51 years ago, John and I were so nervous as this was the release date of the album. He was proud of how he made it. He recorded this album at his favorite place ... Record Plant Studios in NY with his main engineer, Roy Cicala. It took him only 8 weeks from start to finish and handing it in to Capitol Records. He was also on budget ... I should know, I handled that part of it. The musicians were a mixture of his old rock'n'roll buddies and some he picked up from the best of the New York session guys. He relied on his pal, Jim Keltner, to hold that beat for him. He got Rolling Stones' sax player, Bobby Keys, to lead the horn sessions. He loved that Elton John came by one night and decided to play on a couple of songs. It was not a planned thing in advance. Elton was in town and wanted to drop by. Tony King, who worked for Apple and friends with Elton, said it might be easy to coax Elton into playing on some songs. He played on
WHATEVER GETS YOU THRU THE NIGHT
and sang harmony on
SURPRISE, SURPRISE (Sweet Bird Of Paradise). Even bigger surprise when I was asked to do the whispering on
#9 DREAM
and sing chorus background along with John, Lori Burton and Joey Dambra as John called us "The 44th St. Fairies."
When the album went to #1, I made sure the main musicians and the recording studio each got a Gold Record for their participation. An even bigger surprise was when John gave me my own Gold Record Award too!
#maypang #JohnLennon #Walls&Bridges #WhateverGetsYouThruTheNight #EltonJohn #RecordPlantStudioNY
