I revisited some music that I had written for Miles Devis. I used to work with Miles in the '80s. We did an album - "Tutu," that was really successful for Miles, and a couple of years ago we did "Tutu Revisited," and this is where we played the music from "Tutu." But I knew Miles would absolutely hate it if we just got on the stage and played the music the same way we did it in the '80s.

I brought the music out to L.A., and the producer Tommy LaPuma heard it and he said - "Man, I love it. Let's do it. Let's record it." I said, "Okay, where's the band?" He said, "We don't have a band. We want it to sound exactly like your demo." I said, "Well, I played all the instruments on the demo." You do that when you're making demos. You got your guitar, you got your sax. He said, "Well, I want it to sound just like that, so get all your instruments out here." So I ended up playing all the instruments.

Luther Vandross and I met in Roberta Flack's band. He was singing background, I was playing bass, and Roberta was beautiful. She's like the mom to all these young musicians in New York. At that time that I met Luther, I was a musician snob. For me, the singers were just the people out in the front to keep the audience entertained. While the musicians did the real work.

Luther Vandross was doing fine, but he said, "Man, I want to do my own project." So he got us all to do a demo, and that demo was "Never Too Much." It took him a year and a half to get signed, because he didn't have a gimmick. The record companies were looking for his gimmick. They said, "What's your gimmick?" He said, "I sing. That's my gimmick." Anyway, he finally got signed and the record was released, and the rest was history.

It happened to be, from '73 to '78, the five years that, our most glorious years for bass players. We had Larry Graham, with his own band, Stanley Clarke with his own band. We have Bootsy doing his thing. We had Jaco Pastorius. They were all leading their own bands.

Watching Michael Jackson was like taking a history lesson and a lesson on the future at the same time. If that weren’t enough, Michael then went and single-handedly revolutionized music videos. It’s amazing that today, some twenty-five years later, everyone who makes a pop music video still feels obligated to include a 'group dance' sequence like the one Michael pioneered in 'Beat It'. That’s how influential and ahead of the times he was.

I think jazz is a beautiful, democratic music. It encourages musicians with very strong, and many times, very different points of view to work together as a team while, at the same time, giving them the space to express their individuality. It's a very important art form and can be used as a model for different cultures to work together.