Interview: Don Was

Don Was


Interviewer:	Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow

Afropop Worldwide speaks with musical chameleon and Detroit rocker Don Was. Formerly of the band WAS NOT WAS, Don is now one of the music industries most wanted record producers and musician for such acts as: Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Jackson Browne, and Bonnie Raitt. Recently, Don Was has collaborated and tours with rai superstar Khaled on the US release Ya Rayi. Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow brings you this thrilling conversation with the man who’s walked with the dinosaurs.

BE: What we’re gonna do are three questions. One is just a little bit of very selective background about you that would sub for how you got with Khaled. And then, in brief, your story with Khaled. And then just a little bit about what you’re actually doing with this record. The way I do the first question is, I mean you have an illustrious career that we know some of and I’m sure we could sit here and talk for hours as we did with Khaled yesterday, but what do we need to know about your background before you met Khaled that would explain why you were open to that experience and what set you up for that and the way you think of your life and your career?

DW: I grew up in Detroit in the mid-60’s, which was a really vibrant place in a really vibrant time. And part of the culture there, the culture was a total mish mash. It was people coming from all over the country to work on the assembly line. The next step up from Chicago on the road from the cotton fields in the South. So you had a great black culture, a crazy white culture. Everyone would sort of mesh in there.

And a large part of what went on there was an attempt to constantly break down barriers, to create something new. I met the musician Leon Russell a couple years ago, and I asked him what the difference was between making records in the 60’s and making records now. And he said that in the 60’s, if you handed in your record and someone said “Oh, this is great it sounds like…whatever,” those were fightin’ words. Those were grounds to knock a guy out because there was no greater insult you could lay on somebody than to say their music sounded like something else. Now, if you hand in a record and it’s a cross between Incubus and Jessica Simpson, you’re in trouble because people don’t know how to market it. But in the 60’s the idea was to stretch all the boundaries.

I remember going downtown [in Detroit] where there was a poet [and] cultural leader named Jon Sinclair in Detroit who had Pharaoh Saunders jamming with members of the MC5 on acid one night. And it was a rich culture. George Clinton played at my high school. Biggie and The Stooges played at my high school. All these guys were doing something that no one had ever done before. So that’s the aesthetic that I come from. My band, Was Not Was, is kind of an amalgamation of all those disparate elements, and we’re always looking to break down the barriers. Somewhere, early on in our touring, we got over to Europe and people laid Khaled’s records on me. These are the ones that he made, I believe, back in where he played everything on them and they were very handmade, but he was working with electronic instruments. So it was very traditional sounding, I couldn’t understand a word of what he was singing; it was unbelievably soulful, and this weird hybrid of traditional stuff and these electronic instruments. And I just played him to death. I thought they were the greatest records I’d ever heard. And not understanding the language, it’s a blank palette. You fill in whatever you want it to be. And his voice is so evocative, that it’s a projection of whatever mood you’re in. You can find something in there to…it’s really like listening to Coltrane. In fact, I still regard him like a saxophone, in a way, because I don’t understand exactly what he’s saying, I don’t understand the nuances of the language. I don’t understand the language, period! So, jump ahead about four or five years. We have the same publisher in and we’re out to dinner with him, and they suggest, “How would you like to work with Khaled?,” which I was thrilled to do. And then they explained their dilemma. At the time, there was a law in that only allowed for two hours of Arabic language programming a week on state licensed stations. A new low in racism in broadcasting, right? And I just thought that the quarter tones and singing in his language are what make him so great. So we set out just to make a cool record. You know, he came to Los Angeles, brought a few of his guys, his keyboard player and percussionist from , and so it had traditional roots, but we had an R&B foundation on the thing. It was a record called DiDi. And this record became a number one record and they had to repeal the law in in order to justify playing it because it was so highly requested. And that, to me, was a revolutionary thing. That was what attracted me to Rock ‘n’ Roll. You know, it’s hard to get that going here. Rock ‘n’ Roll in this country is more to do with getting a Nike endorsement than politics. And I don’t mean government politics. I’m talking about the kind of politics where Gene Vincent refused to go on American Bandstand because Dick Clark made him wear a tie and he wouldn’t do it. Personal politics, where the music stands for some kind of rebellion that, with that aesthetic, becomes a platform for how you’re going to live your life and how you’re not gonna let a system hold you down. And we beat the system. I can’t think of anything I’m more proud of then being part of DiDi, you know.

BE: That’s great, that’s fantastic. So that was DiDi. That was ’92?

DW: I believe it was earlier than that, but I’m not sure.

SB: Historically, had he just come from a big concert [performing] at Central Park SummerStage, because we recorded him at Central Park SummerStage.

