Kool and the Gang's Robert 'Kool' Bell: The Cream Interview

The pairing of Kool and the Gang and Van Halen on the heavy-metal band's current tour makes perfect sense — both long-running groups have successfully combined stupid noises with musical substance while recasting cultural revolution in the disguise of simple-minded party tunes. A couple of Ohio-to-New Jersey transplants, Robert Bell and his brother Ronald grew up in a jazz-loving household in Jersey City and, aptly enough, began playing as The Jazziacs. Several name changes later, they were Kool and the Gang — jazz-funk pioneers.

The influence of Kool and the Gang upon the '70s generation — kids who lived out their formative teenage years in the early part of that decade — is incalculable, and that impact has something to do with the down-home but futuristic quality of the group's music and the super-populist temper of the era. The premise of the band's 1973 track "Hollywood Swinging" is that a guy goes to see Kool and the Gang and becomes a "bad piano-playing man" with the very jazz-funk ensemble he has idolized. Newly successful, the band goes to Hollywood, where they take a realistic view of the possibilities of the big city and foresee nothing but a party ahead: "So here I am in this Hollywood city / The city of the stars, movies, women and cars," they sing.