THE ERNIE ISLEY INTERVIEW - Soul and Jazz and Funk · had begun experimenting by fusing and funk...

THE ERNIE ISLEY INTERVIEW

Written by Charles WaringWednesday, 19 August 2015 08:34 - Last Updated Thursday, 20 August 2015 08:31

Ernie Isley was, by his own admission, precociously talented and an early starter. He was justfourteen years old when he played his first live gig with his three elder brothers Ronald,Rudolph, and O'Kelly, better known as the Isley Brothers, who'd lit up the US charts with'Shout!' and 'Twist & Shout.' The year was 1967 and schoolboy Ernie was recruited to playdrums for the sibling trio's backing band at a gig playing alongside their then label mates andMotown hit sirens Martha & The Vandellas in Philly. The memory of the event is indelibly etchedupon his mind. " Martha & the Vandellas didn't have a drummer on the same showso I wound up playing drums behind them on 'Dancing In The Street' and 'Heat Wave' and all ofthat ," says Ernie, his voice still betraying a sense of disbelief.Things got even better after the gig was over: " My brother Kellyhanded me a fifty dollar note and said go get a hot dog and then I went through the back stagedoors and all of these girls of my same age started screaming at me as if I was Justin Bieber." It was an epiphany-like moment for Ernie Isley that he would never forget: a point at which hisfate was sealed and he would be destined to become a musician.

Two years later, in 1969, Ernie had moved from drums to bass and made his first recording withhis brothers called 'It's Your Thing' for the Isley's own T-Neck label. It was a massive,game-changing hit for the group, who had quit Motown a year earlier. In the early '70s the Isleys

1 / 9



had begun experimenting by fusing and funk soul with rock and in 1973 - by which time Erniehad started playing guitar in a flamboyant Hendrix-style - the brothers released thegroundbreaking ' 3+3' album where Ernie, his brother Marvinand Rudolph's brother-in-law, keyboardist Chris Jasper, officially joined to make the Isleys asix-piece, self-contained band. The album, featuring their new rock-tinged sound (and Ernie'ssearing lead guitar lines) spawned the singles 'That Lady' and 'Summer Breeze,' whichcatapulted the group originally from Cincinnati into the world arena. In the rest of that decade,the band released album after classic album, which all appear bolstered with bonus tracks onthe forthcoming box set on Sony called 'The RCA Victor and T-Neck Album Masters (1959-1983),' which traces the band's footsteps during four decades of music-making.

In an exclusive interview, Ernie Isley - whose distinctive guitar sound was such an importantcomponent in the band's success - talks to SJF's Charles Waring about the band's long andstoried career and recalls key moments in their history...

The Isley Brothers' career is celebrated by a new box set. What are your thoughts on it?

It's fantastic. It's like an Isley Brothers musical encyclopedia that somebody could have if they'relooking to get an understanding about our career and how it stretched all those years for quite along time.

2 / 9



What emotions come to the surface when you hear the music?

When I go back and listen it's as if it was a photo album except it's got sounds it andautomatically transports me back in time. When I hear the 'Shout' album I'm seven years old.When I hear 'Twist and Shout' or something like that I'm ten. Those two songs predate theBeatles being introduced to America. Obviously they're important songs, everybody knowsthem.

What do you think was the most important album that you recorded in terms of thegroup's career?

There will be more than one. Certainly, 'Shout,' is the first and then the one in '69, 'It's YourThing.' I played bass on that album. I was sixteen at the time it was recorded. And certainly'3+3' and everything else that followed were important too. If you're really trying to connect thedots you have to follow each album more or less as it happened chronologically and thenobviously, the career has gone beyond 1983. So you'd have to start with this anthology andthen go beyond it because the career has stretched beyond those years.

You were only seven when 'Shout' came out in 1959. What do you remember about yourolder brothers in those days?

It was exciting to hear their song on the radio. Cincinnati was certainly proud to have a group inrock 'n' roll music and a lot of people knew our family and knew all the brothers. They might nothave necessarily known Marvin and I because we came along later but because we were allfamily and because they were the older brothers it was an exciting time. It was certainly excitingto hear them on the radio and perform live. The song 'Shout' from its very beginning was a realshowstopper of a song and because of the way they were, in terms of their live performance, itmade them an extremely difficult act to follow. So they wound up being the headliners on showsbecause of that song.

How much did you want to be like them when you were that age? Was it inevitable thatyou would join your brothers in the band?

3 / 9



No, because when you're that little you've got school and you've got bicycles. I had baseballand other interests as a kid and music, of course, was in there but when you're a kid and youstart to get exposed to the world there are all kinds of interesting and exciting things. Some ofthem maybe you don't discover right away. My brothers were in the music business, and Ithought about it, but I didn't start playing drums until I was twelve. So it was like the wholeprocess of growing up and coming of age but it was always exciting to go to a show or watchthe band rehearsing. They stopped quite a few softball and kickball games in the backyardwhen they were rehearsing. When we were with our friends, we'd stop playing and run into thehouse into the basement where my brothers rehearsed. At one point you'd run into thebasement and there was a left-handed guitar player down there... It was exciting.

