And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - In Loving Memory: Allee Willis

Episode Date: January 6, 2020

We were all devastated by the loss of the great Allee Willis last December. Needless to say, she was truly one of a kind. Revisit our episode with her and join us in remembering and celebrating Allee's life and work.Our guest is a one-woman creative musical think-tank, a multi-disciplinary artist and visionary thinker whose range of imagination and productivity knows no bounds. This GRAMMY, Emmy and Tony award-winning and nominated songwriter’s hits include the seemingly ubiquitous "September" and "Boogie Wonderland" by Earth, Wind & Fire, “I'll Be There for You” (the Friends theme song), as well as the co-authored Oprah Winfrey-produced Tony and GRAMMY-winning musical, The Color Purple. She has written for artists across many genres, including Cher, Diana Ross, Ray Charles, Herbie Hancock, Bonnie Raitt, Tina Turner, Boy George, Patti LaBelle, Justin Timberlake and more. She is an advocate for songwriter’s rights being credited as the first pop artist to address Congress on artist rights in cyberspace. Our guest most recently completed writing, recording, producing, directing and animating “The D,” a song for her hometown of Detroit. She has also started performing a series of sold-out one-woman shows, combining her songs with her comedy, art, videos and technology. We are honored to introduce this 2018 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, And The Writer is… Allee Willis! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This past Christmas Eve, the and the writer is family, lost another member. Ali Willis, last year's songwriter Hall of Fame inductee, who wrote songs like September and Boogie Wonderland for Earth, Wind, and Fire, and the Friends theme song, along with theme songs from Beverly Hills Cop and Karate Kid, you know, Grammy winner for the Color Purple, which he also was nominated for a Tony Award for that. she passed away and she was truly one of the most unique multimedia artists certainly I've ever met you know she has this had this incredible pink house where every room was

not a square so imagine going to a house where not one room not even the recording studio nothing is square and that really described her to a T We wanted to re-release her episode that we did only two seasons ago because I want you to hear her tell her story from growing up in Detroit, moving to Los Angeles, and having one of the most unique careers of anyone we've ever talked to. So rest in peace, Allie, here's her interview. Welcome to And the Writer is.

I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's Emmy, Tony, and Grammy-winning writer has been crafting hit after hit for five decades working with legends Patty LaBelle Bonnie Raid, Earthwind and Fire, Cindy Lopper, Tina Turner, Pet Shop Boys, Diane and Ross, Aretha Franklin, etc. But wait, there's more. She's an artist, set designer,

visual artist, director, and activist. In fact, she was the first artist to defend digital and cyberspace rights to Congress in 1997. She co-authored and adapted one of the most popular Broadway shows of the past 20 years, the color purple which received 11 Tony nominations. And won. I was getting there. A later won.

I like that. A later one heard the Tony for Best Musical Revival and the Grammy for Best Musical Theater album. If your jaw hasn't already dropped, this year she'll be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Not bad for a Midwest kid. Truly honored to get to introduce our venerable guests in the manner she introduces every episode of Friends. And the writer is, I'll be there for you. Allie Willis.

All right, thank you. I do have to clarify. Yes, please. Emmy Grammy Tony and Webby Awards. But the Tony, not the Tony. The Emmy, the Friends theme, did not win. Wow. So Emmy nominated.

No, that year the best TV theme was Deep Space Nine. I defy you to sing the theme from Deep Space Nine. Why do awards do that? Unbelievable. You know, they changed how the Emmys were voted for after that because they used to have committees. and I think at that time that, you know, there was no one on the TV committee under 84.

So the writer of the Deep Space 9 theme was from the old guard because we thought if we would lose it to anyone, we would lose it to the theme of ER. So anyway. So it goes. Thank you very much. This is actually really fun because going through your discography, it lines up with

you know basically my entire childhood so going through all this I mean when people talk about music being the soundtrack of your lives and being like yeah I mean I was in this place in this place and this place throughout the

you know the whole journey so this is this is going to be fun I have one song that I never ever ever told people I wrote because I was literally unaware it was a hit because you know back in the day if you didn't get like

into the top 10 or the top five. It wasn't considered, it was like good, but it wasn't considered a song that people would remember. And it actually was not until I started going to medical marijuana clinics and that clinics, you know, pot shops that, and needed a way to instantly bond with the proprietors. So I, you know, used to have like a greatest hit CD. And usually I would get them at like September, you know, like one of those. But I had like a couple of my kind of lesser known things on there

and the pot shop owners would go insane for a song from 1985 that was from the original karate kid called You're the Best by Joe Esposito. And I never used to like

It was actually written for Rocky 3, which is why all the fight references are in it. And then they didn't use it in Rocky 3, so it went into Karate Kid. But I, like, wanted Rocky 3. It's like, you know, because Rocky was Big, what was Karate Kid?

At the time, you know, you didn't know. So I completely missed that that song was a hit. And I stuck it into my greatest hits medley, because I, the last few years I've been performing, which is actually my favorite thing to do,

though I was terrified for 40 years of and in the medley you're the best constantly gets like the biggest amount of recognition and it's like what? You know, I didn't even know. Yeah, I mean it's probably what I'm going to text my friends

when we're done with this. So wait, okay, so I just want to give like some idea of where we are because we're in your house and I mean to call it one of a kind is a bit of an understatement. So how would you describe this house other than maybe a museum? Well, it has actually been listed as a museum in like official listings of Los Angeles museums.

