Patrick Adams

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

We’re very honored to have our next lecturer here with us today. He’s actually been on our wishlist for a long time and he is an accomplished producer, arranger, composer, musician. I think anybody who collects records, you kind of look for certain names on the back consistently and this gentleman’s name always offers something worth checking out. So, please give a warm welcome to Mr. Patrick Adams.

[applause]

Patrick Adams

Hello.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Thanks for being here today. I like to start sometimes just by playing a little something from our lecturers’ repertoires, so we have something set up here. Do you want to give any information or background about this? I mean, your career spanned a number of different eras and different styles of music.

Patrick Adams

Yeah. One of the things people have tried to lay on me, they say, “Well, you’re a producer,” with an adjective in front of it like, “You’re a dance producer,” or way back it was, “You are an R&B producer,” or “You are a rap producer,” and I say, “No, I’m a producer, I produce records.” I studied records from the time I was about 12-years-old. For some reason I knew what I wanted to be. I didn’t know why. I didn’t even know what a producer did, but the concept of being in control of the creative process, that’s what I wanted to do.

And I want to pass on a very important piece of wisdom I got when I was 13. Smokey Robinson came to the Apollo Theater every year. Every summer in August you could count on Smokey Robinson & the Miracles being at the Apollo, and Smokey was very generous. He would come out and play basketball with us and he was a real, regular guy. So, one day I stopped Smokey and I said - because I used to live four blocks from the Apollo – so I said to Smokey, “Mr. Robinson, what advice would you give to a young man who wanted to be a record producer and songwriter?” And Smokey Robinson said, “Forget it.” But that was the greatest advice anyone could give me, because if I was going to be turned around by those two words, I was never going to make it. But it gave me the incentive and all through my life, when someone told me I could not do something, that made me want to do it that much more. So that’s my advice I pass on.

Marta Acuna, met the girl one day in the studio. One of the things I was very big on was sort of ‘off the top of the head’, you know, always spontaneous records. This record was done in an afternoon. I played everything on this record except the congas. I never saw the girl again after this. I don’t know why you guys love it so much.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, maybe she’s watching. Let’s listen to a little bit of this. This is Marta Acuna as produced by Mr. Patrick Adams.

(music: Marta Acuna – “Dance, Dance, Dance” / Patrick Adams accompanies on keys / applause)

Patrick Adams

I was on the Internet one day and I read that I was a horrible keyboard player, and he didn’t get it. I don’t know if you noticed that I laughed early on in the record, because I heard a note that was so horrible, and I knew it but it’s okay, because I was just having fun. All of the Cloud One records, all of the Bumblebee Unlimited records, all of the insanity, I was just having fun. I was not trying to be serious, I was not trying to be in key. I read somewhere one time that Jimi Hendrix was so amazing he could play quarter tones on his guitar, and I thought about it and I said, he was just fucking around and you guys went for that shit!

[laughter]

Listen, Jimi Hendrix is one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived, nobody can take that away, but I am serious. I believe sometimes he was just having fun and he wanted to see how far he could take it, and I think that’s all it was.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Let’s provide a little context for this. You mentioned Cloud One; the label that this record appears on is P&P. This is from the mid- to late ‘70s when you’re pretty entrenched in the disco scene in New York. As you mentioned, you’re from Harlem originally, this is a Harlem-based operation, P&P Records. These records are under different names but you are playing all the instruments. What was your mindset, going in, basically providing all the music for these sessions?

Patrick Adams

In the mid-’70s I was one of the most active musical arrangers in New York. I mean, I was constantly in the studio. I did a lot of string and brass work, did a lot of commercials, did a few film scores, but I was not getting production work.

P&P Records and the Red Greg stuff was sort of an outlet for me when I had a crazy idea that I knew I couldn’t take to a major. There was a fellow named Peter Brown who was a record promoter, he was the owner of P&P Records. Greg Carmichael was a legal clerk when I met him, but he loved music and he would say, “Well, why don’t you put that out yourself?” I didn’t have the head for running a record company while doing all the work I was doing. I said, “No, you put it out,” and so Greg put out “Dance And Shake Your Tambourine.” It became an instant hit. Peter put out “Atmosphere Strut,” [which] was actually the first record by Cloud One and that took off. So, I decided that my serious work, the orchestrated work, I would do with the majors and the crazy stuff I would do with the independents and that’s how that flow started.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You’re from Harlem originally, you grew up near the Apollo Theater, you got to see a lot of musical acts there. How did you gain access to the Apollo Theater? You got a little bit more access than the usual person who would go to the Apollo Theater to see a show.

