All-Time Greatest Music

(This is the fourth artist of the first 27 that produced his music beginning in 1978. So, he was not a part of the 1950s-60s generation.)

By Ahmir Thompson, The drummer that formed The Roots in 1987.

Illustrator: Sterling Hundley

Prince was forbidden in my closed, Christian household. He was somewhere between Richard Pryor — whom we absolutely couldn’t listen to — and a stash of porn. In junior high, my parents would put $30 or $40 in an envelope, and that would buy a card that would cover a month of school lunches. It was November of 1982, and I took my $36 and purchased Prince’s 1999, What Time Is It?, by the Time, and the Vanity 6 album. I starved that whole month.

“Little Red Corvette” from 1999was one of the first regularly played songs by a black artist on MTV; Prince crossed boundaries like that all the time. In the first five songs on Sign ‘O’ the Times, he sprawls across James Brown, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, the Beatles and Curtis Mayfield in five easy swoops and maintains his own identity. But it’s Purple Rain that was a crowning achievement, not only in Prince’s career but for black life — or how blacks were perceived — in the Eighties. It’s the equivalent of Michael Jordan’s 1997 championship games: He was absolutely just in the zone, every shot was going in. “When Doves Cry” is one of the most radical Number One songs of the past 25 years. Here’s a song with no bass line in it, hardly any music. Yet it’s still had such an influence; “When Doves Cry” is a precursor to the Neptunes’ one-note funk grind, a masterpiece of song with just a drum machine and very little melody. Purple Rain was a great movie too. Anyone who saw Eminem’s biopic, 8 Mile, if they’re over 35, the first words out of their mouth are, “Oh, I liked that film the first time I saw it back in the Eighties. It was this Prince movie called Purple Rain.”

Prince’s greatest hits playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/63VPJo5HJpD1fcwJRdK8og?si=wTmxzOHxST66Apqwwu-59Q&pi=XiEJWmq9Q1mGF

Prince must be one of the most bootlegged artists of the rock era — on a weekly basis I listen to a bootleg called The Dream Factory, which would later be known as Sign ‘O’ the Times. His ability to create on the spot is mind-boggling. Like a hip-hop MC freestyling, he executes ideas off the top of his head in a very convincing manner. But there must be at least 20 ways to prove that hip-hop is damn-near patterned after Prince, including his genius, blatant use of sexuality and the use of controversy as a way to get attention. I don’t think any artist before had used that level of sex to get in the door and be accepted by the mainstream. I wonder what his mind state was in 1981, standing onstage in kiddie briefs, leg warmers and high heels without a Number One hit. That was a risk. Also, Prince created the image of what we now know as the video ho — he was a pioneer of objectifying and empowering women at the same time. Jay-Z often talks about ghostwriting for other artists; Prince is notorious for ghostwriting. Not only that, but he invented different aliases for himself in a way that rappers have adopted — he was Jamie Starr, Joey Coco or Alexander Nevermind.

I met Prince in 1996, and I was prepared for the grasshopper voice, the one that he always uses at award shows, but he was totally normal. Just like you and me, except he’s Prince. We played together a few times, and one of my hero moments of all time is after a concert in New York when me, him and D’Angelo got onstage and played for about a half-hour. His period of silence about a decade ago bothered me. It was really a shame that his fight for independence from the labels was a David and Goliath battle that he had to fight alone. But judging from what he’s done lately, I’m happy to say that he hasn’t lost a step in his 30 years of doing it. He seems as young and as in charge as ever. He definitely seizes the moment. In case a few people counted him out, he’s got a few trump cards up his sleeve.

(The third artist that released music starting in 1974. So, was nit a part of the 1950s-60s generation.)

By Lenny Kaye, the guitarist for The Patti Smith Group. Illustrator: Chris Kasch

Every rock & roll generation needs reminding of why it picks up a guitar in the first place, and four nonbrothers from the borough of Queens had a concept that was almost too perfect. Their look — ripped jeans, tight T-shirt, high-top sneakers, bowl haircut and black motorcycle jacket — was a cartoon version of rock’s tough-guy ethos. When they first started, they played what they knew how to play, which wasn’t much, and worked it to their advantage. They opted for speed rather than complexity, they aspired to be the Beach Boys, Alice Cooper and the Bay City Rollers, and their rotational three chords and headlong lunge kept them skidding through the simpleton catchphrases of their singalongs.