It was built in 1937 as the party house for MGM. And though there is some discrepancy as to whether it was actually the MGM party house or the Warner Brothers Party House because it's closer to Warner Brothers. but it is a classic streamlined modern deco house. Looks like a big pink boat, you know, very incongruous with the neighborhood, which makes me love it even more. And I have been collecting 1950s through 1970s,

pop culture memorabilia. Actually, pop culture, atomic, you know, 50 Atomic. age stuff and soul everything from artifacts to furniture to cars to pencils i mean clothes whatever um so this house kind of becomes the perfect display case for all of it but it's not um it's a house where everything is used it's not you know there is actually nothing in display cases and it's the ultimate party house i take throwing parties very seriously because I do a lot of different things, and they're really the only place

where I can do everything I do in one space. So for a party, it's everything from designing the invitations to designing the sets, to, you know, DJing MC, casting fictional characters to, you know, run games that I make up. You know, everything very interactive. And so the house just becomes the perfect place. to do it. I mean, you were saying

that the second largest African American museum is using some of your memorabilia. They're going to display some of it. Where are you inspired to... Like, how are you inspired to collect... Okay, let me clarify that a bit. It's actually a major exhibition

of my work, which is both music and art, and the collection. And it's at the Charles Wright African American Museum. in Detroit, yes, Detroit. Shout out to Detroit. In 2020. But we're, you know, starting to curate all of it now.

Inspiration for the black stuff specifically. Sure. Well, growing up in Detroit, at the time when Motown was coming up, was just the greatest thing, a kid who loved that kind of music. could ever hope for. I used to have my parents drive me and then when I got my driver's license take myself down to Motown, which is just a little house at that time. Now it's a few little houses. And I would sit on the front lawn and you could hear certain instruments. You could hear the bass. You could hear the drums. You could hear the background vocals leaking out of the walls.

So despite the fact that I write both music and lyrics, I never learned how to play. Like to this day, could not play you an opening note, even of any song I ever wrote. But I hear everything in my head, and it comes from sitting out on that front lawn and growing up in that city at a time when it was just bursting with music.

When I started collecting stuff, it was more just that I couldn't afford anything. And I, you know, went into a thrift shop. And, you know, I found actually a little I Love Lucy toy for like five bucks. And I thought, well, this would make, you know, an interesting collection because I loved TV and radio and film. And it just started going. But I started veering off toward a specific interest in, I say soul artifacts,

but basically black Americana not Mammies and Sambo's and Jemima, none of that. My interest starts at the kind of black is beautiful, late 60s, gigantic afros, bell bottoms, you know, fashion music. And in the 80s, I work with James Brown, and he, well, two things. I did have a few, you know, Sambo stuff, and he walked around my house with, he asked me for a garbage bag. And literally, we went from room to room.

And if there was a Sambo, a Jemima, a Mamie, he would pick it up and literally hold it like three feet over the garbage bag and just let it go. So you could hear this thing like crashing. And then with my, you know, 60s, 70s pop call, black stuff. He made me promise that I would continue collecting it because he said he never saw so much of it in one place and there was no money to distribute these products back in the day. So most of this stuff was so rare. So if it was made in Detroit, it wouldn't get to Chicago.

So he made me promise to keep collecting them and I'm not going to. against the Godfather's word. So I just kept going. And that, of course, made it even better. I mean, I got the official word from James Brown. There's a James Brown thing right in back of you. It's a... Yeah, it says truly genius.

No, it says to a true... It's an autograph picture. I made him sign his original press photo. That press photo, I think, was from 1958. And because I collected, I had it here. And so the first time he came over, He wrote to a truly genius, Ali, I love you, WUV. But if you look closely, he originally wrote, I was you.

Now, nothing better has ever happened to me in my life beyond James Brown telling me that it used to be me. That's awesome. So let's go to the beginning because we have a lot of, whenever we've interviewed someone from Detroit, it's always like, what is it about Detroit? And obviously, when you started working, as you were saying, you were getting dropped off in front of Motown. I mean, that is the epicenter of music for 15, 20 years. Yeah, it's...

How old were you when you started thinking, wow, I really love music, I kind of want to get involved, and then how do you get involved? Well, I certainly never thought that I would write music or be in the industry. I just was obsessed with it probably starting around 10 Did your parents do music? No, no one in the fan.

Yes, they listened to music but not the kind of music that I liked. What did they listen to? They were like, you know, cha-cha and meringue. They were like big, you know, dance lessons. But the stereo, the big hi-fi player, which I actually still have downstairs, that was kind of the center of the universe.

And, you know, with my very first alive, I started, you know, buying records. Radio stations in Detroit were incredible. Black radio stations in Detroit were insane. And there was a DJ named Martha Jean the Queen. She was actually the first woman ever to own a radio station, which was in Tennessee. But then she came up to Detroit.

And she was on both of the black radio stations there, WJLB, WCHB, WCHB, and she had this very high-pitched voice. She's actually credited with quieting the city down during the 1967 riots where she stayed on the air for 48 straight hours. So just between the music that was pouring out of the city, those two radio stations specifically,

her as a DJ. I wrote a fan letter to Barry Gordy, I think when I was 11, telling him how proud I was to be a Detroiter and how much it meant to the city that, you know, Motown was happening there. I finally got to tell him that about three years ago.

I finally met him. And I have incredible footage of me telling him that story and thanking him and him going, no, thank you, you know. So at that time, you know, you're talking about the riots. You're talking about a different time where, you know,

especially those northern cities like Chicago, and Detroit were exceptionally segregated, if not still are. And, you know, in a way, Detroit less so than Chicago when it comes to segregation. How was it that, you know, a white girl in that era gets to go hang out with, you know, was there ever pushback from people saying, like, we can't really listen to that music? Well, my best stage story, those. I mean, the one that gets the laughs, you know, above and beyond all else, is about my father.

