Andrew Hale of Sade in conversation with Patrice Rushen for Test Pressing magazine.

The following interview was originally posted on UK-based music magazine Test Pressing and is published here as part of an ongoing collaborative series between Test Pressing and In Sheep’s Clothing. This series stems from a shared dedication to both archival and contemporary sounds, and seeks to bridge the worlds of In Sheep’s Clothing’s vinyl & analog culture with Test Pressing’s UK-rooted music, design, and art. Stay tuned for more! 

Explore the world of Test Pressing: http://testpressing.org/

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Andrew Hale as I guess many of you know is a member of the band Sade. Patrice Rushen is, as many of you also know, a Grammy-winning recording artist who moved from recording with the legendary violinist Jean Luc-Ponty to signing to Elektra Records and developing her hugely successful solo career. We encourage you to head to Discogs to get lost in her world of music. It’s pretty immense.

Both Andrew and Patrice have made (in my humble opinion) some of the finest music recorded to date so it was a real pleasure to sit in on a conversation between two musicians who have that common understanding of how “it” feels. “It” being the playing and support of being around other musicians and creating a joyful sound together. I really enjoyed some of the points made by both, especially on education and community, and hope you do the same.

Patrice Rushen: Here we go 321…

Andrew Hale: We are live… Hey Patrice. Thanks for doing this. So where do we begin… I saw you talking about Reggie Andrews as a key influence on your development as an artist…

Patrice Rushen: Well, Reggie Andrews was my high school teacher, that’s when we met. And it was his first year of being a professional educator and teacher. So he came with a lot of new ideas. And he was allowed by the other two music teachers in this high school to try some things. And one of the things that he really wanted to do was to continue to expose the young people to a lot more variety in the music.

I went to an all black high school, it was post late ’69… Social unrest and riots. And there was a big, big movement to try to give kids a certain sense of pride and self respect, and to learn certain things. Learn by doing you know… So we obviously had at that time, music in the public schools, but we would not only go to hear hear the LA Philharmonic on a field trip, we would go to jazz clubs, because Reggie’s idea also was to educate us on the history of American music. And that consciousness, I think, allowed for us to see music and musicians in various lights.

So you had your jazz musicians who were experimenting and on right on the edge of of what they were doing with spontaneous, spontaneous composition. You had musicians who worked in film and television who were people that were anonymous to most people. But these people made large salaries and were among the elite in their versatility as musicians and worked all the time. You had music teachers, you had music producers, you had arrangers, you had orchestrators, you had all of these different facets…

So from a musical standpoint, this was really great for me. And then you had the bands. One day, some of Reggie’s friends needed a place to rehearse, and he told them after hours to come to our high school, as we had a multi-purpose room, and they could use it for rehearsal.

And he had some of us stay behind to help them bring their stuff in from the car and put it up on the stage. And that band was Earth, Wind and Fire. So you know, to be able to see that kind of thing. I grew up living across the street from Etta James. And on Saturdays, sometimes she would throw up in her garage and have rehearsals for the gigs that she was getting ready to do. And you got to see these as real people who were just trying to get it together. And then lo and behold, they exploded at some point, and became these great figures and iconic figures, but the time that was spent and the ability and the good fortune to be able to see it in progression. And even though I didn’t realise what I was looking at, those moments stayed with me. And they informed a lot about the dedication to the work that still informs me today.

Andrew Hale: So Patrice, within those two pillars of improvisation and composition, it seems like you’re just very versatile. You were working with both of those at a really young age. Were you consciously trying to work and develop those two things at the same time? Had you set out to be a musician in that form?

Patrice Rushen: Actually, I wanted to be a composer because I always had television or the radio on. We came up with TV. So those television shows and all of those different kinds of theme tunes. And the variety shows that were on the air and the dance shows that were on the air. These were things that influenced me and I really wanted to do that music that was in the television. I wanted to write like that, because it was all over the place. And I loved these different styles. And again, at the time, I did not know how important I would be served by all of the various activities that that, you know, learned about or learned how to do. I learned to play the piano via classical music. Because that’s what we did. And I was listening to Stevie Wonder. I was listening to James Brown. I was listening to The Beatles, I was listening to The Rolling Stones. But I did have an appreciation also for Bach and Beethoven. And Brahms. And I was exposed to that, through learning the piano. That was my exposure to that music and the broadening of, of my taste, I think. Although there was you know, there’s always Marvin Gaye and all these other people. And I’d go to my piano lesson and I was supposed to be playing this, you know, Mozart piece or something like that. And I hadn’t really, really practiced and my teacher would say, so what did you do this week? And I said, Well, I learned this Beatles one. Would you like to hear it? And instead of admonishing me, she would say ‘yeah’.

