And now, to the 90s:
A few from the amazing George Michael:
I never got into Wham!, but a music critic I followed sang high praises for George's first two solo albums, and I like them both. Especially the tune "Kissing a Fool". At the time I was playing in a bar band and doing a lot of "sax solos" on my synths, which never did sound very good.*
An unusually large tax return resulted in me buying a good tenor sax, at age 42. I'd already learned a couple wind instruments, but this was my first woodwind, so I already had most of the breathing/tonguing/articulation skills down. I didn't tell my band, learned all the scales, and spent the next two years in the basement with a Jamie Aebersol (sp?) "Blues in all Twelve Keys" CD, just learning to solo. Then, surprised the band on stage, first song we did featuring a sax part was "Heart of Rock & Roll" (Huey Lewis), and I
nailed the sax part; we were playing in one of our favorite bars, it surprised the audience too, and I couldn't stop smiling for three days.
Whups got a bit sidetracked. Anyway, during that time I started thinking, an instrumental version of "Kissing a Fool" would sound
great on a tenor, with its dynamics changes, "in-yer-face" and quiet parts, where you could use breath tones, screams and growls to your heart's content. I did work it up on sax, but of course the band broke up after 12 (!) years, so it never came to fruition. I still wanted to work up a MIDI arrangement and record it, still haven't....
* What hit single, done by a monster hitmaker both in some band and as a solo artist, reached #9 on the Hot Billboard Charts and saturated MTV, featured a hideous, synth-based saxophone solo? Fifty BotchPoints** awarded to the first correct answer!
** redeemable for absolutely nothing.