Ken Ehrlich, Nile Rodgers Reveal What to Expect From This Year’s Memorial-Heavy Grammys
(photo: Nile Rodgers’s Instagram)
This year’s Grammys, airing Monday evening on CBS, may be the most tribute-heavy in the awards’ 58-year history, with segments dedicated to the late B.B. King, Natalie Cole, the Eagles’ Glenn Frey, Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister, Earth, Wind & Fire’s Maurice White, and of course, David Bowie. Five of these legends died in just the past month and a half. And while longtime Grammy Awards producer executive Ken Ehrlich is no stranger to last-minute memorials (as evidenced by the tasteful retooling of 2012’s ceremony after Whitney Houston died the night before), he tells Yahoo Music that “honestly, 75 or 80 percent of this [year’s] show was laid out as of Jan. 1” – the day Cole’s death was announced – “so it slowed us down. All of these passings, with the exception of B.B., happened within the last month or so. And I worked with all these people; I knew all of them. It’s more personal to me than anything else, so I almost have even more of a stake in it.”
Ehrlich, sitting backstage at Los Angeles’s Staples Center right before the dress rehearsal for Lady Gaga’s Bowie tribute with musical director Nile Rodgers, says it was important to find the right balance between loving homages to the past and a celebration of the biggest music of the current era. “I’ve been asked a couple of times: ‘Isn’t this show going to be a downer?’ No, it’s not,” he insists. “Music is celebratory. We’re saying goodbye to these people in a way that celebrates who they were when they were living. And if it brings a tear to the eye because it reminds you – music does that; it reminds you of something sad, something happy, something that makes you angry, something that pisses you off – well, that’s what it should do! All we’re doing is teeing that up for you, to experience it in your own way.”
Adds Rodgers: “Emotionally, it’s really tough for me, because it’s no secret – I’ve said it a million times – that David Bowie changed my life. He may have had almost as much an effect on my career as my [Chic] partner Bernard Edwards… But for me personally, this is wonderful, because this is my opportunity to say goodbye through music. To me, music is a celebratory medium, and I get to celebrate the life of a really amazing artist who happened to be a great friend and great collaborator.”
Without a doubt, the most anticipated tribute of this year’s Grammys will be Rodgers and Gaga’s celebration of Bowie’s legacy: a gloriously theatrical but respectful 10-song medley featuring Lady Gaga transforming into Lady Stardust, in full Ziggy-inspired glam attire, against a psychedelic backdrop of dancing starmen, flanked by Rodgers and “Fashion”-appropriate modern dancers. However, when it was first announced that Gaga would perform the tribute to Bowie, one of rock ‘n’ roll’s all-time most important and influential figures, some naysayers wondered why the segment wasn’t being led by one of Bowie’s peers, like Iggy Pop or Brian Eno.
“That’s a very legitimate question,” Ehrlich admits. Says Rodgers: “We called everybody! I could show you all my emails! I think in Iggy’s case, he just wasn’t available. People didn’t know that we were going to do a Bowie tribute at the Grammys, so what happened was, actually it was Gaga’s idea: She had me reach out to, say, 15 different people. Everybody was available, but by the time we linked up, Iggy wasn’t available, and to me that was important [to include him]. But when you see this [Gaga performance], you’ll get it. It will make sense.”
“It’s subjective, but there are probably many people who look at Lady Gaga as a modern-day incarnation of Bowie,” says Ehrlich. “She’s outrageous – it’s about clothing, it’s about musicianship, and there’s this left turn that she’s always been. Not that David was that controversial, but he was controversial, like she is.”
“I don’t want to speak for Gaga, but I’ve had a huge number of conversations with her about David, and she says – I’m paraphrasing her here – that he was probably the single greatest influence on her life, in terms of where she was coming from artistically,” says Rodgers. Rodgers also stresses that Gaga helped figure out the daunting task of distilling Bowie’s five-decade, multi-genre, multi-character career into just a few minutes. “As musical director, my concept was to musically make that statement – to tell this historical, linear journey,” he says. “That was a little bit tricky, but Gaga’s idea was to do it chronologically, and we for the most part do it that way. But then at the end, you’ll see we do a finale that’s almost like a ‘tribute to the tribute,’ and it’s going to be very interesting.”
