Sometimes you never know who’ll meet and work with in the recording studio. The list of people that I’ve worked with over the years is quite large including musicians, music producers, composers, sound designers, arrangers, actors, voice over artists, comedians, and motivational speakers. But a gorilla?
I was introduced to Garon Michael who needed a music producer and a recording studio for his music and we immediately hit it off and began working. Garon likes to work at an intense animalistic pace with little time for breaks or chit chat. Our first two days of work were laser focused on recording the basic tracks, then on the third day we actually took a little break and talked a bit, getting a much deserved breather after all the non-stop work.
He mentioned that he was an actor, who specialized in gorilla suits for movies and television work, and I asked him if he’d ever seen the Cadbury gorilla commercial. He was surprised and said “You saw that? That never aired in America”. I replied “Are you kidding me?, That got passed around via email by lots of my musician friends. It’s incredible!”. This would have been in late 2007 or 2008 when Facebook and YouTube were in their infancies, before social media was a household word. He smiled and said “Well, that was me!“.
We talked about how fun it would be to get Garon in the studio with the full gorilla suit on, and do some recording, but it turned out to be a logistical and economical impossibility. Well, we had a quick laugh and then jumped back into work. We ended up recording a good amount of his music together over the years, and we’ve become close friends. I still want him to get in the gorilla costume and play some drums in my studio though.
Speaking of, here is the infamous and hilarious Cadbury Gorilla ad: