After the nightmarish experience of recording "Enough Is Enough," I resolved to return to my old ways, regardless of what anybody else might think. I re-camped at Power Station with a young hotshot engineer named Jason Corsaro, who'd been getting some great sounds with bands like "Power Station" (name no coincidence). I also decided to shake up the usual band lineup on certain songs to see what might come out of it (a concept I revisited on "Tell The Truth" some years later).
We experimented with a lot of different ideas, including some extended jams and more elaborate pieces. After a few months work, the results were somewhat inconsistent. I started mixing with Jason, but found myself with a whole bunch of tracks that didn't seem to be quite coming together the way I'd envisioned. After bringing in mix-specialist Tom Lord Alge to dress things up a bit, I reluctantly concluded that we weren't there just yet.
Round about this time, I was introduced to New York producer Godfrey Diamond. Godfrey had quite a varied rap sheet, having worked with acts as disparate as Kool And The Gang, Lou Reed, and Aerosmith. He showed a real enthusiasm for the project, and this motivated me to "get back on the horse," so to speak. We pulled together the best of what I'd done with Jason, and I wrote a few new songs to round out the project. We also decided to return to the original band lineup. The lead track came from my first lunch-meeting with Godfrey, where he thrust himself across the table and blurted out that listening to my music made him want to "rock out and punch somebody." No way that hook was gonna get by me.
I also found myself re-connecting with Desmond Child, with whom I'd worked so well on "Tale Of The Tape" ("You Should Be High Love"). Two more good songs there. And an old acquaintance from my boyhood days of scuffling on the streets of NYC turned up with "Mine Tonite," which was on its way to Journey...before I apprehended it. All of these eleventh-hour, unintended collaborations! The belated result (the project actually took longer than the "Enough..." debacle) was "Hear & Now." While another tough slog, I was much happier with this effort. I was indeed,"back on the horse." The only caveat, was, that after so many months in the studio, with so many personnel changes...the songs themselves were maybe not as cohesive as a group, compared to previous efforts...where I would commit myself to an intense burst of creative energy and spit out a cluster of songs that had a sense of interdependency.
But maybe I'm being too picky.
