E159: Vernon Gibbs on Marvin Gaye + Talking Heads + A&R at Arista

Rock's Backpages

In this episode we're delighted to invite Vernon Gibbs to look back on his career as a pioneering soul scribe and A&R man.

Vernon begins by describing his early years as a scholarship student who took the G train from Brooklyn to school on Manhattan's Upper East Side — and his formative years at NYC's Columbia University. He describes how he fell in with the counterculture and began writing about music for the Columbia Daily Spectator. A discussion follows of pieces he wrote about the death of Jimi Hendrix and — later, for NME — the decline of Sly Stone. He also talks about contributing to Crawdaddy! and other rock publications in the mid-'70s.

The 50th anniversary of Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On gives Vernon's hosts a chance to ask about the 1974 interview he did with the Motown superstar for Zoo World. He then explains how he was hired for A&R positions at Mercury and — more notably — Clive Davis' Arista label, where he worked with P-Funk offshoot Quazar and 'Disco Nights' hitmakers GQ.

Vernon's return to music journalism takes us into a discussion of the downtown New York punk scene and a 1983 Creem interview in which Richard Hell defines "the blank generation". This in turn leads to clips from Jim Sullivan's 1996 audio interview with Talking Heads' Tina Weymouth — and Vernon's thoughts on that most un-punk of CBGB bands — in the week when Jonathan Demme's concert documentary Stop Making Sense is given well-deserved a cinematic re-release.

After Mark quotes from archive interviews with Philly International legend Kenny Gamble (1976), L.A. bete noire Kim Fowley (1979) and smoooooth jazz man Kenny G (1988), Jasper rounds off the episode with his thoughts on Lloyd Bradley's celebration of London's Harlesden scene (2001), Def Jam rapper Ludacris (2005) and "jazz-rock" trio the Bad Plus (2013).

Many thanks to special guest Vernon Gibbs.

Pieces discussed: Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, Let's Get It On, Richard Hell, Talking Heads' Tina Weymouth audio, Gamble & Huff, Kenny G, Kim Fowley, Do the Harlesden Shuffle, Ludacris and The Bad Plus.