Nobody knows what a great blues singer Leo Sayer is. We made this record at Sunset Sound in LA, and between takes we would do blues songs, a bit of All Right Now by Free (which he nailed!), and various other stuff. It was my first taste of the laid-back LA session scene. We’d do a take, go out in the courtyard and play ping-pong for an hour, have something to eat, then do another take. And so it went. I wasn’t used to being paid to be this relaxed. Leo and his wife were great. There were a few tunes that never made it to the record. One I remember as sounding like The Yardbirds, with Leo playing great blues harp. The other was a slow blues song. I remember when everyone went out to dinner I stayed with the engineer, Humberto Gatica, to do a guitar solo. Leo requested that it sound like Peter Green, which was music to my ears. It was really a good solo. Both songs were kept off the record because his record company didn’t think they fit his image. I keep looking for reissues of the album with bonus cuts in hope that these two songs will surface, but so far no luck. |
LEO SAYER
WARNER BROS.- 1979
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