I guess I said what I had to say for the time, and then life goes on. I wasn’t socialized as a music person. I was in my 30s when I started doing this. So I really learned how to live as an adult doing something else. So when I got a family and things, there’s plenty to do there.
I really stopped recording because I couldn’t get in the studio. For seven years, I was at CBS records and I couldn’t get a purchase order to go in the studio. There was a guy over there in A&R, Mickey Eichner, and he wouldn’t take my phone calls for three years. [A&R rep] George Butler, that used to work there, he told me when Eichner was in the building he would hide from me. Eichner came up with such brilliant suggestions like I should cover Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto.” I don’t cover Elvis Presley. For what? I got my own things. The songs that I’ve written did well for themselves, and brothers don’t cover Elvis, Elvis covers us. So that kinda turned me off to the whole process.
That’s why I did “Just the Two of Us” with Grover [Washington Jr.], because I couldn’t get into the studio [by myself]. Then, they said the only way I could get back in the studio is to work with this producer that they picked – and this is a true story. I can prove this if everybody [involved] ain’t dead. The studio was in this guy’s house. There was this little girl about 4-years-old, stark ravin’ naked, not a stitch of clothes on, running around in the studio. So she would go over to the board where I was, and I’d say, “We’re busy.” They’d say, “Go over there and talk to Bill.” Now here’s this little blonde-haired naked girl, and I’m black, from the South. And she’s coming over to me saying, “I’m ticklish, would you tickle me?” I’m thinking I gotta get the hell outta here, they can kiss my you know what. I could see myself standing up in front of some judge – you know, who was born in Oklahoma like half of California was – trying to explain myself. So I said man, this stuff is crazy. And it just soured me on the whole experience, so I left it alone. And I will never, ever again put myself in the position to where anybody has that kind of power over me.
At CBS Records, in 1981, Grover and I did “Just the Two of Us” which was a No. 1 record. It took me until 1985 to get into the studio, and I had been trying since 1977. Nobody will ever own that much of me again.