Eddie Willis

Rip It Up, Issue 82, 1 May 1984, Page 12

Eddie Willis

Murray Cammick

Well, time must be about up it’s near to 8.30. Neither group is in stage clothes yet. I thank Duke and then ask if Motown guitarist Eddie Willis is free to do a brief interview. Willis nods a yes. “If you’ve got questions.” Were you with Motown from the beginning? “Yep, with the original band, the Funk Brothers, about seven

of us. We were strictly in the studio we didn’t have time for the road.” Did you stay in Detroit when Motown moved to Los Angeles? “I moved to LA and stayed there three months, then went back to Detroit. LA, it’s kinda a rat race out there for musicians.” Willis has been on the road with the Four Tops for seven years but prefers studio work. “I love being at home but there’s not a lot of sessions in Detroit. I’m not there that much but if there’s a session and I’m home, I do one.” Did you record live with the Motown artists? “We did the band tracks first, then overdubbed the voice later.” "

Did you know which artist /vould record it? “Yes, but it had been changed before. It didn’t matter if we did tracks for one artist and it ended up with someone else doing it.” Did you work with a particular producer? “No. All the producers worked with the one band.” By the late 60s there would surely have been a need for more than one band? “There was a need. But all the guys in Detroit went from studio to studio all day.”

What hours did you record? “Nine to five, nine to 10 ... we had them at 7am, 4am ...

the time didn’t really matter.” Are there particular sessions that stand out? “The tracks I did with Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, or the Temptations or the Tops. They all were at the time. There was something new happening so they were great to me.” Were the songs presented to you finished, in written form, by the producers?

“No. That’s where the band didn’t get enough credit. No, they came to us with a chord sheet, the chords were written on a piece of paper. We made the feels up as we went the band really made the track. We just had a guide with some chords on it.”

We are interrupted time for the band to move to the stage and for the stars to get dressed.

I quickly show Eddie Willis his listing in the March Rip It Up ‘Motown Who’s Who’. His pleasure at seeing his contribution acknowledged is obvious. But for now there’s a job to do.