Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Hey, what's going on? What's going on? Y'all? This is QLs Classic. My name is quest Love. You're listening to a classic episode of Course Love Supreme. Hey, what can I say? Jesse Johnson from the time you know of Course Purple episodes are my favorite. This is from August first, twenty eighteen.
What makes this Jesse episode so special, in addition to his storytelling and his amazing life, is the sneak guest that he brought into the show that we weren't aware of when I was aware of. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy it. This part one of a two part Jesse Johnson and Course Love Supreme QLs Classic. I hope this works.
Suprema Supreme, A roll Call Suprema Supreme, Roll Call Supreme, Supreme, Roll Call Supreme.
Supreme, roll car.
Yeah, what I'm always getting into something? Why Ia says I ain't right? Mm hmm. Some could say, oh, don't go home with him, or my bark's worse than my bite. Right, you can trust me, girl. A gentleman, A gentleman never tells HM, your secret's safe on site.
Hey, Jesse, Yeah, come in man, Suprema Suprema roll.
Car name Sugar.
Yeah, used to drive a Silica.
Yeah, back when this dude was making Shaka Delica.
Supremo Supremo roll Suprema Supremo.
Roll call was five.
Was corrected by my mother. Yeah, I was sure today's guest. Yeah, it was my father's brother.
Sup Supremo roll call Supremo Suprema.
Rolls like yeah, and Jesse, yo, just looking for to go out.
Suprema Supremeo roll Suprema Supremo roll.
Yeah yeah, and yeah yeah, I want to picture.
Supreme Supreme Supreme roll Supreme Supreme Ro Supreme Supreme.
That's all ladies and gentlemen.
Uh, clown and early, No, you don't.
It's a long story behind that, you know.
At the same time that can't even y'all get away with her thinking she's right there.
Those three seconds, those three seconds are the staple of the show. It's a long story. Explain what that means. But ladies and gentlemen, Uh, nothing sits us more uh than getting one on one time.
Uh.
What I consider with any purple disciple on quest Love supreme and this is no exception.
Bring up bad memories.
I'm about to say, paink disciple, you.
Bring up bad memories of that chachadelic or stuff. No, y'all did. Y'all don't know the story behind.
I've heard the story.
We don't what y'all hold people, truth had the truth.
We're going to get that. Let me introduce you for anyway. Our guest is a master x men on part with some of the best brothers to ever touch the guitar from Eddie Hazel, Ernie Eisley, the Brother Nelson himself, Jimmy Hendricks name him, uh turner anybody. Uh, he's gaying attention. Remember he said he's gay.
I didn't even know what he.
Remember he's gay. Jesse Johnson, thank.
You, question, Thank you for this. It's actually my pleasure, man. It's how's it going, bro? It's good, man. I can't complain. And that's when people you know I'm a true New Yorker in a sense, when you ask me how am I doing I'm compared to who?
Yeah, I definitely as you that. Well, Thank you man, I'm glad you but I'm good. I mean, I really haven't had a chance to chop it up with you since uh well, since you've been on the scene.
Yeah, no, that's why I I this would what great timing. Huh yeah, I've done so much stuff together. We've never had it, but we're always like jumping out of the plane with the parachute on and hitting the ground running.
Part of me always knew that I'd have this platform one day, so I think I wanted to save all of my fan out moments for when the tapes are rolling, so I could just ask any and everything, because I feel like, I mean, after you broke my heart about the the lin drum seven seven story, Yeah, it broke a lot of heart, and then I'm certain that there's like fifty other worries you about to debunk today. Yeah.
They always say the truth is can be heavy.
Truth hurts, Yeah, so uh well, yeah, I guess I should say that we are recording at the world famous Electric Lady Studios, the house of Jimmy.
And uh Live and Well in New York.
We're actually in the b room, which you know, rarely, what do we do here, Steve? We did like send it on maybe.
One more again, I guess was in here. So a lot of vocals and mixing in here.
But Jordan, I know that, uh, I at least know that a track send it on here, Like we started off in this room before we even went to the ap Ram. So like a lot of the early stuff, I'm sure there's a real Superman Lover on it. Back when I think Kim and BB King were supposed to do Superman Lover, we're talking about doing D'angelo's Voodoo.
But right, so, Jesse, you never recorded it here before.
I've came here a couple of times when he was when d was working there, but I wouldn't come in because it's like the headspace in here that you know. I'm a Jimmy disciple. So it's like even now, it's overwhelming. Yeah, it's heavy because you depending on you know what you feel and how you feel things, and I usually feel what's going on and it's it's it's beautiful, but it's heavy.
I'll say that sixty eight, sixty eight years later, maybe would you say that at least seventy five percent of the studio still intact from the original plan of Well.
First of all, it's fifty year.
Sixty eight. I'm in nineteen sixty.
Yeah, fifty years yeah, well technically opened in seventy. But but there's there's some gear that's original, some microphones, but but structurally, it's mostly in the structural exactly our work.
And you know, can we can we reiterate to everybody too, that you kind of grew up in this building for some of the New Quest Love Supreen listeners as Sugar Steve.
Actually, you know, I stole Sugar Steve from Electric Lady Steve.
I mean, I'm only like the third most interesting person here.
Use somebody might be listening like, what the hell did Sugar Steve know what?
Actually he knows a lot.
Yeah, I mean I came up here as an intern, started cleaning the toilets, and then stay for about eight or nine years.
And wait, you were here eight years before.
No, I started basically when you when you came.
Here, So you were an intern when Voodoo started. Yeah, we told you did else. No, I'm just kidding.
I was an assistant engineer, okay, who cleaned the toilets.
At the time. There was a cat here named Jimmy that we swore was the actual ghost of Jimi Hendrix. One time he there was what was it, he jumped on the.
Board and Yeah, if he jumps on the console while you're mixing, meanings like he approves of the mix, you know.
Yeah, but there was one time where he like, we were looking for the source of some feedback thing and the cat actually jumped on the board and pressed it, turned it off and pressed some button, and then we were forever convinced that that was Jimmy Hendricks.
Plus his name was Jimmy, which which really helped.
Yes, that helped, all right, So jesse H, I always start each show with this question, where were you born?
Rock Island, Illinois as far as that from a town probably four or five hours from Chicago. It's between before you hit Chicago, you hit Rockford and some other Aurora, that famous place from U Wayne's World.
Yeah, okay, so.
That he thought he had my I play used to play in Aurora, Illinois, gains where gains Boro I think it's called a Gainsboro, that's something like that. I used to play all over those places illis But Aurora in the movie, he said he thought he had Mono, but he just foo was bored.
And a roar. But Aurora was really like that.
But Peoria, I played one of those you know you've seen the storied uh Richard probably talking about the Pimp Yeah convention. I played one of those Illinois for real and they they're real, Like the dude comes in the Pimp of the Year with the cup and.
Well, I was gonna say, you were born in the sixties, so you were.
Yes, But I played with I was so fortunate I played with these guys. Was telling me one time that they were all Greens Band. So it was a drummer David Govan, his brother Oscar on guitar, brother Dennis on bass. They were signing there, al Greens band. You know, you meet people. I'm in a little town. Came out and I'm like, yeah, yeah, right, right right. And I remember playing at this bar midnight specials on the TV and break and them cats was up there playing without Green
and I suised to play. It was fortunate enough as a youngster to play with some real cats, you know, get to travel around and just drop out of school and all that fun stuff.
Well, for a lot, or I'm saying for a lot of us. For me at least, like you think of Illinois, you just basically think of Chicago.
I grew up South Side Chica. I grew up the two cities that I grew up and I was born in Rock Island, but I grew up in South Side Chicago and one of the other roughest places other than the rough side of You've heard Quincy Jones talk about the South Side Chicago's joke. It's like escape from New York, cars on fire and stuff in Jackson Park. It was really But East Saint Louis was no joke. I grew yeah, yeah, I grew up in Say Louis. So I saw George.
I think the album might have been I can't it was Jerome Brayley, but it was years before the Jerome Braley had the stuff that's on the mother George has on a Mothership Connection album. Yeah, but he was wearing that so they were coming off that thing, maybe the Chocolate City. But I saw them. I was a little kid. I rode three buses to get to They played at East Side High And when I would tell that story to George, George would be like, oh man, you're telling
your age. I'm like, no, I was a little kid. I just was. I had older brothers, so I was in the you know, they exposed me, you know, I we know the Donald Goyn's books and slams and into great music, you know, because I had I had, you know, seven older brothers. Whoa damn Wait, you were the youngest of seven. No, I'm not like towards the end, but I you know, I got older brothers though.
Okay, siblings in total? How many siblings and total?
Shit?
Maybe I shouldn't cuss, right, it's a lot of us. It's it was like twelve of us or something because my father he raised everybody, but there were not those. My older siblings are not his siblings. I'm my father. I'm his oldest. And then I have a a brother and a sister and knows are my father's he raised the other cause I grew up and then we never you know, and black families, if you got you can have twelve brothers and sisters, but they all got different dads.
But you never hear words like that's my step sister, that's my half. It's like, yeah, sisters same here, Yeah exactly.
So were you how did you develop your musical skills? Was your family into music or no? But they my father.
He gave me the he It was a lot of my household had a lot of like if I wanted to play music. I had to be able to remember, you know, you know who wake up in my boy, you can play and then you and I had come to this stuff like exactly. And if you couldn't do that, he wouldn't. I wasn't allowed to play some of them. So I was allowed to play and bands at an early age. Because he had all these thick records. I
didn't know. I think, I forget what they're called, but they look like an album, but they're smaller seventy eights, yes, but they had no names on them, so they were that old. He and you remember the old record players because we didn't ruin all of his records, were slowing them down and learned that, you know, learn and all that and so you slow the record. So he had all these collections that was Lightning Hoppins. I mean, it wasn't into many years later later that I realized it
was Lightning Hopkins now. But they had no names on them. But I had to know all that stuff, and that's why I could play Bottleneck and all kind of tunis and Robert Johnson because he was like, if you can play this, then you can go play, So you're a true bluesman to through and through, but just to please your dad like he was president.
It was.
