In The Groove With 16-Time Grammy Award Winner David Foster
The musician, songwriter and producer talks the songs that influenced him over the years ahead of his upcoming show in Windsor.
In The Groove is CultureShift’s award-winning series that talks with creatives from all walks of life about the music that has influenced them the most starting when they were just a kid.
On this edition of In The Groove, WDET’s Ryan Patrick Hooper speaks with multi Grammy-award winning musician, producer, and songwriter David Foster.
You can catch Foster performing at Ceasers Windsor on June 9th.
Foster says the first non-classical song that impacted him in a real way was “She Loves You” by The Beatles.
“It totally flipped me out,” he recalls. “I didn’t understand it. But I knew I loved it and I knew I wanted to make music like that. It was probably the most influential piece of music in my life.”
In his 20s, there were two bands that played a major role in shaping Foster as a musician. The first was British progressive rock band, Yes. The second: Canadian-American group Blood, Sweat, & Tears.
Yes “was revolutionary for me, because they were a pop band, I mean, a rock-pop band, but they also had heavy classical influences,” says Foster. “Blood, Sweat & Tears was taking jazz and R&B and pop and a little bit of rock and mixing it all.”
Early in his career Foster was told his songs were soft. When that happened, he made it his goal to prove people wrong.
In fact, Foster ended up writing “In The Stone” which was used by Earth, Wind, and Fire on their 1971 album, I am.
“When somebody tells you that you kind of suck, you just want to work all that much harder to prove them wrong. I made it a mission to get to Earth, Wind, and Fire. And we did quite a few albums together. (Earth, Wind, and Fire) were genius.”
Click on the audio player above to hear WDET’s In The Groove segment with multi Grammy-award winning producer David Foster.
