Every Little Step Read online

  I was running so hard that I wasn’t immediately aware that I had gotten shot. The bullet had entered the front of my knee and come out in the back. I didn’t realize I had been hit until I had gotten far down the street and paused at the bus stop to see if I was out of danger. I felt something wet running down my leg, which began to tremble. I was wearing sweatpants and they were beginning to turn red on the bottom half. So I pulled them up and saw a hole in my knee, surrounded by gobs of blood.

  “Aww hell!” I said out loud. “I’m hit!”

  There was a hospital not far from OP, so I hobbled my ass to the emergency room, now starting to feel the intense pain shooting up my leg. They grabbed me in the ER and put me down on a bed. They saw that it had been a clean shot, straight through my leg, so there was nothing to remove. Luckily the staff at this hospital had considerable experience dealing with gunshot wounds. They wrapped my leg up and sent me on my way. I’m not even sure if they gave me painkillers.

  I didn’t tell anybody in my family that I had gotten shot. I went out of my way to hide the bandages on my leg from my mother. That just shows how much more freedom kids had thirty years ago. I could hardly imagine in this day and age my child being able to hide a gunshot wound from me! I only told my mother about the incident years later and showed her the scar. She was stunned.

  I did tell my brother, Tommy, that I had been shot when he saw the bandages on my leg. Tommy and I were living together in the breakthrough—our family had gotten the apartment next door and broke through a closet so that we now had one large apartment with six bedrooms instead of three. My older sister Bethy was already out of the house, living with her new family in the building next door. My older sister Tina was in and out, leaving Leolah and Carol on one side with my parents. So there was now plenty of space for all of us to have our own rooms. Tommy and I stayed together on the other side, in our little male sanctuary. He was home from college on summer break, otherwise he wouldn’t have even been there.

  Nobody in Orchard Park knew I had been shot. But I sure as hell told New Edition about it. I was salty as hell.

  “Fuck y’all, man!” I said when I saw them. “Y’all just gonna leave my ass up there?”

  “You should have come with us!” they said to me.

  When I told them I had gotten shot and showed them the bandages, they were shocked.

  One might think getting shot in the leg would be a serious issue for a member of a group that relied so heavily on dancing, but a weird thing happened when my leg started healing—my dancing got better. I can’t really explain it, but after that I could do anything with my legs. It was like the injury gave me superpowers. When I saw the movie Forrest Gump a decade later, I could immediately identify with that scene where his braces fall off and he’s suddenly able to run like the wind. I know you’re probably reading this and laughing your ass off, but that’s really what happened to me.

  Kim and I got even more serious after I almost died for her. I was extremely careful when I went to see her though, making sure I got off the bus at a stop that was blocks away from Timmy’s house and walking a path to Kim’s apartment building that wouldn’t take me anywhere near him. Kim was still in the group Phase Force; so was my little sister, Carol. They would open for us when we did local showcases and they did a great job. They were bad as hell. Carol had this one signature move she would do, where one of the group members would tap her and she would fall back. It was kinda corny, but the crowd seemed to like it. Carol was feeling herself so hard back then that her head couldn’t fit through the doorway.

  A FEW WORDS FROM RALPH TRESVANT

  I don’t know why the public has believed Bobby and me were feuding, or were in competition, or didn’t like each other. For some reason people were always saying that about our whole group. We’ve had this stigma follow us around for a long time that we don’t get along and that’s why we all went out and did solo stuff. So every time one of us did a project, people would say we were breaking up—while in actuality we were just taking advantage of opportunities to do different things in this business. Then when we’d come back together to do another record, they’d label it a comeback. And we’d be saying, “Comeback? But we never went anywhere.”

  Bobby was the only person who ever broke up with the group. He decided he wanted to pursue a solo career, so he left. Our management and the record company and others started coming at the group, telling us we might want to think about getting rid of Bobby because he was a loose cannon and might mess things up for us. Some of the other members of the group wanted to address it. They were saying this was our ticket out of the projects, we had just started making it and couldn’t mess it up now.

  I remember we had a big meeting because Bobby didn’t show up for Solid Gold, then he didn’t show up for Soul Train. I wasn’t on the same page as them. I’ve known him since we were like six years old. I was ready to pull my lead-singer card and say, “We’re not going that way, we’re not getting rid of anybody in the group. We all came out of the projects together and we’re going to stay together.”

  But then when I went to Bobby, he said, “I want to do it, I want to go for it.” That’s what he told me. He said, “Just keep it rolling, man. Keep it alive because this solo thing just might not work.”

  But of course it did work, in a major way. He and I had been talking about this swing sound. I had these ideas that I had been working on. But I had to go back and do the Heart Break album with the group. So I was sitting on this style, this sound. And so my brother—Bobby—did it. I wasn’t upset at all. I was excited to see it take off. My reaction was like, I knew it could work!

  Bobby and I have always offset each other really well, ever since we were little. We each had enough respect for the other that we never felt like we had to fight or be in competition. Sometimes when he’s too out there, I’m over here, more mellow. But when I’m too mellow and need to be more assertive, he’s over here to push me. It just works out.

