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A Conversation with Richie Havens (continued)
RH: And then I went out there. Of course, they were just happy to hear anything from the stage, which was great.
PM: What did you start with that day?
RH: God, probably "Strawberry Fields."
PM: "Strawberry Fields," right. And it went over big time right from the top?
RH: Oh, yeah, they were crazy when I walked out there. And I started singing, and basically, it evolved. Because I went off seven times, and seven times they told me to go back, because nobody else was there to go on.
PM: You must have been ready to kick the promoter's ass.
RH: Man, it was wild. Each time I walked off they said, "Richie, Richie, three more. Just three more songs. They're on their way." I went out there--that's how "Freedom" was done. I didn't know what the hell to sing anymore. I sang every song I knew, every song.
PM: And you were done, and they just said, "Keep going."?
RH: Two hours and forty-five minutes.
PM: [laughs]
RH: I said, "I don't have another song."
PM: [laughing] Great!
RH: "I'm not gonna sing doo-wop, either." So that's why there's a long intro on "Freedom," I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to sing. Finally, the word freedom came out, because I was thinking, "This is the freedom that we've been looking for for 20 years, from teenagehood until now, and this is the freedom. This is it.” So I started singing freedom--the word freedom--and then "Motherless Child" popped out. I hadn't sung that in ten years.
PM: Damn.
RH: And then just a little of the other piece, with the mother and father thing. It was another bit that I used to do with this band when I was fifteen.
PM: You're just channeling, at that point...
RH: It channeled right out, man, I'm telling you. And I'll tell you another thing, I had to wait until the damn movie came out before I knew what the hell I actually did. [laughter] That's what made it, to wait a whole year later. I didn't sing it for all of that time. I didn't sing it again after that day. But a year later, I had to sing it. It's been thirty years, I've been playing that song every time. I only tried once not to. [laughs]
PM: And they wouldn't let you.
RH: No, they didn't, because they cornered me in the parking lot after the show, and said, "You didn't sing it!"--about 300 people. I said, "Okay." I pulled out my guitar, and I sang it there, too.
PM: Oh, boy.
RH: [laughs] It's crazy. It's crazy. I went, "Hmm, I'll never do that again."
PM: Yeah. It's like Tony Bennett trying to get out of the club without singing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."
RH: Exactly. They get crazy. But as far as I'm concerned, I feel that it doesn't belong to me anyway. It belongs to everything that made it come out.
PM: So I know you're part of some new record with Groove Armada.
RH: They sent me an email asking me if I would write some songs to their music. And I had never heard them, actually.
PM: Yeah, I've never heard them, either.
RH: Oh, they're great.
PM: They're a dance club phenomenon, right?
RH: Yeah. They're really great, because they're a real band, not just the electronica stuff. They have that in it, but it's also two guitars and a percussionist. And a guy who plays keyboards also plays trombone and guitar and bass. And they're just incredibly magic.
PM: And they're English cats, right?
RH: Uh-huh. And they went the opposite direction. All the electronics got faster and faster, and they went down to the bottom end, they went to the groove end.
PM: Ahh, the whole drum and bass thing.
RH: The Groove Armada, yeah, so it's like they went to that side. So they sent me this music, and I thought, God, it's really good music. I got to work on it--although I don't do that often.
PM: Yeah.
RH: But I know when I get something I hear, I'm going to find something for sure, it's going to come to me, what it is. So I wrote two songs, and then they said, "Well, now you've got to come record them."
[laughter]
RH: Okay. So I went over there and I recorded the songs. And interestingly enough, those were the two songs that the radio played all over Europe.
PM: Unbelievable.
RH: So I'm saying to myself, "I'm going to get known finally all over the world for dance music."
[laughter]
PM: The shit that happens.
RH: After all of this time. It was an entirely different audience. They did a tour right after that record came out, and they ended it in London. And I was over there playing, and so I got to go sing those songs with them at a place in London. There were 30,000 kids--
PM: Damn!
RH: --jumping up and down. Okay, straight up and down.
[laughter]
PM: And you also recorded "Going Back to My Roots" with them?
RH: Yeah. They loved that song. And they were saying, "Man, can we do this song again?" Now, in all of the years that I've been doing this, this is the one song that, in my mind, I had said at the time, "I want to do a song that will get on the radio. And if you feel like dancing to it, go on, because it'll be some music you could dance to, but the lyrics will be there when you stop dancing."
[laughter] continue
