Time Lord: An interview with Jellybean Johnson
On Purple Rain's 40th anniversary, The Time's drummer recalls the toughest programmed beats he ever played, his fave drum machines, and whether The Time's legendary original lineup will ever reform.
It was 40 years ago this summer that Purple Rain played to sold-out movie theaters across America. If you weren’t there, it’s hard to overstate what a big deal that film was. Maybe not a Star Wars-level big deal, to be sure: its appeal was more narrow. But if you were a pop music fan, you may recall that summer as a battle between two titans: The Boss and the Prince. And if you went to see Purple Rain—especially if you were one of the people who jumped to your feet and danced next to your seat during the tightly choreographed musical numbers—then you knew that no matter what anyone said, 1984 was really Prince’s summer and no one else’s.
Unless, of course, you were one of the Purple Rain fans who loved Prince—but loved The Time even more. The seven-piece R&B group from Minneapolis might have been a Prince creation—he wrote a lot of their material, and even played much of it on their albums—but as a live entity, they were their own men, and were absolutely electrifying. From the gigolo preen of Morris Day and the attentions of his faithful, mirror-carrying valet, Jerome Benton, to the hard rock theaterics of guitarist Jesse Johnson, you couldn’t take your eyes off the flashily dressed Time.
Purple Rain, in fact, was only a lightly fictionalized version of the rivalry between the group and Prince, which had erupted during their tours in the early 1980s. In Purple Rain, “The Kid” might have walked away with the girl and the final word in the film. But anyone who saw The Time perform “Jungle Love” and “The Bird” might have had different ideas about the true winner of this competition.
So when the opportunity came to speak to The Time’s drummer, Garry George “Jellybean” Johnson, for my book Dancing to the Drum Machine, it was an opportunity I’d been looking forward to since that purple summer of ’84. And of course, one of my questions was whether The Time’s original lineup—which includes successful producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and has reconvened occasionally over the decades—might ever work together again.
In reply, Johnson was frank: “It doesn’t seem likely.”
“It's kinda hard, bruh. You know, my wife gives me a lot of hassle all the time about how much we fight. We still fight. We're 64 or 65 years old,” he said with a laugh.
“A lot of it is, some of us are rich. Some of us are not. There's discrepancies money-wise and all that,” added Johnson. “And there's a lot of powers that be, and a lot of us feel wronged. Some of us don’t."
That wasn’t the answer I was hoping to hear, of course. But during the rest of our 2021 conversation, Johnson opened up about a number of other topics, including Prince’s three most difficult drum machine patterns to play; Johnson’s favorite drum machines; and the challenges and rewards of working with His Purple Badness.
I have to begin by saying that this is a special interview for me, because The Time—that was my band. I was probably the only guy in the theater watching Purple Rain who was rooting for The Time instead of Prince.
(Laughs) Thank you, my brother.
So the first thing that I've been asking everybody—and some people remember this and some don’t—do you remember the first time that you ever heard a drum machine, whether it was on a record, in a music shop, part of somebody's home organ setup?
Oh, wow, man. I wanna say—oh, God. It had to have been Prince, wasn't it?
Well, you know, no. I take that back, because I remember hearing Graham Central Station. I know Larry Graham used to use that kind of stuff on some of the songs in the Graham Central Station record. That strikes in my mind more because of the Sly connection.
So that probably was it—probably Sly. If not Larry, then “Family Affair,” that kind of stuff. That's when I first realized that wasn't a real drummer.
Do you remember the first time that you encountered a drum machine for real?
First time I saw one, man, is probably my Prince days. You know, he used it a lot. If he didn't play drums, that's what he did. And then when I joined Flyte Tyme as a producer, of course, everything was drum machine-orientated. So I had to learn how to get my way around them.
So to talk about that for a second—I think when people hear Prince, they think about the Linn (LM-1).
Yeah. The Linn. That's his thing.
What about in Flyte Tyme? What was the machine there that you were responsible for?
