The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert
Bernard Edwards, my long time partner, peeked out from behind the curtain at the sellout crowd in Tokyo's Budokan. "Look at that," he said to me right before we took the stage. "We did it. They didn't come to see us, they came to hear our music." That would be my last concert with him. After that show he went back to his hotel room and died on the sofa. His words were prophetically correct. We had done what we'd set out to do.
Our dream was never to become stars, our dream was to have our music heard. That's every composer's dream. Anywhere I go on this planet, I can anonymously sit and watch the world listen to my music. And if I'm on stage and I say, "One, Two, Awww," the audience instinctively responds "Freak Out!" They don't know me, but They Know The Song.
The composition "We Are Family" that we wrote for the group Sister Sledge, has been a part of every U.S. president's campaign and victory parties since the 80's. President Nelson Mandela knows The Song and last night I watched Britain's Royal family bop their heads to it. That in and of itself would be cool, but what's really cool is you can tell They Know The Song.
The Queen's Diamond Jubilee - "We Are Family"