fan paraphrases Firehouse members

After the whole “I’m a big fan and enjoyed the show” shpiel, I asked what I really wanted to know: “What was it like working with David Prater?” I was quite amused by the response, which I think came from Firehouse’s guitarist. I’ll use quote marks here, but I assure you that I’m paraphrasing what I remember him saying, and not by any stretch of the imagination quoting what he said word for word:

“Oh! That guy! (sighs heavily) Well, we didn’t work with him on the most recent album. We did Hold Your Fire with him. He’s got one formula for production and no one can deviate from it. He gets very frustrated when it doesn’t sound right. Once he smashed a guitar over the mixing console out of anger. There was no way we were going to work with him again. I know Dream Theater worked with him on one of their albums, and they wouldn’t work with him again.”

Then, my friend and I asked the bass player:

“David Prater? Big guy. Like six and a half feet tall. Used to play in a band in the seventies... He was an asshole! He’d get real pissed off...was impossible to work with. He kicked his dog! (retrospectively, and more calmly:) Ah...I sent him a card at the holidays... (quoting himself, with a tone of bitterness:) ‘Merry Christmas...faggot!’”

For the record, all the guys in Firehouse heavily praised his production work.