City Kid (23 page)

I saw August Wilson's
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
in 1984 on Broadway, and would go to see every one of his ten plays, and not just on Broadway, but in New Haven; Boston; Washington, D.C.; and Los Angeles. Like a Grateful Dead-head I traveled around America, watching how Wilson rewrote his plays, finding inspiration in the work of my great literary obsession.

On opening night of
Joe Turner's Come and Gone
, March 26, 1988, I sat in the front row in the right aisle seat. Wilson's drama of a haunted man and his daughter, searching for their lost wife and mother in Pittsburgh circa 1911, was rich with African mysticism and the burdens racism imposed on its former slaves. In
Turner's
climatic moment Harold Loomis and Martha Pentecost, played by two then unknown thespians, Delroy Lindo and Angela Bassett, struggle with the past, God, and a knife.

When the lights came up, Bassett stood before me onstage, the stage lights twinkling off her eyes and reflecting off those now legendary cheekbones. Between the play's end and the after-party at Sardi's, my date headed home—she'd just gotten in from a convention, and was worn out by Wilson's epic play—while I headed in.

I found Wilson on the second floor leaning against a wall, smoking a handy supply of cigarettes. Extremely fair skinned, with a thick salt and pepper beard, Wilson had a big, bearish demeanor, friendly and distant at the same time. Ms. Bassett was more accessible. I gushed about how good she was, how attractive I found her, and anything else I could try in an ultimately successful effort to get her phone number. It was the start of a sweet friendship.

I ended up riding back to Fort Greene with Spike, who'd also been at the party, and commenting enthusiastically about Delroy Lindo and Angela. (A few years later both would play key roles in
Malcolm X
and Lindo would eventually play Spike's father in
Crooklyn
.) Being toyed with by Prince, and meeting August Wilson and Angie Bassett at the beginnings of their careers, are just a few of the snapshots from that explosion of eighties black pop culture. I'm not sure if that period will have the historic resonance of the Harlem Renaissance of the twenties or the Black Arts movement of the sixties, but that generation, post-soul and mostly pre-hip-hop, both capitalized on existing opportunities and created new models for success.

Looking back, I can see that my career, and that of my eighties peers, was aided to a great degree by a profound change in white America's attitudes toward black creativity. Despite the outright hostility of the ruling GOP administration toward the poor and people of color, the mass public had no problem embracing Whitney Houston, Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Toni Morrison, Wynton Marsalis, and a long list of superb black talent spread over a wide range of disciplines.

Being in New York, with access to several publications with a national profile, I found myself writing at a time of great talent, unprecedented success, and a grudging acknowledgment that black people could actually explain black creative expressions better than white folks could. Well, maybe I exaggerate a bit. At least they began putting us on an equal playing field (though papers and mags like the
New York Times
or
Rolling Stone
rarely employed black critics). But overall a space opened up where I and many others could build a national profile via white media, which, in turn, led to book contracts, speaking engagements, and teaching gigs. The mainstream acceptance of black creativity had a trickle-down effect on myself and many others.

I think my first national television appearance was on CBS's
Morning Show
in 1984 or so, when I joined a panel talking about the major summer tours. I must have done all right, because I soon became a regular talking head on news broadcasts and music-related documentaries, a great many of which were done for British TV. It amazed me that I kept getting asked to do on-camera interviews, since I knew I had a tendency to mumble when excited, and my fashion sense has always been questionable.

Every time a request came in it made me think of watching ABC's
Wide World of Sports
with my mother. The weekly Saturday afternoon broadcast was legendary for its great opening voice-over, promising “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,” and being broadcaster Howard Cosell's platform to media stardom. Fights were regular features of the broadcast, and we'd often watch the ever-increasing number of black fighters dispatch the ever-decreasing number of great white hopes.