Patrick Adams

One thing I found about most serious professionals and most accomplished people, if you approach them and you say, “I want to know this,” or “I want to learn this,” and they see you as serious, they will give you the help that you want. As long as they see you’re not being silly or that you’re not starstruck or something like that, if they really see that you want to know something, they will give you that knowledge. Like I said, I used to hang around the Apollo to talk to people. A fellow named Pete Long was the stage manager at the Apollo. I said to him, “Can I hang around when you have dress rehearsal?” Because every week, the Apollo Theater, when a new show was coming in and you had the travelling rhythm section with different acts... but the Apollo had an orchestra. Sometimes they’d have strings, they certainly had a brass section, to supplement whoever was coming in. So, on a particular week, say, the Motown Revue was coming in and you might have Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, and Smokey Robinson and The Four Tops. It was such a joy to sit in the middle of that orchestra during rehearsal. I mean, I didn’t know an alto sax from a tenor sax when I first went in, but after months of passing out the music, almost being like an apprentice, then I knew, OK, that’s the baritone sax and when they write your music, what key do they write that in? What staff do they use, the alto, tenor, bass? So, I got a great education and then hearing those arrangements from inside the orchestra, that is priceless. You cannot get a better education.

As a matter of fact, one of the things that really was great for me is when I did go to Perception Records – I guess I’m jumping ahead a little bit - but when I first walked in the door at Perception, Today Records had just started. I think they had one or two singles out, and that’s what drew me to this. I saw that Thom Bell had produced one of the records. Thom Bell at the time was having great success with The Delfonics and was working with Gamble & Huff Productions, so that was somebody I looked up to. When I saw his name on a label I said, “Let me go down there, check him out.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

These are late-’60s soul groups, sweet soul with The Delfonics and stuff like that.

Patrick Adams

Right. So, I walk in the door and nobody wants to hear what I’m trying to push. A fellow named Maurice Irvine came out and said, “Let me hear what you got.” I had recorded some demos with Black Ivory – [gestures to Jeff “Chairman” Mao] but you got to do the commercial first – so while I’m there the president of the company’s walking through and he says, “We’ve got to find an arranger for this commercial. We just booked this commercial.” So, Maurice kind of pushed me. Now, keep that in mind. The Apollo Theater, during that summer of ‘68, put on a stage show called Listen, My Brother and it drew on the talent in Harlem. If you were between 17 and 21 you could come in and audition for the show, so we all come in to audition, my band – I was in a band called The Sparks – came in. The day of the auditions, the normal piano player from the Apollo’s orchestra was late so Pete Long says, “Can anybody out here play piano? We need somebody to play for the auditions.” At the time I was a little more shy than I am now, so I’m being quiet and my friend John Cooksey points to me, he says, “He can play piano!” Pete Long came down the center aisle of the Apollo and grabbed me by my shirt. He yanked me up out of my chair and he said, “If you think you can do something, say yes. You never know what you can do.” All right, now, go back to the other story. I walk into Perception/Today and they’re looking for an arranger. At the time I had done small arrangements for three- or four-piece horns, nothing big, but Maurice is pushing me and I’m thinking about what Pete Long told me. So I said, “Yeah, I’m an arranger. I can do that.” I’m 20-years-old and, I said, “What is this going to require?” And the guy says, “Well, we’re going to need ten strings, violins, violas, cellos, kettle drums, a harp...” I know I am in deep shit now [laughs], but I said, “Sure, I can do that.” I lied my ass off. But when I got back uptown, you know, I was at the next dress rehearsal at the Apollo and once again, like, “Listen, if you’re going to do strings, how...?” Because I could hear what I would do. I’ve been listening to records from the time I was a kid. If I was going to add strings to something I would want the strings to do this, that, that. I didn’t know the technicalities of writing it, but I knew what the melodies were, I knew what the harmonies were. So, we booked the session, I show up at the studio. By the way, it was Welch’s grape juice, a television commercial for Welch’s grape juice. I walk in the studio and set down the music and – this may sound like a joke but it’s not – the first violinist, her name was Cathy Beaver. That’s true, you can look her up at the union. She says, “Come here. You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?” Because any regular arranger, who’s doing this as working arranger, knows that if you’re going to do a gliss – an octave gliss of, say, sextuplets, sixteen note sextuplets – you just put the last note in this bar, you put the first note in the next bar and you just scribble. You don’t write every note. So, she says, “Don’t worry, we’ll cover you,” and she then whispers some stuff to all the string players. We count it off and it was wonderful. It was miraculous. It sounded like Tchaikovsky had done it. [laughter] After that, Perception wanted to hire me on a regular basis to do stuff.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

To do commercials?

Patrick Adams

Yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

OK, well, let’s just take a quick look at one of these actual...

Patrick Adams

This was the second commercial I did. It was such a success it ran for five years. It’s very simple.

(video: excerpt from Wind Song perfume commercial)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, that was one of your early works through Perception/Today. Then how soon did this follow?

Patrick Adams

This was about two months later.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

This is another group on Perception/Today and this Patrick Adams’ first production and you also co-wrote the song – or did you write the song yourself?

Patrick Adams

I wrote it myself.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

OK, so let’s check this.

Patrick Adams

In fact, Leroy was here and he didn’t tell you I wrote the song.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, now we know. [laughs]

Patrick Adams

He sang the song, but I wrote the song and I did the arrangements!

