I'm Malcolm Cecil.

And I'm Robert Margouleff. And this is TONTO, The Original Neo-Timbreal Orchestra.

Where did TONTO come from?

Well, it came out of our heads, I guess in the late '60s, early '70s, we designed it on a table cloth in New York in a Cuban-Chinese restaurant across the street from Media Sound. And we came up with the idea of building this instrument as the first real-time performing electronic music instrument. And actually we made, the first album is the actually the first alternative album in I guess in 1971, wasn't it?

Yeah, 1971, TONTO's Expanding Head Band, Zero Time. And that was put out by Herbie Mann, who had a label called Embryo, which was distributed by Atlantic back then. And that was how Stevie Wonder came to find us, was through that album. He rode up to Media Sound one day, with the album under one arm and, uh, a friend of ours on the other arm. A fellow called, Ronnie Banko.

Yeah, and we didn't leave the studio for five years after that. But it was really designed as a real time performing instrument on that, and many of the cuts on that first album, "Zero Time", were performed in real time. So when Stevie heard the album, we were able to start, I don't know what happened, but something magical happened basically, and uh, we started working together and suddenly we found ourselves sort of inventing instruments to play. And that was a very magical thing. And we started then, I think the first album we did was "Music Of My Mind" was the first album we did with Steve. TONTO, incidentally, stands for The Original Neo-Timbreal Orchestra. And this is not one instrument, it's all instruments at the same time. So it was difficult to control in the '70s because we didn't have the technology we have today, but it's still here, and we're still playing it.

When you met Stevie, what was it that he wanted to do with the music? What did he think that this could be like?

Yes. Stevie was a keyboard player. And his principal need from us was to provide him with the sounds and the technical expertise to enable to get what he had in his head. That's why we called the first album "Music Of My Mind" because it was music that was in his head. He'd been carrying it around for several years, because he didn't own his own publishing. And he was very smart for somebody so young. And he realized that he, there was a lot of money in publishing. And he decided that when he came to us that he had not written anything substantial for Motown in perhaps five years. And he had all these songs in his head. And he was just bursting to get them out. and it was very difficult for him to explain to an arranger what it was he wanted, have the arranger write it, have the arranger tell somebody, the musicians how to play it. It was too far removed from what was in his head. He wanted to have more direct contact. And when he realized that the instrument that we had put together was a keyboard instrument and he could actually control it directly, and all he had to do was to work with us to get the sounds that would spark him off, uh, that was really the, that was the real key.

I think also, um, I didn't know what he expected from it. I don't think in some ways, I don't, in some ways I don't agree totally with Malcolm about his, uh, his songwriting, not writing for Motown before this. I think that Stevie acted on impulse. He heard our record. Uh, Ronnie Blanco, our friend who brought him to us didn't know what would happen and we didn't know what would happen. I don't think Stevie really realized it. I didn't even realize it happened until five years later when we stopped working with Stevie that something had happened. I mean, it became totally consuming. We worked night and day, holidays, weekends, every time it was at night, we would start at 7 at night and we'd come out blinking like into the blazing light at 7 o'clock in the morning in the middle of New York, and then out here in Los Angeles. And the music just kind of fell out of him, and instead of saying, well, we're going to make an album now, so let's make, hear the 12 songs for this album, we just started putting material into a library, and we just started recording it. There was no one else around. It was Steve, uh, myself, and Malcolm, and sometimes, Joe Vigoda, his lawyer, who was the, a real character and appears in some of the little sound vignettes for example in "Living Just Enough For The City". And we just went to work. And when time came to put an album out, we would all run around and find the right album art, and the right people for the various parts of the elements and we'd put everything together pretty much ourselves.

We had difficulty with Stevie pinning down what songs were going to be on the album. Because we'd play stuff back, and say, yeah, that's got to be on the album. And we'd say, okay, well, the next song, well, that's got to be on too. In fact that's how "Talking Book" got its name. Because he was putting, we were playing song after song after song and every one had to go on the album.

Everyone told a story.

