Earth, Wind & Fire Says ‘The Whole Month’ of September ‘Belongs to Us’ (Exclusive)

Do you remember the 21st night of September? Well, Earth, Wind & Fire didn’t before the hit song was created.

Late songwriter Allee Willis, who worked on the group’s definitive track “September,” made it known before her death that the famous date had no significance to the group prior to the song’s creation. Now, Earth, Wind & Fire’s illustrious primaries, Verdine White, Philip Bailey and Ralph Johnson, tell PEOPLE that they “wouldn’t have been able to put” the successes of the feel-good song that they created about a random date “together in our own head” when the track came to be nearly a half-century ago.

“We wouldn’t have been able to come up with that,” Bailey adds over a Zoom call amid Earth, Wind & Fire’s co-headlining Heart & Soul Tour with Chicago. ” ‘I got an idea. Let’s have a song that’s as popular 50 years, 50 plus years as it was when it first came out. Actually more popular now.’ Right, right. No, we’re just very proud to be the recipients of that particular song.”

Continuing on, Bailey, who masterminded the group’s current live performance structure that they’re touring and co-headlining alongside Chicago, said, “And every September. I mean, we’ve gotten keys to cities in September in several different cities and stuff in September.”

“If you don’t know Earth, Wind & Fire in September, you will,” he adds, laughing.

“The whole month belongs to us,” White chimes in, with Johnson adding, “Yeah, it’s our month.”

Despite this welcoming of the attention their song has brought to the otherwise regular day of the year, Bailey highlights that the group doesn’t “really do anything special” in honor of the day.

“We don’t really plan or anything to celebrate that day because the world is celebrating it, so we just kind of sit back and watch,” he explains, calling it a “pretty natural day.”

White echoes that sentiment, noting how “people, they want the kids born on 21st of September, they get married. A lot of things happen.”

Years of performing the track doesn’t jade the musicians either, as Johnson points out, “We have fun every night, just so you’ll know, it’s every night we hit the stage, we’re looking to do a personal best each and every one of us, and we take it very seriously.”

“We’re lucky to have the catalog of songs that we do because it allows us, while he’s putting the show together to go in a lot of different directions,” he adds.

Earth, Wind & Fire’s Heart & Soul Tour with Chicago will continue through Sept. 14, ending with a performance at PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J. The group will then take their talents to Las Vegas, performing a string of shows at The Venetian Theatre from Oct. 9 to Oct. 19.