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Members of the House: The Greatest House Music Band That Never Happened
It’s their first time together in a room in nearly 15 years. “Members of the House was the greatest house music band that never happened,” says Bill Beaver. He’s one-fourth of the core unit started by Mike Banks, which evolved from a wider collective also under the Members of the House name. It’s hardly remarked upon these days that Mike Banks was involved with euphoric house music at one point. The legacy of Underground Resistance is, of course, one reason. But it’s also because Members of the House only put out a few records and did one single European tour, drawing thousands of fans a night – and then it was all over.
\n\nIn a series of interviews, three singers of Members of the House – Bill Beaver, Hassan Watkins, and Quentin McRae (Randy “Paul” McKaskill is absent) – tell the story of how Members of the House became almost an overnight sensation in Europe and fell out of the spotlight just as quickly. Also joining are producers Derwin Hall (D-Ha) of Happy Records and Gerald Mitchell of Los Hermanos, plus Mike “Agent X” Clark, who assisted in the studio.
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Bill Beaver
\n\nMike Banks came up with the name.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nThere was a group “Members of the House” before the four-core. It was a revolving lineup. But Members of the House blew up when those four – Paul McKaskill, Hassan Watkins, Bill Beaver and Quentin McRae – got together. It broadened the flavor of the music.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nThe original group included Niko Marks, Yolanda Reynolds, Scott Weatherspoon, Avery Midnite, Crystal Gaynor, Bridget Grace, Tunesia Fowler… lots of cool, cosmic cats came through [Mike Banks’] basement. We all knew each other through backyard parties and grapevines.
\n\nHassan Watkins
\n\nWhen Members of the House first started, it was like a Berry Gordy-type production Mike Banks put together. He had all of these different fellas in it – D-Ha [Derwin Hall of Happy Records], [Mike] Clark, [Gerald] Mitchell [of Los Hermanos] – everybody involved making music. He brought in a bunch of vocalists and I was one of them. They did a compilation album in 1987 and I was the last guy on the album. It was called Keep Believin’. It was my first time doing house music; I was a soul singer from the street who dabbled in church music.
Mike Clark
\n\nI first heard [1988’s] “Share This House” and I was like, “Mike… are you doing house music?”
\n\nQuentin McRae
\n\nI kind of liked “Share This House” and that was before I knew anyone involved. But then I met the guy putting it together – Mike Banks – and he was like, “Well, I’m making this group called Members of the House. I want you to come sing for us.”
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nMike [Banks] was the orchestrator. The way I came in to it was when I was over at Mike Clark’s house. He was DJing and he said, “Man, I got somebody I want you to meet.” Never put out a record or anything like that before; I was getting ready to go to law school. But then I met Mike Banks.
\n\nHassan Watkins
\n\nFrom there, it just grew. Mike [Banks] started grabbing different artists, like Bill [Beaver] and Paul McKaskill and Quentin McRae. We blew up. We toured everywhere – all over the country, out of the country… Scotland, England, Canada. We played Joe Louis Arena with Inner City.
\n\nQuentin McRae
\n\nIt went from being a compilation/production company to us putting out a record called Reach Out for the Love as Members of the House.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nMy talent at the time was arranging vocals and writing. Members of the House was originally on Underground Resistance, but then Mike [Banks] and I started Happy Records, and that was their new portal. Members of the House made Happy Records a vocal label and an outlet for house. UR was a techno label and they were putting out house records, so we had to separate the two.
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Hassan Watkins
\n\nIf you go back and listen to our music, we were doing gospel-style harmony chords on top of house, fusing it. We had stacks of harmony, but then we kept unison on everything. That made it gospel-like. We were, at the time, a perfect gift for house music. I believe Mike [Banks] took four gifted folk, blended us, kind of made it almost like a basketball team… then pulled back all of that to make us one. The only group close to making that sound back then was Ten City. They were making harmonies out of Chicago.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nEverybody in our group was writing songs [at Mike Banks’ house]. If you were hitting your notes wrong, Mrs. Banks would come from upstairs and say, “I don’t know what Michael got you doing down here, but it ain’t soundin’ like the harmony is right.”
\n\nQuentin McRae
\n\nSometimes we would conceive songs in my car. We used to sit there and just create harmonies.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nJeff [Mills] and them would compile the track, then we’d go and make a show version. We would edit their tracks and then Jeff and Mike [Banks] would mix them together, and that would create the show. The main producers were Mike [Banks] and myself, but Gerald and Derek Jamerson started producing, and Mike Clark, too. There were no computers back then. Everything was MIDI-chained.
Bill Beaver
\n\nJeff Mills used to cut our tape down in the basement and edit it.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nWe recorded on that two-inch tape.
\n\nMike Clark
\n\nSometimes I would do the bassline or drum programs.
\n\nHassan Watkins
\n\nWhen I left there, I really felt like I made something.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nActually, you felt like you did a workout.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nNowadays, if someone hits a note wrong, you can fix it. But sometimes that off-ness was what gave a song some life.
\n\nHassan Watkins
\n\nMy voice would crack all the time and Mike [Banks] would keep those cracks.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nWe were four areas of soul that came together, plus all of the brothers who gave us our focus. It took a lot of guys to make us four guys happen. It didn’t just happen like clockwork. It was cultivated.
When Members of the House came along, they ended up putting a face to house music.
Hassan Watkins
\n\nWe were a group nobody had ever seen. We were four different guys with four different looks and four different voices. We had everything from the bass to the top first tenor. It was like the Temptations in a four-man group. We stepped and danced to everything we did. We were young and slim, stripping off our clothes… drove ‘em crazy. House music back then had singers, but they weren’t groups and they weren’t entertainers. We put on a full show.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nWe were like the Temptations of techno, or house. We did it just like the Motown guys did.
