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Emilio Castillo, seated second from left, founded Tower of Power in the late ’60s in the Bay Area.
Photo courtesy Tower of Power |
It’s the late ’60s.
From Emilio Castillo’s home in Oakland, the activities in San Francisco, a virtual stone’s throw away, seem foreign. The bay in between might as well be an ocean separating two countries.
In Golden Gate Park, Jefferson Airplane sings about a fluffy white rabbit to an audience intoxicated by marijuana and the prospect of free love, of dropping out and joining the have-nots.
Just over the bridge, the have-nots are already hip to the benefits of some righteous smoke and a vigorous roll in the hay. However, this stuff about dropping out of what you had never been dropped into didn’t quite jive.
For Castillo, destined to become one of the founding members of the now legendary Tower of Power, the whimsy of counter-culture music struck neither a chord nor a beat.
“The hippies and the flower power movement: I remember driving over with my parents from the East Bay to watch them… that was something... not a part of my lifestyle,” he says. “I grew up in Detroit until I was 11. My dad was a bartender and they played stuff like Ink Spots and Dinah Washington. Soul music was all we wanted to know.”
And that was what they created, the Tower of Power, their name no idle boast, spitting a fiery funk and thawing urges so deep and dormant (at least in the suburbs) that the evangelicals longed for the tame days of Elvis’ grinding hips.
Now, as then, Castillo, a cherubic, pony-tailed white guy at the creative core of some of the best inner-city tunes in the last half century, belies the image that comes with the distinctive ethnic bent of Tower’s sound. In a blind taste test even the so-called connoisseurs couldn’t tell the difference — at least the ones on the East Coast.
In 1974, when their ballad “You’re Still a Young Man” swept inner-city radio stations, a popular African American club in Roxbury, the Harlem of Boston, booked them for an appearance. When the promoters found the band was mostly white (it’s always had a brother or two), the gig was canceled, but the sanction remained.
While groups from Average White Band to the Rolling Stones are accused of stealing music from Black people, Tower gets a legitimate pass. They contribute as much as they take and pay sincere tribute to the roots of their music. After three decades they now stand as one of the country’s longest extant soul bands. But their survival didn’t come without a bit of compromise.
“I think I became a hippy because we wanted to play the Fillmore and we really didn’t fit. We were just little hard guys from the East Bay. So we grew our hair long and started expanding our minds using drugs. We did the things they did, but that wasn’t who we were.”
What they were was a hybrid, somewhere between Earth, Wind and Fire and The Grateful Dead with uncompromising street grit, hewn by spirited and gifted musicians.
Tower, with their signature horn section, has played with some of the top names in the biz: Elton John, Rod Steward, Santana, and as a longtime backup for Huey Lewis. Their individual players are notables in their own right: Lenny Picket, musical director of the Saturday Night Live Band, organist Chester Thompson, inimitable drummer David Garibaldi, trumpeter and arranger Greg Adams. None of it would have come together without Castillo, who hears it all in his head — every part. And that includes the lyrics, usually composed with baritone saxophonist Steve “Doc” Kupra.
Through their rhymes Tower still speaks its own truth. In street parlance they “preach and teach.” Castillo’s always putting out new products, but he still relishes his old sermons and it’s moving to hear him recite (and improvise on) material that over the decades has only grown richer:
“You done went and found you a guru,
in the effort to find a new you,
and maybe even managed to raise your
conscious level”
(“What Is Hip?” 1973)
“If your music ain’t got no attitude, you should be doing something else,” he says. “Whatever you’re setting forth, you own it. There’s a certain quality of energy. When I listen to soul singers that are ‘wringing the rack,’ so to speak, with the way they are singing, that’s what moves me.”
Even a man suffering from a breakup has a swagger.
Got the urge early last week,
to call you up just to hear you speak,
but I didn’t want to waste your time,
’cause on the real side, you ain’t worth the dime
(“Knock Yourself Out,” 1970)
Inside Seattle’s Jazz Alley recently, the audience makeup suggests little commonality among ethnicities, sartorial leanings or generations. So large is the age spread there is a dilemma at the door over whether to check IDs or pulses.
As the band traverses the crowd on the walk from the dressing room, there’s no celebrity pretense. People casually call out individual musician’s names with the familiarity of friends and receive acknowledging nods. The band is as authentic as their music, ready and able to help a friend work on their Chevy or move some furniture. A bit desultory, a little nonchalant, the lunch-pail crew mounts the stage, instruments in hand. There’s little to foreshadow the coming shapeshift.
A sudden surge of energy works its way through the room, through groins and up spinal columns, more than enough to defibrillate a bull elephant: the Tower of Power horn line and rhythm section has gone to work.
As they say in one of their early hits, “Down at the Night Club, the band be pumpin’ / the beat be somethin’.”
Old hits, new songs, the fresh and familiar. Of the latter, Emillio takes the lead vocal for the only time of the night. For him and Tower’s longtime fans, the words say it all:
I’ve been through all them changes,
a lot of stuff came down.
I’ve dealt with all the issues,
you might say I’ve been around.
But back when I got started,
there was a righteous sound.
It doesn’t matter what I’ve been through.
He turns the mike toward the audience and they return his love:
I’ll still be diggin’ on James Brown. |