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, Patrick Adams and Black Ivory...

(music: Black Ivory – “Don’t Turn Around”)

Patrick Adams

At the time, Black Ivory was touring with Kool & the Gang as the opening act and their manager Gene Redd, who was a very accomplished producer/arranger, his father used to do James Brown and so on, Gene heard the record and he said, “So who did the strings on that?” I said, “I did.” He said, “No, you didn’t.” I said, “Why do you say that?” It was because of what I later learned was called a trill, that... [sings] I didn’t know what it was. I just heard that in my head. I’ve always had that. I have a very mathematical brain, I guess. I studied electrical engineering in college and when I hear music, I hear things to put in between and under and over and with. Maybe I’m a savant, I don’t know. I’m nuts half the time, anyway. But, you know, that was weird.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

This was a huge song was for you, this is a sweet soul classic, early ‘70s. What happened after you produced this song and it became a hit? How did that change your standing with Perception and Today?

Patrick Adams

You know, within two weeks I was vice president of the company and had carte blanche. By the way, Boo Frasier, who was a vice president at the company in charge of promotion – he hired me and gave me the promotion – is the same guy who hired Quincy Jones at Mercury records 20 years earlier. He introduced me to Quincy and Quincy and I had this long-distance relationship on and off. But at this point, I could do anything I wanted in the company, that I didn’t have to ask for permission. Well, I needed a purchase order, but I mean, I didn’t have to set up my recording schedule according to somebody else. If I had an idea at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon and I wanted to book a session for that night, and book strings for Saturday and horns for Monday, I could do it, and that was the greatest thing in the world, just total freedom.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And so you became an instrumental part of this label. Why did you decide to leave and move on at a certain point?

Patrick Adams

Because as most artistic people will testify, there is art and there’s economics. And sometimes your economic expectations do not meet you art considerations. So, when you look up and you calculate, “Oh, they owe me $75,000 – this is not working out very well.” Recording labels have always been very good at their math where, “OK, we do owe you money, but your contract calls for another album right now, and unfortunately, the cost of this album is going to outweigh the royalties we were going to give you. But don’t worry about it, there’s a future! If we put this album out right now while the group is hot...”

I couldn’t go for that, and once again it was Gene Redd actually who saved me – and this is one of those wonderful gems. I said, “Gene,” I was almost crying, he took me out to dinner, I said, “Gene, they owe me $75,000.” They had me under contract where, as a producer, I was exclusive to Perception and if I left, guess what? I forfeit my royalties. If I stayed, I couldn’t work for anybody else. One of the things you will learn in your lifetime is that you’ve got to strike while the iron is hot. If you got hit records out there, or you’re in demand, you better take advantage of it at that moment. You can’t, “Oh, well, they’ll wait for me.” No, they won’t, because there’s somebody else coming down the pipe right behind you. So I said, “Gene, what should I do?” and Gene said, “Make the next guy pay for it.” That’s a very deep statement, “Make the next guy pay for it.” In my career I found that’s what starts to happen, whether you want it to happen or not. Because I can tell you about negotiations I have been in where, just because they perceive you to be of a certain status, they start upping the price. Earlier, I told Jeff a story about when I got called to do the Herbie Mann Super Mann album. At a certain point I was like the golden kid at Atlantic. The president would call me up at eight o’clock in the morning, “Hey, what do you think of Herbie Mann, Super Mann?” I said, “Wow, that’s great. Yeah, let’s do it.” So he says, “Tell your lawyer to come over one o’clock.” So we go and we’re sitting with the president of Atlantic and he says, “Let me see, I gave you a $10,000 advance last album you did. This time I’ll give you 20.” My lawyer and I look at each other and we start cracking up, because, wow, I’m getting a 100% pay increase. Jerry Greenberg looks at me and he says, “What’s the matter, that’s not enough? I’ll give you 30!” So I made $10,000 for laughing. [laughter] I wasn’t looking for any more money, I was happy! By the time the insanity was over, I had guys coming to me, right around the end of the disco era when everything crashed, a person said to me, “I will give you $250,000 to produce a studio album for me.” He didn’t even care what the content was, it was just that that was the perception of my position at that moment. That’s insanity.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, let’s talk a little bit about disco, because you worked quite a bit through these years on a number of really great records, but you also have said... well, I guess I should just ask you. What did disco mean to you? Why, as a producer, arranger, songwriter, did you find it to be such a great vehicle?

Patrick Adams

It’s really funny. Disco, for me, was once again creative freedom. I guess, one of the best things about disco also was what led to its demise, that anybody could make a disco record. I mean, in the pure sense of the word disco, because you’ve got four on the floor and you can throw something on top of it and if the rhythms were right you could make people dance. For somebody like me there was the extra impetus of doing goofy stuff, like if you’re familiar with “Push, push, in the bush,” there was a 5/4 bar. Matter of fact, it happens I’ve got time signature changes all through stuff.

