff, it was like a physical patch bay, where you had to plug something in to get the mic to work and you had to do all that. Luckily, Cherrelle’s who we were working on. Cherrelle would go in the booth, and we’d go, “Take your headphones off Cherrelle because we’re going to start plugging some stuff in and there might be some problems.”

Sure enough, we go, “Erh!” and the speaker would blow, or whatever. We’d be “Sorry Cherrelle!” And she’d go, “That’s all right, baby! You’ll figure it out. It’s alright.” She was real cool. Alex’s voice, man, is the… He’s the best of the best, and we worked with a bunch of people, but the thing about Alex was Alex was able to do anything. He could do a ballad, like “If You Were Here Tonight” like “Sunshine,” like something like that, and then he could do a song like “Fake,” which is like the funkiest record ever... With ease. He could do either one. Probably no more talented guy that we’ve ever worked with, so to put them together was just... It was just cool. I mean, I think that’s really what makes this record work is their chemistry together was amazing. And the hooks, we have a saying, we always say, “More hooks than a taco box.” We always feel like each part of the song should have a hook. It should be memorable throughout, so no matter where you start the song or play the song, in the old days, it was on a record, so it would be like a needle drop, wherever you put it on the record, there should be something there that catches your attention right away.

Jeff Mao

I mean, even the last part of that song, “Never on Monday, Sunday’s too soon,” it could be a whole song into itself right there. And you’ve described this gentleman over here as a vocal and lyric master...

Jimmy Jam

Yes

Jeff Mao

… I’d like you to elaborate on that, a little bit more as to why that is.

Jimmy Jam

Well, here’s the thing. I’ll give you an example. Well, there’s many examples. I’ll just give the one that pops into my head always is. I’m very long-winded, so it takes me a while to actually say something and Terry can sum up what I say in three words, and I think that’s part of his gift. I remember when we were working on “Rhythm Nation” with Janet and we had this concept for a song that was living in the world they didn’t make, like that was the concept for the song. Because we were watching CNN, and there had been a school shooting, and all these kids had been getting killed, and we just thought, “We got to talk about that on a record. We got to address this.” We were in our Flyte Tyme... our first Flyte Tyme studio, but we were building a second, bigger one. Janet kept saying, “We need Terry, we need Terry!” I said, “Yeah we do.” Terry shows up at the studio, at the old Flyte Tyme where we were recording. He comes in the door with like carpet samples, and all this different stuff for this new studio. “Janet, what do you think about this carpet and whatever?” We’re like, “Terry, Terry, no, no, no. We need lyrics,” and he says, “Well, what’s the concept?” I said, “OK, these kids got killed at this school, and, you know, it’s not their fault. You know, it’s the adults' fault. You know, it’s our mistakes, man. It’s us messing up, right? The adults are messing it up for the kids, and it’s like, you know, somethin’, somethin’ somethin’.” I go into this whole... and me and Janet are telling him this whole thing, and Terry just goes, “Livin’ in a world they didn’t make.” We’re like, “Yeah!” Terry goes, 10 minutes later has the lyrics, hands us the lyrics, “Here you go,” and that was it. That song is obviously as relevant today as it was 25 years ago when we did it, with what’s going on with the world right now. That to me is the gift that he has for lyrics and also we played something from the Unbreakable album earlier, but lyrically through Janet’s growth as a lyricist, but also Terry’s growth in knowing her so well, I think lyrically that is by far her strongest album, if you listen to the Unbreakable album. And it’s because of Terry. For instance, she said to Terry, “I got this concept for a song, Black Eagle, and it’s got to be about kids around the world and about abuse and this and blah blah, Black Eagle.” Terry’s like, “OK.” This didn’t take a day. Terry was literally like five days in this, I call it the cubicle at our studio, this little place where he’s got his laptop and he just sits there. It’s one light, like the accountant or something. He’s just over there coming up with line by line. Everyday he’d come up and show her a line, “What do you think of this?” She’d go, “Oh yeah I love that, I love that.” He’d go, “OK, cool.” Every day I’d go, “How you coming Terry?” “Oh cool it’s coming, it’s coming.” Finally if you listen to the song “Black Eagle” on the album, I mean he just has a knack for that. The vocal part of it is…

One more story, vocally, I call him the vocal master and that’s the vocal production. There’s two songs for me, “Human” by the Human League. If you listen to that record and listen to Phil Oakey’s vocal. Phil Oakey on all of the Human League records was always very robotic (sings) like that. If you listen to “Human,” there’s a lot of feeling on that and that vocal took a week. That was Terry just drilling them down and knocking them down and giving him the confidence to try to step out of this robotic thing that he had and actually sing. That vocal to me, that’s the best vocal he’s ever done, Phil has ever done. The other song is, there’s a song we did with Usher called “You Remind Me.” When L.A. Reid actually sent us the track to that song and said, “This song is either off the album or my first single but we cannot get the vocal right.” I told Usher to go back in and redo it and he said the only person he’ll go back in and do a vocal with is Terry Lewis. Terry said, “OK I’ll do it, let’s go.” Terry goes out and we’re still in Minneapolis at this point. Terry goes out to LA, they work on the vocal for a week. It was really a thing where the guy that sang the demo of the song, Usher was trying to sing it like the guy that did the demo instead of singing it like himself. The psychological part of breaking Usher down to basically make it his own song. He had to first forget what he had heard. I got to take that totally out of your brain first of all. Then I got to rebuild you as Usher. Now we got to sing this like an Usher song, you have to own the song. When it was done I remember we sent it to L.A. and he called two hours later and he said, “You guys got the first single.” It was a number record and a huge record for him. The vocals are so important and we were taught that you’re not a producer unless you can do the whole thing, you can do vocals. I know nowadays there’s vocal producers and people that just do that. We were taught you got to do the whole thing. When it comes to lyrics, when it comes to vocal mastering, Terry Lewis is the guy.

Jeff Mao

Terry, why do you think you have this gift, this talent? But then also what would you advise people who aren’t Terry Lewis? Who don’t have that pedigree as far as instructing somebody, trying to get a performance out of them or directing somebody to get a performance out of them that you want.

Terry Lewis

I think I get the gift because it’s not about me. I have a lot to say about certain things but I like to say them very short because I don’t like to mix up the words too much. Sometimes we get lost in the words I think, that’s why writing I can get it out. As far as working with people, my job and my aspiration is always to get the best of that person. I want to meet them wherever they are and figure out what they need for themselves to get that out. I always ask artists, the first thing I ask, like Usher, I say, “Usher, what is the key ingredient to an Usher record?” Most artists go around the world, “The beat, the this, the that, the lyric.” I say, “OK, really? You don’t know what the key ingredient is?” That key ingredient would be Usher. If Usher’s not good on the record then the record’s not a good Usher record. It could be a great record for anyone else but how do I get the best of the artist on this piece of song or whatever it is, beat, whatever. That’s always my aspiration. I don’t mind, I have patience. I can just sit there and do it and I’ll allow the artist to take, take after take after take until they feel like they have what they want. I don’t have a problem sifting through it and comping it together.

Jeff Mao

Is it tougher to write a song that is just a love song, is it harder than writing a song that has some melancholy to it? “Just Be Good To Me” or… “Saturday Love” is about, kind of a sad song if you listen to some of the lyrics, in terms of I think about you through the days of the week. A song that’s, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Like how many ways can you say that? Is that a tough thing or is that a thing that’s not tough for you guys?

