Wednesday Encounter With Greatness

Skip to the last paragraph if you're wondering about the title. Otherwise, and as long as I'm posting self-indulgent photos from my college days, here's another one (which I'd never seen till last week, I might add).

That's my old pal and long-time musical collaborator Tony Forte, looking extremely mod (dig the shoes) at C.W. Post in late '68.

Note the photo of George Harrison -- one of the four prints that came with the LP versions of The Beatles' White Album -- underneath his chair.

Heh.

Meanwhile, from a decade later, here's Tony in the studio -- produced by yours truly -- with the quite hilarious and vaguely smutty "Hot Flash." Our attempt to sort of go punk, with what success I'll leave it to you to judge.



Tony's playing three rhythm guitars here (left, center and right channels) plus those blisteringly metallic sort of Keith Richards-ish solos, which I think are genius.

I should add that I produced this only in the sense that I paid for the session (at a really crappy eight-track joint) and sat behind the board nodding occasionally. Tony tacked on the all-girl background vocals (by some friends of ours) after the fact; I thought it kind of violated the spirit of what we were doing at the time, but in retrospect I don't particularly mind them.

I should also add that the drummer on this is none other than the incomparable Corky Laing, of Mountain and West, Bruce and Laing fame. A super nice guy (who worked cheap, in this case) as well as a pretty remarkable musician.