Andrew Hale: So I had the opposite. I think at the time I was learning, ‘The Sting’ came out and everyone was playing Scott Joplin. And that was my introduction to jazz in many ways. My music teacher would just not have it. She was like, ‘if you don’t want to study classical music, you shouldn’t be coming here’.

Patrice Rushen: I think that made all the difference to me. Having teachers who could connect the dots. It’s not the style of the music, it was the ability to be able to play whatever it was well, and the great resources that they had to be able to connect the dots between the music’s genres not as one above the other, but along with and the things that they had in common. You want to be able to execute better that little run in ‘Heard It Through The Grapevine’?. How about this one right here? And this Mozart right here… Let’s get that and then you’ll understand the mechanism that’s involved. And let me show you that. So I had teachers like that. And I know that that was a rarity, particularly at that time, but it taught me a lot about teaching. Communicative concept is what actually allowed me to stay with the music and develop an appreciation for the nuance in styles because of the commonality of the music having to move people.

Andrew Hale: When did you first visit the studio?

Patrice Rushen: Um, I guess I was in my late teens. There was a huge studio scene here in Los Angeles. And so I would go to session sometimes just to watch. I think the idea of observing what happens in the studio, and what it’s all about, gave me a certain reverence for that space, and the importance of that space. And then, as I said, I wanted to be a film composer. So being able to be in the studio to see ‘well, what do people do here?’ How does this stuff get recorded? What’s going on? You know, so I was able to see some of that stuff first hand. And I didn’t forget it. I didn’t forget what it looked like, and the musicianship and the stuff that could happen when it worked well. I saw a few sessions, that didn’t work so well. And I was able to take away from that, you know, maybe why, or why not. But I had a lot of respect for that process. And I still enjoy working in the studio. There’s a certain balance between precision and spontaneity that has to coexist side by side. And it’s an amazing feeling.

“It was about the joy in the music and the music making, and they would have done it for nothing. Because it’s who they are. And it is their truth. And that is how they resonate. They’ve chosen that life.”

Patrice Rushen

Andrew Hale: Yes, you’ve worked through periods of jazz-style recording where everything was done on the day, in four hours or whatever. And then through to the 80s where you’re spending four weeks on the kick drum and stuff. You’ve kind of seen that whole progression.

I know it’s such a cliche and an obvious thing to say, but there’s so many younger musicians now who, probably listening to your music, forget that that was created by a bunch of musicians together in the studio in real time and that’s easily forgotten…

Patrice Rushen: I think these days making music is very accessible. Everybody has an opportunity to be able to go buy something and punch a button or press a key. Anybody can and doesn’t mean that anybody should, but everybody can do that. And that kind of access, of course, it’s a double edged sword. It also gives more access to music to people, but also, it means there is so much more music out there. Sometimes it has made the the ability for the audiences to really understand what’s really well done and what has a certain degree of mastery behind it in terms of knowledge, or the marriage of knowledge and talent, versus what somebody might get lucky doing or where the marketing begins to decide for you.

Andrew Hale: That is a question I can ask myself and I can never quite work out the answer. I mean, obviously genres changed through time and particularly now r&b, I mean, hip hop and rap is kind of the prevalent pop music form for certain in America right now. And it’s interesting why there aren’t those great bands like the Earth, Wind & Fires… I wonder if that way of being together as a group and making music that way has gone for now and why… I ask myself that question and I can’t answer it…

Patrice Rushen: I don’t really know… Maybe it’s a combination of things? I tend to think that it has a lot to do with the fact that we don’t have music in the schools as a regular part of everybody’s public school education. Kids don’t come in to play. So they don’t necessarily have the association with the idea of making music with other people. Because when you’re in a band, you got to bring something to the table. You can’t exactly just show up, you got to be able to do something. And if you’d never picked up an instrument or never got a chance to play saxophone, or even tuba in the marching band, or snare drum on the drum line, or flute, or whatever it is that you played in high school, you don’t necessarily have that association with music making and the instrument and what happens with that. So I think that that has a lot to do with why you don’t see as many bands anymore, because there’s the cultivation of that part of the culture of playing with people starts really early. And we don’t have that in regular schools anymore.

