Late last year we spoke to Leo Sayer about his 40 years in the music business. We chatted for so long that the interview was split into two parts. If you haven’t read part one then you should click here first, but FINALLY (!) we bring you part two of the story of Sayer’s career. He had just arrived in America in the mid 1970s and manager Adam Faith was determined to make a success of Leo in the United States…
Leo Sayer: When Adam [Faith, Leo’s manager] said I was going to work with [hot shot producer] Richard Perry, I said “What? – he’s boring!” I didn’t want to do that, I wanted to work with someone groovy and funky! I was finding my soul. But anyway, we had a meeting with Richard Perry and he was very dynamic, it must be said, but he said “I don’t see you as a songwriter”, and I went “What?!” – because that’s what I did, I was a songwriter – but he said “No, no it’s the voice I’m fascinated with”. So there was a lot of arguments. One time I was going [to go] back on the plane and Richard called me and said “turn the car around and come back to the studio”. So I went back and there was this amazing array of musicians there. So I thought, I better do this… I gave in on a lot of my ethics with “Endless Flight” but it turned out that it was an album where the first hit on it was a Leo Sayer song [“You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”], so out of all of that Richard Perry posturing, saying “you’re not going to write any songs” in the end he turned around and said the first single is going to be that song you wrote [laughs].
Continue reading “Leo Sayer: 40 Years in Music part 2”
