January 25, 2010


"This building wasn't here," Charlie Wilson says, waving at a high-rise condo under construction along busy La Brea Avenue. "It was a parking lot for U-Hauls. I slept under them when it rained. So did a lot of other crackheads."


He brushes a tear from his cheek. Revisiting the haunts of his darkest days is distressing for the R&B legend, who led the Gap Band to international stardom in the '80s and rebounded to solo glory in recent years. In between lies a desperate stretch of addiction and homelessness that took the singer from a posh Hollywood Hills manse to seedy alleys.

Strolling a narrow road behind a pawn shop, he points to the grassy spot he frequently staked out while living on the streets from 1993 to 1995.

"I slept in that deep corner there," he says. "When I come through this area now, I get all tensed up. A lot of people who sink that far into depression, drugs and street life don't come back. A lot of people I knew then are dead."

Wilson, who turns 57 on Friday, did more than survive. He just had the most successful year of his 43-year career. The singer is up for two Grammys: R&B album for fourth solo effort Uncle Charlie and R&B vocal for hit single There Goes My Baby, which spent 10 weeks atop Billboard's adult R&B chart. The album entered the R&B chart at No. 1 and the pop chart at No. 2, a career peak. He's also nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

Nobody is more astonished by this resurrection than Wilson, who returns to the mileposts of his downfall with humility and gratitude. He starts a walking tour at the former location of the Total Experience studio, where the Gap Band, his trio with brothers Robert and Ronnie, recorded from the mid-'70s to the late '80s, generating a string of platinum albums and such hits as You Dropped a Bomb on Me, Party Train, Outstanding, Burn Rubber on Me and Shake.

Unable to revise their label and publishing deals, the brothers first talked of splitting in 1986, and Wilson surrendered a stately home and half-dozen cars in 1987.

"They weren't in my name," he says. "We went from rags to famous, from famous to rags. We never got the riches. It took a toll on us, and we decided to quit."

His money dried up and an existing drug habit worsened, until Wilson landed on the streets with only the clothes on his back.

"I had no home, no money," he says. "You could still hear my records on the radio. People gave me drugs because they thought I was still on top. Nobody knew I was down and out."

On Hawthorn Avenue, he finds another former hideout, but the shrubs he slept behind no longer line the wall. He points across the street to an apartment house, where a sympathetic landlady let him hole up when she had vacancies. A homeless couple who camped near trash bins in the back often let him curl up in a makeshift shelter of shopping carts and plastic tarps.

"Cardboard for a bed and a brick for a pillow," he recalls. "If they had a sandwich, they shared it with me."



Hiding His Pain

During his three years adrift, they were the only people he confided in. To others, he bluffed the part of a big shot trolling Hollywood's underbelly for cocaine. He avoided soup kitchens and shelters, cut ties to former associates and, if recognized, feigned a lost weekend.

"I'd say I just got out of the studio or was on my way to the office," Wilson says. "Nobody knew I had sunk this far. I was really bitter about what I didn't have. And embarrassed. Even when I was getting high, I'd pray, asking God not to let the devil kill me before I got on my feet again."

Eager to leave these grim lairs, Wilson quickens his pace and says, "Woo, it's hard emptying out. I tried to put all this behind me. I had to start over. That road was tough, but I love this music so much that I let nothing stand in my way back to the top."

Initially dismayed to see parking tickets on his entourage's cars, he laughs when the female officer shrieks at the sight of her favorite singer. Her fellow traffic cops are summoned from blocks away, he poses for snapshots, and the tickets vanish. Riding in the SUV with his wife and manager, he describes a turning point.

"I ran into a cousin, who started crying when she saw me," he says. "We used to get high together, but she had been clean three years. She told me, 'Cuz, you have to stop, you're dying.' She talked me into rehab."

Wilson, then a gaunt 130 pounds, entered a 28-day program in 1995 in Acton, 50 miles north of L.A. He was hardly a poster boy for sobriety.

