A Quote by Leo Sayer
In the early Nineties, after my first round of financial problems, I started a studio in Kensal Road in London right at the time when no record company wanted to hear anything from Leo Sayer.
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I arrived in London and I was terrified. I never wanted to be a celebrity - one minute I was in school and the next I was in London talking to people at a record company. If anything, I didn't feel in any way worthy.
To make a live record - something that has a lot of life in it - is difficult. After slaving away for years in the studio, when I hear a No Age record or when I hear Yeah Yeah Yeahs' first EP or when I hear DRI or really early punk stuff, it's just so powerful, so raw - and I know how hard that is to create. It's very deceptive. It's like a Dardenne brothers film - it seems like just a handheld camera following some people around in a trailer park, but it's incredibly difficult to do that.
When I first started coming to New York in the early Nineties and seeing the vitality of the programme compared to what was going on back in London or Paris, it was just in a different league. It's like a 16th-century court.
That was an idea of the record company, and also that was my first album after MCA and we wanted to come back with a strong album that would be noticed. If we put the vocals by very talented people and very meaningful songs, then the vocals would be a platform so that I could be noticed again. All of the MCA albums were just loaded with problems -- you know, the right musicians, the engineers. The record company would say 'You have to make music for black radio, you can't do what you have been doing with The Crusaders.' Everybody was telling me that was over, finished, done.
We had such a small budget making our first record, and the only way we could make it work was that the record company would find studio time in the middle of the night - literally, that was so cheap that we could afford to do it.
I started playing guitar at the age of 8 or 9 years. Very early, and I was like already into pop music and was just trying to copy what I heard on the radio. And at a very early age I started experimenting with old tape recorders from my parents. I was 11 or 12 at that time and then when I was like 14 or 15 I had a punk band. I made all the classic rock musician's evolutions and then in the early nineties I bought my first sampler and that is how I got into electronic music, because I was able to produce it on my own. That was quite a relief.
I used to carry a notebook to the studio. I don't do that no more 'cause I don't have the time to write anywhere but right there in the studio on the spot. So when you hear my stuff, know that I wrote it in the studio.
Often, entrepreneurs don't build a board until they are forced to by their VCs when they raise their first financing round. This is dumb, as you are missing the opportunity to add at least one person to the team who - as a board member - can help you navigate the early process of building your company and raising that first round.
I had a good record company right from the beginning, and I'm still with them after all these years. I think I may be the only person in the world that's had a tenure this long with any record company.
I first started going to Chelsea games in the mid-Nineties when I lived off the North End Road, ten minutes' walk from Stamford Bridge.
I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me.
I dropped Nascimento in the first round, but he came back, and I had to dig really deep because he was gaining the whole time. He ruptured my left ear drum with a right hand in the fifth round, which caused a few hearing problems, but I was able to overcome it.
From my childhood, I never wanted to do anything else but create music. From my first piano to setting up my studio, all I ever wanted was to give it all my time.
I've been in fortunate position of never really having to battle with my record company to do the things I wanted to do in the studio.
To me, 'Crash Love' is the most stripped-down record that we've made since the early Nineties, and I would say that 'I Hope You Suffer' is indicative of the overall tone of this record in being the opposite of that.
I started writing when I was around 6. I say 'writing,' but it was really just making up stuff! I started writing and doing my own thing. I didn't really know what a demo was or anything like that, so I started getting interested in studio gear and started learning about one instrument at a time. My first instrument was an accordion.
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