Terry Manning [Tape Op #58] had already changed my life before I ever met him. Like many of us in the recording and record-making community, his work with Big Star, Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top, and Booker T. & the M.G.’s, along with countless others, had shaped my listening ahead of my even knowing it. And that’s the perfect word to describe him most completely, in fact – in the studio, as a friend, a mentor, and as the musical father figure he would become for me – he was always “ahead.”
I wouldn’t have a career without Terry. Some demos I’d recorded were making the rounds and they’d found their way to him at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas (the legendary studio he co-owned for two decades). Without meeting (or even talking to) me, he got on an airplane, flew to Miami, and sat outside Island Records founder Chris Blackwell’s office – without an appointment, refusing to leave until he’d meet with Terry about the demos. Blackwell was Terry’s business partner at Compass Point, and Terry told him to sign me with the deal-breaker condition that Terry produce the record. As a direct result of Terry’s actions, Phil Ramone [Tape Op #50] (who’d heard of the meeting and wanted to snatch me out from under Blackwell) offered me a record deal. I told Ramone that to consider his offer, I too had a deal-breaker condition: that Terry produce the record.