[plays piano: Musique – “In the Bush” excerpt]

So that’s got one, two, three, four, five before you go back to the main part. You couldn’t do that in any other form. Were you about to play something?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You’re talking a little bit about experimentation, so...

Patrick Adams

That came about... I watch TV like other people do. Saturday Night Live was one of my favorite shows and John Belushi and the crew had this concept called the ‘bumblebees’ and it was hilarious, it was really funny.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

They would just dress up in bee costumes?

Patrick Adams

Yeah. I said, “Let me write a song for that.” Once again, you’ve got to chase opportunity, or you have to make opportunities sometimes where there is none. So, I said to Greg, because he was the collaborator when I wanted to do stupid stuff...

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

This is Greg Carmichael, who’s a producer also.

Patrick Adams

So we went out to Minot in White Plains and I think over a weekend we did this song. This shows you the calculating mind. On this record you will hear voices talking to each other. There’s a conversation that goes on between three people. The way it was done – first of all, I’m everything on this record. In those days we didn’t have samplers, we didn’t have pitch shifters. After the music was done, we actually had to slow the tape down and I sang the background, and there was no dropping in the background then either. I sang the background through this record. And then I hold this conversation between myself as a bee and two other bees. Now, to do that you’ve got to be thinking like a year ahead, because you’re saying one thing on this track and then on this track you’re answering or responding to the first one, and it’s total insanity.

[laughter]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao:

Let’s hear a little bit of this. This is Bumblebee Unlimited.

Patrick Adams

Why did I do this?

(music: Bumblebee Unlimited – “Lady Bug” / applause)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I think I played this mix because this is not the remix, and I just wanted to make sure I played not the remix, the original, since you’re here. But Larry Levan picked this record up and it became a big thing, a big record in the clubs, and he remixed it eventually.

Patrick Adams

I guess you could say it was a symbiotic relationship between producers and some club DJs who got it right. I mean, it’s bad enough that that record is what it is, and in the wrong hands that really could be a disaster because some wise guy DJ says, “I’m going to mix it this way,” and take all the life out of it. You don’t want that.

There was a period of life where I was so angry with some club guys, because they thought to remix a record meant to tear it apart and superimpose their life on it. That’s not what remixing was. Larry got it right because, well, he was at the [Paradise] Garage, which was one of the greatest clubs in the world, and he knew what made people move. He knew what excited people on the dancefloor, so he participated in the process, or added to the process.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And who else remixed your stuff that you also enjoyed?

Patrick Adams

John Morales, a whole bunch of people, Bruce Forrest. See, I don’t want to go past a certain point.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

OK, you don’t want dis anybody by neglecting to mention them.

Patrick Adams

Yes, please do not be offended if I left your name out. You know who you are, you did a good job, we’re cool.

[laughter]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

That’s kind of an unusual record, obviously.

Patrick Adams

By the way, I got to tell you something about this record. Here again is something... This record amazes me because in its conception it actually defies everything that I stated before, in the sense that I wrote this song in five minutes, I swear. Which actually may be the best songs, the ones that just... [clicks fingers] they’re there. I picked up the phone, I booked the studio across the street and I didn’t have any musicians, it was just me, and at this point I’m trying to be a little more professional in my output. The bass drum on this record, for those who are into the technical, is a click track. That’s not a bass drum. Actually, I think I got that from Giorgio Moroder, I’m not sure. But that’s a hell of a concept. I need a straight four, I need this fat bottom and I need it to be consistent.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Was that tricky for you as a producer during this era, trying to make things easy for DJs to play? In a live band everything’s going off tempo.

Patrick Adams

Yeah. Anybody who’s ever worked with a good number of the drummers in the world knows that as a drummer gets excited and he really gets into it, almost every time he does a drum roll he’s speeding up just a little bit. You do that ten, twelve times and suddenly you’re not at 112 anymore, now you’re at 114 or 115. If you’re up at 120, god knows where you’re going to wind up. But another amazing thing about this record for me is, I don’t know where some of the string lines came from.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Let’s play a little bit of this, because you’ve said that this is actually one of your favourites.

Patrick Adams

Yes, I think it’s one of my best records.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

All right, so this is Inner Life, “Caught Up (In A One Night Love Affair).”

Patrick Adams

It’s sort of like Holland-Dozier-Holland meets disco.

(music: Inner Life – “I’m Caught Up (In a One Night Love Affair)”)

Patrick Adams

[speaks the lyrics over the music] “I’m a fairytale princess in search of a knight and I never believed dreams come true. I’m just like you, I’m caught up in a one night love affair.” The lyric, the performance, that’s Jocelyn Brown. It was just a magnificent record.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You’ve worked with a couple of different singers, Jocelyn Brown, Fonda Rae, Christine Wiltshire, consistently over the years and these are singers who have been on numerous records, both by yourself and other artists as well.