That left-handed guitar player... It wasn't a certain Mr Jimi Hendrix was it?

Yeah. It was very exciting.

At what point did you feel that you wanted to join the band?

Probably around the age of twelve when I picked up some drumsticks and sat behind the drumkit for the first time. The drummer set the kit up. Of course, I didn't know a thing about it so heset up the kit with the kick drum, the floor tom, and a couple of mid-toms and a cymbal to the leftand a cymbal to the right, and a hi hat. He said your left foot goes here and your right foot goeshere and your right hand does this and your left hand does that. I said I can't do that and hestarted laughing and said sure, you can do it. But it's one thing to be observing it and another tobe doing it. It was like driving a car. The first time you're behind the wheel it's like, oh-oh, I'msupposed to do what exactly? And then you get the instructions and you sort of learn as you goalong but it turned out that I was a quick learner and I played my first live gig on drums when Iwas fourteen in Philadelphia.

Was that playing with your brothers?

Yeah. And Martha and the Vandellas didn't have a drummer on the same show so I wound upplaying drums behind them on 'Dancing In The Street' and 'Heat Wave' and all of that. After theIsley Brothers had performed I still had on my stage clothes. I was fourteen years old and mybrother Kelly handed me a fifty dollar note and said go get a hot dog. I thought wow, he's given

4 / 9



me fifty dollar bill, and I went through the back stage doors and all of these girls of my same agestarted screaming at me as if I was Justin Bieber. (Imitates screaming noise). "Ah, you playedso well, you're so cute! What's his name? Are you at school down here?" I said to myself: man, Ineed to move to Philly 'cos I'd never got that kind of action in my school back in New Jersey. Itwas an exciting night.

At that point I suppose you thought that 'this is the life for me...'

Yeah, it was like: do this, if you can, because it was an eye-opening experience.

5 / 9



At what point did you move onto the bass guitar?

On 'It's Your Thing.' Before that Chris was playing piano, and I was playing drums and then wesort of drafted Marvin in as a bass player to form a trio. Because Marvin had a bass throughnatural curiosity I started playing it. I was playing it when I got to when I got my very first guitarin September 1968. A month later in October 1968, was the first rehearsal in our home for thesong 'It's Your Thing.' I was switching off between drums and bass and when we got to therecording studio I showed the bass player what I played and gave him his bass back. He had adifferent interpretation of his own (of the bass line) and so my older brothers got into a huddleand they said they preferred the way I played it so Ronald came to me before we startedrecording and said you're going to play bass. I said oh my God, I'm not ready to do this.(Laughs). He said well you just did it and you did in the living room so just do it now. So he gaveme the guy's bass and gave me the headphones and then I heard a voice saying "rolling." I wasreally scared but held on for dear life and played it. It was recorded in November, on a Monday,the day before the general election - it was the election Richard Nixon won, that's how I alwaysremember it. So I didn't go to school Tuesday, the day of the election, and when I went toschool on Wednesday, my friends were like, Ernie, hey what happened? You weren't in schoolon Monday, did you have a cold or something? What's up? I said I was in a recording session.They said yeah? I said yeah, I was with my brothers, playing the bass. They said what song? Isaid 'It's Your Thing.' When's it coming out? I said if you don't hear it before Christmas it will beearly next year. And it came out in the spring of '69. It was a humongous hit and kick-started ourcareer.

What did it feel like when you first heard the record with you playing on it on the radio?

Kind of like eating chocolate at Christmas in Disneyland with Mickey Mouse on one side andSanta Claus on the other. (Laughs). It was really, really sweet. The fact that it was a hit made iteven more so.

