Interview: Lee Fields
08.31.24
Seattle Music News: Lee, thanks for sitting down with Seattle Music News here at Bumbershoot. First things first, how are you? How has this year been for you?
Lee Fields: The music has always been great. We’ve been doing a lot of traveling. People have been giving us great response and it’s a beautiful thing to see through the years. Things are constantly rising instead of descending.
Seattle Music News: Your first single came out in 1969 on Bedford Records. This is your 55th year in music, which is incredible longevity. What have been some highlights that come to mind through the years?
Lee Fields: I feel like what’s been a highlight that comes to mind in all those years are different things. When I worked with Gene Redd. With Gene Redd. The producer of Kool and the Gang, the guy that really launched Kool and the Gang, Teddy Powell. He was a great promoter. This is in the late 60s, meeting all of the artists that I met through the years and every show, every show itself, every tour, is a highlight, you know? Because, hey, man, I’m still here, still in the game, you know?
Seattle Music News: I read, and I don’t know if this is true, but when you set off to New York when you were 17, your mom gave you the last 20 bucks that she had. Can you tell me about that story? And did you feel any pressure? Like, “Oh, now I really gotta make it.”
Lee Fields: Oh no, it wasn’t. See. I’ve never been about “I got to make it.” I’ve never been about that. I’ve been about: I’m supposed to be here. I feel like that I’m supposed to be, I don’t know what the reason is, but I’m supposed to be. And I feel it’s essential in my existence to realize that I’m supposed to be here, and I’m searching for the reason. I’m searching for the reason.
And I’ve looked in all realms of possibilities of why I feel like that, but everything I see seemed like I’ve seen before and but I know I’m supposed to be here, and I got something to say, but I don’t know what it is that’s the reason why I keep it on writing. So, it’s crazy, man.
Seattle Music News: That takes me to my next question. Do you feel like you’ve needed to reinvent yourself musically over the years?
Lee Fields: I feel like I haven’t shown people really what I can do. I feel like every time I record a record. Before, when I start on the record and I show whoever it is that’s going to produce the record, what I have in mind, they want to run with that. “Oh, man, this is great.” And it’s just the beginning of the record. And I work with them in regards to how to finish this up. Finish it up like they like for it to be finished. But I never really finished the record like a true well…maybe “Let’s Talk it Over” and “She’s the Lovemaker.” I was pretty much satisfied, but the rest of the songs that I’ve done, the songs were released when I just got started with producing it.
I’m hoping that the new music that we were going to be presenting to the public, I’m hoping that this time. It will be like, I really wanted it to be. I think I got it in a way this time, before it’s put out, it has to go through all of the peripherals that I feel that is necessary for me to say, “oh, man, now I’m now, I’m satisfied.” So I think I got it at that point.
Seattle Music News: How do you feel about your music being sampled as often as it is?
Lee Fields: I’m flattered, because I feel they must have seen something that I’m trying to touch on, to be interested in wanting to sample the song. But I’m hoping that the new record that I’m completing is done in a fashion that I truly believe that I’ve done my best, and that gives me inspiration.
Seattle Music News: I am guessing maybe one of your inspirations in your life has been your wife, Christine?
Lee Fields: Oh, yeah. Christine is the most inspiring entity of my universe.
Seattle Music News: I’d love to hear how you met.
Lee Fields: I was a kid when I came to New York. I met her around the time when I came to New York and I met her about a year later, maybe a year and a half later, and we’ve been together ever since.
I walked into a restaurant, and at the time a part time job, she was working at Tiffany’s, but a part time job was at this restaurant, and I saw her. I thought she was, at first glance, I thought she was totally amazing, but I don’t think she thought the same thing about me. But I thought she was totally amazing, and from that first glance until now, the same thing, the same thing that I feel, that I haven’t lost one particle of, what I saw in her the first time. Every time I look at her, it’s like the first time all the way up until now.
Seattle Music News: So you’ve been together almost 55 years. What keeps your relationship flourishing?
Lee Fields: Well, I think, to allow her to blossom into the person that she’s she’s supposed to be. And I think. She allows me to blossom into the guy I’m supposed to be. It’s like everything is metamorphosing. Everything is constantly changing. So I don’t hold her in any way to be exact, what she was, image wise or or mental, mentally wise. Everything is constantly metamorphosing.
We try to work together, and we try to change without changing, without losing where we where we started from, without losing where we started from, because if you latch on to one thing and that one thing be your barometer of what you think things should be. And then as the other changes take place, you lose the person you got. You have to let the person be and evolve into what and blossom into the beautiful flower that that person can be.
It was a beautiful transition, and the transition continues, it never stops. So as time goes on, allow her to be who she is, and then I try to be the guy that should be. That fits that particular change, you know. So allow, in other words, total freedom. That’s what it’s about. It’s about freedom and our relationship.
I would put it this way: it’s the grandest thing that I will ever experience. Music is a grand thing as well, but she’s the grandest experience I’ve ever had. And I wouldn’t change a thing.
Seattle Music News: Well that takes me to my last question, which is: what’s bringing you the most joy these days?
Lee Fields: Oh, she does. Everything I see that’s truly beloved by me. She opened the music. Opened a lot of ways to see the world and to meet people that enhance my life to us to a degree that is impossible to put in words, but she’s the ultimate of experiences that put the most value in my life.
Seattle Music News: What would you like to leave readers with, as far as any words of wisdom from you, for life, for love, for music, for anything?
Lee Fields: Well, I would say for the musicians: make music to what you feel.
I would say to the people just looking for finding that partner to go through life: let whomever you decide or who you want or that god brings you together with, let them be themselves and and I pray that they let you be yourself and grow together. And you know, it’s like two flowers. You gotta grow together. Blossom together. Live in this existence in harmony as much as you possibly can. And the only thing that can come out of that is blissfulness, is bliss and happiness. You know, you don’t, in other words, you don’t want to be the weed.
Interview and photos by Sattva Photo
