We Were Slaves To The Tape Back In The Day

Billy Sheehan of Talas

Cris Cohen:  One thing you said about this album, you were talking about bringing 80s hard rock into 2022. From your perspective, what elements of 80s hard rock are maybe harder to find in 2022?

Billy Sheehan: Well, a lot of it, of what we've just been speaking of – that chaos, that spontaneity, that little bit of pressure to get it done because we don't know what's going to happen the next day. So, things of that nature I think are important factors in the music of then. And now, there is a little bit of relaxation, possibly, not with everyone. Generalities are never true and there's a generality that's always true.

Because you can sit down and get an engineer and piece through things and kind of play a part at a time and go back and check it and change it and fix it if you need to and continue on. It's quite a different thing. We were slaves to the tape back in the day, just before digital recordings. First digital recording I think I did was the first Mr. Big record. But you had to get it on tape, and it had to be right, especially the drum track. That had to be righteous, because you couldn't edit the drums. You could, but it was always precarious to edit the drums on too much tape.