Sweet Pea Atkinson

No one involved with the making of Sweet Pea Atkinson’s 2017 album, Get What You Deserve, was really doing the math about how long it’s been since the singer’s previous solo record. And maybe that’s for the best: It’s been a staggering amount of time in the waiting. “Was it really 35 years? Oo!” says Atkinson, letting slip a bit of profanity slip as he’s informed of the exact gap. Executive producer Don Was, who also co-produced the last one back in 1982, is also surprised to hear the passage of years quantified. “That’s almost like Guns N’ Roses!” he jokes.

Time flies when you’re becoming one of the most celebrated soul singers of your generation even as you’re mostly working on other people’s projects. Atkinson’s talents have not exactly lay fallow over those decades, or his genius gone unnoticed. He’s best known as one of the lead singers of Was (Not Was), whose top 10 hit in America and the UK with “Walk the Dinosaur” made the sartorially sharp Detroit native the unlikeliest and nattiest of 1980s MTV stars. In subsequent years, he’s made his way more as a featured backup vocalist, spending a decade on the road as the most recognizable member of Lyle Lovett’s band and appearing on records by Brian Wilson, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Bob Seger, Kris Kristofferson, George Jones, Jackson Browne, Solomon Burke, Richie Sambora and scores of others. He’s also been an intermittent lead singer for the Boneshakers.

Was first came across Atkinson one fateful night in Detroit in the late ‘70s. “I was working with a band called Energy,” Atkinson recalls — a band made up of UAW workers — “and one of the guys who owned the rehearsal hall went over there and told Don, ‘You gotta go hear this guy.’ He came over and, man, he went crazy.” Not just over the voice, as Was recalls it, but the whole package. “I just remember there was goofy, bright orange shag carpeting on the walls, and I was coming out of a dark room at 3 in the morning, and Sweet Pea was dressed from head to toe in an orange ensemble that started at his shoes and went all the way to the hat. Everything was orange, and not just any orange but a perfectly matched shade. You know, a lot of work went into matching the socks to the hat! And in the bright lights of this hallway with the orange shag carpeting, he looked like fire,” Was says, cracking up at the memory. “He was blinding. And he was the most entertaining cat. You know, he’d already had a couple of lifetimes leading up to singing in that auto workers band.”

Before the ‘70s were up, with Was’ help, Atkinson had landed a deal with Portrait Records, which fell apart before they ever made a record, thanks to Epic dissolving the label. Eventually, in 1982, Was and his partner David Was would get around to recording Atkinson’s first solo album, Don’t Walk Away, for Island. The songs the Was brothers wrote for that were weird enough that many people consider it a Was (Not Was) album, in spirit, although it took a turn toward the normal with a cover of Burt Bacharach’s “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” That solo debut, recently given a digital re-release, “kind of slipped through the cracks,” Was says, “but it’s got some hawkish devotees (laughing) around the world. The people who know that record are super into it.”

But before Atkinson’s solo debut in ’82 came the first Was (Not Was) album, recorded at the turn of the decade. If you would imagine that it took some getting used to for an aficionado of the Temptations and Dells to cotton to the bizarre lyrical ethos of Was (Not Was), you’d be right. “The first song Don wanted me to do was ‘Woodwork Squeaks and Out Come the Freaks’,” Atkinson recalls. “I didn’t want to do it, because I thought that I was too goddam cool. I didn’t do it, either. And then I end up singing ‘Knocked down, made small, treated like a rubber ball’!” he laughs.

Was’ version of the story lines up. “We gave him the first version of ‘Out Come the Freaks,’ and the opening line was ‘Like Little Michael on a motorcycle with leather pants and a leather brain, he ain’t ever been the same since Vietnam.’ And Sweet Pea looked at it and he said, ‘I ain’t singing this shit!’ and he walked out. And I remember chasing him down the street saying, ‘No, just give it a try! You’ll sound great!’ as he got in his car and he drove away. Because of that, we called Sir Harry Bowens to sing that song, and that’s why there were multiple lead singers in Was (Not Was)! He would have been carrying the show except for refusing to sing that song that day. But he never refused any songs after that,” chuckling at how Atkinson’s competitive spirit led him to accept some of the group’s most outrageous lyrics.

After a long tour opening for Dire Straits in ’92 that Atkinson still fondly recalls, Was (Not Was) essentially ceased to exist as a touring and, eventually, recording unit. But that was hardly an end to the Was/Sweet Pea collaboration, as Atkinson was brought in on untold numbers of the sessions Don Was got hired for as a newly in-demand producer, starting with Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time and continuing on with everybody from Dylan to Michael McDonald to Iggy Pop.

Which raises the question: How did somebody with such a ridiculously distinctive lead-singer voice ever enjoy such a long and fruitful career as part of the backing chorale? As Keb’ Mo’ says, “He has a huge voice that really stands out rather than blends in. But Sweet Pea has figured out how to do both, depending on the situation he’s in.”

“He’s not necessarily a blender,” agrees Was, trying to explain the dichotomy. “He can blend, but he’s got to work at it, because background singers are supposed to stay in the background and not cut through. If you hear Mick Jagger singing background harmony on ‘You’re So Vain,’ he leaps out because he’s so audiogenic. And Sweet Pea’s got that going on too. There were times we used to have to push him really far back in the room,” Was laughs. “He’d have to get way off-mic to do stuff.”

For his part, Atkinson doesn’t give that much thought to what makes him such an able harmonizer as well as frontman, saying: “I can sing with anybody as long as they don’t sing opera.”

Now he’s back in front, where he more than arguably belongs. It’s another fruition of that fateful moment 40 years ago when Atkinson and Was crossed paths at 3 in the morning in a Detroit rehearsal hall, allowing America to get to enjoy the talents of a singer who’s really off any kind of timeline. “It’s the whole package, man,” says Was. “When I first laid eyes on him, he wasn’t famous, he wasn’t rich, but he was larger than life. And that personality and presence comes across in his singing. If you put on the first song on this album and you hear this guy start roaring, it’s a larger than life voice because that’s who he is.”

He’s still personally bigger than any kind of known reality to Was, 40 years later. He tells a story. “One time we played in Glasgow at the university, and it was a really wild crowd. You could actually see the balcony moving and shaking; it was terrifying. Then everyone went to a packed pub near the gig, and I’d never seen a debauched audience after-party like this. A crowd of drunken hooligans came out and started breaking beer bottles on the pavement, clearly trying to flatten the tires of our bus. David and I looked out the window at this mob trying to vandalize the bus, and we were cowering in the window like, ‘Oh, man, what are we going to do.’ Sweet Pea was changing out of his suit; he didn’t have a shirt on, just had these silk pants and his shoes and, of course, his hat. And he didn’t think twice. He grabbed the fire extinguisher, held it up like a fucking billy club, and went out there and made this mob of drunk guys sweep up. He was outnumbered, like, 20 to 1, but no one questioned him! And with the authority that he commanded, and the fact that he wasn’t bluffing, these intoxicated maniacs got under the bus and with their bare hands swept away the broken glass so we could drive off… with David and myself, watching him take command of the situation. I just remember admiring him so much in that moment — and so much more over the years. He was just fearless and righteous, and the things he stood up for were the right things, and he didn’t think twice about it. He’d say anything to any motherfucker, if he saw something wrong happen. It’s not just that he sang the way we wished we could sing. He’s the guy we wished we could be.”