Sticking To The Sound of 1985
From the interview with Billy Sheehan of Talas
Cris Cohen: First off, the new Talas album, "1985," it's kind of a fascinating idea. Because as you've alluded to in other interviews, it was kind of this time capsule, but it wasn't fully fleshed out. When you went back to the songs that were, for the most part, created in 1985, what state were they in and what else needed to be done to them?
Billy Sheehan: Well, they were trapped in time because they had been pretty much untouched up until now. We played some live shows, and we did most everything that's on the record in the live shows. So, we did perform them, but we didn't change anything about them, really. Our two options were to make them slick and modernized and bring them all up to date, bring (them) right up to the year 2022 or 2023, or go back and “Let's do them the way we did them.” We chose to do it that way because there's a real thing about that year and that time in music, 1985. So, we thought, "Let's do it as close to that time period in music and writing and vibe and all those other things."
I dare say I think we pulled it off pretty well. We went in and recorded for real. That's an important aspect of that part of the equation.
We included one new song, “Black and Blue.” We were doing that live and it's one of Phil's songs. He's a wonderful writer and it (gave us) the opportunity to have his son, James, join us on some vocal harmonies. (He) did a great job on that.
(With the others) we kind of left them the way they were. (We) went back, dug them up, dusted them off, and played them.