Interview with Tower of Power founder Emilio Castillo: Musician, Band Leader, Entrepreneur, Philosop

In this unique interview with one of the most enduring greats of his musical genre, EmilioCastillo opens up and shares his life struggles and personal break throughs, while offering sound advice beneficial to anyone.

It’s hard enough to create one song that reaches the top of the charts. It’s much harder to succeed in the music business for decades on end. It takes a lot of talent, hard work, and intelligence to persevere as a popular band for more than forty years. Only a handful of bands have been able to accomplish that remarkable feat. Tower of Power is one such band.

It’s the very reason Emilio Castillo should be considered a successful entrepreneur, as well as accomplished song writer and band leader. To endure in the music game, you have to think like a businessman. You have to hone your image and remain appealing and relevant, year after year. No small task.

Mr. Castillo’s was able to accomplish just that by learning some valuable life lessons along the way. Enjoy his story. It’s loaded with rich history, as well as insights that will entertain and inspire you.

I am pleased to introduce, Emilio Castillo (EC).

Interviewer: You’ve created a well-respected career with Tower of Power. Would you share the highlight, so far, and the low spot, as a contrast?

EC: Well, I can say that the low spot of my career was probably the late 70’s early 80’s. We had a ten-year run where things were really good, from 1968 to 1978. And then like a lot of people in the San Francisco Bay area, we were indulging in all that stuff that brings people down. You know drugs, alcohol, just not living right, and we paid the price for it. We found ourselves, around ’82, without a record deal and being viewed as a dinosaur. That’s what they actually wrote about us. They said, “These guys are dinosaurs and their music will never be popular again.”

And that was the time when New Wave music and Punk Rock were coming out. The feeling was people didn’t want to listen to anybody who had been in the business for over 5 years. By then, we had been at it for 12 years.

I continued living that way for another 6 years and then sobered up in 1988. That’s when things started to get better for me. A year later my song writing partner and baritone sax player ‘Doc Kupka’ followed suit and he got clean and sober and we’ve been going up hill ever since.

As far as the highlight of my career, I’ve had a lot of wonderful moments. But I would have to say that the decision to turn my life around and living my life right and pursuing a spiritual way of living, turning from my old life to my new life, that’s what really changed my career.

In 1990, I was contacted by a guy who used to be a fan of the band. He had worked in the mail room of CBS and eventually became the Vice President of Epic Records. He reached out to us. He found out I had been sober for a couple years and Doc was sober and he was excited about the band.

Long story short, he signed us to a 7-album deal with Epic Records. And throughout the 90’s, we recorded with Epic. We just continued to grow in faith and our walk with God. We just started living right. We reaped the rewards of doing that.

I would say that was really the changing point, if you want to call it a highlight. It was certainly one of the best highlights of my career and I’ve had a lot of great moments playing live with certain artists or being involved in recordings with certain artists, and you know they were all wonderful, but that’s really what changed my life.

Interviewer: How did you changed personally during that time, not so much as a musician but as an individual?

EC: You know the questioning for me came later in my career around the late 70’s when things were souring. In retrospect I can see why things were sour. I know I wasn’t living right. And I know that’s why things weren’t going right. But at the time all I could think was the record company was telling us, “Can you try to sound like this group over here? Because they get a lot of airplay. And if you sound like them, we can get you on the radio more.”

These people are giving us a lot of money and we want to please them. So we tried. We tried to do it disco style and we tried to sound like this group and that group. But every time we did, we ended up sounding like Tower of Power.

I remember clearly thinking, “Why can’t I sound like these other people? I’ve got a good band, we are tight, we make music. But it’s not like theirs.” And I looked at it like it was a curse. It wasn’t until years later, when I could look back in retrospect, and realized that it wasn’t a curse, it was a blessing. Because the fact that I don’t sound like anyone else means that we have a signature. I have a voice that’s all my own. Maybe I haven’t hit the top 10 and had 15 number 1 records but I have a 43 year career that’s going to be 44 in August. So I have longevity in a business where artists are coming and going in a single year. I didn’t think about it when I first started. All I was thinking about was I’m going to make this band as good and as tight as can be and I’m going to have a lot of fun doing it. That was a big priority for me. We really had fun making music and unfortunately that got a little warped along the way. We were making music and having fun. So I didn’t doubt what we were doing. I just really didn’t think about it that much. But then, later, because of the circumstances of my career, I started thinking about it all the time. And then I started getting down on myself. And when you’re in that mindset, you’ve already lost the war.