Well, that was the thing about Flyte Tyme. It was equal opportunity, bruh, because we had the Linn, the Roland 808. We had the Oberheim [DMX]. Remember the Oberheim drum machine?
And I did a lot of my productions, the Jellybean Johnson productions—I did a lot of them on a[n EMU] SP-1200. You remember those?
Yep.
And I liked it because being a drummer, I could hook up a pad to it and do fills with sticks. And that's what was so cool about it. So I tended to gravitate toward it more than [the Linn]. After that, everything was an SP-1200 for me.
So in those early days—and we're talking, like, late Seventies, early Eighties—everybody didn't look at drum machines the same way. There's some people who definitely embraced them. And then there were other people—drummers in particular—who said, “Look, it's a toy.”
Yeah.
Or “It's out to take my job.”
Yeah. And so I kinda went through that too. You know?
So what was it, then, that turned you around and made you see the other side of it?
Well, what turned me around—I knew if I wanted to get into production, to add another layer to my musicianship, that I had to embrace the drum machine. And if you know a lot of the Time songs, man, you know that Prince, back in the early days, did a lot of our songs on drum machine.
So I had to learn all those crazy-ass drum machine beats. So that also made me have a new respect for them, because some of that stuff is not humanly possible. You're not supposed to [be able to play it]. So all I would do is get a facsimile, as close [as possible], and go with that.
And you know that beats like “777-9311,” and all that kind of stuff, those are drum machine-driven songs. And those beats are not easy beats to play. So I had to learn that. So in a lot of ways, it helped my chops as a regular drummer, because I knew live…I was gonna be the drum machine, basically. I was gonna be the drummer.
And also, later on in my career, with me being old school—I’ve been my own click track for 30, 40 years. So anytime I encountered…the guys in The Time always trusted me, as far as tempos and all that kind of stuff.
But there were a few times, like when I played the Grammys—we played the Grammys a handful of times. Well, I remember one time back in ’08, man, I played the Grammys, and Rihanna was on there with [The Time]. And she was just getting huge, and she had that “Umbrella” song and all that shit. And she had dancers, and she was doing this thing with us, and it was gonna be part Minneapolis, part her. She's gonna be integrated with us—which means with me being the only drummer, I had to play to a click track.
And bruh, I struggled. I'm not gonna lie. I called every hotshot drummer, young drummers that I know, all my top drum friends. I mean, how do y'all do this? Because some guys, especially studio guys, they learn how to do that. Just deal with click tracks and all that kind of stuff. And I didn’t. I never had to really do that. So it was a struggle.
I got through it. If you go back and watch that performance, it came off flawless, but, man, that week of practice was hell. (Laughs) I’m not gonna lie.
It's a funny thing to hear you say that, because as you said, a lot of the Time stuff, it was programmed. And so you had to learn how to do this onstage.
Yeah.
And you mentioned “777-9311.” That’s a song, when you talk about drum programming, that everybody talks about.
So actually, I talked, a couple weeks ago, to (Tower of Power drummer) David Garabaldi. Because a lot of people swear that he programmed that beat. And he told me he didn't remember any of it.
That's how brilliant David is, though, man. Because think about it—listen to some of them early drum beats that he played on the drum set with Tower of Power. Look at “Squib Cakes,” and some of the iconic drum beats that he's played throughout his career, man. And all he did was put them on drum machine.
He probably just—I’m sure Linn approached him when they were doing—when they were designing the drum machine, because he's a world class [drummer], especially for R&B. He was one of the main guys. So he just put his personality in it, and “777” is a prime example of David's personality, a difficult beat. But he made it danceable. That’s the thing I loved about David.
And I told him that me and Morris Day grew up idolizing him. So the thing about David is you could dance to his beat. That's the thing. I mean, it'd be funky, it'd be complicated, but you could dance to it, you know? The entire Tower of Power record.
