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my work with james brown, prince, d'angelo and chris rock - by alan leeds
unique
08-12-2011
Unless you have ever been on double date with Prince, Alan Leeds is cooler than you. He was James Brown's tour manager from 1969-1974 (pictured above, accompanied by Black Panthers) and then managed Prince during his (very) purple patch between 1983-1992. He now works for Chris Rock and D'Angelo. Here he tells all on how to work for a demanding boss:

Deal with a tirade: "Realize you can't fight back. James Brown was not going to be wrong. One day he came back from Europe and said that satyrs existed in Bavaria. You couldn't argue with him. He was just the guy who would say two plus two equals three. You'd say it was four and he'd say "Mr Leeds, that is a white man's illusion."

Always have news: "Being on call 24 hours a day, you get what I call "fear of phones". With James I used to keep a cheat sheet of ticket and record sales for the forthcoming shows in my top pocket. Firstly because he might ask, secondly because you might need something to disarm the conversation in case he started asking difficult questions."

Recognize an impossible job: "There was an attempt in the late Sixties to expand his audience and sell tickets to white kids. We were already fighting an uphill battle and then he'd come out with a record like "Soul Power". There was no way I could go to him and say it was the wrong record to release. Mainly because it was a fabulous song!"

Expect the unexpected: "Prince's aftershows were much harder on the technical crew than on the band. So we ended up having a specific truck with the right equipment and technicians dedicated just for the aftershows."

Talk tough when necessary: "You don't entirely avoid turning into a yes man if you want to keep your job, but you have to build up enough credibility so that when you do pull an artist aside, they know you're not going to waste that opportunity talking about something trivial."

Take the mick occasionally: "I worked with Prince for nearly ten years and I never saw him dress down. He once complained that no one took him seriously as a songwriter, so I suggested he go on stage in a turtleneck with a guitar. All he could say was "What? And look like you?"

Cope with nepotism: "James felt bad for one of his old friends from Georgia who'd sang as a Famous Flame in the 50s. So he offered him a job, even though he was illiterate. You had to find things for him to do, make sure you don't humiliate him and try to befriend him. We send him on the road, ahead of the show, making sure posters were up, radio DJs were playing the records and so on."

Recognize industry shifts: "In the Seventies the black music business was very much in the process of taking control of itself. I was the new breed. - the older white guys were used to an industry that was subservient to them. I recognized that it was fatalistic to align myself with them."

Dismiss divide and conquer: "Brown wasn't above playing games. Even though we were equal in the hierarchy, he'd tell my black colleague Buddy Nolan "Mr Nolan, you can never do what Mr Leeds does. He's got that school, that education. You'll never have that." And then he'd tell me later "Mr Leeds you can't be Mr Nolan. You can't compete. He's got street smarts you'll never had."

Beware responsibility: "With James Brown, if he said "use your best judgement" that would mean you'd put your own job on the line. If you were going to endorse a certain position and were wrong, it was your ass."

Socialize with your boss: "The first year I was working with Prince, we'd double date occasionally. I'd go into the cinema first and buy the tickets. We'd wait till the lights went down and then he'd sit down in the back row. It was really quite normal - apart from the fact that normal people don't wear silk pyjamas and high heels to the cinema".

Work for someone you like: "On the Chris Rock tour, there are no 20 year old knucklehead musicians who can't get out of bed in the morning. We've five grown guys who get on the plane and then fight over the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. One of the last music tours I did, early in the decade, the artist asked me 'Why do you always read newspapers?' I knew right then it was time to move on."

The James Brown Reader: Edited by Nelson George and Alan Leeds (Plume. £5.65 plus postage) is available now from amazon.co.uk. An edited version of this interview previously appeared in British GQ.

Click here to read why Nik Cohn believes Prince is rock's greatest ever natural talent

Published 07 Dec 2011
Online editing by Kevin Perry
Photo Credit: Alan Leeds


http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/enterta...demanding-boss

^ go to link for crazy pic of white guy with massive afro surrounded by the black panthers in the 70s
unique
08-12-2011
http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment...c-icon/for-you

and from the first article there is a link to this cool article as to why prince is rock's greatest natural talent...


From the GQ archive: Nik Cohn saw Elvis, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and the early Rolling Stones. But Prince, he says, is rock's greatest ever natural talent. To mark Prince's appearance at Hop Farm in July, read his tribute to the tiny purple icon.

One night in Dallas, the winter of 1979/80, my friend Katy took me to a club where she said there were good drugs. This turned out not to be true, but I did get to see Prince on stage.

Neither I nor Katy had heard of him. Afterwards, I found out he'd released two albums, For You and the eponymous Prince, neither of which was a smash. He'd begun to build a cult following in Detroit and other northern cities, but here in Dallas he was unknown. The audience numbered 20, tops, and most were drugstore cowboys in ten-gallon hats, getting wasted on Rebel Yell. When Prince came on stage and saw them, he looked stunned. Not half as stunned as they were, though. The Texas music scene at the time was ruled by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, the cowboy hippie set. Freaky meant a wet T-shirt competition or the annual cow-chip toss at Willie's picnic, not this creature from outer space, 5'6" in high heels, scrawny chest bared to the navel, doe eyes, full make-up and long floppy hair that looked suspiciously like roadkill.