Eventually everything went away; God has a way of doing that. You know, when you’re not living right, He takes stuff away from you. And He makes it all bare bones so you can see a little clearer. I remember telling the guys, “You know what, let’s just forget all this trying to be somebody else. We always sound like Tower Power anyway, let’s at least have fun doing it and just make music to please ourselves.” And we’ve been doing that ever since, and it goes really well for us when we do that. It may sound selfish, making music to please yourself. But we notice, when we do that, the fans love it. It’s just what comes out. And you have to realize, ok you’re not cursed; you’re blessed. God has enabled you to be who you are, and to be unique at who you are being.

Interviewer: So many people, at some point in their lives, reach a critical fork in their life’s journey where they have to make a choice. If you could place a signpost that says, “Don’t go this way,” what road would it warn people not to go down?

EC: You have to meet people where they are. I mean, if you see somebody that’s living a life hell bent on just getting every dime out of everybody they can, well they’re paying the price for it by the way their relationships are souring, then you talk to them about that.

If you see a guy who’s drunk all the time, you approach them there. If a guy is on drugs, same thing. If you see somebody who is just a horrendous liar, living in fallacy all the time, you meet him where he’s at.

And I think the only way you can do that is to give your experience. And that’s another thing that I learned from recovery and the Bible is that if you share about yourself then people can relate to it. So, you got to meet them where they’re at and share your life story with them.

The other thing is that, we don’t get the job done ourselves. It’s not us. It’s God working through us. And so, I may be at a juncture with a person where I can share some stuff with him and he may hear it. Yet, it may make no difference then. But a seed is planted. And maybe a year later, with the help of some other people that God puts in their lives, it gets accomplished. It’s God who does it. It’s not us. And so I have to always remember that. It’s not like I’ve got to close the deal. My job is just to give the message that I have that day to them to be used whenever God wants to use it.

I’m not out there playing “Jesus Saves Music.” I mean, that’s not what I do. I’m very experienced at what I do. One of the things I used to hear was “Shoemakers stick to thy last.” In other words, do what you do best. No matter what you’re doing, you’re supposed to be doing it for the glory of God. And so if I’m doing that, I want people to know that I’m doing it, that God is doing it through me. Give Him the credit.

When people know that, it makes a powerful statement to people. It makes them reflect for a moment, maybe “Wow, I want that” or “How can I get that?” Somehow God gets it done through us, so it’s my job to be as transparent as I can and to be a messenger.

Interviewer: You are a spiritual man. Do you talk actively about your beliefs or do you keep it to yourself and do your best to practice what you preach?

EC: When I sobered up in ‘88, one of the first things they taught us was that we needed to get in touch with a power greater than ourselves. And at first that’s all it was to me. Although I must say that when the people around me were talking about, “Well I believe in the cosmos” or the idea of a Christian God or to even say God, I’ve never had a problem with that, and I don’t know why that is because I had no foundation in faith whatsoever.

My parents were not religious and they were not spiritual. But I did believe in God. And I wasn’t going to choose a higher power like some tree or some star. I knew that God created the earth and created me and I was going to be praying to that God because I was tired of living my own life. So I started that path, but I can’t say that I was going around telling people, “Oh, believe in God.” I found out that to stay clean, you needed to give it away. And so I started helping people get sober, and as I progressed in my recovery I became closer to God. And I started working those 12 steps. One of the steps is we’re supposed to pursue God more, get to know him better. Figure out who he is. And prove our conscious intent with him. So I studied all these different religions. But what I noticed was I kept going back to the Bible.

So now you go forward several years and I’m reading the Bible. I’m still checking out other religions and other spiritual ways, new age. But I’m always being brought back to the Bible. And the reason for that is because every single principle that saved my life, I knew came from the Bible. And finally, after praying to God and having a real good prayer life, and really believing in God, and thinking I had a relationship with Him, I realized that I really didn’t understand the whole thing about His Son Jesus Christ. That’s what I didn’t understand. And I got to a place where I just reached out in prayer and said I need some clarity about this, I want to be able to say I do not believe in Him and here’s why. Or I do believe Him and here’s why.