(Editor’s note: The full story of where the iconic beat of “777-9311” came from is long, complicated, and it turns out that David Garibaldi was right: he didn’t actually program that beat, although he did have a strong influence on it. To find out who was really responsible, read my piece for Reverb here.)
So put us in the scene: the time that you first hear “777-9311” and also realize, “I’m gonna have to play this.”
It's out there in the universe, bruh. I told it a few times. But I’ll never forget.
We're in rehearsal for the 1999 tour. Prince rented the convention center [in] downtown [Minneapolis]. We were rehearsing, and we was gonna be the opening act once again. Well, we were in the middle. It was Vanity 6 first, even though we're playing for them, but [The Time] was in the middle.
So I'll never forget: me, Prince, and Morris, we sat down at the drum set, bruh. We sat down and put our minds together, and we say, “How [are we] gonna play this hard-ass beat and have these guys dancing?” Because The Time was also dancing and all that shit. How can we have guys dance and have me not hiccupping the beat throughout this in concert?
So between the three of us, we sat there. And Prince took a a round and showed us how he thought I should play it. Then Morris tried it. And then I finally tried. And between the three of us, we finally came up with something that worked for us in concert.
And so with us rehearsing eight hours a day, it's beaming into my head every damn day. And Prince—he was a slave driver back in those days. We got it, too. You know, if you go back and look some of them early concerts—in concert, the guys, we had it down. The guys were dancing to it, and they got used to it.
And it wasn't quite like the drum machine, but it was close enough for us to get away with it. I always say I R&B’ed it. That's what I call it. I R&B’ed the hell outta that—I still, to this day, when I play, I R&B the hell out of it. (Laughs)
I don't try to get it perfect. Trust me: there’s tons of world class drummers I've seen. They hit it, nail it pretty damn close. I never tried to get that close. I tried to get it the Jellybean way. It worked. It fooled a lot of people. I've heard people say, “Man, nobody can play like Jelly.” There's people who can play it better than me, but…at least I fooled you into thinking I did, you know? (Laughs) There you go.
That's gotta be the most difficult programmed beat that you had to replicate. What’s the second toughest?
There's two others, Prince-driven drum machine beats. And I purposely, when I did my own productions, I tried not to make them too crazy like that. But sometimes you get that itch from being around him and growing up with him.
But the other two for me—one was “Jerk Out.” “Jerk Out” is kinda hard. But I learned that. And when I was in The Family, “Screams of Passion.”
Wow. I wasn’t expecting that one.
“Screams of Passion” was, yeah. That’s a funky-ass beat. But I see drummers stumble on it all the time. Because you gotta watch what the hell you're doing for it to feel right.
And if you listen to it, that's David Garibaldi. You know, them hi-hat licks and shit. That's David Garibaldi.
“Jerk Out” seems like it's definitely a second cousin of “777-9311.”
Yeah. It is. It’s funky. When this all comes together, it's funky.
But you just—trust me, I've seen my share of drummers hiccup on them, man, live bands and local bands, and they'd be struggling. I'd be, like, kinda snickering. (Laughs)
This is a little bit of a tangent, but I'm curious: I also talked not that long ago to to David Z and was asking about how “Jerk Out” started. I think it was a Mazarati song?
Yeah. It was Mazarati first.
So did you play on any of the early versions of that, or did you not get to it until it actually ended up as a Time track?
Not till it actually was a Time [song]. That's something Prince had done, man. And Mazarati was [Prince bassist] Brownmark's project. And so of course, Prince wanted to get his hands on it. So “Jerk Out” was one of them. Then the other one was “100 MPH.” That's another one that you remember.
Yeah.
And he threw [Brownmark] a couple carrots and stuff. But just like “Jerk Out,” he likes snatching. Prince’d do that. He gave you something. And then if he liked it, he'd snatch it back. (Laughs) So he snatched “Jerk Out” back and gave it to us.
