The Making Of "Summer Of '78"

Well the “Summer Of ’78 album is finally in cellophane .I never believe these songs and these albums are ever going to come out until I see them actually wrapped in cellophane and sitting on Tower Records and so there it is, I actually saw it at Tower Records and it’s wrapped in cellophane and so now it’s done. This album witch seem so simple and so effortless was one of the more difficult albums I have ever made. It took two years to make this album. I guess it’s because the choices of songs where so great that it took that long to finally hone it down and make it specific. I didn’t just want to release an album of songs .I wanted to have some sort of concept to it, and I couldn’t find the concept. It took two years .I recorded two albums, there’s probably another album, a box set if anyone wants it I would say at least a dozen or maybe more out takes of songs like “As Time Goes By” and “It’s Not For Me To Say” just dozens and dozens of other songs. Every album doesn’t work like that, this one did. Most of the albums I either write or I arrange and I know exsecly what I’m going for before I sit down to do it. And then we go into the studio and we but down tracks, and then I but down a scratch vocal ,and then we add the orchestra or what ever other sweetening and then the final process is I finally go in and sing the real vocals and then we mix it and it’s out , and that’s usually the process of every album ,this one was extraordinary difficult because we could, I just could not nail the concept and when I finally did nail the concept witch was I wanted to do a batch of these songs from the ‘70s even that was more difficult, because there’s so many choices. Every time I sang an Elton John song I said “Oh well I can’t do better then Elton on this” and they where so associated with these artist Billy Joey, Elton John, these people so they, But I had to go through this prosise in order to figure it out. The songs that I finally did choice where really not identified with any particular person and as you know I realize these songs where much better written then I had imagine. Take “We Got Tonight” “We Got Tonight” was a big hit for Bob Seger and he did a totally different version then I did. I heard it differently, I played it differently, I sing it differently and I thing the song works for me as much as it does for Bob Seger. Some of you got to hear us perform it live in person and every night that I would do it I would find a little bit more to it. That developed into a really nice arrangement I through and we put it right on the album the way it was, most songs I don’t get that luxury of doing. The other songs on the album we had to work it up right there in the studio, but I thing they all sound pretty good and I’m very proud of it and I been getting a lot of good response to it to. So we’ll see how this album fears. The next one is going to be a totally original album and I’m already hard at work on it, and it will be songs that have taken me a long time to write, so we’ll see what happens on that one too. Thanks for everybody for stickin’ by me and waiting for this album and I hope you enjoy the music.