I had been working as a studio musician very intensely all through the 1970s, and I really never left LA. I would just get up in the morning and work on an amazing amount of records. But then Billy Payne and I were playing with Bob Seger in 1986 or '87, and he told me they wanted to put the band back together. We had all been friends and colleagues since 1967, so I just said, 'Sign me up, man.