"Even though rock is not what I'm known for producing, I listen to all kinds of music."įoster admits during his prime production years he rarely listened to music for fear he might unintentionally copy something he heard on the radio. "Most people, who know me, know that when I lay my hands on the keys what comes back is not rock 'n roll," he adds. The same goes for the Tubes, who I co-wrote 'She's a Beauty,' with. I believe I took him a little too far to my side," he recalls. Not because of Alice, but more due to my ineptness at producing that kind of music. Reflecting back, Foster says this project was not one of his best. The 1978 concept album chronicled Cooper's time inside a New York sanatorium during a rehab stint for alcoholism. One of his early production credits was Alice Cooper 's fourth studio record From the Inside. He played on a pair of George Harrison records ( Extra Texture and Thirty Three & 1/3 ) and also lent overdubbed piano to Lynyrd Skynyrd's third studio album Nuthin' Fancy (1975). In his CSHF acceptance speech, Foster shared some simple advice another mentor, Quincy Jones, once gave: "The three ingredients to a hit record are: the song, the song and the song."Īs a keyboardist during this early chapter of his career, Foster kept searching for those key ingredients. Thanks to Banks' tutelage on the art of arranging - and the hard work of gigging in bands throughout the early-to mid 1970s - Foster's songs kept getting better. "In my early 20s I wrote some songs and some got recorded, but looking back they were just awful." "As a songwriter, I bloomed late," Foster says. The impresario took Foster under his wing and encouraged the teenager to write. "When I go to the doctor's office, still to this day, when they ask me my occupation, I always reply musician."Īfter studying music at the University of Washington at 13, the prodigy moved to Edmonton, Alberta where he led a nightclub band in a joint owned by jazz piano player and arranger Tommy Banks. "It sounds cliché, but it's true," says the 72-year-old, reflecting on a life spent searching for the right notes.
One morning his mom was dusting the family piano when she hit a key by accident and David said, "That's an E!" naming the correct note. The son of a blue-collar worker and homemaker, Foster started playing - and studying - piano at age four.
David Foster was born in Victoria, British Columbia.
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