As soon as I made that prayer, God answered quickly. I came to Saving Faith in Christ in 2004 and since then, yes, I’m very vocal about my faith. At first I was a little shy about it. I never liked people stuffing Jesus down my throat: I never enjoyed that. I try not to do that even now. I’m very respectful of peoples’ faith and I understand their walk. And I understand that the word “Jesus” and the word “Saved” and the words “born again” just make people wrinkle.

And that’s just not what I want to do. What I want to do is to help people get a relationship with God. And so I’m very careful about that stuff and mindful of it. But I am also diligent to let people know because I want people to see my life and want what I have. And that’s something that I learned in recovery: live your life as an example to others and they’ll want what you have. And so I try and do that, and I try to pick my opportunities to help people to know about God.

I remember when I first got into recovery, there was this one quote that said, “The fundamental idea of God is in everyone.” And that makes sense to me. I had no foundation whatsoever in faith and yet I believed in God. And I didn’t know why. That little bit of faith I had that there was a God and that He loved me and cared for me enabled me to pursue Him further.

Interviewer: Give me your history prior to Tower of Power. How old were you when you started playing music? What was your path? How did you happen to meet up with the guys in the band?

EC: Well, I always loved music, even as a little kid. My parents loved music. They played it in the house all the time. And I grew up in Detroit until I was 11, but I didn’t play music but I loved singers, and I loved songs.

I was a very good little imitator. I remember my mother telling me that I could sing “Only You” at 6 years old by the Platters, verbatim. I was really intrigued and I enjoyed music. But when I was 14, I’m a teenager and I got caught doing a little, well, my friends and I tried to steal a t-shirt. One of my friends turned out to be my first guitar player.

I had a very short career in crime. I got caught the first time. And my dad took us to the store and made me apologize to the storeowner. And he gave me a notebook to fill with the reasons I’ll never steal again. And he said, “Think about something that’s going to keep you off the streets and out of trouble or you’re never going to come out of that room again as long as you live.”

But I did come out. My friend Joey had bought a guitar on vacation in Mexico and we said, “We want to play music, Dad.” And he said, “Get in the car.” He took us to a music store and said, “Pick an instrument. Anyone you want.”

My dad was a bartender. He worked in these places where they would have show bands and we would sometimes go there to pick him up. He would invite us down and we would see these bands. I noticed that the sax player was always the guy in the limelight. He was the cool guy. My brother was fascinated with the drummer. So he pointed to the drums and I pointed to the sax. So we started at age 14.

We got this one guy, named David Coborn who played guitar. He was like way better than any of us because we couldn’t play. See we didn’t do it the way normal people do. We didn’t take lessons for years and years and practice for years and years and then join a band. We started a band the first day, and then learned how to play. And since that day, I’ve had a band. I mean, my life completely changed.

Something happened with that kid David Coborn. He got put on restriction or something and we had a gig coming up. We couldn’t understand that his dad would just pull him out of the band. That’s when I told the guys about this guy Frank Hutton. Who’s real name turned out to be, we found out years later, Francis Rockwell Garcia. Well I heard that he played the guitar and I told the guys he had really cool hair and that was good enough for them. “Cool hair, he’s in!”

Then my dad got us this teacher, a great guitar player named Gary Saunders. He used to come once a week and teach us. The first time he came to meet us, he looked right at Rocco. He saw him playing guitar, and he was a horrible guitar player, I mean horrible. And he looked at him and he says, “You need to play the bass.” Rocco went, “What’s a bass?” And Gary says, “Don’t worry about it; you need one.”

So he started teaching Jody and Rocco on bass and guitar once a week. He would come another day of the week and teach the whole band how to play a song. I used to watch him and eventually I learned how to do what he did; I became the guy in the band that would teach the guys how to play the song.

Interviewer: When did you first start working? When did you first start playing gigs? And when did you actually get the sense,” Wow, we’re actually getting good?”

EC: Well I don’t know about “Wow, we’re getting pretty good.” But we started working immediately. I don’t even think we’d been together two or three months and we got a gig and we only knew three or four songs half way through. We just played them over and over. And back then kids were more forgiving.

