Every year when September comes around, it’s a time for celebration for iconic music group Earth, Wind & Fire.
The group released their hit song September in 1978, which remains one of their biggest hits to date, and was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2018.
The group, which lost drummer Fred White, who died at age 67 last year, is embarking on a new Heart & Soul tour that it will co-headline with Chicago and continues Sept. 3 in Seattle.
They recently spoke about the song and the many doors it has opened for them… including receiving many keys to various cities over the years.
“I mean, we’ve gotten keys to cities in September in several different cities and stuff in September,” said Philip Bailey, who added, “If you don’t know Earth, Wind & Fire in September, you will.”
Every year when September comes around, it’s a time for celebration for iconic music group Earth, Wind & Fire.
The group released their hit song September in 1978, which remains one of their biggest hits to date, and was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2018.
“The whole month belongs to us,” added Verdine White in an interview with Peopleand Ralph Johnson added: “Yes, it’s our month.”
The song opens with the now-iconic lyric, ‘Do you remember/The night of September 21st?’, although the group’s late songwriter Allee Willis insisted that date had no significance to the group prior to the song.
“We reviewed all the dates.”‘Do you remember the first one, the second one, the third one, the fourth one…?’ and the one that I thought was the best was ’21,’ Willis said in an interview with NPR in 2004, 15 years before he died in 2019 at age 74.
Willis co-wrote the song with former members Al McKay and Maurice White, and Bailey admitted: “We wouldn’t have been able to come up with that.”
He added that the song is even more popular now than it was nearly 50 years ago when it was released, saying: “We are very proud to be the recipients of that particular song.”
Yet, despite the song’s massive success, the group insists they don’t.“I really do something special” every year.
“We didn’t really plan anything to celebrate that day because the world is celebrating it, so we just sat back and watched,” Bailey said, adding that it’s a “pretty natural day.”
After decades and decades of performing, the group insists they never get tired when they take the stage.
“The whole month belongs to us,” Verdine White added in an interview with People, and Ralph Johnson added: “Yes, it is our month.”
The song begins with the now-iconic lyric, “Do you remember/The night of September 21st?”, although the group’s late songwriter Allee Willis insisted that date had no significance to the group prior to the song.
Willis co-wrote the song with former members Al McKay and Maurice White, and Bailey admitted: “We wouldn’t have been able to come up with that.”
“We didn’t really plan anything to celebrate that day because the world is celebrating it, so we just sat back and watched,” Bailey said, adding that it’s a “pretty natural day.”
“We have fun every night, just so you know, every night we go on stage we’re trying to do our best, every single one of us, and we take that very seriously,” Johnson said.
“We’re lucky to have the catalog of songs that we do because it allows us, as we put the show together, to go in a lot of different directions,” he added.
Earth, Wind & Fire’s Heart & Soul Tour with Chicago will continue with shows in Inglewood, CA (September 6), Palm Desert, CA (September 7), and Holmdel, NJ (September 14).
They will then perform seven shows at the Venetian Theatre in Las Vegas from October 9-19, plus a stop at ONE MusicFest in Atlanta on October 26.
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