BE: It was around that same time, yeah. That concert is written about in this academic book… And that concert was very controversial in Algeria, actually, because it was put on by the French and they were presenting him as a French artist. And you know that’s how they got around…”He’s French, he’s one of us now.” And so then you also worked on SiSi…

DW: Yeah, and “Sa-rah,” yeah this is the fourth record on which I’ve been a participant.

BE: What’s it like working with Khaled in the studio. Just give a snapshot of the process or the spirit of the thing.

DW: Well, one thing to understand is that I don’t speak Arabic or French. And his English is dramatically improved, but I’ve never had a real conversation with him! Yet, I consider him to be truly one of my closest friends. They set us up with an interpreter on the first record who came in and was someone who didn’t understand recording and it was creating more problems than anything. And we sent the interpreter home the first day and we found we could get by with a smile and a few words [mumbles, stutters some English/French]. Just like that, we were able to make records, and we communicate very well. And a lot of it, you know, it’s eyes. Look at his face, man, he’s such an expressive cat. That transcends language, and I don’t know why it works, and I don’t want to think about it that much [laughs]. The odd thing is that you get really close to someone when you make records over a period of time like that, and I’ve never spoken really directly to him about anything in depth. Although, through interpreters, but you never know how that’s getting filtered.

BE: That’s fascinating. It’s very interesting; you think about those records that you first heard. I mean, the production on those things is very basic. And then he did that record, I think, probably just before you started working on Kuchi with Martin Messenye, and that was a pretty…

DW: …sophisticated record, yeah.

BE: Very hot record, actually. But, so he was already clearly going in the direction of making music that was more of an international standard. What have you seen in his evolution that might be interesting in terms of where he was then when you first met him and where he is now? What has changed?

DW: I don’t know! Nothing’s really changed to me. Khaled never said no to anything in the studio. He was open to any experimental road we wanted to walk down. He was ready to sprint down the road. He was not only open to everything, but dug the collision and the results of the collision. And I don’t see that changing. He was never seduced by Pop, or anything. He never favored gloss over substance or favored successful formula over experimentation. He’s just been as open as can be, and we’ve tried to throw different things to him from this end, and he’s tried to throw different stuff to us. He reminds me of Miles Davis, really. Miles Davis changed the face of jazz about three times, like dramatic changes. There are probably more nuanced things; you can run the number up. But three significant changes. And yet, if you listen to Kind Of Blue, and Bitches’ Brew, and something at the end of his life, his playing didn’t change. He held pretty firmly to the principles that he picked up playing with Charlie Parker and those guys. What he did was he changed the atmospheres, the environment, he redecorated the rooms he was playing in. And he always had new people, and young people, and new ideas, and new rhythms, but he blew basically the same philosophical trumpet all the time. And Khaled is basically the same way. Don’t start messing with the percussion, don’t turn the traditional beats around. There are some things that are sacred. And he’s willing to go 180 degrees on the textures, but the beats have to be right, the traditional Arabic beats. And, you know, the scales and that kind of thing. So he’s always been that guy. I don’t expect that to end. I don’t think he’s pushed the threshold all the way yet, but I don’t expect him to change dramatically, either. And that’s the beauty of him. He’s got complete integrity.

BE: Yeah, that’s wonderful. That’s a great statement. Talking about this particular record, were you in on some of these songs from the beginning. I don’t know the actual history of these. Or are you coming in right now and doing some reworking. What’s your role?

DW: I worked on one song for this record, which was “Ya Rayi.” And, you gotta understand, maybe it’s evident in the records, the clash of cultures. And they clash at such an intense speed that metal melts and it merges together. So we were just making music, always, and someone with Khaled’s entourage pointed out that DiDi changed the vocabulary of rayi music. And I never thought of it in those terms. And whatever magazines are published, maybe your magazine, I don’t know. But whatever comes out of that world is not in my language, so I have no idea how those records are regarded. So when someone said that, I thought, “Wow, we got a bit of a responsibility here. We can’t be lazy. We’ve gotta not fall back on anything we did before.” And “Ya Rayi” is, to me, a pretty radical record, that track. There are some weird textures goin' on in there. And it’s really an Impressionistic record. And I think, I can’t say it was conscious at the time…we were up for two days and we put a bunch of parts on a song. But when I step back and look at it, I can see it as a rayi version of pet sounds or something, it’s very Brian Wilson-like to me in the way the musical imagery is so graphic. You can hear him getting sucked up in a tornado at one point, Khaled. It’s a really visual track. To me, that’s what distinguishes it. It’s the first time that I think that we acknowledged a responsibility. Let’s make sure we don’t get lazy, let’s raise the bar again.

BE: That’s great. That’s very interesting, you know. I have to say, that struck me immediately on hearing that track, just what you’re saying. That graphic, visual quality. I mean that guitar chord comes in over here, and right in the beginning it’s visual. It’s a fabulous track, it’s really great.

