Peter Brown (singer) - Career

Career

Brown became serious about music in his teens and chose to learn the drums. His greatest inspirations in music at the time were Santana, Earth Wind and Fire and Chicago. He later became proficient playing timbales, conga drums and a large number of other percussion instruments. Brown said that "As a teenager I was in many different “garage” bands and continued to write and record different musical pieces heavily based on percussion."

Keyboards came later and Brown was one of the pioneer users of the musical synthesizer. For a time he was spokesman for the ARP Synthesizer company since he used their products almost exclusively in performances and recordings. He has also been credited as being one of the founders of “House Music” in the 1970s.

Although music was always a big part of his life, he never thought of it as a possible profession. He always assumed he would become a painter or a graphic artist of some kind. After High School he enrolled in The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Although it was a prestigious school, professors seemed indifferent and the facilities were rudimentary at the time. Brown said, "I got no real instruction and wondered what I was going to do after four years of this sort of education."

At this Brown met Cory Wade who eventually became his first producer. "I met Cory Wade by chance through mutual friends." Brown recalled. "Although he was a music producer my friends thought he might also have some connections in the art world and could help me out in some way. But being a music producer he was more interested in hearing about what I was doing musically than as a painter. He encouraged me to send him some of my demos and would critique them. By now I had a 4-track recorder and was able to produce better recordings. I was also in possession of one of the newest musical breakthroughs - a synthesizer. It was very rudimentary by today’s standards but back then it was revolutionary."

It was at this point Brown chose to break away from a career in art and concentrate exclusively on music. Never intending to become an entertainer, Brown envisioned being a song writer, studio musician or producer. It was suggested by Wade, however, that no one could perform his music better than he (Peter) could.

Brown assembled a group of musicians to perform his music, inspiring them with stories of his connections with Cory Wade. Among the original members of the band was Pat Hurley, who sang and played keyboard in the band and who eventually co-write lyrics with Brown. Tom Dziallo, played bass in the band bass and guitar on all of Brown's albums, and Robert Rans who became Brown's lead keyboard player and primary lyric writing partner for many years. Brown's lifelong friend, Robert Vavrik, never joined the band but eventually penned some lyrics with Brown.

Brown recalled, "The musical trend of the time was disco. So even though it was not the type of music I was interested in (or even really liked) I altered my style to fit the times. I continued to send my 4-track demos until one day I got an excited call from Cory saying the last group of songs I sent him contained a definite “hit”. He was excited enough about it that he was going to take it to TK Records in Hialeah Florida to see if he could make a record deal. I thought he was talking about another song, but he was actually excited about a number called Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me?.”

Cory took the demo to TK Records where there was immediate excitement. Within days Henry Stone, the president of TK, wanted to release the song just as it was and offered Cory a deal for the single. This was followed by an album deal if the single was successful. Although naturally excited by the offer, Brown could not stand the idea of releasing his 4-track, home made demo as the actual record.

"I just couldn't believe the sound quality would be good enough. I wanted to re-record the song from scratch in a professional studio. But the record company wanted to release my demo just the way it was. So we eventually compromised. I brought the demo to a recording studio in Florida and transferred it to a 24-track machine. I was then able to fix a few parts I thought were a bit weak and add a few extra parts to it that I thought were important - the guitar and the female vocals in particular. I was also able to create Burning Love Breakdown from scratch to be used as a B side and in the expanded 12” version of the song."

12” singles were something new at that time. They were essentially extended versions of a song meant to be played in discothèques. Some were recorded from scratch and some were just the single or album versions of a song that were lengthened and embellished. They became popular and added a whole new category of product to the industry.

Henry Stone and everyone at TK Records loved the augmented version Recorded at Studio Center Recording Studios. After hearing it, Brown and Stone made the album deal and settled on a six-month deadline to write new material and record the album.

Brown also photographed the album's somewhat controversial cover and revealed, in a 1978 interview in Rolling Stone, that he had created the cover's nude model out of cardboard, sheer fabric and ribbons. Until then, no one ever suspected it was not a real person.