People have no idea how hard it is to make it.

Never mind sustain.

The spin on this film is what an a**hole Maurice White was.

But that’s not what I took, because I know people who are icons are not like the average person, they’re one-minded and dedicated, their dreams are almost too big to share, people will laugh at them, and every single one of them is f*cked up, they’ve got something to prove, they believe that success will solve all their problems, acknowledgement will connect them to people, make up for the heartbreak in their past, but this is untrue. And when most acts realize this, they can never do what made them great ever again, they just can’t get up the motivation.

I missed it.

History is constantly being rewritten by those who weren’t there. By time you hit the mid-seventies, actually a few years before, music was bifurcated, into FM rock and AM Top 40. Of course there was Black radio and country, but the first two were the behemoths. And rarely did they cross paths.

No, an FM track could occasionally cross over to AM, but the reverse was impossible, Top 40 was everything FM stood against. FM was not only the song, but the story of the band, what it all meant, whereas on AM radio it was usually the hit only.

And the big money in touring was hoovered up by the acts on the FM dial. Today pop hits can sell tickets, but not back then. Maybe coming off a few big hits, while you were still hot, you could play arenas, but sans a hit in the marketplace, better to look for dinner theatre, some other way to make bread.

So if you were a dedicated follower of fashion, which in this case meant the same clothes bands wore on the street, you listened to FM rock and nothing else.

Let’s remember, by time we hit the mid-seventies, every car had an FM radio, and probably a tape deck too. In the late sixties, even though FM rock was breaking, most of its fans were still listening to AM in the car, that was all they had. But by the mid-seventies…

Meaning, if it was a hit on the AM, there’s a good chance I never even heard it.

Oh, I was aware of Earth, Wind & Fire, if for no other reason than I saw their records in the bin. And the trade papers featured them, but… Black people in rock was rare, Prince made inroads and left his mark, but to this day, there ain’t a lot of color in rock, which has marginalized the genre.

But back then??

So when “Easy Lover” was a hit on MTV, I didn’t know who Philip Bailey was, I didn’t recognize him alongside Phil Collins.

Oh, I knew what Maurice White looked like, and I could name their hits, I knew the titles, but other than “Shining Star,” I couldn’t sing them because I didn’t know them.

So…

This movie was educational for me, I learned so much!

This doc is not like Questlove’s initial movie, “Summer of Soul.” That film had something to prove, a point to make, whereas here the story stands alone, the band is well-known and what we’ve got is a deep dive.

But not deep enough. I’d argue this could be a series. I want a whole episode on Maurice’s upbringing in Memphis. At this late date most music fans are aware of Nashville and its country roots, but Memphis? Same state, totally different mind-set. Memphis is the south, and even today I wouldn’t say it’s totally integrated. But so much great music came out of the city, and the funny thing is almost all these cats knew each other growing up, at least the Black ones.

Maurice’s mother abandons him at age five and moves to Chicago and starts another family. After high school Maurice moves up north, goes to the conservatory, but then becomes a drummer for Chess, and then goes out on the road with Ramsey Lewis. If you’re a child of the sixties, you know Lewis, if for no other reason than his version of “The In Crowd” was all over the radio. Chess? The English rockers always talked about it, but still…most people are unaware of what was going down there.

So Maurice decides to strike out on his own and moves to Los Angeles… Where there are Black hippies, a whole different lifestyle, I’d like to see an episode on that too!

And forms the original Earth, Wind & Fire, makes albums for Warner Bros. to no significant commercial success, and then…

Fires the band and starts over.

He knows it’s not working, he’s keeping his brother Verdine, the bassist, but nobody else. And they’re PISSED! Because the band members had no warning. They didn’t like how they were treated. They were blind-sided. This is a recurring theme when it comes to Maurice, because he hates confrontation. Most musicians do. They don’t want to piss anybody off, and they let their handlers be the heavies.

So Maurice forms a new band, with the members you know, and rehearses and they go do a show in Philly, where doo-wop groups were the openers, and when the crowd reacts negatively…the band sits on the floor in the lotus position, for minutes!