I was so fortunate in the house growing up. I mean, when I read your backstory, it just sounds a lot like mine, except for my parents were not musicians, but they would promote shows. And as a little kid growing up in a small town like Rock Island, which is very predominantly Jewish town, which was a really really cool thing because I grew up in advertley with a lot
of culture. No, yeah, I saw all my friends. I grew up, you know, mantsa ball and the whole shot, you know, with a lot of culture, but not realizing it because you know, you're just a little kid going. But I would wake up some mornings and there's a guy in the living room. I was like, who's that? And it was a cat named Major Lance a song called Monkey Time. So they would put together shows like that. My father would, so he would, I guess, be a quase promoter, but he worked a gig. He were a
couple of jobs, but he would promote these shows. One day he wake up and it's like Major Lance the living room and you know, Jimmy McCracken, you know, different cats like that. So I would really not realizing, you know, I'm not even in school good yet. So but I but they listen to the between the two of them listen to everything. They loved everything. So my vocabulary in my ears are so giant because it was not so I the love of music. It's just a love of music. But I love all styles.
This is a recurring theme on the show, either DJ's become producers or if you're three or four years old, like God's in the living room teaching you exactly. So, uh, what was your band situation like in school? Like were you forming bands?
And no, I was really you know, I guess you're It was the weirdest thing. I was like, of course, you you know, it's like a disease once you discover music and you really get the jones because it's like you see girls and you're just like, oh man, she's so pretty well love it. But you know, it was like that during that time and girls will say you don't get high, and I go no, and they go, oh, I can't deal with you. And just always try to tell my kids it's like I was always a straight dude.
I was always a nerd dude. I said, but look what I did, and look what did I said? When I went back to rock, And the first time I played the I was with the time. It was printing the time, and we played Palmer Chiropractice Auditorium whereas where I grew up there and seeing then Lizzie everybody at that place, and ac DC's here, so here I'm at
this place and it's print in the time. And then when I went on my own, I went back there and played with Hendricks and Zeppelin played at the Call Ballroom, so you know, and it's and I just remember this girl, she was like miss Black Quad Cities, and I remember she walked on. I was sitting under the girl's porch in Davenport when she walked up the stairs and I said, him, sitting there talking to something. And she walked up stairs a meet with somebody, and I said hi, and she
didn't speak to me. And then when I played there, she almost got hit by a car running across the But it's like, you know, I didn't say nothing, but you just go like, see you just never know that dude janitoring over there cleaning the toilet. You just come on, man, I know I did the same thing. You don't y'all don't even understand I cut I cut teeth. If y'all y'all you know for.
A second, did it's a system too.
I did all kinds.
Of stuff because stuff like the first job that you had.
I okay, as I wanted my first, my first real guitar.
And what kind of act did you have as a kid?
I had like the regular tice skulls and the strength. It was like a break exactly. And that twenty nine dollars of a lot of lawns I mowed. And you know, when you're a kid, you have a stack of twenty nine once loaded, you just keep you taking up the jar.
Look, I'm still that way.
And I had the UH and I had payment ones, I had the memory. I don't know if y'all remember this, as I'm older than y'all, But Crystal radio. There was these things that you would sit in the window. You build these little radios and they didn't have batteries, but you sit them in the window and they gather in store sunlight and did at night you could listen to
the radio. Yeah, that's what they called there. But they were called crystal radio back then because there wasn't solar head like a little crystal and that they would store sunlight and you'd build them from realistic and before radio shock and all that. But yeah, that's how I kind of started getting worn in different styles of music and getting those jazz stations of blue stations that wasn't even in the I.
Was going to say, how prevalent was Was there a black radio station in East St. Yoris?
It was because I'm always telling my cousin that it was black radio that broke Benny and the Jets. Was never a single, but it was a DJ in East St. Louis name Jim Gates. Yeah, it was never a single. Black radio this DJ that started playing it, and at the time they were black radio, unlike I don't know
if because I was in they Saint Louis. I would even when I lived in Rock Island, I would go to my mother's in the summer and East St. Louis and my mother's I mean when I talk about this, because I have a book, an audiobook that's come out later in the year, but okay, she had a backyard and then it was a fence dividing the backyards instead of an alley, so there was. There would be this guy every now and then sitting on the back porch in a chair and playing guitar, and I would go over.
Sometimes I'm a young kid, I go over and I go, you know, and just watch him play guitar. And he'd have a pipe and he'd be playing. And that cat was Albert King. So he would go, you know, he would say, you know, because his guitar is strung up like for me, but he just turns it this way and plays it with the strings upside down. So he would go. He would show me things. And so when I older, when I tell people, I know exactly what he's playing and how he was tuned because he was
like he would show me. And so when I would go right, I knew exactly what he was doing because I got to see him do that when I was thirteen, and he would show me stuff and he would and what it was. He dated the lady behind living behind my mother and and I remember it so brightly because at the time lou Brock was the Saints cardinal, but he had these Dodge dealerships and it was with lou Brock Dodges right there, and uh, I didn't realize that Albert King, but he drove his own tour bus, so
it'd be this every time. They'd be this big bus. Yeah, it's just like that's why when I was telling somebody on the plane here yesterday, I said, when I talk about my life, it's just I was like, I'm lying, you know, because there's too much. No, it's planet. It just too much stuff lines up for me. Like you know, you know my sister, right, Swayne car Walls. He's my play sister, but we like really closely, you know something.
So that was her big joke. She's like, man, he just got here famous because I came to Minneapolis not knowing anybody. I'm staying at the YMC. Ate like one of the village people, right, you know why if you didn't live anywhere, you know you could, they would let you crash out.
Yeah.
So I came to Minneapolis, not not but I'm staying at the YMC. I'm chilling April nineteen eighty one by June, I'm in the stars on that cup.
Wow. Wow.
So it's like wow, and I didn't know anybody, so what the fuck exactly? So what would happen is I was during the day I would go I would go walking around and so people would think I was somebody else. They are you, are you related to that? And I didn't know anybody, and I go no. So I'd be walking around. And if you go back and there's a guitar store there, I think it's still there. It's called
Nude could pay. But if you go back and check out, there's old ads that I did model for before I was ever in the time, so you'll see you can look up. Wow.
So you were dressing like a rock star?
R No, No, I just must have looked a certain.
Allen just walking around.
No, not nothing.
I didn't.
I don't even think I had any of that stuff with me then because I had to when I joined this band Enterprise, I had to have all that stuff come up.
That's crazy. So, uh, what effect knowing that I believe you were born in sixty what effect did watching? How did Hendrix enter your life? Well?
I was too young to have seen him, so when I got but I remember the day. I remember we lived in it was any Saint Louis in a basement apartment the day he died, because it came on the television. I'll never forget it. But I didn't know who he was, but I believe it or not. That same day I knew who Bob Marley was because he wrote a song he wrote. There was a guy named Johnny Nash that had a song called was this clearly Yes that You're right? Quest You're right? He had he had the That song
was out way back then. But that's who wrote that, right and so, and it came out at the time. There was I just remember this one song because I used to I used to just make me have. I didn't like this, so it was called I was a girl watcher A girl watch. Yeah, I watching girls.
I didn't know the real version later, but I knew I didn't. I didn't know the real version until just.
So. Yeah, I just said, I you know, I do. That's for some reason, you know certain things in your like you know, the day you know Kennedy was this and the same thing.
Wait, since we were in a rabbit hole. Side note, Run did one solo joint that never quite made it in nineteen eighty three. It was like Run and Papa Papa rhyme large or something, and they covered I'm a Girl Watcher. Oh wow, but that you have never released it because it was like run run, So anyway.
No, that's just I was just saying how certain things become a snapshot in your life because you they're connected with music. It's like the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. I remember it because one of the songs I love was cat just recently passed away that I absolutely love, Hugh Mescala grazing in the grass. And so I was a young kid and HEAs Saint Louis and been fortunate enough at that time I met Martin Luther King as a little kid. You know, Malcolm X.
I'm sorry, I'm gonna need you not to pass by these moments, and I'm gonna need you to kind of tell I'm.
Telling you when I elaborate on everything is I believe you. It's just like but it's like those times, the times that you grew up in and you got to remember Malcolm X wasn't like the Malcolm X that people know. He went, he flew, you know, they he would be the guy that would come in and opened the other mosque. And so growing up in the Nation of Islam, so through my mother, so.
I wait a minute, yeah, I got to get.
I got to experience all of that seriously. Yeah, that's the reason why I'm like always was kind of really corny and not in the drugs or drinking and all that, because because I was just raised to do that way, raised by a whole bunch of women, my mom, her sisters. Oh my god, so.
Your mom was in the nation, was your but your dad wasn't?
They weren't they were not married? Then okay they were like she disappeared with all of us. And there it's a whole nother.
You're gonna say that for the book. I see what you're doing.
No, no, no, it's just it's just like would go on and be probably everybody no, like this is a true music nerd, but it's like, but it's like the all the moments that you live. And because one of the things that when Quincy talked about, we would go to school in South Chicago and coming home, going to school and come home almost like a life and death experience every day. That's how East Saint Louis was. How did you escape that?
Though? Like, did you have like.
No, I was, I have no idea because I because let me tell you how crazy it is now. It's like it's like my youngest child is fourteen, and I can't imagine her walking from here to you know, three or four or five blocks where I'm I'm nine, and I was ye over seeing those shows when the kids go extra extra Read out about when me and a kid that lived upstairs from us in this apartment. His name was Hermann. Uh he passed away as a child.
He got hit by a car, unfortunately, but he was a He had a gig selling this newspaper called the Bistate Defender. So I was so a hustler at such a young guy. So I was nine, and I had to lie and till the guy was ten. And so we would go after school and we would get a whole stack of papers. He would get a whole stack of paper and carry How crazy this is. You can't imagine and doing this with your kid, or allowing your
kid to do this. But where I lived in the Saint Louis, we would walk across the bridge to Saint Louis. When you walk across the bridge in Saint Louis, Missouri, now, so we would walk across the bridge, me and Herman. He was ten, I was nine. We would get these stack of papers. They were twenty cents a piece. We'd have to turn in the diamond. Then we kept a dime. So we'd walk across the bridge. At the end of
the bridge. You when you got across the bridge, you'd make a right and on one side was the Continental Trailways bus station. Other side was the farmer's market. So we'd be this isn't at night and we're walking down there by state defend their busy and we would sell every one of those papers, walk across the bridge the next day, give the guy his half of the ten, then we get another stack. We would do that every day. Imagine your kid allowing your kid today. But it was like,
you know, helping. Huh, how would you guys be out there till them papers were gone?