I think we played outdoors at the high school in the afternoon. We just did whatever we could. We were exhilarated and that’s when it just took over my life.

Everything changed from then on. I mean, my focus on everything else when out the window. All I lived for was that band. I loved the band. And my brother Jack is ten months older than me. He was the drummer and he was the leader. But as we progressed in our abilities my Dad went to us and he said, “Emilio needs to be the leader.” And I was like, “What do you mean? I don’t want to be the leader.” It was always my older brother’s job. But Dad said, “No. You’re the one who has the natural talent. And you need to lead the band.”

He forced me to be the leader and my brother was angry. I felt guilty, like I was doing something bad to my brother. But my dad said you are the leader and you are going to learn how to lead and he taught me to be a leader. That proved to be a very wise decision.

Interviewer: Do you listen to contemporary music, the new talent?

EC: I don’t listen to radio. I don’t watch MTV. I do watch the Grammy awards. I do listen to Bruno Mars. He has a slick band. They do this soul thing and a dance thing that’s good and he sings well. I enjoy them.

I really enjoyed Taylor Swift perform Mean at the Grammys. When she first came out I thought to myself, why is she a big star? But the more I see her the more I realize she has great songs, she executes them well, she has a cute personality, and I see why that works.

But I have say my favorite band to listen to and to watch right now is Alison Krauss and Union Station. In their genre, they are the counter part to Tower of Power. They execute so well live.

I heard them on a PBS special one night at about 3:00 in the morning. I couldn’t sleep. I was in Park City Utah, at a ski resort snowed in. It was late after a gig and I turned on PBS and there was Allison Krauss. I had heard about her and saw her when she first came out on the Grammy awards and it wasn’t my thing. But this was a complete concert. The way they blended vocally, the way they played, the dobra, the banjo, and the guitar, even the bass player and the drummer – awesome, just awesome.

I immediately went out and bought every CD they had. I could listen to them any time.

Also, what I listen to these days is contemporary gospel praise music, in particular, Fred Hammond and Yolanda Adams. I like those really soulful gospel artists because they are making some seriously well produced soulful music and I just love it. It appeals to me. So, that’s what I listen to the most.

I’m also a big fan of singers. I go to the classics. Right now when I drive around in my van I go through the box set of Ray Charles. I can listen to Johnny Taylor or Phillippe Wynne from the Spinners. But I don’t listen to a lot of the current music.

Interviewer: How do you balance your life with so much road time?

EC: One thing I learned years ago, from a failed marriage, my first marriage, was every single day, no matter where I am on the earth, I talk to my wife on the phone.

I’m quick to point out that even though it looks like I’m gone all the time, if you think about it, most men these days are workaholics working 5 even 6 days a week, sometimes as much as 10 or more hours a day. On Sunday they want to go golf.

A very busy year for me is 200 days a year. That leaves 165 days that I’m home. And when I am home, I am home all day long. This month, I’m working all month but my gigs are on weekends. This week I got home on Monday afternoon. I won’t leave until Saturday morning and I will be back Sunday afternoon.

I’m doing that all month. So, I’m home quite a bit. But when I’m gone, I’m gone. I’m not down the street. I’m far away. But I do have a lot of time with my family and I’m grateful for that.

Interviewer: Does Tower of Power take advantage of new technology these days?

EC: Yes, we use the Internet. We use Skype, Yousendit, Pro tools is wonderful. We send files around when I record. On my last recording I wanted strings on it, so I just sent the music stems down to Texas to my arranger, Dave Estridge. He hired a small string section and over dubbed them and sent the stem back to me.

I can write now with someone online. I don’t have to be at someone else’s house to collaborate, we can use the Internet.

The real guiding principle, something I learned from Huey Lewis, is to use everything that is out there for you. Use it but don’t let it use you.

Interviewer: There is an interesting new trend of baby boomers forming bands late in their life. How do you suggest they perfect their craft after all these years, or should they just give up and let the kids do the job?

EC: For one, you can never master your craft. I don’t think you can perfect anything. It’s always an ongoing process. Anything you do, you want to do your best. And if you are doing your best you are where you are supposed to be at that moment.

