Leon Ware

Leon Ware

I’m clapping for you all because being here is a step in the right direction, I truly believe. I’m actually very pleased to be here because the meaning of being here is touching as you all came here for the same reason: To touch each other in a way that you can’t, I would say, normally. It’s either email or some type of mail that we have these days, which is not a bad thing, but at least in this form you get a chance to get into each other one-on-one and share some ideas. I actually have a couple of songs that I have written for the moment. I won’t get into it right now, but let’s say that [they] kind of exemplify the moment in itself. And me being religiously nasty you can expect it to be something that you will smile about, I’m sure.

Torsten Schmidt

Well, those words came from a man who doesn’t need all too much introduction. He has been behind a couple... I think it’s fair to say that and a good reason to take off the hat as well. [takes off the hat] One of the best albums — albums are those long records that you can listen to for a long time and not just a three-minute hit — that ever have been recorded, I guess. And yeah, I think it’s a very good thing to give him an official welcome, Mr. Leon Ware. [applause]

Leon Ware

Thank you very much. You could add to that by saying it’s one of the most prolific albums as far as babies are concerned. [laughter]

Torsten Schmidt

As we discussed yesterday in the radio, it must feel kind of weird that wherever you go you meet people that had you in their bedroom already.

Leon Ware

Oh, that’s weird. Listen: It is a total pleasure, I’m an extremely freaky individual. Think of it like this, I look at the world as my lover, and we have been making love for a looong time and we still find new and interesting ways to do the same thing. Ha, ha. [laughter]

Torsten Schmidt

Well, on that note, probably we start off with the easier topics. What actually is this thing, love?

Leon Ware

Love, without a question, is what we all have instinctively, but unfortunately it gets drastically fucked up when we get just — excuse me, I didn’t use the right word, did I? But it does get a little bit disturbed when you get past, say, three years old. Unfortunately, because you learn some senses that divert you from really understanding who you are, what your purpose is here. I think what we all share, 100 percent, is the same reason why I consider myself a sensual minister. Not to be funny. But to remind everyone that I come in contact to cherish where we come from. I have fun with it because the moment I say I am a sensual minister, I get this chuckle. However, I’m addressing simply where we come from. I’m very proud to be one of the voices that... I’m coming up with some innuendo that I haven’t even used yet. So that if this, in my time, will allure, excite, invite anyone and everyone that listens to it to a place where they make love, I’m an excessively happy man.

Torsten Schmidt

But isn’t there a little bit more to love than just making love?

Leon Ware

Love is making love and being in love. That’s the two combinations.

Torsten Schmidt

How do you know when you are in love?

Leon Ware

Well, you shouldn’t have to ask. You shouldn’t have to ask. This is spirit. The most honest thing about where I’m at in my pursuit, I have not made decisions that were business decisions ever. I have always been very idealistic. And in fact, really cruelly opposed by different friends and family about some of the decisions I have made. At 65, going on 66 — and I had my first hit 1964 before a lot of you were alive — every one of my moods, everything I have ever done has been from here. [points at his heart] So I don’t even question about — maybe I’m questioned — but I don’t question my premise because it’s very simple as I say. When I started, I recorded my first record 1955, I made my first professional record in 1960 and it hasn’t stopped. I feel like what I look at now is the group of people or this mind-set that you are in — young people, you have such a wonderful time in front of you because not only with the facilities that we have whereas from Pro Tools to the different sequencers and stuff you have that to work with, you get the internet — there is a lot of things that are plus. The only thing that’s different might be a deficit is that in my time there was a lot of camaraderie, which is what I’m hoping will happen here with all of you. At the best when you will leave here, you will feel a seed. As I saw Torsten when I came in, I got a couple of ideas that, as I say, simplifies some of the meaning here. And it is, as I say, me sensually being nasty and religiously nasty, one of the titles is “I Wanna Grow a Seed In You.” And I can see it put on a T-shirt and the smiles that you will get as you pass someone. However, it’s the same meaning as, interestingly enough, when I wrote this song, “Inside My Love” for Minnie Riperton she asked me, “Do you have anything that we could say that kind of straddels the fence?” I said, “Go no further, I’ve got an idea.” Interestingly enough, when the song was released and headed up the charts, I heard a DJ’s description of the song and I stopped the car, pulled it aside and I actually called him something that I won’t use in this room. But it was really disappointing, but actually after I cursed him, then I smiled because it was a 100 percent feeling that, when we finished the song, the sentiment of the song is, “Won’t you come inside me, will you come inside me, will you take a ride inside my love?” However, listening to it, most people took it as what it was, “Won’t you come inside me,” meaning the ejaculation or the orgasm that we do when we get to have that moment. However what I meant, it came from me being a little boy in church hearing the preacher say, “Won’t you come, won’t you come inside the lord?” [whispers] And I took that with me all my life and, in fact, that particular phrase I say to people was so compelling that when I thought that it was coming up at the end of the sermon, I left the room. I didn’t want to hear it because it made you want to come. However, the meaning being an entendre, which I do constantly, I love that, having two meanings on one or several meanings and letting the individual listening adapt to that meaning that means something to them. I think it’s one of the strongest things you can do as a writer is to give your listener, or the people that are working with you, the option to take their particular view of what you are saying in your message.

Torsten Schmidt

Were you ever afraid of saying something?

Leon Ware

I’m instinctively an instigator. In fact, I’ll give you a scenario: I was walking behind my sister and about three of her friends at seven years old. My sister turned around and noticed that every time they were bending over I was taking an extra look. She said, “You are a nasty little boy!” And I said to myself, “Is that what I am? I think I like that!” [chuckles] So I have been nasty ever since. Religiously. And I’m really glad that I came to a point a couple of years ago that validated my nastiness. [laughs] Believe it or not, as I say it to you, I realized that the ennuendos of Marvin, me, Berry [Gordy], all the singers that you have heard in your lifetime alluded to the bedroom. It alluded to an orgasm. It alluded to anything sensual. We are only addressing where we come from. This is a beautiful place, it’s something that unfortunately in our time being here we have learned some unfortunate habits for us. What we are, how to treat things, how we look at things, you know, feeling uncomfortable about something that is as natural as you take the next breath. Some of us, like myself, are rebels. I refuse to feel bad about something that I feel good about. Something that I don’t have to work at, something that I wake up in the morning and it’s like a good sip of coffee, or a good breath of air, or something that you know you don’t want, but you need. It’s a part of you. And I would say, for sure, I look forward to every next breath I have because each day I realize that I haven’t said enough, I have not said everything. It’s like I said earlier. It’s like making love, knowing that there are so many possibilities.

Torsten Schmidt

But does it ever get hard to gyrate always around nastiness?

Leon Ware

Well, when you say, “Does it ever get hard?” I can stop right there. [laughs] However, the sincere truth is, is that I’m blessed with a natural sense... I’m a romanticist. Listen to my music. I mean, me and Marvin [Gaye], when we were doing the I Want You album, we laughed a lot. In fact, when he did this song [sings a line of “Soon I’ll Be Loving You Again”], “I want give you some head, baby.” Lots of people in here who have listened to that record haven’t even realized what was being said, but if you listen to it closely, the whole chorus is [sings], “I want give you some head, baby, that’s what I do ‘cause I’m...” Me and the engineer were standing in the studio when he did it. Of course, there was a sign on the studio board, when you came in, the first thing you were seeing was “head.” Not that we were alluding to anything [laughs], but it was like very free, we didn’t think twice about it. And I can say to all of you, out of all the times in my life, and even Marvin’s, when we went to this Motown... I will come back to that when you ask me some questions about writing and my career. One of the things that made Motown as successful as it is and was, is that they had a quality control meeting every Friday. Quality control meant that, as a writer at Motown, you wrote a song everyday, completed.

Torsten Schmidt

What does that look like? I mean, is it like in the ’20s in a Hollywood studio and the studio boss would walk around the premises?

Leon Ware

No, you did that at home. You did it at home and then they had what they call the workroom. The workroom was like six different rooms that had paper-thin walls. You heard Holland-Dozier-Holland, Stevie [Wonder], Norman Whitfield, Ivy Jo Hunter, everybody was at their axe. As I say, the wonderful thing about it was you learned how to concentrate on what you were doing.

Torsten Schmidt

Is that the original building opposite of the hospital?

Leon Ware

Yes, right next to the mortuary. We used to make jokes about it as well. [laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

Which jokes? What’s the the classic Motown mortuary joke?

Leon Ware

“We send the stiffs over there.” [laughs] Meaning the songs, you know? The songs that didn’t really make it, you know, we had a place for it, give it a headstone right away, quick. However, the quality control meant you came in with your finished songs and you had a team of people that...

Torsten Schmidt

[slips off his jacket] See, I’m getting comfy.

