Superlatives
A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
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Have you heard the news?
Sure, one project is from four decades ago, while the other played in the Theater District.
But the timing was fitting.
Thats all make-believe stuff for me.
I agree with you.
We cant really figure it out, Lewis admits.
I dont know what happened there at the Tonys.
Surely not, man.
In those days, there was no internet.
The only avenue to success was through the strength of your songs on the radio.
We producedPicture ThisandSportsourselves because we knew enough to make commercial choices we could live with.
We aimed every song onSportsright at the radio.
Interestingly, there are different styles for each song on the album.
We didnt know we were going to have five of them.
So yes, that was done very strategically.
However, we abandoned that on every album afterSportswas released.
Theres lots of ways to make records, and we didnt do anything for commercial reasons any more.
Being strategic means different things.
WereFore!andSmall Worldstill strategic?
I guess so, but not for commercial reasons.
That should have been a hit.
We got into an argument with our record company, and they dropped the record.
Its a long story, but we got into a pissing match with them.
They wanted us to do a promotion, which we had already done.
They and my manager got in a big fight.
Theres a couple other songs buried onSmall Wordthat Ive always loved.
Song where people missed the joke
Hip to Be Square.
I thought it would be funnier if I told it to myself as opposed to a third person.
Its a song thats happy to be silly.
Most people just hear it as a pop song and dont understand the humor behind it.
And now the musical has wonderful choreography that emphasizes the humor, and whats wrong with that?
Best song for the harmonica
Bad Is Bad because the harmonica is featured so prominently.
Its a hard instrument.
You have to listen a lot, right?
You do your homework.
And theres Big Walter Horton as well all blues harmonica players know those guys because they wrote the book.
They figured it out.
When it distorted, it sounded a little bit like a saxophone.
Song that has resonated more with age
All of them, to be honest.
I think its because my dad was a jazzer.
All the great standards are that way.
Theyre not written for kids or adults, theyre written for everybody.
You get the inspiration from the muse, I suppose.
Its an artistic thing.
The muse comes when she comes.
Rather, the best ones come to you in your sleep sometimes and write themselves.
If you could figure out where it came from, youd go there all the time.
So that meant I had to mix my own record.
We mixed it ourselves and its not nearly as good as it wouldve been with Bob.
In fact, Bob has just remixed it with an Atmos mix and its supposed to be amazing.
I cant hear it because my hearing is so bad, but my band members tell me its great.
Our label was on us to release a new record immediately.
There was a lot of pressure on us to hurry up on that record, unfortunately.
If I had more time, I wouldve approachedFore!differently in every way.
Im never satisfied if I produce a record myself.
Ive heard The Power of Love a million times on the radio and I still want to remix it.
Most communal album
Im going to saySmall World.
In other ways, not so much.
The best song features an amazing saxophone solo from Stan Getz called Small World (Part Two).
I mean, its just a breathtaking solo.
Thats how they assessed it.
I thought it was our best.
Greatest moment of professional vindication
My looks, maybe.
Lets go with that.
No, we were always told that we werent edgy enough.
Im just not an edgy guy, I guess.
It was nice that we overcame that.
I dont know if were critically acclaimed enough.
Id love to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, obviously.
Thats above my pay grade.
I think its inaccurate to say that were a pure pop band or an 80s band.
Were more than that; were a rock-and-roll band.
We work with a four-piece horn section and have a lot of rhythm and blues in our stuff.
That was our first love.
Our music is a hybrid, I suppose, of many different things.
Quincy responds, Yeah.
And he looks at me and says, Lionel was 5 years old when we recorded that record.
I had a great joke-telling session with Bruce Springsteen, whos very funny.
I got to say hello to Bob Dylan.
It was an amazing evening.
They spent a bunch of money on it and hired a fashion-producer guy to shoot us all day long.
Were in pastel colors and matching pastel backgrounds, and weve got rouge on our cheeks and makeup.
A week later, we went by the record company to see the rough cut.
The director gets up and says, Now, its not colorized.
Its going to look really good when its colorized, but heres a rough cut.
He turns off the lights and plays the video, and my heart sank.
It was so bad.
There was no direction.
This is the video where were all singing to a girl in bed.
Im like,What the hell is this?
I remember my thoughts clearly.
I was like,Theres no art to this at all.
Nobody knows anything about this.
We had the idea that when the song zigs, the video zags.
We wanted to avoid a literal translation of the song if at all possible.
Theres a necessary evil here, so why not embrace it and have fun?
We can just be funny.
We tried to let the city be the production and let the seagulls chew the scenery.
I enjoyed it a little bit, but a lot of people didnt enjoy doing the videos.
We were an audio band.
We had no choice.
You have to embrace it.
That was what the market called for.
