Clearly, everything has a proper place and time for El DeBarge, chief writer, producer and spokesman of DeBarge, the family group that’s emerged as probably the very brightest light in Motown’s roster for the ‘80s. How else could he have the confidence to cite philosophy, rather than the always-pressing topics of promotion and tour support, in discussing DeBarge’s fourth album, Rhythm of the Night? His perspective on the new record: “There comes a time when you have to learn; there comes a time when you have to teach and show what you’ve learned. I had to learn something else this time.”
Just up from bed in a New York hotel, dressed in his robe prior to a Friday Night Videos interview taping, El is patiently explaining--as he will several more times that day--why he sought out Jay Graydon personally to do the major portion of the production on Rhythm of the Night. Actually, the work had been farmed out to several producers: Graydon did four cuts; Richard Perry. Fresh from five smashes in a row with the Pointer Sisters, did the title cut. Targeted clearly at the fans of Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” and Deniece Williams’ “Let’s Hear It For The Boy.” There’s a holdover from last year’s D.C. Cab soundtrack produced by Giorgio Moroder, and finally, El himself produced three. But El had produced the previous two DeBarge albums in their entirety, with assistance credited to other family members. The new album is also mostly uptempo, unlike it’s ballad-driven predecessors.
These last two facts alone might make it look as if El surrendered a measure of creative control to ensure the fortunes of DeBarge in the wake of family’s 1984 pop breakthrough, In A Special Way. But just because El displays no apparent ego about being a studio wunderkind is no reason to assume it was Motown that pushed him into bed with three big-name producers. Historically, the label has been reluctant to assign production to anyone other than in-house producers (only Diana Ross, for instance, got the chance to make records with Richard Perry, Chic and the post-Motown Ashford & Simpson)-- and it’s only been since Rick James that new artists on the label have been allowed to produce themselves without the contractual struggle that Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye went through to gain that privilege.
“We’ve been through a lot this year and I wanted to express that in us,” says El. Sitting up on a straight back chair and weighing some further philosophy briefly, he continues, elaborating on the point: “You’re babies, then you’re children, then you’re a kid, then you’re a young man. We’ve been through different phases in our career and I wanted to bring a different side of us out. I didn’t want to make any mistakes, so I asked Jay to help me out.” Indeed, El considers himself to have been in firm control of the album, no matter who produced or wrote on the album, no matter who produced or wrote on any given track. “My job as the producer is to make the album a hit, right? (Motown) knows I know what I’m doing. I’ve given them a flop album once. I promised I’d never do that again. And I haven’t.”
El, heretofore a young prodigy, but now the young man of his own description, in fact describes Jay Graydon’s specific influences in details far removed from his own music-making processes. “When you go to different cities there’s a time change, right? Jay goes to bed about six o’clock in the morning and gets up about five o’clock. Every day. He kept me on that time schedule, man! I had to totally rearrange my life and go to bed at the time he went to bed, because he works at night. Musically, technically, I know I learned something from him. I just can’t recall it right now. It’s hard to put in words.”
But El DeBarge hardly needs to rationalize his prior decisions, since the result is destined to be the DeBarge family’s biggest-ever single. Maybe he’s not completely self-possessed about himself--but he’s extremely effective. The making of the new album, he says, was a timely opportunity to “relax and let geniuses help me.” He doesn’t neglect to add that Graydon was certainly acquainted with the El DeBarge hit streak. But, “If I had done this album myself it wouldn’t be as great as it is.”
With that perspective, it’s almost rude to ask, But what happened to the ballads? Why is so much of the material uptempo? (To be fair, two of Graydon’s cuts, “The Heart Is Not So Smart” and “Who’s Holding Donna Now,” do capture some of the magic of previous DeBarge ballads.) El takes no offense, but simply won’t countenance any suggestion that Rhythm of the Night is a compromise of the group’s hallmark vocal style. “It’s not fair to call it slicker,” he protests. “The last one was great, the one before that as great. If it wasn’t for the other albums, this album wouldn’t mean what it means now Those albums were great setups.”
Adds El: “We’ve always had uptempo tunes on our albums. But it seems like now people are recognizing them more so it must mean they’re really great, because they weren’t being recognized before.”