Oh yeah, Maurice is really touchy-feely. From astrology to Egyptology to wacko food… If you think only white people were into this…

But then the band opens for George Clinton-Parliament/Funkadelic and… Light applause for them, levitation when George hits the stage. They have footage, for those who only know P. Funk as a legend, this will clue you in on what was going on, the magic involved.

So they go back to the drawing board, hire a rhythm guitarist, become funkified…

And the hits begin.

Now there’s a huge focus on the live show, which doesn’t really work in the era of the internet. In the old days you had to go to experience it, there was no YouTube, you’d come home and tell your friends the details and drag them to the next concert, this is how audiences were built, this was the magic of live performance. Oh, we’ve got tons of production today, but the audience expects it and is rarely wowed.

Maurice hires a choreographer, and connects with Doug Henning for magic, and the show is legendary…

But not in my circles.

I actually remember pictures of the band on stage being encased in tubes, that are lifted to reveal them and set them free, but…

So Maurice is driven. Working twelve hours a day. Pushing the envelope, afraid to fall behind.

He brings in the arranger he met at Chess. He even brings in David Foster… The funny thing about Foster is he’ll deliver hits, but it frequently causes dissension in the band, and in some cases breaks up the band. He brought Chicago back to the chart, but the band members didn’t appreciate his efforts and never worked with him again. Foster delivered hits for the Tubes, and then the band broke up, they believed these records were not an accurate representation of who they were.

So Earth, Wind & Fire are superstars, playing arenas and stadiums. But they come back from every tour $500,000 in debt. The band members are being paid $2,500 a week and…

Sans Maurice, there’s no success. He breaks up the band, Philip Bailey returns to Denver, Ralph Johnson sells stereo equipment at Federated. Everybody believed these stars were rich. It was oftentimes a misperception, cash might have come in, but expenses were stratospheric, never mind all the money wasted along the way.

But Maurice can’t make it on his own, so he reforms the band and…

Maurice may be Black, he may be playing R&B, but he’s definitely a rock star. He believes he’s entitled to go on the road and screw other women. He needs to live like a king.

Until Parkinson’s knocks him off the road and ultimately kills him.

So what have we learned?

In my case, a whole hell of a lot more than I knew.

And it’s not like “Behind the Music,” because this film was not done to set up a reunion tour, but to document the history, the travails of Maurice and the band.

And it was Maurice’s band. As Philip Bailey says, every band has a leader. Who is oftentimes resented for his control, his power, but it was Maurice’s vision, and it worked.

So, this film was not done on the cheap. There are animated effects to tell the story when there is no footage, it’s extremely well done. And there was a ton of press when it came out, but now..?

HBO is not like Netflix. HBO MAX’s homepage is littered with all kinds of junk, whereas Netflix has one brand and promotes its best stuff and the algorithm will serve up stuff you might be interested in, that’s up your alley. So if you watched music documentaries in the past…

Now of course Boomers and Gen-X’ers who lived through the arc of Earth, Wind & Fire’s career will be curious, but it’s young-uns who will get the most from this flick. It demonstrates the twists and the turns on the road to success, what it takes.

Even I am watching wondering how this all works financially, with nearly ten people in the band. Today, bands are rare, everybody’s a solo act, you don’t have to share the bread. And when old acts reunite, oftentimes there’s only one or two key players, because they don’t want to share the money.

So if you’re sitting at home, thinking you want to be a musical star…

You’ve got GarageBand and Suno, maybe even Pro Tools, you have easy access to Spotify, et al. You’ve been exposed to TV competition shows. All this makes you believe that there’s a highway, and if you just get on the road, you’ll speed to success.

No way. You’ve got to be a special kind of person, willing to play without a net, risking all the while. You’ve got to supersede the system. You can’t wait for the suits to pick up on you, it only works if you’re one step ahead of the business, delivering that which the usual suspects can’t comprehend.

