From Uncut’s June 2005 challenge (Take 97). In a world unique interview, Uncut visited the soul legend in his studio as he labored on his then-upcoming album, A Time 2 Love…
By the small hours of Saturday morning, L.A.’s Koreatown district is hushed and nonetheless. The odd automobile rattles alongside Western Avenue, however a lot of the Friday nightclubbers have dispersed and headed house. “Little Seoul”, if one can name it that, is slowing down.
Unbeknownst to the few locals nonetheless awake, the soul legend as soon as generally known as Little Stevie Surprise is difficult at work within the studio that sits slap-bang within the midst of this inconceivable neighbourhood the place few indicators or billboards are in English. The blind genius who recorded a minimum of 5 of probably the most exceptional albums within the historical past of American music is rounding off one other night time behind the huge SSL console of Wonderland, placing ending touches to a observe from his forthcoming A Time 2 Love.
Surprise at work is every part you may think. His head sways back and forth as he mumbles melodiously alongside to “Please Don’t Damage My Child“, the observe he’s engaged on tonight. The well-known gums of his open smiling mouth present above his higher enamel. His braided hair is bunched behind him, tiny seashells dangling at its ends. He’s dressed fully in black that matches his sun shades.
A TV monitor above the console exhibits a gaggle of girls carrying denim and corn-rows and standing spherical a microphone lowered from the ceiling. Essentially the most senior of them, Shirley Brewer, has sung with Stevie since 1972’s Speaking E book; hers is the hollering voice that is available in midway by way of ‘Strange Ache’ on his 1976 masterpiece Songs In The Key Of Life. Just like the others, Shirley is attempting to grasp an idiosyncratic vocal line that includes compressing ten syllables into roughly two seconds. Surprise makes the ladies repeat the road time and again – not like some punishing tyrant, similar to a producer who hears every misplaced micro-nuance and wishes to listen to it finished proper. He demonstrates it to them as soon as once more, semi-scatting the road into their headphones. Finally they get it down, sensuously purring the road “Earlier than you have been usin’ it like a toy” in a method that makes all too plain what “it” is.
Surprise is sort of a child brother round these girls. It’s not laborious to think about the 12-year-old Little Stevie on the buses that took the famed Motown Revue round America within the early ’60s – the pint-sized japester who’d steal up behind Diana Ross and pinch her petite derriere. He strolls over to one of many singers and extracts a packet of Frito-Lays from her pocket. Earlier than inserting one into his mouth he lifts it to his nostril. “Oooh, odor like soiled ft,” he says within the voice of a Mississippi cotton-picker. “Odor like Uncle Charlie’s feets…” The women squeal with delighted displeasure. He repeats the phrase a number of extra occasions after which gobbles down the Frito-Lay.
Wonderland is a airtight haven of a studio. The household of staff that Stevie has created round him makes for an environment that’s insular however all the time pleasant. Even the safety guys are teddy bears. Laughs come thick and quick right here, and probably the most infectious belongs to bassist Nathan Watts, who has performed with Surprise for 30 years. “I ought to be in The Guinness E book of Information for longest-serving bass participant,” he says. It’s Watts’ birthday right this moment, which is why he’s hanging round lengthy after his providers have been final required, laying aside the lengthy drive again to his house in Chino Hills.
Stephanie Andrews, president of Stevie’s manufacturing firm, can be sitting in tonight. A tiny lady with a reasonably, light-skinned face, she has purchased an ice-cream birthday cake for Watts, whose cuddly physique – squeezed right into a pair of high-waisted denim shorts – suggests such treats aren’t precisely strangers to his eating regimen. Surprise himself packs a good paunch beneath his unfastened shirt as he emerges to hitch the impromptu social gathering, which inevitably entails the rendition of ‘Completely happy Birthday’, his jubilant 1980 tribute to assassinated civil rights chief Martin Luther King.
When the cake has been devoured, Surprise challenges one of many singers to a recreation of air hockey on a desk that sits within the studio’s essential recreation room. Regardless of not with the ability to see the plastic puck, Stevie repeatedly wins the sport, demonstrating what he would likely name his Taurean must triumph in any respect prices. Then it’s time to return to work.
“We’re attempting to remain within the realm of getting issues taking place at an inexpensive time of day,” Surprise replies when requested if his classes all the time run this late. “Typically we do work lengthy hours, however very hardly ever can we work and sleep right here for an entire week.”
It seems that music has reverberated inside these partitions for a number of a long time. Again within the ’40s, Wonderland was McGregor’s, a studio utilized by Benny Goodman, Nat ‘King’ Cole and others. The inside of the constructing is like one thing out of Roman Polanski‘s Chinatown, with intricate tiling and wooden panels.
Whenever you wander around the again of the studio, outdoors the bubble-like chamber of the management room, you locate relics from Surprise’s personal previous. Standing alone and considerably uncared for is the unique Moog synthesizer he used on Music Of My Thoughts, Speaking E book and Innervisions. Across the nook from that magnificent creature, draped in black fabric, is the Yamaha “Dream Machine” he used on Songs In The Key Of Life.
On the threat of fetishising know-how, there’s a sure awe in beholding these outmoded dinosaurs. So vital was the function Moog and Yamaha performed within the radical brilliance of Surprise’s run of masterpieces from Music (1972) to Songs (1976) that one seems like prostrating oneself earlier than such superannuated gadgets.
“I’m all the time intrigued by his orchestral use of synthesizers,” stated jazz big Herbie Hancock, who performed on Songs In The Key Of Life‘s impassioned “As”. “He lets them be what they’re – one thing that’s not acoustic.” Listening to the virtually classical preparations of songs corresponding to ‘Pastime Paradise‘ and ‘Village Ghetto Land‘, one appreciates what Hancock meant: it’s as if Surprise is celebrating the very artifice of artificial sound.
“I believe every part has its personal character,” Stevie says. “Even in sampling strings, a keyboard participant can’t actually play like a string participant. You’ll be able to have numerous samples at numerous locations on the keyboard to intensify a really feel and provide you with a way of that, however the entire objective of me utilizing synthesizers was to make a press release and to precise myself musically – to return as shut as potential to what these devices may do, but in addition to expressing how I’d permit these issues to sound.”
Surprise’s discovery of electronics was simply a part of the extraordinary burst of creativity that flowered when he got here of age in 1971, ten years after signing as a pint-sized prodigy to Berry Gordy‘s rising Motown label. In a frenetic four-year run he left “Little Stevie” and the ’60s behind and have become one of many towering artists of the brand new decade.
Think about black American music with out “Superwoman“, “Superstition“, “Too Excessive“, “Dwelling For The Metropolis“, “Greater Floor“, “You Haven’t Finished Nothin’“, “I Want“, “Sir Duke” or “Pastime Paradise“. Or with out “Blame it On the Solar“, “He’s Misstra Know-it-All“, “They Received’t Go After I Go“, “Knocks Me Off My Ft“, “Pleasure Inside My Tears“. This can be a concentrated physique of labor that stands alongside the perfect of the Beatles or Brian Wilson and sometimes eclipses even them.
It’s additionally a physique of labor in whose shadow Stevie Surprise has lived ever since. The query in 2005 is, will he ever emerge from it?
FIND THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT JUNE 2005/TAKE 97 IN THE ARCHIVE
