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This is an excerpt from an interview Jesse Johnson gave November 2009.
Scott Lenz: It’s a good segue into my next question, which is about that, about different times, and it has its good and bad points. In the 80’s, you could be Eddie Grant or Robert Cray or Grover Washington, and you could have Top 40 hits, and nowadays, it seems like these genres are kind of marginalized due to what’s happened in the industry, and soul too, for that matter. So, I’d be curious to know your opinion on that, and is it harder or easier to be a musician now in that vein, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been at it for a long time like you have?
Jesse Johnson: Well, first of all, I think where the music industry is, I think one would have to be Nostradamus to make that prediction. You take an entire industry of entertainment, whether it’s film, television or music, concerts, but you take that whole entire industry and let’s go back to ’84, ’85, ’86, you know that every age group was represented in the different genres of music, so when you had New Edition, you also had Freddie Jackson and Luther Vandross. New Edition was for one age group, and then you had Stacy Lattisaw and Johnny Gill for even a younger age group, but by the time I came in, and Prince, that was another age group that was above the New Edition thing, and above that, like I said, you had your Luther Vandross and Freddie Jackson.
We all know that Adult Contemporary is really the only age group that has real disposable income, so when the tides change, when things get tight, it’s still that age group that has the disposable income. Even right now as you and I are speaking, that age group still has the disposable income, and you know yourself, if we go on iTunes, a lot of the times we’re buying records we already have, because we’re like, “Man, I’m so bored. I want this new record so bad” but we go to the music store and we’re buying stuff from 40 years ago, because a lot of stuff isn’t coming. That was really one of the inspirations that drove me to do the album that I did, because my whole time being in the industry, I always had to look at Billboard charts and what are my numbers today, and how many have I sold, because you’re part of this corporate machine, and you have to do a certain thing to stay a part of this corporate machine.
I did a record years ago called Bare My Naked Soul, and it introduced me to the world of independent records, and also that you could make a certain amount of money without having all this pressure on your back, and Billboard and this and that. So, once I got a taste of that, I knew with the new record, I knew I had to own everything, because if someone robs you once and you didn’t know, then you were really taken. You weren’t even really robbed, you were just hoodwinked, but once you know the truth, you can’t plead ignorance anymore, so I always said my whole thing was having and owning everything I do from this point, whether it be the publishing, the writing, the masters, the whole shot.
With this new record, just so you understand, it was shopped by people, and that’s what they do, and everybody that the record went to, they said “yeah we’ll give him a deal, but we want all the masters and we’ll pay him more money up front” but I was like, “I gotta own this. I have to own this record.” I don’t want to be in that whole pimp game of people owning something that I created, so that’s why I did what I did with this record.
The other part of the answer to your question is, knowing that age group is ignored, I wanted to make a record that was for us, meaning you and I, and like-minded and likewise people in that age group. I wanted to make a record for us. I wasn’t trying to be 16. If a 16-year-old or a 20-year-old listens to it and they dig it, well great, wonderful. I appreciate it, I love it, it’s wonderful, but I wanted to make a record so that you and I could jump in our car and put it on, it was adult-themed lyrics, it was uplifting, it wasn’t exclusive of anyone, it was everybody’s record lyrically, musically, anyone could get to. I never expected it to be a record that everybody liked every song on it, but I think if you took 40 people and put them in a room to listen, if they are admirers of what I do, you’d still take that 40 people and put them in a room and one person will like this song, that will be that person’s favourite, meaning that no one is going to like everything, and I don’t expect them to, but it brings us to the modern times of the Internet.
The Internet has garnered or bred a whole new generation of cowards, because back in the day, if you said, “Jesse, I can’t stand your record. It sucks” you’d have to tell me. You’d have to say, “Jesse, this is Scott Lenz, I just wanted to tell you that your record sucked” and I’d have to go “Well, don’t listen to it.” The point is, there was still this table of respect, because if somebody said something, they had to deal with you direct, it had their name on it, you knew who you were talking to. Now with the Internet, everyone has this opinion that their opinion matters, so I think all of that affects everything. There’s always somebody out there that has something insane to say, and I’ve even seen where people have said the whole record is nothing, and that just blows my mind. If you knew those people by name, would you yell and scream and go off on them, or would you just say, “Okay, post what you have done. Post your accomplishments”? That’s all you have to say. Most of the people who are negative towards something are 90% of the time, people who have never accomplished anything, and it’s pretty hilarious, because people around me get really upset by that, and I don’t even get upset by it. Why? Why would you get upset about it? I’m bulletproof on this thing. I love this record. I just can only hope 5 people love it, but I love it. If you do something and you’re proud of it, that’s all you can hope to do in life. You can’t get bogged down or bothered by what other people have to say. But as far as being a musician, unfortunately there aren’t a lot of things coming out nowadays that would push someone into becoming a musician.