DW: Thank you, man. It was a very weird record to make because, for whatever reason, he was not allowed in the country. I think you can probably…I blocked out that name of the guy from Homeland Security [laughs], whoever that bastard is. And Khaled couldn’t get in. And fortunately, the technology—I don’t mean to give corporate endorsements here—but the Eyesight Camera on the Macintosh…he was in Paris in a studio and we hooked up these two cameras on laptops and I could see him and hear him and he could see me and hear what was going on in the room. And we stayed on there for eight hours a day. And it was like having him at the session, it was the weirdest thing. He’d sing or he’d play an organ part, and I’d watch him do it and make comments on it, and vice versa on our over-dubs. And when someone on either side of the ocean did a track we liked, you just drag it over to the icon, and you have it, and you put it on ProTools in a minute, and it was staggering, man. And, you know, it doesn’t cost anything either. You just couldn’t have done it two years ago. But it dramatically changed the way we could make that record. But he was there! It was close, but not quite the thing. And I think that that disassociation works for the record. It’s a weird record to me. It’s got a very strange vibe to it. And I think part of it is…dissociation, that’s the word I’m looking for. I’ve never made a record like that.

BE: He told that story also in the interview yesterday, and for him that was just an utterly miraculous experience I mean you can imagine. As much as it is for you who live with so much technology, for him it was just mind-blowing.

DW: But what happened is, they were nine hours ahead. So we worked pretty much around the clock on that record! There was a point where he’d go out, and one day he went out and he heard Sean Paul in a club, this record that worked on “Ya Rayi.” And we stayed up all night working on some stuff and ready to play him, and when he came in the next day he downloaded the record to us, and said, “This is the groove,” but it was a completely different thing. He must have been singing “Ya Rayi” to it in the club, so there’s a little bit of that in there. And it would change over the four-day thing, because our hours were so different, that someone would go away and pick up some new influence and show up all tired and say, “Let’s change the drumbeat to this.” It’s a weird set of components, but I really dig that track.

Now, he’s [Khaled] gonna sing it tomorrow, too bad you won’t be here [in the US] tomorrow night. Because maybe that disconnect, maybe we’re gonna miss that. I don’t know. We’re gonna try to sing it in the same room. I suspect it’ll take on some life. I think it’s gonna be great, I think we’ll improve the record a whole lot, actually. But ask me tomorrow!

BE: We’ll be listening.

DW: He got up and sang at “Bersea” one time when we were playing in Paris. Which was a weird experience for him because he had a big hit record at the time, but Dire Straits was drawing a very white audience, and he was not received all that friendly. It was really bizarre, man. This is years ago, 13 years ago. We were opening for Dire Straits and he came in. They didn’t get it, you know.

BE: Was there something you wanted to add, or just talk about the tour [with Khaled] for a second.

DW: Good. So we had this idea that the number of artists I’ve worked with who all have their own huge following in a very specific group of people—Khaled, Ziggy Marley, this guy named Saul Hernandez who is the lead singer of a Mexican group called Jaguarez which is huge, has a couple number one singles and fills stadiums in Mexico and does very well here in the United States, and then there’s my own band Was Not Was, which has its own little Soul following. So our singer, Sweetpea Atkinson, and I thought it’s kinda like the Four Tenors, you know, so a plan for later this year is to play some live dates with just Was Not Was as the backup band with each of the four singers doing what they do but kind of tying it together and playing for everybody else’s audience and showing the common threads between what would be seemingly disparate kinds of music and all the metaphorical chasms that accompany it. It should be pretty exciting.

BE: Look forward to that.

SB: You were the one who invited people into this project to perform together, right? Putting pieces together… Or a lot of people working on it?

DW: It’s just starting to take form.

SB: As you imagine this thing, you’re all collaborating together. What Ziggy’s gonna bring, what Khaled’s gonna bring, and so on, and kind of how you see these elements sparking, as if there were a string section, or some kind of energy section, anyway, just be poetic about it [laughs].

DW: Well, I hear what you’re saying. I think that as opposed to looking at it as a stew with Jambalaya with really goofy things thrown together, I think what’ll happen is that despite the ephemeral differences, you basically have four Soul singers, and I believe the differences are going to become trivialized and flow really well. Some of these guys have played on all the records, so there’s not that much mystery to it. They’re just four great singers and great writers, people with a really strong point of view. The points of view, all of which are very similar, but just expressed in different languages. I expect it to be seamless, actually. If you’re looking for some wacky chemistry, I expect it to flow.

SB: That’s beautiful. The cooking imagery is what I was grasping, but you get what I was meaning. Good music is good music, and great singers are great singers. Thanks so much for being part of this.

DW: Thank you guys!