And you have to be willing to sacrifice so much, relationships… Almost no one is willing to walk the razor’s edge for the years it takes to align you with potential success. Maurice was a professional musician for years before he had a hit.

The bottom line is it’s even harder to be successful today, because the channel is clogged not only with music, but video games and social media and streaming television. And even the music of stars goes unheard by many.

The music business is not for amateurs. If you’re not willing to work hard and put everything on the line…

Hell, if you get an entry level job, know that you’ll be on call 24/7, there’s really no such thing as the weekend. And you’ll need to stay up late and oftentimes get up early. And as hard as the suits are working, the musicians are working that much harder.

This film will keep your attention. It’s not hagiography, it’s the straightforward story. If I was a member of Earth, Wind & Fire would I be pissed at Maurice? Absolutely! But without him, good luck.

This is the way it is.

Maurice won.

But did he really?

Watch the movie and you can decide.

You don’t want to fail in public.

This is why acts are wary of stretching to play larger venues. Nothing puts a stink upon your act like empty seats. Forget the buzz on the outside, the business and the social media scuttlebutt, the attendees are also turned off. What are they doing there if everybody else decided to stay home? Are they no longer hip? Sure, there’s always a hard core that sees its isolation from the rest as a badge of honor, but they don’t stage their events in stadiums.

Now if you were around in 1976…

It was a weird era. There’d been talk about the Bicentennial for years, but in the wake of Watergate everybody was still licking their wounds. The focus ultimately was on light and breezy, fun, no heaviness involved. Ford was now president and people didn’t want any disruption, they were sick of arguing. The war was finally over and it was only a few years before the go-go eighties. The late seventies is when the boomers grew up, looked in the mirror and questioned how they were going to get ahead in the future. It was no longer all for one. There was no common rallying cry. This is when the seeds of the hedonistic eighties were planted, not that we knew it at the time.

But one thing was for sure, everybody still believed in the American Dream, thought if they put their nose to the grindstone they could get ahead, and there was no doubt that America was the greatest country in the world. We were the land of opportunity, we ruled.

July 4, 1976 if not completely flat, certainly was not memorable.

But now it’s fifty years later and…

About twelve months back people stated talking to me about the events they were planning to celebrate the 250th birthday of our nation. Now you’ve got to know that events like this require a lot of heavy lifting, and a ton of money. Good intentions are not enough. And it’s hard to rally people around a generic rallying cry. Look at music festivals… They rarely start with a bang, you need to build them over years, convince the public they’re worth attending, so to plan for one day of events?

At least Trump had the right idea, to have an extended celebration.

But he could not read the room, he had more power than ever before, but despite the ability to quash naysayers, the passion for him and his projects was waning.

Now it’s the little things that get you in the end. The war in Iran? Still incomprehensible to most people. Americans famously lack passports, and many believe that Iran is a third world nation, even though that could not be further from the truth, and all they really want is for gas prices to come down and for inflation to be tamed.

But the algae in the Reflecting Pool…

Did the Reflecting Pool need fixing? Could be, but like with the destruction of the East Wing, we didn’t hear about it until it was happening, and the no-bid contract stuck in the craw of those leaning left, but it was business as usual.

Until the algae bloomed.

First there was the question of the cause.

But we were told the problem would be rectified quickly. And when this turned out not to be the case, it was blamed on bad actors, criminals…and if there’s one person who believes that, they must be related to Trump, or one of the naysayers in Congress.

The thing is when you take action, there’s always a potential for failure. Which is why it’s a fool’s errand to talk about cutting spending, making government smaller. Sure, do your best to control costs, but don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, i.e. fire people and cancel plans. As for the public at large, they like government services, they don’t like to pay taxes, but you can’t have it both ways.

So now you’ve got a green Reflecting Pool with your mad next door neighbor coming out and blaming those pesky neighborhood kids.

What would even be the motivation? And it turns out if you were anywhere near the neighborhood, you were at risk of being arrested. Furthermore, with cameras everywhere, wouldn’t there be footage? And if not, why not?

So then it comes down to the two week celebration of America 250 on the Mall.

