All the Elements of a Successful Career

It was a Monday night like any other in Beverly Hills. A glossy hotel lobby overrun with the almost-famous crowd and the reporters and photographers eager to help them to the top. On any other night, Maurice White, his brother Verdine White, Philip Bailey and their bandmates could have slipped through the masses unnoticed. As it was, most people didn’t recognize the guests of honor of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ 15th Annual Rhythm & Soul Music Awards: Earth, Wind & Fire.

Once the word was out at the Beverly Hilton, however, the group was swarmed. One TV reporter spent the first two minutes of his interview lavishing them with praise. In the background, a record company executive mimed the dance steps they made famous during their spectacular stage shows. Another reporter cornered the band to detail his own teenage years as a musician. “I survived the disco era because of playing your songs,” he said. (The music is a mightily danceable fusion of jazz, soul, gospel, blues and rock.)

ASCAP, a performing-rights organization that represents more than 135,000 composers, songwriters and music publishers, honored the band with the Heritage Award to celebrate its lasting influence on music. While the evening’s honor was clearly meaningful to the band, it comes after a 30-year career, 23 albums, 30 million album sales, six Grammys and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Maurice White said his band’s music remains relevant because “it starts from the heart and transfers to the listener’s heart. It gets your attention. The most important thing is the sincerity.”

As Earth, Wind & Fire answered reporters’ questions, the crowd awaited the evening’s other musical legend. “You guys know who Stevie Wonder is, right?” an ASCAP executive asked his teenage niece and her friend. (They did.)

About an hour later, Wonder took the podium. His first words were drowned out by the audience’s roar of applause, moving Wonder to sing a cappella a few bars of “I Wish.” He spoke candidly of his exposure to music as a child in Detroit. “I never imagined I’d be in this business,” he said. Then, Wonder recalled being inspired by an Earth, Wind & Fire song. “When I heard ‘Shining Star,’ I went right into the studio to write ‘I Wish,’ ” he said. Wonder called the band to the stage to accept the award. “I know we’ve touched many lives,” Maurice White told the crowd. “You’ve touched our lives, too.”

In a Spy’s World,

Age Matters

Producer Mace Neufeld, the man responsible for bringing the spy novels of Tom Clancy to the big screen, was apprehensive about Ben Affleck resuming the role made famous by Harrison Ford, 59. “My initial response was, ‘Wait a minute, he’s 28 years old!’ ” said Neufeld by phone on Monday. “My second response was, ‘But that’s also a lot of our problems with the script.’ ”

At the time, Neufeld had little more than the rights to make “The Sum of All Fears.” He had struggled nearly two years to develop a story that everyone liked. Eventually, he lost Ford to “K-19: The Widowmaker,” due out in July, and director Phillip Noyce (“Clear and Present Danger” and “Patriot Games”) to another project. That’s when Affleck’s people called.

With Ford in the lead, the script was complicated by the character’s progression during the eight years since the last Jack Ryan film, Neufeld said. However, with Affleck in the lead, Neufeld could pretend the first two films never happened. “If we looked at Affleck as a rookie CIA agent, then most of our script problems were solved,” the producer said. “Particularly if we gave him a mentor.” Neufeld chose Morgan Freeman for that role after meeting him at the Flanders International Film Festival in Ghent, Belgium.

The gamble with Affleck seems to have paid off. As of Sunday, the film had earned $85 million in four weeks, tens of millions more than 1994’s “Clear and Present Danger,” Neufeld said. “It’s kind of given the franchise a shot in the arm.”

The success of “Changing Lanes” and “Sum” has reinvigorated Affleck’s career as a leading man, Neufeld said. “I think he’s one of our four or five major young leading stars today.”

Quote/Unquote

“Most people in show business are mining the strangeness that’s inside of them,” Tom Waits tells Entertainment Weekly’s EW.com this week.

“I tried for a long time to be like everybody else....You know, there’s only seven haircuts available at the barbershop and a certain limited supply of shoes.

“But at some point, if you do have things about you that are irreconcilable, you say to yourself, ‘Maybe I can make some money out of this.’ You join the circus. That’s what music is. So that’s what I did.”

City of Angles runs Tuesday through Friday. E-mail: angles@latimes.com.