He was not a bigot. His best friend was black, but he had such a problem with me being fascinated with the culture. And I used to go to the Motown reviews. He would just, like, throw a fit. And when I went to college, when I left to go to college, he, you know, like most kids, you'd go. get a note from your dad.

You know, I love you or good luck in the future. All I got on his business stationery was stay away from black culture, dad. So if ever you wanted a daughter that would torment a father in terms of, you know, where she went with her life, that would be it. I always, you know, my fascination with Detroit, because this has been a massive preoccupation of mine very specifically over. over, say, the last 10 years. I have always been drawn to the underdog,

the disenfranchised, you know, if left to my own devices when writing songs, that's always what it's about, or that you personally have the power, if you choose to claim that. And I was so dismayed at the reputation that Detroit had. Now we're going later.

Now we're going, let's say, over the last few decades, where you would say you were from Detroit and you'd always be greeted with a groan or, oh, that's too bad. And it killed me because I got to live there

in like golden years, between the automobiles and the music. It was incredibly exciting. But I never lost that feel about Detroit. and to me, Detroit is the friendliest, happiest city. And in its worst days, it still to me, the city was about the people, not about the burnt out buildings. And even now, not about all the money coming into the city and being all built up again.

It was about the soulfulness of the people. So, you know, I spent the last. five years working on one self-funded project where, you know, in my head, I wanted to write a theme song for the city to accompany the reinvention, which when I started, there was no reinvention, you know, going on. And I, from between 2013 and 2015, went back and recombation, went back and recorded over 5,000 Detroiters singing lead. Anyone who wanted to sing or play on this record could. And it was also supposed to be a matching feature length documentary

and video. Video sounds too small kind of for what it became. But, you know, I wanted to show the spirit of Detroit. And it was the most fulfilling project I've ever done. We recorded it at 70s sing-alongs. Literally, we would go from football fields to a church, to someone's living room, to a delicatessen, to schools. And then culminating with a big party,

because to me, everything ends with parties. At the DIA, which is Detroit Institute of Arts, fifth largest museum in the world. And they gave me almost a third of the museum to throw this party in. And it was, of everything I've done, that was one of the most thrilling things, to see something that took so long,

that took so many obstacles to overcome. But this was the point of what I was trying to show about Detroiters. You know, from the ashes come the miracles, that despite the greatest of odds, the greatest of things can happen, if you have the imaginable. and the guts just to, you know, to go for it. So I am without question an eternal cheerleader for Detroit.

And the city has changed radically in the last just even couple of years. Like I bring people to Detroit, even, you know, when people were still saying horrible things about it. And they would go, I don't understand what, you know, everyone is complaining what a hideous city is. is, you know, it's gorgeous. It has so many artists and it's incredible. Yeah, I mean, it's, in a way because it's, at least it was, it was cheaper to live there than some other major cities. That's where art comes out of, you know, it's because artists can live there and you go to

some of these areas in Detroit right now and they have, you know, it's as hipster as any hipster place and it's as artsy as any other artsy place. Yeah, I was always pumping all my money back into these crazy projects that I would come up with that I wanted to do. Like this last thing, the Detroit thing, which is called the D, which is what people there call it. You know, just ate everything up for me since 2011 when I first started it. So the days of being able to buy a 10-story building for $80,000, I mean, that's kind of gone.

you know, or buying a house for $15,000, a four-bedroom house. That's gone. But the number of artists that were attracted there because of that and because of the freedom that you would get. You know, under those kind of conditions, there's an awful lot of freedom if you want to take advantage of it. No doubt. So let's tell the story of you becoming a songwriter from, you know,

from being a kid who likes me. music to becoming, you know, let's go back. Okay, I'm going to give you the speed course. Speed course, let's do it. Graduated from the University of Wisconsin and... Would you study? A journalism. Nice.

With a minor in advertising. Because advertising at that time, this was like late 60s, early 70s, was almost the hippest kind of writing that you could do. And someone told me that there were advertising. departments at record companies. And though I always wanted to live in California, because I was clear growing up, I am not staying with the cold.

I mean, this has to. And so I wanted to go to L.A., but there were way more record companies in New York. So I went to New York and, by a fluke, got a job at Columbia and Epic Records. You know, Columbia turned into Sony later. and I was a secretary for about two weeks and then was bumped up to being a junior copywriter.

So I was writing all the print ads that would go into like Rolling Stone or those kind of magazines and then the trade. Do you remember what albums you started off with? Yeah. Well, my first person I ever met was Janice Joplin. That was five days before she died. I eventually moved into her apartment, though, in L.A. when I moved to L.A.

First big person that I was put with to handle all the stuff was one of my favorite songwriters of all time, Laura Niro. Yeah. And her manager at that time, and it was his first client. I mean, it was everyone's first

was David Geffen. And so let's see. Barbara Streis-I was put with all of the minority acts, which were the black acts and the women, which was fine with me. That's all I cared about anyway. And then every now and then, like a Simon and Garfunkel would sneak in, you know.

But for the most part, the ads I remember, God. Okay, so a lot of Streisand, a lot of Lorraine Niro, Sline the Family Stone, there was a Johnny Cash thrown in there, Aretha, the flukiest thing, however, was that I wrote, there was a song out in 1972 called Alone Again Naturally by Gilbert O'Sullivan. It's this fantastic ballad. It was actually the biggest record of the year.

