For many, familiarity with much of Wally Badarou’s music will likely be inadvertent. Unless given to reading recording credits, they’ll have little idea he was involved. Then again, to fathom how omnipresent he was, especially during the 80s, there are a lot of credits to read, so many he should be a household name. In fact, or so he told Benji B during a 2006 Red Bull Music Academy interview, he “cannot believe, even today, that I did all those things with all those people”. From Serge Gainsbourg to Gwen Guthrie, James Brown to Joe Cocker, Jimmy Cliff to Talking Heads, Badarou has played with some of the world’s biggest stars.
Indeed, though you wouldn’t know, he’s at the very heart of Pop Muzik, if figuratively in the form of…