Opposite it stood a bar carved out of thick German marble. The nervous hush was broken by the constant trickle of an indoor waterfall that stood on one side of the room. Bobbit, now in his late seventies, had dutifully served as Brown’s personal manager for almost four decades. The three men were joined by Charles Bobbit. They were Brown’s former chief arranger Fred Wesley, former collaborator and Sex Machine co-vocalist Bobby Byrd and producer Derrick Monk. One sunny morning in February 2005 three musicians waited quietly in James Brown’s atrium. “He came into my office the next day and said, ‘I’ve had an idea! Let’s try doing it the old way!’”Īnd so a meeting was set.
“Of course, that became ‘his idea’,” he chuckles. I said he should go back to the old way of doing it - just go into the studio with his band and record it live to tape. “His music should never have been recorded that way. “James Brown wasn’t made for software like Pro-Tools,” sighs Copsidas. Was another one, Brown’s manager wondered, really what James Brown’s legacy needed? Copsidas would only finance the album, he told Brown, if he went into the studio with his band and recorded it old school. The result had been a series of critical and commercial failures. Brown’s last few albums, recorded with gospel singer Derrick Monk, had seen him move towards a more digitised sound, almost entirely scrapping the ‘live in the studio’ ethos that had made his name. It was time for a new album, Brown decided, so he pitched the idea to his manager Frank ‘SuperFrank’ Copsidas.īut Copsidas was unconvinced. The star was feeling rejuvenated after a number of recent collaborations with younger artists including Will Young and Black Eyed Peas producer Will.I.Am. Diagnosed with cancer in late 2004, the Godfather of Soul had successful staved off the disease and looked and felt younger and lither than he had in a decade. In February 2005 James Brown was restless.
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