Patrick Adams

They’re good.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What is distinctive about each one of them, that you’ve found? What is special about each one of them in their own unique way?

Patrick Adams

Fonda Rae is almost like a jazz soloist. People have not given her her props that way. It reminds me of Freda Payne in a sense. Although people knew Freda Payne for “Bring the Boys Home” and “Band of Gold,” she was a hell of a jazz vocalist. Fonda has that sort of sensibility about her and when you listen to “Over Like A Fat Rat” – now, Leroy produced that – or even when you listen to “Touch Me (All Night Long),” she slides into notes a certain way.

Christine Wiltshire, who by the way is my baby momma – Christine came out of a group with Luther Vandross. There was a group, Luther, that recorded for Cotillion Records in the ‘70s. Christine probably has sung on more records than anybody knows, because she was a constant studio singer, background singer, and she’s a great vocal arranger. She’s more traditional in her approach to singing. She went on to do “Weekend,” both versions of “Weekend,” and quite a few other records. Jocelyn Brown, I guess you could call her the mouth.

I mean, she’s like... [sings] She is the Loleatta Holloway, just a brassy, wonderful singer.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, speaking of her, you mentioned Holland-Dozier-Holland as far as Inner Life...

Patrick Adams

When I was growing up, from the time I was about 12, I guess, I listened to every record I could get my hands on. I mean, I ate, slept, drank music. I wanted to know why that guitar part was there, why did the drummer do a drum roll there? Why did they put a crash there? Which, by the way, to all serious musicians in the world, please put a crash at the beginning of a phrase. It’s like the capital letter at the beginning of a sentence. It drives me crazy when I’m listening to a record and... [sings a fill] I miss that crash if it ain’t there. It’s an accent, there’s a reason for it, use it. Valerie Simpson, Nick Ashford, one of my favourite writing teams, and I think I mentioned to you earlier, the first time I heard the original “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” I mean, I was like 17, I’m sitting at home and on the radio comes this.

[plays piano: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” basic chords]

That blew my mind, that chord structure. I said, “Oh God,.” And me being the mischievous me, I always like to see if I can make something better. I will not claim to have made it better, I have made it different because... OK, I’m going to play you Valerie’s hook, then I’m going to play my hook, then he’s going to play the record.

[plays piano: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” basic chords]

Now, what could you possibly do to make that different? Well, if you really study my music you will find that I’m into suspending notes through changes a lot. So, when you go... [sings and plays] That’s the melodic note. What could I possibly put on top of that that would make it different? I decided...

[plays piano: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” basic chords]

So, my record.

[plays piano: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” basic chords with his additions]

Especially with that lift going from the C major to the D major 9 is like, ooh, for me.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Let’s take a little listen to this.

(music: Inner Life – “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

It’s an overused word, but epic is really the only adjective I can think of to describe this.

Patrick Adams

I was always taught to think big.

[laughter]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

We played Black Ivory a little while ago. When I listen to your disco records, I feel like the way harmonically they’re done, these could be any tempo, any genre. I mean, I hear Black Ivory and I hear things of this chord progression, emotionally it hits you in a way that to me feels very similar. There’s almost a wistfulness to some of the melodies and the way you construct your songs.

Patrick Adams

I would say that most of my work is emotionally driven. For instance, right now there’s a lot of conversation about Daft Punk. I was watching Saturday Night Live again about a month ago. The commercial came on for Daft Punk, “Get Lucky,” and that 15 or 20 second commercial was all it took for me to say, “Damn, that’s great,” because that’s the way that record hit me. It may not hit everybody like that, but in your life there are moments when you hear whatever it is, whatever type of music you love, there’s a moment when you’ve heard a song that has done that to you. That is what you need to try to aspire to. Do not create music just to be making noise, because that’s what it is, it is self-centred, arrogant noise. Don’t do that. You’re polluting the planet, you’re polluting the universe. Try to do something that not only makes you feel good but can move somebody else, make somebody else say, “Ooh!” As a matter of fact, that’s been my biggest complaint for the last 20 years, I have seldom had moments of, “Ooh!” It don’t happen to me that much any more. Every now and then I’ll hear something. I guess that’s why Leroy Burgess and I have an affinity, because we like to do that to each other. I’ll email him an mp3 and say, “Listen to this,” and he’ll call me up and say, “Ooh!”

[laughter]

And he does the same thing to me all the time.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I find that to be true even of the P&P Records, these crazy synth records, the one we played at the top of the lecture. Some of them are instrumental, they don’t have vocals, but there is a moment in these melodies where it turns strangely sombre, very emotive to me, even in an instrumental.

Patrick Adams

I am very intense, let me tell you. Can I play you something, something new?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Sure, what do you want to play?