The Ramones were pure, unadulterated — and hardly adult in their adolescent concerns of sniffing glue and beating on brats with a baseball bat, even if the brats were themselves. Their sibling rivalry meshed like any television reality show. Johnny was the stern older brother, disciplined, military; Dee Dee was the blunt instrument; Tommy was the producer who knew the record business, and like any good producer, knew that you build a great track from the drums out. Joey was the beating heart.

The Ramones had their act so together that they would change it only in increments for two decades after they took it out of the CBGB nest in 1975. They were easily understood, translatable. When the band got to England on Independence Day 1976, returning the favor of the English Invasion in a fun-house mirror, it was a frontal assault on here-we-go-again pop subculture.

The Ramones always believed in their music’s message of self-deliverance. They affirmed that if they could do it, you could do it; just be resolute. Count to four.

The Ramones greatest hits playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4kf2AuUVNAj7r668swikki?si=_cp6P4o_SxyNS_YcBIMp6w&pi=y4YfuwvCTsy7H

When I think of a Ramones moment, I remember not the early years — when the bands played for each other on the Bowery, and each was like a different world — but a late afternoon in May, somewhere in New England, a daylong festival, maybe the early Eighties. I’m standing backstage with Johnny, and we’re talking about nothing much, guitars we’ve known, the Red Sox, and finally the conversation stops, and we just look around, quiet in the midst of electric noise, seeing where rock & roll has brought us on this beautiful afternoon, playing the music we love.

By Dr. John, An icon and emdodiment of New Orleans musical legacy. Best known for his 1973 hit “Right Place, Wrong Time.” Illustrator: Dan Adel.

After John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Fats Domino and his partner, Dave Bartholomew, were probably the greatest team of songwriters ever. They always had a simple melody, a hip set of chord changes and a cool groove. And their songs all had simple lyrics; that’s the key. There are no deep plots in Fats Domino songs: “Yes, it’s me, and I’m in love again/Had no lovin’ since you know when/You know I love you, yes I do/And I’m savin’ all my lovin’ just for you.” It don’t get no simpler than that.

Fats Domino’s greatest hits playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/album/06srT6zqpIJQEIhfHUFdQ4?si=bjs9qdD-QI2cG5r3HRuaWA

Even when Fats Domino did songs by somebody else, it was still Fats. He could really lock in with his band and play those hard-driving boogie shuffles — it was pre-funk stuff, and it was New Orleans, and he did it all his way. One thing that most people miss, which he did on some of his biggest records, like “Blueberry Hill”: He could do piano rolls with both hands. A couple of guys, like Allen Toussaint, could do Fats to a T, but with Fats, there was brothsome little different thing. He was like Thelonious Monk that way. You can always tell when it’s Monk and when it’s somebody trying to play like Monk.

I give a lot of credit to Dave Bartholomew, Fats’ producer and songwriting partner. They were a team. Dave produced records perfect for Fats. He had the sense to go with the best-feeling take when they were recording. People would have missed something great about Fats if they had just heard the more “correct” takes — the ones without that extra off-the-wall thing that Fats would bring.

You can’t hardly hear the bass on some of Fats’ early records. Later, they started doubling the bass line with the guitar, and it made for a very distinctive sound. That became standard with Phil Spector. I don’t know if Phil picked it up from Fats or from somebody who picked it up from Fats, but it started with Fats. You can hear a lot of Fats in Jerry Lee Lewis. Anytime anybody plays a slow blues, the piano player will eventually get to something like Fats. I can’t tell you the number of times I played sessions and was asked specifically to do Fats. Eighty kajillion little bands all through the South — we all had to play Fats Domino songs. Everybody, everywhere.

Fats is old school to the max — he loved to work the house, do looooong shows and push the piano across the stage with his belly. That innocence is there in his music. He’s a good man, and people respond to that goodness. I don’t think it was about anything other than the tradition of working the house and what felt good to Fats.

When all the payola scandals were happening and it looked bad for rock & roll, Fats did an interview in some magazine. He said, “I don’t know what all the trouble is about us being a bad influence on teenagers. I’m just playing the same music I played all my life.” That’s what Fats was about. He didn’t look on what he did as special or different. He just did what Fats did.