And I never thought about being a songwriter or anything. And I actually loved my job at the, it was very glamorous working at a record company right out of college. But I was on a buzz. riding home and I scribbled my own lyric to that music. And then I called up my only friend I knew who played piano and said, you know, have you ever written a song? No, but I'm ready. So he came over and he brought the sheet music to never can say goodbye. And we started at the end of the song. So in other words, played the chords from back, you know, to front. I can sing a melody to anything. That's

something I always, you know, could do. If you started, like, banging pencils together, I'll hear something. So he, you know, clunked this thing out, and I bought a big, real-to-reel, you know, tape recorder. And so we wrote our first song that day by combining lyrics I wrote to Alone Again, naturally, with music from Never Can Say Goodbye. And then I wrote two more songs by myself. And I took them to my boss at the record company. company and he knew it was me. He liked it. So we took it, we had to take it to the two heads of the

record companies without saying who it was because I would have lost my job. It was a conflict of interest. So Ronne Lexenberg was the head of Epic at the time and he loved it. Then it had to go to Clive Davis, who was my ultimate boss because he was head of Columbia. So I got the deal with them knowing who it was, then recorded it over the next year and a half or so. By that time, then they did know, but I had to quit my job. So I went from being a network...

Which you were pretty cool with. Well, I was cool with that, but I went from being a network executive to being a hatchet girl at a comedy club, which I actually thought was the serious cool job because it was at a club called Catch a Rising Star. and there was Catch Rising Star and the Improv, or the two big comedy clubs,

and it was the year they were casting the original Saturday Night Live, would have been 1976, and so all these people were coming through. And I had an attitude in the hatchet room. It's like, you're just comedians, but I'm doing records, you know. An album came out, my first 10 songs,

that would have been 1974, I was terrified on stage. I was just, I spent all my time making sets, making the costumes, choreographing everyone, and just terrified to rehearse. And the first time I ever performed was right after the album came out

and they put me in front of 10,000 people. I mean, I thought I was going to die. Had an all-black band dressed as sequined vegetables and they put us with a folk singer. So that was trauma. So I only did three more performances. And in the middle of an instrumental, I jumped off the stage with my band screaming at me.

Come back. You know, that's unprofessional. And I walked out the door thinking I would take a year to get myself together and just try and perform at little clubs, not these like massive concerts. And it took 30s. 37 years. But now it's my absolute favorite thing to do. But it was crazy. But the day I was dropped from the

record label, because I was dropped because I refused to go on tour. And the record was like selling, but not really. One of my friends who was a big background singer had a session that night. And she said, well, you really shouldn't be alone and, you know, come to this session. So when you're dropped from a record label the last place you want to be is it's someone else's session who has a deal but she was adamant about it so i thought okay anyway we go and it was one of those crazy things that happens to me all the time where i walked in and the person whose session it was turned around took one look at me ran over to me fell to her knees and started bowing at my toes and said, what are you doing here?

Go home and write me a song. It was the one person who had bought my album and it was Bonnie Raid. So I didn't even know what she sounded like, but I had one of my friends who was a songwriter always used to talk about this chick, Bonnie Raid. So I like ran on the subway. I got home, I called him.

And he came over. We wrote three songs that night. She chose one of them, so I had my first cover the next day. Went on on the road with her for a while as a background singer and figured, oh, well, now it's going to roll. And the part of it that I loved of the entire experience was the songwriting. I loved the relationship with the co-writers. I loved, you know, fitting words to music. I loved clunking things out on the piano, even though I could never.

again, sit down and play it as a coherent song. So I figured, okay, now I'm with someone and she was getting a lot of heat at that time. But I would get three to four songs cut a year, but nothing substantial until same girl that had taken me, this chick named Sharon Redd. She was one of the Harlats, Bette Midler's background singers.

She was the one that took me to the Bonnie Raid session. And then in 1978, and I had moved out here by that time. Because if I was going to starve, it was not going to be in the hat-check room freezing in New York. So moved out here. And the Harlettes, Bet's group, got a record deal. And they took a lot of my songs, which were literally me just singing into a microphone. So they had no money. Half the time they didn't even have piano on them.

and they took them to their producer David Rubinson. He owned a big studio up in San Francisco called The Automat, and he was producing Patty LaBelle at the same time. She heard the demos and actually gave me money to fly up to San Francisco to put the songs down as demos. And then she became the first artist to start regularly doing, doing my songs, like at least a couple per album. On that trip, when she had me up there, she kept saying to me,

my friend is also up there, and he needs lyrics. I didn't want to just write lyrics. And plus, I'm finally with Patty LaBelle. I don't need the friend, you know? So I never went into the studio where the friend was. And she never told me his name. And then one day, he actually followed me into the bathroom. And these two male feet come under the stall.

And it just said, Patty says, you're a great lyric writer. And, you know, come into Studio B. So I figured I was trapped. So I went in and we immediately started writing. I had no idea who it was. But there were more keyboards than I had ever seen. And, you know, 1978 since, you know, coming in. and this guy seemed to have had everything.

But we wrote, we were in the middle of this second song, and he was kind of on the phone and looking down, so I really stared at him. And then I went, oh, my God, it's Herbie Hancock. So I ended up writing four songs on the Herbie Hancock album, had the Patty stuff. One of my friends ended up dating someone in Earth, went in fire. And so at the beginning of 1978,

I was on food stamps, getting medical assistance, pretty much as close to welfare as you could be without actually being on it. And by the end of the year, I'd sold 10 million records. But still getting the food stamps because the money is so delayed. So that's my saga. A long one, I know.

