A tip: Tower of Power still very hip
By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Writer
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| Members of Tower of Power are, from left, Mike Bogart, Adolfo Acosta, Jeff Tamelier, Emilio Castillo, Roger Smith, Rocco Prestia, Doc Kupka, Tom Politzer, Larry Braggs and David Garibaldi. The band, launched 30 years ago in Oakland, Calif., remains at top form with its trademark brass sound. The band will perform a Valentine's Day concert Saturday at Blaisdell Arena and on Sunday will play on Maui.
Tower of Power $55 for reserved-table seating, with cocktail and pupu service; $45 for other seats (877) 750-4400 Also: Tower of Power performs at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center; $45, $35, $25 at the box office office; (808) 242-7469. |
"What is hip?" we asked Emilio Castillo, founder, saxophonist and singer of the mighty Tower of Power. After all, that's one of the band's top pop hits.
"As the song says, what's hip today will become passe. What's hip now may be passe in an hour," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Phoenix.
Hip 30 years ago, when the band was launched in Oakland, Calif., and still hip today, with a just-finished tour of Japan and a Valentine's Day concert Saturday at the Blaisdell Arena, Tower of Power remains at the top of its game for a very simple reason: It rocks.
"We just won't go away," said Castillo, 53, who co-writes much of the group's music.
"And (there is) the fact that we play a specialized music that's all our own," he said. "If you're in it, you're in it for the duration."
Of course, the band's brass sound is legendary, an industry signature.
"The brass is our trademark," said Castillo. "And the distinctive way our rhythm section plays. We always have a strong voice in front, and we've always been a big group — as few as nine, as many as 11, but mostly 10. Ten works best."
In a sense, Tower of Power has created its own vocabulary. "We're a real band with a language of our own," he said. "Everybody's got a say. We all speak our piece. We communicate. We 'talk' to each other."
The five-piece horn section is classic, the manner of the rhythm section inventive. "It's high-energy and very unique. I'd say we play illegitimately," he said, laughing, "because we don't give legitimate, full value to the four-quarter movement."
He said the group mimics the bouncy beat: bop, bop, bop, bop. "We play a bumpy style ... sort of our way, I guess."
Castillo hasn't always been a top brass man. "I started on the sax, but went over to organ, and played guitar part of the time," he said. "But I got back to sax and got singing."
As a youth living in Detroit, he and a brother had a group called the Motowns, an homage to the soul-and-rock label, because of the kind of music the act favored as wannabes in Motor City. "My mother suggested that name, and we were at it for about a year-and-a-half, and later became Tower of Power, which is a boring story itself.
"We needed a name if we were going to fill the Fillmore Auditorium (in San Francisco), at a time when we were growing our hair out long, everybody was turning hippie and psychedelic names were everywhere," he reflected about the psychedelicious 1970s.
The name they came up with would become synonymous with the group's powerhouse brass. And its sound — a fusion of rock, soul, blues and jazz — has been everywhere.
Over the decades, the group has aligned with a number of heavyweights, from Elton John to Dionne Warwick, from Rod Stewart to Smokey Robinson, and recently appeared on sessions with Aerosmith and Smashmouth.
"The horns are also heard on Playstation's Dragonball Z, with four of my songs on that, too," said Castillo.
"We do get around," he said. There's talk now of a union with James Brown and Ray Charles, though Brown's brush with the law (with domestic abuse charges pending) may delay the project.
"We've played concerts with James and Ray, and we'd love to connect again," Castillo said.
Work keeps him joyful, active and young.
"An audience has a lot to do with how you feel," he said. "You put out energy if they put out. It gets really hot when you're jamming. But I love other aspects of my work, the creative process — recording, writing. I don't get bored, because I have a lot to do."
For the romantically inclined, the group will be uncorking the obvious — "heart-wrenching love songs for Valentine's Day," said Castillo.
For the diehard Bump City hipsters, there also will be a barrage of oldies, including "You're Still a Young Man," "Back on the Streets Again," "So Very Hard to Go," "Soul Vaccination" and "Don't Change Horses (in the Middle of a Stream)."
"In other words, some of the hits you didn't hear last time will be very much part of the show," said Castillo. "Along with a brand new batch."
Sounds hip.
Reach Wayne Harada at wharada@honoluluadvertiser.com, 525-8067 or fax 525-8055.
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Who's who in longtime band Tower of Power
- Emilio Castillo, lead vocals, tenor saxophone, background vocals
- Stephen "Doc" Kupka, baritone sax
- Rocco Prestia, bass
- Adolfo Acosta, trumpet, flugelhorn
- Tom Politzer, lead tenor sax
- David Garibaldi, drums
- Roger Smith, keyboards
- Jeff Tamelier, guitar, background vocals
- Mike Bogart, trumpet, flugelhorn, background vocals
- Larry Braggs, lead vocals
