NEW YORK – When Smokey Robinson began dating his now-wife more than 20 years ago, she didn’t want anyone to know.
Robinson and Frances Glandney, who married in 2002, were lifelong friends, and she was worried they’d start gossiping about her and the famed singer-songwriter.
“When we first started seeing each other, she wanted to keep it quiet.” Because we were friends, she didn’t want anyone to know. “And then all our friends would be talking about us,” Robinson explained.
Naturally, this became the basis for a song, “I Keep Calling.” Robinson had been holding onto it for years — complete with the words “Simple things like touching in public/Private touches goin’ unseen” — until this month, when it appears on his “Gasms” album, his first in nearly a decade.
“Gasms” finds the 83-year-old in a playful mood, with the Motown legend creating a compilation for the bedroom with nine tunes of desire. “Beside You,” “I Wanna Know Your Body,” and “How You Make Me Feel” are just a few names that hint at this.
Robinson, whose songs include “My Girl,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” and “I Second That Emotion,” says he doesn’t write with the goal of chart success in mind.
“In my opinion, you can put it on and be with whoever you want to be with and just kick back and enjoy each other,” he says. “It’s more about the idea of love.”
The CD blends old and new songs, with “I Keep Calling You” and “Roll Around” penned years ago blending with contemporary pieces. “They were all songs that fit that particular mood that I wanted to set,” he explains.
He acknowledges it’s his most obviously sensual compilation, and the title tune, in which he tells his partner, “You give me gasms” – eyegasms and eargasms — proves it. Another song, “I Fit in There,” begins, “If you’ve got an inner vacancy/Baby, make it a place for me.”
“I regard all of the songs as food for thought.” “You can bring them wherever you want,” he says. “Whatever your thought pattern is for any of those titles, that’s exactly what I’m looking for. I want them to provoke thought.”
J.J. Blair, a producer, engineer, and mixer who has worked with June Carter Cash, Rod Stewart, and P. Diddy, mixed half of Robinson’s new album and claims she has a perfectionist streak.
“I’d make a mix for him, and he’d drive around listening to it for two weeks, and then he’d call me up and say he wanted to come to change two words,” Blair says. “It’s just so encouraging to see someone of that stature standing in that pantheon of greats still care.”
Blair claims that the new stuff is similar to what Robinson is renowned for, just a little more R-rated. “I think we’re just not used to octogenarians throwing that at us, but Nicki Minaj can come out and say whatever she wants — we don’t question it?” “I’m not sure.”
“I Keep Calling.” Robinson had been holding onto it for years — complete with the words.
Robinson, whose songs include “My Girl,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” and “I Second That Emotion,” says he doesn’t write with the goal of chart success in mind.
“There isn’t a formula. There is no procedure, guy. It’s just you writing what you’re feeling. “You gave it your all,” he says. “You do it until you feel you’ve given it your all.”
The former Motown Records vice president’s latest collaborative album, “Smokey & Friends,” was published nine years ago and featured performers such as Elton John, John Legend, Steven Tyler, and Mary J. Blige.
Robinson appears to be always writing. He has a handful of song fragments ready to record and jokes that he may be the only person on the planet who maintains a tape recorder by his bed in case he dreams a song lyric or tune.
“If I’m out and about and an idea, a melody, some words, or something comes to me, I call my voicemail.” “That’s a good thought,” he says. “Please check your voicemail. Place them down. You don’t want to be without them.”
SOURCE – (AP)