A lot of kids I know want to do their MPC and rap, and it’s not bad. I would never discourage a child from doing anything or anyone else from doing whatever their dreams are, but there’s something about being a musician that your hair can be all the way white, and you can be 1,000 years old, and it’s still something that you’ll have. It has nothing to do with technology or anything. Whether it’s a saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, guitar, bass, piano, it’s hard to understand, but it’s something that you’re just so thankful and grateful for, that you learn that part of it and adapt with the times as far as technology goes as well, but there’s so much to be said for being an actual musician. There isn’t a lot of music that’s inspiring people, the younger kids and up, to want to be musicians. That’s what I also wanted to do with this record as well, is to say there’s no samples on this record, no loops, everything is 100% played, amps are mic’d, bass is mic’d. It’s how records used to be made, but I’m into modern technology with Pro Tools and so forth, but it’s like a recipe.
Your Mother could have given you a recipe that belonged to your Great-Grandmother. With the ingredients, or the brand of the ingredients, it might say to use this type, and that brand may not be around anymore, but there’s still baking powder, there’s still flour, meaning the recipe to a great cake never changes. It’s just the ingredients, the brand names might change, but the recipe of what makes a great song a great song will never change.
SL: Listening to what you just said about the industry, and mentioning about the ingredients and all, and this may be a little repetitive, but you can maybe put a different spin on it, but does your approach to making music change, or like you said, is it the same thought process going in, but then different stuff comes out?
JJ: To be honest with you, Bare My Naked Soul was one of those records that, I started making records on my own, which means I started making records outside of the corporate machine, meaning I didn’t take monies to make a record. I made the record first and then I would shop it and what not, but it put the power back in my hands, because your thinking is totally different, of how you make records when you’re on that corporate machine.
Say for example U2, I can’t imagine what their budget was. I ran into some other people in the studio when I was mastering this record and I just know their budgets are a lot greater, and my budget for this record was a healthy budget, but it was a budget that I created myself. What it freed from me was, that it would take the time to really re-invent yourself. A lot of times, when you’re into that corporate contract, you’re so under the gun to deliver things by the deadline, that to re-invent yourself, I don’t think I could have ever been able to make a record I just made if I had been under a corporate contract, because it took a lot of time for something. Say for instance on this new record, I would say, “If I played this chord before, I’m never playing this chord again on this record.” Whatever I played before on the other records, I didn’t play those chords at all on the new record, and that took time, to basically forget everything you know and start from scratch.
From equipment, all the way up to where you’re writing, and the whole shot, your writing and your creativity is totally affected by the avenue, because there are so many kids that are signed, and it’s like they’re rammed through a machine. A Gucci bag is a beautiful bag, but if you buy one, somebody is going to buy the same one that looks exactly like it. The whole uniqueness thing, you can’t really blame on artists coming up, the record company plays a big factor in the whole clone theory, if you will.
There was a time and place in music for me especially, that it was so dependent on people and what they wrote and what they said, and it’s just been quite a relief now. As you know from listening to the record, there’s no such thing as an independent record attitude or a major record attitude, because if you listen to my record, it has the exact same sound as a big budget record. There’s no difference in the production, there’s no difference in the layout, there’s no difference in the cover, so that’s all a myth, that people want you to believe that you can’t do such and such if you’re going to do it without a major, and I think that’s the whole voodoo behind it. The majors, maybe they want you to think that.
I’m trying to be Funkadelic. I’m trying to figure out how George Clinton was able to have Funkadelic be successful and never do an interview or TV show or anything. That’s what I want to do, because in my whole years of being in this thing at a corporate level, I’m telling you, it will make you walk away from something you love so much, because of the politics. I know there’s politics involved with just picking up your clothes at the drycleaner, you know there’s politics involved in everything if people know the true meaning of politics, but it just turns you off of something you love so much. It’s been a great experience for me to make this record and not have to deal with that corporate feeling inside, and “you’ve got to do it this way. You need a song that sounds like ‘Be Your Man’”. You know, the stupid stuff that has artists re-treading themselves and not allowing them to move forward all the time. You’d be surprised how much of “this sounds like your last record. This sounds like his or her last record”, you’d be surprised how much of that is the label as opposed to the artist.