Actually more dangerous for the race than the boxing contests were the postfight interviews. Ma would sit with me and hope that the black boxers “could talk.” Nothing upset her more than a black man on TV who couldn't pronounce vowels, didn't use Gs, or otherwise viewed standard English as a third language. She'd watch ABC's loquacious Cosell ask them questions with her psychic fingers crossed. Ma liked the hard-charging style of Joe Frazier, the relentless Philadelphia fighter who was Muhammad Ali's greatest rival, but squirmed whenever Smokin' Joe got near a microphone.

With this as a backdrop you can imagine Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali was a welcome presence on our black-and-white. Ma was especially taken with the post-Nation of Islam boxer, a man who spoke slower, more purposefully, and with more heart than bluster. His youthful bravado was still in evidence, but it was tempered by a maturity that made him an international hero and, subsequently, an American one.

At no point in those days did my mother and I ever entertain the idea that I'd be doing television interviews, talking about sports, movies, or music. Unless you were a fighter or a civil rights leader, you weren't talking on TV in the sixties. Black experts on anything but “the movement” and the “Negro problem” were rare, unless you threw a jab or a baseball.

So when these on-camera opportunities started coming my way, I never wanted any black folks flinching when my face popped up. I never wanted to be known for leaving off Gs, mispronouncing (or misusing) big words, or stumbling in my articulation, or to do anything to make my mother cringe. I never aspired to being a TV talk-show host or correspondent, but it quickly became clear that being an “expert” raised the profile of my work and helped sell books.

A turning point in my talking head career came via an appearance in 1986 on the
Today
show to promote
Where Did Our Love Go?
. Getting a spot on the NBC franchise was a coup. Even better, I was to be interviewed by Bryant Gumbel, who'd made the big jump from handling the NFL Sunday pregame show, bringing his crisp delivery and smart professionalism to early-morning television. Gumbel didn't kiss up to guests—he asked tough questions—and did not suffer fools. As a young journalist, I respected him immensely, since, in his own way, he was a revolutionary figure. Gumbel presented himself as he was. He didn't curry favor with a toothy smile or toss in slang or otherwise play the race card to cozy up to viewers. He reveled in his competence, a character trait that could tip over into arrogance. I always thought that if one of Sidney Poitier's characters from the sixties survived into the eighties, he'd have been as composed and cocky as Gumbel was on the
Today
show.

In the greenroom that morning I sat watching a monitor and had tea, amazed at being in the famous building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, about to be interviewed on national TV about my first work of serious nonfiction. I'd done a lot of TV in the wake of writing that quickie bio of Michael Jackson in 1984, but the Motown book and the
Today
show was the big time. I had a sense that I'd arrived as a writer. I wasn't worried that Bryant was wearing out some actress with withering sarcasm. She didn't seem too smart, and as I said, he didn't kiss up to even ingenues. I was just convinced he'd give me love.

Walking into the chilly studio, knowing that I'd have four minutes on national television to describe my book, was a heady feeling. I was so gassed that I didn't take it as a bad sign that Bryant shook my hand stiffly, made no small talk, and looked down at his notes during the entire commercial break. He was a pro's pro. No need for him to chat me up. Save the good cheer for on air.

Red light comes on. Clips of Motown artists are screened. He reads off a teleprompter. I hope my cheap blue suit looks presentable under NBC's unforgiving lights. He starts in with that clipped, energetic delivery. And his tone is as cool and probing as a urologist's hand. He's not treating me as a “brother” but as a subject, one who has written a slightly controversial, often critical volume about the greatest black business of the twentieth century. He asks me why I didn't speak to Gordy (he wouldn't grant me an interview), about my sources (the juiciest stuff came from the in-house band members, now known as the Funk Brothers), and, finally, he wonders accusingly about my depiction of Gordy himself.

Of course, it was clear by then that Gumbel was holding me up to the same standard he'd hold up any other historian. Show and prove, young man. Let me see if your work is as intellectually rigorous as it needs to be. Because of the high-profile venue and the aggressive questioning, this is absolutely the toughest interview I'd ever (would ever) experience. Being young and more naïve than I would have admitted, I resented Gumbel's interrogation. I came through all right. In fact, I even got a little flip with him, which just came out as me defending myself.

