In nineteen eighty seven...

major label artist Walter Egan agreed to produce four songs in a recording studio in hopes these

newly recorded songs would gain radio airplay.

Four songs were recorded in forty hours of studio time on sixteen tracks at the Studio Suite in Glendale CA. spending one thousand dollars.

All of these four songs previously had been played live by the band Missing Link featuring drummer Greg Mennie, Bass player Donna Worden, Guitarist Ken Tennesen, and Guitarist & Vocalist Thad Francis.

When for purely logistic sake Walter Egan's band members were utilized in the studio instead of the live & well rehearsed players of the Missing Link those Missing Link musicians were a bit disappointed.

We played back and listened to the Walter Egan produced songs in the hallway of my house where we rehearsed as they clearly vocalized how they had wanted to be on the recordings instead.

Soon after, drummer Greg Mennie decided to leave the Missing Link taking his drum kit out of the living room to join the brother of Bobbi Brat, named Mike who had an actual recording studio built in his own house so that Greg could keep his drums set up there. Bobbi Brat also developed and then died of cancer.

The Missing Link bassist Donna Worden and I, did a few acoustic gatherings with only the both of us, which she decided to record. "I just like to keep the tape running." Donna had studied and wanted us to be produced as a visionary styled band, by Jimmy Iovine, who produced Tom Petty among other pro label artists.

Because Donna and I could not find a drummer to play for the Missing Link, we eventually stopped getting together.

One of Donna's close friends whom we all had spent time with was stricken by Hodgkin's Disease Cancer and we took turns driving her to then USC County Hopital to get her cared for until she could go back to Kentucky.

Her cancer was similar to my mom's Ovarian Cancer, & all the things that were going in a forward direction for the Missing Link were put out of their engaged gear into a flotation of neutral again.

For Donna the bass player her friend having cancer took precedent over Missing Link.

A year passed, I moved out & lost the rehearsing space of a house and had to learn how to be a rock musician living in an apartment which was not exactly simple.

It was more logical at that time to

start recording some of my songs

on one guitar with one vocal almost every time that I would write a new song, with a few exceptions given, as when if I was able to get such ensemble recordings done very quietly.

So then Walter Egan in nineteen eighty-eight...

had gone on in a forward direction, producing and recording wise, at least,

to create some prominent achievements during the time all this simultaneously was going on for Missing Link

by writing a great movie soundtrack for Back To The Beach starring Frankie Avalon & Annette Funicello along with nine other as yet to be released songs about beach life and changing times in the world then. Living In The Now, Dying For Love which was his song about AIDS.

Eddie Money, unfortunately for our fame's sake was instead chosen as the performer of the main movie title of Back To The Beach feature film.

Walter Egan had also then started performing & recording with, both, Loggins & Messina secretary, Sara Fleetwood, and the renown rock group, Spirit, for whom he played bass.

Walter Egan contributed songs of his own for Spirit to perform live while he played bass, one of which was a different arrangement of Only Love Is Left Alive.

Ed Cassidy explained about music arranging back stage at The Central/ViperRoom then also.

Walter Egan's previously released music would, in just a short while, be featured in the critically acclaimed movie Boogie Nights.

It actually took a long time since I met Walter Egan in 1983 with me always thinking he'd get a new record out & published in those years.

I recall with Walter Egan producing my agreed to, four, songs because that's how many songs will fit on a two inch 16-Track recording reel,

& then how things "went South" too quickly

when I asked Walter a day or two before the first scheduled recording session

if he thinks any of the songs he'd heard many times before needed to be arranged differently?

I was willing to do so if he thought it necessary and someone else had suggested this be done.

So, Walter Egan tells me, "no," that he thought the song arrangement's I have composed are fine.

As soon as we got to the studio he changed the arrangements on every song of four.

I was not bothered by this, but I did think, "Are we communicating?" is he, trying to create adrenalin for me in the studio? Is he joking, what's in his head at this time now?

The Walter Egan experience lived like a soap opera.

He once explained to me how many of the songs for his The Last Stroll LP, were written about the drummer's girlfriend for the rock group America whom he'd apparently had an affair with.

Walter Egan conveyed how John Zambetti, his fellow successive long time bandmate in groups The True Levelors; an extreme Catholic bias; Sageworth & Drums and finally, The Malibooz, had his song Surfing And Driving put onto Walter Egan's first Columbia Records LP Fundamental Roll.

Walter had said, 'John had Surfing And Driving but it was really slow & akward," from Walters description, until Walter changed John's original guitar strum, turning the song into a then acceptable tune. Me clearly being led to understand at times he saw my playing a bit how he saw John Zambetti's playing. I thought often, 'you do know why I'm here right?' Couldn't Walter work out and record one or any of my tunes to that same result?