  Growing Pains

  With each passing day with New Edition, I began to feel more and more constrained, hemmed in. I knew I wanted to go out there and do my own thing. And I also felt like we were being taken advantage of in the group. It was all really bothering me. New Edition was getting paid a half cent on each record sold. What the fuck is half of a penny? People always ask me, Why did you leave? What did you have to complain about? Well, you can’t live off half a penny, even if you sell millions of records. I knew it was time for me to go.

  One day in LA, Michael Bivins and I had another brawl, but this time it was for real, not playacting like it had been years earlier in Transitions. Mike did the nastiest thing you could ever do to somebody. We were headed somewhere and I had hurried to get in the front seat before Michael. When you travel everywhere as a group, the front seat is a major prize because no one wants to be crammed together in the back. In all the commotion, Michael acted like his foot had gotten run over. Soon everybody in the car was laughing at him. So he walked up and spit in my face. Yeah, that’s right—he spit in my face. I was so mad I couldn’t see straight. I got out of that car and commenced to whupping Michael’s ass. Khalil, our old road manager and head of security, tried to break it up, but it continued when we got to the hotel. We kept fighting in the lobby and beyond. I was still kicking his ass. He picked up a fifty-pound weight and threw it at me. I kicked him in the mouth, drawing blood from his lip. It was ugly. I had had enough.

  Toward the end of my time with the group, things got really tense. It felt like all the other guys had come together to sabotage me. They started to cut down my parts onstage to give me a smaller role in the performances. They would talk among themselves and the next thing I knew, my part would disappear from the song. One day I couldn’t take it anymore and I exploded onstage. They had stopped the music and left me hanging out there. There was supposed to be more to the song, featuring my vocals, but suddenly the song was over. In my mind I said, Fuck this! I took the mic and threw it at Michae
l. I knew he was the one who was behind it—and there he was laughing at me. I said to myself, That’s it. This is my last show with New Edition.

  It was the last show I would do with the group for more than a decade. I left the group, got on a plane and headed back to Boston. It was over. So four years after our crazy odyssey began, I was out there on my own.

  A FEW WORDS FROM TOMMY BROWN

  I was a student at Northeastern University in Boston, nearing the end of my third year, when New Edition’s first single was released. I remember how excited the family was by my little brother’s success. I’m nine years older than Bobby, so while I knew he was really into music, I was astounded that it was actually his group on the radio. Around this time my mother started telling me her concerns that the boys were being taken advantage of by their management. She told me, “Why am I sending my son away every weekend to perform and they’re coming back with no money?”

  I felt like I was in a prime position to get more closely involved and see exactly what was going on. I was majoring in journalism, but I had enough understanding of how the world worked to look after my brother’s interests. My first official act with Bobby and the group was to accompany them to London in 1984, where they went to film three of their early videos, including the video for “Popcorn Love.” Ricky Bell’s mother also went on the trip with us.

  At this point, the boys were constantly going on trips and getting dumped back in the projects before school, so we needed to find out where the money was going. We knew somebody was making money on these trips, but it wasn’t the boys, who were still thrilled about all the fame and attention—which made sense, since they were just fourteen and fifteen. So they sued Streetwise and were released from their contract. The lawyers who brought the lawsuit were Michael and Steve Machat, who, along with Bill Dern and Rich Smith, ran the company that subsequently managed the group, Jump and Shoot.

  We kept pushing the issue of finances with Jump and Shoot, but they could never give us a proper accounting. We were new to the industry and my family could tell that the boys were being taken advantage of. Their first record was a big hit, all over the radio, and they were spending every weekend on the road, yet none of them were making anything. My mother was in Bobby’s ear, telling him this wasn’t right. But she didn’t even need to tell him; he already knew. He was getting frustrated; everybody was getting frustrated. Even choreographer Brooke Payne and Travis Gresham, their first manager, were coming home broke because Jump and Shoot was getting all the money. As the story has been spun over the years, people have wanted to point a finger at Maurice Starr and say he ripped off the boys, but Maurice just produced that first album; he never managed New Edition. He never had his hands on the money either, so he didn’t have the ability to rip them off.

  When my family started making noise, the families of the other members got upset at us, telling us we were going to mess it up for everybody. They were saying we should just leave it alone. But my mother’s response was, “Are you crazy? They’re robbing these kids!”

  Bobby didn’t have the mentality to take this kind of mistreatment. He comes from a family that’s not going to tolerate that. I remember the management company coming in from New York to have a big meeting with the five families that took place in our apartment. They were supposed to be coming with an accountant to give us a rundown of what was happening with the money, but instead they gave us some wishy-washy bull. So my mother got totally fed up and kicked them out of the apartment.

  “Get moving—get out of my house!” she said to them. “I don’t want to hear any more. See you all later!”

  After that it got really rough with the other families. They were pretty upset with us. But we soon saw what the management company was up to when they came to us and started talking about Bobby going solo. While they were talking to us about a solo career, the management guys were going to the other members and telling them that Bobby was causing trouble for them and they should think about getting rid of him.