Some call it a World’s Fair.

But there’s a reason there hasn’t been a World’s Fair for eons, everything new can be displayed and experienced on the internet, you don’t have to travel to see something, you just have to log on.

As for a raw celebration/party…

I don’t know who came up with this fakakta idea, but it would have been better to get the experts involved. Hand concerts to AEG or Live Nation, which doesn’t seem like much of a stretch since Michael Rapino actually spoke with Trump.

And until you’ve established the gravitas of your festival, attendance is based on headliners. Who are the headliners?

One thing about the Bicentennial, everyone did their best to make it bipartisan. Then again, as much as we were divided, we were united by the resignation of Nixon, we were coming together. Meanwhile, J.D. Vance is now trying to rehabilitate Nixon, talk about rewriting history…

Then there were the musical acts… When they started to cancel, Trump could have done a mea culpa, said it was not a MAGA event, but instead he doubled-down, said he would be the headliner.

So now there was no talent and a great swath of the public was rubbed the wrong way.

As for coming to a carnival for booths and a Ferris wheel… In the modern era a Ferris wheel is not far away, nor are the booths that titillate you for a moment while they take your money.

And if you want to spend, who wants to go to D.C. in the summer? I mean if you really want to endure the heat, you’ll go to Disney World.

This was a foreseeable failure, and there could have been some course correction, but like last week with the housing bill, Trump is stonewalling.

Now in business they tell you not to do this, that it’s about the customer’s mind rather than the company’s. Nordstrom and Costco will take almost anything back, they want to keep a customer. But if you’re hemorrhaging customers… That’s the thing about businesses, they fade very quickly when the public starts to turn on them, especially in the modern world, where word of mouth is on steroids online.

It’s all about soft power. Feelings.

But Trump seemed to miss the memo.

Now whatever you think about Trump, pictures don’t lie. Scratch that, in the AI era, pictures lie all the time. But I’ve yet to see a deepfake showing the Mall crowded with attendees.

And it’s even worse, since so few people are there, there’s no FOMO amongst the rest of the populace.

So Trump is failing in plain sight. It’s not like he can declare bankruptcy and start over. America isn’t a business.

Now never in my lifetime have Americans been so misinformed. The truth is fungible, facts are up for debate. But the failure of the celebration on the National Mall is not. No one can defend it. But expect Trump to come out and blame someone for the failure imminently, like he did with the Reflecting Pool.

The truth is America is experiencing generational change, and neither the Republicans nor the Democrats truly see this, never mind want it or are effectively countering it, or god forbid embracing it.

The younger, digital-savvy generations, are taking over.

Meanwhile, everybody over the age of 50, especially those with a megaphone, can’t stop sh*tting on the internet and social media, digital communications. It’s just like our parents railed against rock music back in the sixties. Utterly laughable if you’re a youngster. You need to disrupt yourself to stay in power, but both parties are calcified.

Much of America is tuning out the D.C. circus.

But when the Reflecting Pool is green and the Mall is empty, only Karoline Leavitt could spin this positively. Everybody else cringes, if they don’t laugh outright. They see an out of touch Administration in an out of touch city. Maybe if they had rappers and influencers, maybe if they met the younger generations halfway…

But no, it’s Lee Greenwood or the equivalent twenty four seven. 

The game is to have plausible deniability.

But there’s no way Trump and his cronies can spin the disaster of the Great American State Fair positively.

And people may feel positive about Coachella, but they have mixed feelings about state fairs anyway.

What a disaster. Which will seep into Trump’s presidency just like algae took over the Reflecting Pool.

1

There was a standing ovation after almost every song.

As previously established, my dentist turned me on to Yes. His nephew made an 8-track tape of the first album for him and we listened to it as the Dodge station wagon which needed a front end alignment trundled down I-91 from Vermont back to Connecticut.

Now if you know that initial LP, there’s an absolute killer version of the the Beatles’ song “Every Little Thing,” which had the misfortune of being on “Beatles VI” in the USA, a hodgepodge collection with a lame photo on the cover, but in the U.K. it was ensconced towards the end of “Beatles for Sale,” the band’s CD I’ve played the most, because it contains the original recording of my now favorite Beatles song.