6 / 9



(left: Isleys at Motown) It was a game-changing record for the Isley Brothers, wasn't it? Yes, it certainly was. It changed everything. T-Neck was my brothers' label. They had had somesuccess on Motown and then left Motown. Any artist that had been on Motown and left, that wasusually the kiss of death to their career but they were the first artists to defy that; andsuccessfully in a major way. That was in 1969 and in1971 Marvin Gaye came out with 'What'sGoing On' and although Marvin Gaye had an extensive catalogue at Motown, 'What's GoingOn,' was unlike anything that he had ever recorded. And then Stevie Wonder had 'Music Of MyMind' in '72 followed by 'Talking Book' and 'Inner Visions,' which were unlike anything that hehad ever recorded. Motown was a company that was changing and certainly the whole musicbusiness was going into another kind of gear and one of the first to do that would have been theIsley Brothers. At what point then did you graduate from bass to lead guitar? I wanted to play 'Light My Fire' by José Feliciano and then I wanted to play the twelve-stringguitar part on 'Love Is Blue' (by Paul Mauriat) and I also wanted to play Mason Williams''Classical Gas.' Those were the three songs. And then after that I was trying to play what Iheard in my head. I was on-the-job training and learning as I was going along and eventually Igot a certain kind of dexterity and just a knowledge of the instrument. I was learning andimproving day-to-day and week to week. Four-and-a-half years later we'd got to April 1973 andthe '3+3' album. That came about when I went to music store on Sunset Boulevard into theirguitar centre and asked them for certain kinds of guitar toys (effects pedals). They brought themto me and I asked for a Strat (a Fender Stratocaster guitar), plugged into an amp and played therhythm guitar part and the lead part to 'That Lady' in the store. Nobody came over to me orturned around but I knew what I had and I went into the studio that night and said I've got tohave this pedal. It cost a hundred bucks and the engineer said you don't have to buy that, wecan rent it. So I said okay, and told them what it was and the next day it was there. I plugged inand when I hit the very first note on the 'That Lady' rhythm track it went from black-and-white to3-D Technicolor. It was astounding. And it flawed all of us. We were all like: wow. Our engineerswere also working with Stevie Wonder - they were working with us half the day and the otherhalf were working with him - and when they heard this guitar sound, they lost it: "Wow, that's notClapton, that's not Hendrix, that's not Carlos Santana, that's not Jeff Beck, that's... Ernie?"Everything changed. There were two takes of 'That Lady' and the first one I was playingeverywhere. I lost it. My brother Kelly was staring at me for forty-five minutes through the studioglass without blinking. (Laughs). So then I did the second take and the second take I didn't likeso we shut it down and came back couple of days later and played back what we'd done. I saidto the engineer I'm glad you didn't erase it because take number two was what went on therecord. Take number one was better but that ingredient changed everything. When CBS heardthe finished product they were like, "well, 'That Lady' doesn't sound like 'It's Your Thing' anddoesn't have trumpets or saxophones but we like it. What category is it in?" We looked at eachother and said category? Yeah, they said, "because it's got dance elements, it's certainly gotR&B elements but it's also got rock elements with the guitar. It's a great sound - where did youget the guitar player?" Ronald said that's my brother Ernie. "Get out of here. We thought therewere only three of you guys. Ernie?" Yeah, my brothers said, he's twenty-one years old and incollege in his last year. By the time we'd done the cover for the album and all that, the IsleyBrothers was launched as a band. With the sound that we had and the songs that we did - 'ThatLady,' 'Listen To The Music,' 'Summer Breeze,' 'Lonely The Night' - it was like wow, whatevercategories we were supposed to be in we kicked those little plastic doors open and there wasno looking back after that.

Was 'That Lady' inspired by a particular person or woman at all? I heard Ronald say once that was for his wife Margaret. Because it was done in '64 as acha-cha, kind of like a bossa nova. He said we're going to do that song again and I said but it'sa bossa nova. He said no, we've got to change the melody and change the lyrics and you aregoing to play lead guitar on it. I was like okay. We tried it and it worked. Chris Japser joined the band at the same time as you... Yes, Chris has a sister married to my brother Rudolf. The Jasper family lived about threeminutes from where the Isley family lived in Cincinnati. Same neighbourhood. And Chris is notquite three months older than me. (Laughs). It sort of worked out. He played keyboards and Iplayed drums and we joined the band that way. You both brought a unique quality to the group with your contributions... Yes, the keyboard thing certainly. What record doesn't really at some point incorporate thekeyboard as a reference point? The fact that he plays so well and we'd be bouncing stuff off ofeach other musically. I remember once in '72, he came over to Ronald's house and Ronald wasplaying these four-note chords in the right-hand and it sounded really good. He asked Chris toplay it, showed him what he was playing, and Chris could play it in tempo. Those chords werefor the song 'Work to Do.' When we went into the studio to do it, the way Chris played it from theway it was originally demonstrated, he just embellished it more on acoustic piano. That song appears alongside 'That Lady' on the unreleased 'Wild at Woodstock' album.Why wasn't it ever released? We were working on more than one particular idea for the next record that we would do in 1980and we wanted to do a live album and did it but we were also working on a studio record ('Go AllThe Way'). The live album ('Wild In Woodstock') was finished first but then CBS in the endwanted the studio album. Because the live album had been tracked and had already beenrecorded, it's sort of went on the backburner to the point that we went on and did other things.When they got to assembling this project (the new box set retrospective), they realised oh,we've got a live album that was never released. So they opted in there and we said wow, that'sreally good stuff. Why didn't we release that? (Laughs). But at least it's there now.

