Rock and Roll; Interview with Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff [Part 1 of 2]

An NT I'm Malcolm sessile. You have to wait for action or you do. I'm not I'm special and I'm Robert Margolis and this is Tonto the original Leo Tambora Locke astray. Well it came out of our heads in the late 60s early 70s we designed it on a table cloth in New York in a Cuban Chinese restaurant across the street from media sound and we came up with the idea of building this instrument as the first real time performing electronic music instrument and actually we made the first

album was actually the first alternative album and it like it was 1971 with the 71 Tonto's expanding Head Ground Zero. Was put out by the man. Who had a. Label called embryo which was distributed by Atlantic Records and that was how Stevie Wonder came to find this was through that album he wrote up a media sound one day with the album on the line A. Friend of ours on the other on how to run a bar and yet we didn't leave the studio for five years after that but it was really designed as a real time. Performing instrument and many of the cuts on that first album zero time were performed in real time. So when Stevie heard the album we were able to start. I don't know what happened to something magical happened basically and we started working together and suddenly we found ourselves sort of inventing instruments to play and that was a very magical thing and we started then I think the First off we did was music of my mind was the first album we did with Steve Tonto incidentally

stands for the original Neo temporal orchestra and this is one instrument it's all instruments at the same time so it was difficult to control in the 70s because we didn't have the technology that we have today but we're still here and we're still playing it. Well. Well he was a pianist keyboard player. Yes Stevie was a keyboard player. And his principal need from us was to provide him with the sounds and the technical expertise to enable him to get what he had in his head that's what we called the first out music of my

mind because it was music that was in his head. He'd been carrying it around for several years because he didn't own his own publishing and he was very smart for somebody so young and he realized that he was a lot of money in publishing and he decided that when he came to us that he had. Not written anything substantial for Motown and perhaps five years and he had all these songs in his head and he was just bursting to get them out. And it was very difficult for him to explain to a ranger what it was he wanted. Have the arranger right did have the arranger tell somebody musicians how to play it. It was too far removed from what was in his head. He wanted to have more direct contact and when he realized that the instrument that we had put together was a keyboard instrument and he could actually control it directly and only had to do was to work with us to get the sounds that would spark him off. That was really that was the real key.

I think also I didn't know what he likes. Did from it I don't think in some ways I don't. Some ways I don't agree totally with Malcolm about his or his songwriting not writing for Motown before. This. I think that Stevie acted on impulse he heard our record. Ronnie Blanco our friend who brought him to us didn't know what would happen and we didn't know what would happen I don't think Stevie really realized that. I didn't even realize it happened. Little Five years later when we stopped working with Stevie that something had happened. I mean it became totally consuming. We worked night and day holidays weekends every time it was at night we would start at 7:00 at night and we come out blinking like into the blazing light at 7:00 o'clock in the morning in the middle of New York and then out here in Los Angeles and the music just kind of. Will out of him and instead of saying well we're going to make an album now so let's hear the 12 songs for this album. We just started putting material into a

library and we just started recording it. There was no one else around it was Steve myself and Malcolm and sometimes Joe go to his lawyer who was the Kara real character and appears in some of the little sound vignettes for example in Living just enough for the city and we just went to work and when time came to put an album out we would all run around and find the right album art and the right people for the various parts of the elements and we put everything together pretty much ourselves and we had difficulty sometimes with Stevie pinning down what songs were going to be on the album because we play stuff that you say well and so yeah that's got to be on the album and then we said OK and he said well this is the next song. You know what that's got to be on too. In fact that's how talking book got its name was because he was putting playing softer song off the song and everyone had to go an album everyone told a story and. The difficulty Stevie was getting him to choose which songs to put on the album

because we had so many of them and he always wanted to include everything in fact. That's how talking book got its name he wanted to put every song on there and we got to a point where one point we said Well Stevie you know this is this is an album and it's not a talking book Talking Books for the Blind at half the speed and all they'll pay down is sixteen and two thirds and so they run on for much longer. And. That was really the basis and and the and the and the songs are all stories and statements I mean the thing about Steve's music is that it's not just about you know love and how much I love you baby or I lost you baby and now I found you baby I mean the material is really about the social condition in the fabric of our society. For example leaving just enough for the city has that beautiful little vignette in it of the drug bust. The innocent kid who comes to New York and walks across the street and finds himself arrested. That is very much

like a talking book it's a sound picture. It's like old time radio in a way where we used to listen to like Captain Midnight or some of the early Dragnet or some of the early radio dramas where they would create these sound vignettes and it really helps sort of illustrate the story than the social consciousness that Steve brought to his music which I think was very very important because Steve's music wasn't just for the black community or the white community. It was music that was universal music for mankind it was for the planet. And I think that the music itself hasn't really lost any of its real meaning I think that's why I think it lives on really is because of the social and social context one of the social context things that Stephen was very interested in hearing books and so on. The other thing about the social consciousness we stated is that he was interested in hearing other

people's work. For example I remember reading him from 1984 by George Orwell in Animal Farm. And you know he would always come in and say oh I've written a new song. It's not a love song Stevie you know and he would tell me one day he came in and he said I got a new song because I responded with my usual well not about a love song and he said no let's listen and he went inside and he started singing this thing. My name is Big Brother. You say that you're watching me on the Tele which was Big Brother. And it was like directly as a result of him mowing of the things that he heard from George Orwell's 1984. That is the you know the basic plot of the whole book is to do with this society where you're being supervised all the time. And he felt that that was a very you know that was very meaningful to him. And I was I was very struck with that. So it was really very nice to feel that we had

