Artist

Tower of Power

US R&B-based horn section & band

San Francisco Bay Area, United States • Formed 1967

Tower of Power is a music group from San Francisco Bay Area, United States, active since 1967. Their discography on Gatefold includes 24 records.

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Albums tracked

123

In collections

1967

Since

Biography

Tower of Power is a horn-based funk/soul band from Oakland, California. In the mid-1960s, 17-year-old tenor saxophonist Emilio Castillo moved from Detroit, Michigan, to Fremont, California. He started a band called the Motowns, specializing in soul music. In 1968, Castillo teamed up with baritone saxophonist Stephen "The Funky Doctor" Kupka and trumpet/trombone player Mic Gillette, moved to Oakland, and began writing original material. They changed the band's name to Tower of Power and began playing frequently in the Bay Area.

The Arc of Tower of Power

The pivots — what forced Tower of Power to reinvent.

The East Bay Grease Peak
Between 1970 and 1974, the band cut the blueprint for modern funk across records like Bump City and Back to Oakland. Lenny Williams stepped up to the mic, giving them a voice potent enough to match the horn section's wall-to-wall attack. Garibaldi and Prestia perfected their interlocking groove science at Wally Heider Studios, creating polyrhythmic monsters like 'What Is Hip?' that turned funk into a contact sport. It remains the gold standard for hyper-tight ensemble playing.
The Slick Disco & Major Label Grind
Lenny Williams walked in 1975, kicking off a revolving door of lead vocalists that included Hubert Tubbs and Edward McGee. Warner Bros. pushed them toward polished disco and mainstream R&B on records like Urban Renewal and Ain't Nothin' Stoppin' Us Now, diluting their gritty street funk for dance-floor radio. Columbia picked them up late in the decade, but string overdubs and glossy production couldn't mask the lack of raw grit. The rhythm section still smoked, but the arrangements were fighting the suits.
Horn Section for Hire and the Comeback
By the mid-1980s, the band stayed relevant largely as the hottest horn-section-for-hire in the business, cutting session tracks for Huey Lewis, Little Feat, and Aerosmith. That studio cash kept the lights on until Epic signed them for 1991's Monster on a Leash, sparking a true roots revival. Bringing Garibaldi and Prestia back into the core lineup reminded the world who owned the Oakland sound. They quit chasing the charts and leaned into being the undisputed masters of live funk.

Influences

James Brown — Castillo and Kupka built the entire band's ethos around the discipline and punch of the J.B.'s. You hear it in the interlocking, percussive horn stabs on tracks like 'Down to the Nightclub.' Without the Godfather's strict rhythm-first mandate, Tower of Power doesn't exist.
Sly and the Family Stone — Sly Stone created the Bay Area funk template right across the bridge, proving a multi-racial outfit could dominate with heavy brass and heavy bass. Tower took Larry Graham's electric low-end push and translated it directly into Rocco Prestia's machine-gun muting. It gave Oakland bands permission to get louder and faster.
Booker T. & the M.G.'s — The Stax house sound was Castillo's early obsession when he was fronting The Motowns in the late 1960s. The deep, in-the-pocket simplicity of Donald 'Duck' Dunn and Al Jackson Jr. provided the foundational anchor before Tower hyper-charged the tempo. That Southern soul discipline is the bedrock underneath all their complex arrangements.
Otis Redding — Castillo has repeatedly cited Redding's raw, unvarnished vocal delivery and Stax horn backing as his primary spark for starting a soul group. Lenny Williams' vocal phrasing on 'So Very Hard to Go' is pure Otis lineage mixed with Bay Area grit. They aimed for Redding's gut-level emotion on every ballad they ever cut.
Sam & Dave — The dynamic call-and-response and hard-hitting horn arrangements on classic Stax singles like 'Hold On, I'm Comin'' served as the direct structural model for Tower's early live sets. Kupka's baritone saxophone lines were deliberately voiced to mirror the deep, driving horn charts that defined the duo's hits. It taught them how to make brass sound as urgent as the lead singer.