Tammy Egan, his wife telling me, that

Walter & the bassist Tony Zamora were both, "pair bonding"

& at certain times I began to regret the selfishness of Walter Egan when it

meant his long term life decisions were, in my vision, skewed by lifelong marijuana smoking.

The keyboardist yet adding about his wife's, "snarf-dogging," implying cocaine usage all the while contrarily quite a moralist, which was a bit of a clear facade?

Walter Egan has a song from his LP Hi-fi Love called Little Miss where the lyrics say, "Look in my eyes, you see they're clear and blue," but that was far from true.

Walter Egan used many drugs that didn't always affect his ability to drive a school bus, but

did make me question a lot of his decisions too often.

Like once for instance, his playing at a club/warehouse an hour and a half inland from Los Angeles with not one person in the audience coupled with his reluctance to perform in Hollywood. He only finally performed a club in Hollywood when as bass player for Spirit.

He was a major label artist still

on the sole positive note, and that, kept me always interested, him playing music like no other human being could or did.

Walter Egan drummer Jim Snodgrass, had also shown me support which I appreciated about whether or not the first line of Christmas In Hawaii the whole reason for making the EP recording should be changed from, "Three o'clock is here and WE'LL be on our way," to, "Three o'clock is here and I'LL be on my way?"

Jim argued for, "we," and how that, "we" made the song funner.

I don't really know what Walter thought of this band discussion to this day? Walter wanting, "Three o'clock is here and I'll be on my way."

Jim Snodgrass unfortunately for all involved & as luck would have it, at the actual recording session forgot to put his snare drum in his car trunk resulting that there were over-dubbed drum tom's onto a drum machine tracks but NOT an over-dubbed snare drum,

and, being Walter Egan had created the song's introduction utilizing an isolated snare drum for Christmas In Hawaii this resulted in a very compromised effort to what the recording was supposed to sound like. The first thing heard, a Casio drum tapping.

The recording in it's final form had been left with a tap tap tap Casio sounding drum machine introduction

and my off key lead vocal that I had to make way too many excuses for to say the very least. Much worse could of been said about the recording, but there were, reasons, and there are some highlightable moments found. Such as Walter Egan's vocal harmonies.

The recording had layers of great production, but on the other hand a Casio sounding drum machine. Rodney Bingenheimer questionably played the song saying he didn't know if it was a band or a production?

One thing specifically, I had asked Walter Egan is that there were other unsigned artists that year like MIchael Seven

who did recordings that were not radio worthy and

could Walter make our recording a quality radio playable recording,

a pretty tall order I suppose but not completely out of the realm of possibility?

So that was my sort of condition that I wanted from Walter, that it wasn't a homemade recording like I already had, but a radio ready product I could send to more college radio stations other than KXLU which we had already been played upon many times.

For my lead vocal, Walter had used the technique he always wanted to do, a "tape slap" instead of reverb for Christmas In Hawaii as he told me "Elvis Presley used this technique for Elvis Presley records."

I guess the fact that I was not singing on pitch was difficult if using either a reverb or a "tape slap?"

Then there was the last recording session for mixing that we had scheduled when Walter said then, 'I have an idea first,' and he added the now greatest part of the remaining song the harmony vocals on the third verse.

Walter singing so focusedly was unaware of the time this was eating and also how we were in the final and only, mix session, with that limited time we had left.

The engineer at one point saying to me, "He's one toke over the line," to me, with my immediate astounding, "I know," being spoken back quickly!

I have to always recall also that later down the line of time in about nineteen ninety one when Walter Egan was appearing at the place that is now famous for where River Phoenix died The Central/ViperClub how when

he started smoking his usual marijuana,

common with so many, he was outside the car on the sidewalk when I thought he could be lighting up in the car instead, so as to not draw attention from traffic etc or any possible cop cars that were to drive past, while we were instead standing and waiting to walk into The Central together on the sidewalk.

Every time I see anything about River Phoenix's death on video etc, I am always reminded of this small incident at The Central/ViperRoom, how I annoyed Walter by telling him my expressed point of view about where to light up.

It's just how it is, whether it's embarrassing for anyone now or not.

Walter Egan also was very, more than most people, entertained by the notion that JFK was specifically killed by Mason's, and Mason's only. I never really cared to share his excited enthusiasm about this. The dj Jim Dunfrund did though and by nineteen ninety three had started saying this on his Thursday night Surfwave Show and what can one say, was off the air by the following year or so?

Knowing who killed JFK was not why I interacted with Walter Egan. Eventually this kind of thing becomes overwhelming, as well as, just intolerable.

I separated, but after the riots of nineteen ninety two hit, I found myself still interacting on occasion, even if it was just to congratulate him on his long earned success of Magnet And Steel being included in Boogie Nights.

These four songs comprising this Missing Link EP, I had wanted to title,

Since You've Left Us Behind, but

as usual Walter Egan did not like that title and argued against it and I was then left with a four song, "Eponymous" release instead of an EP called, Since You've Left Us Behind.