Recording
This album sounded like a Bee Gees album minus the brotherly harmonies, and throughout most of it, danceable rhythms and synthesizer work were noticeable. An example was the song "Fine Line". This album actually did better commercially than the most recent Bee Gees 1981 album Living Eyes. He started to record demos in August 1983 with the track "I Wanna Go Home With You", and he continued to record from November to December 1983, with the songs "Face to Face", "The Hunter", "Fine Line", "One Night (For Lovers)" and "Illusions". The musicians who played on the demos were Maurice Gibb on guitar, bass and synthesizer, and George Bitzer on piano and synthesizer.
It was recorded at Middle Ear Studios, except for the string sweetening on few tracks which was done at Ocean Way in Los Angeles. Recording was perhaps done in May in order to allow for filming the audio-visual version of the album. Filming was done in August. Albhy Galuten is notably absent from the production team as he left for California in 1983 after disagreeing with Barry Gibb on where to go next. Albhy wanted to break free from the studio straight jacket of recording tracks to mechanical beats and dubbing onto them. Instead he suggested that they rent a theater in New York where Barry could do a series of live performances before audiences for a week, using all the session players they usually used. They would record all the shows and pick the best take of each new song. Barry did not want to do it and Albhy moved on, but Karl Richardson carried on. The musicians were played on the album were Michael Brecker (who also worked with Steely Dan, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones and others), Randy Brecker (who also worked with Frank Zappa, Bruce Springsteen and others). Roger Daltrey of The Who, Olivia Newton-John, Harry Wayne Casey of KC and the Sunshine Band and others sings backup on "Fine Line". Jimmie Haskell, who conduct the orchestra was also worked with Maurice earlier in 1984.
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