Leon Ware

I should as well. [slips off his jacket] They screened your songs and they told you whether your song was one that lived or was one that was ready for next door. And it was vicious because you were pitted against… Which was Motown’s, I think, its strength was that they pitted everybody that was there against each other. So at the end of the week you had 10 to 15 writers that were excessively talented coming up with their best work. And as I said to people, you didn’t think twice about that meeting, you either came in ready or you didn’t come in at all. It’s similar to when I was a young man, as a singer, coming up in Detroit, I also was blessed with a really good voice, and others knew it before I even knew it before I knew it. And in that process of doing talent shows throughout Detroit... Detroit was very big with two things, crime and music. Fortunately, I had left the crime alone in time to not really suffer, but that was a part of my life as well, unfortunately. Being a young kid in Detroit, you didn’t have any options. However, the strength of the talent in Detroit at the time and the concentration of just music itself was so rich. You had Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Holland-Dozier-Holland. I mean, all those people all they were doing day and night was music. And again, the premise wasn’t about being stars. We all just basically loved what we were doing. As a kid I went to church every day until I was 12 years old because my mother was a bit of a minister herself, not Jehovah Witness but a Baptist, and I sung in the choir and I was a church kid, so to speak. But the interesting thing is that Detroit bursts some hall of famers, you know? People that you listen to and that will be remembered for as long as music is music. I love what I’m doing more than anything else in the world. And it’s something I have paid my dues. I mean, literally paid my dues. And the times that I have turned down opportunities that could have made me an excessively wealthy man, financially wealthy, wealthier than I may have been — some people could debate that — but my wealth isn’t about mankind wealth, it’s spiritual. Again, like Marvin, like myself – very idealistic. Marvin was really rich and he had a talent for telling you his life in a record, you know? I’m not that exposé myself, I kind of like playing with emotions. And if not playing with them, exciting them. As a kid I liked to say things that would people say, “Ahh! You didn’t say that!” That was always making me feel so good... [smirks] This bad little boy!

But again, I’m happy to have arrived to see that all this time I spent from — I had my first gold record for the Isley Brothers in 1964 — and from then to now has been a wonderful journey. I look forward to saying anything that, hopefully, something that you can use, hopefully that you can take home with you and grow on. I don’t definitely want to waste your time. My son, if he was here, he would leave the room. He does not really like to hear me talk because I have a lot to say. I don’t really talk a lot normally, but this is a very rare moment for me because I get a chance to say what I feel, as opposed to sing it. Every other song I get a chance to give an idea of who I am. But for the most part I’m satisfied with these performances because with each song, every song is accountable to who I am. I think in that terms, as I said to a young man who is a rapper. Rap in itself is something that I really, really respect a whole lot. Because of the fact that, when you stop and think of what these guys say in the course of one minute, and you have to remember that... I’m a singer of songs. Songs, next to rapping, are like a walk in the park.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s a different discipline. I mean, they are putting out a lot of words but the question is: What are they really saying in that time?

Leon Ware

Well, that’s the interesting thing, some of them are really saying something.

Torsten Schmidt

I’m not knocking that but...

Leon Ware

I don’t want to play out the artistic excellence of anybody. Before I really assessed it... I guess a lot of people who hear rap hear the roughness and the animal thing, and to me at first it was so demeaning first to the ladies. Second, to just your intellect. Third it was not happy music, to me, or happy art. However, over the years they have adapted and you got some people like Common and different people that have some views, stressing some ideas and I think that’s going to be the development of that art. In every art you will have, I call them your hackers, people that write you ten songs a day, you know, but none of them are really [good]. But some of these hackers... This is the interesting thing about what we do. Make a point about your charts. Any chart you read do not put any emphasis on it because it is only a reflection of the modeled money of the people that put your record out and were able to put into that record to see itself. Unfortunately, I’m speaking of now, I’m not speaking of the time when I came into the business. Fortunately, there is a parameter there that does work, but for the most part, this time, set deals with not so much your excellence, but how excellent your connects are and how good you are as a business person.

Torsten Schmidt

Then again, Motown was not only about great talent but also about fabricating products as well, great products, great quality products but nevertheless...

Leon Ware

Yes. Motown itself, as they say, it was like a factory. You had Berry Gordy was a genius. He is a person that had an innate eye for a talent and he also knew that the smartest thing you can know about any talented person: Leave him alone. Leave him alone. But see, he had his way of guiding you. His way of guiding was putting someone next to you who maybe was just as bad as you are. [laughs] Good guidance, right?

Torsten Schmidt

But probably to talk about the actually working process, the scenario that you pictured there, it almost sounds like battle rap. It’s a battle rap scenario, which is all about being master seductresses. And when you got the scenario with the five rooms and you got Stevie writing next to each other and come up in this highly competitive atmosphere with the most highly seducing kind of things. What does a day feel like? What does everyone have for breakfast and...?

Leon Ware

There is so much energy there, and there’s so much you can come away with. But for the most part, this sensuality factor was more religious than sensual then. As I say, because I didn’t really realize how much of a freak I was until I was in my early 30s, you know? Unfortunately, or I have to say fortunately, I understand now clearly what “freak” means. It’s “free” with a “k” on it. [laughter] So in that light, I hope that everybody in here is proud to be as freaky as anybody would say that you are. We have some different views about that. Interestingly enough, I have listened to different records, I have even been questioned as to whether I was the guy that did “I Want to Do Something Freaky to You.” A different thing is what does the word “freaky” suggest in another setting? Actually, if you look at the dictionary, the word freak means somebody that’s impaired, you know, like the Elephant Man or something like that. It doesn’t mean what we have made freak out of. Which is a great word, because this isn’t a connection to sex but some people would think it’s a little bad, like they think sex is bad. But it’s not.

Torsten Schmidt

Really?

Leon Ware

Believe me. It’s religious.

Torsten Schmidt

OK.

Leon Ware

It’s like the line which said, this song that me and Marvin would call “Come Live With Me Angel,” “A good experienced freak is what you need.”

Torsten Schmidt

Yeah, and speaking of which because maybe that’s a good thing before we go into this whole thing of like I mean obviously, being gifted with a talent is one thing, but then realizing that someone else can probably do something out of something that you created and probably even take it to a whole different level. How do you cope with that ego-wise?

Leon Ware

Ego-wise for me is, I said this once before. I don’t remember ever really being intimidated. I started at three and a half years old, I won a contest playing [sings melody to Louis Jordan song “Caldonia”], “Caldonia, Caldonia, what makes your big head so hard? Boom budum budum budum budum.” Three and a half years old. I won a contest, and I’ve been patted on the head and been complimented since then. Every time I’ve ever been in crowds. In fact, from 12 to 16 I kind of avoided because it was to a point where I was not really comfortable with the attention, so to speak. Because I’m actually very shy. You wouldn’t think it, but I used to be. My thirties changed me.

Torsten Schmidt

What was the thing in your thirties that changed you?

Leon Ware

I can say to you easily it was drugs. But I became vocal, because up until my thirties I was always asked, “Was I OK?” Because I didn’t speak a lot. I was always very, very, very... You could find me very religiously in front of a piano. But if you wanted to ask me something…

Torsten Schmidt

The initial point was that, let’s say you wrote a song, like the one that came after the dance, and you see that you can sing yourself, and then that other boy who might be able to sing and hold a tune or two, like this Marvin guy.

Leon Ware

I looked at Marvin as he had the voice I wanted. He had the voice I wanted. What was really – again the words could be, where, I would say very unusual, you could say freaky, was two years before I met Marvin different friends of mine and different friends of his, on each side, were saying “You’ve got to meet Leon,” or “You’ve got to meet Marvin, you guys sound so much alike.” Marvin was already Marvin Gaye with several hits, and I was Leon with a few hits. When we met the first thing he said, I looked up, the sound of his voice was so much like mine. And then when I opened up my lungs, and, I won’t say what we were doing, but anyways, he said to me, “look,” and we both laughed for a good five minutes, because everything we said, we’d say, “I know see what they were saying,” because we had very similar vocal sounds in our voice, and interesting enough as we worked together, I say to you very clearly, there will be a time where you’ll work with somebody that you will not have to ask anything. It’s like telepathy. I’ve only had that one time happen in my life, with one individual where we knew what each other were thinking. In fact the story goes about the I Want You album was the album was actually mine, that I started out doing a demo session on T-Boy Ross who was Diana Ross’s brother who co-wrote “I Wanna Be Where You Are” and we were doing a demo session, and I had a song called “I Want You” that was the filler of the demo session, because we had three other songs and we needed one extra song and I put the song in as just another song. And Berry Gordy came in the studio, I guess the second or third day we were working on the demo session, and he said, “I like this song.” At this particular time Marvin had sworn off doing anything secular, commercial. He was actually very close to being, well, the record “Sexual Healing” was where Marvin had stopped that. Because he definitely, like myself, was brought up in the church. When I say things as I say, all my life because of learning that, you can say one thing and it can mean two things or three things. I’ve always found the way to say something nasty that could be, you could say the same thing and it would be religious. You know, in the same phrase.

Torsten Schmidt

Which goes back to the whole transcending thing and...

Leon Ware

You was saying about ego. My feeling is, is my ego is in my work. I don’t want anybody to kiss my ass, you know as normal as you... everybody, anybody that knows me always, in fact I’ve been said by several people, “You should act a different way,” but I always say to people, “I didn’t do this for that.” I did this because I love it, and like a three year old leaving the stage for the first time in my life, I turned to my mom and I said, “You mean they really like this?” And since then it’s been like that’s what carries me. I don’t really, when I see people that are successful, and I do know people that have their ass on their shoulders. Unfortunately, you know. But it’s kind of like you, when you come from where I come from – and I’ve been a blessed individual. I’ve never had to look for sanctioning or support, especially as far as my time is concerned, because my time is kind of what got me my first piece, kind of. It’s like, I can praise it. It’s a gift. I said freely, it’s a gift, it’s not mine. I do it too easily. I can write you three songs in a day, and it will all be good songs. I don’t do that now, I used to. And as I say, it comes from the Motown training that you wrote a song a day. If you are a really, really competent, talented writer, you wrote a complete song a day. And it wasn’t a hack song. It was a song that you could use.

