Steve Winwood – Higher Love

“Higher Love” – Single by Steve Winwood from the album Back in the High Life
B-side “And I Go”
Released June 1986
Label Island – IS 288
Songwriters Steve Winwood and Will Jennings
Producers Russ Titelman and Steve Winwood
Charted No.1 in US; No.13 in UK; No.8 in Australia; No.1 in Canada; No.49 in West Germany.

“Higher Love” was Winwood’s first Billboard Hot 100 number-one song, topping the chart for one week beginning 30 August 1986. “Higher Love” also spent four weeks atop the US Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart and earned two Grammy Awards, for Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. It also peaked at number 13 in the United Kingdom, Winwood’s highest charting solo entry there, and reached number one in Canada for a week.

Winwood recorded the album Back in the High Life at several studios in New York City, ending up at Unique Recording Studios where Tom Lord-Alge was engineering with his brothers. To round out the sounds on “Higher Love”, producer Russ Titelman brought in two members of the funk/soul band Rufus: singer Chaka Khan and drummer John ‘JR’ Robinson. After recording his drum parts and while waiting for Khan to get set up, JR played an impromptu drum fill which Lord-Alge caught on tape. Lord-Alge connected this drum fill to the beginning of “Higher Love”, by assigning a timing offset to one of two tape machines such that they first played the drum fill followed by the song coming in on the beat. Titelman was happy with the result and decided to open the album with this drum fill. JR used a Latin rimshot technique across the top of his classic seamless brass Ludwig Black Beauty snare, unmuffled, with its snare wires disengaged, to emulate the sound of a timbale. He said, “it’s one of the best drum intros I’ve ever played.”