By Moby, a singer brought electronic techno into the mainstream. Illustrator: Jody Hegill.

I’d be curious to know how many pianos Jerry Lee Lewis has gone through in his lifetime. Whoever was responsible for keeping the piano in tune and making sure it didn’t fall apart at Sun Studio must have wept every time he showed up to play. I don’t know what switch got flipped in his brain when he was born that compelled him to play so fast and so hard, but I’m glad it got flipped.

There’s a perhaps apocryphal story that when he and his cousin, the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, were children, they went to a roadhouse and listened through the window to some amazing R&B band. Jimmy Swaggart supposedly said, “This is the devil’s music! We have to leave!” But Jerry Lee just stood there transfixed and couldn’t tear himself away. He was an evangelist for the devil’s music.

If you listen to his records, they sound more punk rock than just about anything any contemporary punk band is doing. His records sound faster than they actually are, and they sound louder than they actually are. If you listen to them on a crummy little stereo on low volume, they still sound like they’re exploding out of the speakers.

Jerry Lee Lewis’s greatest hits playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/album/02FCCye8QsWyjHwedg9Quj?si=awSXDlgVRuCu2xiGSLouwg

Whether it’s Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard or Gene Vincent, these guys were dripping sex and anarchy. Their records all have a sense of abandon, like they had given up all hope of commercial success or ever being respected, so they just wanted to play crazy music and get laid.

If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let her date a musician, because most of them are just too dumb. In Jerry Lee’s case, if he were coming over for dinner, I would literally lock her up. The story of him marrying his 13-year-old cousin is unbearably sad. Elvis had just been drafted, Jerry Lee was about to tour England for the first time, and the scandal broke. He was never able to ascend to the throne that was rightfully his. And the piano faded because it was too big and too hard to mic. The beauty of the electric guitar is that it’s small, portable, loud and easy to mic.

“Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On” are the iconic singles. But if you really want to understand Jerry Lee Lewis, find some video performance of him doing “Great Balls of Fire.” It’s pure, narcotic rock & roll excitement.

(This is the second artist of the first 23 that was not releasing songs in the 1950s or 60s. Bruce was active in the 1970s including Born in the USA.)

By Jackson Browne Illustrator: Owen Smith

In many ways, Bruce Springsteen is the embodiment of rock & roll. Combining strains of Appalachian music, rockabilly, blues and R&B, his work epitomizes rock’s deepest values: desire, the need for freedom Noand the search to find yourself. All through his songs there is a generosity and a willingness to portray even the simplest aspects of our lives in a dramatic and committed way. The first time I heard him play was at a small club, the Bitter End in bNew York, where he did a guest set. It was just an amazing display of lyrical prowess. I asked him where he was from, and he sort of grinned and said he was from New Jersey.

Bruce Springsteen’s greatest hits playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4adcEAzQKaVJLlo94o3nVU?si=s-nPfLw_ShWf7MtmxC0Rrw&pi=cKae9iDAT4ikj

The next time I saw him play it was with his band, the one with David Sancious in it. I’d never seen anybody hdo what he was doing: He would play acoustic guitar and dance all over the place, and the guitar wasn’t plugged into anything. There wasn’t this meticulous need to have every note heard. It filled that college gym with so much emotion that it didn’t matter if you couldn’t hear every note.

A year or so later I saw him play in L.A., with Max Weinberg, Clarence Clemons and Steve Van Zandt in the band, and it was even more dramatic — the use of lights and the way it was staged. There were these events built into the music. I went to see them the second night, and I guess I expected it to be the same thing, but it was completely different. It was obvious that they were drawing on a vocabulary. It was exhilarating, and at the bottom of it all there was all this joy and fun and a sense of brotherhood, of being outsiders who had tremendous power and a story to tell.

Bruce has been unafraid to take on the tasks associated with growing up. He’s a family man, with kids and the same values and concerns as working-class Americans. It runs all through his work, the idea of finding that one person and making a life together. Look at “Rosalita”: Her mother doesn’t like him, her father doesn’t like him, but he’s coming for her. Or in “The River,” where he gets Mary pregnant and for his 19th birthday he gets a union card and a wedding coat. That night they go to the river and dive in. For those of us who are ambivalent about marriage, the struggle for love in a world of impermanence is summed up by the two of them diving into that river at night. Bruce’s songs are filled with these images, but they aren’t exclusively the images of working-class people. It just happens to be where he’s from.