However, it’s like for me, I think it’s the pride that I have in the work that I do that I consider my ego, because as far as me being intimidated, I think the people that inspired me, Burt Bacharach, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, you know these are the guys that are gifted people. You can tell gifted people. They don’t just do it once. They do it a lot. And in that light, I’m rather than [being] intimidated, I’m motivated, I’m inspired. And I look to that as in the community of creativity. And it’s like I say, years ago you had peers, we called it “peermanship,” that this almost like development-ship that doesn’t almost exist where companies are concerned in this era. Companies used to take young talent like you, people that were really dedicated to or wanted to be dedicated, and they developed you. You develop yourself these days. Unfortunately that’s become so digital at the end of the quest, concentrated by companies and people that used to be behind the desk, that what you have is 90 percent of the charts are repeat of what’s there. It’s like you can play ten records and basically they’re pretty much the same similar sample. I’ve listened to the radio, it’s like listening, you go to some discos, as they say, some dance places. Now they’re not called discos anymore, but interesting enough my feeling is that disco never went away, we just started calling it a little something different. Each ten years. Now it’s hip-hop or a combination of hip-hop and rap, but it’s still disco. And nothing wrong with that, because I love disco. I’ve had a couple of disco hits. However, the two for me is like from where we are and where it’s been, it’s like, uh... I was going to say something else, go ahead.

Torsten Schmidt

You talked a lot about how you thrive on an interview, how you get fed off affirmation. What do you do once the applause dies down?

Leon Ware

It’s always here anyway [points at his heart], I always feel it here. I was asked the question, how do I feel when I was coming up in the business and I would walk into an A&R man’s office and he would take and — ’cause this happened — just totally destroy your song? You know, it’s like, “Man, this particular part sucks and you should have put the bridge a little earlier.” The way they treat your work isn’t necessarily complimentary, and in fact, is disrespectful and you have to be strong enough. Like I said to the young lady, for me, I’ve always loved what I do so much that about the time I play for anybody, if they didn’t like it, I loved it so much, it didn’t really make a difference. So I always insist when I’m speaking or I have something to say that’s being listened to, especially in the creative process, the strength of your work will be determined by the love that you have for what you are doing. Not for the accolade that you’ll get from others, or the appreciation. It will start from you, and by you loving your work to the extent that you are supposed to, it won’t be bad work. It will be work that you’ll be proud of, you won’t have to worry about.

Then, unfortunately or fortunately, we do have critics that criticize everything, you know? There is going to be somebody that is going to find something wrong or something that they didn’t like about something you did. Again, that’s cool. Some of it is motivating. Some of it is enlightening. Some of it can help you grow. I listen to everything, even that which I can’t use, or you find that out after it goes in. However, it’s a process of you... I also said this afternoon, I was speaking to somebody about the writing process, “organic” is a word I like using. Not so much because using an organ of some kind, but the idea of being very internal when you decide that you like something. As we go through the process of writing, we have a million different ideas. And I didn’t make the phrase, but I don’t mind using it, because it’s true. The process is, as I was told as a young writer, “You must realize when you’re polishing a turd and you’re not.” [audience laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

Who told you that?

Leon Ware

A very, very old young man. A friend of mine. He is not in the business, he just had a very nasty attitude about certain things, but that particular phrase I remember because all it meant was just, as the ideas come, you have to be objective and note the ideas that deserve your time. You have to be very objective. For me, objective is being organic. When it comes through here [points at his belly] is when I know that I should spend some time on it. Lots of times, I hear things because I’m listening all the time and as being able to play a little bit, I’m always hearing things. As I say, I can do from three to five tracks a day, you know? As far as ideas are concerned, there will be one that will be rich. Really, really rich. And again you just asked me the question, “How do you know when you are in love?” As I said before, that is not a question you’ll ask, you’ll know that. It’s the same thing when you write a song that you really like. The only thing I want add to that, it’s not a contradiction, but it’s a bit of a story I’ll tell you about not being the judge of your work. One of my copyrights is a song called “I Wanna Be Where You Are” — that was Michael Jackson’s first gold record as a solo artist — but this was the seventh or the eigth song in a demo session that I was about to leave the studio ,because I didn’t think this song was a strong song. The guy that was the head of the… He was the representative of [indiscernible] at the time, he had been there the day prior to that and heard this song, and said. “Leon, that last song, that one that, Oh, oh, oh...” I said, “Yeah, it’s OK, I don’t really like it.” He says, “Oh, no no no, please put that down.” He had to actually convince me to put the song down. The story goes that two days later I get a call, “They love it, it’s a smash, man, it’s going to be a smash!” I’m thinking this is going to be one of the four or five songs that I thought were some of my best work, right? [shakes his head]

Again I say, it was the lesson then. Don’t be your critic. Finish your work, let somebody else be your critic. At that time had I been my critic, that song would have not been heard. It’s an interesting process. Once you love something, I wouldn’t second guess myself. It wasn’t a song that I loved until I heard Michael’s voice on it, because there were still several other songs I thought were so much better. I insist on being organic. When I’m working with people, when we start something, it’s finished. I don’t think if I have ever started a song I didn’t finish.

Torsten Schmidt

Which goes for everyone in this room, I guess.

Leon Ware

Well, some people do start songs that they don’t finish. I call them the quick thinkers, kind of like people that make almost good sex, you know? [audience laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

That’s a bit harsh. So, speaking of which, is there something like a work routine for you? When you get up in the morning, do you have to, I don’t know, a certain paper or a certain type of juice or something to get going?

Leon Ware

No, I’m totally untrained, unconditioned. Everything is very [long pause] organic. I’m serious because I have been asked the question before in another way. Do I have a process? No, in fact, I stayed away from any kind of process because I want it to be instinctive, I want it to be inspired by the moment. I want to approach it in exactly the way it happened, you know? And if you have a particular way of doing things or you have a set way of starting something, I feel like you might miss another process. In the way that I approach it, I let that feeling be what it is. I don’t want it to be something or expect it to be something. I kind of open my door and let whatever the feeling is come in and dress it up to as much of a possibility as my creativity will allow me to and the rest is the rest. If I was to say, out of the amount of songs that I have written since, I would say 1960 — I go back but... I have written a lot of songs, and, again, many of them that didn’t get heard [whispers] I thought were awesome. And I still think they are awesome, but the lesson is, like I was told before also in my young career, “Don’t go in with just one song.” And the idea is, to exaggerate the point, be as prolific as you possibly can be because the ideas are waiting in the wings, so to speak, and the more you work and the more you do what you do, you give all your ideas a chance to come out. And I think, for me, my process is as like right now I get up every morning, I do a two or three-hour bike ride seven days a week and I don’t go in my music room unless I’m ready to write.

Torsten Schmidt

But writing meaning you are sitting down on the keyboard or do you...?

Leon Ware

Sitting here, I can’t... [plays the keyboard]

Torsten Schmidt

Wait, here. [switches keyboard on]

Leon Ware

She is sleeping right now. [speaks to the equipment] Honey, honey. It’s a lady. My computer is a lady. [audience laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

So you were really lucky when you were introduced the track pad?

Leon Ware

I’ll also say something to you that is really funny. Have you seen the big Apple screens? The ones that are like this. [shows the size with his hands] The one before they made the one that I have at home, which is a 30-inch one, the one that’s like this [shows size] and that has two legs like this [draws legs in the air]... Well, the interesting thing about the computer is — as I do address my computer as a lady — when my tech was putting all the equipment together, when he got down to actually turning the computer on, he said to me, “Leon, you might want to do this yourself.” I said, “Why?” and he said, “Because where the button is, you’ll like it. You have to do your fingers just like that.” [fondles around and laughs out loud] Then he said, “I wouldn’t want to do that to her the first time being that she’s yours.”

Leon Ware

You know what, I always come prepared to do the supplement when you are dealing with this. I would like to play a few pieces of work that I have had some success with and some demos that other people just love them.

Torsten Schmidt

Are we going to play?

Leon Ware

Hmm. Play this right here, which would be… [camera cuts to new section] Up until that that after quality control there was hands down, 100-percent acceptance. One of the first albums.
In fact I can only allude to my usual point of view that it was so sensual, it was impossible not to like this album. I don’t want to elaborate on that point because I don’t have to. I’ve had other people elaborate for me. But play something else. “Body Heat.” In the course of events from Marvin to Quincy [Jones], yeah Quincy and I... [camera cuts again] Mariah Carey. [laughter] You like that?

That thing is really, really, really great. Again I have nothing but positive things to say about most of everything that happened I just look at one thing that I feel like I continue the stress, and that is premise. Why you are doing what you are doing? For sure I am sure you know that it starts with loving this and the second is loving this. It is very good, loving this. Because everything that you may think I am and everything I may think I am and everything that I may want to be, at the end of the day all I am is a heart wanting to express itself. Period. I genuinely love everything that I create. I don’t work at it. It works me and I love it, and so I could, if we had a piano I would play a couple of things. But there is tomorrow and I am going to be doing another session right?

Torsten Schmidt

We might do it upstairs.

Leon Ware

OK, and I would have a better opportunity to… I don’t play great keyboards, but I am always complimented by some really brilliant people by the chords that I come up with. Even people that I would say classically trained and working with me always say, “And you don’t read?” No, I am not studied in the way that I could have studied because I’d say around 19 years old I was getting ready to take a course on theory and the teacher seen me from across the room. She stood there, she said she was there for a good 10 minutes and she walked to me and she says, “You don’t need lessons.” The same thing Quincy told me. I was taking a course in theory and Quincy begged me to stop I stopped, because the idea is that what I have is a gift, what I hear is a gift, the way I hear, my whole application in music totally gifted because what I do it takes a lot of people a long time to do.