But this Yes cover, it was majestic. I immediately purchased the album, played that song for everybody I knew, even during freshman orientation the first week of college, I thought it would close everybody instantly, but it took years for the masses to catch on.

After loving the debut, I saw the follow-up, “Time and a Word,” in the bin at Alexander’s, not evening knowing it existed, I thought the group was one and done, and I played it, but it was not quite as good as the first LP.

And then came “The Yes Album.”

I only purchased it because I was a fan of the band. I did not expect a great leap forward, but that’s what I got. The addition of virtuosos Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman lifted the band to a whole ‘nother level, pushing the envelope of what came to be known as prog rock.

Steve Howe was not there last night. Nor Rick Wakeman.

But unlike Chris Squire, at least they’re still alive.

And Bill Bruford’s replacement Alan White is gone too.

And it’s more than half a century later. Does anybody care?

That’s what I was thinking driving to the gig and during the first number, a full-length version of “Close to the Edge.”

The original Yes only had one hit, “Roundabout,” and this show was from that classic era, except for a few new songs from Jon’s collaboration with the Band Geeks, which fit in seamlessly and were actually quite good.

Most people come to oldies shows for the hits. And depending on how many you have, that’s how many tickets you can sell. Aged Boomers and Gen-X’ers do the calculation. They’ve got the cash and the time, is it worth spending it? I wouldn’t think that many people would want to go see a band with only one hit.

But they did.

But were these the only ones? I mean how broad is the Yes footprint?

I’m not sure.

But this music was from a point in time when hits were just icing on the cake, it was about the album. With none of today’s internet distractions we played them from beginning to end, over and over. And went to see these bands. But now?

This is not like going to see the Journey celebration. This music is too difficult to be pure nostalgia, it demands attention. I won’t quite say it’s work, but if you’re not involved, you don’t even want to be there.

And I’m asking myself why I am there.

It’s so weird, I’m sitting there thinking about what this music meant to me back when, but do I want to live in the past or the present? Stop in my tracks or keep pushing the envelope?

Now let’s be clear, it was my people who were there. Old and rumpled, with gray and white hair, some wearing t-shirts, in some cases band shirts from previous tours. This was not a night out at the Hollywood Bowl, no one was there to be seen. They came for the music, and the music only.

So is this material ancient, or is it our classical music? Were the people going to the show no different from their parents going to the symphony?

And marching forward… There can’t even be any shows like this.

First and foremost, there was no production, which the Spotify Top 50 specializes in. And the Spotify Top 50 also specializes in hedonistic, mindless hits, not much different from superhero movies. Will you really want to spend all that money to see these acts fifty years from now? It’s one thing if they’re part of a revue, but will you want two hours of their tunes?

The people last night did.

2

So what you’ve got to know is the Band Geeks do an excellent job of playing the  material, but they are faceless. Which is a far cry from the Yes of yore, with Wakeman in his caftans…

And there still is a version of Yes plying the boards, sans any original members, but the band is lacking one thing, Jon Anderson.

This is not plug and play, this doesn’t work with an Ariel Pineda. It’s not about suspending disbelief. Unlike with Journey and other bands with soundalike replacement singers, the music is not bigger than Jon Anderson, he is intertwined with it. Yes is beyond songs, it’s creativity in the writing, the playing and the singing.

You need to see Jon Anderson sing these songs. And he’ll be 82 in October, and unlike so many of his peers, he still has his pipes.

So… You miss the other original players, their personalities… I learned way back that you need to be weary of replacing band members, because in addition to musical cohesion, there’s always some part of the audience that is attached to that seemingly secondary player. Don’t forget, George had fans, not only John and Paul, never mind the quirky, lovable Ringo.

And you want to see these people in the band.

And that was lacking last night, and was disappointing.

