I had sort of exhausted all the avenues playing in Detroit. So again, through the stewardship of my brother, I ended up in California and went to the Musicians Institute in L.A. I wanted to get better as a player.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I moved out to L.A. when I was 17, dropped out of high school, and pursued a career in music.
I came to L.A. in 1970, and my desire and my training was to be a studio musician, which I had read about in my senior year in high school.
I played in garage bands and rock and roll bands when I was in junior high and high school and saw some of the great talents of all time in the local area where I lived.
I started bands at a pretty young age and played with my friends back in Detroit. I've always known that I wanted to do this. It was all I was ever interested in doing. I never had, outside of music, any extracurricular activities that I took part in.
Instead of going to college, I spent my time out on the road learning how to be a better musician.
I grew up in Cleveland and started doing plays in high school. And I went to the University of Illinois, and I majored in drama. And after school, I went up to Chicago, because I didn't really know anybody in New York or Los Angeles, and I knew people who were doing plays in Chicago.
I went to national piano competitions and did that whole circuit. Then I played professionally to support myself when I moved out to LA.
I started playing piano with a little band in high school. I was terrible. I thought I had absolutely no talent. I couldn't keep time. I only got into McGill, which was a lousy music school, because they were taking American music students.
From an early age, music was my only thing. You come from Detroit, you learn how to make the most of what you can do best.
When I got out of college, I moved to Seattle because it was the nearest big city and still didn't know if I wanted to be a composer, conductor, singer, actor. I just got day jobs and auditioned and took what came, and the theater doors were the ones opening the most.