I come up with it quickly and as Quincy said to me leaned over my shoulder as I was playing a chord, he said, “If you knew what you’re doing you would scare yourself.” I really know that I am always pleased sometimes, especially times when I’ve been in the room late at night and I leave the room and I come back following something that I’ve worked on and how can I keep words when I say it, “But I couldn’t have played that.” It is really beautiful. It is so beautiful discovering yourself. That’s another thing I want to stress is that in your lifetime, as you grow, the one beauty I want to stress is that we have certain substances in this planet, from cocaine to heroin and grass and different things. Unfortunately for me, there was a period in my life that from peermanship I did allow myself to do certain things. I wouldn’t want to be quick in this point with you. There’s a substance that you already have that will never be exceeded by anything that you can take: You. Nothing richer than that. I can only leave you with the thought that I said to my son and to different people that I hope are listening. Substances, they’re tricky. You feel good, or you think you feel good, but there’s nothing on Earth richer. As I say to my son now, “I smoke me.” I get high... I get a high on me. There is no better high, and no safer high than that.

Torsten Schmidt

OK, for all us lovers still in the making and not on the senior ranks of the game, saying...

Leon Ware

Am I in the senior ranks? Okay?

Torsten Schmidt

Champion-level four-star general, something like that?

Leon Ware

All right.

Torsten Schmidt

Moving up the ranks, and I mean just going to someone you don’t know and saying, “Hey lady, smoke me,” is probably not exactly a subtle approach. Can you let us in on, you know, your trade secrets?

Leon Ware

[long pause] I think “smoke me” sounds good. [laughter and applause] The song that I’m going to create as soon as me and Tony go upstairs, I have this idea already in my head. It’s actually in part to... Is Reuben in the room? The singer, the Brazilian singer, Reuben, is he in the room? I was playing something from his CD last night, and the rhythm got to me and I had this idea and I said to him, “Damn, that’ll work really well with this, because it’s that…” [makes a skittering sound with his voice] Again, don’t blush. I am excessively nasty. You think in terms of your tongue doing that. [makes the sound again] Ladies can also address that outlook as well, and it then makes you think of... See, because this is the lesson I’m trying to teach. As a sensual minister and a person that relies on... Not only relies. I want to stress sensuality in most of my work. So when I hear certain things that kind of, you can put this piece here, you can sing the right phrase over the right chord, and it’s like putting some oil on a booty. [laughter] What do you want? I’m trying to be as explicit as I can here, you know?

Torsten Schmidt

Now that you put the oil on the booty, verbally. Reality check, chances are it’s not that wanted in nine out of ten cases, maybe. Next step, how do you go on about seducing someone that’s not totally inclined directly by the taste of your great smoke?

Leon Ware

The thing is, I was also going to add to, how did you say the first line? “Smoke me”? Was it “smoke me”? Was it just “smoke me”?

Torsten Schmidt

That’s what you said.

Leon Ware

OK.

Torsten Schmidt

I was kind of like, too shy, you know?

Leon Ware

I was going to add to that. There’s the question of good sex and... I don’t know if it’s possible to have “bad sex,” but there’s good sex and there’s sex, OK? In that light, and it being questioned like this, what you have is, you get out of the moment what you put in it. Interestingly enough, if you’ve got a partner that’s not putting out what you’re putting in it, you need another partner. Period. There is a mutuality in all of us, instinctively. We don’t have to work at it. It’s there. It’s waiting to be addressed, believe me. I’m a bit of an authority on that. This feeling isn’t something that we have to manifest, we have to work at, we have to look for. What we have to do is decipher who is the person that can take that feeling to the place that we want it to go. In that process, it’s learning how to be a lover. A lover, a great lover, is a lover that has... You give, and you take. You lend yourself. You give of yourself. Not where you’re equating your giving, you give. Interestingly enough, like I say, the more you love something, the more you’re loved back. I can swear to you, I’ve had moments that could’ve been disastrous, but because of me insisting... Not insisting in a physical way, but insisting that this was a moment it was supposed to work and not allowing that second guess that’s going on – because interestingly enough maybe in your process of making love in your lifetime, you have moments where you wonder. OK, you came, but you didn’t really come. You were involved, but you weren’t really involved. I’m going to make this short, hopefully. As it was put to me, this point is not mine, it’s by an older lady, me being a 28 year old young man, and she made a point to me that sticks with me as a man going into 66 years old. She said, when you work at something, when you work at it to make it right, it ain’t right. It’s just supposed to happen. When you get in the way of it is when you work at it. Period. I learned this very simply. It’s the simple act. You ever heard the word “foreplay”? Foreplay is if you want to call it, it is the process of a magical orgasm. You can either have great sex, or you can have sex. When the process is right and both people are... It’s like when you’re collaborating with somebody, I can use the same analogy. Collaboration is just like making love. You get in the room with the person, and you both do like this. [moves hands back and forth in front of him] Give and take. In and out.

Torsten Schmidt

Is that the right moment to talk about Minnie Riperton?

Leon Ware

The right moment to talk about Minnie? Yes, we can talk about Minnie, because as that song was, I can say a double entendre meaning. As what kind of person Minnie was, I say immediately she was a mother to everybody she met. She loved you instantly. She looked at what you were wearing, assessed as to whether it was enough, whether you needed a scarf on or anything. She really was a very, very sweet person. Also I learned something that really hurts. [long pause] She died from breast cancer. Being someone that was so religiously healthy, and always after everybody about what they were eating, their intake, whether it was a substance or not, you know, or whatever. So conscientious about her health and about others’ health, and to have that happen to her was one of the things that I learned in life that is inescapable. There is no chart in life on when we go and how we go. There’s the biggest lesson I had was my daughter died two years ago, who was 31 years old. Not the same cancer, but the lesson is that in life, we face things that are not where we are questioned. Nobody knocks on the door and says, “You ready for this?”

Life is a series of challenges. I think at best, what we do, what I want to do with my challenges, is hopefully they make me stronger. The sadness of losing someone never goes away. However, there is such a richness at a moment in your life where you can say I lost something but I gained something at the same time. A very difficult paradox to really explain, but it is something that does make you richer than the experience. I thought about suicide at that moment. But then, on the other hand, my daughter wouldn’t have loved me to do that. And at the same time, in speaking of it the week before she passed, it was like she understood that all of us will understand at some point in our life. It’s not about who, or how. It’s life. Life’s experience. It’s unfortunately very random. We try to put a fix on it and a time of various studies or whatever. But the reality of it is, we wake up in the morning to a series of challenges that we have to meet. Many of them, we are not ready for. And many of them, we are.

I’m looking at the planet that I live on and I see a world that is actually missing a point. One major point. I won’t go on with this because this is my pet peeve. And I could talk about it all day. A planet that is so rich, we have such a beautiful opportunity here but, as I said before, the word “love,” which is what we are to each other... I make a very simple point. You can look at the person next to you and think that that’s another individual but, in short, everybody in this room, all of us, are a part of each other. The day that we really realize that is when we will all realize the true value of each other. Right now, we haven’t seen a time on the planet yet where we have really exploited our strengths. We’ve been very insecure and very, very, let’s say vicious in that insecurity. I hope that me and you and our plight as messengers will say things that will make the world that we love, that we live in, come together. Because my personal feeling is, the wars and all the dissension and all the bullshit, it can stop in a second. All we have to do is stand up and turn around to each other.

I won’t close with this, but Martin Luther King’s daughter was given an award. I was at this particular session. She stood up and she something that I’m glad to be able to share with you, because it’s very short. She said, “I’ll tell you all a story. A professor was teaching a class of 60 children for about six months. And he came after the six months and said, ‘I’m going to ask you all a question on your graduation.’ The question is, can you tell me the difference in day and night?’” Half the class did their assessment of what day and night was. Between 24 hours and some was scientific. After half the class did this, one of the students stood up and said, “OK teacher, we did this. We’ve gone through this. Tell us what day and night is.” The teacher said immediately, “When you can look at any human being, be his size, or her size, her color, or whatever, and know that that is your brother or your sister, you have realized day. If you cannot do that, you’re still in night.”

Torsten Schmidt

How did you learn to overcome, as Kanye calls it, your insecurities?

Leon Ware

My insecurities have been very few, I was busy as a teenager. [laughs] When I say busy, I had a lover. I come from the streets of Detroit.

Torsten Schmidt

Which is a different city than Detroit today?

Leon Ware

It’s not only a different city, it’s a different “-ity.” The streets of Detroit had a higher level of skullduggery. You can take your pick. From childhood to when I left Detroit at 19, I had learned everything you could do to make some money in the streets. I knew how to do it very well, unfortunately. And interestingly enough, you didn’t have too much time to be insecure. I say again, growing up in that city was like being prepared for any place on this planet — any war zone — I’m talking about you could not find yourself in any place where you feel intimidated. As a kid growing up, I have seen people get their head chopped off in cold blood. By the time I was ten years old, I had seen every atrocity you can think of one-on-one, right in front of me, you know? And fortunately now we have Washington DC, which now has the title of being the murder capital of the United States. Where Detroit for a good 30, maybe 40 years was from the era of the gangsters and Chicago and stuff, Detroit was always in that mix and a big part of the mix.

