Now I know what it’s like to be a rock star. No, I didn’t sleep with 5 groupies at once. But I was interviewed about 45 times in 5 days in 3 cities.

It is easily overlooked that what is now called vintage was once brand new.

My father loved people, children and pets.

Since my teen years I was interested in martial arts.

Originally a record producer more or less hired a bunch of professionals to participate in a recording session, the performers and the technicians, and a music director was put in charge. That directly related to a film producer’s job.

I like to work with people who have a sense of putting a song over, and can sing in tune, and with passion. With technology you can polish a turd, but there’s still no button you can press for passion.

Despite a few really bad days we had quite a lot of fun making Low, especially when all the radical ideas were making sense and things were starting to click.

Fortunately I own a vintage brain, and I am alive and well in the 21st century, still making records, still working at an intense pace and most of all, still having fun doing it.

Marc Bolan had inspired so many people to pick up a guitar and join a band.

My dad‘s sense of humor was direct and sometimes surreal – his quick wit is well known amongst our family and friends. He raised me on Spike Jones records and W.C. Fields movies, and his sense of humor fell somewhere in between.

I also mixed David Bowie‘s Young Americans album in 5.1 earlier this year and it will be available very soon. Even the original stereo mixes have been re-mastered and sound amazingly good, better than ever, in fact!

Every time I meet the CEO of a record label I tell them how they did it in the seventies because they want to know. I tell them, “Sign a hundred people! Throw it against the wall and see which ones stick!” And they frown and say, “Oh, we can’t do that!” and they start mumbling about demographics and this and that.

The ukulele was the first of many instruments they had bought for me. They got me a guitar when I was eleven, which my son Morgan uses until this day. They paid for 3 years of guitar lessons; they bought me a bass fiddle, which I still play.

We always started these albums as making demos, that went right on until Scary Monsters.

Computers have virtually replaced tape recorders.

The labels are not getting the returns they want from their PR. Plus, for every Taylor Swift there are a hundred thousand nobodies out there who are probably making better music. Self-releasing is the only way to go.

Some people do rely too much on technology. Look, technology is wonderful and I love it. When I was in the UK and I had hit records I would also have a high tax bill at the end of the year, and that would be the time to buy up all the technology – it was write offs.

In August most of Europe goes on holiday.

Rock and Roll has certainly tried to take its toll on me. I’d rather not talk about my past excesses here, although some hardcore rockers might argue that those excesses were responsible for some great records, but I know which side I came out on.

My profession is called record production.