Gail Davies

"One rainy night I hear this knock on my door. … I open the door and there’s my brother [Ron Davies]. He said, “I’m going to go to A&M and play some of my new songs, because I’m trying to get a publishing deal. They own part of my publishing now. Would you go with me?” So I said, “Yeah.” We practiced his songs ‘til the sun came up. Then we went to A&M and we met Chuck Kaye and Jerry Moss, and we started singing together and they just flipped. They signed Ron to a publishing deal and signed us both to A&M Records. So that was sort of the kickoff of both of our careers."

"A&M became my music school. I was a background singer. I was there hanging out with Karen Carpenter when she was recording. I sat in on a John Lennon session with Phil Spector producing it. I was able to watch Joe Cocker. A&M was the place to be back then, and I was fortunate to be right in the middle of it. And of course, Joni Mitchell befriended me and introduced me to her engineer, Henry Lewy. Henry was the main engineer for A&M. And he just took me aside one day and said, “You know, Gail, you’ve got great ears. I think you could be a producer.” He and his wife, who was just lovely, just sort of took me under their wing. He just started becoming my mentor."