Patrick Adams

No one outside of this room has heard this record! This is a world premier! I talked about Fonda Rae before, I love Fonda Rae. Fonda’s like, “Ooh!” Just her voice does that to me anyway, whether it’s “Touch Me,” “Over Like A Fat Rat” or a whole lot of other things she’s done. This is something new that Fonda and I are working on. It’s a work in progress, but it’s almost finished. You’re the first ones in the world to hear this. By the way, I’ll play a minute of it then I’ll cut to the end, because I don’t want to give the whole thing away.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

All right, so here’s a little bit of Fonda Rae and Patrick Adams.

(music: Fonda Rae – “Please Don’t Make Me Wait”)

Patrick Adams

Do I have a chance with this record?

[applause]

See, never get so smug that you, “Oh, I know this is a hit.” You don’t know it’s a hit. Even when you know it’s a hit, you don’t know it’s a hit unless people say it’s a hit. Otherwise, you can just keep that shit to yourself. [laughs]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Did you go to discos much back in the day, to check out how your songs were doing?

Patrick Adams

I once went to a disco on New Year’s Eve, when Christine dragged me to a disco. On another occasion I went to a disco for a photoshoot, but I hate to tell you, I did not live in discos. I was in the studio all the time. Who had time to go dancing? As I often said, I did most of my dancing horizontally. Don’t think about that too hard.

[laughter]

I guess that was for me the release. It’s in the music. I created that. I don’t need to go to discos to enjoy it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How did you feel when the whole disco movement came to a close? You were obviously working on a major level, on an independent level, you had records out under various different names. In addition to the records to played today there were a number of different names. There was Phreek...

Patrick Adams

My whole life at that point was invested in discom, and there was a natural prejudice on this planet between different camps or different tribes. When your tribe is in power everything is wonderful, but the other tribe is trying to knock you down sometimes. If they get the upper hand, you’re in deep doo-doo. I recently did an interview for Unsung, that documentary show, and the question came up and I told them, “I went from making about $10,000 a week doing arrangements to zero overnight.” And I must tell you, one of the most important things that ever happened to me for my sanity – I had just produced four cuts on Melba Moore but it was never released. Because I’m in the studio working on music, I don’t know that disco’s dead. Nobody told me, I didn’t get the memo. That’s for real. Suddenly, none of my records are being released. Nobody’s calling me up for work. I’m like, “What the hell? What did I do?” I ran into Fonzi Thornton, who’s a background singer for Luther Vandross, and Fonzi said, “Hey man, I just heard that new stuff you did with Melba. It’s great, it’s killer!” I swear to god, if I had not heard that at that moment, I would have gone into a very deep depression for a long time, because I had no idea what went wrong. I didn’t find out until later on about the ‘Disco Demolition’ thing and ‘disco sucks’ and all of that. That’s sad, because the truth is there always has been danceable music. There always will be danceable music whatever you call it, whatever the instrumentation, whatever the sounds being used, so get off of that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

In the ‘80s you shifted gears a little bit. At a certain point you became an engineer.

Patrick Adams

It was self-defense. It was like, “OK, fuck it.” But I knew I wanted to keep my fingers in the game. I knew I needed to know what the new technology was, what the new techniques were, so I landed at Power Play Studio in Long Island City. It was a small eight-track studio when I went in there and Tony Arfi was the owner. He welcomed me, he said, “Hey, you got the run of the place. Tell me what you need.” Because, see, I started engineering out of self-defense, too. Back in the ‘70s, you’re in the studio and you ask the engineer, “Please, would you brighten that,” and the engineer would just touch the knob and maybe add one dB at 10,000. You say, “No, I want to hear...” I got tired of fighting with engineers. So, I learned what this was for, and that you should do for yourself anyway. You should learn, why do I use a compressor, why do I use a limiter, when do I use them and when not to use them and so on and so forth. But the thing was, working at Power Play, it became sort of a laboratory, like what Red Bull Academy is now. You know, you’re learning from him and she’s learning from her, and you’re throwing ideas out. Sometimes three people may be in a room and we say, “Well, we’d like it to sound like this or do that.” And there is no answer and then somebody says, “Well, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we run it through such and such?” and that becomes the new standard. That’s what Power Play became.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I want to play something from Power Play in those days. This is a little bit of a different direction.

(music: Eric B. & Rakim – “As the Rhyme Goes On”)

Patrick Adams

Two things about this; I engineered that and some people would tell you I produced it. I participated. See, I’m not the type who wants to grab all the glory. I mean, it’s obvious Rakim as a writer, you can’t grab any glory out of that. And as a performer, I will tell you, what you heard there he did in one take. As he mentioned in his lecture, he would write in the studio. He would write, say, eight lines and then record it, eight lines, record it. Then he would take it home and he’d come in the next night, and he’d do it in one take and he used to blow us away. I got to tell you, one of the greatest experiences in life – and think about this – can you imagine night after night being the first person and the only person to hear that shit? That shit used to fuck my head up. And he was always on.