Four white girls clustered by the stage, his total support group. To the rest of us, especially the massive tattooed biker at the bar, there seemed only one possible reason why anyone would go on stage in such a get-up and that was to get a good kicking. Prince seemed aware of this and even to revel in it. He struck a girlish pose, hand on hip. The biker hesitated, then stomped out in disgust. Only then did Prince deign to cue the beat, and the show began.

The sound system was abysmal and made it impossible to judge his music, but his physical presence was unforgettable. Though his band was a mix of blacks and whites, Prince himself seemed not to belong to any race. Perhaps he was an android - the man who fell to earth. His flesh seemed weirdly translucent, his movements too fluid for a mere mortal. Though the club's air conditioning was on the blink and everyone else was in meltdown, he never broke a sweat. Only at the very end of his set did a single bead of moisture start to trickle down his nose. The moment he sensed its intrusion, Prince stopped dancing and lowered his guitar. The show was over.

On our way out, we passed one of the white girls. She was in tears. Katy offered a Kleenex, but the girl waved it away. "He isn't human," she said. I felt she meant it literally. And I was inclined to agree.

Next morning, I went out early and bought his records, but they didn't do much for me. Though Prince contained a couple of catchy pop songs and some nice production touches, there was nothing to stop traffic. I was more impressed by the cover notes saying "produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince". That a 21-year-old unknown would insist on total control, free from executive meddling, was unheard of. No question, the boy had balls.

Dirty Mind, his third album, came out a few months later. This time there were rave reviews, and he played the Ritz in New York. Despite the acclaim, his sales were still slow and the club was half-full, but Andy Warhol and his claque showed up, and so did a number of music-biz faces. Before the show, they lounged in poses of practised cool. Then Prince appeared, and cool went up in flames.

I'd seen some heavy hitters on stage. Elvis, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, the early Rolling Stones - all, in their different ways, were spellbinding. None hammered me like Prince that night at the Ritz. I can't remember what he wore or what songs he played, just that it felt as if all the music in creation poured from him, unstoppable. By the time he was through, I was convinced he was the largest, most protean raw talent that rock had produced. A quarter-century on, I still believe it.

Issues of greatness are always subjective. Whose body of work ranks supreme?

Others will nominate the Beatles or Bob Dylan or Springsteen or even U2. For me, Prince tops them all, but that's a matter of taste. What's undeniable is his influence. The albums he made in the Eighties reshaped the way pop sounds, and their impact has never diminished. You can hear still their echo in artists as diverse as Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys, D'Angelo, Andre 3000, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears and countless boy bands. A mixed inheritance, at best, but that's not his fault. He isn't simply the godfather of modern R&B - his thumbprint is everywhere.

Given his natural gifts, his own records have been uneven. Often he has seemed to take his genius for granted and allowed himself to cruise. At other times, he's shied away from digging too deeply within himself, preferring bromides to hard-won truth. No matter; his best has been astonishing. At 5'3" and shrinking, the man is a colossus.
mushymanrob
09-12-2011
an interesting read that...
unique
09-12-2011
alans brother is eric leeds who played sax and flute for prince and many of his various side projects such as madhouse (which is basically prince on all instruments bar eric on wind/brass), and the family (who did the original version of nothing compares 2 u)

eric has his own incredible stories and is quite willing to chat and tell you about them. it's actually eric that plays horn on a very famous bootleg that was credited to prince and miles davis (miles only plays on two tracks, and one of the tracks was actually a miles davis track that was officially released and had nothing to do with prince)

alan got the job simply because purple rain's success allowed prince to pick and choose who he wanted to work with and he choose alan simply because he was james browns tour manager. prince also later got james browns saxophonist maceo parker to join his band, and he's currently touring with prince in canada at the moment

what's also interesting is that both d'angelo and chris rock are big prince fans, so they may have choose alan as manager due to the prince connection. alan basically "ran" prince's paisley park studio in it's early years. d'angelo and questlove also recorded their own takes on all of prince's early albums to dat, but so far whislt some d'angelo outtakes have leaked over the years (presumably via questlove himself), only one prince cover by d'angelo has surfaced, a cover of a b side that was the opening track in scream 2 (the movie)

so because of working with one person, he got those other jobs

he was also interviewed in the bbc documentary on prince the other week (and there is a public enemy one tonight), and i believe sky arts is repeating the great prince of paisley park documentary today and over the next few days, which was made when alan was in charge. nelson george (who co-wrote the book with alan) is also in that documentary (which is a different version to the uk omnibus special that used parts of the original footage, of which ironically the best stuff was missing from the american version)
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