I met Bill Laswell, on Labor Day 1982 at RPM studios in New York City. I was subbing for another engineer and the session was for Material, which was then Bill Laswell and Michael Beinhorn. We were recording a singer and a saxophone player and then mixing the song afterward. As it turned out the singer was Whitney Houston, and I think it was the first time she was ever in the studio, because I remember she didn't really feel comfortable wearing headphones while she was singing. The sax player was Archie Shepp! I remember when we recorded Archie. I was talking to Bill about doing fly-ins. That is taking a solo or a vocal from one part of a song and moving it to another part by recording the track from the multi track tape to a ½ inch tape machine, and then “Flying” the ½ inch tape back to the multi track tape – but at a different spot on the multi track tape - which he thought was really interesting, and we ended up doing that to a solo that Archie Shepp took on the song “Memories” on the Material record “One Down”.
Musican, Producer, Engineer
So Long Whitney
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