And y'all was mad late, like the paper come out in the morning, y'all sell No.
The by state there was like some weird paper that just kind of told about murders and killings. And because at that time Saint Louis, I think Saint Louis, Missouri, was the murder capital of the state. And in that neighborhood that was the murder capital was where the Spinkx brothers came from. Oh yeah, because you they were Yeah, it was like you didn't go in that. It was
the projects over there. And you would walk past this store that was called Famous Bar Sticks and Fuller and all of some story like that was really like the big Then you got two blocks past that, man, it was like the White House back in the days. You remember you walked past the White House for about two blocks and it was, well, what's going on? What happened?
Yeah?
East St. Louis a lot of cities like that.
Were there any notable uh peers or people that we were doing all day long?
Because if you guys go look at the history of Chuck Berry and all them. So East Saint Louis, downtown eas St. Louis, there was a club and I just don't know how, and I ain't dead or whatever, but I was a kid. I was a little kid, wasn't old enough, but I was so crazy with music already. This club Chuck Berry would play it and the club had a back door. You would open the back door. I remember hearing stories. Elvis used to do this when he was a you know, a kid, he was a
little kid. He would do to go look in the window at the you know, the juke joints and they would let him do that and the little white kid, and I actually did that. I would this club. You would open the back door and you could see straight through the club to the stage, and I would see Chuck Berry play. I would see the I would just sit there and be like And so I was really fortunate in the sense that I knew what I was.
Going to do.
And then what changed it. Parliament Funkadelic played at Eastside High School, and then whenever I would tell George. I was telling George just during the Graffiti Bridge filming and he was like, Oh, you're showing your age. I said, no, bro, I was, I wouldn't even and I wouldn't in high school. I said, I took the rebusses to get to that area, and I said, I was so young and so little that when the guy opened the door, he was like, who's with you? You know at the school, and he
let me come in. So I'm sitting in the bleachers watching them rehearse sound check and everything, and it was I knew from that moment what I was gonna do
because Michael Hampton walked in. It was back in the seventies where there was these patch of jeans and Michael Hampton walked in and he had a pig nos amp on east side and they had they all had some barrels hanging off their back like real Mexicans, and it was like and it was the only time I've seen during the soundcheck, George Clinton played a black less Paul. He played guitar and it's just the real this was
Funkadelic fund And you talked to George. George's memory is frightening, like George remembers any and George is mind blowing with that. Like George talked to me by about three years ago and oh, I haven't seen you since the Blop blop blop and he was dead and the and it was the last time he saw me was at Paisley was filming. You know, it's just mind but that show. I remembered
it because I'm dude, I'm a little kid. I'm like and I took like two the transferred things to get there, and so I to this day, I try to remember how I got home because I'm a little kid and just walking from that school back to where the bus just just like sick with it. As far as no, I was actually living with some other.
People like in the books ran away.
It was like a foster kid at that point time.
It's another recurring on this show. So how did you wind up in Minneapolis?
Well, I was in in Rock Island. Rock Island is a really very very very small town. And at the end of the bridge, there's this bridge that it takes you from you're in rock I know, Illinois. When you go with a bridge in Downport Iole. Well read the foot of that bridge. There's a you can see it online because it's no longer there now, but it's called the Yankee Clipper. It was a hardcore biker bar. I mean, if you went in there black, you died. You I'm
not I'm serious. The band the you can look it up. The motorcycle group was called the Grim Reapers. Seriously seriously, like yeah, no, seriously, you you and he and it even worse. You had a chance, you had a better chance, Like I learned something about cats that were hardcore like that, Like I went in there and I survived because I went in there and cranked them. Map and the guy who placed I took in his band of band was
called Dealer. And the guy who place I took he was like an actual dealer and he just got tired of planning, so I took his he gave the job
to me. And then and the band was all all white band and the club was like it was like it used to be at one point in scription, so you had a The stage was like this when we were and then it came out in a little you like that because it was a strip joint and it was a long stage like that, and then a bar ran and I and when the singer, one of the guys in the band was gay, and I never got any flat because I played my butt off.
You know.
I went in there and just popped it harder than it ever you know. I heard somebody kick guitar like that, and and when he would come up to sing, hey what pelt him with so much stuff? And I was like, damn.
So this like the Blues Brothers where you just the chicken. Yeah.
But what I discovered at that young age is like you can be white, but if you're gay, they will hate you more then they hate me. Yeah, they don't. They never because they loved me because I went in there and really, so.
Does this mean that you would have to go zero to one hundred and automatically show your shred skills to let you let them.
Know it's something happens to you because you you in your mind know that it's a It's it's hard to explain. It's like something in your mind knows that it's like sink or swim, and so you just dive right in swimming and you don't know how to swim, but you're swimming. You know you're swimming. So at the end of that bridge, the town is so small at the end of that bridge. Think that Yekee Clipper across the street, down across the
street at the end of the Sheraton. The only big hotel you know, I was like the taj Mahal in this little town. So across the bridge you take right now, are you ever heard of the rko Orpheum? That's it right there, because you got to what y'all got to remember, Iowa is the rock and roll belt of the United States. That's why the monsters of rock all of that stuff. Iowa, Iowa, Iowa, Iowa, Iowa.
That's why my cousin always gets jealous because I've seen everybody growing up because that's where all the the cont like Van Halen first, Van Halen album. I saw them when they had the exact clothes that are on the cover everything. I saw all of that Atlanta Rhythm section, the Doobies when they had the Taking It to the Streets album, lant Rhythm second, saw everybody, the cars, the
Thin Lizzie, they saw them all. And what what would happen is a lot of big bands like Rush, let us come in one time and watch them rehearse, because they would come to the Rkoorphi and a lot of bands would rent that and rehearse there for a month, Like Rush rehearsed there for a month, And so you need to come in because you know, you when you're in the audience, That's when I kind of first got the you know, you're in the audience, everything looks like
shining and then you get up there and this dude's answer all knit and they wasn't as tall as you. You know, it was my first time. Yeah, get into that.
But she's saying that Iowa was like mostly a starting point, sort of like Michael Jackson's starting off in Kansas City or something like, you're saying that Iowa was just a starting but it was.
It was yet a lot of people you'd be surprised. And then and then if you turned, if you went across the Centinial Bridge right at that same you could turn left this arka or from you turn this way. The Call Ballroom. The Call Ballroom is where Zeppelin flew in from Minneapolis. That's where Jimmy Page's Black Beauty got stolen. And then the Sunburns Less Paul that you've seen him play forever, that's where he bought it from. Joe Wash
was at the Call Ballroom. So it's like if you go look at the and then they just released The Hendricks at the Call Ballroom. And a guy that of course was older, that was there. His name is Jerry Wetzel. He told me everything had happened and that was a thousand years ago in the seventies. He told me that like seventy eight, seventy and I was a kid and the music start listening to the stories. Everything he told me. They just released it last year, late last year, the
Hendrix at the Call Ballroom. Everything he told me was he said he came because the Call Ballroom doesn't have a backstage, and it's a stage. The stage has covered it cut into you so you can stand it went in at the stage and go ques and it's like,
I'm like next to you. It's like, you know, back then they built halls for real music, right, and so everything he told me, he said, Hindricks went, he came on stage, he caught walked through the audience with the police because there's no backstage, so you have to come through the audience. And I played there when my first album was out, so I was like, you can't tell me, so he said. He came up and he was like, you know, then he went, he said, oh, you're experiencing.
And he said when he started playing, he said, don't know what happened, but I got I was like completely out of it, but I was just able to see a lot of like that. And what ended up happening.
Every band that, even at the big Iowa Jams and the Credit Credit Island concerts, with all the men they stayed at that, they would come across the bridge they at that Sheridan and they would come to the Yankee Clipper and I would jam with all of them, Molly Hatchet, everybody jam and they all said the same thing to me, and I knew that's when I had to get my ass out of there, and they would all, what are
you doing here? What are you doing here? And so I didn't have money, you know, because when you're Midwest kid, you think you gotta go to Hollywood, gotta go and I had money to do that. So I they saved up money for me too. I gotta get a bus to in his far as I can go with Minneapolis. But that's how I ended up there.
And so but nothing was there, you just like, that's as far as I can go.
It was like I just knew I need to be somewhere, and I knew nothing about many I didn't know, And as a matter of fact, when I met Prince, I didn't everybody. I just knew. He walked in the room and he was like hey, and everybody changed, you know, the dude six eight was four, what's walk? And everybody changed, and I was like, dude, must be. And then the funniest thing about why he even came over because he was buying I had a little color TV and you know them first VCRs. He came over to buy that
from me for three hundred dollars. And he had invited me through Morris because the band and I joined Morse day was the drummer in Enterprise, and I never played a show with him because he and he invited me to First Avenue. So I'm like, you know, I don't know anybody and shit, so I'm like outside the club and this girl just was just dropped it. Georgeous pulled me. I must have looked lost and she just yanked me,
and I'd never forget her, Sandy, It's so beautiful. She yanked me in the thing and like you just let you know, just like I must look lost, I must look like a tourist or something. And then I go in and I watched Prince shows this is a Dirty Mind. He's getting ready to leave for the Dirty Mind tour and Moors so this is eighty eighty one. Okay, this
is the April eighty one. So he so I he invited me to the show through Mors and I've never met him yet or nothing, and so Morres said, hey, he got your ticket.
Here, Da da da.
I go down the First Avenue, you know, see the show, and I watched and I was like, this shit's amazing, Da da da. And what Morris was the Morris was a dude at the video at the soundboard videotape and all the shows, and I didn't know at the time that they had this whole thing going where, you know, he had these He made some deal with Morris over the party up song. And so the next day Princess coming over to buy this thing and this is eighty one, so it's three hundred dollars. I'm at the why so
that's like three million dollars, you know. So he comes over and it was the only it was the last time I ever sung with jeans on because he was like, you know, it was the whole kind of punk thing. He had the jeans on the thing that Quest has on the rood boy. But then and all that and this exact one exactly that came from the douction Dog Jamie.
I gave up.
I set all that stuff up. I gave you. No, yes, no, you don't understand it. D You haven't talked to D right, okay, I'll talk to you after the show. You gotta you don't understand what's getting to happen.