Bruce has all kinds of influences, from Chuck Berry and Gary U.S. Bonds to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. But he’s also a lot like Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and James Dean — people whose most indistinct utterances have been magnified to communicate volumes. He is one of the few songwriters who works on a scale that is capable of handling the subject of our national grief and the need to find a response to an event like September 11th. His sense of music as a healing power, of band-as-church, has always been there. He’s got his feet planted on either side of that great divide between rebellion and redemption.

(First artist that made this Top100 list that was not from the 1950s or 1960s. Their best recordings began in 1976)

By Chris Martin, Lead singer of Coldplay. Illustrator: Anita Kunz

I don’t buy weekend tickets to Ireland and hang out in front of their gates, but U2 are the only band whose entire catalog I know by heart. The first song on The Unforgettable Fire, “A Sort of Homecoming,” I know backward and forward — it’s so rousing, brilliant and beautiful. It’s one of the first songs I played to my unborn baby.

U2’s greatest hits playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0NsBqiR0s3D3Tz05L5B6x6?si=FA_Bc9KvSBuRLIqPVd2P-w&pi=2LpJKXlcQeiCm

The first U2 album I ever heard was Achtung Baby. It was 1991, and I was 14 years old. Before that, I didn’t even know what albums were. From that point, I worked backward — every six months, I’d get to buy a new U2 album. The sound they pioneered — the driving bass and drums underneath and those ethereal, effects-laden guitar tracks floating out from above — was nothing that had been heard before. They may be the only good anthemic rock band ever. Certainly they’re the best.

What I love most about U2 is that the band is more important than any of its songs or albums. I love that they’re still best mates and that they each play an integral role in one another’s lives as friends. I love the way that they’re not interchangeable — if Larry Mullen Jr. wants to go scuba diving for a week, the rest of the band can’t do a thing. U2 — like Coldplay — maintain that all songs that appear on their albums are credited to the band. And they are the only band that’s been around for more than 30 years with no member changes and no big splits.

It’s amazing that the biggest band in the world has so much integrity and passion in its music. Our society is thoroughly screwed, fame is a ridiculous waste of time, and celebrity culture is disgusting. There are only a few people around brave enough to talk out against it, who use their fame in a good way. And every time I try, I feel like an idiot, because I see Bono actually getting things achieved. While everyone else was swearing at George Bush, Bono was the one who rubbed Bush’s back and got a billion dollars for Africa. People can be so cynical — they don’t like do-gooders — but Bono’s attitude is, “I don’t care what anybody thinks, I’m going to speak out.” He’s accomplished so much with Greenpeace, in Sarajevo, at the concert to shut down the Sellafield nuclear plant, and he still runs the gantlet. When the time came for Coldplay to think about fair trade, we took his lead to speak out regardless of what anyone may think. That’s what we’ve learned from U2: You have to be brave enough to be yourself.

By Steve Cropper, Lead guitarist for Booker T & The MGs. Illustrator: Dale Stephanis

The first time we saw Otis Redding was in 1962, and he was driving a car for Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers out of Macon, Georgia. They had a moderate hit, an instrumental called “Love Twist,” and they wanted to record a follow-up in Memphis with my band, Booker T. and the MGs. I saw this big guy get out from behind the wheel and go to the back of the truck and start unloading equipment. That was Otis. And we had no idea he was also a singer. In those days, instrumental groups always carried a singer so they could play the songs on the radio that the kids wanted to dance to.

We had a few minutes left at the end of the session, and Al Jackson, our drummer, said, “This guy with Johnny, he wants us to hear him sing.” Booker had already left for the day, so I sat down at the piano, which I play only a little for writing. Otis said, “Just gimme those church things.”

We call them triplets in music. I said, “What key?”

He said, “It don’t matter.”

He started singing “These Arms of Mine.” And, man, my hair stood on end. Jim [Stewart, co-owner of Stax] came running out and said, “That’s it! That’s it! Where is everybody? We gotta get this on tape!” So I grabbed all the musicians who hadn’t left already for their night gigs, and we recorded it right there. When you hear something that’s better than anything you ever heard, you know it, and it was unanimous. We almost wore out the tape playing it afterward. “These Arms of Mine” was the first of 17 hit singles he had in a row.