The difficulty with Stevie was getting him to choose which songs to put on the album because we had so many of them. And he always wanted to include everything, in fact that's how "Talking Book" got its name. He wanted to put every song on there, and uh, we, we got to a point where, uh, at one point we said, well, Stevie, you know, this is an album, it's not a talking book. And talking books for the blind ran at half the speed of an old LP, they're on a sixteen and two-thirds, so they run on for much longer. And uh, that was really the basis.

And the, and the songs are all stories and statements. I mean, the thing about Steve's music is that it's not just about, you know, love and how much I love you baby, or I lost you baby and now I found you baby. I mean the material is really about the social condition and the fabric of our society. Uh, for example, "Living Just Enough For The City" has that beautiful little vignette in it of the drug bust, the innocent kid who comes to New York and walks across the street and finds himself arrested. That is very much like a talking book, it's a sound picture. It's like old time radio in a way, where we used to listen to like Captain Midnight or some of the early, uh, Dragnet, or some of the early radio dramas, where uh, they would create these sound vignettes. And it really helps sort of illustrate the story and the social consciousness that Stevie brought to his music, which I think was very, very important. Because Steve's music wasn't just for the black community or the white community. It was music that was universal music for mankind, it was for the planet. And uh, I think that the music itself hasn't really lost any of its real meaning. I think that's why it lives on really, is because of the social, social context.

One of the social context things that had, Stevie was very interested in hearing, uh, books and so on, and we used to…

The other thing about the social consciousness with Stevie was that he was always interested in hearing other people's work. For example, I remember reading him excerpts from "1984" by George Orwell and "Animal Farm". And uh, he would always come in and say, oh, I've written a new song, and I'd say, oh, not another love song, Stevie. And uh, he would turn around one day, he came in and he said, hey, I've got a new song. And of course I responded with my usual, well, not another love song, Stevie. And he said, no, no, listen. And he went inside and he started this thing, my name is big brother, you say that you're watching me on the telly, which was "Big Brother." And that was like directly a result of mulling over the things that he'd heard from George Orwell's "1984" where that is the basic plot of the whole book is to do with this society where you're being supervised all the time. And um, he felt that was very meaningful to him. And I was very, um, struck with that. I thought it was really very nice to feel that we had some interaction there in bringing his attention to some of the social issues of the time. And I really believe that he was doing a good service for all of us.

That's what I was, that's what I meant Malcolm by saying that, I mean this material wasn't just for the black community or making black records or blues records. His records touched everybody. I can remember going out on the road with him briefly on the Rolling Stones tour, and uh, it was remarkable to see how his much like touched everybody. And uh, the context and the social clarity of what he had to say, how important it really was to the culture then and now. I might add I just finished, uh, remixing some material for Steve's new album, "18 Years Later", and the material does again address the strong social issues, uh, of the culture, and I think these are things that need to be said. I think that music is the most powerful export we have in America. And uh, he really is one of the, I think one of the great, I mean, great songwriters. There's only a few people in this world like Stevie in terms of being strong writers, whose material lasts more than 18 or 20 years.

Most of the artists we've worked with have what we call like two or three songs. All the songs are the same sort of changes, they just consider them new songs, they put different words to them, and so on and so forth. Stevie has many, many more than two or three songs, basic songs. They're pretty much, everything he writes has a uniqueness to it. And that's what makes him a very great person. Because Stevie's first a songwriter, secondly, a vocalist, and thirdly a musician.

Well, in terms of the sound, let’s take Superstition for instance. I mean all those interesting sounds going on in his music. How did that come about?

Well, the sounds in "Superstition," were first of all, the way the music was put down, Stevie would normally go in and play either clavinet and piano and sing at the same time.

No click track either.

Yeah, no click track. And he would, "Superstition" was different however. He went into the studio and sat down and this was done when Jeff Beck wanted to have "Maybe Your Baby" and Stevie kept saying, no, you can't use it, no, I'm going to put it out, no, you can't have it. And Jeff kept on and on, we were producing Jeff at the time. And, and the, Stevie said, okay.