Now, I gotta.
I gotta show you something. You're gonna lose your mind.
Another house is this.
I'm going to give you an inside thing so that you will know what to grab when this I'm just I'm gonna take you to something.
Get that VCR man. I went that board.
This is I just spent twenty because Jamie Sup is a very very dear friend of mine, and I've always been She's always been an absolutely dear person to me because she was you never forget people that were nice and generous and looked out for you when they didn't have to, and you wasn't nothing on you wouldn't anything on the bottom of the shoe. And she was that way to me. Taught me. I mean, I every time I go jack in at the airport, is that She's the reason how to do that?
You know.
I went up to the when I was told my cousin. I went up to the gate in LA yesterday and I said, oh, can you I got in line and the girl, so can you just check my boarding pass to make sure I'm okay? And she said, why wouldn't you be? And I was like, and I'm thinking myself, and I can suck up anything. I've been at the airport at the gate and missed the fly because I just know, I yes, I just don't. I don't be paying it in anything.
And you ain't have to.
And so I was just went up to the thing and shoulder and now I'm gonna tell you how how stupid it gets. I wanted to think and short to think. She goes, why wouldn't you be? Yeah, you're fine. Why wouldn't you be okay? You know, pretty pretty sister. You know. She's like, why wouldn't you be okay? And I was like, you know, I didn't say that, but I'm thinking, I said, because I actually did say because I can mess up anything. And she said, no, baby, you're good, You're good, You're good.
But when I went and sat down I told you about I couldn't find my boarding. It was like the code had inside pocket and I had put it in there, and thought, I'm like, asking, have you seen a board? That's how I'm telling you know, I'm a Gemini.
I'm gonna query. Come on, man, I'm.
Right now.
I can just you so be thinking you'd be thinking about I don't know what everything, but I made I already knew early in life. I made a point that I would be good at a whole bunch of stuff, but I know it would be great at one thing.
So and this life is a loted you at the time that you don't have to know these things.
This is great for.
The most part. Thank god, I have a lot. I mean for what I've accomplished. I never They's never been a part of my dreams. I just wanted to be around the corner playing guitar at some pub or something. So what if accomplished You have no idea? Yeah, I was going to say one, I have no idea any of that.
Were there any other black people in You're Midwessex before you got to Minnesota?
No, that had to say no, no, because that was the whole thing that That's why I ended up playing at that biker bar with the white cats. Because all the brothers that I knew that were the top cats, they had jobs because they wanted to have They had Lincolns, got a lot and it and I would they would give me whenever they came and pick me up for the gig, get a job, get your card, and I was like, you know, that wasn't my thing, and I wanted to play with your an and your neck. I
would be first saying where I get a taxi? No, they would pick me up, but they would gripe about picking me, y'all. But the thing was that they worked at uh. I mean that they made more money and they worked at it. They worked as straight. So the music thing was kind of a hobby where to me, I wanted it to be six nights a week and then you know, at the time, unfortunately, at that time, it was like White Cats was the ones. It was
like they were working six seven nights a week. And I'm like, I gotta go mess with these luggers because these brothers wanted to have Lincolns and none of the White Cats though, had lincolns. A catalyzed big shit. They just love was like me, hey, hey, we're making ten in eighty one. I think I had a ten thousand dollars a year. You couldn't tell me I wasn't rich.
Well, your journey it sounds kind of like we had Michael McDonald here too, who was also from Saint Louis. And it is interesting because you mentioned the Doobie brothers in Iowa. So I was like, damn, y'all had parallel journeys going on, and then y'all did y'all ever cross paths?
And that's no.
He had just I think taken it to the Streets was his first Doobie's record, right yeah, because the other cat who really founded the Doobies with that, Tom Johnston, he quit because he didn't like where it was gone with the Michael McDonald's stuff. So no, I never I never met him because I liked the other Doobie you know, the Doobie Brothers, Old black Water and all that ship and.
That that I don't know whatever that was.
That's as much as I'm a plague. So you want to so you I gotta just say this to you. That was when I went when Prince came over. This is how, this is how our relationship was founded. For this is why we This is why I lived with him, and we were cool up until I left, because he came over to pick up that thing and he sat down and and everybody changed and stuff. All of the hardest brothers. Why you big? You know, we stole that from another base player named Jeff mcgravey, But he was
the one. What are you big streets of San Francisco knowles having, you know, that's where we got all that hy you well, even he changed when Prince walked in. Everybody, Prince, what's going on?
You know?
And king.
He came and sat out. He sat down, Yeah, black leather jacket, and was like I said, last time, first and only time I ever seen him with jeans on. After that, he's been decked every since. He never heard it, but he I set across from him, probably where that is, and I said, hey, man, I saw you. Sure no, he said. I said, hey man, I'm Jesse and he said Prince. And I was like, whoa man? Because I can't even do it as monotone. He would never think he could sing his eyes off because he spoke it
was one note. Hey, how you doing. I can't even do it? Yeah, you're doing It was just so low and yes, And I just freaked out and I said, man, I thought you was gonna go hi Maname is Prince And he just kind of started laughing a little bit. And Morris is standing more. The only person that really remembers is Morris is standing where Princess sitting. Morris is standing right here. Morris Day, That's who I know. I don't I don't know who print says or nothing about
him or anything. So I just knew he must have been somebody. He must have been. Like I saw the show the night before, but I still didn't know anything about because you know, how segregated the rock and.
Roll so none of this hits.
None of his radio, yeah, none of the black rock Island has no black radio.
Zero.
That's why I knew the Doobies and Zeppelin and everything else like that, because there's no black radio. So when he hit, you know, it was right towards the disco. So I was fortunate enough to miss that whole discorder because I was rock and roll thing. So he I said, yeah, man, I saw your show. I said, think so invioted show. I show you show. It was really cool, man, I really dug it, So you really dig Hendrix Hunt. I never watched him, and I stood up. I was like you,
I swear, I said, you lie. The every move and more sustained behind him, and Prince looked at me and he fell on the floor. Kh He fell on the floor, just laughing his eyes up. And that was like that was the relationship was we was never know you know.
So that's why when you would see me out in LA during that whole you always see both of us together all the time because I didn't have that oh man, you know, because he we'd walk in the club and chicks with be all on him and shit, and I just go hang over here for a minute till you was the cool and then we just hang out and he's like, man, you know, when I walk in the club with other people, I won't say that name. They wouldn't come near me to rest it. And I asked, mother,
fuck are your priends? I ain't nobody, you know. I was never tripping like that because I remember after the nineteen ninety nine tour being so broke. But I never equated his wealth or shit with what I should be making because I knew that I'm broke. I'm in the time, I got gold, platinum, broke as a mother like, I ain't even pay attention. I'm so broke. But I knew that that was his shit. You did what I'm saying,
Like a lot of people don't realized that. Like somebody just I saw somebody on Twitter and I couldn't bring myself to just break the harbor. They said, oh, man, I don't know what the question was because I don't really know how that shit works, but I just see that reply and it said, oh my.
Favorite, without a doubt.
Seven seven.
You know, Jelly Bean on drum drums.
Jerry on bass, and I just I can't do it. It's like, dude, that's that's all, Prince. I hate to tell you and David Geirbaldi on the program for it, but you know you just, oh, I just got I can't run nobody's dreams. I'm gonna be thinking that, but that's what I mean. It was all his stuff. So but I knew that, I knew within myself I had talent because I'm I'm horrible when it comes to learning
songs off of records and ship like that. When you when I met you for the first time with D's thing in twenty twelve, I was like, and I was telling you, dude, never played any music before, did I didn't have a hand, and you know, creating and creating this is just crazy. And plus you know d the biggest thing, well for you would probably is normal, but
that is these timing. And he would tell me the hours that you and him and that you and Peano would argue him and go that ain't the one, and he would and y'all he was telling me, he said a mirror Pino would be like that ain't the one. That ain't the one, but you know how he's one now his one is now a two or three or something.
Pick up.
Yes, if you ain't, if you like, if you plan lady or something and you daydream for half a second, you gotta stop. And because his his whole. That's what's beautiful about his music though, because it's like, uh, it's the same thing with Prince, Like a lot of people always see him trying to figure out what Prince did on the keyboards and what they don't know. You ain't never figured that ship because he took the overheim a pedal board and until anything, and he just wants something
that he never It is crazy. It was no rules to how he how he did anything. You know, he had a little bit of theory behind him, but it was all guttural. It was all instinct. It was just like you know, and that we related really and intellectually. We related to a great deal of stuff because the dude was like so smart, you know, I Q wise, he was really really smart dude. But I learned records, how to make records. I had never been in a studio till I met him, So I learned how to
make a record, Like how Chris Moon taught him. That's how I learned.
Were you there at the infamous uh Perkins restaurant uh dinner?
I hate to break it to you, my man, it wasn't Perkins. I'm gonna take you back Sambos. Y'all don't remember Sambos. Get you a Sambos Burger. Yes, it was called We had Minneapolis had the last standing Sambos on Lake Street. That ship wasn't no Perkins. That was a
Sambos on Lake Street. And I remember Morrise and I rode motorcycles and shit together, so that Morris was going to the meeting with because the way the time actually came together was nothing like all this stuff that people make up and say, and it wasn't anything like that. The time was Morse day and I. If you see the assetate which I owned today, it says the Nerve. Oh, I remember that, And it's just Morse and I and what we were. We were gonna be the Blackhall and Oats.
So it's the album that y'all know. We'd get it up cool, all of that, but it was just Morrise and I.
It's gonna be called the Nerve.
It was the Nerve. And so when Prince went to used the name, but it was owned by some people. But Dick This though, catch This though the Time was owned forever until nineteen. He didn't buy the name until ninety seven.
He leased the name.
It was owned by two white cats in North Carolina somewhere. They owned it all those years. He's just leasing it, really, yeah, And then he bought the rights. When I knew the rights was up, I was on the phone with Terry. That's why I remember. I had just moved to Awatuki, Arizona, from Minneapolis, and I remember being on the phone with Terry.