Anyway, when you listen to that again, as I know you will someday, you’ll notice that there’s reverb on the bass. There’s a room on the bass and there’s a different room sound on the tom toms and the foot. This is what I’m talking about. I mean, that’s creativity. Back then most people would use a drum machine and the samples were flat and they sound horrible. One of the reasons Paid In Full sounds so good was my perception of – that don’t sound the way drums are supposed to sound. Drums are supposed to have this meat to them, this reflection from the walls and whatnot. That was probably a major contribution of mine, the fact that all the samples on that album are in pitch. Most rap albums in the middle ‘80s, the samples were in different keys and it’ll hurt your ears after a while. It just was sonically sick. So Eric B. and Rakim, they allowed me to pitch their samples up or down until they were in relative keys. And then I mixed the album.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But how did you actually mic Rakim’s voice? You did something a little bit different.

Patrick Adams

Yes, see, we have an easy way of speaking into the mics. It’s not popping. Anybody in here who’s an engineer knows, when you have somebody who’s right up in the mic and their projection is powerful, all you’re going to hear is ‘pop, pop, pop.’ It was actually out of frustration. One night – well, the first night, because we would have gotten nothing done otherwise – I said, I’ll use a bass drum mic. So, I went and I took the RE20 out the closet and I said, “Here, talk into this.” Because, it didn’t matter – compression, limiter – nothing helped. I put that RE20 there, he got up on the mic and, “Yeah, pump up the bass.” The bottom of his voice just came right up and the rest of his voice was right in your face. And I put a compressor on that. That was wonderful and that’s how we arrived at that. Not even Rush Limbaugh uses an RE20. Heaven help me. [laughs]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I want to actually open it up to questions at this point. If there’s anybody who has a question for Mr. Patrick Adams, don’t be shy.

Patrick Adams

And make it good, come on. No questions? You’re all fired.

Audience Member

Hi there. We were wondering, since this was a very big anthem in this so-called institution since its inception, can you talk a little bit about “Guardian Angel” and how that came about?

Patrick Adams

Well, I’ll tell you. Greg Carmichael was my co-conspirator on a certain line of thought. Peter Brown is a co-conspirator on another line of insanity. Peter would say, “Let’s go in the studio,” and once again I had no idea what we were going to do. Peter was very topical. If you notice, some of the P&P titles, like “Guardian Angels are Watching Over Us,” or “Don’t Let This Rainbow Pass Us By,” which actually, if you think about it, that’s the classic black R&B way of approaching things, because if you study records from the ‘60s, a lot of the hooks in 1960s records were words of wisdom or little catchphrases. I mean, that’s what a hook really was. You know, “I’m going to put it in the want ads.” Great hook. “I heard it through the grapevine.”

So, on the way to the studio one night we saw Curtis Sliwa and some of the Guardian Angels on 59th Street, and Peter says, “Why don’t we do a Guardian Angel record?” I was like, “OK.” I forgot the girl’s name, the singer he called, but we went in and once again, it was just spontaneous, on the spot, “Guardian angel’s watching over me.” We did it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Want to play a little bit of it?

(music: Golden Flamingo Orchestra – “The Guardian Angel Is Watching Over Us”)

Patrick Adams

I mean, that’s classic Patrick Adams in the sense that the song is a very a simple song. One of the things that I read Holland-Dozier-Holland say – who of course, that team wrote 50, 60 top ten records – one of them said that when you’re writing a song, you should write it as a conversation to someone. It sounds like you’re speaking to someone. And listening to that lyric right there, that’s what it reminded me of, someone describing a situation straightforward. The other thing is, like you said, musically, chord structure and going back to something Leroy said, I always try to surprise people. I mean, in the middle of this calm thing, suddenly you get this side-chord, like, “Where did that come from?” But it’s never disturbing. I want to put a smile on your face when you’re listening to the music. I want you to say, “Ooh!” Here we go back to that again. ”Ooh!” Or as George Takei would say, “Oh my.” [laughs]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Who were the voices? Were you the conductor voice on that?

Patrick Adams

I was the conductor. [laughs] Yes, I think there is something wrong with me. I was the conductor on there, and I’m the male background voice. As I said, I’m sorry that I cannot remember the female vocalist, but that was she and I doing all the background. She did a hell of a job on the lead, though.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Margo Williams.

Patrick Adams

OK, Margo Williams.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What do you attribute to having been able to have sustained work through a number of different eras? I mean, a lot of these folks in the room here, everybody’s a creative person, a musician, a producer of some sort. They may just be starting. You started at 20-years-old with a hit record.