If you have success, it can be a kiss of death for you, then people want you to do, and when I say people I mean the people of power, will want you to continue to do the same thing so they can keep making all this money. You’ll make it, but you’re suffering as an artist and as a person, because you don’t want to play the same thing again. I’ve heard people say really stupid comments, like “where’s the ‘Free World’ on here?” What? Do you realize that I have to play that every time I go onstage? Why would I put it on the new record? I guess you’ve got to do it to understand it. It’s a strange machine to be a part of, but it’s been a pleasure. I’m looking forward, probably for the first time ever, looking forward to just touring and enjoying myself as opposed to touring and doing tons of radio, and you have to do this and that, and people are still asking me, “What’s the single?” I’m like, “What? What year do you think this is?” Where do you think I would put a single anyway, if I were to choose it? What station and format? I used to make records that fit into all of that, and a lot of it was by force. I decided to do it, but I stopped that a long time ago, when I stopped making R&B records. I didn’t want to be forced into this little box all the time. That’s why it turned me off and made me not want to make records anymore. It was the politics of it. It wasn’t the music and all of that; it was the politics. It wasn’t the admirers that came out to the shows and bought the records and loved what you did; it wasn’t that. It was really just the business of it, and it’s been somewhat pleasurable to do this without all of that garbage connected to it.
I’m still trying to figure out how I can do this and not have to do a lot of interviews or worry about T.V. or that kind of stuff, because I really don’t want it like that. I want it to be successful, but do I want to do anything that it takes to be that? No, no, no. I’ll accept that I’m going to be like Wes Montgomery or somebody, or Eddie Hazel, and do really great things, but not really be above surface. I was telling my girlfriend yesterday about everybody she loves, like Bob Marley, and Jimi Hendrix, and Eddie Hazel, and I said, “Do you realize those people that you’re talking about were not as big when they were alive? It wasn’t until death that they became much bigger.” I saw Bob Marley in a club not long before he died, and the place was so small. People thought Eric Clapton did “I Shot The Sheriff”, you know? A lot of times, people are only appreciated after.
If you want to read the whole interview, it's here or you can listen to it here.
Scott Lenz: It’s a good segue into my next question, which is about that, about different times, and it has its good and bad points. In the 80’s, you could be Eddie Grant or Robert Cray or Grover Washington, and you could have Top 40 hits, and nowadays, it seems like these genres are kind of marginalized due to what’s happened in the industry, and soul too, for that matter. So, I’d be curious to know your opinion on that, and is it harder or easier to be a musician now in that vein, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been at it for a long time like you have?
Jesse Johnson: Well, first of all, I think where the music industry is, I think one would have to be Nostradamus to make that prediction. You take an entire industry of entertainment, whether it’s film, television or music, concerts, but you take that whole entire industry and let’s go back to ’84, ’85, ’86, you know that every age group was represented in the different genres of music, so when you had New Edition, you also had Freddie Jackson and Luther Vandross. New Edition was for one age group, and then you had Stacy Lattisaw and Johnny Gill for even a younger age group, but by the time I came in, and Prince, that was another age group that was above the New Edition thing, and above that, like I said, you had your Luther Vandross and Freddie Jackson.
We all know that Adult Contemporary is really the only age group that has real disposable income, so when the tides change, when things get tight, it’s still that age group that has the disposable income. Even right now as you and I are speaking, that age group still has the disposable income, and you know yourself, if we go on iTunes, a lot of the times we’re buying records we already have, because we’re like, “Man, I’m so bored. I want this new record so bad” but we go to the music store and we’re buying stuff from 40 years ago, because a lot of stuff isn’t coming. That was really one of the inspirations that drove me to do the album that I did, because my whole time being in the industry, I always had to look at Billboard charts and what are my numbers today, and how many have I sold, because you’re part of this corporate machine, and you have to do a certain thing to stay a part of this corporate machine.
I did a record years ago called Bare My Naked Soul, and it introduced me to the world of independent records, and also that you could make a certain amount of money without having all this pressure on your back, and Billboard and this and that. So, once I got a taste of that, I knew with the new record, I knew I had to own everything, because if someone robs you once and you didn’t know, then you were really taken. You weren’t even really robbed, you were just hoodwinked, but once you know the truth, you can’t plead ignorance anymore, so I always said my whole thing was having and owning everything I do from this point, whether it be the publishing, the writing, the masters, the whole shot.
