SIXTIES

"I knew a guy called Doctor Doss who was managing some kind of dope addict project in the city" says Fred. "He wanted to get a foothold in the industry and asked me to set up some equipment. So I rigged out this place on Puritan, at number 7312, for rehearsals.

At the same time, my long time friend Lawrence Payton was setting up a new project with the Tops a couple of doors down.

Early on I found that Doctor Doss had some strange views on things. First of all he wanted to call the record company Dink. I remember saying to him 'what kind of name is that?!?'.

Anyway, we went ahead and did some demos, but lo and behold when I told him that it was time to record in a proper professional studio, he couldn't believe it.

'How much is this thing going to cost', he cried.

So that was the end of Dink."

Talented Songwriters Renaldo 'Obie' Benson and Lawrence Payton, of The Four Tops.

"I explained my predicament to Lawrence " says Fred. "and straight away he asked me if I'd be interested in running the Four Tops new studio couple of doors up. I liked the thought of working with my old friends and jumped at the chance.

Initially the Tops had set up an office, a studio, a rehearsal room and a store next door to Dink, so it made sense for them to expand a bit more and take over this other studio.

So I became the Tops A&R guy, in effect a Mr Fixit, who managed the studios, auditioned the groups, vetted the songs and even oversaw the financial transactions of the company.

Lawrence was the Tops music man and it was great to link up with him again.

We wrote a number of songs together during those days. Some of which ended up with ABC Records, like 'Catfish', 'We all gotta stick together', 'Feel free'. Obie (Renaldo) Benson also wrote a couple of tunes with me too. There was also an album called 'Catfish' in 1976.

But we cut other stuff, like Levi singing 'Give me just a little more time', which remains in the can to this day.

We also cut groups from around town one of which included singer Belita Woods. Man she was good, real good.

It was a busy place and when the Tops would come back off the road I would have to find them some studio time to cut this new material. That became a bit of a problem however, as George Clinton was block booking United for weeks on end during the height of his Parliament-Funkadelic thang.

It was tough, but George respected us and we got slotted in."

In 1980 the Tops asked Fred if he'd like to become their Road Manager.

"The idea appealed to me as I already had some of the credentials" recalled Fred. "I had worked the clubs as a singer, knew about stage lighting, knew how to handle musicians etc etc. What was going to be new was dealing with travel arrangements, and the like, but I suppose I picked that up pretty good as I've been in the job for twenty-five years!

In fact we've travelled all over USA, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand. It's been fun.

During those years our song writing habits would change as did the quality of the equipment.

We had moved our EQ over to Lawrence's house on San Juan. There was no longer a requirement to pay a band for rehearsals. The equipment saw to that.

I'll give you another example of how the advances in equipment had changed things. Take the Tops' Christmas song, 'Christmas here with you', which was released on an MCA album in 1995.

I swear that our home demo sounded so good that this didn't need to go to a studio. No one would have known. But anyway, they wanted Paul Riser in to arrange it with real musicians. Paul's a genius of course, but what a waste, it was totally unnecessary."

Lawrence and Fred then invited George Rowntree, the Tops' musical Director, to join their song writing team as they felt his expertise could add an extra dimension to their music."

Continued