You know, that's just like “Kiss.” Some of the guys in Mazarati wrote “Kiss.” And they gave it to Prince. And Prince turned it into a Grammy-winning song.
You were talking about playing live a minute ago. And part of this book is—it’s mostly drum machines, but a related thing is the electronic percussion element of it.
Yeah.
I know, in talking to other people, that [Prince’s drummer] Bobby Z was was using a Synare or a Sydrum onstage.
Yeah. The first year, Bobby was regular drums. Next year, Prince had him on accents and drum machine. (Laughs)
So were you using that stuff too?
No. Never! We made it a fact that we wanted to be as ghetto as hell, as street as hell. And so we wasn't about to go to the drum machine route. And plus, I was happy with that because I didn't wanna have to—in hindsight, I might have got better at stayin’ with a drum machine and all that, but we didn't wanna do that.
We wanted to be as as organic as we possibly could, and that's why we kept it like that. I just played the beats. Whatever drum machine beat our record had on it, I had to play it live. So we're doing—still do, to this day.
As it starts to get to the middle of the Eighties, the standalone drum machine—those machines that you were talking about earlier—a lot of that stuff starts to get swallowed up by the sampler. The SP-1200 is, I guess, an example of that. And then at some point they kind of disappear entirely because things go to the all-in-one workstation, and then computer recording.
Yeah.
You worked on a lot of records, especially in the later half of the Eighties. What's the last standalone drum machine—Linn, Roland, DMX—that you remember working with?
Damn. Man. It might have been something for Alexander O'Neal. I did a song called “Criticize” with him, but, in, like, ’90, ’91, I did a song called “Used” on his All True Man album. And that was the SP-1200, and me putting fills in there, and all that. But I like I said, it it felt more like me playing personally, and that's what I liked about it.
You know, my other stuff—“Black Cat” was a Linn machine. Nona Hendryx, “Why Should I Cry that I did? That was a Linn.
So I was gonna ask about the Janet Jackson stuff, because that's clearly right in the middle of this drum machine period. So “Black Cat” was a Linn?
That’s a Linn drum machine. I actually used real drums (Editor’s note: cymbals and toms). The next album, that song “What’ll I Do,” I used Stokley Williams to play real drums. But “Black Cat” was a Linn drum machine. Just a basic beat. And I put stops in there. It’s so guitar-oriented, the beat—it didn't taper. If you listen, I’m not doin’ a lot of rolls. It’s just straightforward because it's guitar-based.
And so you're running the drum machine, I'm assuming, through a lot of reverb to get the live sound.
Yeah. Yeah. Make it huge. Make it sound like Tommy Aldridge. (Editor’s note: the former Black Oak Arkansas drummer, who played with Ozzy Osbourne and Whitesnake during the Eighties.) The big rock drummers. That's what I was trying to sound like.
Obviously, there's other stuff on [Rhythm Nation 1814] that is clearly drum machine. It's mostly Jimmy. Jimmy Jam went down in history as one of the all-time greatest drum machine players. He had a special way—him and Prince had special ways with drums. I don't know it's because they were keyboard players, and how they can manipulate their fingers and stuff. But they were great at manipulating the drum machine and getting it to do stuff.
Hell, I couldn't do that. I can do it with sticks, but not with my fingers like that. And they'd make the drum machine do some crazy stuff, Prince and Jimmy Jam. They were iconic with drum machines. They really were. A lot of 808 with Jimmy Jam, too.
Is the 808 on the Janet record too?
There might be. Not so much the Janet record. Mostly the 808 was, like, the SOS band and stuff like that. Janet’s more the Linn.
I don't even remember the Oberheim drum machine being on too much of Janet’s stuff. That was, like, Alexander O'Neal, Cherelle, people like that.
It sounds like the SP-1200 became, at some point, your go-to machine.
Yeah, that was my go-to.
Out of those other machines—the Linn, the Roland, the DMX, at least in the first half of the Eighties—most records you heard had one of those on it. So out of those three, if you had to pick one, which one would it be?
