Photo by Dino Perrucci

Very soon you’re going to be celebrating a milestone, your 70th birthday. One thing we were talking about before—and I hear you talk so lovingly about all these projects you’re working on—is that, in the last few years, I think you’ve looked at yourself as a composer in a new way. I was wondering if that was something you felt was a conscious change. Was there any point in your career where you said, “Now I want to focus on writing new songs and recording new songs with different people”? Was there a moment where you felt that kind of shift? Or was it just that now there are all these opportunities and it’s time to jump into them.

I wrote songs for the band back in the ‘60s. I did some writing, but it was always the writers’ war. Being the junkie I was back then, I didn’t give a shit about fighting with anybody. Fighting is going to ruin my high, and I don’t want nothing to do with ruining my high. I’m just going to sit back and stay high and watch this shit go down. [Laughs.] That’s the way it went down. For years and years after the band broke up, I always blamed myself because I didn’t step up and stamp my foot on the floor and make everybody understand that what we were doing was wrong. Because once we started abandoning what we really were about and tried to become Earth, Wind & Fire, then we started losing the war. First of all, we didn’t have the promotion in New Orleans that Earth, Wind & Fire and Kool & the Gang and all those guys had in all the other parts of the world. We had management that didn’t care about that. He wanted us to be that home-sweet-home-based studio band for the album. I understood that, because we had a wonderful thing going. Why ruin it by getting a bunch of stars? I don’t want y’all to be stars, I want you to be a hell of a rhythm section, and that’s what we were. Once we became the songwriting tool that brought us to another point, I thought we lost, or we started losing. At the same time, like I said, I offered nothing. I laid back and watched the shit go down wrong. I blame me for not saying, “Man, this is dumb.” And not accepting, “No, we’re not going to talk about this.” The roots of what we did, what we started, nobody else was touching it. Now everybody’s touching it and now we can’t even play it no more. Somebody say, “Y’all sound like—” No, they’re playing us!

The last time I saw you was at Bonnaroo, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers headlined this year. Not only did they get their roots from you guys, they turned one of your songs into their songs, and just changed the city.

One thing about that is they put our name on it. That was great. Those guys are for real. It’s not like so many of the other communities that was utilizing our music and just ignoring the fact of where it came from.

You actually played with the Chili Peppers not too long ago.

Yeah, I played at Jazz Festival with them.

Can you talk about playing the Chili Peppers, especially in front of an audience that maybe wasn’t as familiar with your music?

I wasn’t thinking about that. I think we went up and we played two songs with them. One of them was one of their songs that was kind of based off of that groove from “Africa.” One of the things that I’ve learned about who I am is when people hire me or even when people invite me to be a part of a project that they’re doing, I’ve learned to check my ego. I do have a little ego, it ain’t bad.

Rightfully so, you invented an amazing style of music.

I check it at the door. I go in and be a part of the project that’s required of me. I think that’s been the reason why I’ve been successful at this point. Because I know how to be what you need. I do that really well; that’s ego now.

It’s like the opposite of ego.

I can do that. [Laughs.] I didn’t even know most of those artists that came up [at the Bonnaroo SuperJam]. They would introduce them, and I’d turn and look the drummer and say, “Who the hell is that?” There was one song, “Superfreak.” I heard that song through my daughter. And then the other one, “Can’t Stop This,” from my granddaughter—No! “Can’t Touch This”—my granddaughter, that’s her class of music. The artist at the festival [Boyfriend], she did both songs, which was natural because it was the same piece of music.

The truth is that people ask all the time—I don’t listen to new music. This kid Chance, man, I didn’t know who he was. This guy is one of the biggest artists on the planet right now, and I didn’t even know who the hell he was. I saw when he walked out on stage, 60,000 people lost it. I looked at the drummer again and said, “What the hell was that?” It was after the gig. I said, “What just happened?” He said, “This kid got three Grammys this year.” Obviously, I live a very sheltered life.

Is there a style of music as a composer or as a musician that you haven’t been able to explore as fully as you wanted to before?

Before this is over with, I have one thing that I really want to do: Record a full-fledged bebop record. I really want to do that. I started thinking about it when David Lastie was alive and I was playing with him. Because I thought he was just well known for music that he played with other people, not for himself. I thought I would write some music for him. I was told back then by some of the jazz musicians, the jazz icons, that every piece of bebop has been played, there could be no new bebop. That was kind of like, “Oh wow.” Because I was still doing lots and lots of drugs. I kind of said, “Maybe I’ll throw this away.” But then David passed and the whole idea just went away. But that’s still on the table. I actually have the songs that I wrote for David. I did the backing and the rhythm stuff at home and I was going to have David come in play the stuff. I wanted to do a little more research on some of the stuff, because at that point I played the drums myself. I wanted to get some of the drummers from New Orleans that go back like Herlin Riley and Johnny Vidacovich to come in and play on these different tracks. There were some of the traditional jazz drummers in New Orleans, the old school guys, I wanted to get at least one of them. Ernie Elly! Wonderful drummer. This guy plays so much drums, he can swing. The guy can play all night long and not break a sweat. He can go home and his clothes…

He’s dry [Laughs.]

It was effortless. He just did it. It was so cool. I always loved the way he played. So those are some projects that I wanted to do with those guys. Bring them in and replace my drums with some real drummer. That’s not far away, but I think at this point these other two records are going to have be the ones that I want to do first.

You mentioned that you have always wanted to play with Wynonna Judd. Have you ever crossed paths?

We’ve talked a couple of times but she’s got Willie Weeks. I told her, if Willie breaks a finger or something, call me up. But I think I would submerge myself in any music that I play—I don’t have to like it.

I was originally a guitar player, and I still consider myself a frustrated guitar player. It was right after I tried to join the military, because my little brother ran away and joined the military and we were all worried he was going to go to Vietnam. And I didn’t tell my mom that I was going to do it, so I sort of ran away from home to go join the military too. But I couldn’t touch my toes so they sent my ass home. At home, as a musician, as a guitar player, there were thousands of wonderful guitar players in New Orleans. New Orleans has always been known for great guitar players, and I was not one of them. I was a rhythm guitar player. I couldn’t play a solo to save my heart. If it was my life depending on it, I would be dead. I could not play a solo. But there was a need for bass players because the young electric bass players that was around town at that time got drafted. When I was eight to ten, I was studying classical guitar, so knew how to play bass already. I knew the formula of how to play bass, so it was pretty easy thing to move over to, to be just a bass player. And then I had all the gigs.

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