I was already playing the clarinet and the piano. My father's a piano player. But I wanted to play in a funk band, and the clarinet wasn't fit. So you was "Hey, man, can I sit in?" They're like, "No, man." So I started fooling around with the bass.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's a great thing about being a musician; you don't stop until the day you die, you can improve. So it's a wonderful thing to do.

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.