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.

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.

Miles Davis had been in retirement for five or six years and he was coming out of retirement and he was looking for young guys. Somebody gave him my name and he called me and said, "Can you show up at Columbia Studios in two hours?" I'm like, "Whoa, is this the real Miles Davis?" He's like, "Yeah." So I showed up and yeah, it was intimidating, but music is so important to me that the intimidation was all before the notes started.

Luther Vandross was a musician who sang. So after a while he was also the number one background singer in New York, so he would sing for Bette Midler, he sang on "Fame," he sang for David Bowie, he sang for - whoever needed backgrounds, he would arrange the parts and hook your record up. He also sang on commercials. McDonald's, Budweiser.

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.

Where Miles Davis can make you feel things.That's what I'm looking for from young guys. I'm looking for somebody who not just has a command of the instrument, but can actually say something to make you feel something, make you think about something.

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.