Terry Lewis

Love songs are really tough for me because love, idealistic love is tough because love is never idealistic. True love I guess you could say the [inaudible] love it has no expectation, it gives all, takes nothing. That love is cool but that’s not the way we love, it’s always conditional. Writing a love song is always about finding that condition that people covet. It’s like, “OK I love you if, and I don’t love you when.” Like a song like “Just Be Good To Me,” you know, “I don’t care how you love them as long as you’re doing that thing that I need you to do for me.” That’s one of those experiences that as a kid growing up I saw in various households where there’s always the mother, the mistress and on and on and on. It’s easy to write about those kind of things but the true love is always hard for me because it sounds so sappy.

Jeff Mao

Let’s listen to this actually because this is a love song.

(music: Force M.D.'s – “Tender Love” / applause)

Jimmy Jam

What? (laughs) OK, but the thing about “Tender Love” is “Tender Love” was written for a movie. The interesting thing about it was that they sent us a scene in the movie. Now the movie was Crush Groove so it was like one of the first hip-hop movies and Sheila E. was in it and LL Cool J and a bunch of folks. So they sent it, they said, “We need a ballad for this one love scene.” And so the lyrics were really based on the scene that they sent us. Like when they say, “Candles that light the dark,” there was candles that were being lit in the scene literally at that point in time.

Now, when the movie actually came out. They chopped the scene all up so it didn’t really matter, because everybody thought, “Well who wants to hear a ballad in the middle of a movie? Particularly a hip-hop movie.” It ended up being our first actually top 10 pop record, this was, and we had no clue. People at this point in time didn’t know we were capable of writing a ballad, I don’t think at that point anyway, certainly not a piano ballad. It did a lot of things for us, it really opened up a lot of opportunities for us after that.

Terry Lewis

Yeah and it’s a physical love ballad. That’s different. That’s just nasty. (laughs)

Jeff Mao

Speaking of Crush Groove and hip-hop actually, what was your relationship with hip-hop at this time? Did you see it as something that you could embrace or was it something, because you came from a band background, that seemed somehow foreign or were you comfortable with it?

Jimmy Jam

I loved hip-hop music and I always say to this day, “I love hip-hop, I’m not of hip-hop.” Because hip-hop to me is a culture and it’s a way of growing up, and I didn’t grow... I grew up as an R&B guy and a pop guy so that’s where I grew up but I love hip-hop. When “Rapper’s Delight” came out, I was DJing at that point in time. I was not in a band. It was between the time... I was in a band for a while. I quit, I got frustrated with the band and I started DJing and I DJed all different clubs. I had a teen club, I had like an R&B black club, I had a gay club, I had... Different nights of the week I was at different clubs.

I remember when “Rapper’s Delight” came out and I remember getting it from, like there was a record pool I would go get all my records from and I remember I got the record and I just... I was like, “Oh my god, I can’t wait to play this.” “Good Times” by Chic was like my number one record at that point in time so as soon as it went to the break in that, I just slammed it in and I remember everybody on the dance floor stopped dancing and turned and looked at the booth. They thought I was doing it and I’m like, “What are you looking at? Just dance. This is the record, it’s not me.” And then everybody was like, “Oh OK, Cool.”

Then I remember calling the record pool and they said, “How did the record work?” And I said, “Oh my god. It’s amazing. Where is more of this? I need more of this.” I remember getting the Funky Four Plus One More and Treacherous Three and I just totally dug into it. I absolutely loved it from the moment I heard rap music man, I just, I was so with it. I loved it.

Jeff Mao

How about you Terry?

Terry Lewis

I love hip-hop. I love everything about it because it’s fun. Well it used to be fun and it turned into something different, but I respect that as well. I mean I love all expression you know? I believe that’s all... Everything is good as long as there’s another alternative. You just can’t make everything one thing so, across the board I just like freedom and a freedom of music, but hip-hop was always cool for me. Being in the club when Jimmy was DJing was always the most fun for me because as an R&B person, as a band person, I would get a chance to groove to somebody else’s groove and so that was always a great thing and hip-hop was always so fun. It didn’t take itself serious, it was always a party thing and that became part of the culture obviously.

Jeff Mao

Obviously you guys have been able to adapt through all sorts of movements. From the band era to embracing electronics and drum machines and embracing sampling and all of these different facets. Some of your contemporaries seem like they had a harder time adjusting. Why do you think that you were able to and have been able to navigate these different changes and movements over time? Have you had to check yourself in terms of remaining open minded to something that maybe wasn’t in your wheelhouse as far as understanding initially, or you know...

Jimmy Jam

There’s actually a whole lot of places to go here. Number one I would say because there’s the both of us, and even though we’re very compatible but we have different tastes, and things that I like he may not like and vice versa. But we also have the respect and part of respect is loving what someone else loves. If I love something, even if Terry doesn’t see it, he loves it because of me and that goes the same with him. That’s the first place, it starts with the respect.

Terry is also very technically... He’s always into the next thing, he’s always technically looking for the next thing like literally ... Like we now take Pro Tools for granted right? But the early, early versions of those things Terry had and Terry had on this little Commodore. I don’t know, it was a Commodore computer or an Apple computer, I don’t remember what he had.

Terry Lewis

PC.

Jimmy Jam

It was PC? He had these little programs with sound waves and stuff on them and I was like, “Terry what are you doing man?” He was like “I’m going to figure this shit out man. I’m going to figure this out man because this is where it’s going.” And I’m like, “Man, OK, whatever.” I had no tolerance for it but he did, and every piece of technology along the way... He was on the phone today, we’re setting up to work with a band next week and there’s a new wireless technology we wanted to use, and Terry’s on the phone with the guy today on the way coming over here. “We need this in our studio by the weekend. We need this set up.” It’s like that’s what drives him, so I think in that way, technologically it’s about keeping up with whatever is going on and using the tools that are available. I think that’s part of it.

Also we have kids and our kids keep us very young, because we listen to what it is that they listen to. We don’t really take the attitude of... Now listen, we love the music from back in the day. Like give me a good James Brown record and a good Sly and the Family Stone record. I’m all over that. I’d rather hear those records than hear our records quite honestly. You know what I’m saying? I mean we can’t hold a candle to those records. We can’t hold a candle to Gamble and Huff’s records, we can’t hold a candle to Quincy Jones records but we do what we do and we do it pretty good, but we aspire to do that. When some of the stuff what I hear my kids play, it’s nothing but (imitates bass-heavy music) and I go, “Hmm, OK.” But you know what? They like this so there’s got to be something there. Something there is affecting them the way that whatever we grew up with affected us, so we keep a very open mind about it.

Also because we’re collaborators, if somebody comes in and goes, “Man you heard the latest Drake or you heard latest Chance the Rapper? You heard the whatever?” You’re damn right we’ve heard it, because we got to hear it. We have to, you know? It’s part of what we do, so when we’re referencing things we can reference those types of things. I don’t know if that totally answers the question, I mean Terry’s got a take on it too but I just... Terry said it though, “You got to be open.” You got to let music happen and you’ve got to be open to it. You can’t just dismiss stuff and go, “I don’t hear it. I don’t like it.” It doesn’t work.

Terry Lewis

Yeah and my next explanation will be like something that Quincy Jones said, to quote Quincy. He said, “You’re only as old as your ability to accept and process new things.” So you have to be able to leave yourself open to something new and not be afraid of it because you don’t want to sound like somebody, “Oh I can’t do that e-mail. I ain’t going to talk to nobody on the e-mail.” Because if you’re not doing that you’re left behind, you’re done, your world is over. You got to be able to take whatever the information that’s coming in and say, “OK, how can I put this down in the world that I live in and make it relevant to what I do?” That’s what we’ve always tried to do. We’ve tried to get ahead of things. Right now, Steven Slate came out with a console that’s just an iPad so when everybody saw that, everybody was crazy, “Oh, that’s never going to work.” I said, “Oh that’s going to be the biggest thing since ice cream and cake.” Why? That’s all kids know. You give a baby an iPhone, the baby knows how to work it in two minutes. You give them an iPad, they know how to pull up movies when they’re two years old. That’s all they’re going to know, they’re not going to know faders, like tactile faders and you feel them. They’re going to know the iPad. I can just push it and push it up, it works. For the future and for the price point, it makes sense to me. I think it’s all about technology and economics, that’s all it is.

