If I hadn’t been getting high a lot, I probably would have had more energy to write more songs.” But he knew the power of lawyers, retaining Los Angeles capo John Branca and Irv Shulman from his Buffalo hometown to look after his business interests. “When I was drinking and doing drugs,” James confided to Billboard, “there was a sap on my musical energies. At one point in 1985, Rick claimed to have 75 people on his payroll at Mary Jane Productions and Stone City Inc. He mentored Teena Marie to her breakthrough, as well as his backup players, the Stone City Band a female black vocal quartet, the Mary Jane Girls and a retro-funk combo from Buffalo, Process & the Doo Rags. Motown’s investment in Rick paid off for the musician in other respects, too. I said once I got one hit, once I got one foot in the door, then I would be unstoppable.” And he was correct: the momentum continued with 1979’s Fire It Up (1979) and Garden Of Love (1980). “I had been in the business since the ’60s, so you can imagine how long I’d been trying to make records and when it happened, I was totally dazed. “I never ever thought that record was going to be a hit,” he said. The sheer locomotive force of Rick James’ “punk-funk” was stoked in 1978, when Rick had returned to Motown as a solo artist with the album Come Get It! and ‘You And I,’ its lead-off track.
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I was no longer a Black artist, I had officially crossed over.”Īnother sure sign of his crossover status, albeit years later: ‘Super Freak’ was prominently featured in a TV commercial for Visa credit cards. ‘Super Freak’ was that song.” He added, “My whole life changed drastically after Street Songs. 3: “When we had started recording the album, I had said that I wanted to put something on it for white folk, just as a joke, something that they could dance to. 1 on the R&B charts, but more significantly, 74 weeks on the mainstream Billboard best-seller listings, peaking at No.
‘Super Freak’ was contained in Rick’s own all-time biggest-selling album, Street Songs: 20 weeks at No. ‘U Can’t Touch This’ collected a Grammy as best R&B song of 1990. At least three lives were affected by its success and income, including that of the ‘Super Freak’ co-writer, Alonzo James. According to The Billboard Book Of Number One Albums, Hammer cleared the sample with James’ lawyers, even though Rick generally nixed sampling. Hammer was changed by ‘U Can’t Touch This,’ sampling James’ 1981 smash, ‘Super Freak.’ The track was the centrifugal force which spun Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em into one of the biggest selling albums of 1990. They also told me that when the obligations were over, I’d be welcomed back to Motown.” While Rick was in jail, Young and Palmer left for California, for a changed future with Buffalo Springfield and beyond.ĭecades later, the life of M.C. “Neil and I called Motown and they told us they were holding back on releasing the single because of my military obligations with the Navy. They recorded several songs in Detroit, including a single, ‘It’s My Time,’ but when their manager told the company that James (known then as Ricky Mathews) was a draft-dodger, things changed.
Rick, Neil and bassist Bruce Palmer were part of the Mynah Birds, an interracial Canadian band signed to Motown in 1966. Teena Marie is one, but there are others: for instance, Neil Young. Through his music and mercurial personality, James Ambrose Johnson Jr., yes, that’s Rick James from Buffalo in upstate New York, helped to change and make a difference in many people’s lives, fans and fellow musicians alike, before his premature death in 2004. “ I had gotten really close to the cat.” – Neil Young The reasons for my incarceration are of no importance…what is important is that by writing my life’s story, I might help change or make a difference in someone else’s life.”
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“There are no windows here, just dismal grey iron and concrete, and I don’t know if the day was filled with rain or sun.
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