It was like ninety seven because I just dropped that bear on my neck and sole thing and and I was like, man, just by the by that, you know it's and he was and then print A bought it, damn exactly. So he but it was like we didn't own them. But but then that all the flight time thing and all that stuff, how people try to tell it didn't come together like that. It was just at the last minute because Prince was on a dirty mind tour and so Morris when he left, he had you know,
laugh row and jeans. I never saw him look like that again when he came back. He was a totally different cat.
Oh so he was afro, not feathered.
No, he came back from the Dirty Mine tour and the album that you know was they have that album. Okay, the first album was called the Time, it was called The Nerve. But when he came back and the Prince would call me and sold this girl that I lived with at the time, she they would answer the phone. You know, I was standing at the cribs. She would answer the phone and it's Prince Jesse there. And they would earn her friends were freeing.
They'd be.
On the phone and they would go and her friends like, who is here? And she would always and this is a true, honest, I got a story stack of bibles. He would go, what did you come here for?
Us?
Second?
I'm gonna be famous. She would laugh so hard. Oh my god, she'd fall on the floor crying. And that should have been a sign I didn't pay attention. Story shirt. But yeah, he would call and say, stay there, stay there, stay in Minneapolis, stay in Minneapolis, stay, don't leave, don't leave. We're gonna get your car. Like I was just gonna. I was just and that the fucking starving to death in minis because we would play a weekend. Man, Sue Anne talk about that. So we play a weekend and
make thirty five dollars. You remember them days you make you in heaven. It was like we would go to white and White Castle was like like La. Like there was a time in La that I'd be at the studio and then you see the White Castle here and you would see a purple pink Bentley, so what the Paris Hilton would be in line. It was like that kind of how in an out burger. But White Castle was that back in the day on Lake Street. So we after the club's closed, Prince everybody was in that ship.
It was like that because it was the joint. It was like the joint, so we were all you know, it was a joint. So thirty five dollars was like we get some White Castle. You know, you can take about five and get about thirty White Castle and exactly. So he would call and say, don't leave, stay there. You know, we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do that, and we go to this and we're going. I said, I'm a car. We're gonna get your car, which he never did, but in a way they later on it did,
but didn't have no air in it, so fuck. But I had a great stereo. I think I told that story online about the jungle of song. I would play him songs and he would let, oh my god, he go, Morse, you gotta hear this, and Neat and Morris and Jimmy jam are the only two people I know when they cried, they tears start, they they literally are quiet. And he kept doing that. But most people you know and be like, oh man, ain't playing nothing, but I didn't. I just
kept playing songs for him till one day. I it was after acting class, before we started preparaying. I said, hey, man, I want to play you something. So he I want to go listen to it in his car because he got air. This is somethinger my car, no air, one hundred and eighty degrees. He goes. But I had the stereo over everybody. I had the bomping shit over. So he's listening to it in your car. And I was trying to give him the cassette so he could listen
to it later. And it was right after acting class. Caught me cool, let's just listen to it now, and I'm like, oh, ship you know, laughing at So it was a jungle up, you know, exactly as you know it. Yeah, I put it on the thing because I get sick of motherfucker's telling me your boy said that in Billboard,
Nelson George. So when I met him the first time here in New York on the island, it was a press release party for my first record, and he was and his name was on a card and I was looking this way, and the girl was with wit said, ain't that the guy in Billboard that said this is.
What I said?
This is honest. I got to I said, yo, man, hey, bro, then do you really think you're gonna sit here on my ship? And he made him leave.
Wow can you.
In the article?
He said, Uh, it was really it was really dispepful. He said, I didn't probably didn't write ship and the princess probably put my name on it for the blah blah blah blah blah. You just don't say that unless you talk to the people, because you back in the day, he had an article in Billboard, had a little picture
of him. Yeah, but I didn't little blur really remember it, like I mean, I remember reading the article, but the girl remembered the face and I was like this, I was a remembering it was someplace here and it was like a really popular Chinese place because they had brought squab, which I didn't know was pigeons.
Mister, No, it was it was before that. Yeah, Nelson looked like twenty one Jump Street. And also but I did what was the sergeant's name? I can't remember.
I was just telling Deanna today. I was like, damn, you know me, I was always a never industry cat, but an industreet's cat. And I said so, I didn't.
Because Prince wasn't even that dude though, right Like, he wasn't mean not for nothing. I ain't gonna say not that nice. But he wasn't the one that just throws somebody's name on a song that they had nothing to do with it.
Yeah that's a nice No, he was. No, it wasn't a nice thing. It was like it wasn't known there on the publishing.
Record. I even wanted to make it seem like he did everything.
But my I don't even think Jungle Love said my name on the record.
Though I think it did. You know why?
I thought, No, I'm gonna blow y'all away. I'm a blow I got a piece of something I ain't never seen I have. You know, back in the day when you would do a record, they do all the artwork for you album, you know, you know me. They then they send you the record and you have to look at the and look at all the writing. Well, I have that in the very for the ice Cream Castle album. I'm produced by Jamie Starr, co produced by Jesse Johnson.
And the same thing with it. If you got the first pressing of the Sheila E record, the first ChIL records exactly and now and then after that there, No, it came off. It came out years ago. It came off years ago because he was Prince was vindictive when you left him, and it was real bullshit because I stayed, you know, I mean, I was just telling Ingrid today. When I left after finishing Purple Rain and all that,
my check was like three hundred and thirty dollars. I wouldn't make it though, And this is my question, and I got kids, I got so you so as far as dedication and all that place.
Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, hang.
On, Yes, three hundred and thirty nine dollars, bro.
Wait, am I sitting in the room Ingrishavez.
Don't cheesecake, you said, no, she touch cheesecakes, pie, talked about the three kids like he's got the mic. We put the whole chair in answer, she with.
High I'm Ingrid seven, you said, Ingrid, And I was like, wait a minute, and I put my glasses on.
Like.
Well, I think that was one of the things that she was so nice that she's an hour into this interview not knowing that you've been sitting.
At the same freaking time and hello, how are you? Yeah? I could. I can't touch the cheesecake because I've been sugar free for thirty six days.
There you go.
Came on the way from Minneapolis for you today.
That's right, so I have to break it. Just yes, I want to.
Say I'm Aquarius as well.
You know what I was saying.
We're kind of all over the place sometimes, are you just make sure are February of January?
Yeah, wow, twentieth twenty first we're all together. Wait, this is freaking me out because I didn't know that was ingrish Chaves.
Yeah, that's why I was like on this. I met her on the set of I said I would never be there, I would never go I never went to Paisley, I said, I never go there and never go down to paid to be in it, and so I got paid for a week Grafita Vision. I barely made it three days and we got into it and I had to leave.
Wait all the shooting was just three days?
No, I yeah, my shooting yeah for whatever I'm in the movie was three days because I it was it was like all this time when by from Purple Rain to now and I hadn't seen you know, like Prince would call me up with and play he was. I was telling my cousin they had a weird sense of humor, Like he called me up long after that's gone. I think my first album was about the Dropper what I
can't remember? But he call you. I mentioned a song today and I was like, you know, and he would and he was always like he could call you and you and it and I'm like real, So I go, man, you get this number and he and henores, but he ignores that. And I mentioned this song today and I go, what do you talk about? Raspberry Beret? And click good, Clay hangs up. It was I gonna listen to the song. And I had moved the opposite of everybody. So I'm
in this area called Blaine. It was nothing out there but cows and shit me so.
Old man Johnson's farm exactly so.
And then the other one was I mentioned I wrote a song about you, and I was like, I didn't know what. At the time, I was living in Paris and I we had Chris crossed a lot and I was like, eighty nine, maybe that wasn't wrote a song about you. Send me this tape, Bob George, I'm.
Like, mother forgot that day.
Wait, you know that's a part of the song that's got a gun all that ship. He that's his sense of humor. So I had to call it, Yeah, that's that's funny. But we would there's things that we would like, can you.
Explain the references? Bob? How is that about you? How is that cop you? Or the dude?
The dude when he goes can we just dance or whatever? I don't I don't know. But he because his nickname for me for I was here comes Jesse, I'm okay Johnson because you know it was the tie. We was just some street dudes. And so whenever we would run into stuff and I would get that, I would get called all the time. I'd be a we've been an in store signing, and then some girl you're gonna be like bitch, you know, and I would just like, you know what, twenty twenty year old, you don't you don't
you know you just like you're fighting. You don't care because I come from you, Saint Louis. Were girls girls kick your ass. It ain't like it ain't like how it is now.
You were.
I grew up going to school good as girl. You like me, don't you. This girl used to sit behind me, batty, and you're my boyfriend. And she was a twin too. She was a twin and her brother, just to describe him, they looked just alike. His nickname was Big Fake. So I wasn't trying to fuck with So. I used to be terrified at this girl. But I'd seen girls just beat MoMA and now so so. But it would we be in an in store, you know, at a full
in store, and then I signed something. I didn't act funny or nothing, but I signed something this girl be like and I just immediately I just bet you what you beat you Withn't that nigga you're with you? It would happen in hotels, and I would, you know, because we would go up come back from the show and go up to our room and get changed, and she'd come down and lobby and for like the nineteen ninety nine tour, can never meet anybody, you know, would be
on my arm. What vanity and we were like best friends, So she'd come down on my arm like because she was all the perfect man. No, she's a perfect, complete killer blocker. Because girls would come up to me, you can have and she wasn't you know. We were like brother and sister. Well, our relationship to the day she died, she was we were super tight. It's like on me and Jamie and and and she would be the whole. She had been all over the world and seen in
places we had never been. So when she came out on tour and was seeing this stuff for the first time, she was like completely really enthusiastic and excited about it because she had she'd been you know, modeling and been all over the place, but she had never experienced adelation like that before. And so when we'd go in the lobby, we'd go up and get changed and then we get rid. I try to sneak by doors. Never gonna get it's like. And she'd be on your arm, literally girls, and then
she would point you out, how y'all do women? Y'all see, y'all see stuff we don't see. You'd be like, oh, she's fun, look at her nails, look at everybody you don't even see. You don't even.
Care, you're like that.
That's what she would say, stuff like she's not even pretty territorial pes, It's like, what do you do?
You know?
So that And I could never say to her, no, you know, because she was like, we guarded them, you know, her Susan, We were like that. I was like their big brother, because Susan to this day, if you talk about Susan, you talk to Susan Mooncie, she'll tell you how how often her and Prince were together. And I was always with them, And she said, she remembers me looking at my watch at hey, where do you gotta go? You know, in Minneapolis, you know it's like ninety below,
there's this much snow. So when you would go way out to Chanhassan, where Prince live, you pack a suit case because you wasn't trying.
