I went against my gut, the decisions turned out to be wrong every time. Somewhere deep inside, you know which is the right path and which is the wrong one. The problem is that so many times we start doubting ourselves, questioning, second-guessing. My advice? Get over it. Remember that this is your career, and you don’t get too many shots. If you go with what you believe, you will almost always be a step ahead of the game.

Now, if you do not believe your gut is trustworthy, then find some people whose intuition you do trust. Surround yourself with a few people who inspire confidence and run your ideas past them. As irritating as it was to have conflict with my label, I not only trusted my gut, but I had a few people around me who did as well.

Not being a music man, Rick may not have completely understood my thinking, but he knew that I wasn’t going to back down. One fellow at Chrysalis Records understood what I wanted and why—my A&R man, Jeff “Buzzard” Aldridge. A&R stands for “artists and repertoire,” and those are the staff members who deal directly with the artists and their music. The A&R guy is your guy. Everyone else is the record company’s guy. Buzzard was our day-to-day person, the one I usually dealt with and the one I trusted.

The only problem with A&R representatives is that they are not usually the decision makers. They are not the people who will be marketing and selling your music or setting your promotion budget. Those are the suits, and they could make or break careers, including mine. And musically, those guys weren’t getting it.

Luckily, after those first misdirected recording sessions, Buzzard convinced the suits to bring in one of the top producers in the business, Mike Chapman. He’d been working with Blondie at the time and didn’t even think he’d be able to produce a whole record. Still, he’d work on a couple tracks with us. I’d heard talk that Chapman was difficult, something of a Svengali, because he was very controlling, but his success working with Blondie had Chrysalis foaming at the mouth. Though not a musician himself, Chapman was a very instinctual producer. He wasn’t necessarily going to find the sound himself, but he might be able to connect me to people who could.

Initially Chapman was the only person who understood what I was going for, and he navigated a way to get it accomplished. He listened to me explain what I wanted, and started looking around for somebody who fit the picture. I could hear the guitar I wanted, the one that would bring alive what was only in my mind at that point. I’d been trying to come up with a partner and a sound for months, to no avail. My frustrations were rising on a daily—maybe hourly—basis. But I knew that Chapman was talented and smart. I want people who work with me to either be smarter than me or be willing and able to work harder than I do. (That’s critical, because I am a working dog.)

Chrysalis set up a time to audition some players at SIR rehearsal hall on Thirty-seventh Street in Manhattan. After they got the initial lineup booked, Chapman had another thought, a twenty-two-year-old kid who had been touring with Rick Derringer.

“I think this is the one, Pat. His name is Neil Giraldo. He’s perfect—just what you’ve been looking for.”

“Okay, bring him in to audition.”

“Well, I didn’t tell him he’s coming to an audition as such. I just told him to stop by so you could meet him. He’s a genius, Pat.”

That certainly grabbed my attention. “Genius” wasn’t a word that Chapman used often. Chapman wasn’t going to be at the audition, but Buzzard made the arrangements for Neil to meet with us. And so as the time went by that day, I got more interested in meeting this genius. Then I was told that Buzzard had arrived with the guitar player.

“Oh, cool,” I said, nonchalantly.

I was talking to Rick Newman, with my back to the door, and didn’t turn around immediately. When I did, Buzzard was talking to this guy Neil. He stood there looking like Adonis, hair to his shoulders, the most drop-dead gorgeous man I had ever seen in my life. Somewhere in the distance the “Hallelujah” chorus was playing. Luckily he didn’t look at me in that moment, because I froze in my tracks. Something shot through my entire being.