{"id":10338,"date":"2014-12-31T11:42:29","date_gmt":"2014-12-31T16:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=10338"},"modified":"2014-12-31T12:32:47","modified_gmt":"2014-12-31T17:32:47","slug":"wonder-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wonder-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Wonder Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winterguide 2015 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Toward year’s end, Stevie Wonder swept onstage at TD Garden. Quietly, a full-time Maine resident joined him, and they started to play.<\/h3>\n

By Cody E. Marcroft<\/p>\n

\"WG15-Wonder-Man\"<\/a>“Your timing\u2019s good,\u201d says Ben Bridges. \u201cJust today, I returned home after doing live performances with Stevie Wonder in Boston and Philadelphia.\u201d<\/p>\n

From 1975 through 1992, Bridges was a sideman for Wonder, ringing his rhythm guitar on hits like \u201cSir Duke,\u201d \u201cRibbon in the Sky,\u201d and \u201cDo I Do.\u201d Touring and recording as a member of his backup band, Wonderlove, Bridges has traveled the world with Motown\u2019s most recognizable artist.<\/p>\n

Because he\u2019s one of us\u2013he lives in Falmouth, sharing the same marsh with Maine Audubon\u2013yet still in demand creatively, Bridges was invited to play in two shows as part of Wonder\u2019s 12-city \u201cSongs in the Key of Life\u201d tour.<\/p>\n

His wife Nancy cast Maine\u2019s spell on him. \u201cHer family\u2019s been vacationing in Ogunquit for decades,\u201d says Bridges. \u201cI came with her on one of those trips\u2013my first time here.\u201d Far from Wembley Arena, London; Electric Lady Studios, New York; and Yokohama Stadium; Tokyo, Maine stood out as different. \u201cI\u2019d been to many places in my life, but Maine left a strong impression.\u201d<\/p>\n

You know Stevie Wonder the man. Who is he?<\/strong><\/p>\n

After a concert, Stevie notified the band that as a thank you, he was giving everyone two extra days in the hotel so we could relax and enjoy Hawaii a while longer. I\u2019d brought Nancy. When we learned the hotel offered a sunset dinner cruise, we decided we\u2019d do it that evening. Around midday, the phone rang. It was Stevie. He asked what my wife and I were doing, so I told him about the dinner cruise. \u201cThat sounds like fun. Do you mind if I join you?\u201d Now, we\u2019re talking about Stevie Wonder, the international superstar. When he said he\u2019d be joining us, I expected bodyguards and a small entourage, but no. It turned out to be like a double date. We met in the lobby.<\/p>\n

Who was Wonder\u2019s date?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the singers who came with him.<\/p>\n

When did you first meet him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d just come out of rather intense musical training in college [Temple University]. Stevie was looking to replace one of his guitarists. Michael Sembello, a Philadelphia guitarist who was a member of Stevie\u2019s band, heard about me and extended an invitation. The day he and I met, we played guitars together for a few hours. It just clicked. The next day, he and I took the train to New York City. That afternoon, I auditioned for Stevie\u2013a terrifying four-hour live audition with Stevie and his band. I somehow hung in there. I was hired on the spot. My life literally changed overnight.<\/p>\n

What happens during a four-hour audition?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was an entire playing experience. We started and the hours flew by. Some of the songs we did had already been released on other records. Others were songs he and the band were working on, and [still others were] things he\u2019d write on the spot. That happened a lot. If he had ideas, he\u2019d start working with the band right then and there.<\/p>\n

In Boston recently, you and Wonder played songs from Songs in the Key of Life<\/em>. What\u2019s your favorite memory from making that album with him in 1976?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cLove\u2019s In Need of Love Today\u201d has a lot of background vocals on it. I was in the control room the night those vocals were laid down, and Stevie laid them down himself. I was the only one there that night besides the recording engineers and Steve. It was late at night, and I was sitting there on the couch between the two main speakers. I had the best seat in the house! Just to hear that come out of nothing. Those vocals were not there before<\/em>. He laid them all in there flawlessly, like he already knew exactly what he was going to put in. One by one, he laid them on top of each other\u2013this rich harmony that supports the song\u2019s melodic line.<\/p>\n

Take us closer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was the 20th anniversary [1983] of Martin Luther King\u2019s \u201cMarch on Washington.\u201d Stevie wanted to be there, and he invited me to go with him. So his small entourage and I went with him. We did the walking and marching, and then he was going to give a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He asked me to play guitar with him on a song that hadn\u2019t yet been released, a song called \u201cRise.\u201d I knew it, but I didn\u2019t know we were going to do it. He\u2019d arranged for a rental guitar to be brought there. So, he and I did the song in front of all these thousands of people. It was kind of terrifying\u2013the stage was mobbed with speakers. Afterward, he gave me the guitar as a gift. I still have it.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s been the biggest disaster in your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was at a certain recording session in New York. I won\u2019t name the artist\u2013it wasn\u2019t Stevie\u2013but this person is a household name. It was a terrible experience\u2013a lot of yelling and bullying of the whole band by a person who knows nothing about music. I gave them the tracks they wanted, but there was no joy in it. I never worked for them again.<\/p>\n

Come on, who was it? We won\u2019t tell.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually a person who\u2019s in the news right now, so I especially do not want to mention the name.<\/p>\n

Tell us about a pleasant encounter, then.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bob Dylan was virtually responsible for an event in Texas called \u201cNight of the Hurricane.\u201d Reuben \u2018Hurricane\u2019 Carter had been put in prison, and Bob Dylan and others who believed him innocent were trying to get him released. This was a benefit concert. We all flew down on one plane. Stephen Stills. It was quite the trip, for a young guitar player to be there, seeing all these celebrities at one time on a chartered flight from L.A. But it\u2019s the kind of a scene where you have to be cool. You can\u2019t just run around bothering celebrities.<\/p>\n

No wonder you love Maine.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, yeah, my life is totally different now. As a guitarist, I think I\u2019d done everything I wanted to do at that point in my life. After 17 years, I was perfectly fine to stop touring and get back on a normal cycle.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s me individually, but I have a very curious mind. I\u2019ve realized there are other things. I like computer programming, I like golf, I play other instruments now, and there are plenty other things going on in life beyond music and the guitar. I wanted to pursue those things.<\/p>\n

After leaving the band, Ben Bridges lived in New Jersey and Pennsylvania before moving to Maine to begin a new job as a software engineer with Tyler Technologies in Falmouth.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we moved here, we spent the first four years renting a house on Cousins Island, just steps from the edge of a tidal inlet. What a wonderful experience it was to live there, watching the changes the tide brings and the seasonal birds coming and going.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaine is a very clean, hassle-free way of life. The people I work with are not contrived. They\u2019re not the cosmopolitan, jaded people you\u2019d run into in New York or any other large city. My relationship with people I know here is much more basic, down-to-earth, and I appreciate that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winterguide 2015
\nBen Bridges has played with Wonder for decades. Here in Maine, Bridges is a software engineer at Tyler Technologies in Falmouth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[89],"class_list":["post-10338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-winterguide-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10338"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10367,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10338\/revisions\/10367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}