"For 14 days, I was showing off, acting like a superstar," he says. Finally, a rehab director confronted him. "This lady called me in and said, 'Mr. Wilson, I notice you've been sleeping in class, not paying attention. What are you going to do when you get out?' I told her I had nowhere to go."

On Wilson's weekend pass, the woman rented him a house in nearby Palmdale, then furnished it. "So I asked her for a car," Wilson says. "She said, 'I can't, because your subconscious mind will take you to a liquor store or a drug house.' I told her I couldn't live in this house by myself. So I asked this lady to marry me."

He and Iranian native Mahin Tat have been married 15 years. She weeded toxic and unscrupulous influences from his life, began booking Gap Band shows and boosted his confidence.

"I asked God for an angel, and he sent her," Wilson says. "Everyone told me I was washed up and too old. She told me, 'We're going back to the top.' My wife believed in me more than I did."




Doing The Work


A driveway lined with rose bushes and pepper trees leads to the palatial Mediterranean home on Wilson's 20-acre hillside spread in Acton. Inside, Persian rugs and crystal chandeliers grace nearly every room, including a 3,000-square-foot master suite. Wilson's studio sits higher on the hill, adjacent to the couple's menagerie of goats, llamas, alpacas, ducks and chickens. With pit bull Chloe on his heels, Wilson cradles a 3-day-old lamb and assesses three pregnant sheep before gathering eggs.

Though he feels vindicated by such domestic comforts, he measures pride by another yardstick: "Not one relapse in 15 years. Not one beer, no cocaine, and I quit cigarettes in 2000."

Restoring his R&B authority required patience and stamina. He got a leg up when admirer Snoop Dogg, who gave Wilson the nickname Uncle Charlie, began enlisting him on recordings in 1996.

"Snoop is a nephew, not by blood, but by love," Wilson says. "He got me back in the business. The hip-hop community embraced me and sustained me."

Wilson worked with Master P, Mystikal, Kanye West, Lil' Kim, the Black Eyed Peas, Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac. Michael Paran, Mahin's son, served for two years without pay as the Gap Band's manager and rebuilt the band's reputation and bank accounts during eight years of touring. He urged Wilson to go solo and negotiated his record deal at Jive.

Wilson quickly discovered sobriety and talent weren't enough to reclaim his position in the limelight, Paran says. He had to fight for it.

"Every day was an uphill battle, with all the doors shutting on him," Paran says. "He kept himself clean and got rid of people with the potential to bring him down. He was a true underdog. We just told him, 'Be yourself, stay on track and people will wake up and see what you're capable of.' He was resilient."

Wilson released 2005's Charlie, Last Name Wilson, produced by R. Kelly, T-Pain and others, then produced Uncle Charlie himself, though he says some Jive executives balked and doubted the hit potential of There Goes My Baby.

"People at my own label said, 'I never would have signed you,' but I've been told no too many times," Wilson says. "I know I can sing. I know I can record. I didn't want anyone dictating to me. And now I got two Grammy nominations! This is sweet."

Wilson's revival should surprise no one, says Gail Mitchell, Billboard's senior R&B/hip-hop editor. She credits a still-supple expressive voice that continues to shape soul singers.

"There Goes My Baby is the perfect balance between old-school and contemporary neo-soul," she says. "It's retro without sounding dated. And Charlie loves to entertain. He's never lost that showmanship. He gives his all, and I feel sorry for anyone following him on stage."

No longer sleeping behind hedges, Wilson isn't living on Easy Street, either. Diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008, he lost his father, Bishop O.W. Wilson, to the disease last June. His cancer now in remission, he's a spokesman and fundraiser for the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

"I do a lot of performing, so I thought it was time to do a lot of informing my brothers about this disease," he says.

Before he died, Wilson's father encouraged him to let go of regrets and grudges.

