bet they do i bet they do and philip your voice is so beautiful like i mean and i i can tell you just talking every day it is exhausting on my voice what do you do to keep your voice being able to hit those notes what do you do in order to take care of your voice

well you know interestingly enough i can't do a lot of talking I can't do a lot of talking.

When we have three straight or whatever, I'm basically chilling and just saving it for the singing.

Because if I had to do what you do and talk, I wouldn't be able to sing at night.

So tell me, how do you keep that joyful spirit?

Well, Maurice's intent was always to render a service to humanity.

That's pretty lofty.

He wanted music that was bigger than just for ourselves.

[laughs]

And there was a lady chanting buck naked in front of my door.

And I'm opening, getting my number.

I was like, "Okay, I'll be right back." I, I, I backed back on the elevator, went down and got security and said, "Do something with this." You know, and people could go, go to the front desk and tell them different things.

They'd give you your key.

I was in, in, uh, uh, San Francisco one time and came, got, c- c- came home from the show and went to open my door and the, and the, and the double lock was on there.

So I said, I looked at my key.

Mm-hmm.

[laughs]

But, uh, yeah, it's a, you know, it's a passion and it's wonderful that it makes a lot of other people happy and brings so much joy to, to so many people.

Like you say, our music has become part of the soundtrack of so many people's lives now, and, uh, we, we wouldn't have been able to even imagine that, you know, starting out.

But we just wanted to be in the best band in the world, whole world, and Billboard just nominated us.

Mm-hmm.

And I, and I bet you, I bet you management probably took him to the bank too, you know.

Because, you know, basically you just moving and you don't think the money's gonna dry up and all that kind of stuff.

You don't have no history.

Somehow I can picture all of this.

You can picture all this, right? And so, you know, like being from Denver, I'm looking at this like, you know, like he's a spaceman coming out of space.

But he got a chance to see the band that me and Larry Dunn and Andrew were in.

And he was impressed with that, and later, a year later, I was introduced to the entourage out in Los Angeles, and he asked about several other members who later became members of the band, Andrew Woolfolk and Larry Dunn.

Make some noise! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I

think that that's to be commended.

You're in the right place fella.

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, we would go to Broadway and watch plays, you know, and watch how that, those plays had every eye in the audience fixed on whatever they wanted you to be fixed on.

And so we, we wanted to bring theater to the concert stage.

And so that's how we started thinking about different ways, different people to work with, such as, um, uh, George Faison-

Yes.

Um, and you gotta understand, you know, being African American, you know, and in this country, you know, that it brings a wh- whole nother level of special, uh, to it.

Um, because w- we could have never foreseen, you know, that ever h- even happening.

That, uh, you know, that a person of color was in the, in the White House, much less playing for hi- for, for them, you know, at their, uh, event.

Yeah.

It was like a colle- it was like being in a university, because you, you had Maurice's c- comrades, Don Myrick and Satterfield, and, and so they were, they were older th- than us and had, had a lot more experience overall musically.

So they would, you know, take us under their wing and mentor us, you know, in, you know, into the music and, you know, so it was a, i- and we were always together.

Yeah.

But you know, it's a, th- you know, that story is a testament to the fact that Verdine was not only really, really gifted as a musician, bassist, but he was destined.

It was destiny.

You know, because when you tell, when he tells that story and you think about, you know, the, what most musician ha- know at a certain point in their, in their careers, in their recording careers, he was so young to it, you know.

you hear...

That's when the funk starts.

I'm saying to myself, if they can do that, what can I do? Earth, Wind & Fire, we're making a whole different sound.

No people playing no music like that.

You're thinking they're

Do one of those words mean to you if they mean anything? And was that the intent, not just to make feel good music, but to make kind of elevated feel good music when you were making it? What are those kind of ideas? How do those ideas animate what you were trying to do?

Well, it's music that touches the soul and the body and the mind, you know, and so it's music.

We were always it was always our plan, our hopes and dreams that the music would make people feel really good.