James Brown talking loud and saying nothing

By GRAHAM REID

We go through a very polite Mr Bobbitt, James Brown's business manager.

He warns "everything with him is 'Mister' and do not speak about his personal business or his family affairs".

It isn't the last we hear from Mr Bobbitt. Initially there is some confusion when Mr Brown doesn't understand a question and later electronic interference briefly drowns us out.

But we spoke to Mr Brown at home and he was "getting ready to get on tour. We're going to have great time down there.

"We gonna bring you some funk! We gotta pretty good-sized group, a big funky group."

Can I ask what we might expect because your last album The Next Step moved slightly into hip-hop funk.

You gonna get James Brown. Period. Across the board. All my material. We take it from different parts and it comes over a different sound.

Did you feel you were moving into a slightly new style, the next step?

I don't push hip-hop out so much but whatever the feeling brings at that time.

James Brown is a big business. Do you spend much time on that, spending more time with lawyers than musicians?

No, I'm caught just like everybody else. I invested a lot and took my loss and keep on workin'.

We gotta keep set in one direction and I have Mr Bobbitt to handle my personal business until it gets to that point I have to be there in person. I don't really have no problem.

When you look around do you see a lot of younger bands, like Black Eyed Peas for example, who have your influence?

Well, everybody has got a little bit from me over the years and when I hear one it don't really bother me, it makes me feel good that I was able to contribute something to this industry.

How do you feel about this music business now? It's very diverse but when you came out you could get an audience - black, white, right across. Nowadays it doesn't seem like that.

Well, the time changes and you continue to move on to different grooves and different feelings. A lot of different people got a lot of different input in a lot of different parts of this country.

I came from another time so it moulded me into being a lot more versatile. We had few things available but they were the top things that we kinda polished up.

(Mr Bobbitt "intercedes" at this point and reassures "our audience is extremely white now and black as well, he hasn't lost any of his audience, it's still very diverse".

After some clarification - and Mr Brown was fine with the question from the outset - there is some laughter, then Mr Bobbitt bows out.)

What I was suggesting was that radio has divided up the marketplace. Once you could hear James Brown and the Supremes alongside the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, now radio has very clear target audiences.

It's more like a food market today, you take what you want, there's a lot of different ones and whatever you think you like, that's what you listen to. I'm lucky, I go across the board and I thank you so very, very much for being interested in what I'm doing and I hope you come out and catch the show because I tell ya, we got somethin' we gonna lay out for ya.

But right now we got some more interviews coming up and I just want to tell ya I love you all very much but I got this next interview. Thank you, God bless you, I'm looking forward to seeing you.

We'll be gettin' down.