The interview largely completed, El retreats to get dressed for the TV taping. He reappears from the bedroom in a smashing tallow jacket and black pants that emphasize his leanness. All of the DeBarges have put on the dog for the new album cover, particularly by growing their hair and having it styled in formidable punk/New Romantic dos. Unlike their first three album covers, on which the group looked sporty, the new sleeve suggests a stylist whose new wavo couture ideas have really been taken to the max.
El’s carrying a lint roller that he’ll use on his black pants while being driven to and from the session, even though he’s informed that he’ll only be shot from the shoulders up. “It looks better,” he murmurs--and it probably does, to the half dozen young fans who greet El at the hotel entrance.
In the limo on the way to the studio, El’s mood has shifted perceptibly. Less ebullient than he was even minutes ago, El’s answers become slightly clipped. Asked where the rest of his family is, he replies simply, “In L.A.” He fidgets with the window and seems to be following a song that’s playing softly on the driver’s radio and leaking back through the intercom. Another question: Has El had time to himself to get away from his heaviest year of work ever? As it turns out, he means to take some, but hasn’t “because I got used to not doing it.”
El’s jauntiness returns as he’s introduced at the studio, and he even gives different answers to the same questions as they are asked by the producer off camera. “My main influence,” El says at one point, “is me. I’ve been spending along of time in the studio to see what I have to offer myself.”
In a way, it’s the inner voice of El DeBarge that has reached the group’s fans so successfully. To the suggestion that some of his best work has an instinctive knack for subject matter and wording, he explains, “It is subconscious. I’m a different kind of writer than I thought I was. I learned I can’t write songs purposely. When people ask me to write songs for movies, the hardest thing about that is I have to pull all of me into it. There’s a little valve you have to turn to loose me. It’s not turned on by someone asking me to write a song purposely about a particular thing. It has to come when it wants to.”
And then, though he won’t explain specifically why his piano playing sounds so strong and attractive on vinyl (“I can’t tell you my secrets”), he offhandedly offers some observations that further pinpoint the integrity and deep appeal of DeBarge: “When you go through some things in life you can’t really chalk it all up. After a while you’ll understand it better. And a lot of things I go through, I don’t even know how to write about--how to put in words until like, sometime later, when it’s ready. See, I don’t hardly do anything but stay home, so I’m always there when the music wants to talk to me. I’m around my instruments. I like that.
El is in not great hurry to pin down details of the next records and live shows to come from the family DeBarge, or to speculate on any outside writing or production opportunities now that he and his siblings are on the verge of breaking into the really big leagues.
Maybe the conversation has gone on too long: by the time he’s asked where he’d like to be at the conclusion of this second, even bigger year of breakthrough, he retorts crisply: “Where would you like me to be?”
Top 40 staple, easily recognized…
He grins a bit. “Thanks, I like that concept. I’d like to be more stabilized, too. I’d like to have more people listening to us. I think they’d like us.”
What El DeBarge can put into words, and easily, are the immediate goals he sees coming out of the new record. “‘Rhythm of the Night’,” he states, is the record to take him and his four siblings beyond the realm of the mere “hit-hit” and into the rarified atmosphere of the “smash hit.”
DeBarge’s hit-hits have been sweet, reverent ballads on teen love, marked by gorgeous ensemble singing and absolute un-self-consciousness. All of them -- “I Like It,” “All This Love,” “Love Me in a Special Way” and the crowningly glorious “Time Will Reveal” --peaked just around the pop Top 20.
But upon hearing that the group’s latest single, “Rhythm of the Night” (featured on the soundtrack of Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon), is bulleting at 55 on the pop charts, El predicts -- in his unassuming way -- that it will go straight to the top. “I think it sounds like a number one record, don’t you? he asks casually, but rhetorically, in the almost clairvoyant assurance that we’ll both soon see it in that slot. Time proves him close to the mark, as the politely festive pop-tropical “Rhythm” hits Number Three in a month, while the album makes a sixth-week surge into the Top 30. “Yeah,” El says in the car on the way back from the taping, “it’s the best album yet. But each album has been that way. Each one was the best until the next one came out.”
And who among us would dare second guess this man’s wisdom?
Written By Brian Chin for Record Magazine, 1985
Transcribed for the web by thedebarges.blogspot.com
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