Get Out! GAY Magazine – Issue 410 March 20, 2019

That was not inspiring to
me. So I developed this
sound where I wrote music
that is dependent upon
my knowledge of harmony
and inversions and voice
leading and stuff like that.
I don’t play guitar like the
typical guitar player. I play
more like a jazz guitar
player, but I’m still doing
pop music.
It works exceedingly
well for you.
It seems to work. I mean,
it’s working pretty good.
I cannot wait to come
see you at The Capitol
Theatre for sure.
You’re going to have so
much fun. The Cher tour
for us has been one of
the most exhilarating
periods of my life. It’s
great that we get to go off
sometimes and do our
own shows. With Cher,
we’re an opening act, so
we only play about an
hour. But when we do our
own show, it’s a full, big,
gigantic production. It’s a
lot of songs. You will say
to yourself, “Jesus Christ, I
can’t believe this guy did
all of these songs.” So it’s
entertaining and didactic
at the same time, because
you realize how many
songs this guy has done.
Of course, we don’t even
do all of them. We just do
the big hits, as we call it:
“All Killer and No Filler.”
If you could go back
in time when you first
started to record, the
technology wasn’t
as advanced as it is
today. Is there anything
you would’ve done
differently?
Well, obviously, if we had
today’s technology, we
may have approached
things differently, but
that’s a tricky question.
The audience... and I
don’t mean to sound
like an age chauvinist,
but I could just prove
it scientifically by what
people consumed back
then. The audience then
was more sophisticated
when it came to listening
to compositions, because
of what the songs were
like. In the old days,
songs were much
more complicated and
sophisticated.
Now songs are pretty
much based on loops and
things like that. They’re
very primal and simple.
We think more in terms
of the lyrical content in
today’s world than about
all of the orchestral
musical elements that it
takes to make a record. You
had to go to a professional
recording studio to make
the record when I was a
kid. You couldn’t make a
record on your laptop at
home. There was no such
thing as a laptop. I bought
one of the first musical
computers, and it cost an
absolute fortune, a quarter
of a million dollars. You
had to be rich already to
do that. We were buying
it to aid the process of
recording things that
were still very antiquated
compared to the processes
we use now.
Computers in those days
were really expensive. We
were just using mine to
help us explore different
sounds and different
things we could import
into our environment
without having to hire
someone every single
time we had an idea. In
those days, without your
own computer, you’d
have to hire someone else
to see if your idea was a
good one.
The music industry
has changed so much.
Most artists today stay
relevant for about 40
seconds. How do you
manage to stay relevant
all these years? What’s
your secret?
I’m not a music snob. I
like music, and I like the
challenges, so I’m always
working with people that
are either up and coming
or people that will never
be known, but are just
talented. I’ve learned a
lot from new artists. The
average age of artists that
I work with is probably
about 26. So that means
that I work with a lot of
artists in their teens or 20
years old. Obviously I still
work with artists in their
40s and 50s, but that’s
rare.