Patrick Adams

Well, actually the process goes back I guess to when I was 12 or 13. Like I said, I knew I wanted to be a record producer. I didn’t know what a record producer was, but I knew the record producer was the person who made that thing happen, who guided the process. You know, you watch American Bandstand and Dick Clark is saying, “Here’s so-and-so, he produced that record.” And the guy’s saying, “Yeah, Dick.” That’s the guy I want to be. I want to be the guy who makes things happen. I would read articles about Burt Bacharach and Bacharach would, coming back to my self-defense question, if you listen to Burt Bacharach, especially the Dionne Warwick stuff, you will hear music that is going along very nicely and suddenly he drops a beat. He’s going 4/4 and suddenly he does a 3/4 bar or he does a 2/4 bar, and that’s what he wanted. But Bacharach used to complain, before that, that we all start off writing songs and somebody else records the song, that’s your pathway into the business for real. By the way, don’t be afraid to allow someone to record your song under the proper circumstances. I have a friend who played me a song in 1969, great song, and I said, “I want to record that with so-and-so.” He says, “No, man, I got to do it first.” Well, here we are 2013, he hasn’t done it and nobody else has done it. Meanwhile I’ve recorded, I don’t know, five, six hundred records in the last 40 years. I’m saying don’t get hung up on that whole egotistical thing. It’s not that important. Plus, if you allow the right person to record your song, it might become a hit. They’ll come back and then everybody else will come running. The one thing I’ve found that is true: you’re only as good as your last hit record. When you’re hot, you’re hot and when you’re not, you’re not.

In 1989, so now we’re past the disco era, we’re past the rap thing being strong and things were kind of cooling down for me again. Suddenly I turn on the television and Oprah Winfrey is introducing a young woman from England named Cathy Dennis and she’s doing... [plays piano] “Touch me all night long,” you know? She redid the song that Fonda Rae had done in 1986. Like six, seven weeks later the song was number two on the Billboard charts, it’s number one is this country. The first ASCAP check comes in, it’s like $140,000. I’m saying, “Jesus Christ, I had no expectations of that.” You never know what’s going to happen.

Last year, I get an email from DMG, which is... I forgot its name. It’s a company that clears tracks, like when a rapper samples you and he doesn’t know who to call or where to look. They’re called DMG and DMG will do the footwork, so I get an email and it says, “So-and-so wants to use a sample of your record in his record.” Once again, I could be a dick about it and say, “No, I don’t want nobody doing that.” But I said, “Go ahead!” I said, “Send me a copy of what they’re doing,” so they sent me back “Daughters” by Nas. I said, “Holy shit!” When the video came out it was like, woah. It was the single from the album Life is Good. You don’t know that’s going to happen. You never know what’s going to happen. And then it gets nominated for a Grammy. I’m like, woah.

And I got to tell you, a wonderful moment happened in February of this year. Nas’s father Olu Dara is a jazz musician and he was being honoured at the Schomberg Museum in Harlem, it’s a library. A band I play with on the weekends was invited to play. So we’re playing, and I know Olu and Nas happened to come to the concert, so Olu and Nas are sitting in the front row and Olu points to Nas, because I had told Olu I wanted to thank Nas. One of the things I try to be conscious of is thanking the people who have made my life better, thanking the people I’ve worked with. So when my band finished playing, I’m walking off the stage and I went down to the front and I said, “Thanks for using my song.” Nas bowed, he acknowledged my thought. The MC that night was Avery Brooks. I don’t know if you know Avery Brooks. He was Captain Sisko on a show called Deep Space Nine and before that was The Hawk on a television show called Spenser: For Hire, but Avery Brooks is a very formidable black actor with Shakespearean projection. I’m trying to get off the stage and he says, “Hey, what did you say to Nas?” I said, “I’m not going to tell you what I said to Nas.” He said, “No, I want to know. Matter of fact, the audience wants to know, what did you say to Nas?” I said, OK, so I went over, I said, “Thirty years ago I wrote a song called ‘Dust To Dust,’ Cloud One, and I was thanking Nas for using my song.” I went back to the front of the stage and I motioned for Nas to come up. We shook hands and the place erupted, it was a wonderful moment. I got to tell you, it was a wonderful moment for me, because I got to say thank you and I really meant that. But you can’t plan things like that, things like that just happen. Even this, I would love to have come here. I mean, as you said, you guys have been chasing me for six, seven years and it just never worked out. As things just happen, they happen. I’m here and I’m thankful for it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Anybody else with a question for Mr. Patrick Adams?

Patrick Adams

No, I’m not going to answer that.

[laughter]

Audience Member

Do you still engineer all of the recordings you do?

Patrick Adams

The funny thing about that is, only in self-defense. Usually, I’ll book a studio and there are a few places where I’m comfortable with the engineers, because they’re quick, they know me. I don’t have to say, “Clean that up,” I don’t have to say, they know what I want and they know what to do. If a guy, say, a young engineer comes in who doesn’t know what I’m about, and he’s like fumbling over stuff, I may walk over to the console and say, “Try this,” or “Try that,” because it’s still a give-and-take experience. One of my great cornerstones of my life – I don’t know everything and everything that I do know might be wrong. So, I’m sure there’s things to be learned. Well, I know there’s things to be learned from young people, or old people. And I have no doubt I have something to give away. Did that answer your question?

Audience Member

Yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Anybody else? Well, I feel we’ve learned a lot today so I just want to say thank you, and please join me in saying thank you to Mr. Patrick Adams.

[applause]