I apologize. No. I mean, we're really only at the beginning, so let's be honest. Did your parents and your dad start to understand? No. Any of this yet? No. My mom passed away when I was really young, so it was really just my dad.

He, to me, never showed it. He was dismayed that all these people ended up being black. You know, his thing to me is right for a white artist, right for a white artist. But I would hear from all my friends in Detroit. You know, we love your dad, but when we see him, we have to, like, make up in the scoose. he will sit there and talk about you for hours. Good, talk about me. You know, with me, he would, like, complain about my hair.

He'd complain about my clothes. He complained about the black culture. To my friends, he evidently, like, bragged, yeah. So I think he just couldn't show it to me. Sure. However, no one was happier that I wrote that friend's theme than my father, because you could not find a whiter show or song, if you tried.

I mean, it's just interesting to say, you know, the, you know, trying to avoid black culture and then writing September is like, it's like literally, I mean, like, you couldn't have nailed it right on the head. No, I'm not going to write, I'm not even get close to it. I'm just going to like be in it. And September, you can't, I mean, still,

I hear it on the radio every day. I mean, you cannot imagine how much. Was there ever pushback when you walked in a room? They're like, oh, white girl. Actually, my very, very, very first experience getting press was like that. September came out, and then I wrote with Maurice White, Al McKay, a couple other writers, almost all of the next Earth, Wind, and Fire album, the I Am album. I think I wrote eight out of the 10.

songs there. Boogie Wonderland was on there in the stone, a bunch of other ones. And my very first press was with Jet Magazine. And I had an office at A&M Records at the time because I was signed there

as a songwriter. And these two guys came in, they had all their equipment, they're sitting in my office. And honestly, like a half an hour went by. And they finally said to me, well, is Allie coming?

And I said, I'm Allie. And one of them went, you're white? And the other one went, you're a woman? And they called the office and they didn't do the interview. So that was the first, but one of the only times like that. And then a lot at the color purple when we first opened on Broadway. my two music collaborators, Brenda Russell, Stephen Bray, were black.

And I guess you would expect the writer to be black. But a lot of times people would come out after the shows because we stayed for like a month or so after it opened on Broadway, you know, just to see what the reaction was. And oftentimes people would come out and they would have read the little playbill, you know, your little bios in back, and they'd always go,

who's the earthwind and fire one? And they'd never look at me. They'd always look at Brendan, Stephen. So they got this little kind of hand routine, you know, going, almost like the temptations pointing, you know, to the white girl. And, you know, usually people were very cool, but I did one time have a woman that just walked away. So, but for the most part, I don't,

you know, get that at all. And I will always say that the bulk of the breaks that I've had in my career have come from the black community. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. I mean, my biggest, I guess my biggest songs are all with people of different ethnicities. Yeah.

You know, that's just... You know what? If you have soul, other people will soul spot it. One of the things that's interesting when we were talking about the song from Karate Kid or Boogie Wonderland. You know, it's, I think people sometimes think that when a song is number one on a Billboard chart, that that means that everyone will in perpetuity remember that song. Yeah, not the song. And you find it's not, it's not like that.

You can have a song that's number six on Billboard and Boogie Wonderland still. It's like every bar mitzvah plays it. You know what I mean? Like you can't help it. It's just, just something to notice. You know, it's not always the one that hits, number one that everyone remembers. No. I came up with a certain group of writers and we all kind of hit at the same time.

And I... Or I'll just make a general statement, especially songs that try and follow the trends of the time. Those are the ones that don't hold up. If you're the first and you're doing it, cool. If you're kind of a sound alike and it's of the moment, even if it's huge, it's not remembered and I am very blessed

to have a few that just absolutely refuse to die you know September literally gets bigger every year that one is in a whole other

class amazing where that happens in you know in one's career too that that can be you know really the first hit

like really big hit and then that's the one. Yeah. I mean, I've been blessed that there... I mean, you have a lot throughout, but to have that one. Yeah, well, that one, and that one is my favorite one.

Yeah. I have never lost the thrill from the second that the intro hook was written to today. And I, trust me, I've heard that song massacred in more karaoke weddings, our mitzvahs and everyone makes me as happy as the last.

It's an eternally happy song and that's what we set out to do. September was actually written as the third song in a trilogy and that two of the songs had been out before I even got there. But that was the only thing that Maurice White told me about that song in writing it was that he wanted to call September and that it was to be the third in this trilogy. The first of which was an Earthwind and Fire hit called Sing a song, also incredibly happy song.

And then the second was a song that he had written with Al McKay and the three of us who wrote September by the emotions called Best of My Love, which great is a pop record. record like ever. So those two songs were such favorites of mine and impossible to be in a bad mood listening to either of them. So the goal all the way through with September was this had to be the happiest one. So, and I feel like that is what kind of carries it through the test of time that it's so uplifting. And it fills people with the spirit with which it was,

written. Yeah, I like that I'm always telling writers to not make the listener an antagonist. Like there's no reason to make somebody feel bad about themselves and it doesn't have to be like you did me wrong. Every song doesn't have to be about how you broke my heart. And

you know, one of the songs that I have highlighted that to me brings that out, which I don't know if our listeners will know this, but Neutron Dance which is maybe the weirdest lyric ever. And yet this thing This thing ends up being in, you know, it's in Beverly Hills Cop,

so it's like right in my wheelhouse of childhood glory. And this song comes out and it's like, it's, I mean, it's not only a dance record, but it's called Neutron Dance. I mean, when you're writing that lyric, where in your psyche are you like, oh, this is going to be a great pitch. That's one of my favorite stories. First of all, it was not written for Beverly Hills Cop. It was written for a film called Streets of Fire.