Probably the Linn.
Why?
Because, I mean, by this time, I’d heard so many hit records with that machine on it. So it kinda drilled into my brain at that point. You know?
And this is before I knew about the SP-1200. I kinda knew about the Oberheim, but the Linn, like I said, that's my Prince connection. You had “1999” and “Erotic City”—all these different iconic songs he had out. So it was kinda beaten into my brain, bruh. So I had to learn to to accept it and adapt to it.
So I have to ask this question, because one of the people that I talked to was Susan Rogers—
Oh, yeah.
—who worked with Prince. And she talked about that drum machine, and about her first day on the job. Jesse [Johnson], I guess, was there. And she said the guys from The Time kinda showed her around the studio.
But I‘m curious: did anybody else ever get to go into the studio and use that machine?
Bruh, I doubt it. I doubt it. Prince didn’t play, man. (Laughs) You know? First off, it's just gonna be hard for you to even use it because his ass never slept. (Laughs) So he can be in there for 48 hours.
So if I'm getting to use it…you better jump in [at] that little point where he’s taking a little break to go sleep or do somethin’. That would be the only time it'd be. And by that time, Susan would be trying to get some damn sleep too. (Laughs)
To go back to the SP-1200: that machine is where sampling really starts seriously for a lot of users. So as a drummer, are you using that capacity? Like, are you recording yourself playing?
The game's changed now. So, yeah, we've done all that kind of stuff in recent in recent years.
Did you do it back in the early days of the SP-1200, though?
You know, maybe I wasn't quite hip enough yet or something. I didn't realize the capacity that the 1200 had. I just know I liked it.
Like I said, I could play my rolls and it would play them back to me the right way, the way I imagined them. But I didn't really get into the sampling capabilities till later on. I knew that it could do that, but I didn't use them in much on my productions.
I have to ask about that Family record (Editor’s note: the group’s self-titled debut from 1985, which includes the songs “Screams of Passion” and “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which later became a huge hit for Sinead O’Connor.) That's a record I wore out.
That was just a classic, man. It's hard to find too, you know?
So is most of that stuff live drumming? Are you playing over programming?
Let me see…”High Fashion,” “Mutiny”'s live drumming. And I remember, I pressured Prince because I wanted to play on it. But he just couldn’t help himself.. So I ended up playing, like, electronic claps right along with him, 2 and 4 right along with him.
But, those—I know those two are real drums. I'm trying to think of anything else.
Oh. Some of the instrumentals he did with Eric (Leeds) is [Prince] playing the drums. Because they were doing Madhouse (Editor’s note: Prince’s instrumental jazz project with saxophonist Eric Leeds, who also played in The Family) at the same time. So a lot of the Madhouse stuff was Prince just going off on the drums by himself and putting stuff around it.
I know “Screams” is drum machine. That's a Linn drum machine. “Desire.” You know, Prince is great at those little exotic drum machine-driven beats.
I'm still a really big fan of The Time album Pandemonium. What's the balance of programmed versus live drums on that one?
Well, the thing about Pandemonium, there's only one song on there, and that's the ballad, “Sometimes I Get Lonely,” that I play on Flyte Tyme’s Yamaha drum set. Me and (keyboardist) Monte Moir. It’s just me and Monte—piano and drums there. It sounds like Philly International. It really does.
Everything else is Jimmy Jam, man. That's the brilliance of Jimmy Jam. And Jesse [Johnson]. Jesse did the rock songs. So, like, “Blondie” and the other rock song, “Skillet.” That's Jesse.
And you know, Jesse is like me. I know he did a lot of his stuff with the Linn, but he might've used something else too, back then. Because he's guitar-orientated like me, too.
By the time you guys reunite for the Original 7ven project in 2011, clearly a lot of the drums are programmed—
See, by this time now, we're into—we’ve all had hit records on our own stuff. So you got the whole gamut on [that album].