Otis Redding’s greatest hits playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/19HWlK29BcgW5CCgpjRW4S?si=7f1tDGObQ_q6mA7WXCH2tA&pi=BkrzvPnRSLefq

Otis had the softness of Sam Cooke and the harshness of Little Richard, and he was his own man. He was also fabulous to be around, always 100 percent full of energy. So many singers in those days, with all due respect, had just been in the business too long. They were bitter from the way they were treated. But Otis didn’t have that. He was probably the most nonprejudiced human being I ever met. He seemed to be big in every way: physically, in his talent, in his wisdom about other people. After he died, I was surprised to find out I was the same age as he was, because I looked up to him as an older brother.

When I wrote with Otis, my job was to help him finish his songs. He had so many ideas that I’d just pick one and say, “Let’s do this,” and we’d write all night long. “I Can’t Turn You Loose” was just a riff I’d used on a few songs with the MGs. Otis worked it up with the horns in about 10 minutes as the last thing we did one night in the studio. Just a riff and one verse that he sings over and over. That’s all it is. With Otis, it was all about feeling and expression. Most of his songs had just two or three chord changes, so there wasn’t a lot of music there. The dynamics, the energy, the way we attacked it — that’s hard to teach. So many things now are computer-generated. They start at one level and they stop at the same level, so there isn’t much dynamic, even if there are a lot of different sounds.

I miss Otis. I miss him as much now as I did after we lost him. I’ve been to the lake in Madison, Wisconsin, where they have the plaque. The best explanation I’ve read is that his plane missed the runway on the first approach, and it circled around over the lake when the wings iced up. That was December 10th, 1967. It’s been difficult for me to listen to Otis since then. It brings back too many memories, all great except for the end.

By Iggy Pop, punk singer for The Stooges that he formed in 1967. Illustrator: Mark Summers

Bo Didley’s music is enormous. It’s deeply moving. It has the sultry, sexual power of Africa. There’s all sorts of mystery in that sound. People listen to Bo Diddley recordings and think, “Oh, you can just go bonk-de-bonk-bonk, de-bonk-bonk, and you got a Bo Diddley beat.” But it isn’t that easy. He played really simple things but with incredible authority. I first heard him on a Rolling Stones album, on their cover of “Mona.” It was such a great song; I looked at the credits and it said “Ellas McDaniel,” and I thought, “Who the hell is that?” But when I wanted to get into songwriting, he was the key for me. I didn’t have a lot of vocal range, and I didn’t know a lot of chords on the guitar. So I was looking for a way to write, and there he was, writing very complete, very memorable songs without a lot of fuss. They weren’t florid. He never bothered to change the chord, for one thing — which is very heavy-metal! It’s hypnotic. And, of course, there’s the attitude, a chin-up, chest-out sort of thing. He was a bull; he had a bullish quality to everything he did and everything he played. Vocally, he reminds me of gutbucket Delta blues: Muddy Waters, but brought to town, rocked up. And his voice is so damn loud. It’s just a huge voice, and he’s got a big, deep shout.

Bo Didley’s greatest hits playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2bfapHkoIx0vXWRwezVR4n?si=hmNP_2y0QOWrCktHRVD0ag&pi=OqucxHEqTlSQj

Then there’s the way he played the guitar. First of all, Bo’s hands were about a foot long from the wrist to the tip of the finger. He really controlled his guitar. Bo plays his instrument, and the way the rhythm clicks is unique. What seems to pass for guitar more and more now is some wimp with a fuzz box. Somewhere around Hendrix, the line was crossed. Hendrix had both: He had the hands, and he had the fuzz box. Now all they have is the fuzz box — a lot of them.

Bo Diddley had a huge impact on Sixties rock. The Stones covered Bo Diddley, and the Yardbirds did “I’m a Man,” and the Pretty Things did his song “Pretty Thing.” My band in high school, the Iguanas, did a few of his songs, including “Road Runner,” and you can hear a bit of him in the Stooges. You can be damn well sure that Jack White has studied Bo’s records.

