Included in the Album, Passenger

Song Sample

Song backstory:

1986 – what a year!

I had the honor of working with the late great Greg Ladanyi at The Complex studio in West Los Angeles, as he mixed down TOTO's Fahrenheit album.

[I also got a contact high from being in the control room with Greg and the band, and had to sit out in the hallway until the world stopped spinning, but that's another story.]

Don Henley called and needed help with keyboard programming to achieve a "killer bass sound" for the Color of Money soundtrack he was working on for Touchstone Pictures.

Dr Ziw had been activated!

One of the miracles of MIDI was that I could link a dozen or more synthesizers together and play the whole lot using a master keyboard. Each keyboard (or sound module) could add a particular color or tone to a sound. Then, when played together, it would create an overall sound that far surpassed any single preset.

I created the sequence for "Out of Africa" as a repeating pattern while I tweaked the individual keyboards to achieve the overall sound Henley was looking for.

You can hear the result of my keyboard programming for the bass on the track "Who Owns This Place" from the Color of Money soundtrack.