How Stevie Wonder found the key to her golden years
Zero Time is an experimental album from the summer of 1971 that very few people heard when it was released. Even today, it remains a curio capable of attracting cryptic expressions from all but the most musical history enthusiasts.
His albums were made by an American-British electronic music duo known as Tonto’s Expansion Head Band. This is, in fact, a showcase of Tonto, a room-sized, polyphonic synthesizer crafted by two of the band’s members, Malcolm Cecil and Bob Margouleff.
Synthesizers were numerous in their infancy in the early ’70s, but Cecil and Margouleff were keen to show off the exceptional sounds they could bring with their creation, The Original New Timbral Orchestra (name it fully). With the pair mostly working on the music for TV commercials, they wanted a box of audio tricks that could help them get ahead of the competition.
After that Zero Timereleased, an unexpected visitor arrives at their Manhattan studio, an old church. It was Stevie Wonder, holding a copy of the album. Motown’s blind star became a big deal in 1971 and he was keen to hear what Tonto could do.
He was taken to the basement of the studio, where the monstrous synthesizer was installed and his hands were guided over all its switches, keyboards and joysticks so he could ‘see’ the absolute scale of the device.
“Is this the instrument that made all the sounds on your recording?” he asked his presenters. “All of them?”
Wonder was told that every note, mysterious and otherwise, had been made in this very room. When he learned that a Steinway piano and a full drum set were also in the studio, he decided he wanted to record his new album there – and he was enthralled by the prospect of transforming his sound and he got to work right away.
In The seventies, Howard Sounes’ gripping book about the rich culture of a daring decade, he writes about the transformative effect of a homemade synthesizer on Wonder. “Stevie was amazed at the way Tonto’s keyboard seemed to shift under his fingertips,” he wrote. “The mechanism is completely standard; There’s nothing magical about it; the usual number of black and white keys. But by programming Bob and Malcolm’s Tonto, the sounds that emerge in response to the pressure Stevie exerts on those keys are varied in tone and pitch, as if he were playing an instrument. can change continuously. “
Cecil and Margouleff were involved in Wonder’s new music from the start, happy to work through the night as he wished at the time. Years later, Margouleff remembers what made the musician so special. “First, you immediately recognize his genius. All you have to do is be in the studio with him for 30 minutes to get to know his all-around genius. Jesus just came down and put his handprint right on his forehead.”
Stevland Hardaway Morris is a prodigy. Having signaled an extraordinary ability from his earliest years, he signed – with his mother’s blessing – a contract with Motown when he was 11 years old. -Evaluate the deal. His disability seems to have had no effect on his music and his new stage name, Stevie Wonder, could hardly have been more appropriate.
At age 14, in 1964, Little Stevie Wonder (as he was originally billed) was such a big deal that the fledgling Rolling Stones supported him on tour. But as the 1960s passed, he felt increasingly mistreated by Motown, believing that the contract he signed as a child was not a fair reflection of his talent.
As he neared his 21st birthday in 1971, he began to plan for when he would break free from the stifling creative deal. Now he’ll be able to make the music he really wants to make.
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On May 13, Motown supremo Berry Gordy threw a birthday party for Wonder in Motown’s hometown of Detroit. The next day, Gordy received a letter from the artist’s attorney informing Motown that the contract was void. With her trust fund secured, Wonder moved to New York for the next phase of her career – and immediately began looking for the guys behind it. Zero Time.
During the later stages of his time with Motown, he deliberately withheld his best songs. Now, with Cecil and Margouleff, he’s unleashing them in the basement of a church-turned-art studio in Manhattan.
Tonto helped ensure that Wonder’s sound would be like nothing else. “One of us would be working on the nodes,” recalls Cecil. “One of us – Stevie – will play the actual notes and one of us will work on the keyboard.”
His first Tonto-supported album was Music of my mindreleased in March 1972. As one of its defining singles, Keep running, was released, the music press was confused – they also had nothing to compare it with. Even today, it seems like something Prince might have concocted after a decade or two.
The album, incidentally, was released by Motown. After getting over the initial shock, Gordy is determined not to lose Wonder and offers him a very lucrative contract to ensure he has complete creative control. Wonder and Motown will stick together for the rest of his recording career.
Wonder was at his creative peak in 1972. He delivered an even better album, Talk bookOctober of that year. It features some of his most iconic songs, including Superstition. And – in a reversal eight years earlier – he supported the Rolling Stones on their huge US tour that summer.
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Cross appeal: Steve Wonder on stage with Mick Jagger for the 1972 Stones concert at Madison Square Garden
The Stones were the biggest band in the world in the early ’70s, and Wonder saw an opportunity to reach a large white audience. He determined that this music wasn’t stuck in the kind of R&B slum that influenced most black artists at the time.
“It was something we discussed a lot,” Cecil later recalled. “’This is not black music [Wonder would say]. This is music for everyone. This is crossover music. ‘ We’re very aware of that, and we’ve pushed for that the whole time.”
In order for Wonder to approximate the kind of sound he was making in the studio, the on-stage synthesizers were specially programmed, and Margouleff operated the soundboard nightly. Any skepticism that a crowd of white American rock fans would not be mesmerized by Wonder was quashed from the outset. Sunshine of My Life and Superstition went down exceptionally well night after night.
Margouleff recalls: “It was wonderful…so introspective and very engaging. “He has a big standard Motown background, but much of the show is focused on electronic sounds, and people are immediately drawn to how fresh and new it is.”
The tour is both legendary and infamous thanks to the Bacchanalian exploits of the Stones and their entourage.
For the final show, at Madison Square Garden in New York, Wonder joined the Stones on stage for a re-enactment of one of his great early songs, Advanced (Everything is fine)and classic Jagger-Richards (I can’t get no). The performance ended, to the delight of the audience, with a custard fight on stage.
Wonder will do two more Tonto-heavy albums with Cecil and Margouleff – 1973 Inner and in 1974 Fulfillingness’ First Finals — and by mid-decade, his status as an innovator was secured.
Like all great artists, he felt the time was ripe to move on to something new and after signing with a new Motown – when it was the most lucrative deal in industry history. music industry – he started working on his double album. The song in the key to lifedebuted in 1976.
But it’s a huge temporary synthesizer and an album called Zero Time that put him on the road at the turn of the decade.
https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/music/how-stevie-wonder-found-the-keys-to-his-golden-years-41889826.html How Stevie Wonder found the key to her golden years