360°Sound recently had the pleasure of chatting with Glasgow, Scotland-based music journalist Steven Vass about his book Let the Music Play: How R&B Fell in Love with 80s Synths (out now on Velocity Press). The 445-page book tells the fascinating story of how R&B and funk were transformed by the explosion of synthesizers. In this interview, Vass discusses his inspiration for the book, highlights key innovations that paved the way for ‘80s synth-funk, and picks his top three synth-funk singles.
Editor’s Note: This Q&A has been edited for clarity. Check out the full video interview at the bottom of the article.
360°Sound: Why did you decide to write Let the Music Play?
Steven Vass: I pivoted towards this topic partly because I’m a child of the ‘80s, born in ‘75. The ‘80s is well-loved. If you look at the stats for radio play, the ‘80s gets far more airplay both in the UK and the US than any other decade before 2010. But I think it’s loved in a slightly ironic way. The songs that get a lot of airplay, the Duran Durans, the Princes, and the Michael Jacksons, I feel like it’s loved in a bit of a nostalgia way. I don’t think the ‘80s is taken as seriously by heavyweight music fans as the ‘60s or ‘70s.
I’ve gravitated towards R&B because I’m such a huge fan of a lot of that music, but also because I feel like when you look at the stuff that gets all the airplay, it doesn’t encompass what I remember about the ‘80s. There were a lot of groups I used to see on TV or hear on the radio that are completely forgotten now, and most of them fall into the R&B category. I’m thinking of people like Imagination, Colonel Abrams, Gwen Guthrie, and Skyy. It’s almost as if the Michael Jacksons, Princes, and Whitneys were so big that there’s not enough room left to appreciate a lot of these other great Black artists.
I’ve always been a huge lover of synth and electronic music. When you ask the average person on the street, “What do you think of when you think about early synth music?” People are likely to say Depeche Mode or the Human League or Kraftwerk. They’re very unlikely to say Stevie Wonder or Ike Turner or D Train. It felt to me like we don’t attach synth music half as much to Black artists as we should. Underappreciated R&B from that era and Black artists being underappreciated for what they did with synths was a topic I thought I’d like to explore.
What were some pivotal moments that paved the way for ‘80s synth-funk?
You would have to say the invention of synths, which goes back to the ‘50s. But they start to become more manageable in the ‘60s when the modular Moog comes along, which basically looks like a telephone exchange. It’s covered in knobs, dials, and sockets, and people start experimenting with that. The game changer is when the Moog company brings out the Minimoog in 1970, which is the first synth that has a keyboard. That was quickly followed by the ARP 2600. That paves the way for artists from all kinds of genres to start to dip their toes in the water. Before that, there’s a fad for those big telephone exchanges, but it’s only artists who have got a ton of money, like the Monkees and the Beatles. Once the keyboard-led synths come out, that really starts to change the game.
Stevie Wonder gets in tune with these hippie producers, Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil, in the early ‘70s. They’ve constructed this crazy device called the TONTO, which stands for The Original New Timbral Orchestra. The early synth keyboards were monophonic, which meant that you could only play one note at a time, so it wasn’t possible to play chords. Cecil was a real electronics brain, and he hit on the idea of attaching different synths together so that you could play more than one note at the same time. They essentially built this spherical studio that an artist can sit in the middle of. Then you’ve got the producers at the outside, messing with all the knobs and dials. Stevie visits their studio, Mediasound, where TONTO is set up, and wants to experience the synth for himself. So begins his four-year patch of creating the best music of his career, starting with 1972’s Music of My Mind, an incredibly pivotal record. It turns people in the R&B community on to the possibilities of synth, people like Marvin Gaye, Kool & the Gang, and the Ohio Players.
You have Parliament-Funkadelic (P-Funk) and Bernie Worrell, who’s their master keyboard/synth player. In ’77, he plays the Minimoog on “Flashlight.” He plays this very hopscotch-y, grindy bass sound that’s hyperactive and brilliant. It’s copied by a million R&B and dance records in the late ‘70s and into the ‘80s. The same year, Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” comes out. That record is entirely made by synths except for the kick drum. And everything that isn’t made by a synth is auto-synced, so that it’s completely locked into place. That really blows people’s minds. When Nile Rodgers hears “I Feel Love,” he realizes he needs to go disco. He doesn’t realize that there’s an auto-sync going on; he thinks he’s hearing the tightest band in the world. One of the key components to Rodgers’s band Chic is to try and mimic this very machine-like sound. That influences a ton of other people.