But again, my insecurities are others. [pauses] People. As I have said before, I’m blessed with a talent that I never really had to guess about. My guessing has always been people who will either be good or be bad. Again, it’s the blessing to know that you do something that everybody likes, and it’s been that way since I was three years old. So again, that’s also the reason why my ego isn’t in a place where I have seen people that are rivals, where they are stars and they have this attitude, this “I want you to kiss my ass”-attitude. And to me that’s, first, a sign of insecurity, and second, a huge sign of not really knowing who you are. For the most part, I think the insecurity factor is something that’s human, I think we all have a bit of it. For mine, I’m like a seven year old. And I always classify myself as seven and a half years old, you can ask my wife. I watch cartoons religiously on Saturday morning and you can get extremely insulted if you bother it. I have a child inside of me that will not grow up. I remember being at that age and having somebody say, “You have got to act like a grown-up!” And me thinking to myself, “If I got to act like what I have seen with grown-ups, I’m staying a kid.” I instinctively want love, I’m just this seven and a half year old kid that’s still wondering why the rest of the world doesn’t want to have fun. [audience chuckles] I’m serious. I give you another story...

Torsten Schmidt

Which brings us to your note maybe.

Leon Ware

No, I’m going to tell you a story about my childhood. I was blind for two years as a child. I shot this eye out with a slingshot. [points at his right eye] And I had to learn braille. I graduated from the same school that Stevie Wonder went to. I was not supposed to have vision according to technical medical knowledge. But my mother’s prayers brought my vision back, I say, she says. But in the process of being blind and going to school with blind kids, I learned one thing that I would love to share with every human being. Especially all of us that call ourselves caucasians, black, the different nationalities, I would like to share one thing: Blind people don’t see color. [pauses] Blind people see you! That’s the reason why I am really good at assessing people. Because I close my eyes constantly, I don’t even look at the piano when I’m playing. It’s not fool-proof, because we got some people that are very brilliant about lying. [laughs] There are some artistic people that know how to prefabricate and say exactly what you want to be said. But for me, like I said, I’m a simple kid. I’m a little seven and a half year old kid, saying, “Let’s have a good time,” you know? I’ve grown to be a grown man and I doubt that assesses sometimes too much. I definitely see everything because I don’t watch. And when I’m looking at people, I’m not looking at them. One time on stage, I got on stage and immediately asked the people in the club, “Please turn the lights out.” They turned the lights out, completely dark for a second and then I asked them to turn them back on. I said, “Now you know who I am.” Because what it is, I — as I said to the young lady that was taking pictures of me today — I said, “Sixty-five, going on 66-years old. I look in the mirror daily.” I’m still somewhat conceited, if you want to say. I like me, but I also see the age. I don’t kid myself, but I said to her, “It’s not my outside that I’m interested in anyway. It’s inside that I’m caring about, you know?” This is what I think all of you want your world around you to know, you know? We may be a different color, but I can guarantee you [whispers] we are the same. [pauses] Close your eyes, you don’t have to see me, but if you close your eyes, you will see me. I can’t close them now because I want some questions now.

Torsten Schmidt

Probably before that, are you one who looks or who closes your eyes? Or do you always close the eyes in intimate moments?

Leon Ware

Aah, I told you I was a freak, right? [laughs] Let me address that. There are moments when you are feeling so good, you don’t even have to ask your eyes to close, they just instinctively close. [laughs] And then there are times when you really want to close your eyes. That’s another thing that happens. It’s like when you are being stroked properly and your eyes go in the back of your head. [laughs / holds his hands up] Excuse me! You are all grown, so it’s OK! Those times I just say, you don’t have to ask your eyes to do anything, you don’t have to ask yourselves to do anything. I said to Manu [of the Red Bull Music Academy crew] yesterday — I’m good with philosophical phrases, whether they mean anything, I’m sure they mean something but whether they mean anything to the person I’m saying them to, but I say them anyway because it’s from the heart. I said, “There are things that we are, there are things that we need. I think the things that we are outweigh the things that we need, because what we are is what we need already.”

In other words: This earth that we live on, this earth that you have in you, is waiting for you to grow into the person that you want to be. When you pray, I believe that there will be a day every Earthling will wake up and we will pray to ourselves because we are god. The god is not out there or buddha or wherever. God is in here. [points at his breast] You do not have to go to a church to get on your knees or whatever to pray to god. God is here [points at his breast], you are part of god. I truly believe that every religion, regardless to whether it is Buddhism, Catholicism, whatever it is, all leads to the same door. It’s just different names. Always leads to the same door. We are a part of each other, the more we realize it, the stronger we will become as a species. And as far as race is concerned, man has played with that issue for a couple of thousand years, and I do hope we get to the point where even if it’s just the point, “Hey, we have been fucking ourselves up enough! Time out!” Look at it like it is, if it’s not religious, if it’s not race, if it’s not...

Oh, let me also stress this one thing: Power. We haven’t seen it yet, we haven’t realized the power that we are yet. There hasn’t been a king on this planet that wanted to make every other man a king. When we have a true king, that king will make every other man a king. When we have a true leader, that true leader will make everybody else a leader. My outlook is, until we are banned in our insecurity to look at each other and not be afraid, and look at each other straight-on and say, “I love you because you are part of me.” When we get to that, that’s what I’m putting in my songs and in my nasty way, but it’s all about doing this [folds his fingers], getting us together, you know? Each of you in this room will have your own individual way of making your point. But we are messengers and I truly believe we are more accountable about our messages, the richer we will be to the community we are serving. And that’s what we are: Messengers serving our messages to the people of this planet, you know? Maybe there are some of them out there, too. I am definitely into aliens, I think Starbucks is definitely owned by aliens. [laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

Well, speaking about another church that you worship, what’s your role in the church of Deep Throat?

Leon Ware

Ooohohoho... [audience laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

You know, talking politics and stuff.

Leon Ware

I can tell you this story because it’s OK, everybody has died. Me and a gentleman that I was writing with — actually he was my mentor as a lyric writer, his name was Bob Period — when I met him he lived on the top of the hills in Beverly Hills. Bentley, Rolls Royces, everything and then I walked in and I saw that jukebox and it’s as big as this and has a hundred hits. All of them were his. He wrote the lyrics to ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The man was in my estimation what you call a genius, he was a lyrical genius. He said to me that people were asking him, “Bob, how do you continue to come up with all these ideas?” The same thing I said before about making love, he always said, “I never try.” He said to me about the process in itself, “Leon, check any of my lyrics out and if you have to ask me what I meant, I didn’t write the story.” In other words, when you write a line, there are some writers that are really good at being clever and they have lines that are very colorful, poetic and some of them are brilliant, because they do say exactly what they mean. However, the most potent writers on this planet are writers, when they write a line, you don’t have to ask them what they meant. You get the meaning instantly. I think that’s what I was trying to address about that point. But I want to say something else to that because I didn’t start writing lyrics until he said to me one afternoon... I was singing something before he came in the room, and he actually had listened to it a bit, “You have a unique approach of how you say things.” Which is also a talent, you know. Because I think the best analogy for writing a lyric is when you listen to a song and you instantly say, “Damn, I follow the same thing.” Bingo! Because that’s the trick of what we do as lyricists – writing something that instantly most people can relate with. The rest is like, I like to have fun. And as I say, I’m a 100 percent instigator. I like playing with the do’s and the don’ts. Always in a good way, never malicious, never vicious. I do hope that I have said something that is useful, I do hope.

Torsten Schmidt

You totally did, especially on that one, but I’m somehow a little lost here because I think you started of explaining what your involvement with the Deep Throat soundtrack was and we got off on a little tangent.

Leon Ware

Oh, I was trying to get out of it. However, the story goes that me and Bob were working on a movie before he passed away, and a year after he passed away a friend of mine called me up and says, “Leon, I’m down here in the Pussycat Theatre, I’ve just seen a movie called ‘Deep Throat.’ Man, you should come down here.” I said, “OK,” and I didn’t really have to be convinced, I wanted to see ‘Deep Throat’ anyway. I had heard about it. He says, “Come down here man because the second song in the movie, I could swear it’s your voice.” So I go down, I listen, and as soon as the second song comes up, I know it’s me because it’s an effect that I did. I took a straw, put it in a glass and then [blows] and you can hear the bubbles, right. But the next line is [sings]، “Bubbles! Great big magic, bubbles!” [laughs] Of course, the ladies are saying at the time, this is classic, before they come, “Do you mind if I smoke while you eat?” [laughs]

Anyway, I go back after the show, after the movies are off, I call the lady who is the wife of [Bob Period], I said, “You ought to come down to the theater because there is a couple of Bob’s songs.” It was one of mine and three of his, because what they did was they took three to five songs — we had about seven in the movie — and just took them. It turns out, four or five days later after we were trying to investigate who the people were and so forth, I’m sitting in her house and the phone rings and her being Caucasian, you know when you guys get upset, you get red. And the phone rings and she says, “Yes,” and her face gets a little red, and she says, “Yes” again and her face gets redder, and she says “Yes” one more time and the phone is shaking as she puts it down. I say, “Jackie, what’s wrong?” And she said, “Well, that was the guy on the phone that said [in a dangerous voice], ‘Are you Mrs. Elliot?’” She says, “Yes.” “We understand that you want to find out who owns the rights to ‘Deep Throat.’ She said, “Yes.” [in a dangerous voice] ”Mrs. Elliot, are you listening?” She said, “Yes.” [in a dangerous voice] “Forget it.” [laughs] Now, your laughter will be at this: 20 minutes to 40 minutes later the lawyer that we had investigating it, calls and says, “Jackie, you know about that picture ‘Deep Throat.’” She says, “Yes, but sure I want to...” “No, no, Jackie, let me tell you something: Forget it!” [laughs]

As it turns out, if you go online, because the story is there now, they are actually bold enough to tell the story, because it is online, my wife and me read it the other night — it’s the first time to see that — where they told the story that the Gambino family was [involved]. You have heard of those guys? They took it and they just, what’s typical of the mafia, they [hands out], “It’s yours this week, it’s yours this week, it’s yours next week.” And for the past 30 years it has been a lot of people’s ownership. But of course, the other issue was is, I have never stood up to say it was my voice because my knowledge of the mafia was very clear. [laughs] If you know the mafia, you don’t call to say, “Hey, I want what’s coming to me, man.” [laughs] Instead, on the other side they are like, [in a gangster voice] “Ey, Charlie, this guy Leon Ware wants what’s coming to him. Let’s take care of him. Oh, by the way Charlie, check out his cousins and all of his good friends because we don’t want to leave any grieving relatives, right?” [laughs] Now, 30 years later, I’m 65, even the lady that was the publisher died two or three days ago, so my wife and my sisters, don’t go crazy [in a female voice], “I’m not going to go crazy.” I had had some plans. I told Robin that I was going to disclose this information that maybe we should do a real intimate picture session so I could take off something, you know, maybe get fully erected and [looks down], “Uh, check this out!” [laughs] No, no, no, listen, because it’s the funny part because – the only thing I must say about the ‘Deep Throat’ movie is because, in leaving, Jackie had this one thing to say, she insisted – I’m not bragging or anything — but she said to me as we are walking along, “Leon, they actually cheated, you know because she hasn’t had what we call deep throat, has she?” [laughs / takes his arms up] It’s true. Proud. Touché my brother. Some questions, please.