I would.
I had never lived in a city with freeways before. So Rock Island is that little, It's that small. So when I came to Minneapolis driving, it was like you would see where you needed to be and you couldn't get to it, and I would. I would, just I'm
telling you honestly, God, it was like scared shareless. It was like so big and intimidating for years to me and I can imagine, yeah, but but now I got GPS that ship because I'd be daydreaming, you know, and that's where listening to music in my car and I'm because I was telling ingrid earlier. I've been all over the world with no cell phone or or pager, you know we used to. Now people can't even on my phone.
Batteries start you gotta charge.
You know, I start paying where I'm like, I my cousin the slash managers always mad at me because I'm always turning all my ship off.
I was gonna say. So we went to Minneapolis for the super and it's like, thank God for GPS because I was trying to figure out I mean, even me driving all you know, I did the whole tour of Minneapolis and all that stuff, like even with GPS and security, like I still felt like I just try to imagine what was it to drive forty years ago, thirty years ago?
And and if your people and if you're you know, he always seems like he's in thought, always thinking about music or something music relate, and if your people watcher too.
In Minneapolis is a really beautiful city. It's like it's so clean, you go, oh my god. And it's even most cities like go see the sky or whatever. But so when I yeah, it's I I'll kill somebody if I don't have GPS to just say, dude, turn right here. And I don't know if y'all know ways, but ways unless you know your own voice in it?
Yeah you know that?
No, No, they added that. So I mean I going there and all my ship fool, what are you? I purposely it's so excellent you will ride with me?
Then?
Mother fuck you just miss motherfucker. I got all of my daughter by the fourteen year olds. She is in the car dying right because it's like, dude, really, I told you, I put on my own but no, going back to what we were doing Graffiti Bridge and I met Ingrid the first time I remember talking to because she has she has this heaviness tour. Even even back then as a young lady, she just had this heaviness tour like she her mind always looked like she was
in thought, like she was some she. I always took it like she really a member. I always told you that my cousin was like she always so like she wasn't in none of it. I thought I was bad. I was just out there going ship over with Yeah, but it was all that time passed and it was the same kind of thing was happening. And so if that easily boor g thedn't how bad were the rehearsals, because I know that, like you guys were one of the tightest but musical.
Here's that.
I came up like that whole lot of all that stuff because I grew up with the James Bound thing and all that, so all of that when I was doing all that horn stuff, all of that stuff, I was like all the horn parts. I was coming up with a lot of those arrangements and a lot of the steps because I played guitar, and so when somebody else would try to come up to I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing this shit because I can't sing and play and do all that dumb shit at the same time.
So as a when you're playing and somebody, oh, I get this stuff, it's like, yeah, but you're not playing nothing, so I'm not even paying attention to that. So I would come up with a lot of cara fee because I knew that it would be simple, like if we were just doing this or something, a simple move like that, but if you got three cats doing it tight.
It looks really cool.
And if the whole stage is going, I knew that, So I would come up with a lot of the choriography and like we would do the chili sauce across the stage. Came with all that ship and so we do it around so you could play and then you work so hard on it that rehearsal because you would want it to be where you didn't think about nothing. Because the singing play at the same time an instrument, there's a middle brain you gotta find. So when people go how do you do that? You as you know,
you can't think about one or the other. But he be playing drums, he'd be playing drums and singing and he'd be talking at.
The same time. So he sandwich man.
I saw him as a session murdering and he was eating something and I'm like, and he kept going he was and then he was doing and then he would switch off credit and I was like, that's a bad dude, But he knows that it's a middle brain. If you think about one or the other, you're gonna mess up. So it's a place I think right, left, right, I mess up. Yeah, it's like you, but you got to a place that doesn't exist. It's just like an inner blank space and you can almost see yourself in front
of you doing with you, but you know you. But if you think about singing, or if you think about plant, you're gonna mess out.
When Jones calls it the alpha state, yeah, where you just don't don't think about it, do it.
So we're gonna get in a whole graffiti Bridge chapter because I, well.
Yeah, we got a lot Ingrid.
I that's when I met Ingrid on the side, and I forget who introduced me to it, but I didn't. I just asked her today did she ever live in Minneapolis? Because I didn't think she was from Minneapolis or even live there. She says she lived at twelve years but I never thought that. But she heard her baby was like, he wasn't that old. He was like, what eight months or was he older than that? But he but I knew she had and I just adore kids. So my kids were kids then at the point in time too.
I think her son and my daughter, the Isabella is around the same age. But I was talking about that. But she was talking to me, and she was really super nice. But I'm standing next to her and I'm facing her, but she rarely ever did that. She would occasionally did her but she would talk and have a full till conversation with you, but she wasn't She was really nice, but I was like, Okay, maybe I'm bucking her and talking about stuff. And then eventually I walked away.
I'm on stage shooting now a scene, and then I watched Prince walk over to her and she does the same thing. She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, So tell.
The people, what were you think? You're angry?
What was going?
Well, let's see, I had met Prince a few years earlier, so I had made this record with him that hadn't been released, and so this is a few years later, and so when I got back into this scene, I was kind of over it. So I knew I was right a little bit of a you know, like, Okay, I'm gonna do this movie.
But you know she's like, y'all since you're here, y'all, No, she really you saw it all over her? Have I not told you that? I told my cousin and I was like, going. She she wasn't impressed by not, not nothing that any of us was doing.
Can I ask a side question? This is this is a side detour, but I think Bill and I at least would like to know what was said to him. Oh what did you say to him that made him canceled cancel the Black album?
I didn't say anything to him. I think he was looking for a signed you know. And yeah, you know, so it wasn't a conversation. It was because he didn't talk to me about it. I had no idea about this Black album or anything that was going on in his head that night.
He just had this.
He was on this.
He had these questions in his heart and his mind, I think, and the night that I met him, he felt like there was a sign.
And yeah, the sign was don't put out that ship to said the only good rappers are dead rapper and do what you normally do put that ship on the time album. Let us be for motherfuckers, let us let the tie, let me more sent terry beef with motherfuckers. Shipped to do it, because like when that ship said we don't like New Wave, ain't none of them. I don't that ain't me on there. That's all Prince voice that I know. But you that ship was, ain't that Andre we don't like New Way and that ship ain't
got nothing. I gotta go boxing, petty, But I gotta go box with motherfuckers now. And I ain't got nothing to do with that ship on that record.
But that's no.
At this point, he had just left right now, he that left, Yo, I never put you into neither, but that.
I heard that when you heard it. Okay the record again.
In my mind, I don't like me.
Wait, I ain't on none of that.
I'm damn he's being petty.
I'm not getting shot or some ship out in there, you.
Know, because even someone had an album out around the same time called Living in the New Wave.
That was his whole that was his whole thing, His whole thing was.
In my mind, I'm thinking, like, well, is he talking about the Talking Heads or right I think.
Like the actual legit and new wave and but legit. That was the whole thing about legit new wave band. They didn't call themselves that did, know what I'm saying. It was just press was calling him that. But so you never said that he was bucking the shot at Andrea?
And was he ever nice to anybody who heard.
He was he was? I don't know was he ever nice.
To anybody who left?
I think that when I left, my record got dropped.
I mean, just like he was vindictive on this ship. And then John when I played there December, When was that December seventeen, twenty seventeen, John, what's his name? John? You know the John John Ringos. Well, you know, he was always fiercely he was like he was always fiercely competitive. I'm like that shit ain't fiercely competitive.
That's some bullshit.
He did a lot of when I left, he did a lot of stuff that people just don't know, Like the whole Shocadelica thing. I I think it's whole. We were, Oh my god. We used to ride around LA with the member of the Garbage cam back Seville. The catall like to be with the gar We prints the room we'd had the biggest hat song could barely fit in the car. It was like something from Amoa, Get You Suck Leaning. He was leaning his way. I'd be leaning and we would and there's a riot going on. Was
our bible, was our bible. It was like day in, day out. That's and so when I got the opportunity, which didn't have anything to do with me, John McClain put the whole thing together. Because John McClain, I was always always recorded in Minneapolis, so I wouldn't be in LA because I didn't want record people coming over. And there's this thing I never I didn't have budgets when
I recorded. I recorded on what it's called the fun because when I signed with the label, I knew enough by then, because I was broken enough and had got you know whatever initiated. Let's just say that I knew how to do yes exactly, how to least construct a deal. And so when I did, I signed as a production company that as Jesse Johnson. So that's why I could go. If you look at that period, I'm on all kinds of stuff, doing everything everywhere. But when I so, John
was my an R guy. John McClain was my in our guy, and he signed me, so the only artists I think i'd sign at that point in time. But he would fly in when I say I'm done. You know I'm mixed, I'm done, and so he would say, he said, okay, man, he said, you got a nice record, and I'll play me shit you don't like. And one of the songs I crazy was in the songs I didn't like?
Why do you specifically ask you for what you don't.
Because he knew that I would because the way he set it up for me to record, because I was recording on a fun and not on pos nobody knows what I'm recording. So when you're going to record an eight song album, he knows I'm gonna record twenty songs, a billion songs. And so he would go, okay, yeah, I play the song, and yeah, a nice record here. Now play me the shit you don't like. And one of the songs I played and was crazy and he's.
That's a hit, Daddy's I'm gonna take that to La.
I'm gonna put slide on there. And I couldn't picture it. I couldn't. I was like, what hem ma, man? He was like, and I couldn't picture it. I couldn't picture it, and he was like, so he did that whole thing had nothing to do with me. I didn't see Sly until I went to LA to do the video for Crazy, and that's.
When we recorded his parts Away from You.
A guy named Billy Valentine got all the vocals and everything on Sly in La. He did all of that and Sly, I guess when he's you know, Slye was the pioneer of that slowing the tape down and singing if you won't man this day, that's where that sound comes from it and so I get upset if I do it now.
People.
It was like, Prince, it's the funk out of here.
It's like I was.
