Chapter 4 - California Dreaming

1973 and Terry is living in the high desert landscape of the Santa Monica Hills a semi wilderness utopia north of Los Angeles. After a brief spell in a temporary home he moved on to stay at the ranch belonging to Tony Duquette . Tony Duquette was a world renowned designer and sculptor with past commissions for Paul Getty and The Duke and Duchess of Windsor amongst others.  His property was like a cross between a sculpture park and a design Museum with dozens of buildings and sculptures made from found objects. There are a couple of pictures of Terry at that time posing in front of some antique furniture. All this set in the hills with breathtaking views west to the Pacific Ocean and spectacular sunsets night after night. Sadly this unique place was largely destroyed by fire in 1993. Properties in the hills were much sought after and people often drove along the narrow roads looking out for potential homes.  One day, one such person found his way up the ranch inquiring about places that might be available. This particular person a popular songwriter and one-time protest singer, pleased to find a fellow musician, spent a happy couple of hours discussing music, songs and the like.  Bob Dylan, for it was he, didn’t quite make it up into the hills to live, ending up nearer the coast in Malibu itself. Needless to say it was the ideal environment in which an artist could relax dream and create.  It was here that Terry would mostly write the songs that would form the basis of his next album, Seed of Memory.

As well as living and composing in his hillside retreat Terry was weaving his way into the multilayered fabric of the West Coast music community. Still friends and playing music with David Lindley and Lee Miles, Terry became acquainted with a whole host of West Coast artists some of whom he'd already met at various gigs and tours in England and America. Terry jamming and gigging with whoever was around, playing at places large and small.  Probably the most significant connection though was somebody Terry already knew from way back, his old friend and fellow Brit Graham Nash, also settled in California. Having written a load of new songs Terry was unsure about how to record them and recalled in a magazine interview at the time” I went to Graham with the songs and said, I don't know where to go at this point, in a sense that I want to get a person who will read into the songs, I wanna get someone on the other side of the window who understands what I wanna do. I wanted somebody that's just going to totally lift the responsibility off my shoulders of having to make sure a things plugged in just so I can sit in the studio and loosen up just like I'm sitting on the front couch at home and sing a song”. Graham proved to be the perfect person to go to and readily agreed to work with Terry on the songs. Rehearsals began at Graham's home and were recorded in part at the studio, Rudy records in L.A., which Graham had set up and owned.  Graham used to have a lot of equipment at his own home but seeing it unused a great deal of the time decided to move it to a proper studio in downtown L.A and allow others to use it.