You’ve got the arrival of polyphonic synths in the late ‘70s, particularly the Prophet-5 and the Oberheim OB-X. Within a couple of years, these synths are becoming a bit more affordable. You start to see guys on indie labels who can afford them. By and large, apart from TONTO and one or two other innovations, most people are having to make do with the limitations of the technology until the polyphonics come along. It changes the sound. Then you’ve got the “Disco Sucks” movement, which peaks in mid ‘79 with all the records being destroyed at the Chicago White Sox stadium. Disco is basically completely untouchable from this point on, and so that heralds a shift in the way the music sounds.
A lot of the R&B music in the book falls under the subgenre known as boogie. What are the characteristics of boogie?
It’s definitely not disco. It’s slower. Disco tends to be around 125-130 beats per minute (BPM). Boogie sets much more in the 105-120 BPM zone. It’s grindier. It’s got more of an R&B flavor. It tends to have a lot of space in it. Disco is often pretty busy. The boogie sound, partly because it’s quite jazz-inflected, tends to be a bit looser. It does a lot with handclaps. Records that I would say are classic boogie are Patrice Rushen’s “Forget Me Nots,” Kashif’s “Lover Turn Me On,” George Benson’s “Inside Love,” Odyssey’s “Inside Out,” and Mary Jane Girls’ “All Night Long.”
What would be three tracks that are essential to any ‘80s synth-funk/R&B playlist?
I’m going to cheat slightly with the first one, The Whispers’ “And The Beat Goes On,” because it came out at the end of ‘79, but it was a hit in ‘80. There’s something so magical about it, something about the way it feels like it starts almost halfway through the record. Something about those magical handclaps, the amazing singing of Scotty and Walter Scott, and it’s got that real tightness. [Solar Records producer] Leon Sylvers was a huge fan of Chic. It’s got great delicate synth work, just an absolute Lamborghini of a record. It puts me in a great mood whenever I hear it.
I would say “You’re The One for Me” by D Train, which came out in ‘82. Hubert Eaves, this seasoned jazz pianist from Minneapolis in his mid-30s, hooks up with this 19-year-old kid from Brooklyn, James “D Train” Williams. He gets his name because he’s a football player, and he’d run at people like the D Train subway. They’re an odd combination, so that’s really interesting. The song starts with this gorgeous gospel a cappella part from Williams. It’s just iconic. They use a real drummer, but everything else is done by synths. It’s pretty much all a Prophet-5, which was one of those new polyphonic synths.
That amazing glassy synth riff is very jazz influenced because of Eaves’s background. Also, François Kevorkian, one of the great New York DJs, was in the studio with Eaves behind the console, helping him to stay focused on what’s going to work in a club. That’s a real shift – DJs suddenly being involved in making records. Also, the way that Williams sings throughout the record is really quite aggressive, which nearly meant that the record didn’t get a deal. A lot of labels turned it down because they thought Williams was too in-your-face. But he goes on to influence a lot of dance music to come. It’s hard to imagine records like [Chicago house classic] “Love Can’t Turn Around” coming out if it’s not for Williams and the way he sounds.
“Let The Music Play” from ’83 is pivotal. Electro had been exploding in New York. Electro is basically the combination of a hip-hop aesthetic with mixing different records with synths. It was influenced by people like P-Funk and Kraftwerk. Electro kicks off with Afrika Bambaataa and the Jonzun Crew, but these artists are fairly niche. It’s not until ‘83 when Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” and Shannon’s “Let The Music Play” are big hits. Shannon’s record takes the electro sound but combines it with much more of a pop aesthetic. The guy behind the music, Chris Barbosa, is a Puerto Rican DJ from the Bronx. He brings more of a Latin flavor. Most people would say that this is the record that kicks off the freestyle sound, which is everybody from Lisa Lisa to Taylor Dayne to Exposé. Madonna doesn’t make “Into the Groove” if “Let the Music Play” doesn’t happen first.
It samples “Looking for the Perfect Beat” by Afrika Bambaataa. This leads the way towards all the beat sampling in hip hop. I’m not saying that it starts with this record, but it’s an early example of it. These reasons are why I chose to name the book after it, and partly because it’s just an amazing song. It’s exactly the opposite of “And the Beat Goes On” and “You’re the One for Me,” both of which almost kick off with the chorus. “Let the Music Play” is your classic example of having an amazing chorus and making the listener wait and wait for it, almost to the point that you’re drumming your fingers, and then bang. You’re not disappointed when it comes in. It’s just genius. Shannon’s almost the female equivalent of Williams. Her urban, gritty voice is also very important to a lot of the stuff that comes later. But their masterstroke is they combine her vocal with Jimi Tunnell’s, who sings in a falsetto. There’s something about the way that their voices blend. He only comes in on the chorus, and it knocks you off your feet when you hear it.
You can order Steven Vass’s Let the Music Play: How R&B Fell in Love with 80s Synths direct from the publisher, Velocity Press, on their website, velocitypress.uk
You can also grab it from Amazon here
