In the '80s, I was putting out an album virtually every year, I think mostly based on fear - that if I didn't, people would soon forget about me.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
At some point in my life, before I was gone, I wanted to make an album, even if it was for no reason other than posterity.
I did a lot of writing for a lot of different kinds of bands that I was in and out of during those five years and that left me with a little body of songs that I liked better when I played alone, so I ended up going out solo and very soon made my first album.
My first album came out in 1979.
I began the process of recording myself seriously in the fall of 1999. If I could finish an album of my own music, I would. Five years later I am happy to say I have.
In the mid-1980s to the early 1990s I was writing songs not because I particularly liked what I was doing, but because I was desperately trying to get back into the charts. I really didn't enjoy it. I didn't like the music I was making, I wasn't proud of it, like I have been before or since.
I always wanted to have my own album released before I graduated from high school.
My career was really odd, because I literally had a greatest hits album out and nobody knew who I was. They knew the songs, but they didn't know me.
My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.
I don't even remember the last time I bought an album, honestly.
In the '70s, you had to come up with an album every year whether you were ready or not.