With this new record, just so you understand, it was shopped by people, and that’s what they do, and everybody that the record went to, they said “yeah we’ll give him a deal, but we want all the masters and we’ll pay him more money up front” but I was like, “I gotta own this. I have to own this record.” I don’t want to be in that whole pimp game of people owning something that I created, so that’s why I did what I did with this record.
The other part of the answer to your question is, knowing that age group is ignored, I wanted to make a record that was for us, meaning you and I, and like-minded and likewise people in that age group. I wanted to make a record for us. I wasn’t trying to be 16. If a 16-year-old or a 20-year-old listens to it and they dig it, well great, wonderful. I appreciate it, I love it, it’s wonderful, but I wanted to make a record so that you and I could jump in our car and put it on, it was adult-themed lyrics, it was uplifting, it wasn’t exclusive of anyone, it was everybody’s record lyrically, musically, anyone could get to. I never expected it to be a record that everybody liked every song on it, but I think if you took 40 people and put them in a room to listen, if they are admirers of what I do, you’d still take that 40 people and put them in a room and one person will like this song, that will be that person’s favourite, meaning that no one is going to like everything, and I don’t expect them to, but it brings us to the modern times of the Internet.
The Internet has garnered or bred a whole new generation of cowards, because back in the day, if you said, “Jesse, I can’t stand your record. It sucks” you’d have to tell me. You’d have to say, “Jesse, this is Scott Lenz, I just wanted to tell you that your record sucked” and I’d have to go “Well, don’t listen to it.” The point is, there was still this table of respect, because if somebody said something, they had to deal with you direct, it had their name on it, you knew who you were talking to. Now with the Internet, everyone has this opinion that their opinion matters, so I think all of that affects everything. There’s always somebody out there that has something insane to say, and I’ve even seen where people have said the whole record is nothing, and that just blows my mind. If you knew those people by name, would you yell and scream and go off on them, or would you just say, “Okay, post what you have done. Post your accomplishments”? That’s all you have to say. Most of the people who are negative towards something are 90% of the time, people who have never accomplished anything, and it’s pretty hilarious, because people around me get really upset by that, and I don’t even get upset by it. Why? Why would you get upset about it? I’m bulletproof on this thing. I love this record. I just can only hope 5 people love it, but I love it. If you do something and you’re proud of it, that’s all you can hope to do in life. You can’t get bogged down or bothered by what other people have to say. But as far as being a musician, unfortunately there aren’t a lot of things coming out nowadays that would push someone into becoming a musician.
A lot of kids I know want to do their MPC and rap, and it’s not bad. I would never discourage a child from doing anything or anyone else from doing whatever their dreams are, but there’s something about being a musician that your hair can be all the way white, and you can be 1,000 years old, and it’s still something that you’ll have. It has nothing to do with technology or anything. Whether it’s a saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, guitar, bass, piano, it’s hard to understand, but it’s something that you’re just so thankful and grateful for, that you learn that part of it and adapt with the times as far as technology goes as well, but there’s so much to be said for being an actual musician. There isn’t a lot of music that’s inspiring people, the younger kids and up, to want to be musicians. That’s what I also wanted to do with this record as well, is to say there’s no samples on this record, no loops, everything is 100% played, amps are mic’d, bass is mic’d. It’s how records used to be made, but I’m into modern technology with Pro Tools and so forth, but it’s like a recipe.
Your Mother could have given you a recipe that belonged to your Great-Grandmother. With the ingredients, or the brand of the ingredients, it might say to use this type, and that brand may not be around anymore, but there’s still baking powder, there’s still flour, meaning the recipe to a great cake never changes. It’s just the ingredients, the brand names might change, but the recipe of what makes a great song a great song will never change.
SL: Listening to what you just said about the industry, and mentioning about the ingredients and all, and this may be a little repetitive, but you can maybe put a different spin on it, but does your approach to making music change, or like you said, is it the same thought process going in, but then different stuff comes out?
JJ: To be honest with you, Bare My Naked Soul was one of those records that, I started making records on my own, which means I started making records outside of the corporate machine, meaning I didn’t take monies to make a record. I made the record first and then I would shop it and what not, but it put the power back in my hands, because your thinking is totally different, of how you make records when you’re on that corporate machine.