I tell people one of the most important things is just to get out there and play. I think it’s invaluable to play with other musicians live. Not with headphones or playing to a track, that is good also. But I think there is something to be said for humans interacting with each other making music. The more you do that the more you will progress.

Interviewer: You said you had two goals, one was to write a score for a movie. Have you made any progress? How close are you to achieving that goal?

EC: I don’t approach that goal specifically. I don’t sit down and write a song for a movie that I think will be an Oscar winner. I write my songs and I approach my song writing one song at a time. Whatever comes out on that day is what comes out. Now I’m hoping that some of these songs are good and that one of them is going to click some day and do that for me. But if it doesn’t happen, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

I often write songs, finish them, then don’t listen to them for years. I’m doing an original album right now. I just started recording a few months ago. I’ve got 14 tracks recorded. And when I started going over all the songs I had written in the last 7 or 8 years, I was amazed. I reviewed some of those songs I had written and said, WOW. When I broke them all out and started listening to them, I realized I had way more than an albums worth of great music here.

So, that’s how I approach it. I make music and I do it to the best of my ability. There are all these different stages. There is the song writing stage, there is the demo stage, then there is teaching the band, shaping the song, shaping the recording, completing it. And even after that going out and playing it live, helping it to grow in a live performance, not leaving it the same all the time, adding little things here and there. It’s like an ongoing work of art, like a sculpture. We are just always doing something to the music.

Interviewer: Your other goal was to make a record with someone who has a timeless quality. Can you give me an example of who that might be?

EC: Someone like Sting or Peter Gabriel but really anybody that’s not trendy; singers that are going to be here for a while. I like people who make music that has their own signature.

We are not like a lot of these big stars. We are a working band. I have a lot of guys and I have a huge overhead. We are working all the time and we are very slow at moving forward with our individual goals because we work a lot.

We want be with our families and we are older. Slow and steady, things are definitely moving upward. Things are getting better; we are pushing the envelope more, globally.

We are kind of like the best-kept secret in the industry and we are a growing phenomena. And that’s good cause it lets me know I have a lot more years in the business. My career can go for a long time.

People say, “You are 61 years old, how long are you going to do this?” My answer is, just like BB King, “Til I can’t get up there anymore, I’m just going to do it.”

And that’s what I do.

There is nothing in the bible that talks about retirement. Humans came up with retirement. You work your whole life. That’s what you are put here for. And you work for the glory of God. And my partner Doc, he has this great phrase, “Musicians don’t retire, the phone just stops ringing.”

I am happy to say the phone is still ringing for us.

Interviewer: How do you address the aging of your fan base and the emerging interests of the younger generation?

EC: In the last 20 years we have started noticing that our crowds are getting younger and our young crowds are getting larger. When we go to Europe, it’s all kids 25 and younger.

I was in Seattle and there were 6 or 7 younger girls, 16 or 17 years old, who came back stage and asked if they could get our autographs. Of course we gave them but I asked them, “How did you kids get interested in Tower of Power?” It turns out they drove down from Vancouver with their band director, and that’s a two and a half hour drive. They came every night to see us, 4 nights in a row. “Our band director told us about you and you guys are awesome.”

What I’ve noticed, a lot of musicians tried to make a career out of live music but for some reason or another it didn’t work out. So they went into education. So there are a lot of band directors, stage band, jazz band, marching band, concert band, who are pointing these kids in the direction of Tower of Power.

If you think about it, it’s a very good way to get kids to play music. Because when I was in school they weren’t pointing us towards Elvis Presley, they were pointing us to John Phillip Sousa. No offense to John Phillip Sousa but that wasn’t what I wanted to play.

Kids have a way of seeking out music that is good. I don’t think they are seeking old music, I think they are seeking good music. And they can tell what’s good and what’s not.

It’s become a cool thing to be a Tower of Power fan and that’s good for us.

Interviewer: Parting question, if you were a motivational/inspirational speaker standing in front of a crowd of 10,000 people, in one short phrase, what would you say that is uplifting and inspiring?

EC: I learned a long time ago, “Live right, feel right.” If you are not feeling good about your life, it’s because you aren’t living right.

Learn more about Emilio and Tower of Power at their website, http://www.towerofpower.com.