Jimmy Jam

People used to, I remember when, you mentioned sampling earlier and I remember when sampling came out and I remember people talking to me all the time about, “Well when Beethoven was making music, when Mozart was making music.” I’m going, these guys would be using this stuff, whatever is available, you use whatever the best... if you’re a creator, whatever the best stuff is available is what you use. I don’t care who you’re… Beethoven or whatever, you can say if all he had was a piano, that’s cool. If he found a harpsichord or he found a celesta or he found whatever it was, they were going to use it because that’s what was available to them. I don’t agree with that and the other thing that people used to say was like on a sampling thing is be like, “I know you don’t like sampling huh, because that’s like cheating.” I’m like, “Well no not really.” I love sampling. I love doing a record like “All For You” that samples “Glow of Love” and “Change” by Luther Vandross and have the writer of “Glow of Love” come up to me and go, “Man you bought me my house.” You know, because I’m not into stealing. I’m not into taking something illegally and using it but if people get credit for it. The idea of introducing people to new music through old music and the music I grew up with. I sampled “Ventura Highway” by America, one of my favorite songs growing up, we did a song called “Someone To Call My Lover” with Janet. I met Dewey Bunnell and the other gentlemen in America, I cannot remember his name, I met them on a plane and he said, “Hey man you built me my swimming pool.” I’m like, “OK cool.” I’m glad.

You guys, I was raised on your music so I’m so happy to be able to do it. By the way when I played the track for Janet she had never heard it in her life and that was great. I introduced her to something that she really loved. I love sampling, I love the technology. The thing is don’t let the technology use you. You use it the way that it works for you.

Jeff Mao

There is an art to building something around a sample rather than just relying on a sample. I don’t want to skip past some of the most important records you’ve made but it does make sense to maybe listen to a bit of this right now.

(music: Janet Jackson – “That’s The Way Love Goes” / applause)

You said this is one of your favorites that you’ve done. Why is that in particular your favorite?

Jimmy Jam

OK, I’ll try to make a long story short which as you can tell is tough for me to do. OK, so for so many reasons. First of all, James Brown, start with a James Brown sample, “Papa Don’t Take No Mess,” one of my favorite James Brown songs ever. That’s the guitar part. You know The Vapors, I mean there’s tons of songs that have used it, right? That was number one. “Impeach The President” which is the drum sample, right? Just a classic drum sample. Taking those two elements of hip-hop and then thinking about putting chords over the top of it and making an actual song on it which changes that whole thing with the vibe. That was the dream in my head. What happened was we were getting better as producers at that point. What used to happen in the early days is we would have something in our mind and it would come out totally different than what we thought but it would still come out good. It would not be what we heard in our heads. This was one of the first records we did where what we heard in our head was exactly what came out. When we got all the elements together I remember there was a guy named Mark Mazzetti, he worked at A&M Records and this was… Janet had moved to Virgin at this point. I played the track for Mark Mazzetti because he was a huge Janet fan and I said, “What do you think of this?” He said, “Oh my God, I love this, this is a smash. Has Janet heard it?” I said, “She hasn’t heard it yet.” He said, “Oh I love this, she’s going to love this, this is great.”

When Janet came to the studio later, I put the track on and I said, “Listen to this.” I was all proud, listen to this. She’s like, “Yeah, it’s okay.” I was like, “Really?” “Yeah, it’s okay, let’s work on something, something else.” I’m like, “OK.” I was like, “Wow, maybe I did something wrong.” Anyway, we were getting ready to take a break for the holidays, it was around Christmas. I made her a cassette with all the songs we were working on, right? She goes on vacation for a couple of weeks, she comes back to the studio, she walks in the door and she said, “Oh my God, we got to work on that track.” I said, “What track?” “That track you gave me, oh my God that track. We got to work on that track.” I said, “What track are you talking about Janet?” “The track you gave me, oh my God.” She puts it on and I said, “The track you don’t like?” She said, “Oh my, oh no, we were in Anguilla and all of a sudden the track came on and we were looking at the ocean and everybody was like ‘wow what is this?’ I get it, I get it.” I said, “OK, good.”

She was actually staying at my house and she had a bedroom at my house and at about two in the morning my intercom goes off and she goes, “Jimmy are you awake?” I said, “I am now.” She said, “I got the concept, 'that’s the way love goes,' but not in a bad way, not in the way 'that’s the way love goes' like it’s messed up, but in a good way, that’s the way love goes.” I said, “OK great, we’ll hit it tomorrow at the studio.” And we did. She basically came up with all the melodies and all the stuff for it and then the one thing we added was the, “like a moth to a flame burned by the fire,” and then sampled her voice. That’s her voice doing that in different octaves and stuff. I mean it was just so cool and then even the story of how that became her first single. The whole time making the record we thought it was the first single from the album, but earlier on some record executives had come up and heard “If.” It just happened to be the record we were working on the day they came, and in their minds “If” was the single, but that was the only thing they had heard. Janet went to LA for some meetings, and the last thing we said to her is don’t let them talk you into “If,” 'cause we all know “That’s The Way Love Goes” is the single. She comes back and says, ““If” is the single.” I said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “No, no, no.” She said, “No they think we can do a great video, and it’s dance, and it sounds like me, and blah, blah, blah.” We said, “No, no, no, whatever.” Now fast forward about a month later we’re finishing the album, the last song we’re doing is a song called “New Agenda,” and we’re doing it with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee from Public Enemy. We get done with the session about three in the morning, we’re still mad about the single not being “That’s The Way Love Goes,” so I said, “Janet can we play them the two songs we’re thinking about as singles?” “Yeah.” So we go, we play “That’s The Way Love Goes” and they’re grooving and then we play “If” and they’re grooving. We said, “OK, what do you think?” They go, “Well that “If” just sounds like Janet, that just sounds like, I can see the video and the dancing, and that “If” is crazy man, that “If” is crazy man.” Janet’s looking at us like (makes head nod) We’re going, “Damn.” Then they go, “But that other song, what’s it called? “That’s the Way Love Goes,” you know that other song, that other song is like some Sade shit. It’s like some shit where, you know how Sade when she comes out with a record there’s no big fanfare that she’s coming out with a record. It’s just all of a sudden you look up and somebody goes, "oh what’s this?" Oh a Sade record, "oh cool let’s check this out.” He said, “That’s that record.” We looked at Janet and went (makes head nod / laughs) And Janet said, “That’s the Way Love Goes” you’re right, “That’s the Way Love Goes,” that’s the single.” That’s how it ended up being the first single and we were absolutely right.

Jeff Mao

By this point it’s your third album with Janet and there’s three different identities with these records and she’s reinventing herself to a degree with each one. It’s probably important for you just to even explain how you guys initially gained that trust with her to produce Control and reinvent herself. I can only imagine what it’s like to be a Jackson, in that family. At that time she was better known as an actress than a musician.