Okay, we'll write a song, we'll write a new song for you. Jeff, I'll write a new song for you. And it was "Superstition."

But he walked into the studio and sat down at the drums. And started off, just [drum noises] And, and, and that was all he played, was like the drum track for like five minutes, and that was it. And he came back and he said, let's get a good bass sound, want a real funky bass sound. So we went out and programmed up a bass sound. And then he put on [sings bass] And then he says, I want some clavinet. And we haven't heard any melody, we haven't heard any sound. We didn't know what this all was yet. And we put this clavinet down, and this is where he did the thing, uh

He used the wah-wah pedal on the clavinet, which again was I think a first. The thing I think that we brought to a lot of the music was that we created new sounds with TONTO. These are sounds that sort of reminded people of other sounds, but they were their own unique color and they brought a kind of an emotional content to the record I think that was unexpected and I think that that brought a kind of a new light to it. I mean the modern synthesizers are interesting, but they really are the children of the Hammond B-3, more than they are the children of the synthesizer.

Samples, samples.

Well, sampling is one thing, but I mean even, the synthesizers, the, uh, the 808 drum sounds and all that stuff, Stevie said to me once recently, he said, man, listen to that 808 drum sound, that sounds really like street. And I said, yeah, it sounds like the street in Japan, because that's where the sound come from, okay? But the synthesizer, this really creates a sound that's an event. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It has content that's going on inside of it. If you listen to the sort of the reedy sounds or the brassy sounds, or the colorations and so forth. They're all unique in that they appear as a one invent. This instrument, as big as it is, is truly a monophonic instrument. We create one event at a time, or multiple events, but each event is its own thing. So in doing that we brought a very unusual, kind of new emotional level to the music. And what we used to do with Steve as Malcolm was saying earlier, is we would cut library material, we would cut and put it into Stevie's song library, and then when the album came…

What we would do with Steve, we would cut for a library. And by that I mean, we would cut a song not with a view to putting it on an album but with a view towards just creating a large database of songs essentially. And they would be in various states of being finished. Steve would work on one song for two hours, then write a song for three hours and so forth. And what we did in the studio originally at Electric Ladyland in New York, when we were start, had just really had gotten into the saddle so to speak, was we'd have all of the instruments out in a large circle in the studio, all plugged into the console. The synthesizer, the piano, the clavinet, the Rhodes.

Drums.

The drums. Everything all miked, everything all ready to go. And "Music of my Mind" was the most self-contained record because, uh, he played all the instruments, with the exception of a few guitar parts, and he would go from one instrument to the other, and we were able to like sort of help him around in that sense, in creating that kind of an environment so he could instant, have instant gratification in the matter of which instrument he wanted to go, he could get, sit down and start playing immediately. And we would mix the electronic sounds, the sounds of TONTO with live instruments. So you never knew where the reality of a live instrument and the beginning of an electronic instrument was.

But it wasn't all electronic. We had, on "Innervisions" for example, the title track was all acoustic. In fact, I'm playing bass, acoustic bass, which was my original instrument, because that's what I used to play in England. I used to play at Ronnie Scott's, I was principal bass with the BBC radio orchestra for several years, and I was, uh, a professional bass player, and that's how I earned my living before I came to the States. And also I keep it up to this day, and I still play and I still enjoy playing, and I have a very beautiful old bass. But um, Stevie liked to have whatever was necessary. We, we had no, uh, rules. There was nothing, things did not have to be all electronic, they didn't have to be all acoustic. There were no rules, there were no regulations. It was just whatever we felt was correct for the song we would put in there.

But it was a blessing in a way, because we could remain focused on the music. We never heard the word, it's out of, it's over budget, or, it's under budget, or we're running out of money, or anything else. Steve brought us the greatest blessing of all, was to be able to really just concentrate on the art, to know that we'd all be making enough cake to stay alive and to work and to be creative. And all we had to was just be creative and work in the studio. And it was really a great blessing, and it lasted for five years, which I think is enough, you know.