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R&B Legend Leee John Interview
RnB/Hip Hop | Saturday 26th April 2014 | James
A living legend in his own right, Leee John has lived a whole lifetime inside the music business. Rising to fame in the early 80s as lead singer of R&B sensation ‘Imagination’, Leee John has been a continual and crucial part of UK R&B and still continues to pursue creative ventures across the board. Leee started his musical career at the young age of eleven and worked with some of the industry’s best producers and musicians, going on to be signed by EMI at age fifteen. There aren’t many people in the music business who have witnessed the breadth of evolution and talent that this man has.
With an upcoming show in Dalston on May 3rd and an array of projects on-the-go including his forthcoming album ‘The Truth’ and documentary film ‘Flashback’, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to have a talk with him about the life, times and plans of a man who has truly lived the life.
GL: Hi Leee, thanks for taking the time. So let’s start from the beginning; you started out pretty young, a while before Imagination was formed. How did you first get into the music business?
LJ: Well I was signed very early on as a child. I lived in the states for a while and was signed to a label when I was about 11. When I came back to London after my parent’s split, I got signed to EMI; I was 15 at the time. I was making tracks produced by Del Newman who had produced and arranged music for the likes of Paul McCartney. This was all happening while I was still in school so I had a very early grounding of being in the industry. As time went on, I realized that I had a lot more to learn because we didn’t have a hit on EMI. It was a big learning curve and I just decided that I really had to go for it. At that time I was performing everywhere from clubs to Bingo halls and I spent time training to act and tried to do a bit of everything in an effort to become the best at what I do.
GL: Was there a specific point where it all took off with Imagination?
LJ: There was never a specific point. Nowadays a lot of people want a quick fix in those terms but my career was never like that. We had a good track called ‘Body Talk’ which we had written with Tony Swain. When we began to work with the label ‘R&B Records’, they heard me and loved it. I then got the other guys in and we became Imagination. ‘Body Talk’ was recorded in 1980 and was out on the street around January/February of the following year as a white label. It was one of the slowest tracks to be played on the radio and in clubs at that point, very classic beats and bass stuff and it was all around. Just by chance, we managed to get a slot on Top of the Pops through someone dropping out and we entered the singles chart at 44.
GL: That must have been an exciting time! I hear you’ve been in the studio recently, what projects have you got going on at the moment?
LJ: Right now there’s a lot going on. As well as my current musical projects, I’m editing my documentary film ‘Flashback’ which is essentially a history of UK Black music. We’ve got so much footage and it’s a case of sifting it all down to feature length. We want to really make light of the rich history of Black music in this country that people just don’t know about.
GL:Can you tell us more about that?
LJ: There are so many forms of music from the UK that have affected people so much and most people just don’t realize that they came from here. Most fellow artists who I tour with think I’m American before they meet me and I think that’s a common misconception with a lot of UK music of that sort. It’s amazing how once you start digging, you find out about how UK Reggae, Brit Funk and the Jazz scene emerged here and how it was so influential. Then you come into the Eighties where it was mammoth with groups – Ourselves [Imagination], Jackie Graham, David Grant – there are tonnes and they’re not honoured properly and I want to give all of these great people a nod and a wave. All of this stuff is on a similar platform to American music; we know Motown, we know Stacks, we know about The Blues, The south and the Gospel movement. We get it rammed down our throats all the time so for now I thought – you know what, it’s time people really got to hear our history, there’s so much that’s from here that people need to know. It’s important for the kids here and across the world to know about the roots of all this music that we hear everyday that people just don’t know originated here.
GL: Sounds great. I’ve seen you’ve been working with Belgian DJ Electrokid. What sort of thing have you guys been working on?
LJ: Electrokid did a mix for me and he came up with the idea for a song called ‘Turn It Up’. We’ve had Daft Punk and Pharrell mix the track for us and a lot of people think it’s going to be a real smash. I sound about 19 on the track [laughs], it’s the youngest I’ve sounded on a track for ages and it’s a lot of fun and very contemporary.
I’ve also done a track with DJs Tiger and Woods and they’ve got a really great show going on. I’ve always had strong contact with DJ culture going back a long way. In the early 80s Larry Levan remixed one of our Imagination tracks ‘Changes’ and we went to Paradise Garage to see it played. I also worked a lot with UK Garage around 2000 with “Your Mind, Your Body, Your Soul’ being the second biggest UKG track of the year. I’ve had a very multi-cultural and multi-dimensional career.
GL: Amazing. So what about your other current musical projects? You’re playing in Dalston on May 3rd, is it nice to come home and play a local show?
LJ: It’s always fantastic to come home, I was born in Hackney and we lived in Finsbury Park just down the road from Dalston. I grew up there and know people all around the area; a friend of mine actually owns a bicycle shop just opposite the venue. I’m very much the type of person to push live entertainment and we need more live music venues in London. It’s great to be a part of getting more live acts into the area. I think that playing in Dalston is really going to be terrific. We’ve got some great DJs with us on the night who are doing some really good things at the moment, it’s going to be a great show.
As far as other projects go, there is a lot of stuff in the pipeline. I’ve written a song called ‘The Truth’ which is going to be the title of the new album I’m releasing. It’s very deep and it’s really another side of me vocally and I know it’s something that people can very much relate to and identify with. There’s a great retro track on there called ‘No More Lies’ that I wrote with Nelson Lee – a fantastic musician. There’s some funky stuff on there and also some Imagination-ish stuff, it’s very eclectic. With the freedom that people have now in listening to music, I want to make an album that has a distinct sound but also a mix of varying influences and styles.
GL: You’re touring with Kool and the Gang, Earth Wind and Fire and The Jacksons in June. Does it remind you of the old Imagination days?
LJ: Well I believe in today and tomorrow. I learned a hell of a lot from the past and that’s how I take it. I take the past as history and use that knowledge to take me to the future. There are some wonderful moments I have from the past but I don’t live there because it’s gone, you can never re-create that, you can only re-create it through what you have with the music and with the audience and give the audience everything you can because at the end of the day it’s about them. They’re the ones who put me where I am I never ever forget that.
You can catch Imagination featuring Leee John at Epic, Dalston on May 3rd for a rare opportunity to see a Legend in action.
Tickets can be found here: https://www.rsn-tickets.com/events/1442/indalston-pres-imagination-feat-leee-john-live