Jimmy Jam

It’s interesting because we had met her, she actually came to a Time show. She was huge fan of The Time. The story was we were supposed to actually produce someone on A&M records, a girl named Sharon Bryant who used to be with Atlantic Star. We were big Atlantic Star fans and we were like, “We’d love to do the record.” There was a rumor that the Control album was really what we were going to do for Sharon Bryant which is absolutely not true. Obviously we would have did a different record because we always try to tailor the records to fit the artists we were doing. Basically they sent us the roster and they just said, John McLean who was the A&R person there he said, “Anybody on our roster you’d like to do?” We said we wanted to do Janet. He said, “You want to do three or four songs?” We said, “No we want to do the whole album.” He was like, “Really? OK, cool,” because nobody was checking for Janet at that point. We just felt something. She had first of all just talent, she had a great voice, but she also had a great attitude and we thought that the attitude was never being brought out of her. We thought as producers and writers we could do that. First we had a meeting with Janet and her dad and everybody, and they played her whatever the last record we’d done, which I think was “The Heat Of Heat” by Patty Austin, which scared her to death because it was a record we did for Quincy Jones, had strings and was all big. She was like, “I’m not sure that I want my record to sound like this.” We were like, “No, no, no, I don’t know why they’re playing this, this has nothing to do with what we’re going to do.”

Her dad says, “Y’all are from Minneapolis?” We said, “Yeah.” “Prince is from Minneapolis.” I said, “Yeah.” “Don’t have my daughter sounding like Prince.” “OK, Mr. Jackson you got it, we got you.” Anyway she came to town, she came to Minneapolis, no bodyguards, no nothing, she brought a friend of hers, Melanie her friend. We rented her a car to drive, a little Chevy Blazer, she had to find her way around; this was before GPS. There was maps and all kinds of stone age stuff, and she had to find her way to the studio, find her way to the hotel and all those kinds of things. We didn’t go into the studio for the first four or five days, we just hung out, went to the movies, went to the club, went to the lake, just hung out. About five days in she said, “When are we actually going to start working?”

We said, “Oh we been working,” and we showed her the lyrics to “Control.” And she started reading the lyrics,and she said, “Well wait this is what we been talking about.” We said, “Exactly.” She said, “So whatever we talk about that’s what we’re going to write about?” Like, “Yeah.” She said, “Oh OK.” It was like a light bulb went off in her head because nobody had ever asked her what she wanted to write about, or sing about. First of all nobody asked her to write, nobody asked her what she wanted to sing about, they just gave her songs. We were like, “No, no, you got to be part of the process here,” and that’s how the Control record started. Obviously ended up being a very pivotal record in all of our careers.

Jeff Mao

At the beginning of “Control,” it’s the first few words of the song, she talks about taking control of her life. I mean did you guys feel that you were also doing that with your careers by being handed the reigns of a project, and seeing it, I guess from start to finish more or less right? The entire album, supervising it, making sure if you weren’t writing and producing all the material that it was up to par. There was obviously a huge turning point for you guys.

Jimmy Jam

It was a huge turning point but we had done that because we had been very lucky with Clarence Avant. Remember when we were doing S.O.S. Band and we said, “Hey Clarence you should hear these records we’re doing.” He says, “I don’t want to hear it till they done.” We got really spoilt, there wasn’t an A&R guy always in our midst trying to tell us what to do. When we did the Alexander O’Neal albums and that it was kind of the same, and the Cherelle album. Nobody really got in our own and we got a chance to actually do those whole albums and even do the artwork. We did the artwork on the Alexander O’Neal album, the Cherelle album and all that, Christmas Album for Alexander O’Neal. They kind of just turned everything over to us and just let us run with it. We were familiar with doing that, and Janet was interesting because there was no pressure, there was no expectation. The only expectation really was John McClain, John McClain heard the record and beside saying what every A&R guy says, “I need another record, I need another song,” he says, “A double platinum record at least.” He said, “At least this is a double platinum record.” Anybody in earshot of him he would tell that to. He literally would get on executives' desks at A&M records and go, “This is double platinum, do you get what this record is?” He totally was a champion for it in a big time way.

Jeff Mao

What should people know about Janet Jackson as musician, as an artist, that perhaps they don’t know generally?

Jimmy Jam

I just think how good she is, I mean she is so amazing. First of all her lineage is crazy right? You come out of the Jackson family and you’re growing up with arguably the best musical family ever that existed. She got a chance to grow up around that, she got a chance to see the work ethic that they had. To really learn the business, to be an entertainer at an early age, the acting and all the other things she did, to me, just prepared her to be a better and more expressive songwriter and singer. People say that she doesn’t have a really good voice but actually she has a really good voice but in the sense of… I always compared it to Diana Ross. To me there were certain singers as opposed to Whitney Houston… Whitney Houston was like a singer you listened to right? Diana Ross was a singer you sang along with, she had a knack for melody, and that’s what Janet had, if you give her a great melody, to me she sings it and makes it infectious so that you want to sing along. I think that is her gift. She’s also fearless. You think about the records that we’ve asked Janet to sing over the years, think about “Nasty,” think about the attitude on the song, “Nasty,” which has become ubiquitous again due to the Trump stuff, nasty woman stuff, but think about the way she sings that song. Think about a song like “If,” where she’s literally singing… I remember giving her the melody to “If,” she said, “What should the melody be?” I said, “I hear something almost like an Indian chant, like a Native American... Like a (makes chanting noises).” And she comes back the next day, “Sittin’ over here with a lust in the eyes and I don’t give a damn and I...” And I’m going, “Wow, OK!” And then going and singing it. I said, “Can you sing that low?” She said, “Yeah, I’ll give it a try.” She didn’t care, and so as writers and producers, you’re like... If somebody just is like, “I don’t care, I trust you.” It’s like when we stack this harmony, the notes are going to be right next to each other. It’s not going to sound right, but trust me, it’ll sound good when it’s done. She said, “Oh, I trust you. OK, cool.” Then we put the harmonies down, and you end up with, like, “Love Will Never Do,” the way those harmonies work or, you know, whatever. Or “Broken Hearts Heal,” which you played earlier. I mean, to me she is the inspiration. She is the muse for us. Anybody we work with, it has to be someone who we really want to write songs for, and we really want to try to do our best work, and she, for us, is that person. I think all great producers over the years, certainly George Martin with the Beatles, or Steve Sholes with Elvis Presley, or the gentleman that produced all the Bee Gees records. There’s certain people that you just connect with, and for Janet, she’s like our muse, to me. She’s amazing. She’s the best.

Jeff Mao

Terry, what about just even on a... I mean, Jimmy mentioned the vocals, but I mean just on a lyric writing and vocal side of it, what stands out to you?

Terry Lewis

Well, I think when Janet writes, the thing that stands out to me is that it’s always heartfelt. It comes right from the heart, and I always say what comes from the heart reaches the heart. She is so in it that it just becomes infectious, so I love when we do records together, because we just bounce stuff back and forth. And that’s always a great foundation for me because I hate to write for anyone in a vacuum. I have to be around them. That’s where the inspiration comes from, that energy. We have such great exchanges, so I really love that part about writing with Janet.

Jeff Mao

Let’s just listen to something from Janet, and just enjoy it for a moment.

(music: Janet Jackson – “When I Think Of You” / applause)

Now, I could have played a lot of different songs from a vast range of years, but I guess I’m just sort of curious to know, when you’re in the moment of this kind of success through the ’80s and ’90s, how does it feel? How does it feel to be on this sort of unprecedented streak of success that doesn’t seem to end over even 10 years, but maybe 15 years or whatever, until you’re doing it for three decades? I mean, when the moment of all of that success, what does that actually feel like? And does it make you nervous? Does it make you feel like you just need to keep going and make sure it doesn’t end?

Terry Lewis

Well, it feels good, certainly, to have expression and art and for people to like it, and receive it well, that’s always great. But I think what it did, and I’ll speak for myself personally, made me fearless. Like, that particular record, I played guitar on that record and I don’t really play guitar, so I always used to tease my friends that are really good guitar players that, “I’m playing on a number one record guitar. How many number ones are you on?” You know, it just makes you fearless. There was no genre or style that we wouldn’t try, and that’s what I love about music is that there’s so many possibilities. We’ve been able to go through different genres and have success, and that’s what makes it cool for me. It keeps me on my toes. It keeps my juices flowing. I always want to try something different. I encourage anyone to always want to try something different. Like, we weren’t trying to fit into any mold there. It’s just a song that we did, and I like that.