And all they told me about this film was that it was a handsome, or at least for the scene we were writing for, was a handsome guy, a gorgeous girl, and a black duop band were the only people to escape a nuclear holocaust. And they were on a bus riding out of town, you know, as if the band they're so happy they're escaping, you know, write a song for that. And my publisher put me with a kid. much younger than me, that they had just signed. And they didn't tell me until right before he was ringing my doorbell that he had never written a song before. And I figured he only got the deal

because his brother, whose name was Michael Simbello, this was Danny Simbello, had written the biggest record of the year before and sung it, a maniac from Flash Dance. So I'm writing for a stupid movie. I'm writing with someone who has never written, written a song before. And I was at a point in my career where I was very bored songwriting. I was getting over 100 songs cut a year, which meant I was a machine. And a lot of times I was

just putting lyrics to other people's music. And had I been involved in the music, at bar five, the music would have changed. So I was getting very disenchanted with my career. I was at the beginning after September came out, I constantly had stuff. But because I was at such an uninspired point, I was really at a point where I thought I'm never going to have a hit again. And now I got this dumb movie, this dumb kid, this whole thing. So when he walked in, I said, I only have an hour. And I literally put a timer on.

And the one thing I knew about him was that he had been in Stevie Wonder's Bainter's since he was 15. So I knew he was a phenomenal keyboard player. So because it was supposed to be this duop band we were writing for, I just said play the tritus 50s bass line that you can think of. And he just started, you know, boom, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bab, bab, bab, bab, bab, bab. And I just wanted him out of my house. I just wanted to be done.

And just started singing. I always write autobiographically. so I felt like I was at this low point. I knew I needed to make a change in my life. So the whole song is really about, you know, all these conditions in your life that are not working. But basically if your life isn't working, get off your ass and change it,

i.e. do the neutron dance because someone can push the button tomorrow and we're all up in smoke. So he left my house. We finished in 58 minutes. The only thing we didn't have was the title. It was originally called Barbecue. It was originally, I'm just burning doing the barbecue.

And I knew, no, no, no, barbecue is not the right title. And I just remember being in my car, driving down the 405. And literally, in neon lights before my eyes, this neutron dance came up. I mean, not actual neon lights, but that's how vividly it hit me because I'm thinking nuclear. It's got to be like something. So let neutron dance be symbolic of get up and change your life.

So the one thing I will say is that it was rejected for streets of fire, thankfully. It was picked up and used as temp music in Beverly Hills Cop, which means they wanted to replace it because they couldn't own the publishing. They sent it out to every songwriter, a cassette of Neutron Dance, copy this song. I got so sick of my friends telling me what a great time they had ripping me off that I told Danny to come over. I put the timer on again. And we stripped Neutron down to the drums, took all the same instruments, just changed

arrangements, changed chords, wrote a completely parallel lyric. If one had cracks in the ceiling, the other one had a, uh, you know, the floor that was cracking. I mean, literally, same song. Handed it in, not accepted. And then I got a, just about a month before the film came out, I got a call that Jerry Bruckheimer, whose film it was, went into his garbage can,

looking for a cassette to tape over, played a little of it just to make sure it sucked as bad as his screener said it did, and fell in love with that. that was the second song we wrote. That was called Stir It Up. So I recorded it with Patty LaBelle. He never found a song he liked better than Neutron Dance.

So Neutron Dance stayed in. And won the Grammy. I mean, it was like crazy. But even better. Even better. Pravda, which was the official newspaper of the communist government, mistranslated Neutron Dance as Neutron Bomb and named me one of the ten most dangerous subversives

living in the United States. Congratulations. Thank you very much. I was supposed to be going to Russia. Of all the accolades in this house. It's the best. That's huge. I was supposed to be going with 10 songwriters,

BMI songwriters, to write with the top 10 Russian songwriters because it was glass-nosed and the wall was going to come down. And I was pulled right off of the trip because they didn't want any trouble at all. But that was one of my favorite things. For me, who's into kitsch, how much crazier does it get to that? They said I preached.

I poisoned the minds of youth by preaching the inevitability of nuclear war. Oh, yeah. So all that's accurate. Well, it actually was, but none of that was in the lyric. It was crazy. So obviously, you know, there are a bunch of hits even between that and the next one we're going to talk about. I know, you know, what have I done to deserve this?

For Pet Shop Boys, a massive song and whatnot. That was, I was not, they didn't even know I was a songwriter. I was hired as an artist to paint their portrait for their fan club stationary. And I was flown to England. I just started painting. And their manager was in the States looking for a publishing deal. for them because West End Girls had just come out and was a huge hit

and so I got flown over there and it was while they were posing for me that Neil, the lead singer, kind of figured out who I was and so I ended up staying an extra week and we wrote, what have I done to deserve this? Yeah. All right, so I mean the one we have to talk about

because this one for sure all of our listeners know is I'll be there for you, the theme to friends. I mean, I don't know, as big as September is, I don't know how you beat. I don't know how you beat this one. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's, how do you even describe what it's like to have the theme?