Audience Member

Yes, I got two questions. They always talk about how Marvin Gaye had these many demons, and I was wondering if he had a nervous breakdown or anything, or how was he acting around you?

Leon Ware

Marvin was, as I said, very similar, very idealistic. Idealistic people are extremely sensitive, they treat things in a deeper form than a lot of people do and the way me and Marvin differed, is Marvin clinged to disappointments. He did not...

Audience Member

He could not take criticism?

Leon Ware

It was not criticism, it was the pains that he had in his life from the marriages — or the marriage, his first marriage that didn’t work. He had a couple of other grievances in his life. He was Marvin Gaye, his father was gay, he had to live with the fact that his father was gay coming up. Also, being totally heterosexual and having the last name Gaye, it was a couple of issues that he dealt with, but he was as I am in the light of being another man.

I was asked by a lady at a party one night, she was trying to make, I guess, the guys feel uncomfortable, because she asked a couple of guys the same question, “Do you know that you have a lady in you?” And I answered the lady quickly, I said, “Yes, 50 percent of me is female, but the lady in me is so in love with the guy, she can’t wait to get to him!” [laughter] So I’m excessively impressed with the fact that part of me is female and I said this to a dear friend of mine, “Any man that’s uncomfortable around a gay individual, you better check yourself out.” Because I have got a lot of friends that I love dearly that are gay. I feel the gay people are getting the same slack and the same bullshit that black people get, that women get, you know? A false, very disrespected outlook about who and what they are. We are not supposed to be equating who and what we are – I don’t say when I say what I’m supposed to be. I think what it is, is that there is a lot of misspent time in our lives on this planet where we have the audacity to someone else’s bedroom and tell them what we feel about it.

My feeling is this, I said about 15 years ago to a very dear friend of mine who is as gay as lord on the Earth — this guy wishes he was a woman on Christmas – OK? I said to him, “The only thing I feel is if I were gay, there would be no question about me saying to the world: You can kiss my ass. I am who I am, I love who I am, and I’m not asking you to be who I am.” And I would say to anybody that has that particular classification, love yourself enough whereas like I said about your work. You don’t ask nobody, you don’t even ask anybody, “Is my work OK?” You ask yourself that first. By the time you release that work for somebody else, even your close friend to hear it, you’ve listened to it enough to know that now it’s time, now I can play this for somebody. Because believe me, nobody other than my wife — and she hears about only by proxy through the wall — nobody hears anything of mine until…

It’s like, I can’t hit on a woman because I hate being rejected. You know, and I have been that way since I was a teenage boy so I know how to get mine without hitting on ‘em. [laughs] Hey, we all got a style! You know, mine is real free and it’s like the same thing about making love. Once somebody knows that you are in the room with him and you are on the same page... As like my sister said, being a young man and have four older sisters, by the time I was 20 years old, I had been schooled very well about the other side. I wasn’t the young boy, that — a lot of young men think that when they are going out they cop. No, when they are going out, they are going out to be copped. Because most of the time you think you are copping? Eh eh, you ain’t copping, because she was waiting for you. [laughs] You know, that’s the game that women play because their approach is — we go out the masculine style to allure — they go out, they have already allured. But they got something we want and they do that feminine thing that we love so much. That’s the reason why we are here. [laughter]

So god bless ’em, and all I can say is that, again I hope I’m saying something that is useful. I’m here because the meaning of you all being here was the meaning that drew me here. It’s like I have been invited to different things that I have not made myself available to, because the feeling that the premise and the meaning wasn’t what I wanted to be involved in. This is something that after my wife, of course, has seen the whole tape and she was very excited about it, I was very excited about it after looking at half of the tape, because I’ve heard one young man who was from San Francisco making a phrase [turns to Torsten] and you might know who this was, it was in the video that you sent. He was from San Francisco and he made the phrase, he was a DJ, he said, “I do this...” Same thing I say. I can’t remember exactly what he said ver batim but he said, “I do this because I love it.” The whole energy about what this is, is people from all over the world, different parts of the whole planet are coming to communicate, to share their feelings, to do what a nasty guy like myself would think could happen. Not that orgies are something that I participate in, but it’s almost like a creative...

Torsten Schmidt

Orgies are scheduled at 11. Would 11 be convenient for you? [audience laughs]

Leon Ware

Excuse me, have you got the oil? [laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

Always, it is sitting right next to me.

Leon Ware

I am 150 percent. I feel the ideas that we all have waiting in the wings, you know?

Audience Member

My next question is, as far as like MCs and hip-hop, clearing samples from you, have any of them tried to play you out? What was their name? Was there anybody big that didn’t want to pay you, disrespect you by not even clearing it or whatever?

Leon Ware

I have not had that problem because, in response to that question – kind of kike that question from somebody else – most of the rappers from 2Pac to Ice Cube... I mean, I have been sampled by almost all of them. The current thing with Mary J. Blige. And Puffy and couple of other things that are out, and there are some more things coming out next month or in January but not... See, because what happened, I think, when rap started really getting big and it was like the Wild West and guys were just taking people’s stuff, you know? What happened was they started losing everything. See, because they were taken to court, it was clear out plagiarism and whatever percentage they had of the work that they did, they lost completely and that became so emphatic across the board every time anybody would get caught stealing or taking a piece of somebody’s song. They have since now come up with the plagiarism law, that’s a bit different. See, because when I was coming up you had to have eight consecutive bars — both melody and chords — in order to have a plagiarism case. In today’s world, they have a thing where, I think, it’s four bars and if you have the sentiment, as they say — if you have the sound or the sentiment of that piece — that’s plagiarism. I’ve only had two outright thefts in my career, and one was by one of the biggest stars of black history, I’m not going to say his name but because I don’t want to put people out, but actually two...

Torsten Schmidt

Who was that?

Leon Ware

I won’t say names. Can I have a tissue, someone? [stands up, someone hands him a tissue] I’m OK, I’m OK.

Audience Member

What was the song?

Leon Ware

If you listened to their repertoire, it’s like both of them were in the top tens or they got gold records, both of each artist. And if you listen to their top ten greatest hits, you won’t have to ask me. Fortunately, for me what has followed me in my career is that my uses of chords is my signature. Again, I don’t know what I’m doing but it has caused me to have a few what we call hits, and you can listen to my work with other people and discern the parts that I wrote. I think that’s great, I think we all should reach for identity. That’s one thing that’s dwindling in this particular era where so much sounds alike, you know? You should endeavour to as you are do in your... You should hook it up as uniquely in your style, so that as things progress they can say, “That’s so and so’s thing.” That’s how you [climb up the ladder]. [raises his hands over one another / points at someone in the audience] What’s your name, darling?

Audience Member

Anya.

Leon Ware

Anya? She was saying to me last night about the different DJs that don’t have the slant or the proper sensitivity to the art that they are doing. It was only until about three years ago that I realized that DJs were as popular as, let’s say, as creative as they are. My first impression of DJs, because I was on the road with a young man named Carl Craig, who is also from Detroit but a very, which I found out, very popular, very famous DJ, right? He happened to tell me some of the fees that he gets in going to various countries. I mean moneys, amounts of moneys. I want you all to know, my first comment to him was this, “Fuck, I missed the boat, man.” [laughter] I call it the smartest manifestation — I thought that sampling was slick. DJs are the slickest. They take your shit, they rearrange it, now they are artists. It’s not like they are really ripping anybody off, I just say it’s a brilliant manifestation. They take your shit, make it their own by the way that they play it — the sequences that they play — because I think the power of a DJ is the first song isn’t the one that you really have to concern yourself with. It’s the same as Bob said about writing, “It’s not your first line that’s important, it’s the one that’s following.” So, a DJ’s thing is to have his things when as he sequences, you do it like this. [raises one hand over the other] And by the time you get here [raises hand to his head] you are hooked. If you watch most people by the time they are here [on top] you can’t say shit to them. They don’t want to hear anything else, leave them alone. So, it’s an art that I respect and I’m sure that many of you that are in here and that are DJs, can rest assured that it’s a lot bigger than I knew it was. It’s here to stay, and it’s fulfilling because it’s the same thing that I do as an artist that sings. You get in front of a thousand people or a 100 people, how many it is, but you get in front of these people [whispers] and you make them feel good. That’s what they come for. They come to be released, they come for you to serve them musically, beat-wise, what will take them out of their present moment. And that in itself is an art, so you can pat yourself and give yourself a hand. You know, please. For me [claps], all of you that are DJs.

