In 2012 I was recording a Loft Session, we produced over 400 of them during my 17 years at the helm. I honestly do not remember what artist we were recording that day, but when I popped back into the studio control room there was a very familiar dude sitting quietly in the corner, but I couldn't quite place him. He was grinning like the proverbial cat that caught the canary, just exuded a sense of kindness and good nature. And then it hit me.

"Wait a minute," I stammered "either I'm having a flashback or hallucination or that is Karl Wallinger." The engineers Jackson and Mike knew I was an enormous fan, as we had many conversations centered around the greatest live shows we had seen, and The Waterboys in New York on the "This Is The Sea" tour has been #1 or #2 on my list ever since the show ended. They were wondering how long it would take me to recognize him and everyone in the room enjoyed a good laugh at my expense, which was fine by me. I always try to suppress my fanboy tendencies in these situations but was not quite successful, partly due to the knowledge that he had suffered a very serious aneurysm in 2001, and had to basically relearn how to do pretty much everything, yet here he was. Big smile and in love with what we were doing musically at XM.

I said, "Karl I am not going to ask you to sign anything or play a note, but can I please grab a photo of you at our board, I don't even want to be in the shot, it will only ruin it." He laughed and said something to the effect of, "It would be my pleasure." Here is that picture. He is one year younger than I am. An amazing musician and an even better human.

P.S. Once again the DMCA continues to stifle reforms for something that actually has done nothing but hurt artists,. That it is the most important, while serving to enrich the monopolistic tendencies of what remains of the Record Business here in the U.S.A. What are we down to now, 3 Major Labels? I'd like to relay that the “Biz” is ablaze with roaring chatter and this is going to cause upheaval on a massive scale, but sadly I cannot. The simple fact is that nobody works in the Music Business anymore. Honest. At best I would say the numbers in percentages would be 3-5%. That posits since 1974, my High School Graduation year there currently are 95-97% fewer people employed in the Record Business in one form or another.

Karl Wallinger, only a year younger than me, was as fine a musically obsessed human that I ever encountered. He loved playing live but I’ve always felt that his happy place was in his studio alone. His drive to record every Beatles song was absolute proof, money was not what drove his decisions. It was always the art alone that inspired and guided him. I only encountered him twice, but I really feel like I lost a friend. I hope I did him justice with this 2 hour tribute crafted under the Rules of the DMCA. It could have been so much better. Thanks for listening. Love to his family and may he rest in eternal bliss.