Tower of Power
The soul-funk band returns to Hawaii
for a dance extravaganza with a vow
to play the hits that have fired up fans
for decades
Emilio Castillo was a few short days away from giving up on a musical career when he got the call. Castillo had asked his father to give him one more year to get his band going. If it didn't happen in a year's time, they agreed, Castillo and his brother would give it up and join the rest of the family in Detroit.
"They had financial difficulties and moved all the way back (from the Bay Area) to Detroit, but me and my brother were in the band and didn't want to move and give up the band, so my dad put that stipulation on it," Castillo said by phone last week.
Valentine's Day
With Tower of Power
Dance PartyWhere: Blaisdell Arena
When: 8 p.m. tomorrow
Tickets: $55 for table seats (drink and pupu service available) and $45 reserved floor and riser seating
Call: 591-2211
It turns out that since then, the years have been pretty good for Tower of Power -- particularly now since the soul-funk band was out here last for a Sheraton Waikiki gig. "Oakland Zone," the album that was released just after the gig, is out and "selling pretty good," according to Castillo. And the band's one-nighter in the Blaisdell Arena tomorrow comes between a recently completed 26-show tour of Japan and an upcoming European tour.
None of this would have happened if Castillo's father hadn't given his sons a full year on their own in Oakland, Calif. Even then, Castillo said, they almost didn't make it. In the end, it all came down to one final audition for a gig at the Fillmore Auditorium.
"We got busted by the ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) for being underage (to be) playing nightclubs, so all the places we were playing suddenly wouldn't hire us, and from January all the way to November of that year, we couldn't get a gig. We'd been playing clubs so long that none of the high schools knew who we were and we were just rehearsing and rehearsing and rehearsing and writing and trying to make ends meet. By the time we got to audition at the Fillmore, we were so broke I told the guys that if nothing happened I'd be going back to Detroit (for good)."
Castillo was in Detroit visiting his parents for the holidays when he got a telephone call from his friend and songwriting partner, baritone sax man Stephen "Funky Doctor" Kupka.
"Doc called me up and told me, 'You gotta come back. He dug it!' "
The man in question was Bill Graham, the late, legendary concert promoter and impresario, who signed Tower of Power to his own San Francisco Records and became their management, booking and music publishing representative.
Regional success in the Bay Area was followed by national exposure. Tower Of Power first made Billboard's Pop Album chart with "East Bay Grease" in 1971. The band was then signed to Warner Bros., which released "Bump City" the following year.
Castillo and Kupka have been the foundation of Tower Of Power since Day One. The first song they wrote, "You're Still a Young Man," became the band's first national hit single in '72. After that came a series of moderately successful national hits that included "Down to the Nightclub," "So Very Hard to Go," "This Time It's Real" and "What Is Hip?"
But no state had more hard-core TOP fans per capita back in the day than Hawaii. While only one TOP single broke the Top 20 nationally, Hawaii fans have always recognized and appreciated the soul power generated by the mighty-sounding Tower.
CASTILLO AND KUPKA led TOP through a well-received concert at the Sheraton Waikiki a year ago -- even though fans had to wait almost 45 minutes into the show before they heard any of the favorites they were waiting for.
Castillo volunteered a promise that Tower of Power will be playing "all the hits" tomorrow.
It won't be the first time that TOP has played Blaisdell Arena, but tomorrow's "dance party" will be something a little out of the ordinary. The theme is "Down to The Nightclub," with reserved nightclub-style table seating and drink and pupu service available, as well as conventional floor level and riser seats. No seats will be sold in the arena's upper levels.
Two "Bump City" dance floors will be open to inspired boogie-ing and slow dancing.
"There's no possible way I could have foreseen this," Castillo said, regarding the band's longevity.
"I was a kid doing something that I loved to do. That's all it was. I think a lot of times today, young kids get into music because they're going to have the tours and the bling-bling and all that kind of stuff. When we did it ... it was just for the total love of playing music (and) that feeling of getting on stage, playing for people, so there's really no way I could have foreseen that my music would have any sort of timeless quality to it."
The key to longevity, he adds, is to bring something original to the table.
"We don't really sound like nobody else. It's pretty much our own genre of music, and that's turned out to be a big plus. If you asked me what I thought about that at different points of my career, I might have had a negative response, but in the last 15 years or so, I came to realize that the fact that we don't sound like anybody else really is a blessing."
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