The Isley Brothers

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  • Go for Your Guns
    Go for Your Guns
    Go for Your Guns

    Although there’s plenty of frantic disco-funk on this release, Go For Your Guns found the Isley Brothers inching into the slow grooves of their quiet storm era. Its most enduring tracks, “Voyage to Atlantis” and “Footsteps in the Dark”, feature the same ambitious jams and improvisation that the group had made its signature through the ’70s, but taken down to a more intimate, seductive tempo. Those two songs also found the group once again working ahead of its time: Neither was a hit upon its release (“Footsteps in the Dark” wasn’t even put out as a single), but it wasn’t long before they became the most beloved entries on the double-platinum album. The drums alone on “Footsteps in the Dark” are iconic; once the guitar and bass enter, you’re hearing the bedrock for songs by everyone from Ice Cube (“It Was a Good Day”) to Usher to J Dilla. Most of the song, including the lyrics, were crafted by Ernie—best known as the group’s virtuoso guitar player, he actually started on drums and is also behind the addictive, understated beat on this record. The family band slowly adds layered, almost contrapuntal riffs as the song progresses beneath Ronald’s soaring falsetto. Ernie is also the key to “Voyage to Atlantis”, opening the track with a guitar solo and setting the stage for “Choosey Lover”—the pair of which helped make shredding sexy. Upon its release, Go For Your Guns’ most successful songs were “Livin’ in the Life” and “The Pride”, two earthy dance jams that resisted pop gloss in favour of rockish grit, proving anyone who thought disco and rock were at odds clearly just hadn’t listened to the Isley Brothers. At the height of their most commercially successful period, the band kept shifting and evolving, offering up relentlessly original music that everyone wanted to dance to.

  • 3+3
    3+3
    3+3

    The Isley Brothers’ 11th album marked the official dawn of a new, still funkier era for the shape-shifting group—younger Isleys Ernie and Marvin, as well as Rudolph’s brother-in-law Chris Jasper joined the original trio of brothers in the spotlight (hence the album’s title). Ronald, Rudolph and O’Kelly Jr were content to let their new, younger bandmates continue to push the music in a funkier, more expansive direction while they handled the family band’s business. 3+3 was the band’s first release to be certified platinum, and the beginning of their most commercially successful decade as a group. It also included their first explicit forays into funk-formatted songs—tunes sprawling across two parts to span both sides of a 45. “That Lady”, a rework of their own 1964 composition “Who’s That Lady”, and “Summer Breeze,” a Seals and Crofts cover that continued their years-long project of turning soft-rock hits into funk jams, both used that two-part structure to great effect. “That Lady” was the Isley Brothers’ second biggest hit to that point, reaching the top ten of the pop charts thanks to Ernie’s screaming guitar and its contrast with the song’s gentle, persistent groove. “That Lady”, along with other uptempo tracks like “If You Were There” and “What It Comes Down To”, helped form the bridge from funk to disco; yet there’s an undeniable rockish core to the release. They kept guitar front and centre, and almost half the album is covers of hits by white artists—key to an argument that the Isley Brothers kept building into their albums: that even if radio would never say so, they were rock pioneers, as much or moreso than the artists whose songs they were transforming.

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About The Isley Brothers

Few, if any, groups have influenced and adapted to the changes in popular music as long or as fruitfully as The Isley Brothers. The family group formed in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1954, and by the end of the decade they had relocated to New York and morphed from a doo-wop-inspired outfit to a gospel-fuelled rock ’n’ roll band with the 1959 hit “Shout”, later immortalised in Animal House, and “Twist and Shout” in 1962, famously covered by The Beatles. After cutting a few failed singles with a young Jimi Hendrix on guitar, the group re-emerged on Motown in 1966, deftly transplanting Ronald Isley’s creamy lead vocals to the urbane soul-pop made famous by the label on the classic “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)”. In 1968, the group relaunched their T-Neck label—named after their adopted home base of Teaneck, New Jersey—to co-release future recordings, including the funky 1969 smash “It’s Your Thing”. After producing and releasing the 1969 concert album Live at Yankee Stadium, the group settled on a singular sound, melding slick gospel-driven soul with the psychedelic lead guitar of Ernie Isley on both original material, like the ubiquitous 1973 smash “That Lady”, and inventive hit rock covers of “Summer Breeze” and “Love the One You’re With”. The group solidified their popularity throughout the ’70s, toggling between lean funk and silky balladry that presaged the slow-jam era. As the 1990s began, the group had dropped off the charts despite continuing to make solid recordings, but a late-decade partnership with R. Kelly found the Isleys sharing radio waves with artists one-third their age. More than six and a half decades after they formed, Ronald and Ernie Isley continue to tour, sharing a lifetime of seduction and grace with listeners new and old.

ORIGIN
Cincinnati, OH, United States
FORMED
1954
GENRE
R&B/Soul

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