But, afterward, as I wrote other books, I realized that Bryant Gumbel had done me a tremendous favor. Prior to the
Today
show I had thought that because I was black, Bryant would toss me softball questions. He cured me of that expectation forever. No matter who came to interview me or what subject I was speaking about, I had to be prepared for anything. I had to know what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it, and, perhaps most important, how to handle the questions I didn't care for. I'd been a good interview before that, but from then on I worked hard on perfecting the art of the sound bite.

The truth is, Gumbel was an anomaly. I'd find that most television interviewers were not nearly that tough or tenacious. In fact, on live TV, the interviewee has a lot of control, since there's a limited amount of time for follow-up questions. You can use phrases like “That's a very good point, but what's really important” to lead the conversation in another direction. I figured out that in the hierarchy of interviewers, those on TV tended to be the least well prepared and most passive, so you can manipulate the interview more easily (compared to doing print and radio).

The bookend to this story is that, a decade later, I was working as a producer on Chris Rock's HBO show, supervising interviews. We booked Bryant Gumbel, and I did the preinterview with him, and prepared questions with Chris. By this time Gumbel was nearing the end of his increasingly contentious tenure at the
Today
show. In fact, he was grappling with bad press about his failing marriage and his rocky relationships with his coworkers. It was weird to be interviewing the man who had, inadvertently, schooled me in the art of TV presentation. Even funnier was that we were preparing to do the type of interview I'd hoped for years earlier—softball questions that, in this case, would be spiked with setups for Rock to be funny. Life is filled with funny little ironies, and one of them is that most of your best lessons are taught outside the classroom.

Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound
had been an emotional journey and challenge for me, both wrapping up a childhood obsession and establishing me as a serious writer. But there was a conceptual leap I wished to make, and it was daunting. I had a title for a book in my head,
The Death of Rhythm and Blues
. It was an idea that went back to those mornings listening to Eddie O'Jay's
Soul at Sunrise
on LIB. I wanted to look back not only at the how black music had changed, but at how the institutions that supported it (radio stations, mom-and-pop record retailers, concert venues and clubs, record labels) had evolved as well.

Two ideas would animate the project: SOLAR Records honcho Dick Griffey (later Suge Knight's mentor) used to say that as oil was to the Arabs, our music was to us, a lucrative and seemingly endless economic resource; and two, the music reflected where African Americans were in our historical evolution in American society. Ultimately I would revisit the journey from segregation to integration via popular music, looking specifically at what had been lost and gained in this process. Great idea, huh? I just had to figure out how to write it.

Over my years at
Billboard
I had accumulated scores of interviews. Moreover, the pack rat in me had all the material I'd used to write
The Michael Jackson Story
and the Motown book in file cabinets, plus lots of articles and memorabilia I'd been saving for a more in-depth inquiry. Now I had to interview folks with tighter, more focused questions. I began acquiring tons of juicy individual stories that personalized this larger tale. I looked at Louis Jordan's post-World War II crossover success, the colorful promotion men who traversed the nation as musical traveling salesmen of soul, and on to hip-hop's place as a revival of black music's vitality.

But writing a book isn't journalism. It takes a larger vision, tons of thought, and a grasp of narrative. So I got lost in the devilish details, and lost the thread of my story. In one disastrous draft I even had a fictional DJ character, who represented the spirit of black music throughout the twentieth century. This was an absolutely horrible idea that I had made worse by executing it badly.

In early 1987, which ironically—and maybe not coincidentally—was a pivotal year in hip-hop's artistic development (Public Enemy, LL Cool J, Boogie Down Productions, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim), I found my keys to unlocking the history of R&B. I'd befriended the producer-songwriter Mtume at the start of my career. Aside from creating huge hits for Stephanie Mills, Phyllis Hyman, and his self-titled band, this ex-Miles Davis percussionist had, as a young man, been caught up in the maelstrom of radical politics. He had been down with Ron Karenga's US Movement in Los Angeles and, later, part of the nationalist community that rose to prominence in New-ark after the brutal late-sixties riots.