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While Rick James & all his women laugh

by

Dave DiMartino

Rick James wears funny clothes, has long and braided hair, smokes dope onstage and sings about kinky girls—“the kind of girls you read about in new wave magazines”— and how he’d like to taste them. He is black, and he is also Motown Records’ first official superstar of the 80’s.

“If I wasn’t selling any albums,” says he, “your ass wouldn’t be here right now.” Rick James is talking to me, and my ass is parked in a chair in a room in a suite in a hotel in a ship in the water in Long Beach, California. We—Rick James, his Stone City Band and the (noticeably) white writer for America’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll Magazine—have gathered together tonight to discuss, at least indirectly, why rock ’n’ roll and the music that Rick James writes and plays is (or isn’t) one and the same. Better yet: just why and where James’ “punk funk” meets rock ’n’ roll—which, as defined by Billboard, means REO Speedwagon, Styx and white suburban muzak proper. Or: does “Ghetto Life” mean anything to the teenager who takes Mom’s Toyota to the mall for the latest Foreigner album? Yes? No? Who cares?

As we sit aboard the Queen Mary, inside a Main Deck suite, Rick James’ Street Songs rests comfortably at the top of the R&B and Pop charts, right alongside REO Speedwagon and Kenny Rogers. Number Three, to be exact. Why is my ass in there with Rick James? Because, for starters, he’s more fun to listen to than REO Speedwagon and Kenny Rogers, more fun to watch and lots more fun to write about. And by anyone’s standards—certainly his, if not Rogers’ and REO’s—he’s more relevant to the 80’s than anyone else is these days, at least up there in the Top Ten. And maybe that’s relevant in itself.

I am trying to make Paul McCartney white boy

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Punk Funk?

“Punk funk,” he says. “We created the name, because I always thought if we were real successful, and really made a dent in the music world, we’d do it before Joe Blow titled us. ’Cause Joe Blow is quick to take our music and put names to it—he calls it ‘bebop,’ ‘jazz,’ ‘blues,’ ‘disco,’ ‘R&B,’ all that silly shit.

“We just decided to label the music so that when it goes down in the history books, they’ll say Punk Funk was Rick James.”

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Street Songs is that good, one of the Motown biggies of the decade, a less erotic Let’s Get It On or What’s Goin ’ On for those who slept through the 70’s. Its concerns are basic: sex, drugs, sex, ghettos, sex, police, sex, love, passing the joint. Sounds deceptive, because Rick James isn’t all about sex the way, say, Prince is; he just talks about it a lot. Street Songs is one of those albums that means something different to everybody who hears it—dance music, love music, flat-out funk, and, too, strange stuff for those willing to meet it halfway. From “Below The Funk (Pass The J.),” comes: “But it’s strange the gossip is so tragic/They call me a faggot/Me and all my women laugh at it.” From “Mr. Policeman”: “I see you walkin’ your beat/Searchin’ strangers on the street/Especially the whores you meet/It’s a shame, It’s a disgrace/Everytime you show your face/ Somebody dies, man/Somebody dies.” Great stun, because a) Rick James cares whether guys call him “faggot,” let alone feeds the need to write a song about it, and b) there are over two million Street Songs owners, of which demographics suggest a very large portion are young and black, singing along with James about how police are “killing people.” On the same album: • “One thing ’bout the ghetto/You don’t have to hurry/It’ll be there tomorrow/So brother don’t you worry.” Interesting, that.

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RICK JAMES: “If I was losing touch with the kids out on the street, I wouldn’t have the biggest album in the country. I think I have a very good touch on the pulse of what’s going on. I live in Buffalo, my hometown, and I still do the same things I always do—same ol’ niggers I used to hang out with I hang out with, I do the same ol’ shit in the same ol’ ghetto, nothing changes in my life... Other than I’m a multi-millionaire, that’s the only thing that’s different: I got me a couple o’ million dollars...”

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Rick James is a pretty cocky guy, which 1 guess he has a right to be; for two nights the Long Beach Arena has been crammed with fans, both shows long sold out, and for him this is nothing new. “We just broke Elvis Presley’s own attendance record in Memphis,” he says, “first time in the history of Memphis.” A third Stone City Band album—he’s already produced two— counts among his plans to expand the James empire, along with an LP by the Mary Jane Band (his female backup vocalists), and a solo “jazz-funk thing” by saxophonist Daniel LeMelle, part of the Stone City Band’s Punk Funk horns.