Yeah, it's, well, first of all, it was, I only wrote that song because I was trying to get out of my publishing deal. I never wanted to write a song again. It was 1994. And in 1991, someone had shown me the internet. And I immediately became obsessed. No one was aware of what the internet was in the entertainment business. But the first thing I saw were message boards. This is before there was graphics on the web. And I looked at it and I was looking for a way to get my parties. out of my backyard. And I thought, oh, well, this person's from Mexico

and this one's from Japan and this one's from Cleveland. Look at the way all these people link up. And people were just exchanging like information. And I thought, well, this at least could be funny. And then I started, you know, being exposed to these emerging technologies where all of a sudden there was, you know, there was graphics and eventually there would be animation. So I got this idea for a social,

network. And I, my CEO was Mark Cuban, you know, Shark Tank and Dallas Mavericks. He made all his, you know, money through technology. And we would go around to record companies, TV, you know, networks, film companies. Everyone said, you know, the internet's a fad. Why are you throwing away your music career? You know, but to me, I wanted to take all these emerging technologies. And, you know, and have this little, it was actually a cul-de-sac with these fictional characters who were supposed to be your guides into cyberspace so that people could write songs together.

Like, I didn't want to write a linear song anymore. It's like what is a song once you have millions of people linked up from all over the place. I really wanted to music and art direct cyberspace. And so it was 1994. I still was under my publishing deal, and it was the first time I ever had a song quota.

And in the past, that wouldn't have been a problem because I was like a machine. But now I'm interested in this whole new, you know, platform that had nothing to do with linear, non-interactive stuff. So I was just looking for a way to get out of my deal, my publishing deal. And every time I thought I had fulfilled the quota, they said, well, you may have written this song with one person,

but there's, you know, six people in the group, and they're all, you know, on the label. So it finally got down to I owed one seventh of a song. And Friends was a Warner Brothers show, and I was signed to Warner Chapel. And one of the producers of Friends had, I had won the AFI Film Direction Award, women's directing award, a few years before that.

and he was my mentor during that. So he called up Warner Chapel, said, well, we need a commercial yet quirky songwriter. Whenever they said quirky, I would get, you know, the gig. Plus, it was a way for me to fulfill my quota. But everyone said, you know, this show's not going to be a hit. No one's ever going to hear this song. I only came in on lyrics because the music had been,

started and written already. So I just had no interest in doing it. Michael Scloff, by the way, wrote the music. And I only did it to get out of my deal. I bitched all the way through it. It was just this white, twangy, especially the demo. Handed it in. Three weeks later, the show that no one thought was going to be a hit

explodes, like from the first showing. and what happened with the song is that a DJ in Nashville, radio DJ, made a cassette of the song off the air, and then he played it back to back for 45 minutes, and they got so many listener calls saying, you know, what is that record, that Warner Brothers then decided, okay, let's expand this into a single. The only group that was in town and not on tour at the time,

Warner Brothers group was the Rembrandts. So they like go into the studio. Like literally, no one involved in this song. They didn't cut the TV version? Yeah, they did cut the TV version. Yes, that's how they got the gig to cut the TV version. But then it's like, let's expand it into the song. But I'm just saying they were the only ones in town.

I was looking to get out of my deal. I mean, no one involved. Wanted to do this. And then it ended up being, I mean, am so grateful for those circumstances happening. It's unbelievable. And then that was my last publishing deal I ever had. And it was perceived that I was leaving to pursue this crazy thing that no one believed in,

the internet, but that I had really gone off, you know, kind of tossing off one last greatest hits when in fact I just was crawling out of there, you know. It's amazing how, you know, when, when I talk to people about moving to L.A., it's like having that proximity is huge because what happens is that you end up having somebody say, well, why don't you come over here and write this?

And if you happen to have that day free, fine, whatever, let's get it done. And you just do it. And if you happen to be in town, you cut the song. And then, you know, the Rembrandts will, that's what they will be known for. Yeah, which they're not happy about. They never wanted to be known for that.

song. You know, that song never came out as a single. It was the number one airplay record of the year, but they did not want to be known for a song that they did not solely write. They did write part of it, you know, when we had to expand it. So they refused to release it as a single. You had to buy the album. So for the number one single of the year, zero dollars and zero cents from sales. Yeah, it was crazy. Oh, wow. Yeah, welcome to my career. But, you know.

I mean, do you think, you know, because I know that we don't have forever, but how do you, that you kind of come up in the 70s when people are buying albums and vinyl? And you've experienced the whole journey from vinyl through tapes, through CDs, through MP3s to now. And you say, welcome to your career. And yet, like, obviously you've sold probably $60 million. Yeah. Yeah. But that's 60 million of albums, which have multiple songs on it.

I mean, if you want individual songs, you're an astronomical number. Yeah, I don't actually know. When you say, like, well, welcome to your career. How do you see it like that? I was never, ever, ever into the money end of it. I wanted creative freedom. I wanted the relationships with the collaborators and I wanted enough money to be in thrift shops every day

and to throw parties. So I would do spec stuff and not necessarily have the greatest deals. Like my earthwind and fire stuff fell under my original publishing deal where I didn't own any publishing. Friends, you know, you write for T. you don't own publishing. But even the writers share, I mean, that thing's being played right now somewhere.

No, no, that's great. Yeah. But it's, I just, my friends who were very cognizant of business, who were also songwriters, financially may not have sold anywhere near what I sold, but always financially did better for me, better than me. It's honestly only now, and maybe since the color purple, because the color of purple was the first thing I absolutely refused to give away. You know, it had been a Warner Brothers film,

so Warner Brothers had underlying rights in, you know, what we did. And they, one of the three of us was, had already had a publishing deal. Two of us didn't. and it was the color purple. It wasn't like it was going to be this small, even if it failed, it wasn't going to be this tiny little thing. And the deal that we got from Warner Brothers, this is the God's Truth.