"My blessings are ahead of me," Wilson says. "I've cleaned out the garbage can. I don't have fear of anybody taking anything anymore. You can't steal my joy."



http://www.usatoday.com/l...5_CV_N.htm
[Edited 1/31/10 7:35am]

He should have went back home to Tulsa. There were a lot of people there that would have helped him. Hopefully he'll be well from now on though.

On another note, it gives me pause when I know these great acts from the 60's and 70's are NOT being given their right due financially from their plethora of material. As much as I want to own ALL albums from The G.A.P. Band (or whoever), I also know that more times than not the artists won't be getting their rightly deserves royalties.

SAG takes care, as best as they can, in making sure their 100,000+ members get what is owed them for their work. Yet there is no real music union to do that. Endless stories about singers losing everything (whether drugs were involved or not). Matt Fink told me Prince still owed him monies, and at one point he did get a chunk of money. But Prince also told him "This is it. You're on your own after this," meaning, if they felt they were owed more money from sales, they'd have to go to Warner Bros. on their own to get it. I don't know, or want to know, the amount that Prince forked over to Fink, but he didn't seem to think he got what he deserved.

Having said all that...it makes me think twice about buying CDs to refurbish and complete my CD collection of folks I love, because these artists are still struggling to get by. I watched Unsung last night on TV|ONE with Melba Moore. She really had some hard times, but luckily she still has a voice, and now a one-woman show about her life. SAG offers health insurance and takes care of their union members (and no - no organization is perfect so let's not site examples of the opposite for the sake of it). Yet there are endless stories of musicians ending up WRECKED because of mismanagement.

It times like this where I don't hesitate to download Gap Band albums, if for no other reason than to side-step the greedy record companies by NOT giving them my 9.99 at Best Buy or Target because if Charlie Wilson ain't getting it, why should Capitol Records?

wow...did....not....know....this.

Ern's points are well said. Thank God Charlie still has his gift.

ernestsewell said:

Did I understand you correctly, your proposed strategy to helping struggling artists is to download their life-work illegally? Odd, because you are essentially ripping them off again.

I'm glad he made it back. Uncle Charlie's given us so many classics and was way 2 strong 2 fall off

Wow thats a powerful story. He's been through so much. I'm glad he's back on top and more importantly, gotten his life back together.

Identity said:

No, you didn't understand it at all. Read it again.

He survived a great deal indeed.

Wow. I honestly had no idea. I just assumed he was living well and wasn't musically active for a few years between the Gap Band's hit streak and when I first started hearing him on hip-hop records in the mid 90's.

Just goes to show.....this business can chew you up and spit you out without any remorse.

When I was 16 and living in LA trying to get a record deal I met up with two guys that were producing at Total Experience Studios. They asked me to come in on some sessions with them. I was nervous as hell I had never been in a real big studio like that. We were working on a girl named Penny Ford. While we were recording this crazy looking guy came in, I could tell he was on drugs, he walked up to each of us asking for spare change no one gave him any. He the asked who we were working on. When he left I asked the two producers why they let homless people in, he said that was Charlie Wilsons brother from the Gap Band! I tripped out because they were pretty big then. I still have a few of those old total experience demo cassets that they let us have. I will have to find them and see what they sound like.

This industry

elem55 said:

@ the mention of Pennye Ford


yes Charlie has been thru the mill so for him to turn it round is great

elem55 said:

Wow,,,I shuddered when I read this

I'm so happy he came back in full swing. I too didn't know he went through this, I thought Melba Moore's welfare episode was the ugliest but this his story is far uglier.

I'm mostly happy that it didn't break his spirit, you can tell Uncle Charlie loves living life to the fullest just from watching him in interviews.

Sounds like Elem55 was mentioning Robert Wilson when he said he saw a "homeless crackhead" talking to the music corporates.

God bless the Wilson brothers. Damn.

I knew he had a drug problem but didn't know it was that bad. Jeebus. Poor guy. He's come back though God bless him.