I’ve had a little personal experience with Bo. I worked with him in Vegas once, and I kept running into him on airplanes in the Eighties and Nineties — always in first class, always alone, always with a roll bag, his police hat and his sheriff’s badge. I think Bo and Chuck Berry have both suffered the trivialization of people who are covered too much. His influence is everywhere, but his personal career could have used a boost. Some car or jeans company needs to put a track of his in a commercial so a lot of young dudes and dudettes can go, “Whoa — that’s rockin’!”

By Julian Casablancas, Lead singer for The Strokes which he formed as a teenager in 1998. Illustrator: Jose Jammet

When you listen to a classic-rock station today, why don’t they play the Velvet Underground? Why is it always Boston and Led Zeppelin? And why are the Rolling Stones so much more popular than the Velvets? OK, I understand why the Stones are more popular. But there is also a part of me that has always felt that it should have been the other way around. The Velvet Underground were way ahead of their time. And their music was weird. But it also made so much sense to me. I couldn’t believe this wasn’t the most popular music ever made.

Listening to those four studio albums now is like reading a good book that takes place in a distant time. When I hear The Velvet Underground and Nico or Loaded, I feel like I’m in Andy Warhol’s Factory in the 1960s or hanging out at Max’s Kansas City. The way Lou Reed wrote and sang about drugs and sex, about the people around him — it was so matter-of-fact. I believed every word of “Heroin.” Reed could be romantic in the way he portrayed these crazy situations, but he was also intensely real. It was poetry and journalism.

A lot of people associate the Velvets with feedback and noise. White Light/White Heat is the kind of record you have to be in the mood for. You have to be in a shitty bar, in a really shitty mood. But the Velvets created some very beautiful music, too: “Sunday Morning,” with John Cale’s viola; “Candy Says”; “All Tomorrow’s Parties” — I can’t imagine that song without Nico singing it, although I thought Maureen Tucker had a cool voice, as well as being a really cool drummer. She had a femininity. I thought she sounded hotter than Nico.

The Velvet Underground greatest hits playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4mWGeVlq9hWjMgyIkxGIgU?si=rlPNZs0cS9CUvIf_j-ksdw&pi=0upzOIdvSiK4X

In the beginning, the Strokes definitely drew from the vibe of the Velvets. I listened to Loadedall the time when we started the band, while I was writing my first songs. For four solid months, it was just Loaded and this Beach Boys greatest-hits record, Made in the U.S.A. A lot of our guitar tones are based on what Reed and Sterling Morrison did. I honestly wish we could have copied them more. We didn’t come close enough. But that was cool, because it became more of our own thing. Which is something else I got from the Velvets. They taught me just to be myself.

By Smokey Robinson Illustrator: Andrea Ventura

At Motown, Marvin was one of the main characters in the greatest musical story ever told. Prior to that, nothing quite like Motown had ever existed — all those songwriters, singers, producers working and growing together, part family, part business — and I doubt seriously if it will ever happen like that again. And there’s no question that Marvin will always be a huge part of the Motown legacy.

When Marvin first came to Motown, he was the drummer on all the early hits I had with the Miracles. He and I became close friends — he was my brother, really — and I did a lot of production and wrote a lot of songs for him: “Ain’t That Peculiar,” “I’ll Be Doggone.” Of course, that means that I spent a lot of time waiting for Marvin. See, Marvin was basically late coming to the studio all the time. But I never minded, because I knew that whenever Marvin did get there, he was going to sing my song in a way that I had never imagined it. He would Marvinize my songs, and I loved it. Marvin could sing anything, from gospel to gutbucket blues to jazz to pop.

Marvin Gaye’s greatest hits playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7jBkEtXp80vXneXV9B6ydq?si=fVFb4QX3Qa-4mmto1wjt1g&pi=E0kyzYHiTAi8j

But Marvin was much more than just a great singer. He was a great record maker, a gifted songwriter, a deep thinker — a real artist in the true sense. What’s Going On is the most profound musical statement in my lifetime. It never gets dated. I still remember when I would go by Marvin’s house and he was working on it, he would say, “Smoke, this album is being written by God, and I’m just the instrument that he’s writing it through.”

Marvin really had it all — that voice, that soul, that look, too. He was one very handsome man. He had sex appeal and his music was sexy. You couldn’t blame women for falling in love with Marvin.

I said before that when you worked with Marvin, it meant you were waiting for Marvin. But Marvin was always worth the wait. I suppose that in a way, I’m still waiting for Marvin.