Audience Member

I wanted to ask you if you ever changed songs when somebody told you to do so? Or how would you approach that?

Leon Ware

When I have finished an idea, I play it for somebody and I listen to their opinion. I don’t leave with that opinion, though. I leave with mine. It’s important to be open. If it’s criticism, hopefully it’s constructive criticism. [to participant] Anya.

Audience Member

Thanks, hello, OK. Now, you keep saying, “I hope it’s useful what I’m saying for you guys, I hope it’s useful.” I just want to thank you for your words, really, because I think the knob twisting and everything is important but I think a lot of us need a little bit of the soul side of it as well. So really thanks a lot for your words, and I’m glad that you touched a bit on the sensual side of music-making because I think for a lot of people it’s taboo in a way, or people don’t admit it or open up to it. But for me, when I take the stage — I’m still working on the studio side — but when I take the stage it’s 100 percent what I’m there for. I’m making love to the crowd and I get so much out of it and it’s what drives me, really. But my question for you is, who are you making love to when you make your tracks? Like, you talk about the whole process that you describe, who is your lover when you make your tracks?

Leon Ware

Ahhhh, see...

Audience Member

Your instrument, yourself, your words, your goal for the track?

Leon Ware

My wife tries to nail me in the sense where... I was writing a song that was called “On the Beach.” I have lines in the song that, they could be classified as pornographic lines, “I’m in between her leg, my tongue is doing different things, I’m sucking nipples,” and stuff. She was asking me [imitates female voice], “Who did you write the song about?” [laughter]

Audience Member

I was just wondering...

Leon Ware

No, but my answer in short, like I said, I’m making love to the world. As odd as it might sound, but when I’m fantasizing I have a fixed individual, but as you say a fixed individual for a flashing woman because it was from that flashing woman, to another individual, to another individual... I think basically, I’m just driven by sensual urges and sensual innuendos and I never have to work at it. Every word that you say, if you make a phrase, I instinctively can connect it to something sensual. And I do. I don’t even think that it’s a talent, it’s just, I do it. And now, of course, for the past, say, 30 years or so, since I’ve been really into and like you say, the world around us is just a bit intimidated or some people feel a little uncomfortable about saying certain things, I’m just the contrary. I am that rebel that wants to raise the bar, that says, “Hey, not only should we not be afraid, we should be proud. Proud of who we are and what we are.” That part of our substance or our existence... I mean, I can get choked up right now I won’t, but I find it almost an audacity that we could have allowed ourselves as a species to look at that part of our function as taboo, wrong, or to be afraid of it. Recently I said, simple point, I said to a guy who was an interviewing me about six months ago who wrote an article, I said simply, “I’m not saying anything ingenious, I’m not bringing anything to the table that’s new. I’m only reminding the people that have a chance to remind very simply: Cherish where you come from.” And in that light, [whispers] you can get extremely nasty and be honorable. Very nasty in a very honorable way. Because anything that you say that alludes to sex can only be considered your ode to your origin. Oh, did I say that right? Touché: Ode to your origin, you know? Yeah. And in that light we are all one, a beautiful one. [looks at Torsten] And you can bring the oil up! [giggles]

Torsten Schmidt

One of the most difficult things is probably to wrap things up and let go sometimes. On a reissue there is extensive liner notes, and one bit talks a lot about Marvin Gaye’s wife talking about how she felt when she was a little younger in the actual recording process and how she felt like he was just singing for her and how she uses this record to play it to the kids now and all that kind of stuff. I mean, were you present and... ?

Leon Ware

Yes.

Torsten Schmidt

I mean, and how did it feel when you... ?

Leon Ware

She was right. There was a...

Torsten Schmidt

Those were initially your things and it already took a life of its own.

Leon Ware

It was so beautiful because what happened with that record was — again, this is another part of the story — Marvin had been recording... I don’t know if they just got married. Yeah, they just got married, and he was as in love as anybody could be. Genuinely in love. And I think probably that marriage had been one of Marvin’s happiest moments ever. It took us 13 months to complete the album. Why so long? Because six of the months we were playing basketball on studio time. But Marvin really was in love, he loved Janice. It’s like my wife says better, “Jan was his reward for the pain that he was feeling about the other relationships in his life.”

I could guess. It was said. I don’t know this to be true. Marvin’s last tour, he made two attempts to kill himself. His process and his attempts were not good because he had a problem with the issue of suicide. His suicide is sacrilegious. The story goes, two weeks before his father killed him, he brought his father a gun. The day before the incident, he went to a house where his father lived and proceeded to kick his father’s ass. This story is not told but I can tell you all. Please don’t record this. It was intentionally done by Marvin. Marvin didn’t want to kill himself. He didn’t want to do it himself. But he took it to the man that brought him into the world, that he never got along with. Him and his father never really had any great father and son relationship. Went to their house, beat him up, and let his father leave the room. His father came back into the room and shot him. The story is told but, in essence, that part of the story, as far as where the gun came from. When this was told it was told by one of Marvin’s families so I know it’s not a lie. It made sense because there was an open, ongoing family dislike for each other. Father, son, family. Marvin figured it out. He said, “Well, if I can’t do it myself I know somebody that’ll do it for me.” As sad as it sounds, I only note that he was a troubled person. He, to me, was another gift to the world that, whatever you want to call, his time was too quick. Much too quick. But in the same light, we don’t have any charge of that.

Torsten Schmidt

To what extent do you think is being a troubled soul essential to producing great art?

Leon Ware

Lots of troubled souls do great art. Interestingly enough, I’m a bit of a troubled soul but mine is not only under control, mine is basically loving something and knowing that you won’t have the time to really do what’s necessary. I think, for the most part, Marvin and people like Marvin that have such strong passions, passions that exceed being consumed. Consumed is a word. There is a point of passion where consumed is only a word, because it is another level where you are that. It is everything and nothing else means anything. I could probably make a list of brilliant talents throughout time that were troubled souls that gave the world some phenomenal art, from picture art to paintings to dancers to... Interestingly enough they say, the more troubled an artist is, the more depth you get out of their strokes and their music and whatever. Could be true, because it’s the dark side that does seek light, needless to say.

Audience Member

Hello. It’s been a real pleasure listening to you for these hours. I guess I speak for all of us. If, for some reason, you just said you were confident and all, if for some reason you are doubting you got your point across I can assure you that it was really important listening to you.

Leon Ware

Thank you very much.

Audience Member

Having said this, and getting back to the topic of Marvin and the whole importance of his life to all of us, and not just as DJs I guess, Marvin Gaye must be the artist that everyone surely likes, or like Bob Marley or whatever. He’s really like consensual to everyone, and that’s partly my opinion because of the humanity in his body of work. And of course it’s transparent also within your words.

Leon Ware

[cellphone rings] Sorry. I thought it was off. It’s off now.

Audience Member

OK. So what I will try to ask you is, his music has been sampled so many times by different people and in different contexts, but I’m thinking, we have a track here on the laptop which is exactly called “Tribute to Marvin: The Day We Lost Soul,” and we were thinking we would like you to take a short listen...

Leon Ware

Can I?

Audience Member

Yeah. And comment on that.

Leon Ware

Yes, can I?

Audience Member

And if you feel it’s actually a tribute. If you feel it’s a tribute although it’s ...

Leon Ware

Can you bring it?

Audience Member

Yeah. We could put it on the speakers of the laptop but maybe it’s best to connect to the mixer and listen to it properly.

Leon Ware

I’ve been talking so much I wanted to – like my son says, you talk too much dad, when you get started. However I…

Audience Member

We will take care of it here.

Leon Ware

I don’t get the chance, I don’t get the opportunity to do this.

Audience Member

It’s another Detroit record by the way.

Leon Ware

Which one?

Torsten Schmidt

It’s the Moodymann one I guess.

Audience Member

So the question’s basically whether you agree it’s a proper tribute. Although this is like a record with perhaps a thousand copies, you know?

Leon Ware

Oh, I’ll answer you in a second.

(music: Moodymann – “The Day We Lost the Soul”)

Again, like you said, so many different interpretations and different treatments of various works of mine, and monetarily-wise I love it, creative-wise I appreciate and some of it I actually do love. But a hundred percent agree with because, first, for anybody in this room, with living 30 years and doing this for 30 years and people come into you after this process, and say they want to do something else with your work, I feel like it’s a plus. The only thing that I’ve got myself, me on one thing and the police was on a couple other things with this one, you have guys send you their idea of what they’re going to put out, and I’m low. And if you can make me feel like you’re really low, you have real gone past the point. Because especially with this current song that I’m just finishing, I’m saying that in things I’ve actually haven’t expressed on record because in actuality, but it’s again part of who I am. But bottom line, I like it. I like the variations. I think it gives a piece of work new life, and again the only time you have to reject a person’s particular slam or their approach to what they’re doing with a piece of work of yours is, like I said, if it’s tacky. If it doesn’t have any taste. Or especially, one of the things, this guy says, mmm let’s talk about some raunchy phases about how they did certain things with certain ladies and you know. It’s like hm, let’s give you a point.

