http://www.livedaily.com/news/3853.html

liveDaily Interview: Rick James

by Colin Devenish
liveDaily Contributing Writer

October 25, 2001 12:44 PM - The casual fan of Rick James (news) probably knows the album "Street Songs" for the song "Super Freak," which MC Hammer later raided for the hook of "U Can't Touch This." It's interesting to note, then, as James does, that "Super Freak" was an afterthought for the album, which was mostly inspired by James' return to his native Buffalo, N.Y.

To celebrate the album's 20th anniversary, Universal Music Group recently re-released "Street Songs" with bonus tracks, as well as a never-released live disc from a 1981 show in Long Beach, Calif.

In an interview with LiveDaily, James talked about the making of "Street Songs," the live LP, MC Hammer and the lost album he made with Neil Young in a long-dissolved group called the Mynah Birds.

LiveDaily: You went back home to Buffalo to write "Street Songs." What was that time like for you?

Rick James: It wasn't a good time, I'll tell you that. It was a very strange time. It was very ambiguous, because I had just come off a string of platinum-selling albums, and I was feeling very frustrated with Motown [Records], because I was thinking in my mind that Motown wasn't doing the best it could as far as promoting me and our little family.

As a matter of fact, I wasn't thinking it, I was sure of it. I was positive that they weren't. They'd release records and promote us, but they didn't put the pedal to the metal. I was a little pissed off. I was selling a lot of records at the time, so I said, "The hell with it. I'm going to go down to the islands, I'm going to relax and I'm going to do my next album down there."

So that's what I did. I went down to St. Martin island in the Caribbean, and I put together "Garden of Love." It was basically a very mellow kind of ballad album with really one funk song, maybe two funk songs.

So they put that out, and it barely went gold, which really kind of made me very humble, to say the least, because I hadn't had an album at that time that had only gone gold. Everything I was doing was selling three, four, five million records. My ego took a beating there. It became more than about Motown, it became, "Wow, was my life over?" And then I went on tour and had to cancel. I found one thing out, and that was at that particular time and space, nobody really wanted to hear me do a bunch of ballads with ocean sounds and birds and stuff like that. I loved it, personally. I love that album to this very day, but people wanted funk.

My lifestyle had changed so much [prior to "Garden of Love"]. I went from drinking Ripple to Cristal champagne. I went from driving a Volkswagen to a Rolls Royce. I went from a little apartment to a home that used to be owned by Randolph Hearst. My lifestyle had changed and I had gotten lackadaisical, and all that kind of influenced my music. I didn't have the eye of the tiger [like I did] when I was first starting.

I thought my career was over after the tour was canceled. All my friends were saying, "You really got to get back to the funk." That's all I kept hearing, "You gotta get back to your roots, you gotta get back to where you were."

So I went back to Buffalo. I used to disguise myself and I used to go into the ghetto and I used to walk around and hang out. And no one had the slightest idea of who I was. I would play basketball and talk s--- with the brothers, and that whole thing. I did that for a long period of time. What that did was put that taste in my mouth of the ghetto and the hos and pimps and the degradation and police. It brought back all those things. Drinking soda through a peanut butter glass. Roaches and rats. I actually lived that for a while, so when I started working on "Street Songs," I was back to where I was. I had that hunger again, because I realized where I'd come from, and [that] I didn't want to go back there. That's what gave me the drive to write "Street Songs."

The record has a political bent to some of the songs. Were there specific situations you were responding to?

Absolutely. If one listens to it, one can really take in a lot. It's also semi-autobiographic too. "Mr. Policeman" is about a friend of mine who was shot down in Buffalo while I was there. He was copping some coke or something, and the police came and ... and really, he never should have taken a bullet and died. And I wrote songs about being too drunk or too high to make love to your woman. I wrote about the first time I lost my virginity ("Ghetto Life"). I wrote a song about being successful, my phone ringing all the time, girls calling me all the time. Basically, I touched on a lot of things in my life at that time.

When you were writing the record, did you have a sense that you were on to something?

No, not at all. I was scared s---less. I had no idea what that album would do. I was under the frame of mind of "Yeah, I'm doing this album, but who the hell knows? My career could be over." People's careers were ending fast in those days. Lot of one-hit wonders.

Even when I wrote "Super Freak"--that was an accident. The album was over when I wrote "Super Freak." I was sitting down playing bass--the slightest little lick--and the band said, "Wow, that's really slick, Rick." And the new-wave age was still going on at that time. I started singing these words: "She's a very kinky girl, the kind you don't take home to mother," kind of mimicking. And the band thought it was really funny and they said, "Let's put it down." So we put it down, as a record. Not so much as something that was real. I mean, it was real because at the time, I was living it, but it was more of a record so white people could have something to dance to.

It was almost a joke in a way.

Yeah, absolutely it was.

It must have been surprising to see that song take off.

It was, trust me. It was and it still is.

What did you think of Hammer's usage of it in "U Can't Touch This"?

I thought it was fantastic, but I knew MC Hammer would have bad karma, because he never really mentioned my name as having anything to do with it. He never really acknowledged me as part of it, so I knew his ass wouldn't have long to exist. He should have stayed in the Rick James catalog.

How come the live album was never released until now?

That's because of Motown Records. That's another example of Motown being a very sloppy company. There's a whole live show of that, too. It was videotaped by four cameras, and you've never seen that either. That just goes to show. That's what I meant by Motown not taking care of business. I'm going to try to get that released one day. It's a live show we got, and it's filmed beautifully. It shows all the magic and majesticness of those two nights in Long Beach Arena, where we recorded the show.

Do you have any recollections of that show?

I got higher on those two nights than [on] any drug I've ever done. At that time, we were doing two nights at [New York's] Madison Square Garden, stadiums, two or three nights in the Forum [near Los Angeles]. We were doing very big arenas, and I remember that particular night we filmed it, and it was exciting for us because it was the first time we were caught on film. It was also exciting because Long Beach was one of our most fun places to play. There was magic in the house.

What was your stage show like at that time?

A lot of pyro, a lot of glitter, a lot of rhinestones. It was showtime, baby. Ghetto fabulous. We wanted to give black people a show, man, and we weren't f---ing around at the time. We gave them everything. Everything that white kids were getting at KISS and other shows, we wanted to give to black kids.

Is there any talk of releasing the Mynah Birds album?

That's another question. We have to get Motown off their asses. Their library is so messed up. Finding the album will be virtually impossible, impossible to find me and Neil's stuff. If I ever run into Neil, I want to talk to him about us doing a record together.