“For us not to take advantage of the fact that we’re, uh, successful, would be foolish,” says James. “I mean, anyone who doesn’t is full of shit. Any artist who tells you they don’t wanna get gold or platinum records is full of shit. Any artist who tells you he’s doing it for the sake of art is full of shit, OK?

“And I’m not gonna sit here and tell you ‘umm, this is art, man, it’s really what’s happening...’

“Well fuck all that, it ain’t about all that. I am trying to make multi, mu/ti-millions of dollars, I am trying to make Paul McCartney white boy money, so I can sit back and have a big house in Spain and not ever work again. Right now I got a few million dollars and I’m doing all right; I hope to have 20 million soon, so I can sit back real fat like Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart and all them other assholes who sit out there and talk shit and procrastinate and talk that hypocriticalass bullshit about their ‘art’...”

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What has Rick James done? He’s put out five albums, each better than the last, he’s shown very real artistic growth, and he’s produced Teena Marie, who’s a whole different story on her own—suffice to say she sings backup on lots of James’ tracks, is tremendous on Street Songs’ “Fire And Desire” and even better onstage, which, in Long Beach, she shares with James during each performance. ‘She’s absolutely spectacular and, ironically, white; ironic only because so few white people know of her. “They don’t know who she is, but they will,” says James. “White people should be real proud of her.”

The disparities between black and white performers mean much to James; they come up several times in conversation, in his talk of earning “Paul McCartney white boy money” and elsewhere. “I’m not a vocalist really,” James says, “I’m more of an actor, a character. And so are Rod Stewart and Mick Jagger. They ain’t no fuckin’ singers, and they better not say they are. They’re a bunch of fuckin’ sounds, they’re millionaire sounds. Rod Stewart and that raspy voice, he’s trying to sound like David Ruffin, the Temptations. Mick Jagger can’t even sing out this room...”

"I'm not a vocalist realty. I'm more of an actor."

I wonder aloud why James concerns himself with such matters. “Because they’ve made a hundred million dollars with their non-singing asses, you know?” he says. “And I find that ludicrous. Helen Reddy was voted top female vocalist in the world— and people like Teena...” James looks disgusted.

“Fuckin’ Average White Band.” He corrects himself: “That’s Below-Average White Band. Cat’s cornin’ off trying to sound black, Hamish Stuart tried to sound like Ronnie Isley and he lost his voice. Ronnie Isley has been around for 40 years and he’s still sounding great . The Natural is The Natural. You can not fake it. Remember how great Hamish Stuart was? Listen to him now. Listen to Ronnie Isley now. Or Marvin Gaye.

“These men are like 40-somethin’ years old.”

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Rick James says his show is “a black, almost Kiss production,” and he’s not far from wrong. He gives Kiss more credit than they deserve.

Both shows in Long Beach open with a ’full stage set that depicts a typical street corner. On the corner are several flashy, obvious “hookers,” and as the show begins, a “policeman”—who’s white, incidentally —struts on his beat, looking ominous. Gesturing to the audience, he pretends he’s smoking a reefer, and then pulls out his nightstick. It’s a warning. Then he,pretends he’s sniffing something. He pulls out his nightstick again. Then he spots the hookers, and gives them “trouble.” He ends up on his back, the hookers pushing him down, attacking him, kicking him. The obnoxious white cop is trampled and defeated. The audience cheers—and the show officially begins.

Later, during his ode to marijuana, “Mary Jane” (“I’m in love with Mary Jane... /She makes my heart sing.../Takes me to paradise”), Rick James goes through the same antics that get your standard David Lee Roth in trouble with police officials, i.e. “passing the joint” onstage. I ask him when I see him how he’d feel if, after the show, his audience decided to go out and kick in

TURN TO PAGE 61 policemen’s, heads while smoking dope. James is astonished I’d even draw the parallel.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31

“I don’t tell ’em to do that,” he says. “I don’t tell ’em to smoke dope all the time and beat on police!”

Well there you are onstage, smoking dope and...

“That’s fight, I smoke it, I like it. But I don’t tell nobody what to do. I like marijuana, I been smokin’ marijuana for many-many-many-many years.” He grins. “And I love it, OK?

