When
I first became aware of Cindy, I was on tour with Andy Pratt. Rick Shlosser,
our drummer, had been in a band with Cindy. She came to check us out,
and then starting showing up at gigs to check me out. She was a rocker,
and we had the feeling that together we could be the cosmic, androgynous
Jagger/Richards. She scored a record deal with United Artists (Mark
Lindsey was her A&R man, and I remember going with Cindy to the
LA office to meet him). Her record was the first record recorded at
Power Station in New York. There was still sawdust on the floor and
construction underway while we were working on it.
There were some great guys on my sessions: Bob Babbitt on bass (he made
a lot of the great Motown records), Jerry Moratta on drums (Peter Gabriel).
And it was the first time I met Bob Clearmountain, who was the engineer
on the sessions. Bob had just done The Tuff Darts album, although I
didn’t know he was involved with it. But when I plugged in my
guitar I tested the amp with a few bars of “All For The Love of
Rock & Roll” by The Tuff Darts. Bob was instantly a sympatico
fellow. And I couldn’t help noticing the extraordinary sounds
he was getting.
For some reason, when I think of this album I think of my daughter,
Brigitte. She was less than a year old when this record came out, and
she had total recall of the record. She would jump up and down in her
crib and sing the whole record a cappella, starting with the first song
(“Survivor”) til the end. She even sang instrumental passages
between vocals!
Cindy is one of my dearest friends, and was instrumental in turning
my life around and getting me out of the bad habits I had picked up
along the way.