Jimmy Jam

It’s interesting. And I say our first little roll that we went on was kind of through the Control album, and I remember we got the producer of the year... We won the Grammy for Producer of the Year. I remember right after that, Clarence Avant, whose name I bring up again because he’s so important to us, ordered us to take a two-week vacation. We were like, “Vacation? What are we talking about, Clarence? We got all these acts lined up. We’re producing records.” He said, “You take a vacation for two weeks. You can’t go to the studio. That’s the stipulation.” And we were like, “Oh my god! What are you talking about? OK, fine, right, whatever.”

I remember the first couple of days. Called Terry on the phone. “What you doin’, man?” “Nothin’, man. What you up to, Jam?” “Oh, nothin’.” You know? And we went through that for like the first week. Second week, we kind of settled into it a little bit. We’re kind of like, “What you up to, man?” “Nothin’, man. It feels good to do nothing, man.” “Yeah, I agree. This does feel good. Yeah, this is cool.” Called Clarence up. “Clarence, can we take a third week off?” He said, “Absolutely!” So we took a third week off, and then we eased back into it, I would say, because Herb Alpert was making an album, and John McClain who was at A&M said, “Would you want to produce Herb Alpert?” He said, “It’s no pressure. Just, if you’d be interested.” And we kind of thought, “This is a great project to jump back into because there is no pressure, there’s no expectation,” except that we want to do good by Herb, because Herb had looked out for us so much on the Janet records and even giving us a chance to even record. It was like cool and we ended up having a number one record with him and his first really, number one record in 20 years. And so, what it did, I say that to say, that that gave us perspective on longevity and that was kind of our, even going back to like, I was reading one of our first interviews we ever did and somebody mentioned saying the hottest producers and I said, “We don’t want to be the hottest producers, we want to just be warm for a long time.”

We kind of always set out to do that and be consistent and have a career. A lot of the decisions we made were all based on having a long career. Because we kind of set that as our goal. The last thing I’ll say on that is that Clarence Avant, the other thing, is that we always kept one eye towards doing other things, because Clarence said, “What are you guys going to be doing in seven years?” That was right after the S.O.S. Band, “What are you going to be doing in seven years?” We said, “We’re going to be making hits!” And he said, “No, no but besides that, what are you going to be doing? You’ve got to get involved in politics, you’ve got to get involved with who is going to be the next me? Who’s going to be the next Barry Gordy? Who’s going to be the next people running labels and signing acts? You’ve got to start thinking about that. You’ve got to start thinking about other talent that’s out there. When you see talent that needs help and stuff, you need to make sure you reach out and help them and all of that.”

L.A. and Babyface at the time, who were thought of as our rivals because we both had records out and we both were a production duo but those guys were actually our friends. When they needed a boost, they had some bad business dealings and we introduced L.A. to Clarence, who got their business straight and they of course went on, L.A. now runs Sony, Chairman of Sony Music, Babyface is obviously one of the great writers of all time. Those were the other things. Yes it was nice we were on a nice streak of records, but we also kind of took the time to take time out to do some other things. I remember the funny thing is always whenever we did get a number one record, we would like... literally someone would go, “Hey, your record’s number one this week!” And we’d go, “Yes, that’s great, cool.” “What we got up next Terry, what are going to do?” I mean we literally just always kept looking forward. It was always whatever the next thing was because of, like the song says, “What have you done for me lately?” That’s what it’s all about particularly in the music industry. Listen the whole thing felt great, it’s great doing that, but my wheels are always turning and I know Terry’s are. We got a project when we get back to LA, we have got a project that we’re excited about working on. We just always think like that.

Terry Lewis

And mind you, all the representatives would always tell you, you’re crazy for wanting to do a Herb Alpert record.

Jimmy Jam

Yes, right why would you do a…

Terry Lewis

“Why would you do a Herp Alpert in the middle of doing Janet Jackson?” Because we can, why not? Why would we do a gospel song or a gospel group for our first signing on our label? Because we can, why wouldn’t we? You have to keep the inspiration at the level that you need it, not at the level that people want it. That works for you. You have to always be inspired by the music itself. One thing that we’ve always done, praise god for that, is keep the music first. It’s always about the music, it’s not about the money, it’s not about the fame, it’s not about anything other than the music. (applause)

Jeff Mao

I think we’re going to open this up to questions but I think we should also say thank you one more time to Mr. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. (applause) If you have a question for these gentlemen, please wait for the microphone.

Audience Member

Hello, I think you both maybe missed your calling as voice actors, I really enjoyed the impressions. I just want to touch on something you said earlier about how when you’re starting out, you took on the role of entrepreneurs and you were going around putting flyers on cars and stuff, and whether you had any comment on the fact that because, you know, record labels don’t have money to fling around like they used to, a lot of us who are artists, we very much have to take on that kind of role as the entrepreneur. It’s not like rock & roll, the whole turning up to a gig smashed, that’s dead. Whether you see any similarities between how artists today have to manage themselves, and have to really with social media and just generally having a composed punctual presence, if there’s any difference, if it’s the same, if you have any comments on that?

Jimmy Jam

I think it’s very much the same because once again you can have talent but if nobody knows it, then you know, it’s basically the tree that falls in the woods, does it make a sound? Right? You have to be able to get out there and you’re using the tools that are available to do it. For us it was a place called Insty-Prints that would print up a bunch of flyers, a 1,000 flyers for 10 bucks, and that was the way we communicated and got our message of our band out so people could come and hear us. To me social media and getting yourselves out there is part of it. Certainly the record companies these days… The development of groups and of artists used to be in the record companies, I mean A&R that’s what it’s supposed to do but as Terry calls A&R, “Ass and Rest,” because they don’t really do a whole lot unfortunately. You have to kind of walk in with a package.

Nowadays you walk into a label and they want to know how many listeners you have on your channel or they want to know what sponsors you’re bringing with you and so on and so forth. They really don’t want to do any of that work. Once you get it to a certain point, they can help you, certainly distribute your record worldwide and give it a budget and all that kind of stuff. You do have to figure it out on your own. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. If we were starting today, we would be doing exactly the same thing but we’d be using social media and using the tools that are available to us because you have to be an entrepreneur nowadays, that is just part of it.

Audience Member

I also really, really like when you touched on work ethic because I think that often goes overlooked or maybe not necessarily spoken about. Everyone who has been here for the last two weeks, we’re all pretty sleep deprived. Thank you very much.

Jimmy Jam

You do it because you love it.

Terry Lewis

Exactly. I’d just like to add just a little bit on it. I think this gets overlooked, I mean, I agree that everything has gone full circle. It’s just a new pair of diamonds in terms of how we do it but the thing that we can’t lose sight of, as music people, is what our value is. What our value is not only to ourselves but to the world in our music, OK? I’m not giving that shit away. I’m going to make people respect my music as I want them to respect me. Make people respect your music you know, by you respecting it first. OK? How you deal with them is going to reflect on how they deal with you. Make sure, that we get our ducks in a row the correct way and gain the respect back from music because people are building multi-billion dollar industries on the backs of our music. Music sells everything but music itself. Now this is the shit I like to talk about. This is where I get really heated because music is so important. There’s nothing in this world that doesn’t use music, so think about how valuable you are. (applause)

Audience Member

Hey, thank you both, it’s been very… Over here, hi. You spoke earlier about the easing into the process of making records, I’m just curious about how long it takes on average to make an album for you guys?

