Written by Benji B
After lunch I was lucky enough to be interviewing the legend that is Wally Badarou. As first lectures of new terms go, this one was nothing short of heavyweight. Responsible for devising the riffs on Tom Tom Club’s ‘Genius Of Love’ and Grace Jones’ ‘Pull Up To The Bumper’ is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this man’s discography. Anyone familiar with Level 42’s ‘Starchild’, Foreigner’s ‘I Wanna Know What Love Is’ or Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted To Love’ has heard the synth work of Mr Badarou. Anyone familiar with Massive Attack’s ‘Daydreaming’ has heard the composition of ‘Mambo’ from the ‘Echoes’ album – liberal sampling at its best. This is definitely one to check on our archives – that is if the wisdom of someone that has produced Fela, composed with James Brown and met the night nurse with Gregory Isaacs might interest you. It was an honour and a privilege to meet a master of his art so ready to embrace new technology and share his experience, and just to see Jeff Chang’s face alone during the lecture was enough to know it was a shame to have to wrap it up by 7 pm. Thankfully Wally will be here for the week and will be (hopefully) imparting some knowledge on the third floor. There’s no better example of the man’s enthusiasm and humility that his most important question to me before leaving was to be clear about when our CD-r session is going to be tomorrow – so he could hear the compositions of each and every participant in full.
One Comment
Wally contribution and insight into music is unique.