(Isley Brothers with Jimi Hendrix far top right) One of the discs covers Jimi Hendrix's tenure with the band in early-to-mid-'60s. What doyou remember about him? Jimi Hendrix was our house guest between March 1963 and November 1965. He was verytalented. He caught on quick and played all the time. Being a kid I didn't understand thatbecause he didn't have to practice but he was always playing, with or without an amplifier, to thepoint that whenever I would hear him play in the house I'd find a book or something like that andgo in the same room with him, not necessarily doing social studies but listening to andobserving him. So, naturally enough, the way everything went if he had been around when 'ThatLady' came out he probably would have given me something between a bear hug and a tackleand say how did you ever learn how to play like that? Looking back at your career with the Isley Brothers, what's been the biggest highlight foryou? Oh, that's really hard. One of them would be in 2014 when we got a lifetime Grammyachievement award. At the ceremony was Olivia Harrison (George Harrison's wife) and YokoOno and Ringo (Starr) and Paul McCartney was in the audience but we had already met Paul.All of them were very gracious and in 2011 we had done a show for the estate of Ron Perlman,whose family own Revlon. Ronald and I did a performance and when we left the stage wentback into the audience afterwards. We were signing autographs and taking pictures and stuffand we sat back down. My wife Trish, she says, "Paul McCartney's over there." I said where?She said "A few tables away." So I weave through the tables and I go up to him and tap him onthe shoulder. He stands up to its full height and gives me a bear hug that almost put me out ofcommission. And we're both talking to each other at the same time and I said something like:Paul, Ringo, George, and John are just flat out wonderful and he said, "Ernie, if it were not forthe Isley Brothers, the Beatles would still be in Liverpool." And then he went on stage and saidthe same thing. And we performed Twist & Shout" for the very first time with a Beatle and theIsley Brothers with Richie Sambora and Usher and John Bon Jovi. After we did 'Twist & Shout'and it was over everybody was standing around saying "now what we do? How do we followthat after what we just heard and saw?" It was like there's nothing else left. Your music has been much sampled and covered and is still very popular. Why is itstood the test of time do you think? That's divine grace. And we love what we do and we have a lot of listeners, obviously.Everybody knows 'Shout' and 'Twist & Shout.' I mean it's just "what key do you want to sing itin?" The Beatles have done it, Bruce Springsteen's done it, Stevie Wonder's done it, Lulu hasdone it, and it's been in the movies Animal House and Sister Act. 'Shout's' been likeeverywhere. It's just the perennial rock 'n' roll party song everyone knows at weddings, and barmitzvahs. I've been in hotels where they've had weddings and we've been in the hotel becausewe did a show. And after the show I'm riding on the elevator with people who are going to awedding and the elevator door opens on that floor and I hear (Ernie sings the very first openingwords and notes of 'Shout'). We just look at each other and go wow, man. Incredible. So it's awonderful thing that the music has been embraced like that. Of course, certain songs that wewere doing we didn't know that by way of technology and MTV and hip-hop and rap that songswould come back in another kind of way. 'Big Poppa' by Notorious B.I.G., or 'Today Was aGood Day' with Ice Cube, and 'Footsteps in the Dark'.... Bone Thugs and Harmony with 'SayAgain Girl,' the backdrop to 'See You At The Crossroads,' which was the biggest record in theindustry that year. Or Aaliyah doing 'At Your Best You Are Love,' which we never released as asingle. I know there have been a couple of versions of 'Harvest For The World.' So we've donevery well in that regard. I think everybody likes our music and that's what we were doing it for inthe first place.

7 / 9



(Ernie with brother Ron today) Going forward from the past into the future, are you in Ronstill performing under the Isley Brothers banner? Yes, as a matter of fact we've got a show coming up this time next week. We're going to bedoing a TV special with Oprah Winfrey along with Smokey Robinson. And we've got a showcoming up in Detroit with Aretha Franklin. So yeah, we're busy. We'll be at a music festival offthe coast of Venezuela in early September so we're going to be busy. What about recordings? Anything in the pipeline? We're working on it. It's a work in progress. 'The RCA Victor and T-Neck Album Masters (1959-1983)' is out on August 21st.

Read the review here:

http://www.soulandjazzandfunk.com/reviews/3539-the-isley-brothers-the-rca-victor-a-t-neck-alb

8 / 9

reviews/3539-the-isley-brothers-the-rca-victor-a-t-neck-album-masters-1959-1983-sonylegacy.html



um-masters-1959-1983-sonylegacy.html

9 / 9

reviews/3539-the-isley-brothers-the-rca-victor-a-t-neck-album-masters-1959-1983-sonylegacy.html

THE ERNIE ISLEY INTERVIEW - Soul and Jazz and Funk · had begun experimenting by fusing and funk...

Documents

Transcript of THE ERNIE ISLEY INTERVIEW - Soul and Jazz and Funk · had begun experimenting by fusing and funk...