Andrew Hale: What is happening in London is that there’s a very healthy young jazz community, which has really been developing in the last 10 years. So there’s a lot of interesting stuff around that. It feels like hopefully we are moving into an age where musicians have that pride in their ability as a musician.

Patrice Rushen: Well, that’s really cool to hear.

Andrew Hale: Yeah, it feels like thats what’s really coming back now…

Patrice Rushen: I think the idea of being able to see beyond just the thing that you do and how it connects to another artist or connects to another person who has an artistic or creative attitude about what they do, whether it’s business related, or, you know, playing an instrument, all of that factors in to your success, and your longevity. So, I think it’s always been like that, but I think now it’s even more obvious because you don’t have record companies in the same way cultivating that or connecting those dots for you.

Andrew Hale: Yes. The sense of allowing people to develop a career, which I think record companies did at least used to do. Marvin Gaye didn’t make ‘What’s Going On’ the minute he walked into the studio. And a lot of people are signed now on the basis that maybe they have a year to prove what they can do and if not sadly it’s ‘Thank You’.

Patrice Rushen: The recordings were kind of a documentation of the promise that the artists who were signed, were worth watching, and worth developing and worth working with. There was something there that was going to emerge even beyond what you saw right at that moment. And that moment was a result of something.

There was a time when I’d ask kids why they want to make music and I heard a lot of people reply, ‘because I want to be famous’. And I would have to remind them… I said, ‘Well, that’s cool’. I’m not knocking fame. I get it. But fame is a result of something. That’s not why you do something. So what are you gonna do? You know, and then it gets back to then having to, you know, recalibrate where you’re coming from. The thing that all the people I came up with have in common and had the good fortune to be around and work with… All of them. It was about the joy in the music and the music making, and they would have done it for nothing. Because it’s who they are. And it is their truth. And that is how they resonate. They’ve chosen that life.

Andrew Hale: I know exactly what you mean…

“There’s a history and a lineage of artists that you want to be aware of, so that you’re standing on their shoulders, as building blocks, for the kind of music that you’re going to create.”

Patrice Rushen

Patrice Rushen: It’s about the feeling first… What are you trying to make it feel like? What purpose does it have for you in this moment? And then you go to that. And that was because I think that was my orientation first, you know, how does it make you feel? So my approach, I guess, was more from the inside out, rather than outside in.

Andrew Hale: Yeah, that makes sense. I think, you know, in our band we’ve just been together for so long that we kind of second guess each other’s playing, and we are, we are very much a less is more kind of band. That’s our approach to the music. So we actually spend a lot of time taking things off. And Sade is the best judge of that… She’s quite minimal in her in her approach. Because the minute the music feels cluttered or it feels overblown or needless, you sort of suddenly realise, and then you can strip it back again.

Patrice Rushen: And every tune doesn’t demand everything on it. Some you need that air. So that is especially if it’s really groovin’ or something like that. People have to have a moment to react. And if it’s all crowded with too much stuff, sometimes it doesn’t necessarily get there, you know. And even when you use a lot of instruments, the placement… How does it fit? With everything? You just don’t put horns on it to just have them? Do you need them? And if you do, what are they? What? What the is that colour adding?

So that was always something for me that I learnt from the respect for great orchestrating and great arranging is that the silence is already perfect. So if you’re going to punctuate it with something, make wise choices.

Andrew Hale: Then going going into your electronic period where you worked more on your own… You’re still early in your career at that point. Was that daunting? Or exciting?

Patrice Rushen: Well, for me, it was very exciting, because I got to do a lot of different things, you know, but for the record company, it was a headache, because, you know, ‘where do we market it? Some people will still see you as a jazz artist… So what are you? You need to make up your mind.’