Say for example U2, I can’t imagine what their budget was. I ran into some other people in the studio when I was mastering this record and I just know their budgets are a lot greater, and my budget for this record was a healthy budget, but it was a budget that I created myself. What it freed from me was, that it would take the time to really re-invent yourself. A lot of times, when you’re into that corporate contract, you’re so under the gun to deliver things by the deadline, that to re-invent yourself, I don’t think I could have ever been able to make a record I just made if I had been under a corporate contract, because it took a lot of time for something. Say for instance on this new record, I would say, “If I played this chord before, I’m never playing this chord again on this record.” Whatever I played before on the other records, I didn’t play those chords at all on the new record, and that took time, to basically forget everything you know and start from scratch.
From equipment, all the way up to where you’re writing, and the whole shot, your writing and your creativity is totally affected by the avenue, because there are so many kids that are signed, and it’s like they’re rammed through a machine. A Gucci bag is a beautiful bag, but if you buy one, somebody is going to buy the same one that looks exactly like it. The whole uniqueness thing, you can’t really blame on artists coming up, the record company plays a big factor in the whole clone theory, if you will.
There was a time and place in music for me especially, that it was so dependent on people and what they wrote and what they said, and it’s just been quite a relief now. As you know from listening to the record, there’s no such thing as an independent record attitude or a major record attitude, because if you listen to my record, it has the exact same sound as a big budget record. There’s no difference in the production, there’s no difference in the layout, there’s no difference in the cover, so that’s all a myth, that people want you to believe that you can’t do such and such if you’re going to do it without a major, and I think that’s the whole voodoo behind it. The majors, maybe they want you to think that.
I’m trying to be Funkadelic. I’m trying to figure out how George Clinton was able to have Funkadelic be successful and never do an interview or TV show or anything. That’s what I want to do, because in my whole years of being in this thing at a corporate level, I’m telling you, it will make you walk away from something you love so much, because of the politics. I know there’s politics involved with just picking up your clothes at the drycleaner, you know there’s politics involved in everything if people know the true meaning of politics, but it just turns you off of something you love so much. It’s been a great experience for me to make this record and not have to deal with that corporate feeling inside, and “you’ve got to do it this way. You need a song that sounds like ‘Be Your Man’”. You know, the stupid stuff that has artists re-treading themselves and not allowing them to move forward all the time. You’d be surprised how much of “this sounds like your last record. This sounds like his or her last record”, you’d be surprised how much of that is the label as opposed to the artist.
If you have success, it can be a kiss of death for you, then people want you to do, and when I say people I mean the people of power, will want you to continue to do the same thing so they can keep making all this money. You’ll make it, but you’re suffering as an artist and as a person, because you don’t want to play the same thing again. I’ve heard people say really stupid comments, like “where’s the ‘Free World’ on here?” What? Do you realize that I have to play that every time I go onstage? Why would I put it on the new record? I guess you’ve got to do it to understand it. It’s a strange machine to be a part of, but it’s been a pleasure. I’m looking forward, probably for the first time ever, looking forward to just touring and enjoying myself as opposed to touring and doing tons of radio, and you have to do this and that, and people are still asking me, “What’s the single?” I’m like, “What? What year do you think this is?” Where do you think I would put a single anyway, if I were to choose it? What station and format? I used to make records that fit into all of that, and a lot of it was by force. I decided to do it, but I stopped that a long time ago, when I stopped making R&B records. I didn’t want to be forced into this little box all the time. That’s why it turned me off and made me not want to make records anymore. It was the politics of it. It wasn’t the music and all of that; it was the politics. It wasn’t the admirers that came out to the shows and bought the records and loved what you did; it wasn’t that. It was really just the business of it, and it’s been somewhat pleasurable to do this without all of that garbage connected to it.
I’m still trying to figure out how I can do this and not have to do a lot of interviews or worry about T.V. or that kind of stuff, because I really don’t want it like that. I want it to be successful, but do I want to do anything that it takes to be that? No, no, no. I’ll accept that I’m going to be like Wes Montgomery or somebody, or Eddie Hazel, and do really great things, but not really be above surface. I was telling my girlfriend yesterday about everybody she loves, like Bob Marley, and Jimi Hendrix, and Eddie Hazel, and I said, “Do you realize those people that you’re talking about were not as big when they were alive? It wasn’t until death that they became much bigger.” I saw Bob Marley in a club not long before he died, and the place was so small. People thought Eric Clapton did “I Shot The Sheriff”, you know? A lot of times, people are only appreciated after.
If you want to read the whole interview, it's here or you can listen to it here.