I went to an awards program about ten years ago in Atlanta, Georgia. Up until that time, I was like, most men my age, 60-ish, late 50s, kind of wondering how young women could really be getting off on the rap scene. I mean these guys come out the [grunts noisily] and it’s aggressive, it’s animal, it’s ugly, a lot of it’s disrespectful. Not today’s thing but looking at somewhat the scenario or the outlook of rap, hip-hop rap, my lesson was about to be taught. I watched Tony! Toni! Toné!, Stevie Wonder and different singers, they’re singing. I watched this crowd do their, [waving hands in the air]. I mean things like light the candle. I mean everything was going on just as I was used to seeing. My lesson was, when the singers stopped and the rappers hit the stage, those same people that had been swooning, some in their late 40s, 50-ish people, the younger ones as well, all those same people were responding to the singers in the way that singers get responded to.

Soon as the rappers hit the stage, lesson number one, I watched those same people that were cool and suave and all this shit, they got up on the tables, hit the table, it was like [stands up and makes angry grunting sounds]. I said, “Oh I get it now!” I said because in my era, we were learning to pull the panties to the side. [laughter] Okay? In this world, they tearing the panties off. [laughter and applause] You know what I mean? It’s like, excuse me, it is so animal because, I got to say it to you, you have to see the two together to really get it. Because the same people that were swooning and doing all this, oh I light the candle, same people that we saw next to the rappers [loud grunting]. I said now I get it. These girls, sweet girls, we don’t like to think of it, but we are animals. And rap, and the context of rap, does this to you. [grunts]

Like I said to Robin, you look at the pictures of young artists of this day, the only thing that’s missing is the number across their neck. [laughter] Because they don’t look like they trying to be your friend. They looking like, if you come around this corner I’m fucking you up. You know what I mean? Excuse me. Language is necessary because I want you to get the point. Anybody else?

Audience Member

Please, thank you very much. Hello Leon.

Leon Ware

Hello.

Audience Member

How you doing?

Leon Ware

I’m well.

Audience Member

Well, you’ve been really great today.

Leon Ware

I hope so.

Audience Member

You said some very inspiring things to me yesterday about time. We’ve just been talking about Marvin and how much time he had with us on the way, or with you. We are sharing time together over the next couple of weeks, we’re sharing time right now. Tell me about time.

Leon Ware

Time? I should tell you about time. I can tell you about my time, which, actually, you know what...

Audience Member

Sorry. How you view the time that we’re all allocated on the Earth to be a missile.

Leon Ware

I view it as a continuum. It’s like I said to somebody just recently before I came here. I said really people put thought because in this process, the only thing... I won’t say the only thing, but one major thing that I feel is missing is us really getting acquainted with each other. Just Earthlings getting acquainted with each other. We don’t do that. This kind of forum is a good beginning or a good process, or good part of that process. But I’ve said and I say it again, I hope that my being a part and your being a part will generate, will be seeds to other hearts, because this is the beginning of what I’m talking about. We are supposed to be about the task of magnifying each other, not diminishing each other. I’m supposed to do, in my time, what’s necessary for you to be your best in your time and on down the line. And once all of us on this planet realize how much we actually need each other is when we’ll realize – really realize – how strong we are. We haven’t seen anything yet.

I’ll say also another favorite phrase of mine. We will, as I say we as humans, outgrow our ignorance. I truly believe that. I truly believe that the human spirit is much richer than what we’ve shown. I think we’ve just been in this circle which is consistently, like I said, at this point I’m hoping that most men, the brilliant minds on this planet will kind of come to the point that I myself consider myself a very simple-minded man, but even a simple-minded man can come to the same point – aren’t we tired? I mean, if we were doing something different to each other after two thousand years it would be something. Then we could question something. But we’ve been in the same circle for two thousand years. “I don’t like you for this, I’m going to cut you for that, don’t kill me for that.” You know what I mean? And none of that, none of it, is who we are. It’s like the basics of what we are and who we are are so drastic we miss because we’re so fucking scared of each other.

Audience Member

So, speaking on that do you think racism is like the ultimate test that god put on his earth for us to really challenge, because the way it was designed and it’s sort of like a game or sort of like to end up getting us all on one and loving one another. Do you think that’s like the ultimate goal?

Leon Ware

I think the best answer for that is, you’ve seen a rainbow, right? You’ve all seen a rainbow?

Audience Member

Yeah, yeah.

Leon Ware

You’ve all seen a rainbow? Lots of colors, right? And what’s the first thing you say when you see a rainbow? [pauses] “Ah, beautiful. Ah, beautiful.” You say, “That’s really beautiful.” Right? I don’t know but my biggest guess is that if there are makers of us — I have questioned that — but if there are makers of us, they intended this to be the same way I just expressed. This blackness and your whiteness and Asian and Spanish, and all these different things, they are supposed to make us say, [whispers] “Wow, beautiful.” Instead, what do we do? What have we done? We look at each other and we say, “Black men go across the earth and they intimidate. White men go across the earth and they get along.”

But it’s like with the Irish thing, the Irish are fucking each other up for how many years over a point that you ask yourself... I have a very good friend of mine who is Irish and we had this conversation, but it’s interesting that you say to yourself: How can another man knock on your door and say, “Hey, you know, I’m ruling you. Fuck what you believe, I’m just ruling you. Let’s say whatever you believe, throw it away. I’m ruling you.” That’s Irish. That’s the Irish fight and there will be fighting for a long time. It’s the same thing with Israel and Palestine. Oldest war on the planet, but I did hear a guy that went to Palestine and to Jerusalem talking to regular people and if you close your eyes and you listen to each of both sides talking, all you can hear was, [in a threatening manner] “I ain’t going nowhere, this is my shit!” And the other side, “Hey, I ain’t going nowhere. This is...”

And I had a conversation with a young man from Palestine who had years ago been sent to London because his parents were wealthy enough to send him there, he was driving a cab and I was in the back of the cab, we have been getting into a conversation. He pulled it out like, we had about half an hour, 45-minute talk, just sitting in the cab, he was like, “Do you know what this war and my country is about?” I said, “For years I heard a lot of different things but the most part I heard it was about a wall.” He was, “Oh, yes!” It’s about a wall, believe it or not. It started about a praying wall that Jerusalem said was theirs. Palestine says it’s theirs. My point was at this point of the conversation, I say, “Hey, why couldn’t they have said, “OK, yours for three and a half hours, mine for three and a half.’” He said, “It would have been too easy, man.” It would have been too easy and plus, at this point, they have been killing each other for so long, it’s no longer about the wall. It’s about how many people have died on these sides and the different grievances and plus, I won’t get really deep into politics but I will say this. If Americans wonder why 19 men would make themselves a bomb to make a point, if they are wondering, they haven’t been keeping up with the do’s and don’ts of America. Because America, unfortunately, has made some moves and are responsible for a demise around this planet in their quest for quietly doing what the Dutch did first, the British did second. Conquering the fucking world. And I say to you again, power. Power? True power is not about conquering anything at all. In fact, any man that’s truly powerful, he makes every man as powerful as him because he knows his power.

Unfortunately, on this planet we have had leaders that have been guessing and totally unsure about their part because everything that they exhibit was oppression. And even at this point, every nationality on this planet — black, white, all of us, every nationality — separately enslaved their own first. And I say it’s a known, if you psych it out. Why? Because we are afraid. Men are afraid of each other, of themselves, of their own community and then they spread it around, so over the years you have had these different conquerers from Genghis Khan to Rome and the different things and it’s like a big circle that continues to do the same thing. [draws a circle] Kill and conquer, kill and conquer. And in the war in Iraq, a lot of people could guess what it’s about. We’ll find out in maybe ten years the actual truth, because what’s really good about this particular time that we are dealing with, we’ve got magnifying glasses up your ass! Excuse me, but that’s where it is and very little that you do now on this planet that cannot be or will not be deciphered.

So the truth of this war or this current situation, unfortunately, it ain’t about what they said it was about and I think a lot of Americans are pissed about it. The biggest problem is now we’re passed two thousand young lives over there, and are going to be even more than that before this is all over. Because there is a war that’s going on, that’s not going to be won the way they are fighting it. You cannot win that war. The best thing that was said when 9/11 happened was, is we can go up and kick their ass, we can go up and do this and that, but unless they address the hearts of the 19 men that made themselves a bomb, unless they address that, the war that they are fighting right now will go on just like the same war that is going on between Palestine and Israel. The different wars that are going around the planet, they are never going to stop it because you are not fighting the war. The real war [points at his heart], as I’m saying, “OK, now we come back with some changes. America has to make some changes because the politics that they had been making for the past 20, 30 years helped only fucking people up.” And Americans don’t know it but when you look at 9/11, it’s kind of an indication, but still there is a lot of Americans that don’t realize how much America is a part of different demises around this globe. And the demises, unfortunately, aren’t to anybody else’s advantage but America and what’s really cold about the American structure or the politics is, they are smart enough to do it this way. They are not actually doing it: Oh, that is not ours! Been doing that for 30 years or more. However, truth being told, these wars that were going on, these wars will continue on until they start lessening their so-called pursuit of grip of power because that’s what it is, guys. It is not pursuing to give nobody’s shit! [laughs] Excuse me, it’s a pursuit of power and they call it a lot of other things and I think me and a lot of other people are sick of it and [whispers] that’s the magic. It’s that me and you, it’s us that makes those guys powerful. [laughs] ‘Cause at the end of the day, it’s us that make those guys powerful. When the people across the continent, across the world realize that this together will be a start in us realizing some of the magic that we have here.

But I wish you all love, I love you dearly and I’m sure, I hope it comes back. But mine is, it’s like I said to Anya, like I would say to anybody of these questions, I’m 24, 26 hours a day nasty, and 27 hours a day very much in love. I just hope they give me about another 20 years because I really feel like I can do something to something that I haven’t done before. [laughs, audience joins in, clapping]