I think I definitely enjoy recording, but I think it's more fun to go out and perform live, because it's like instant gratification, you know? You feel the response immediately.
My old man was a musician - that's what he did for a living. And like most fathers, occasionally he'd let me visit where he worked. So I started going to his recording studio, and I really dug it.
I now have a home recording studio, which I can operate entirely on my own, as well as a portable version of the same which allows me to record anywhere I like and simply swap out the hard drives for use in the home studio.
A lot of our tracks have sounded a lot better than I thought they would because of recording, mixing, and because I probably didn't hear it that way. I'm not a songwriter.
I made many studio albums and I think the danger of studio recording is that if you do not watch out, you come out with a perfectly sterile performance.
What made me want to become a recording artist; I was the first artist that was repeatedly asked by a label to record with them. That label was Def Jam Records.
Normally, you go into the recording studio, make a record and then take it on the road and you think... wow... I could have done THIS to it, or something.
Nowadays, it's like two different arenas, recording and touring. When I started way back in the day, doing both was nothing, you didn't have to think about it, the road and recording.
And, you know, I think the original recording of Ravel's Bolero, probably whoever played percussion on that, will never have It played better than that.
