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‘James Brown kept cutting our stage time’ – how the Stylistics made You Make Me Feel Brand New
‘The first time we opened for James Brown, we got 20 minutes on stage. Then when he heard the crowd response, he cut it to 15. By the end of the tour, he’d cut us back to five’
Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWhen Linda first sang the melody to You Make Me Feel Brand New, I thought: “Wow, that’s a nice-sounding song.” I used to ask her: “What have you gone through to come up with these words?” They were simple lyrics but everyone could relate to them. We did a tour opening for James Brown, and in the US south we saw the remnants of segregation – they’d painted over the separate signs on bathrooms for black and white people, but you could see them beneath. By the time a song reached us, Thom had everything in his mind and would play the piano, creating the recordings with the musicians called MFSB – Mother Father Sister Brother.
Or read this on The Guardian