“I happen to dislike police harrassment. I don’t tell kids to kick policemen’s asses. In not one record have I told people ‘Kick Policemen’s Asses.’ The statement that was made at the beginning of the show, with the girls beating on the police, that’s taken from ‘Mr. Policeman’: ‘Isee you walking on your beat, searchin’ strangers on the street, ’specially the whores you meet. ’ That’s all that was.

“I mean, I seen my best friend shot down by police, and shit, I don’t have no love for police—but I don’t tell nobody to do anything. I ain’t no preacher, I ain’t no politician, you know? I smoke a joint onstage because I wanna get high at that particular time. Niggers airt’t never been able to do that, but / do it.”

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It’s becoming a mini-party on this suite aboard the Queen Mary; in walks Rick James’ mother. “I don’t wanna bust up anything,” she says. “That’s alright, mama,” says-proud son Ricky, “it’s just an interview.” The rest of the band jokes with their leader’s mom. “I brought somethin’ special I want y’all to see,” she says, pulling out a tiny picture of Rick as a baby. Rick smiles, embarrassed, and the band chortles. Someone passes me the tiny picture, little baby Rick. Cute kid."

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Why, I ask, does Rick James need to tell the free world on “Pass The Joint” that—when people call him “faggot”—he and “all his women” laugh?

“OK,” he’s quick to explain,, “that statement was made in my hometown, because there’s guys who run around— because I got long hair and braids and stuff—who feel their masculinity is in jeopardy, OK? Teddy Pendergrass, for instance, can go onstage and there’s mostly women—no men in his audience, because they refuse to go and see him. And so: ‘For Women Only.’ So Teddy don’t be sellin’ out no 20,000-seaters, like us, OK?

“It’s this kind of syndrome—where if a guy sees his girlfriend likin’ somebody, that’s called ‘bitch-power.’ Like Elvis Presley was hated by men, hated, ’cause he had bitch power. Teddy Pendergrass has bitch power, I just found out that / have a little bitch power. But beyond bitch power”— great album title, no?—“I have something else, that men like —and that’s the truth, and the down-to-earth shit, OK? So men don’t mind bringin’ their women to see me, ’cause I have bitch power but it’s in another way.

“So, when guys get jealous, they say ‘Well, Rick James is a faggot’ and all that shit, y’know? So I wrote a line on it: ‘they call me a faggot/me and all my women laugh at it,’ ’cause we do. Don’t we?”

Rick James asks this of a young white woman in a leopard-skin outfit who is sitting on his lap and who is now giving him a great big kiss. “Am I a faggot?” he asks. She’s silent. “You see her smilin’?” The band laughs uproariously. “She knows goddamn well I’m noit, y’know?”

“So on that song I was just tellin’ ’em to kiss my ass. That’s all it was.”

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Of his contemporaries, James isn’t enamored with anyone in particular. Prince? “You ain’t never heard me write an album you couldn’t play on the radio,” he says. “He’s trying to cross over into the white thing too much, y’ know? Long as he’s in that pantyhose, he can forget it.”

Actually, James himself has managed to cross over without the media help/hype Prince has suddenly been awarded; comparable contemporary George Clinton (“he’s just comic-booked out, reads too much science fiction” per James) must feel the sales heat James has generated, if the cartoon buffoon “Trick James” on the cover of the new Funkadelic LP is any indication. And James is doing it without much critical reward, and—despite his claims of his being money-hungry—without compromising his music at all. ,

Crossover?

“If I was trying to cross over into rock, I’d just do a rock album,” says James. “Fuck rock. I’ve got the number three Pop album in the motherfuckin’ country, right up there with REO-motherfuckin’ Speedwagon. The motherfuckin’ Moody Blues, Kim Carnes and me. If that ain’t rock then what the fuck is it?

“I would love to do a hard rock album, I would love to have three guys out there, turn it up to 10, all the amplifiers, and just go crazy like Ted Nugent. I would love that. It’s cheap, you ain’t gotta carry a band, you ain’t gotta wear no clothes, you wear a pair of jeans and you go for it. I would love that; I’d make five times as much money. I mean Ted Nugent got the great idea, all them rock boys.

“But...I would be broke. I would be broke. Because I don’t think the world is really ready for a black rock star yet.” James shakes his head again, and the party in the next room gets louder. “When they are ready,” he says, “I’m sure they’ll let me know about it.”

And then he changes the subject. Because it doesn’t mean a whole lot to him anyway. ‘