  At one point they even had my mom at a meeting in a Boston restaurant talking about Bobby leaving the group and going solo, while at the same time somebody else on the management team was meeting with the other New Edition mothers at a different restaurant on the same street. My mother actually went to the other mothers and told them that the management was trying to play both sides, but they wouldn’t hear it. Management’s strategy was divide and conquer, making sure they didn’t have to split up that pie. So they just built another pie that they could dig into. They went to the other members and encouraged them to take a vote to kick Bobby out, but at the same time they had big plans for Bobby as a solo artist. It was a very confusing and frustrating time.

  If you want to understand the demise of New Edition and Bobby’s separation from the group, listen to the last song he recorded with the group, called “Who Do You Trust.” Study the lyrics, because Bobby spelled it all out in that song, on which he was the lead singer. The writing credits went to David Hurst Batteau and Danny Sembello, who clearly had some sense of what Bobby and the group were going through.

  In my opinion, this moment is where the whole “bad boy” reputation started, when he left the group. Despite what was going on behind the scenes with the shady financing and deceitful managers, Bobby got labeled as arrogant and uncooperative. A troublemaker. A bad boy. That’s where it all began. After all, who would walk away from a multimillion-dollar group? And to top it off, word got out that the group had voted to kick him out because he was irresponsible and missing rehearsals and shows, trying to destroy an extremely popular group. That was the official story fed to the press.

  That’s where the stigma started.

  PART II

  BEING BOBBY BROWN

  CHAPTER 3

  ON MY OWN

  My life changed pretty quickly when I left New Edition. It went from one extreme to the other. My first problem was I didn’t have any money. I was seventeen years old, back in Boston, and I had to figure out what I could do to survive until I made my solo record. So I started selling weed. But that didn’t last long—my brother found out. He was not happy and shut that down right away.

  I then started writing and going into the studio and recording as much as possible. I would send songs to people I knew at MCA, and they liked what they heard. MCA had already asked me if I wanted to do a solo album, but I needed some time off from the grueling travel with New Edition. So I went to work on my first solo album, which would fulfill my part of New Edition’s two-album obligation to Jump and Shoot. We called my solo album King of Stage. I’ve always felt that was the most accurate description of my performing talents. I may not be the most gifted singer in the world, but once I got out on that stage I didn’t think anybody could match me. Years later my first wife would try to call me the “King of R & B,” but that was never a title I claimed.

  I had a big hit on that first solo album, a song called “Girlfriend” that climbed to number one on the Billboard R & B chart in 1986. I made enough money with that song to move my entire family out of Boston to Los Angeles—my mom, dad, sisters and brother. Everybody moved out west with me. I was fulfilling that vow I made to myself after Jimmy died to get out of the projects—though I had no idea it would all happen so fast.

  While it was cool to have a hit song on my first album, I wasn’t even close to satisfied. I wanted to do big things. I had a lot I wanted to say. But nothing could have prepared me for Don’t Be Cruel.

  Blowing Up

  At one point when New Edition was out on the road, we were touring with the incredible Rick James. I spent a lot of time with him; I was drawn to him like a magnet. How could you not be drawn to Rick James—he was larger than life. I’d always loved his music, ever since those days dancing to my grandmother’s records in her living room. But now he became a very dear friend to me. I learned so much from him, about life, about music, about women.

  I would often go into his dressing room before the shows, just to absorb a
ll the knowledge and wisdom I could. He was trying to teach me how to play the bass, that instrument I had always loved, so while we were having our lesson, he’d start talking. When he found out that we were smoking weed on the tour, he got pissed off. He was adamant—he’d say to us, “Don’t ever do drugs, it’ll kill you.” And he’d be smoking a joint while he said it!

  We said, “But you smoke it!”

  “That doesn’t mean you should smoke it,” he said. “You’re kids. When you get to be twenty-one, then you can talk to me about smoking weed.”

  My response was, “Man, whatever.” I didn’t stop smoking weed.

  But beyond the weed discussion, Rick was a huge influence on me and the music I created for my second solo album. I wanted to take a little bit of Michael, a little bit of Prince, and a little bit of Rick, and mash it all up in a ball. That’s the artist I wanted to be. From Prince, it was all about his originality. That was everything to me. And every move he made was cool, mysterious. I wanted to take Rick’s wildness. When I got up on that stage, I wanted it to be like I had been let out of a cage. Growling, stalking, like a wild animal. And with Michael, it was about his precision. His mastery of the craft we all used, which is entertainment. I wanted to put all of those elements together and become this super-entertainer, jumping off risers and things like that.

  To make my new record, I crisscrossed the country, working with great producers like LA Reid and Babyface, and Teddy Riley. When we were finishing our sessions on the West Coast with LA and Babyface, I just felt like we weren’t quite done. I wanted to add more aggression to the album, something that had a harder edge to it. That’s what brought me to the East Coast and New York City, where I was walking down the street when I literally bumped into Teddy Riley carrying his Casio keyboard under one arm. Though he was only two years older than me, Teddy had been a hot producer for years. He had started working on some stuff with his new group, Guy, but they were still a couple of years away from releasing their groundbreaking album, The Future.