We knew we did not want to record at Impulse Studios again, after the experience of recording in a 'real' studio in London for the Radio One session we did.
When I was around 7 or 8 my Dad took me to a B.B. King recording session, well, that really did it. Huge and lasting impressions. After all that I pretty much knew playing guitar was something I was going to do because I just had to do it. And I did.
I had no allusions of radio success. I just loved being in studios. I was having fun and in that sense I now feel a lot like I did when I did that record.
I don't particularly like recording studios, they tend to be lifeless and without any natural light, so I wanted to record wherever we lived. We just don't want to be bound to a studio to who we'd have to pay untold sums to.
I never had any formal voice training, but it's something I always wanted to do. 'So I negotiated a deal with a recording studio after I gathered enough material for a record. I put a group together and just went ahead and did it. What the hell.
After I found that I had become an actor, slightly to my surprise, I did have some insecurity, and I did take some rather strange acting classes at a place called The Actor's Studio in London. I don't think they did me any good at all.
We with Michael Jackson were in the studio recording some work on "Man in the Mirror" or the duet. I can't remember which it was. We did the duet in three languages: English, French and Spanish. So, I spent like a week with him in the studio doing the three songs in different languages. It was just an awesome experience recording with him.
We won a contest at the teen fair in Vancouver and the first prize was a recording contract and we recorded at a radio station on the stairway, and we did a record and it got put out.
I considered the attacks on London useless, and I told the Fuhrer again and again that inasmuch as I knew the English people as well as I did my own people, I could never force them to their knees by attacking London. We might be able to subdue the Dutch people by such measures but not the British.
Even before I became a recording artist, I did other things in music. I was a teacher, I did studio work, and I was an arranger and a producer.
We honestly felt a bit more at home in the TV studio than we did in the recording studio.
So at 16 I got a job at the local radio station. And I was working after school and weekends. I did the news; I did everything. I did - played records.
I did radio, I did television, I did opera, I did films in which I had very, very little to say. But I had a lot of experience in front of the camera, and that's what really counts.
My favorite record shop was called Recommended Records, in South London near where I lived - they did all the original Faust reissues that came out in 1979, and they also did a lot of Sun Ra stuff. They were a great record shop.
In most of the stuff that I've done over the years as a sideman, I wasn't really a session musician, because to me, a session musician is a guy who makes his living in the studio, and I never really did that.
I did not want people to know that I was a Muslim; I did not want people to know my name or that I did not have an American name. I did not want that. Because I knew if they knew that, they would cast me as the bad guy.
Recording studios are interesting; a lot of people say - and I agree - that you should have a lot of wood in a recording studio. It gets a kind of a sweeter sound.