Jimmy Jam

Wow! That’s a good one because it takes as long as it takes to get it done. The three I can give you is that it took, as far as making full albums because that’s different then coming in and doing a couple of cuts here and there, which we’ve also done a lot of. The Control album took six weeks, Janet’s Control album. The Rhythm Nation album took six months. The Janet album that followed that, took three months. All widely different periods of time, but it was enough time to make the record correctly, I guess would be the thing. I don’t think there’s really a…

Terry Lewis

[inaudible]

Jimmy Jam

Well, oh yeah, you have your whole life to make your first record. That’s the thing. Yeah. Control took six weeks but actually your life and six weeks in the case of working with Janet. You take everything that you learn and all the knowledge that you learn and all the gifts that you get given, and you put that all into that first recording. It’s the reason a lot of times you hear the term sophomore slump. Like when somebody follows up an album and it’s never as good as their one before. It’s because you have your whole life to make your first one. Then you might have three months, or five months, or whatever to make that second one because now you’re touring, and you’re making videos, and you’re doing all these other things that are distracting from the thing that made the first one so good.

We were fortunate with Janet because Janet took three years between, and didn’t tour on Control. We actually had time to get in, and refurbish, and get the batteries recharged, and actually come up with different thoughts. She was a different person at 21 than she was at 18. We had that advantage of doing that. It really does, it takes as much time as you want to put into it I guess. You should know when it’s done. The other thing is you don’t want to just continue to go like a dog chasing its tail and not knowing when it’s actually done. At a certain point it’s got to come out.

Audience Member

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Jimmy Jam

Yeah, you’re welcome.

Audience Member

Hi. I’m over here in the back. I had a question about the song “Pleasure Principle.” I’ve listened to that song countless amount of times and I was just thinking about the structure of it. There’s like two breakdowns in it. One’s like really long. There’s like five different sections, or maybe six different parts to this song. This is like a popular song, super popular. What do you have to say about song structure now versus something like that being totally accepted at that time? I feel like this would just not fly in 2016, this kind of structure.

Jimmy Jam

Well I think it all depends on what the song is. I remember, the song that pops into my mind, it was a popular song probably what four years ago, was the fun song? I cannot remember the name of it. It was this pop record that started off one way and then it went into this whole different thing. I remember thinking, hearing that song, “Wow I’m surprised that’s getting played on the radio,” because it starts off slow and then it gets fast. “Some Nights” I think it was called.

Anyway I think that there’s a place for, as long as it’s the right song I think it can get played and can get popular. I think when we were making records back then we made records longer period. We made records, “Pleasure Principle” was probably five, six minutes long when we made it and then we would edit it down. We’d always keep things long and put grooves in it and that kind of stuff.

A lot of the records nowadays are made off a loop. You have a loop. What happens is the beginning of the song sounds exactly like the end. I can hear a record now for 30 seconds or a minute and know that basically that’s the whole song. There’s people that break the rules on that, obviously Kanye to me with this last album did a lot of that. Where it’s like the end of the song has nothing to do with the beginning of the song. Drake does the same thing. The way [Noah] 40 [Shebib] produces is they’ll get to a certain point and 40 will go to a whole different thing in the middle of the song which, that to me is always really interesting.

I think it’s possible to do it, but I know what you mean about “Pleasure Principle.” Actually I’ll shout out to Monte Moir because Monte Moir was actually the writer of that song, the keyboard player in the Time. It’s kind of cool that all the guys in the Time on their own have all had hit records. Which is kind of cool. Jellybean Johnson did “Black Cat” for Janet. Monty did that and he also did “If You Were Here Tonight” for Alexander O’Neal, and so on and so forth. It’s been kind of cool that everybody has had... of course Jesse Johnson had a great solo career too. Everybody outside of the Time, back in the day we used to call the Time like Saturday Night Live. You know how people always leave Saturday Night Live and then they go on and do other things. The Time was kind of like that. It was just a lot of talent in that group.

Terry Lewis

Yeah. Don’t be afraid to try it. It’s like anything else. It’s like a bottle of milk. Milk can be sour, it can be spoiled, it can be good, it can be cold. It’s what you put in it. Put some chocolate in it and let it go.

Audience Member

Do you think it ever has to do with the industry, and how they control what goes on the radio?

Terry Lewis

Well if that’s the case then everything would still be the same, the same records since the beginning of time. Once again, it’s us. It’s the people in this room that are creators, that are important. That one record that was big 10 years ago was big because of its time and who it appealed to at the time. If it was going to be that way, we all can do records based on know-how. Yeah you do eight bars of this, and four bars of that, and another eight bars of this. That’s doing it on know-how, but inspiration tells you to do something different, you got to let inspiration take you where it takes you. Don’t be afraid of that. Otherwise we’re done. There’s no more records to be done after today. You understand?

Audience Member

Yeah.

Terry Lewis

Let it go. It’s okay.

Audience Member

I’m not afraid of it. I just know no one’s going to hear it.

Terry Lewis

But if you say that you speak it into existence and if you never create it, they will never hear it.

Jimmy Jam

That’s right.

Terry Lewis

That’s on you.

Audience Member

Yeah, OK.

Terry Lewis

For me I’m never afraid. The stupidest record is usually the one... We never thought, when we did “Fake” we never thought “Fake” was going to be a… We was like, “Oh yeah we going to do “If You Were Here Tonight,” we’re going to do all the ballads, whatever. When Clarence Avant said, “Man I like that one. What’s that motherfucker Fade?” “Fade? No, no, “Fake” Clarence, “Fake.”” Clarence liked “Fake” because it inspired him a different way. We loved it but we didn’t think anybody else was going to get it. You just got to do it. You got to make it. You know that Field Of Dreams thing, “Build it and they will come,” I believe that. I hope you do.

Audience Member

I do, thank you. (applause)

Audience Member

What’s up?

Jimmy Jam

What’s up?

Audience Member

Thank you so, so much for being here. Thank you for your immeasurable contribution to music. When I was a kid the only song that my dad turned the stereo up all the way for was “Escapade.” If you can imagine a 60-year-old Scottish man dancing around to Escapade that is very much why I’m here today and feel very honored to be here in the room with you guys. I have... Can you share… To me that is the most sonically perfect song ever. Every pair of speakers, every clock radio in my household, that was the test. Did “Escapade” sound good on it? My old man maintains it’s the greatest intro of a song ever. Now I produce records, mix records. Can you speak on a very technically/nerdy level about what makes that record sound so amazing and why it’s the greatest intro ever written? (laughs)

Jimmy Jam

OK well I’ll try. OK. “Escapade.” The idea of “Escapade” was that we wanted a song, Janet wanted a song that you would hear like at a basketball game or a sporting event. A really uptempo record that everybody would want to sing along with. That was kind of the seed of the idea. Technically I used for the track, it was an SP-1200 drum machine. It was just a stock sound that came with the machine. We actually never had used the SP-1200. We had it, but we hadn’t used it. We used it for “Miss You Much,” same drums as “Miss You Much” and the same drums as “Love Will Never Do.” “Escapade” was the other song that we used these drums on. It’s just a real simple beat obviously. Now going back to the Prince story about playing with my left and my right hand, I got really good at playing with both hands. Playing a bass part with my left had while doing chords with my right hand. “Escapade” was a song where the bassline was I believe a [Yamaha] DX7, if I’m not mistaken. The upper hand was playing the (makes melody) Which was a Mirage MIDI’d with something. Another string keyboard but I couldn’t tell you what it was. I don’t really remember.

The record was basically done with me playing (makes melody) like that with the drum beat. That was it. Now the intention was to always go back and redo it. With Janet the thing we always did was, we always would let her sing and then we’d fill the track in around her vocal because we always wanted her vocal to be as important as everything else. Rather than finish the track and have her sing it we’d always get it to a point where we’d say, “Is it good enough to sing?” She’d say, “Yes.” Then we’d put her vocal on it. We never went back and changed that track.

