“He said ‘What’s wrong with this instrument? It only plays one note at a time!” Producer recalls Stevie Wonder’s first encounter with the TONTO synth
TONTO co-creator Robert Margouleff looks back on a special moment with the music legend.
Image: Kevin Winter / Getty Images
Synth history buffs and fans of ’70s classics like Stevie Wonder’s Superstition and Boogie On Reggae Woman might be familiar with The Original New Timbral Orchestra or TONTO, the instrument behind many of these iconic tunes.
In a new interview, producer and TONTO co-creator Robert Margouleff looks back on the first time Wonder laid his hands on the legendary synth and the creative partnership that blossomed following their initial collaboration.
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According to Margouleff, Wonder had approached him and fellow TONTO mastermind Malcolm Cecil after hearing their 1971 album, Zero Time.
“Stevie came in and we showed him the instrument [TONTO] and he put his hands all over it,” says the producer [via Music Radar], recalling the way Wonder showed up at their studio with a copy of the record in hand. “And then he started trying to play chords on it and he said ‘Malcolm! Bob! What’s wrong with this instrument? It only plays one note at a time!’”
“And Malcolm said ‘Stevie it’s sort of like a trumpet or a saxophone. You have to use your whole body just to get the mood and the sound and it only plays one note at a time and it comes out of your mouth.’”
“Stevie got it in a second,” he continues. “We started recording that weekend — we recorded like 15 or 16 songs. We went completely bonkers.”
“We never recorded [music] to create an album, so to speak. We just recorded music and we had a huge library of music, all in different kinds of places.”
The producer adds that this happened while Wonder was renegotiating his contract with record label Motown: “He was sick of Motown,” Margouleff explains. “Why? Because there was a formula for Motown — it had four guys dancing in sort of uniforms and a front person, male or female. It was a formula and Stevie didn’t want to be inside the formula. And also, his music was so socially significant and important it wasn’t just about ‘do-bop’ and ‘how I love you baby.’”
Watch the full interview below.
