Into the Ear of Madness: Week 20 — More Power, Ballad Style

Terje, your dedication to the Foss is appreciated. Completely misunderstood, but I remain steadfastly grateful. The pain and suffering Mrs. Terje and the kids must go through is probably going to land you in a Turkish prison one day, but until then, I'll continue to tune in and see what is lurking on your iPod and probably informing you, Manchurian Candidate style, to overthrow a government somewhere. I'm cool with it.

Meanwhile, I have to ask: granted, the 80s are probably Foster's most lucrative period, but at the same time, it seems (to me, at least) his style became one of sameness and repetition. Like you said, the Anka / Cetera track sounds like a lost Chicago track, although I think it would fit on 18 or 19 as well as 17… and on those wretched Peter Cetera solo discs, too. My question then, before you finish your Mediterranean beverage o' choice, is do you think this is one of the symptomatic problems with a lot of the balladry of the 80s, or was it more of a deliberate style choice that sets the 80s apart from, well, not most of the 90s, and not a lot of the current decade? I'm not quite stepping to the diving board and asking if you think Foster ruined popular music, because I can point to a lot of other culprits (Diane Warren, I am sternly pointing at you), but do you suppose it was his success that caused him to deviate very little from The Foster Formula and thus created a homogeneity of the better-selling madrigals of the latter-day divas and troubadours?

Ah, this is a very important aspect in the development of Foster's style. The way I see it, his work in the 1980s was more about a strong melody and excellent musicianship, whereas his work in the 1990s was all about pyrotechnic vocal ad-libs and the artist's image.

Roughly speaking, his work in the 1980s was a result of the collaborative effort between relatively faceless but (usually) talented men like John Parr (not necessarily a talented man), Chicago, Air Supply, Tubes, Jay Graydon, Richard Page,etc. whereas his work in the 1990s was little more than a generic instrumental setup for divas and boybands, performed exclusively by him and his Synclavier in his personal studio adjoining his living room, with two bars of guitar playing by Michael Thompson and Dean Parks thrown in for good measure.

Which, again, to answer your second question, means that he got rich and lazy and didn't bother to get out of his own house to record tracks, or even to hire session musicians, since everything he needed was already stacked into his keyboard box.

Yeah, I've tried to deep-Google Steve George a couple of times, but he has apparently vanished from the face of the earth.

I searched for “Walk a Fine Line” for years, and I finally bought a vinyl version a couple of years ago. I was really disappointed, though. Pretty standard fare, there's no sign of the David Foster “magic” I was half expecting after reading all kinds of glowing reviews on these various Westcoast pages that exist on the web.

Ah, this is a very important aspect in the development of Foster's style. The way I see it, his work in the 1980s was more about a strong melody and excellent musicianship, whereas his work in the 1990s was all about pyrotechnic vocal ad-libs and the artist's image.

Roughly speaking, his work in the 1980s was a result of the collaborative effort between relatively faceless but (usually) talented men like John Parr (not necessarily a talented man), Chicago, Air Supply, Tubes, Jay Graydon, Richard Page,etc. whereas his work in the 1990s was little more than a generic instrumental setup for divas and boybands, performed exclusively by him and his Synclavier in his personal studio adjoining his living room, with two bars of guitar playing by Michael Thompson and Dean Parks thrown in for good measure.

Which, again, to answer your second question, means that he got rich and lazy and didn't bother to get out of his own house to record tracks, or even to hire session musicians, since everything he needed was already stacked into his keyboard box.