Even though that record didn't do nothing. But there's a lot of cool shit going on on there, man. We had Pro Tools, and we had the sampling that you're talking about. And I'm sure there's some Linn drum machine stuff, everything.
And once again, there's only one real drum track on there, and that's the ballad (“Gohometoyoman”), at the end. That's me playing, and Monte again.
It's an amazing record. And I know when it came out—
Well, the problem with it, [Prince] dogged us with that. Because it should have been a Time record.
Nobody know what the hell the Original 7ven was. They knew when they seen us. (Laughs) But it should have been a Time record. And this is like the fact that F Deluxe should have been a Family record, right?
And both of those records came out at just about the same time in 2011.
The same time. Yep. He put the kibosh on both of us with that, you know? I always tell people—I joke about it. I say, yeah, Prince effed up two bands I was in. Imagine that. (Laughs) He got me twice.
I don't know if he did it on purpose, but he got me twice, man. Trust me.
I'm just curious: do you still have a 1200 around? Any other drum machines?
I don't, bruh. I don't. I'm 64 years old and I downsized. I had a house for 30 years, and I had the big Dennis Chambers drum set up. I had drum machines, all that shit.
And then I moved here, like, the last seven years, I've downsized. I'm in a townhouse by myself. It's just me, my clothes, and my guitars and stuff. And there's a little electronic drum set downstairs that I never play. (Laughs)
Every time I go do drums now—like, my friend, the guitar player in The Time now, the current guitar player, Tori Ruffin. Me and my wife went down and stayed one New Year's at his house. He has a house in Tulsa. And I played some real drums on his record, man (Editor’s note: Ruffin’s band is called Freak Juice).
He had a cool little drum set in his bedroom, man. And I played his drum set. And when I heard it on the record—it’s a song called “Cookies n Cream,” man. And I do a guitar solo and I play the drums throughout it.
And they sound great, man. Shows you how far technology's getting. Because you couldn't have got away with that back in the day. You know that. You had to be in the studio, mic'd up.
So it's all good. But that's the whole thing. Like, you know, in F Deluxe, when we're in concert, I only play, like, two songs. If I get even get a chance to do that most of the time.
I will go back and play drums, like, on, “High Fashion” and “Mutiny,” or something like that. But mostly I'm on guitar. And that's a whole new world for me, too, because you're on Pro Tools. It's a whole different thing. I didn't have that luxury coming up.
That's actually a thing that I wanted to ask about. You talk to younger guys, and often they’ll say, “Man, l love these old drum machines.” Or they’ll say, “I'd love to record to tape.” And then you talk to older guys who lived through all this, who aren’t really nostalgic about those kinds of experiences. So I’m curious: what’s what's your biggest nightmare experience that you had in the studio?
There's a few, man. I can't remember them, per se. I remember doing doing a few tricks and stuff back in the day, though.
Like, especially, I used to do more guitar tricks than anything. You know, like backwards guitar [where] you flip the tape over and reverse it, all that stuff. Reverse drums—I had that going. And it's so easy to generate that stuff now. But back then, you had to literally do things like turn the tape over and slow the tape down, you know—speed up your solos. I'd slow them way down and then put it back regular speed, and then you got this crazy-ass guitar solo going.
Yeah. I don't miss those days, but it it was fun.
So kind of a related thing: some people will say, “Look, nothing sounds like the standalone drum machines and nothing feels like them. Like you were talking about—playing with your fingers. Some people even say, “Hey, the old machines, they kept better time than computers.”
And I've heard that. But, you know, the older guys, the old school guys, really believe that. They really believe that.
You don't sound like you believe it. (Laughs)
I don’t, yeah. I can't tell the difference, bruh. I can't. You know? And I'm from back in that era too. I can't.
I mean, it ain't that much stuff I like these days. But, you know, the stuff that I hear is on point. It sounds cool. So at the end of the day, that's all you want. And that's true, like, with the plug-in stuff. See?
