Get ya back up off the wall, ’cos here’s a freaky fun fact on 45.
Before they descended into total slush muppets with mid-eighties bore ballads like Joanna and Cherish, America’s Kool And The Gang were a jazz funky sub-Sly And The Family Stone family affair who released their first album in July 1969, one week after I was born, though more notably the actual day the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones met a watery end at the bottom of a swimming pool.
The New Jerseyans had to wait another decade until they made their presence felt on the British charts, though; transitioning from the disco dumper into the ’80s with the addition of slightly handsome Carolinian vocalist James ‘J.T.’ Warren Taylor. Happily, this led to a string of hits — huzzah! — and even an impromptu appearance on Bob Geldof’s original Band Aid record. Celebration time, indeed.
While the group’s perennial ear-worms have soundtracked weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other pop paaaaarties for decades, there is one 45 that is memorable more than most, though for more reasons than you might shake a stick at.
Released at the tail end of 1981, Get Down On It became the band’s biggest success across the pond to date, a melodic mantra that ploughed its way to No. 3, bringing up the rear behind The Land Of Make Believe and Don’t You Want Me while nudging the soon-to-implode ABBA and Adam And Ants on their way to oblivion.
A strange and still surprising claim to fame, but two 12 year-old boys at a school in Buckinghamshire were responsible for inventing the naughty-silly version of the song’s already slightly nursery rhymey chanty chorus. An oral reimagining which — rather inexplicably in the pre-internet age — went viral and soon a panoply of jocular juveniles from John o’ Groats to Land’s “End” were united in reciting this tasty tunette:
“Get down on it
Suck my helmet
Please don’t bite it
Just excite it”
Ooh La, La, La. Get this, because, I kid you not, but one of those lyrical bastardisers is the author of the piece you’re reading. Though, in the interests of égalité, I feel obliged to hand over to a more famous writer who’s just turned 71: Pet Shop Boys frontman Neil Tennant, who interviewed the Gang in his first full year as a journalist on Smash Hits, for the zany pop mag’s 100th issue. It is indeed a celebration.
Smash Hits, September 30 – October 13, 1982
KOOL AND THE GANG
Eighteen years on the dance floor with Neil Tennant.
If you’d nipped into your local trendy disco round about 1974 (no doubt wearing very flared trousers and bright platform-soled shoes) chances are you’d have found yourself doing The Bump to the latest Kool And The Gang dance hit. In those days the chunky, horn-powered sound of songs like “Jungle Boogie” and “Funky Stuff” guaranteed a crowded dancefloor. And in America Kool And The Gang scored several hit singles and albums in the days when “funk” was a dirty word.
“At one time when you said ‘funk’,” explains vocalist James “J.T.” Taylor, “if you said that to someone, you might have to fight. They’d take it as an insult, a threat. You couldn’t say it on the radio.” But Kool And The Gang helped to take the trouble out of funk.
As the 70s went on, public reaction to their funky stuff became rather more muted. They had a song on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack but their own record sales were down.
Robert “Kool” Bell admits: “There was a down period right after our “Open Sesame” album in 1977-78, an all-time low. The types of songs we put out in that period were concepts that might have been a little progressive for what was happening in the marketplace right then.”
Kool And The Gang have a basic core of six musicians who have been playing together since they were called The Jazziacs in 1964. In 1979 they decided to bring in some new blood. Famed producer/arranger Eumir Deodato was plonked behind the recording console and a mutual friend arranged for a young Jersey City singer, James “J.T.” Taylor to audition. A week later he was performing with them in concert.
“That’s when I started getting a little nervous,” admits J.T., “because that was the big league.“
“His voice was like an instrument,” says Kool. “He had the two sides: he could understand where we were coming from musically as well as the vocals, which made the difference.”
J.T.’s flashing good looks and automatic dance sense haven’t done the band much harm either. The album, “Ladies Night”, was the first product of the new, smoother, more vocal, but still danceable Kool And The Gang. It sold over a million copies. So did its successor, “Celebrate!” which included the single, “Celebration”, a song J.T. speaks of with pride.
“It was number one throughout the world and it was used in such different ways. When the hostages were returned from Iran, when they landed here, they played “Celebration” as a welcome, you know. It’s like a part of history.”
Last year’s “Something Special” album was yet another million-seller, including a batch of hit singles like “Steppin’ Out” and “Get Down On It”. “As One”, a new album, has just been released: as the million-sellers mount up, so must the pressure.
“From album to album, people are expecting much more of us,” says Kool. “The pressure builds but I would say it’s a helpful pressure because it makes as work harder.”
Kool And The Gang have the knack, like veterans as dissimilar as David Bowie and Cliff Richard, of constantly changing, both from within the band and by reacting to current musical trends. Kool and J.T. have, for instance, heard some of the new British funk, mentioning Light Of The World, Central Line and Junior.
“It’s not exactly what we’re playing, but it’s good to hear it because that’s what’s going on,” says J.T.. He also expressed the hope that he might meet The Human League when Kool And The Gang visit Britain this month.
“We just try to stay aware of what’s going on around us,” says Kool. Having achieved worldwide success after a low period means that Kool And The Gang have a very balanced attitude to music, business, their personal lives and the outside world. They’re a close unit and that’s important.
“We have a fondness for each other,” says J.T., “which doesn’t have to be taught. You don’t have to teach me to reach out for another individual, that’s something very natural, and if we can bring more people into it with our music, so be it.”
Kool describes them as “humanitarian— in terms of helping people” they help charities all over the world) and says their basic inspiration is “life”. He certainly seems to take life seriously, talking like a friendly mixture of musician, philosopher and businessman while munching a barbequed pork sandwich.
“I call this The Second Time Around or maybe The Second Resurrection — a lot of mistakes you made in the first round, you look out for. We have a little more insight of what should be happening around as and what it takes to go to the top and then be consistent and remain there.
“It gives as the opportunity to really build something that will be around when we’ve passed and gone.”
© Neil Tennant, 1982
Edited by Steve Pafford
