DAVID Foster. AP Photo
Success has not ruined David Foster’s personal life, although he admits there was a time when he momentarily lost grip on reality.
“Sometime in the 1980s I was working with Kenny Rogers and he invited me over to his place,” Foster tells the Inquirer, recalling how amazed he was with Rogers’ property—a huge Beverly Hills estate with limousines, a horse ranch and other trappings of the rich and famous.
“I was hanging out with Kenny and I felt I wanted that life,” Foster says. “I was being cocky.”
But soon enough Foster came to his senses and thought that material wealth could be blinding.
He can very well afford to buy anything that he wants now, but Foster would rather spend more time working. “Not for the money,” he points out, adding that he just likes doing what he does best, which is producing hit records for artists he believes in.
There’s a Michael Buble Christmas album due for release, and another project that seeks to discover new talents via the website borntosingasia.com.
Winners of the ongoing search will get to perform with Foster at his shows in Las Vegas and possibly record a song with him.
Foster says two winners from the Philippines will join his coming concert, “The Hitman Returns: David Foster & Friends 2,” on October 25 at the Smart Araneta Coliseum. The show features Earth, Wind and Fire vocalist Philip Bailey, British tenor Russell Watson, American RnB singer Ashanti, Filipino international pop sensation Charice and the special participation of soul singer Michael Bolton.
“I realized I love performing live. It came rather late in my life,” says Foster, 61, who has spent more than 30 years of his career as a record producer.
He says he’s gotten used to the long hours in the studio, although there was one incident in which he lost his temper. There was a singer whose mother, Foster recounts, was meddling with the recording session. “I had to make her leave the studio,” he says.
But those are rare instances, he points out, because it’s not good to get mad while trying to motivate artists to give their best performance. “The producer’s job is to get singers to do great vocals on record,” he explains. “If you yell at them, they often get off and leave the studio.”
Foster says he decided he wanted to be a record producer after getting a “little taste of success” as a member of the band Skylark, best known for the 1973 hit single “Wildflower.” Getting a hit record, he thought at that time, was not impossible and that he could do it himself.
In the course of pursuing his goal, Foster also found success as a studio musician. He says he didn’t like the way many veteran session musicians struggled for a living, in spite of their status—that’s why he kept focusing on ways to achieve what he wanted.
After producing countless hit records for the likes of Bryan Adams, Christina Aguilera, The Bee Gees, Andrea Bocelli, Boz Scaggs, Mariah Carey, Chicago, Destiny’s Child, Neil Diamond, Céline Dion, Earth Wind and Fire, Gloria Estefan, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan, Beyonce Knowles, Kenny Loggins, Madonna, Olivia Newton-John, Prince, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer and Shania Twain, and winning 15 times in the Grammy Awards, Foster says he still gets inspired to do better: “I always wake up each morning feeling hopeful.”
Asked if there’s anything more that eludes him at this point, Foster pauses, and then says, “I want to win an Oscar. I’ve been nominated three times… But I really want to keep making music that would make people listen and pay attention.”