When I was five my parents bought me a ukulele for Christmas. I quickly learned how to play it with my father's guidance. Thereafter, my father regularly taught me all the good old fashioned songs.
Despite a few really bad days we had quite a lot of fun making Low, especially when all the radical ideas were making sense and things were starting to click.
Oh, it was so hard to leave Paris, just about my favorite city in the world.
I kind of liked the method of the seventies where they would throw a little bit of money at a hundred different groups - not millions of dollars per group, but, you know, a few thousand. Throw them in the studio, and if five of those groups came out with a hit record it would be money well spent.
The object is to make a great record and you have to do whatever it takes.
My father had a brilliant scholastic record in high school and was awarded a college scholarship. Unfortunately he had to turn it down so that he could continue to support his family.
Since my teen years I was interested in martial arts.
Towards the end of the seventies pop was gaining the momentum and respectability was very high with groups like Yes and Queen who were making "classical" rock records. They were also bringing in big bucks. So the eighties became the "bottom line" decade.
My father loved people, children and pets.
In the last 17 years of his working life, my father was finally rewarded with having landed a great job as first, a maintenance engineer, and then a senior locksmith with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Computers have virtually replaced tape recorders.
Some people do rely too much on technology. Look, technology is wonderful and I love it. When I was in the UK and I had hit records I would also have a high tax bill at the end of the year, and that would be the time to buy up all the technology - it was write offs.
I keep reviewing my feelings about the supernatural.
I am not a creature of habit.
My profession is called record production.
You could make some great sounds with technology. That's what recording is all about. What happens in the studio is very magical, and should be, in my opinion.
The ukulele was the first of many instruments they had bought for me. They got me a guitar when I was eleven, which my son Morgan uses until this day. They paid for 3 years of guitar lessons; they bought me a bass fiddle, which I still play.
In August most of Europe goes on holiday.
Every time I meet the CEO of a record label I tell them how they did it in the seventies because they want to know. I tell them, "Sign a hundred people! Throw it against the wall and see which ones stick!" And they frown and say, "Oh, we can't do that!" and they start mumbling about demographics and this and that.