That I saw that as an asset, and they saw it as a liability. So there was a clash, you know, as far as that was concerned. So I just focused on the assignment at hand. If I was in a situation where the assignment was a session with someone, or they needed a particular kind of thing, or wanted me to play a solo or improvise a solo, okay, then I’m there 100%, for that. And the electronic years were about being able to take the jazz sensibilities that I had, and the commercial sensibilities that I had, and find a voice that allowed for those two things to coexist. That was the assignment. And so I did that there. And that’s how some of that stuff came about.

I got to do a lot of different things, try a lot of different things do them the way that I wanted to. I think that’s why those records still stand the test of time because we were being our true selves, and becoming experts at that. And that’s what I think those records gradually began to reflect.

Andrew Hale: Absolutely, I think it’s a great credit to you how you did those two things together that, you know, in a way that was never done before. There was jazz, and then there was dance music… And it was that intelligence that was coming through everything, but at the same time, these hooks that were just like, ‘oh my god’. I remember a lot of music around that time. There were a lot of jazz artists who were like, ‘You need to make a disco record. You need to make a funk record’. And so there were some of those things that just felt like they kind of just stuck them together and they didn’t quite gel. But I think your records sound natural and organic to me. They’re like they’re asking something of the listener…

Patrice Rushen: It was about being allowed to find that, that place in that space, because it wasn’t a foreign territory. Neither one of those things. It wasn’t about those boundaries. In that way. It was about just creating good feeling music, and being the best that you could be, based upon what you want people to get from it. Pure and simple. That was it.

“It was about just creating good feeling music, and being the best that you could be, based upon what you want people to get from it. Pure and simple. That was it.”

Patrice Rushen

Andrew Hale: Oh, thank you for that. You came into contact with Prince. How did that come about?

Patrice Rushen: An engineer that I used on one of my records told me, ‘I need you to meet this this guy that I’m gonna be working with. You guys have so much in common. His name is Prince.’ And he got him on the phone. And we talked and Prince already knew of my work. First couple albums or whatever from Elektra. Those were the ones that he knew about. And then he discovered the older ones. He said, ‘Yes, maybe we can meet some time’. And then he asked me about how did you do the Clavinet on whatever song it was? And I’m like, ‘Oh, wow, he’s deep. He’s paying attention’.

So he would call me periodically, and we would talk. And then he said, ‘Would you write the string arrangement on my first album, I’m doing this. I’m doing a song called ‘Baby’. So would you mind? Can I can I send you some suggestions in terms of the parts that I want it? Could you just orchestrate them for me and do it for the record?’ So I said, ‘Sure, no problem’. So I did that. And then we continued to be friendly and talk and and then we wound up taping a show called American Bandstand. That was a big show here with Dick Clark. And it was a big, big major dance show that was on for years and years. And we were taped, we weren’t on the same show, but we taped the same day. So there we were at the same time. And that gave us some time to talk even more. And this is about the time that you know, these first couple albums were coming out and I said, ‘Oh, man, he’s he’s got some things going on’. I was listening. And I was like, ‘okay, I hear the influences. I hear all the stuff that points to this is really going to be somebody special in the music world’.

And we didn’t see each other very often though would periodically talk on the phone. I found him always to be really vulnerable. I remember when ‘Purple Rain’ was about to come out, he was really, really concerned about that. He said, ‘I may have gone too far on this one’. And I said, ‘Did you do your best?’ He said, ‘Yeah’. I said, ‘Do you believe in what you did?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Well, then let it go. You can’t call it back, let it go’. And of course it exploded.

I would go and see the shows, but I would rarely go backstage because that was really an opportunity for me to watch what does it look like when somebody has to be on all the time. And that side I want to kind of observe because that had not been my experience. My experience was I was always myself. I didn’t ever feel like I had to be on for people or to be in a certain character for people, because my music, I don’t know… I just felt comfortable with that being the character for me. But I get it. I understand the purple limousine and bodyguard that carries you in and all of that and I don’t want to intrude on you on your on your vibe. So I would just see it from afar and keep on moving.