\n\nQuentin McRae
\n\nWe put outfits together – white suits, turquoise suits.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nThat’s kind of what set Members of the House apart from everybody else. House music had always been a faceless music. You could listen to house music all night long, and no one ever knew the artist or the name of the song. When Members of the House came along, they ended up putting a face to house music.
Hassan Watkins
\n\nAt that time, house music was still underground; you’d find it in buildings with strung-up lights. “Reach Out for the Love” was an underground track of ours only getting radio play on the weekends. WJLB had a Saturday night house mix – by Jeff Mills – and they were backing us. Before we knew it, we started hitting all these different charts.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nWe had Nicky Trax, Tony Cockrum, and John Truelove marketing our music overseas.
\n\nQuentin McRae
\n\nAnd React Music.
\n\nHassan Watkins
\n\nOur distribution was coming through an entity of Sony, so that’s how we were able to reach different countries, too. And we were this close to signing with them. I still have the contract.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nThen we got a tour. Before we did any shows, we rehearsed for a year-and-a-half.
\n\nHassan Watkins
\n\nWe practiced night after night, day after day. We had mirrors and we worked our butts off.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nThe show was tight and I have to give Banks credit for that. He was a drill sergeant and it benefitted everybody. We hated him for it, but we also loved him for it. That discipline he instilled taught us how to stay focused.
\n\nHassan Watkins
\n\nWhen we got overseas, what blew my mind was the thousands of people who knew our record. They sung every word. Here [in Detroit], nobody knew our words.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nWe were in Brixton [London] walking to a little store. We looked at the magazine rack and we were in the fucking rack! Like, “OK, I guess we made it to something, fellas!”
\n\nQuentin McRae
\n\nWe were at the newsstand and there was a Blues and Soul magazine with Vanessa Williams on the cover. I opened up the magazine and in the middle was this big huge picture of us. I was like, “Wow! Blues and Soul magazine is kind of big.” I didn’t think we were big.
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Hassan Watkins
\n\nOur popularity shined brighter overseas.
\n\nQuentin McRae
\n\nWe did our first interview at KISS-FM in London. On the spot, we did a jingle.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nI found out that there were a lot of kids who studied our music in Manchester. Our stuff was in their crates.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nHere [in Detroit], house music was more homegrown. Family, friends, entourage. It’s still that way now… same with techno. You can walk down the street here and no one knows who you are, but overseas you get off the plane and they think you’re Bobby Brown.
\n\nHassan Watkins
\n\nThey thought we were New Edition!
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nOne girl even screamed, “OH MY GOD, MICHAEL JACKSON!” And we were like, “No! There’s no Michael Jackson here!”
\n\nHassan Watkins
\n\nWe were playing everything from raves to arenas to airports. We actually played in an airport hanger. They turned the hanger into a big club. One time, they gutted out a movie theater for us, removed all the seats and made it a dance floor. We had this show at a pub in Scotland… as soon as we got there, the power went out. We thought we were done for, but the people wanted to hear their stuff. They were like, “Sing some a cappella! Sing some Motown!” So we did straight a cappella and crushed them. They ended up buying us pints of beer.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nHot beer, because they didn’t have any ice in the cooler and there was no power. Then the fans stole our clothes.
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Hassan Watkins
\n\nOne of the best feelings is when you’re a poor boy from Detroit and you’re growing up on Livernois… I’ll never forget when we were in Scotland and I looked around and it was so beautiful. The prettiest green, the prettiest blue. I said, “Wow. This is a long way from Livernois.”
\n\nQuentin McRae
\n\nWe had shows with 5,000 people.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nWe met Boy George at one of the shows.
\n\nQuentin McRae
\n\nWhat tripped me out was that everything was totally paid for! We had drivers, we had cars. We stayed in the same hotel as the Beatles.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nWe did somewhere around 32 shows in one month [during our 1991 European tour]. We all got sick after.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nWhen we came back to Detroit and hit Soul Night, that gave us our crowd [back home]. Soul Night was at the State Theater (now the Fillmore). It was a wall-to-wall crowd, jam-packed. It was one of the only places in Detroit that got 2,500 people at a party…. That was the era when house music was the biggest that it’s ever been in Detroit. Then hip hop came and took us all the way out.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nIt was a battle on the radio between Eazy-E, the West Coast boys, and house music. WJLB used to play everything from rock to house to techno, Depeche Mode… it could be anything.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nAnd then it got restricted. Something happened. Censorship was a big deal. That was when I first discovered the music business… those words should be reversed. It should be the business of music. The business overrode the music.
\n\nHassan Watkins
\n\nRight after the first tour, we stopped touring. That was it.
\n\nQuentin McRae
\n\nWe never got our second tour.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nThere were no more tours, but there were continued records for four or five more years. I think the last record came out in 1995.
\n\nGerald Mitchell
\n\nSo I got a question for y’all. Members of the House… why can’t that get back together now?
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nCould it happen again?
\n\nHassan Watkins
\n\nI definitely think it could happen again ‘cause Bill and I never really stopped. I mean, we went our separate ways, but we kept doing music.
\n\nDerwin Hall
\n\nI don’t think you can recreate Members of the House, though. It’s like buying a really fine painting and putting it on the wall. You can try to recreate it, but it won’t be the same thing. You can get that same artist to do something new that will be just as beautiful, though.
\n\nBill Beaver
\n\nWe’re only as good as our next record.\n
\nPhotos courtesy of Hassan Watkins