Terry Lewis

I think you tried but it didn’t feel the same.

Jimmy Jam

It didn’t, yeah it wasn’t the same thing. The story on it is that it’s probably the least tracks we’ve ever used on a record. Certainly on a Janet record. It literally is a bassline, a keyboard line. There was, probably stereo and MIDI’d it was probably five... The drums were all on one track. I think we might have put one overdub of something on there. I can’t even really remember now and that was it. I remember sending... Back in that day, when you made a tape it was on analog tape and you sent it out to get a remix or something done and what you’d do is you’d make a copy of the tape called a work tape and you’d send that out. So they’d always want the master because they’d want to be able to adjust the levels and stuff and I remember we sent it out and we just made a copy of the actual master because that was all we had. I remember we sent it, I think it was probably to Shep Pettibone, who was one of the top remixers at the time and Shep said “Hey, where’s the rest of the tracks?” We said, “That’s it. It’s those tracks.” And he said, “But the drums are all on one track.” “Yup.” He said, “Well the keyboard just is one track.” “Yes.” He said, “No there’s gotta be other tracks.” I said “No that’s it.” That’s all it was. The day we’d cut it was the day that it ended up on the record like that so obviously we had clock radios in mind when we were making it.

Audience Member

That’s amazing. Thank you so much. I have one quick tiny little other thing and I’d only mention it because you guys brought up the system and this has driven me crazy for a few years but Thelma Houston “You Used To Hold Me So Tight” which came out in 1983 came out at the same year as The System “[I Can't Take] Losing You” which in the pre chorus has... There’s a vocal overdub that’s, “You used to hold me so tight.” And I can’t figure out which one came out first, and I wanted to know, are you guys referencing The System or is The System referencing you guys?

Jimmy Jam

That’s a great question. What was the name of The System song?

Audience Member

“I’m Never Losing You” or “I Can’t Stop Losing You” or… (sings)

Jimmy Jam

I’m going to say probably, I’m going to say The System probably. I’m going to say The System probably because they were very influential on what we did. The difference was obviously that I played it. The thing on “You Used To Hold Me So Tight” that was cool, to me anyway, was the bassline that we played, and we played it all the way through but the little part that goes on top of it (hums melody) was a piano and we just damped, threw a blanket on the strings and that’s what that little (hums melody). But I played them, it wasn’t MIDI’d or anything. It was just I played freehand on that and stuff. It was cool, it was a lot of fun. Thelma Houston was the bomb. What a great singer she was.

Audience Member

I love that song. Any time I DJ I always play that song.

Jimmy Jam

Cool. Thank you, thank you.

Audience Member

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Jimmy Jam

Absolutely. (applause)

Audience Member

Hi. Thank you so much for being here. Your records are the soundtrack to a lot of great memories of my youth until today. I wanted to know… A lot of artists, especially young artists don’t have the benefit of a producer or somebody who can listen to their songs from afar and kind of help shape them and I wanted to see if you guys could discuss how you listen to records, especially demos from somebody’s album that you’re about to work on, or a newer, younger artist who doesn’t already have as much of a vision in place. And discuss how you listen to records and maybe some tips for artists how to listen to their own records and make them a little bit more... precise is the wrong word but a little bit more dynamic or interesting or directed.

Terry Lewis

Yeah, see that’s a real big question. For me I listen to music based on how it makes me feel. I don’t know any other way to do it. One thing that we’ve done since the new technology came out is kind of, we look at things more than we actually hear things. I call it listening with our eyes. The waveform looks wrong so we think something’s wrong with it. I remember like back in the day, because I’m not a keyboard player, but I would play stuff on the keyboard and Jimmy would say, “That’s not right. That chord’s not right.” I’d say, “It sounds right to me.” That’s the only way I can think. If it sounds right, then it’s right because it made me feel okay and so I would go with it that way and as far as producers, I mean, I think everybody at some point in time needs someone. I call it the barber effect. The barber can make your hair look wonderful, he can cut the front of his head but he can’t cut the back. Everybody needs a barber. Everybody needs to have that person that looks at you objectively from the other side and is able to give you that criticism. That can be a friend, that can be anyone. One of the best objective moments for me: I remember we did a Janet song I think one time and I played it for my sister because I’m thinking it’s the jam, it’s jamming. She listens to it and she comes out and her sensibility is different, she said, “It’s alright. I like it.” Anybody gives you that tone you know they don’t like it. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK.” “Well what’s wrong with it?” “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know, it’s too many voices.” I said, “What do you mean too many voices? That’s just the background.” “I don’t know. It’s too many voices.”

So I had to make myself shut up and try to put myself in her place and listen from a simple point of view and I finally understood it. It was just, the background was [inaudible] too many times. It wasn’t personal anymore, it was like a choir singing it and that pushed it into a big mush. She needed to feel what was there so I finally said to myself, “Man, a baby can teach you something.” Because you just don’t know it all, even as much as you know in your infinite wisdom there’s somebody that’s going to give you something simple that’ll take you to a different place. I make sure when I listen, I look at my kids. If it makes them move a certain way, ah the groove’s not right. I can just see it now. Try to get what people that you know… I mean within this room I mean you have so many different people that can help you with your music. You know other people that can help you with your music. We bounce stuff off each other all the time. We don’t have to be in the same room all the time working. I’ll play it for him and he’ll give me all kinds of ideas. I’ll hear something that he’s doing, I’ll give him ideas. That’s where it’s... That inspiration, man. Keep that inspiration alive. That gives the song a chance. And then next, it’s always about the next one. Keep it moving. You know, you can invest a lot of time in something and get no return. We call it polishing a turd. Every song that we do is not going to be great so you got to move on. Then who knows, the remnants from all those turds can actually be beautiful song somewhere. You know, you...

Jimmy Jam

Fertilizer.

Terry Lewis

Yeah. That’s fertilizer.

Audience Member

Thank you gentlemen for driving a lot of points home today and seeing that this is the last lecture here in Canada, you produced one of the most heartfelt and beautiful tributes to one of Canada’s finest. Who made Q-Tip say, “Joni Mitchell never lies.” What is the story behind the song and can we have that as an outro later?