Yeah. I’ve had people tell me, “Nothing sounds like a Linn. Nothing sounds like an 808.” And then on the other side, some people have said, “If there's a difference, I can't hear the difference.”
Yeah. And I'm one of those guys. I'm one of the ones, I can't hear the difference. (Laughs) Now I'm sure there probably is. You know, don't get me wrong. There probably is, but I can't hear the difference.
And I'm gonna tell you right now, the consumer ain't gonna hear the difference, either. As long as they like it or they love it, they don't give a shit. We're the ones that create it, we know, and that messes with us. But the consumer don't care, man, as long as it's right.
I probably wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't ask this. I don't want to get into any sensitive areas, and there might be sensitive areas here. But what are the chances for a Time-slash-Original 7 reunion?
It's kinda hard, bruh. You know, my wife gives me a lot of hassle all the time about how much we fight. We still fight. We're 64 or 65 years old. (Laughs)
A lot of it is, some of us are rich. Some of us are not. You know, there's discrepancies money-wise and all that. And there's a lot of powers that be, and a lot of us feel wronged. Some of us don't.
And then you add all the strife that's going on in the world right now, bruh, with what's going on and COVID killing us. It's a lot going on right now, man. I've lost so many musician friends this year, for instance. It's just sad.
So I'm never gonna say never, but it doesn't seem likely. But, you know, who knows?
Well, that’s not what I was hoping to hear, I admit, but thanks for answering the question.
And I will say this: every time—and there's been a handful of times over the years that the original band's gotten together—the minute we get together and we play, you can hear that these guys, you know, have a history. You can just hear the automatic tightness that just falls in right away. And that comes from 30, 40 years of knowing each other and being around each other and knowing how we play and all that. So that's cool.
But at the end of the day, there's only a handful of times [we’ve done] that, you know. And at the height of our powers, those first two years, that's when we were really—I go back on YouTube and see us in concert, and I’m like, damn. We was serious.
It inspired a whole lot of folks. Drummers especially, I would think.
There's a whole ton of them here, man. We're blessed here in Minnesota, especially, drumming-wise. Kirk Johnson. You know, he was one of Prince’s drummers. And Michael Bland, too. That's the big beat there, bruh. That's my musical son. You know? He's a world class drummer, musician.
Stokley Williams (Editor’s note: the singer and drummer in the R&B band Mint Condition), he plays everything. I have a whole host of badass drummers here, man. They call me Uncle Bean, you know. (Laughs)
They're just ridiculous. Mario Dawson. There's Jay Corcoran. There's Erick Ballard. There’s Eric Johnson.
But Kirk, especially…he had to program drum machines and all that shit when he was with Prince. Remember, Kirk was a dancer first. He was one of his dancers first, and then he went back.
Kirk is always taking a lot of heat, but Kirk can really play. You know, the Prince fans don't particularly like him, but he's unique in his skillset. Trust me. John Blackwell, too. (Editor’s note: another former Prince drummer, who also played with R&B singer D’Angelo. Blackwell died in 2017 of a brain tumor, at age 43.) God bless, you know, rest in peace. But John was brilliant too, man. Oh my God. What a brilliant drummer.
Well, look, I really wanna thank you for your time, for taking all these questions—but most of all for the music.
That’s what it is at the end of the day, bruh. It's all about the music. That's all we got right now, especially with the times we live in right now, man.
And our Lord knows, if I didn't have music, I wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be even talking to me. You know?
Tune in for more exclusive interviews about drum machines and electronic percussion, coming soon! Meanwhile, follow me on Twitter (@danleroy) and Instagram (@danleroysbonusbeats), and check out my website: danleroy.com. And be sure to visit the official Jellybean Johnson site, too! (Also, check out Time singer Morris Day’s website for tour dates from the current version of The Time.)
Dancing to the Drum Machine is available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle/eBook from Bloomsbury, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers.