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Taken from Power To The Peaceful - European Spearhead-fansite (July 27, 2003)
The questions for this interview were provided by Spearits from all over the world. The interview was taken on July 1st, right after the Nijmegen gig by
Johan.& Enjoy reading!
Michael, what do you think is the most important thing for you within Spearhead, the music or the lyrics?
Well to me the most important thing in music, is to serve. That's what I want to do, I want to serve other people. So, the music, the rhythm, the melody and the lyrics, they're all the same to me. But for me they're all an opportunity to be of service, to bring out emotions in people, to bring music to people who are in pain, who are in prison, to bring celebration to people who need to come out. To me the music and lyrics are not as important as the idea to serve other people.
How do you keep from getting "strung out on the material"? For those of us who are not musicians, how do you Stay Human when not playing? So much bad in the world.
The Dalai Lama has this great book called transformations and in this book he describes how all of us are trying to transform in our lives, we're trying to grow and trying to change all the time. And always the end goal is to try to find happiness, that's what you want. We all seek to be happy. But in the world that we live in in the West, it's always about; 'If I get a better house, or a better car or a better job, a better partner we're more happy. And it never works. Really when we're happy, is through the practise of altru?sm and doing things for others and being nice to other people. So that's the reward I that I get from being a musician and being in this band, to see people in the audience smile, to see people dance to see people laugh. You know, in Spearhead we don't make a lot of money. We make enough money to keep everybody going, but like on this European tour, we're losing money. But we make it up later in another level. I always told the band, if we make as much money as schoolteachers, that's honorable. (laugh)
You seem to have such a commitment to making a change in the world. I see you ARE making a difference. What in your life helped you develop that commitment, that you could make a difference; that you HAD to try?
That's a really good question. When I was born, I was given up for adoption. And I wasn't raised by my birth parents. When I was 20 years old, I started to search for my birth parents. And when I was 22 I found them. I was raised by white parents and when I found my birth parents and I asked my mother. - my mother is white, my father is black- I asked her: 'why did you give me up for adoption?' She said the reason was because her family never would have accepted me, being a brown baby growing up within her family, her family is very racist. So I grew up in a family where I never felt like I fit in, I always felt like I was an outsider in the schools I went to, in the community I grew up in. And being an outsider I've always felt a connection with other people who are outsiders. All of us are outsiders in some way. We all have that part of us that wants to be loved, wants to fit in, wants to be a part of the community, but doesn't feel like we can really be ourselves and still be accepted. But the truth in the matter is that, the more that we understand ourselves, the less we care about being accepted. And in turn we become more comfortable with ourselves and other people find us more comfortable to be around, so we fit in more when we be ourselves. So it's that experience of growing up feeling outside that led me to want to speak for others who feel that way. And whether that's on a political level or whether it's on a personal level, it's just people who just don't feel like they fit in. That's why I say; 'all the freaky people make the beauty of the world'.
What things are personally helpful to you, when you get discouraged?
Well, I had a hard time about the third or fourth day of this tour. I became very depressed. I was very sad about my father passing away, I felt homesick. You know, it's hard. My youngest son Ade is travelling with me and my wife Tara, and it's hard because I work all day doing promotion, at night there's a show, and the Ade stays up till five in the morning every night. I'm doing to be a father to him, and I don't give him much sleep, and it's everything with that combined with my father's death that made me really depressed. And so there were two things that got me out of that depression. The first was spending time talking with Carl. So Carl stayed up with me late into the night on the bus. We stayed up talking all night long about our fathers. He lost his father last year, so... And the other thing was to practise Yoga. I practise Yoga almost every day on tour. Today I didn't practise being with the press all day. Yoga is a thing that helps me to quiet my mind. Quiet the judgmental voices in my mind. I was starting to feel judgmental about live things, things shouldn't like this, shouldn't be like that...Eventually I had to sit down and meditate with Catherine and my wife Tara, we did a very nice Yoga practise in Brigton at the beach. Two days in a row we practised Yoga very intensely and that lifted me out of my depression.
How do you feel about religion and what is your deepest believe?
Well, it's funny you ask me that, cause today I went on this Dutch Christian radiostation, and I was walking there and they asked me: 'you know what this station is about, right? And I go: eum, yeah I know, it's a Christian radiostation. 'Ok, well let me ask you some questions about Jesus and stuff like that. I said: OK, that's no problem, I'll talk about every subject there is to talk about. So, I'm somebody who believes that God is continuant in each of us. It's continuant in every person, within every rock, every tree, every drop of water and that when we look inside and understand ourselves, the more we understand the nature of God. For some people, they can find that through religion, they find that through prayer, through the discipline of certain moral practises and going to church. Other's find it through walking through the park and being with nature, being around trees and the ocean and mountains. Others find it through meditation and practising yoga. But I think the main thing of any spiritual practise is to spend time being quite. That's why I'm really in tune with Buddhism and with yoga and Hinduism and other practises where we spend time being quite. It's kind of like if you're looking in a pond and you're trying to see your reflection, but you keep dropping little pebbles in the water, you never see your reflection clearly. But if you allow the water to be still and spend time seeing and looking, eventually you see the beauty that you are, you see your reflection clearly. And so in whatever religious practise we do, it's important to spend time alone with our eyes closed, aware, awake, sitting and meditating and quieting our mind.
What do you do when you want to chill out?
I think playfulness is one of the most important aspects of our sanity, to remain playful. As we grow older, we become less playful. And I remember when I first started practising yoga, which is a year ago, not even a year ago, there was a lot of things that I would do when I would fall. And I started thinking on myself, it's been a long time since I just fell. I snowboard a little bit, for about four years I recognise the same thing too when I started snowboarding, that we rarely fall as adults. And it's important to fall and get back up and to be playful about it. Not just like : 'Oh shit, I fell and to be so holding on to, but to just, laugh. So playfulness in whatever I do. I enjoy playing football (soccer). I've been doing for about four years for now.
In a team or just with the band?
We just play with the band, we just juggle the ball, we kick back and forth. Especially me and Manas and our tour manager Pretty in America. I think in four years we've played maybe an organised game twice. We just kick the ball and we do it every day. Whenever the soccerbal gets lost it's like: Manas, buy another soccerball, you lost it this time!
If it's not too personal, how did you meet your wife? what attracted you to her? I can only have the biggest respect for her and your family/friends as they obviously enrich your work as a musician/all round amazing human being!
I met my wife in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. She was there with a friend of mine who she was working with and I walked in and I saw her. I had to choose a beautiful woman. We had an attraction, but she had a boyfriend, so I had to wait for about a year and a half she finally broke up with him and then we got together.She's a beautiful Spearit, she's somebody who is gone through a lot of growth in our relationship. Both of us. It's interesting because relationships bring out the best and the worst in you. We both see the best and worst things in each other. We've grown to work on those things. It's not a perfect relationship, by any such dimension, but no relationship is. We're there and we keep trying.
What is your favourite kind of gig? Playing a festival where you can reach thousands of people or a playing a venue where everyone is a fan already?
I just love to play music. (little Ade comes whispering in dada's ears) You know, in Dijon, we were scheduled to play this big festival. The day of the festival the stage workers went on strike, so they cancelled the whole festival. So there we were in Dijon, expecting to play for thousands of people and we show up and they say, 'the whole thing is cancelled'. So there was a little backstage area where people had been cooking food all day for the artists and for the stage crew and there were a few other people there. When I showed up, I said; 'no no, we're going to play some music. And they said; no son, you can't, it's not going to happen. There was even a guy in the backstage playing guitar and they told him; no, you can't even play an acoustic guitar.' When I heard that, I just said no, these people are cooking and making noise with the pots and pans and I'm going to make noise with my guitar, that's what I do. So we brought a guitar back there and Manas played on a little garbage can, we started playing music at midnight and pretty soon somebody brought a bass amplifier out there and some congas. After that Dave brought his guitar and a keyboard, and pretty soon we set up a whole lot of music instruments. Right there in the backstage area. There were about 60 people there, and we played music for midnight till four in the morning. And it was probably my favourite show of this whole tour. So to me it really doesn't matter about who we play for or where we play. It's just: I'm so grateful for the opportunity to play music. Music is a daily part of my life, so sometimes it's in front of thousand of people, sometimes it's in a small venue, sometimes it's sitting on my couch at home playing the guitar, sometimes it's sitting in a shower with my stereo cranked up to ten, while I'm taking a shower. So music is just part of what I live and breath every day.
Is 'We don't stop' an ode to the Clash (Magnificent 7) or is it just my feeling it sounds a bit like it. (which is no offence 'cause the song is brilliant, I was just wondering)
When we were making this record, I thought of a lot of the music that I really loved growing up as a kid. Like to me the early eighties we inspired by two different styles of funk. And the first one was Sly and Robbie, so there was like a lot of groups inspired and produced by them; Grace Jones, Culture Club and a lot of reggae funk style music, Blondie and Blacku Uhuru. And then the other side of funk was inspired by Chic. So Chic is that same kind of bass line. (Michael singing the bass line)...same as 'good times', as 'rapper's delight'; And then there were lots of other bands like Queen with 'Another one bites to dust', it's the same bass line. Magnificent seven, it's the same bass line. It's just a different variation. I look at it really as borrowing from Chic, but I love the Clash. And the thing that I love about the Clash is that, although they started off as a punkgroup that could barely play their instuments, they also played reggae. And then when they started to get really famous, their music was like this wonderful blend of so many styles, reggae, salsa, funk, hiphop, jazz, punkrock, motown. It were so many different styles all in the one thing. The only thing you could call it was: the Clash. And then they became more famous like with 'Rock the Casbah' and people were like: oh that's the Clash. But by that point it's like everything in one song: funk, rock, hiphop, jazz, reggae, punk. And that's what I was trying to inspire in the band, like for a lot of times we do reggae songs, salsa songs, but never say: let's try to make it all be one thing. So it's just people looking at it saying: 'oh it's just Spearhead'. It's not reggae, it's not hiphop, it's not soul, nor R&B, it's just Spearhead. You can't call it something else.
How do you feel about changing up the setlists a bit more, adding some more political covers (ie. Lennon's imagine, Bill Wither's Let us Love, and the many more that aren't coming to mind at the moment) to help mix it up and keep those artist's message alive aswell. Also maybe bring back some of the older stuff from the first couple of albums or even incorporating some of Carl, Dave or Radio's solo stuff into the mix. But I mean, why not rework the songs a bit so you don't have to rely on a female vocalist as much to perform a song.
I think those are all great ideas. On this tour we really tried to do this. (which is more than true for the 3 gigs in a row I saw on this tour - Johan) When we're on the road we play so long and so hard and sometimes you get tired and you think the next day: 'Ok what are we going to play tonight, well ok, let's just change a few songs in the set. But now with the web, you come to Amsterdam and the person who was in Amsterdam wouldn't have seen the show in Belgium. So you want to make the best show you can. It's like: ok, we did these songs in Amsterdam and they were great, so we'll do the best show the same in Belgium. But the guy who is in Belgium he heard the show last night on the web, so it's really a challenge now to really develop the music. Now with this tour and this summer, we're going to try to do everything he said there: incorporating songs from other artists, working on new arrangements of older songs, keeping the setlist changing every night. That's something I've really talked in and set down with the band and we had a lot of conversations about it. So I look forward to that. It's more fun for us and for the people who are really paying attention. I don't take it as a criticism at all, I'm glad people are paying that much attention.
Thank you so much Michael for the time you took for this interview! In the name of all Spearits: THANKS, GRACIAS, DANK U, DANKE, MERCI!! Furthurmore I'd like to thank all Spearits that have send in questions to make this interview as great as it is!! You are the Freaky people!
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