Below, in Ehrlich’s words, is what to expect from the other tributes at this year’s Grammys.
MAURICE WHITE
“I’m an old guy, and the first series I did was this little local show in Chicago called The Marty Faye Show. And the house band was the Ramsey Lewis Trio, which was Ramsey Lewis, Maurice White, and Cleveland Eaton. Maurice was the drummer. I met Maurice in 1968 in Chicago, before there was any Earth, Wind & Fire! But we stayed in touch and would see each other, and over the years we had him on Grammy shows. So this [death] was very personal to me. But more than that was this kind of fateful coincidence that Earth, Wind & Fire were being honored with a lifetime achievement award this year. So we started thinking about how to something appropriate – so we’ve asked them to present the award for Record of the Year. And there’s one other surprise we’re doing for them… but you’ll have to wait and see what happens.”
GLENN FREY (tribute by surviving Eagles Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, Timothy B. Schmit, and Joe Walsh, plus Jackson Browne)
“I’m very close with Irving Azoff, the Eagles’ manager. I never thought the Eagles would want to come and play for Glenn, because I figured [his death] was way too fresh, too new. But I just kind of posed the question very gingerly to Irving. I was hoping it would happen, but it was still a surprise when I got a call from Irving a week or so ago saying the guys would like to come and do ‘Take It Easy’ for Glenn. And I think they were very comfortable with the addition of Jackson Browne, who co-wrote ‘Take It Easy.’”
LEMMY KILMISTER (tribute by supergroup Hollywood Vampires; intro by Dave Grohl)
“I’m not a real metalhead, though over the years I’ve listened to a lot of it. I had already booked the Hollywood Vampires – Alice Cooper, Joe Perry, Johnny Depp, Matt Sorum, and Duff McKagan – so that made sense automatically [to have them do the Lemmy tribute]. Then Dave Grohl called me and said, ‘What are you gonna do about Lemmy? Could I introduce it?’ So Dave’s going to set it up. And there’s going to be this lovely imagery to go with it.”
B.B. KING (tribute by Chris Stapleton, Gary Clark Jr., and Bonnie Raitt)
“We wanted to have Chris on the show this year. We knew we probably weren’t going to out-sensationalize the CMAs with Justin Timberlake, so we had to go another direction. So I was on the phone with Chris, talking about what we might do, and I had seen on YouTube that he had done ‘The Thrill Is Gone’ and it was really good. I said, ‘I have an idea. You obviously love B.B. King. You love the blues. Maybe we can build a blues segment and do something different than what you’ve done on other shows’ – which is what we’re always trying to do on the Grammys. He said, ‘You’d let me do a tribute to B.B. King on your show? I’d love to do that!’ I think we suggested Gary Clark Jr., and then about a week after we were thinking of having someone else someone that would bridge the generations. And I love Bonnie Raitt. I’ve been in love with her for years. So Chris said, ‘What about Bonnie?’ And I said, ‘You’re not gonna get an argument out of me!’ And of course she wanted to be involved. They’re going to do ‘The Thrill Is Gone,’ the three of them, and that’s the perfect way to do it.”
NATALIE COLE
“Natalie was the first [of 2016’s deaths]. That really hit me right at the first of the year. I knew her very well and had done many shows with her over the years. We started thinking about what we could do [to honor her]. I always loved the song ‘Miss You Like Crazy,’ which is appropriate, but then I looked at what we had done on the Grammys when she won Record of the Year [in 1992] for ‘Unforgettable’ – we did this beautiful performance with her and [video footage of] her father [Nat King Cole], and it ended with this kiss being blown from her father to her on video, and then live onstage her blowing a kiss to her father, and then at the end her turning front and blowing this kiss to the audience. And what we decided to do with that right from the beginning, no hesitation, was that’s the way to end our whole In Memoriam segment. I suspect there will be people that will say, ‘Why didn’t you do a live performance?’ But the reality is, when you see this, it will be just an incredible moment. Not only will it speak to Natalie being gone, but it will sum up the 40 or 50 people in the In Memoriam segment.”
Follow Lyndsey on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+, Amazon, Tumblr, Vine, Spotify