“I did three songs with Stewart Levine and another dozen songs with Bill Schnee. It was a strange one because I had been away from it all for seven years. I took some time off, and so getting back into it was a bit awkward. I wasn’t writing, but then I hooked up with a couple of good co-writers, musicians and arrangers and started up again.

“It was like trying to fit three or four or five different elements together, and I didn’t really feel at the core of it all. I was out of practice. Still, it was a blast to make this record, and my association with Jeff Porcaro and Marcus Miller and Stewart Levine felt like a big comeback party for me. Jeff is one of the truly great drummers of our generation.”