Sly was the inventor of so much of that ship and so uh that Prince he he took that really in a weird way, and it was uh and uh this last thing. I had a celebration in Minneapolis and some psychic lady said, you know, Prince loves you or something sent the message saying that or whatever. Bet they had a psychic reader at or somebody said, I get
that a lot. But he called me when we were in when I was saying some stuff with that something was not right, and I was in a I was in for eleven day's rehearsal with D in New Zealand, and then we went to the Gold Coast Byron Bay to the festival. And when I was there, we had got their day off and then we played. And the first day we played, when I came back to the room, because I don't take any of my I don't take
phones or anything with me. I leave everything at the hotel and I don't take anything because motherfuckers be stealing. So I leave everything at the hotel and completely disconnected and kind of want need that anyway. But when I got back, he there was a girl that I can't say. Her name is an unusual name, but she uh worked for him. So she's like, oh, Prince wanted to talk to you, has something for me. And I haven't talked
to Prince in a thousand years. So he's like, you wanted to he has something for you and he wanted to tell you. And he's like, you know you need to do you need to you know this is her message and you know Google transcribes, yeah, the message And the only person I ever played the message for was D and he said, you know, you need to do Jesse.
These other people you're dealing with there, they want to be you, they want to be me, or they want to be Morris and they you know, he said all this stuff like that beneath you, and you know, I don't know who he was really talking about. And the only person ever played it for was D and he was like, who do you think he's on?
Like, I don't know, I know, but I.
Don't know anyway. But then you know, everybody knows Prince. You know, you call the number and it's like a burner, you know, it's like doesn't exist now, number back, But it's never self destructive exactly. And so that was the last thing I had.
Interaction with him, and that was God.
Was that seventeen sixteen? Yeah, twenty sixteen. We were there because Karina was there too. She's you know, you know Corina, She's in a documentary, so she was there too. But yeah, the only person I played that show for was D.
But uh, we should say to D is D'Angelo for all the listeners because I don't know they might.
Oh yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, wait, okay, we this is the most jumping ahead of time. We got to go back a little bit. Yeah, we gotta go back a lot of it because I want to hear at least okay, So when you at least developed the first record.
He well, the fly thing really messed him up. Because the thing about it with Prince, I learned a lot every almost everything I learned about when I got under time, Like he, I wasn't afraid to do anything like you
you know, we would we like people. They were trying to look like girls, but we were who he was trying to really look like was little Richard because you know, if you look at the photos, little Richard, he was pretty as fuck, right, And so you know, in principal you got to do this and you you know, put the because I never wore makeup or had foundation on our island. But he was like whatever, you know he was. He just like knew that. I was like fearless as well.
And then when you fearless like that, it helps that you have somebody alongside with you that thinks like minded. They ain't just like, ain't no tripping, they don't trip about the ship, you know, and people was like, man, I think that goes gay. And I'd be like you, but I hope you gay like he gay. Then only maybe a proctologist might see more crack, like whatever, what the fuck? Whatever fuck out here with that bullshit. But
they would always say that about me. But see, James Brown told me, when they start calling you, that's when you know you made it, you know, because when that comes from the man they were. You remember as a kid it was like James and Bobby Birds getting married and crazy. And so when the signs were made the first game, then you start getting shoot a lot you grew up, yeah, or your sister like in my case, was like threatening to cause you and once money, or
she's putting out a story of a lot. Wow, wow, really yeah, I just know I told you all to day, I said, I saw the episode of Say Yes to the Dress. I just told him yes. Then she said, but yeah no. But but going back to the Black album, I just that that that that one song would have caused a lot of problems in l A that only a rappers, No, that's a song that's dead on it. Only a rapper is a dead rapper. And I was like,
that shit going end up on a time record. Now we beefing and get shot it and got shit to do with that song, man, But you know that was long gone after that. But I'm just saying, dude, Due was vindictive when you left, and you didn't do anything wrong you. I went and made it on my own merits. I wrote every song I ever did, or every song was mine, because if I would have even attempted to steal something is he didn't you know, he didn't play that. He would sue the pants off you because he had
the bread to do that. So I never went into anything like that with him. And I had just never signed releases or something. So when I left, lawyers were telling me, man, he owes you millions of dollars and you can go, And I never did, and you got your freedom.
Got publishing Jungle. You got your publishing for Jungle.
Luve right, No, I mean I did, but I there's prices that myself and Morris had to pay if we were leaving. But I was never in a contract, but we still there was prices you had to pay. Oh so if you left, then you had to differ up some things.
So what okay, I gotta ask, where is that the board because I know that you purchased Oh yeah, I bought it, but it was really fucked up because I'm I just left, I'm on my own.
I'm he know how poor I am. And he's doing dress rehearsals and just give it to you, like no, it's just like this, motherfuckers. And he's doing dress rehearsals at uh the Saint Paul Center or something, yeah, the Saint Paul Civic Center. And I go over there and I got a check for I think eighteen thousand. You know,
that's like nine million dollars to me. So I told him I would just gave you the board, like no, But he was real hardcore funny about it messed up because the only person standing in a room when it went down was out of leads. But I walked in the room and I said, you know, to get that board. It was a Soundcraft B three great board. We did a lot of shit on it, nineteen ninety nine Vanity the time. We did a lot of great stuff on it. All the purple rain was down on board. Yeah, so
we I go. I give him a check for that, which was like killing me because because my fun, my album, my first album, Fun was one twenty five and they pay it to you in thirds you know, you get a third when you start, third when you mix, and the other remaining third when you had But people think that's a lot of money, but they don't realize it's working capital. It's not. It's like you get maybe get to get twenty out of that if you're lucky, if
you're lucky. But I was really good. And because all the control is in your hands to to to to, you know, to make sure you coming, you know, you do right with the money. So and so I go over to buy it, and I bought a board, but it was garbage. It was a Soundcraft sixteen hundred. And when I.
Started recording, it was like, oh.
And I and I had already lied my way into the record you know the record deal. They say, you you don't know about this, you produce records. Oh yeah, of course I know what I'm doing. A clue what I'm doing.
Susan, that was at least happening now.
Actually Susan. Then Susan didn't come with me until until I did the Love Struck Hung So that's so Susan I'm talking about.
And that's what question real quick, when did the Janet Jackson tracks come in? Is this before you got signed or after.
This after, but I was before my record ever came out because I was a John McClean project too. So I bought that board. I had to take the other board back.
It was garbage.
It was I don't know what I paid for nine thousand or something, and I took that shit back and I was like, all right. I was panicking. I had to make something happen. So I knew Prince Sella their board, and I called him and he's like, yeah, yeah, d d DA. And I didn't even say that, like, man.
Why don't you just give it much? Motherfucker.
I ain't even get into that. I just said, Okay, where do I need to I went over to the same reci to check and Alan Leeds was in the room and I and I said, you know, you should be the nicest people in anybody ever met. And he goes, why do you say that? And I say, because everything you've ever dreamed of is happening for you in the way that you dreamt of it happening, meaning a crossover, right right crossover. That's why when the time plays seven seven and stuff live, white people be like, oh what
the fuck is that? And then the black people in the audience be like, yeah, because they knew all the time shit before that. But if you ever see the audience that the white kids, only the white folks only
know that ship from the Purple Range. They think that's the only time record that's And so I got to see that in two thousand and eight when I performed that run in Vegas with them, and it's like you said, seven to seven and the walk and all that shit, And it's weird, how now people don't they don't like something, and then you know, we like something, we go, man, it's cool.
Let me go see these other.
Records, and then we might end up. There's times we go Danni, shit, old man, them records wasn't right yet, you know, but we'll go back and find out everything. And so when I bought the board he said, I said, yeah, it should be the nicest person anybody ever meet. And I'm meaning this because I love Prince even to the day they he died. We were the best of friends. We had a major love for one and I lived with him. I live with him, I lived in him all the way and when we finished Purple Raine, I
was living at that house. And then when he went to La. It was cold blooded. He went to La and I said, And on the rap night, I said, Prince, can I stay at your house and use the studio? He said yeah. But when I went there, I said, can I just use the studio? Because I knew he was going to La to you know, wrap the film and do whatever. I went there.
He took a boy.
It was just a take machine and the board and the speakers, so I had to like go with someverb and on it. And that's where Susan came. I met Susan. And you've seen Susan say, how if it wasn't for Jesse, I wouldn't got the gig because I'm the one that came and I knew everything. But you couldn't never sing ithing around Prince. I remember a suns and sound. He plugged in harmonizer.
And I said, what does that do?
Don't worry about that? And that's all you I knew right then and there. Okay, he ain't supposing you ain't supposed to know, no ship. But I had big eyes and ears open, and so when he when she came in, she came from Crosbie, Stills and Nash, so she never was around no thumping, bumping, And I said, look, this is the drum machine he uses. This is how he likes his kick a cute, this is what he uses on the base. And I showed her all that stuff.
And so when he came in for the first time and finally called her, she knew all this.
So all the outboard gear that he would have in his drum machines too.
He took all that shit to La and he didn't tell He said, oh, yeah, sure. Then what I asked about it was actually shocking.
Was at the wrapper.
I was like, ah, because I had been staying there, but for some reason, it's weird as hell. I Jamie. She was asking me, you know, like the top of the year. She said, all that time you spent at princes House, why did you just sleep in the living room on the couch? And I said this bedrooms? He had other bedrooms in there, and his bedroom was on the lower level. And then after nineteen ninety nine, Jamie had remodeled, had the whole house remodeling at the West Lake.
Speakers of shit. But I and she said, why did you she financed me. Why would you ever sleeping in the other bedrooms? I said, because that best friend had them flowers and shit on it and ruffles. That shit freaked me out, man. But but let me tell how futuristic this cat was. Because I didn't know any of
this stuff. But he would take me in the bedroom like on if you've seen Twitter, and I said, yeah, Prince had a I said, he had a stack of rejection letters because the one that Owen published is one of them. But he had a bunch of them because he showed them to me. The only reason why I know, because he showed them to me. But how ahead of himself he was. You know, he in one of the bedrooms. He opened up the door to the closet to show me, and he had every outfit from the what was the
first album, call for You for You? He had all of the whatever he had on on their leather jacket, the bell bottoms of shoes, hit everything. He kept everything he had to get. He just had that foresight or something and he had and he was showing it to me. But I didn't know what this stuff was. Some big ass platform shoes, one am I supposed to do?
But he had.