some interaction there. Him bringing his attention to some of the social issues of the time and I really believe that he was doing a good service for all of us. That's what I was. That's what I meant Malcolm by saying that. I mean this material wasn't just for the black community or making black records or blues records. His records touched everybody I can remember going out on the road with them briefly on the Rolling Stones tour. And I just it was remarkable to see how his music like touched everybody and the context in the social clarity of what he had to say how important it really was to the culture then and now I might add that I just finished remake sing some material for Steve's new album which 18 years later and the material does again address the strong social issues of the culture and I think these are things that need to be said I think that music is the most powerful export we have in America. And he really is one of the I think one of the great I mean great

songwriters there's only a few people in this world like Stevie in terms of being strong writers whose material lasts more than 18 or 20 years. Most of the artists we've worked with have what we call like two or three songs. All the songs the same sort of changes they just consider the new songs they put different words to them and so on and so forth. Stevie has many many more than two or three songs basic songs that pretty much everything he writes has a unique use to it and that's what makes him a very great person because Stevie is first a songwriter. Secondly vocalist and thirdly a musician. By the sounds of superstition. First of all the way the music was put down Stevie would normally go in and play clarinet piano and sing at the same time no superstructure either not like trap and he would superstition was different however he went into the studio and sat down and this was done when Jeff Beck

wanted to have maybe a bite in case the CEP say no you can't use it now I'm going to put it out. Now you can have it. And Jeff kept on and on we were producing Jeff at the time. And the sleepiest said OK but I like the songwriter new song for you Jeff. All right a new song for you and it was superstition but he walked into the studio and sat down at the triumphs and started off just Paul took it took it took. And that was all he played for the drum track for about five minutes. That was it and he came out he says. Let's get a good base I want a real funky bass sound so we went out program got a bass sound and then he put on you know they're going to do you know and then he says it was private we hadn't heard any melody had any sack and we didn't know what this is. And we put this clarinet down and this is where he did the thing a little while pedal on a cloud and it which again was I think the first thing I think that we brought to a lot of the music was that we created new sounds with Tonto.

These are sounds that sort of reminded people of other sounds but they were their own unique color and they brought a kind of an emotional content to the record I think that was unexpected and I think that that brought a kind of a new light to it. I mean modern synthesizers are interesting but they really are the children of the Hammond B3 more than they are the children of the synthesizer samples so it was all sampling is one thing but I mean even the synthesizers the way drum sounds and all that stuff Stevie said to me once recently said Man listen to that 8 away drum sound that sounds really like ST and I said Yeah it sounds like a street in Japan because that's where the sound comes from. OK but the synthesizer is really creates a sound that's an event that has a beginning a middle and an end that has content that's going on inside of it. If you listen to the sort of the sounds of the brassy sounds of the. The colorations and so forth they're all unique in that they appear as one event. This instrument is because it is truly a monophonic instrument.

We create one a vent at a time or multiple events but each event is its own thing. So in doing that we brought a very unusual kind of new emotional level to the music and what we used to do is Steve is as Malcolm was saying earlier as we would cut library material we would cut and put it into Stevie song library. And then when the album came. Out what we would do with Steve is we would cut for library and by that I mean we would cut the song not with a view to putting it on an album but with a view towards just creating a large. Database of songs essentially and they would be in various states of being finished Steve would work on one song for two hours then write a new song for three hours and so forth. And what we did in the studio originally Electric Ladyland in New York when we were started really just really had gotten into the saddle so to speak was we'd have all the instruments out in a large circle in the studio all plugged into the con.

The synthesizer the piano the klavern at the road's drums the drums everything all miked everything all ready to go. And the music of my mind was the most self-contained record because he played all the instruments with the exception I think of a few guitar parts and he would go from one instrument to the other and we were able to like sort of help him around in that sense in the creating that kind of an environment so he could instant have instant gratification the matter which instrument he wanted to go he could get sit down and start playing immediately and we would mix the electronic sounds the sounds of Tonto with live instruments so you never knew where the reality of a live instrument and the beginning of an electronic instrument was. It was all electronic. We had visions for example the title track was all acoustic and fact I'm playing bass acoustic bass which was my original instrument because that's what I used to play. And then when I used to play Ronnie Scott's I was principal bass with the BBC radio history for several years and I was.

Professional bass player that's how I my living before I came to the states and I still keep it up to this day. I still play. I still enjoy playing a very beautiful bass but Stevie likes to have whatever was necessary we had no rules that was nothing. Things did not have to be all electronic. They didn't have to be all acoustic. There were no rules there were no regulations it was just whatever we felt was correct for the song. We would put in there. It was a blessing in a way because we could remain focused on the music we never heard the word. It's out of its over budget or it's under budget or we're running out of money or anything else. Steve brought us the greatest blessing of all was to be able to really just concentrate on the art to know that we'd all be making enough cake to stay alive and to work and to be creative and all we had to do was just be creative and work in the studio and it was really a great blessing it lasted for five years which I think is enough. You know as I said earlier we cut as I

said we cut for library material.