When
I first became aware of Cindy, I was on tour with Andy Pratt.
Rick Shlosser, our drummer, had been in a band with Cindy. She
came to check us out, and then starting showing up at gigs to
check me out. She was a rocker, and we had the feeling that together
we could be the cosmic, androgynous Jagger/Richards. She scored
a record deal with United Artists (Mark Lindsey was her A&R
man, and I remember going with Cindy to the LA office to meet
him). Her record was the first record recorded at Power Station
in New York. There was still sawdust on the floor and construction
underway while we were working on it.
There were some great guys on my sessions: Bob Babbitt on bass
(he made a lot of the great Motown records), Jerry Moratta on
drums (Peter Gabriel). And it was the first time I met Bob Clearmountain,
who was the engineer on the sessions. Bob had just done The Tuff
Darts album, although I didn’t know he was involved with
it. But when I plugged in my guitar I tested the amp with a few
bars of “All For The Love of Rock & Roll” by The
Tuff Darts. Bob was instantly a sympatico fellow. And I couldn’t
help noticing the extraordinary sounds he was getting.
For some reason, when I think of this album I think of my daughter,
Brigitte. She was less than a year old when this record came out,
and she had total recall of the record. She would jump up and
down in her crib and sing the whole record a cappella, starting
with the first song (“Survivor”) til the end. She
even sang instrumental passages between vocals!
Cindy is one of my dearest friends, and was instrumental in turning
my life around and getting me out of the bad habits I had picked
up along the way.