We met another time when I was Music Director on the Grammys and he’s the elder statesman now and he and Beyonce are going to open the show. I walked into the rehearsal as my job as music director was to find out what was going on and everything and they were doing was great. They were rehearsing. Her work ethic is very high and they did a great job putting this thing together. The director of the show, the producer, walked into the room. And up to this point, the Music Director on the Grammys had become sort of a necessary inconvenience for this particular producer. He didn’t really need a Music Director in the show because he was gonna tell everybody what to do. And Prince looked at him and says, ‘So you finally got a real music director to do this show’. And I’m like, ‘Thank you, brother. Thank you’.

My point is this… As artists, we depend on each other. It’s about protecting, especially if you respect someone. And while again, our paths didn’t cross all the time, when they did, they were always meaningful. And I will always treasure the conversations that we had, from the very beginning, until the last time I was able to speak to him, because our conversations were typically based on mutual respect of the music.

Andrew Hale: It’s true. That feeling and reaction when you finish a record and it’s just about to come out? The vulnerability there. So how do you let that go? And yes how do you deal in those situations when there are ten people in the room with differing opinions, and you’ve got to navigate that. And for me the only way to do that is really through the connection of the music.

Patrice Rushen: Exactly. And you protect fellow musicians and people you respect at all costs because that’s that’s the common denominator that you have no matter if you’re a big, big, big superstar or if you’re the up and coming person. The connection is really about the music and the desire to to want to do that.

Andrew Hale: We have a program here that Jools Holland has done for years and years and years called ‘Later’. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that… All the bands come into one room… There could be a first an act who’s just been signed with an acoustic guitar or there could be you know, The Rolling Stones. It doesn’t matter. They’re all there in the studio and the camera just goes from one to the other. And it’s a kind of given that if you kind of act up you’re just gonna have 30 other musicians looking at you going ‘What are you doing?’. And it’s kind of amazing how that democratises that sense of you know, no one is getting the higher billing than anyone else and it’s I think it’s why that program has had such longevity and musicians love to do it, because they feel safe. Rarely as a musician do you feel that kind of protection that you spoke about. How do you put this across to the sound people you speak to?

Patrice Rushen: Well, so know there are young people who look to us. And want to know how we did and what we did. And while they might not do exactly what we did because times are different, what they are getting, is something that, I’m sure you can vouch for this, there has always been sort of unofficially among musicians, a certain sense of community. That community idea being institutionalised now. And the idea of community replacing the old tradition of competition allows for there to be this kind of networking and overlap and intersection that is creating a different attitude about presentation of a show about amassing a certain amount of mastery of have something to present, and of bringing your audience along with you for the ride.

“While they might not do exactly what we did because times are different, what they are getting, is something that, I’m sure you can vouch for this, there has always been sort of unofficially among musicians, a certain sense of community.”

Patrice Rushen

Andrew Hale: Yeah, that knowledge is really, really important. How do you now mentor this new generation? And then how do you get that focus part across?

Patrice Rushen: Well, I was allowed to participate in the construction of a program that spoke to a population of students who didn’t necessarily want to check the classical box or the jazz box. You know… Classical music education has been around in higher institutions for 100s of years… Jazz for at least half that time. I was involved in a situation that allowed for me to help create some of those pathways and what we took off the table were the things that didn’t matter. Still got to have, you know, musical and fundamental musical language so that you can converse with other musicians of all types but we took away the things that were such a drag. Like competitiveness. Like not necessarily feeling comfortable “failing” in front of your peers.

When you’re learning something new. You might fall off the bike the first time then you get on the two wheels and you can’t stop after that. You got to say, ‘let me get back on, let me try again’. Because every time you’re allowed to try it again, guided, you learn something that keeps you from falling off the bike the next time. That experiential learning is huge. And to be able to understand that, and help the students realise that is invaluable.

So when we can couch that in such a way and be able to show them the connection, that they are part of a legacy, and they are part of a history, and they are part of a continuum, then they can’t help but then realise that it didn’t all start day before yesterday, it started a long time ago. And there’s a history and a lineage of artists that you want to be aware of, so that you’re standing on their shoulders, as building blocks, for the kind of music that you’re going to create.

And creating that environment has really been a tremendous for me as an artist that definitely has kept me motivated. And now I can see the fruits of that.

Andrew Hale: Thank you so much for the time Patrice. Fantastic to speak to you.

Patrice Rushen: Great to meet you too finally. Take care.