They offered me and Stephen Bray, and Stephen was known for all these Madonna records and it was crazy. They offered us for 100% of the publishing that they would take, $1,500. to split between the two of us. Yeah. So that was really when I went,

you know what? No one's owning me anymore. No one's like getting anything. And I'm actually in one of the heaviest songwriting periods I've ever had right now. And I'm like brutal. I mean, I am, I wish I was this way 30, 40 years ago, you know. but then again

I had the most interesting creative career because I would just do things I was interested in I mean that's what I was going to say is that I think it's often paralyzing when you start thinking well I mean if I work with this artist

this artist has nothing going on so you pass on it this artist has nothing going on so you pass on it even if they're good sometimes and I think that that in the end hurts a lot of writers who are business-minded first, you know, because you end up writing on a lot of bullshit records that have, like, a lot of

money behind it and it ends up being something that's not credible. And the songs aren't that good. You're just doing it to do it to do it. Because you're motivated for the wrong things. It's really hard to be business-minded and creative and be honest all at the same time. I mean, the ideal is if there's an even split between that. But I think when you say your friends that are in the same case that were more business-minded, but I would imagine a lot of them weren't as prolific or didn't get to write as quirky of projects

or didn't get to, you know, weren't aiming for a Broadway show, weren't aiming for... Well, I think the big difference is a lot of them had hits, but they weren't classics. So it's not like songs that really survived. And I would say the main difference is

I'm the one that's still going. You know, I'm going like I'm 21. I'm still like looking for my... big break. Yeah. But the ones who a lot of them... Why are you...

Because I'm not just a writer and I'm not just an artist and I'm not... You know, that I was always someone who saw all the various ways that you could express something artistically. I always saw that as one thing.

So, despite the fact that I was designing, let's say, a lot of, you know, in the 80s, a lot of music But if it wasn't my song, which it never was, you know, certainly back in that day, there was absolutely no value given to a multimedia artist, multimedia meaning multimedia as opposed to that you're doing something online, you know. And certainly when it came to online stuff, I saw that as very organic to that, that

that it should not just be used as an advertising medium or a way to stream songs, that there was a way to express an idea musically. There was a way to express it in an online environment, which was very social. There was a way to express it as a painting, as a video. And that's why I started, like, funding my own career because it was the only way besides my parties

where I could do everything in one chunk. I mean, I still feel that way. You know, if I write with someone today, it's like I love the experience of doing it, but when I hear the record, it's like, oh, if they only knew what I was really capable of doing, because this could have been a whole visual, interactive world, not just a song.

So, you know, my favorite thing, collaborations are with people who really understand what I do and we approach it at a much broader vision than just what's the music and what's the lyrics. Sure.

We're going to go to the next segment which is I'm going to name five things and you're just going to tell me the first thing that comes off the top of your head. Oh boy, you're in trouble. Okay, come on. Let's start with... Vibrator. No, okay. Let's start with Patty LaBelle. kind magnanimous riffs a lot.

Let's go with earth, wind, and fire. Oh, boy. Thank you, God. It gave me the absolute break of a lifetime and led me down a spiritual path. I love that. Let's go with Detroit. Greatest city in the world, soulful,

big-hearted, undervalued, brilliant, watch out. Let's go with the internet. Still not being utilized artistically in the way that I think it could be

paradigm shifting, literally a place to live, in the most real sense of the word. Bubbles the artist. Brilliant. I know I'm supposed to only be giving you one word. No, this is fine. Bubbles the artist is my alter ego,

who I created. She was a really kind of bad painter, but she supported me throughout the making of the color purple, the writing of the color purple. Bubbles taught me how to have fun with music and art. because I took it very seriously before,

and the whole point of a Bubbles painting was that it was affordable to anyone. And Bubbles told stories. Bubbles helped me in ways she could never imagine, and she's been in retirement for 10 years because when I was doing her, I was also doing the color purple and the dichotomy, it was too big of a brain split.

So I retired her, but I have officially announced as her manager that she is coming back. So Bubbles is about to tell her congratulations. Thank you, I will. I will. So Songwriter Hall of Fame, congratulations. Thank you very much. Are you excited? Very excited.

I honestly did not. It was never a big deal to me to get in because I figured that you kind of had to be really connected to get in and that you would have to do a whole, you know, it's like any award, like the Oscars. If you think that person's getting best actress, because everyone just thought she was the best actress, no, it took millions of dollars to make that happen. So I was never comfortable with like self-promoting or anything and just never thought that I had a chance. I thought I deserved to be there, but never expected it to happen. Therefore, I did not think it was a big deal. And I got so excited

when they told me I got in and it is a much bigger deal than I ever could have dreamed and I'm elated about it. Well thank you for doing this you know as a Midwest kid who moved to L.A. and who've gone

seen this journey it's I think it's so important to hear a story like yours so you can you can grow up not in LA or New York love music so much and follow its path

and then to have it provide that life where you were saying that all you wanted to do was to afford to go into thrift stores, you know, essentially and you're living in a museum and it's incredible

it's what we kind of all strive for is to find a way to pay for your life from music and the life want to have. Yeah. You know, not just, you know, I know a lot of people who might make money and don't know how to allocate those resources, but. Or they do the things that they think one does.

They get the big cars and the fancy homes. Yeah. But they don't do them. And, you know, you are you. I mean, there's nobody who's like you. And I think if there's one way to, you know, there's no other way to applaud a career than to to be an author. of someone truly being themselves.

Thank you. I love that. You're a leader and we appreciate your work. Thank you. So thanks again. All right. Anytime. All right.

I'll be there for you.