Jimmy Jam

Yeah. OK so “Got Til It’s Gone.” First of all, it was a call to Joni. Because growing up I always loved “Big Yellow Taxi,” I used to skate to it at the skating rinks so I always loved that record. Being a sample person as I am, I always thought that would be a great song to put a sample or put that sample into. We called her and she said... Janet and I both called and we just said, “Hey we have an idea that uses one of your songs but we don’t know how you feel about sampling.” And she said, “I can’t wait to hear it.” She said, “Have fun, I can’t wait to hear it.” We were like, “OK great.” The idea for the track was... We knew Q-Tip was going to be on the song because Janet had wanted Q-Tip to do something on the record. She was a huge Tribe fan and she was just like, “We got to get Q-Tip to do something.” In my mind I’m thinking sonically, let’s give Q-Tip the best sonic comfort zone we could. There’s a producer, J Dilla who is one of my all time favorite, rest in peace, producers ever. J Dilla had done a remix for a Brand New Heavies song called “Sometimes”, but he had done a remix to it that was just, it was just his quintessential kind of stop start (hums rhythm) just the kind of, it was so funky and I was like, “We got to something like that.” We had a drum programmer named Alex Richberg and Alex Richberg was... He kept trying to make me, because I never like sequencing stuff, I just wanted to just play it, just put a beat on it and I’ll play. He set my whole studio up, put an MPC in there, hooked it up to this Ensoniq keyboard I had called an MR-76, and he said, “Make a record over the weekend, just using this stuff. Do not hook up to the way you normally do it, you got to use the drum machine, you got to hook all this stuff together.” And I’m like going, “OK fine.” So on a Sunday, I went in and I said, “OK, I’m going to do this.” So, I’m thinking I got to do it as simple as possible because I don’t really know how to work this stuff, right. So, I did the little keyboard part (hums melody), and I looped it. So, it’s like, “OK, that’s easy.” Now I got to do a bassline. And I am going to do the bassline drunk, like Dilla would do a bassline. So the bassline was (hums bassline). But I played it real drunk (hums bassline). Like real drunk, right. So the last thing was the beat, so the beat was real simple in my mind because it was just (hums rhythm) right? Problem is, I didn’t know how to get the MPC to swing. So, it was just kind of going (hums rhythm). And I was like going, “no this is not right.” And I got frustrated and I gave up and I said, “OK, that’s it I’m done.” So the next day, Monday, I come into the studio, Alex comes into the studio, he said, “What did you do over the weekend?” I said, “I came up with a track but I can’t get the drum machine to swing.” And he puts it up and he listens and he goes, “Oh you just got to do this...” And he hits like two buttons and now, I’m there (hums track). So now we got it. So the Joni Mitchell sample, I took and I put it in what’s called an AMS and it was this little sampler thing: it only has like six seconds of sampling, but all I needed was (sings sample) and that’s all I really needed. So I put this sample in there, and I basically just triggered it and every time the beat would come around I would just go (sings). And then I started going (stutters sample) I started doing stuff like that. So then I wanted it to sound authentic hip-hop, but I don’t really know… I could DJ but I wasn’t that good of a scratcher. So I had the same MR-76, I put little scratches and stuff so it would go (mimics scratching) so I tried to make it as authentic as possible. We went to New York, [Hit Factory] in New York, we played it for Q-Tip and he was like, “Yeah, yeah I get it, I get it, I get it.” And he goes in and does his part and like nails it. Like it took him, I don’t know, three takes maybe. He had it. He just had the whole song down. And then the toughest part for us was we had a whole different lyric and a whole different melody that Janet sang, that didn’t work, it just kind of dragged the song down. And one day we were just messing with different melodies and she just came up with the (sings) she came up with that little line and it was like, “OK now let’s put that against everything we got.” And that ended up being kind of the record. We played it for Joni, Joni loved it. She loved it and we were like so happy because we were thinking, “Wow we did all this work, we hope she likes it.”

And it was amazing to me because it was… Like I say it was so… The making of the record was so inspirational to me because once again it was one of those records, like I think I mentioned with “That’s The Way Love Goes,” because we love hip-hop so much that we wanted something that felt authentic. Even though like I say I’m not of hip-hop but I wanted something that felt that way and Q-Tip gave it the credibility and it was interesting because it was a huge record on the urban side and pop radio didn’t touch it, which was a first for a Janet record in a while. Pop radio was just like, “We will wait for the next one,” and so it was really interesting. But, no, it’s one of our favorites that we ever did. And it actually turned out… You know once again when you hear something in your head- I had no idea what it was going to turn out like because of my, not being that technical on the MPC and all that stuff, but it actually turned out great.

And people to this day will ask me, “Who did the scratches on there?” And I’m like, “Oh they’re not real scratches.” I just find of faked them. But if I fooled you, that’s great because that’s what, sonically I was trying to fool you, and make you think that a DJ was in there cutting it up. And the “Joni Mitchell never lies” that was just something that Q-tip said. He was just ad-libbing, and he just kind of said that and we were like, “We’re putting that in like every time.” Like we took that and we said, “We’re going to put that in every time she says, ‘You don’t know what you got till it’s gone.’” So, that’s the story. (applause)

Audience Member

You had mentioned the LinnDrum earlier. And I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about the LinnDrum in general and why you got so much out of it back then and even today if you are still using it.

Jimmy Jam

The LinnDrum was, first of all it was the staple of a lot of Prince records, the LM-1, the original LinnDrum was. And we loved it, we thought it was so cool. When we started producing, we had really, we got the LM-2 and then we had the DMX and those were like the two kind of go-to drum machines for us. The thing that was cool about the LinnDrum was, when they started making the sound chips where you could switch out the sounds, and I remember we had… Because it had the classic Linn sounds but they started making other sounds that you could get. And I remember we had these little adapters that fit in that you could pop, because they were tough to get out, the little chips with the sounds, but they made a little adapter where you could put these adapters in and you just could kind of flip a little switch and it would just pop out. So we had a ton of those. So, the Control album is almost all LinnDrum, I mean we triggered some other drums, but like if you listen to even the song “Control” in the big breaks the (makes noise) that’s the 808 toms, but sampled into a LinnDrum. So the LinnDrum became the basis for all that stuff, “Nasty”, was the same way. The kind of noisy beginning the (makes noise) that’s all LinnDrum. But it was just taking the sounds that were there, and tuning them way different then they’re supposed to be. Something that was supposed to have a sound like (makes hi-hat sound) if you tuned it down all the way it was all of a sudden (makes noise). So we like doing those kinds of different things, and it was a real simple drum machine to program and also in those days the machines all had individual outs. So we would take the bass drum, the snare drum, the hi-hat, the whatever and you’d plug different cords into each one and it would all come up on different tracks. So you could always manipulate and do, you know, mixing on the tracks and stuff because it didn’t all come out at the same time, it was all on different tracks, which was pretty cool back in that day. But the LinnDrum was awesome. We love it. We still have it. It’s still awesome, we still use it. To this day.

Terry Lewis

How many drummers in the room? LinnDrum put the drummers out of business. (laughs) It’s funny but true. Because I remember when the drum machines first came about. Drummers would all just trash drum machines. “Aw, I hate drum machines!” And as bass player, I must say I hate to play to a drum machine because it doesn’t move like a human. And, you know, you can’t make the turn-arounds cough and push and pull like you can with a real drummer. So, it was a terrible time for drummers because the drummers who did not accept the drum machine were out of work for probably about 10, 15 years. The ones that embraced it, they continued to work because they became great drum machine programmers because nobody can program a drum machine like a drummer. Because they understand. So another thing to say, technically, you have to embrace technology. You have to. Because whatever it gives you, you have to be able to apply it to what you do.

Jimmy Jam

By the way, I know you like playing to a real drummer, however I would say that “Encore” by Cheryl Lynn, is the funkiest ass bass because I programmed the drums on it and then he put the bass on that record. That record, come on man. I’m sorry Terry Lewis, you got to give it up on that one man.

Terry Lewis

But I got to make it cough though...

Jimmy Jam

No, that record coughs though. I know what you saying but that…

Terry Lewis

That’s how I play. I play like I play…

Jimmy Jam

Yeah man, that record coughs man. That “Encore,” man. Come on now. That’s the one there.

Audience Member

On that note, there’s that song that you mentioned earlier, where it actually says, “Yo Terry,” but I’m not sure whether you’re on the record, but who did the hi-hats on “777-9311” and what drum machine was that?

Jimmy Jam

Ah ha! So that was the LM-1, that was the Linn LM-1. And when the drums… When the LM-1 initially came out there were drum beats that were put in by drummers. They actually had drummers put in beats. The “777-9311” beat was put in by a drummer named David Garibaldi who is a drummer for Tower Of Power. If you ever have the opportunity or pleasure of hearing Morris Day play the drums, Morris Day plays exactly like David Garibaldi. David Garibaldi was Morris Day’s hero playing the drums. And that’s how that ended up becoming the beat for “777.”

Audience Member

We could be here for days.

Jimmy Jam

What did you say I’m sorry?

Audience Member

I just said we could be here for days.

Jimmy Jam

Oh, sorry.

Terry Lewis

Do we have stories. (laughs)

Jimmy Jam

We’re just scratching the surface.

Jeff Mao

Thank you to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. (applause)