As Maurice White tells it, there were a couple of reasons why he chose to record ”Stand By Me,” the first single release from his self-titled solo debut album. For one thing, White loves the song, which was a Top 10 pop hit for composer Ben E. King in 1961 and later was recorded by Spyder Turner, John Lennon and Mickey Gilley. For another, he thinks it`s important to keep classic soul songs from the `60s in the spotlight. ”A lot of kids now are unfamiliar with those songs,” laments White. ”This was my way of trying to reacquaint them with their heritage.”
And then there was the business about the voice that White says he heard while riding along one day in his car.
He was alone. The radio was off. White, who lives in Los Angeles and spends a lot of time in his car, likes it quiet when he drives so that he can think. But all of a sudden, loud and clear, he heard the words ”Stand by me.”
”It was like a voice speaking to me,” recalls White, who has long considered himself ”a searcher” open to mystical experiences. ”I even looked in the back seat to see if there was anybody back there. There wasn`t, and I thought, `What`s going on?` Then I thought, `Oh, the song, ”Stand By Me.” When I got home, I pulled out the old Ben E. King record and played it, and I was thrilled with what I heard. Then I went about recording it myself.” The release of ”Stand By Me”–which made it into the Top 10 on Billboard`s ”Hot Black Singles” chart–sparked renewed speculation that Earth, Wind & Fire, the progressive soul band that singer/songwriter/
percussionist White built into a formidable musical force during the 1970s, had passed into pop history. Earlier, EWF lead singer Philip Bailey had turned his falsetto to other solo projects, including last year`s album, ”Chinese Wall,” which sold more than 500,000 copies. And White himself, in the liner notes of his solo debut album, writes of ”a new beginning which I am now discovering.”
But that ”new beginning,” says White, refers simply to the fact that he is launching a solo career–which doesn`t mean that EWF has broken up. ”I haven`t disbanded the group,” he says. ”Philip Bailey hasn`t left the band. We are just in a state of mind now where we want to do solo projects. It`s just evolution.”
According to White, who recently released a second single, ”I Need You,” EWF will regroup in the fall of 1986 to begin a new album. Meanwhile, White–a self-described workaholic–hopes to begin work on a second solo album early next year and later embark on a solo tour.
”I don`t know exactly what kind of a show I`ll be doing, but I know that it will be something spectacular,” he says. ”I`ve got to disappear at least once.”
White is no stranger to spectacle, as anyone who has ever seen an EWF show knows. The group`s stage shows, rife with imaginative special effects that included such offbeat touches as seemingly magical ”disappearances” on the part of band members, were among the most elaborately staged performances of the 1970s. ”I look at some of the acts that come along now that are supposed to do such spectacular shows–well, we`ve already been there,” says White.
EWF`s live shows, jazzy soul/pop sound (White had spent a number of years as a session drummer at Chess Records and later played with jazz man Ramsey Lewis` band) and quasi-mystical musical positivism brought them crossover success and a total of 9 million-selling albums (and 9 million-selling singles) between 1975 and 1983. But the band`s last album, ”Electric Universe,” sold less than 500,000 copies, and White decided it was time to take a break.
”I wasn`t very satisfied with that album,” he says. ”I think that at the time we made it, I was probably burnt out from the road. We had been touring continuously for years, and I had pushed it a little too far. I wanted to reassess some things, reassess my music, dig deep again. Go back to the true feelings of why I started playing music. That`s why I decided to do a solo record.”
White, who spent much of his childhood in Memphis with his grandmother while his parents (his father is a doctor) established themselves in Chicago, grew up listening to blues, jazz, r&b and gospel music. Later, after moving to Chicago to join his parents, he attended Crane Junior College and the Chicago Music Conservatory before going to work for Chess and later backing Ramsey Lewis. In 1970, he put together an early version of EWF and left for Los Angeles. The group stayed together for 18 months before it disbanded and White assembled the EWF lineup that went on to success.
”I really didn`t think too much about whether my solo album sounded like EWF or not,” says White. ”I just followed my heart. But since I produced it along with some other guys and I also produced all of the EWF records, it`s going to have a certain stamp on it. But I don`t think that it really sounds like EWF; I think that it sounds like Maurice White.”
White`s spiritually positive (and frequently mystical/metaphysical)
outlook on life, which surfaced repeatedly in the songs he wrote for EWF, colors many of the songs on his solo album.
”It`s important for me to communicate higher thought, higher spirit, higher ideas in my music as well as communicate emotionally,” acknowledges White. ”It`s important to put the emphasis on the positive aspect. I have learned that music helps a lot of people survive, and they want songs that can give them something–I guess you could call it hope.
”There are a lot of things wrong on this planet–starvation, poverty, negative thoughts, racism, a lot of weirdness. So somebody has to communicate something to try and balance that, if it`s possible. What happens is that when those higher thoughts are communicated to a thousand, that thousand can become ten thousands. The message might not get to everybody, but we can lighten the load a little bit and lift the planet. If everybody was thinking higher thoughts on this planet, it would be incredible what we could accomplish. I`m trying to acquaint people with a positive image of self. It`s like seeing your life in an unlimited sense. Seeing your accomplishments in an unlimited sense. Seeing how far we can go as a people in an unlimited sense. We are all reaching for the same thing, and the creator looks at each of us in the same way.
”Spiritually, we don`t all have to walk the same path,” adds White.
”I`m not speaking in terms of any denominational religion. I`m talking about a more universal thing. But people should make sure that whatever path they walk is a positive one to instill good things in yourself and others.”
White`s own path has led him to visit such places as Stonehenge and the ruins of ancient Indian civilizations in search of answers to what he describes as the mysteries of the universe. ”I`m a searcher,” he says. ”I`m curious. I`m a child of the universe, and I will forever be a child of the universe until I leave this planet. If you`re alive inside, you have to have some curiosity and enthusiasm about the universe. Questions, that`s where I`m at. I`ve always been interested in mysterious things. Stonehenge, the Mayans, the Incas, the Pyramids and the Sphinx. . . .”
White`s interest in the Pyramids and Sphinx led him to study Egyptology for several years, during which time a number of ancient mystical symbols began to crop up on EWF album covers.
”Most of the things that I have studied, relative to metaphysics and all that, I try to relate (to the public) through my album covers and music,” he explains. ”Actually, the main reason I do it is to stimulate curiosity. For instance, on EWF`s `All in All` album, I put a lot of symbols on there purposely to create some curiosity so that people would think and start to raise questions about what life is about, and think about all the symbols that they had been seeing all these years.
”That might be why in the past I have been looked upon as being kind of mysterious,” says White. ”Really, I`m just a simple guy.”
