Here’s an interview I did a few years back with the late, great Isaac Hayes.
10 Questions for Isaac Hayes
Interview by Bill DeMain
MOJO, 2003
Do you remember your first week at Stax?
Man, I was scared stiff. Here I am, in this place I’ve always dreamed of being where all these greats have been. I’d been playing a lot of small clubs and Jim Stewart [Stax president] heard me and said, “Hey, do you want a job?” Booker T. had gone to school and Stax needed a replacement keyboard player. I’d actually been there a few times before with other bands, but they’d always turned me down. My first session was for Otis Redding. Talk about being scared. But it was a very loose vibe. We worked up the arrangements around the piano and the drums. In those days, we recorded to one track, so everybody had to really get the parts down. There were very few written parts. A lot of room for spontaneity.
When you started writing songs with David Porter, did it take a while to find your groove?
We wrote a lot of songs. When we first started, we’d be up at Jim Stewart’s office every two or three hours, saying, “We got a hit!” Jim said, “Back to the drawing board, fellas.” Eventually we found our groove and then we started writing just one after another. And when Sam & Dave would come to town for a session, we would meet with them a couple of nights before and write with them sitting there. And they would learn the songs as we wrote them. It came so freely and so easy. We’d go in the studio and David would work with Sam on vocals and I would work with the band on the music. It was a hell of a team.
One of your first big hits for Sam & Dave was You Don’t Know Like I Know.
That came right from the church, from a gospel tune. [Sings] “You don’t know like I do what the Lord has done for me.” I thought, “Well, if the Lord can make you feel good and do things for you, why can’t a woman do the same? (laughs)”
What inspired Soul Man?
I was sitting in front of the television watching the riots on the evening news. They were protesting and burning buildings in Detroit. One of the commentators said, “Well, your building would be passed over if you’ve got the word ‘soul’ written on it. They won’t torch it.” Blacks were running around the streets with their fists clenched in rage, screaming, “Yeah, soul brother, yeah!” I said, “Wow, they’re coming together as one.” Whether it’s right or wrong, they are united, and they are taking pride in the word soul. I thought, “Soul man, that’s it.”
Hot Buttered Soul was groundbreaking, in that it helped change the emphasis in R & B from singles to albums.
I was given a free hand when I started recording my own stuff. When I was a songwriter at Stax, we had limitations because Jim wanted us to sound a certain way. If I put a nice chord in a song, he’d say, “No, no, I don’t want that. Stop.” But when I had a chance to do my own album, it was different. I asked Al Bell [Stax business manager], “Can I do it the way I want to do it?” And he said, “Carte blanche, however you want.” Then I was given the freedom to exercise my creativity with no boundaries. That’s when I started putting the strings and horns together with the funky rhythm underneath. I didn’t feel the pressure to come up with a hit record, because there were twenty-six other albums being released that spring. But doing so, I stretched and I trusted what I felt and it outsold everything at the label that spring, and a star was born (laughs).
It’s been said that a lot of babies were conceived to that album. What do you think about the way the subject of sex is addressed in today’s R & B?
Some of the lyrics are kind of raw. I don’t want to sound old-fashioned, but they’re raw. When I talked about things that I considered sexy, you didn’t just lay it all out. You left a lot to the imagination. You did it with better taste. You didn’t have to name body parts. Whatever happened to foreplay? These kids want to jump in and get it over with, like rabbits. The best part about it is the contemplation and the foreplay.
How did the Theme From Shaft come together?
Gordon Parks, the director said, “All you have to do was zero in on the character.” Shaft was a relentless guy. He was always in pursuit, he was always on the move. Gordon said, “That’s what your main theme should denote.” And that’s where I got the idea about the sixteenth notes on the hi-hat. It just fell in place from there. Before I even presented it to Skip [Pitts], the guitar player, I had the wah-wah in mind. I always had a fascination with the wah-wah. I tried early on to put it on a tune that David Porter and I produced, so I liked the way it sounded, and of course, I’d heard Hendrix use it. When Skip played, I got on my knees and worked the wah-wah pedal with my hands, then he got the feel and took over from there. The lyric came easy. I did censor myself though. ‘This cat Shaft is a bad mother . . . shut your mouth.’ I did it that way, otherwise somebody would have told me to shut my mouth (laughs).
A lot of classic soul artists from your generation are struggling to stay current and reach a younger audience by using more modern beats and sounds. What do you think of the records that are being made by your contemporaries?
The best of them doesn’t come across, unfortunately, and I blame the record companies for that. I’m not knocking hip-hop, but there’s not enough depth to it. If you think about it, on the charts now, whoever has a hit record, it lasts for a week. Then next week, it’s somebody else there. And people can’t remember two months ago. But back in the day, when we had hit records, they’d stay at number one for three or four weeks. It stayed in the minds of people because it had more depth, had more meaning. And like I said, I blame record companies, because they’re trying to make quotas. How many did we sell this week? But the art itself is suffering. These kids don’t even know who their predecessors were. They don’t know whose shoulders they’re standing on.
In the late ‘90s, you had a second career as the voice of Chef on South Park. What did you think when you first took the part?
I was reluctant. When my agent told me I had a job doing a voice-over, I thought it was for Disney. But when I read the script it was really funny. I remember saying, ‘I hope you guys got insurance because you’re going to get sued.’ The more I did it, the more fun I had. But at the beginning of South Park, I thought that I’d ruined my career.
What’s next?
I’m here in Miami this week to accept the BMI Icon Award, which I’m very happy about. BMI and I go way back. Then this fall, I’m scheduled to start doing a new album. I’m going to try to give people songs of substance, songs that stir the emotions. If I’m not sabotaged by the record industry. I have to keep some artistic integrity in my music.