Everything from every album up until you know, this is like after nineteen ninety nine, tours. So but he was showing me just like and that's where he had the whole stock of rejection letters, and he's like, look what this guy said, Look at this guy said, look at it, and they were at all. I was like, I don't hear receipts and the yeah, but but it to me was showing you how you you had a belief in yourself. You ain't really.
Well wait, I still don't get the question answered.
Where is the board now, John McClean, If Jesus it's upstairs and Marvin's woman John had it.
Marvin's boy and Prince's board is in that same upstairs up in the where bedroom is.
Yes, it's upstairs. And if you walk in, if you walk upstairs and you see the best, you know how he has had that secret door that opens even met. Yeah, but what did I buy? I bought the t s, the Giant one fifty six input and all that automation because I had the two machines and stuff, and so I outgrew it. But but my it was nicer after I bought it because I had api okay five fifty bees installed, had a roll of like six of them
installed in it. So I you know it was a great console though it was it smacked it to it, It really did. And that's why when he I was just keeping it and then he said, oh, I'll buy that, and then he bought it for what I paid for a way back then. But he had Soundcraft come out and recap everything, refresh everything. So it's like men and it's just sitting there, but it's all connected and everything, but it's just sitting there and it's the five point
fifty b that we cut all that stuff. And then I'm just like really not a collector of anything in.
That sentimental No, Okay, I gotta ask you, how did you manage to escape the dressing room from the food fight? It was the handcuffed like what they Every everyone's account of the food fight in in Cincinnati was that on the nineteen ninety nine to was that you're you're anger, But I was you to take that that entire coat rack down.
It wasn't because if you if I was really angry like that, I gotta steal pipe in my out. It has been I've been on death row right now, so I've obviously wasn't. It's just like you know you uh, but it scared me that day because Prince when I when I took that thing down, everybody in that room, his band members, everybody fled like roaches. He cut the
light time. I was like, you can see because there's somebody was shooting pictures and you can see just THEO and I was yeah, and I was running behind Prince and like, say, if you open the door, you know most it was a It was a big, big ass arena place, so they have fire doors. So when he opened the door, Bobby z or somebody ran through the door before Prince, and so the door was closing, but Prince was busy doing this and then he hit the edge of that door and I kind of stopped because
I thought he didn't hurt himself. He hit that ship hard, but he lamb and then rolled around the door. And I'm like, I'd have been dead if I hit the door like that. But no, I wasn't like that. But we had it was a but was funny though. I just I just got the concert. So I have him taking you both from the stage. But what you know, what you didn't see is he was running. You don't
see how giant the stage is. The stage is like ten twenty feet he was running so hard, and then Roger Trautman's drums big as drum set zapps with you guys at yes, prince, yes, it was before the vanity. It was before so it's the controversy to it, right, But that drum set is sitting there, giant mam maculate. He was running and he couldn't stop, and he knocked that hole off the stage like twenty feet. This is
one stage you guys are for. We got got him good because he used to do less work and he got that whatever he used to say, I'll do use whatever the words. That's always and he and then he would always pull out this pair of underwear and do this, like pull out a pair of drawers like man, I went on a special hunt. I got a pair of draws that you know, you can put them on a car like a braw and I put that and I
paid the production manager. I put that ship in his because when he would come off, he would change and put on the same kind of the same exact jacket. Put that ship in the pocket. He goes, I'll did you in and he's like, and you got to see it.
It might even be on the tape to here, but you see him and he and it's like a magician pulling out the scarfish and he's like, and he does this, and he looks at the production mad because the production dude was from here, and he looks at him and he's like, he was so see, he could do that ship, but he couldn't take this ship back. He was like, And I didn't think he'd be that hot about that. You know, he pulled that ship on these big ass straws,
and he was. But the fact that you have to see him go after that, you in.
And then he had to.
Nerd a dude like and he was hot. And I was on the side of the stage. And so that was the day before the food and so the food fight was the actual because that that day that I did that wasn't the end of It was the day before.
So that's how I was and was the end.
And so after the thing with me, when they got me, you saw the door kind of small. He saw the time members with juice bags on the head. They took green garbage bags, put holes in them and had them all life suit him and you saw them out there just hot and ready to kill until Morris. We caught Matt faink and you know you so they were so angry that they were this close to him and could hit him. Its like, was just off completely. It was
just off. I mean, I'm like, because Terry's like, he's just so close to it and then the egg breaks in his hand because he's gone.
And the musicians shouldn't be sports people.
He's picking the egg off the I mean, just like revenge time and the only person that wasn't food fight. They ran up on him. But he was never part of it. I never said more than he what's up to him? Than all the years around. It was down Dickerson, Dickerson. But yeah, we caught math faint somewhere man, and he was not good, wasn't pretty. Yeah we were. You know, you just don't need a lot for the time to be mad. We ain't paid and then you know where,
you know, we're going back to the hood. When the tours, you know, it wasn't.
A lot at the end of the day, were y'all at least scale like to other the other musicians that you would tour with left like Roger Troutin.
Ask him that we don't know nothing about no scales and ship that's something that we just you know, but no, you, in all honesty, you can't. The reason why you never hear me bitch and moan about it because it's like you're there by choice, so you know, ain't nobody you do? No because what you learned and what an experience couldn't buy it with all the money in the world. So when I look at it, and I've always looked at it's.
Like what if I got paid away more money?
But I would have never been in that inner. That's why when a man was sitting here and he was laughing about cleaning the toilets, which I don't know, dude would call me in the middle of the night. I lived down you know those apartments that you see from the freeway that are in different colors. See the scu was That's why I lived, and that's where they used
to film the Marriytime Marshall. Really yeah, but I used to live there and to get in Michael, you call me at any hour and I would go drive way out there because it's the studio. And then the girl I was dating with, I think you guys are having a fair and I'm like, did the funk out here? You know how to make records, call me too, but
this is fucker called this is fuck. They don'ts how to make records, you know, And seriously, that's exactly what came out of my mom I'm like going, I'm sorry, but he went and out over you because Sigon came. Hear around you and listen to some records or whatever and the three genos back then it was still three channels right now. But I'm like, ship, this is another thing. So he would call me out there. Morris is the
Morse is the witness to this. But Morris, you know, in the studio they had that really long cue tip that you clean the head, stop using those not for that.
He would be mad, like you.
Man, would you stop you? But this we were this is doing according the Bird, I think with the bird, the original bird, Okay, And he called me out and he called me out the drive way out there in the middle of like I think I will record or something. That got me out there because the machine broke and I meant to rewind it by hand. He called you just yes because he knew. He was like just gonna pay the dudes to be in this moment because you
know them two grew up together. As kids, Morris and Hill was so Morrison be sitting at the board and he would be Ryan because I'm like, man, fuck the fuck is why you had me call Man? You need to call Dom Batcher.
Why Morris an't give you the handsome.
No, because he because they're hilarious. They're the funniest dudes. They are the funny. Morris is probably one of the funniest dudes you ever meet. And he's off the cuff
with it. Like on stage even that run in Vegas, a girl came up and had this top on and she had a you know, was like tied in the back of the boat and just saw the top of his head he got when he touches things like I'm about to go from PG to double D like ship just immediately he don't think about it and he just fat and I just be like, I can't even I tell you when we you know, when we see each other, we'll see each other now and before we say anything, we just look at each other and start Ryan just
start laughing because we know.
Morris isn't the same for everybody who never met Morris.
He is purple.
He is funnier because all that stuff was written all that stuff was written by friends. But Morris Morris is funny as hell. He so funniest cats ever. Man, all right, are you about to change the topic because actually want to. There's a photo going around of Morrison Prince and Princess and Jamie star mode or where he's doing that. Yeah, no, that's just the polls. They would never they would never like that.
Well no, no, no, no no, I'm just asking, like, you know what he would did Jamie Starr character appear in the studio whenever?
That was some ship that was just print. I ain't seen them about get Ready knock Up one time, and I was just so happy. I was like being out in the middle, be fun friends. It was on the set of Propine and Morris came in and uh he was late, and he wasn't late because y'all don't even know man. Y'all don't even know man. He We would be on the set every morning at five thirty, but we wasn't shooting being dressed. No, it wasn't no hurry up and wait. Just didn't want us to be doing
anything else. So you'd be on the set every day, full makeup, dress and ain't shooting nothing, just had just so he would know where where's Jesse. I know where he's over there? Okay, you know that kind of ship. And so Morris was like, yeah, man, you know what, fuck this ship. And so Morris walked in one day. It was so it was so amazing because he was always like my idol, because he.
He came in high collar, clean his hell, ask got look just looked amazing, hairlaid, everything, came in clean his hell and Prince and it was when you.
First walk in the first avenue. You know you can either go that way if you go this way. There's a stairway, so that the stairway is full of extras. And Prince walked up to him, which he was used to doing and sand stuff for him. And Morris never would say anything in front of everybody, but he this morning wasn't. He wasn't at one because.
He walked up to it.
Man, you know you're letting the thing about it.
He's doing this.
Like mother fucker, and what the fuck? And I was like, that's about time. And then when they made it to the dressing room with that, then Prince came into the dress rooms man and Morrises immediately was and then Bean jumped and he's like, bring this ship man, Morsels, get ready, And I was like, I'm standing at that going because that's what he with. Me and Jerome used to fight all the time, really because when Jerome got when Jerome came around, he wasn't in the band. He was like
the roadie dude. So he would be mad all the time. You'd see him and he'd be moving the suitcases and roadka. He'd be mad all the time. He was always mad at me for something he didn't even know me. But and so we fight all the time. I said, you know what, Mom, Toddy, you musclehead motherfucker, let's do this ship And Prince used to be the always be the one let him let him fight, So that was my opportunity to investigator. Yeah, and Bean jumped in your friends,
did Joy ass off the way? Let these niggas had his ship out?
I just want to know who said I will fuck you up more?
Yes, So sorry y'all, So sorry to cut y'all so short, but you know there's more to come next week on our special interview with Jesse Johnson, Tune in next week when Jesse will talk about those Purplerine deleted scenes. That we didn't get to see touring with Luther vanros and Roger Troutman and Larry Troutman. Also, we'll talk about a few Prince demos going up for auction. It'll be a blast, y'all.
Trust me, Trust me? You want to come back next week for part two of our interview with Jesse Johnson on Quest Love Supreme see event West. Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.