And to tell you the truth, even though I own and know “Close to the Edge,” it was never my favorite, but here we got the full side rendition. And when it closed…

People stood up clapping vociferously and…

There were no video cameras, no one to impress, they were just that moved by the music.

But then came “Perpetual Change”…

Never mind “And You and I.”

And then I was completely involved, it was not pure nostalgia, it was not like so many oldies shows, this music was alive and kicking, no one on stage was going through the motions, this was as vibrant as all of the new shows out there.

Once again, they’re doing it without a net. Yes, there are two keyboard/synth players, but like I said, there’s no production, it’s purely music. Sure, Anderson claps his tambourine, and occasionally paraded around with a giant flag, but this show was not something so much that you saw, but something you heard, something you experienced. That you were involved in.

And song after song, except for a couple of the new ones, generated a standing ovation. These people knew the music. They’d stand up spontaneously and thrust their arms in the air, they’d clap along and sing too. For all you knew, these people were still living in the seventies.

But it’s the twenty first century.

3

So if you’re a Yes fan, you’ve got to go. Since it’s only Anderson of the originals, it’s actually less nostalgic, it’s like Anderson has thrown off the past and been reinvigorated.

And the venues are not big. There’s no rip-off involved. It’s like it was back in the day.

But those days are long over.

So what do we make of this? Sitting there for the two hour long sets it was clear that we lived through something, whose formula seems to have been lost. Yes, we can call Yes prog rock, but they sounded nothing like their contemporaries Genesis or Gentle Giant. Each of these acts was on their own hejira. And nobody was sitting there saying “let’s write a single,” it was never about the hit. But this music has lasted.

So many of the acts from the seventies can’t even sell out a club. And even if you had a couple of hits, if there were no albums to back it up, there aren’t any rabid fans. But rabid fans will come out every year to see acts they’re invested in, just ask the metal bands.

But metal never dies. And prog rock is almost completely in the rearview mirror.

4

The apotheosis was “I’ve Seen All Good People.”

“Take a straight and stronger course

To the corner of your life

Make the white queen run so fast

She’s hasn’t got time to make you a wife”

Even if you don’t remember every word, you remember the melody. Takes you right back to your dorm room. And they started a cappella and then the voices ascended into heaven and it was positively mesmerizing. All I could do was lean forward, rock back and forth, nod and sing along.

There was joy in this music. It was the other. Not made for radio, seemingly not made for anybody but the people who made it, the band itself. And if the audience could relate…

And we did. And we couldn’t exactly explain why. It’s just that it titillated us, was one step beyond what we’d encountered before, was anything but me-too.

“‘Cause it’s time, it’s time in time with your time, and its news

Is captured for the queen to use”

Don’t ask me what the words mean, they’re open to each person’s individual interpretation.

“Don’t surround yourself with yourself

Move on back two squares”

“Your Move” goes on for minutes, it’s exquisite, prettier and more enticing than music half a century younger.

And then, when you’re completely entranced…

“I’ve seen all good people turn their heads each day

So satisfied, I’m on my way”

5

There was no context. Other than the fact that this was music we knew and loved and wanted to hear performed.

It wasn’t about hype, there was no press, you had to find it yourself.

Once again, the music didn’t sound, still doesn’t sound like anything else, and rather than being set in amber it was scrubbed clean and moving.

I’m not saying this is for everybody. But it’s surprising how many it is for. Those who grew up in an era when music not only drove the culture, it was a constant bastion of innovation. You’d break the shrinkwrap and drop the needle and not know exactly what you were going to experience, even if you owned every one of the act’s previous albums.

It’s a lost formula.

Forget the music, you’ve got to have screens, lights, distractions, the belief is the music itself is not enough, certainly not if you’re playing to 1,800.

But last night it was.

P.S. No one got up and went to the bathroom during the show.

P.P.S. There was no undercurrent of conversation whatsoever during the show, a rare event.

The set list: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/jon-anderson-and-the-band-geeks/2026/thousand-oaks-civic-arts-plaza-fred-kavli-theatre-thousand-oaks-ca-134841ed.html

Tune in June 27th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz