Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 4/4/03: A very famous pop star booked our Studio A for a year, recording his next mega-smash.

Alma Thomas, "Red Azaleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music" (1976) — Alma Thomas, *Red Azaleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music* (1976)

April 4, 2003:

A very famous pop star booked our Studio A for a year, recording his next mega-smash.

Each afternoon he began work with the same ritual. Onto the soundboard of our superb Bosendorfer grand piano he'd empty three or four ounces of what must presumably have been excellent cocaine, which he'd spend about fifteen minutes meticulously chopping with a one-sided razor blade. As the afternoon grew to evening and the evening grew to night and the night grew into morning, he'd refresh himself frequently with long snorts from the soundboard, often pausing to chop his supply into to ever finer and finer perfection.

In time his chopping took a toll on the piano. What began as occasional scuff marks grew little by little into hollows and depressions and canals, a regular geography of chop marks slowly eating away the rich lustrous wood of the instrument. Which went up his nose, of course. Over time he snorted the piano he worked on.

The album went multi-platinum.