As the Mac II launch drew near, the head of ATG Graphics and Sound Group, Mike Potel approached the team of Mark Lentczner, Steve Milne, Dave Wilson, and Wil Oxford:
We wanted a killer demo of what the ASC (Apple Sound Chip) and Macintosh could do that would point the way to our AV future. At that time, Peter Gabriel’s “So” was a popular album, and we loved the opening track “Red Rain”, a drivingthematic anthem that matched the aspirations we had for the Mac II. Mark and his team digitized the whole six-minute song, which we loaded onto a hard drive. I remember running countless demos inside Apple, blasting this song on big lab speakers we had and blowing peoples’ minds with what sound could come out of a Macintosh.
Senior ATG engineer Steve Perlman remembers:
“Red Rain” took up most of the largest disk drive we had. However, with only about a week before the introduction, Apple’s legal department said there was no time to get a release from the record label for the song, so we needed to play something copyright-free.
Potel adds:
We wanted to have one other song to alternate at the intro, but as the day drew near, we couldn’t get approval for anything else. So, in the end, Mark said, “Fine, we’ll do our own song.”
Wil Oxford recalls:
Going back a step, I was a child prodigy pianist who was not good enough to go further. I needed to find another passion that may become my career and, that's when I took up computers. Of course I remained a musician at heart, always a musician, but when I graduated and landed at ATG, what were these guys? They were all musicians, good ones at that, who happened to be in the computer business.
Steve Milne recalls:
I have always had a home studio and at that time I had an eight-track reel-to-reel tape recorder in the spare room, I was the type of guy who instead buying a fancy car, would spend his money on recording gear so while my wife was sleeping, Mark Lentczner and Erich Ringwald (Finder engineer) and Wil Oxford and I stayed up all night to write and record an original song. And when we finished someone said why don't we call it ‘While Drew Slept’.
Perlman continues:
The song and the performance weren't as good as Gabriel's song but it did show the high fidelity of the Mac II’s CD-quality output. Still, we were all very disappointed. Then, a miracle occurred. Out of the blue, Apple’s sales team said they had a VIP visiting who wanted a tour of the Graphics and Sound group (we often gave demos of our research in progress to VIPs). And it turns out the VIP was Peter Gabriel.
Milne recalls:
He came into ATG with his sound engineer and they walked through our lab. We were playing something on the speakers at the time and his engineer stopped and listened, and then pointed out that our speakers were out of phase, our stereo speakers. And we checked the wiring and indeed they were, the wires were reversed and the left channel was out of phase with the right. We were embarrassed that we had been listening to this set-up for months and no-one noticed and very impressed by a guy who comes in and after ten seconds tells us that the speakers are out.
After the speakers were sorted, Gabriel and his engineer were shown the soon-to-be released Macintosh II. Perlman recalls:
We gave him a preview of all the Graphics and Sound tech that was in the Mac II that was to be introduced in less than a week, including playing “Red Rain” with CD-quality sound off of a hard disk.
Potel remembers a successful demo:
He loved it. I remember apologizing to him that our sound output was only 8-bit DACs, and he said, “That’s OK, we only had 8-bit hardware when we recorded that song”. We desperately wanted to be able to use “Red Rain” for the Mac II public intro, but of course, the legalities involved in Apple acquiring a license would never get done in time.
Decades later, Perlman recalls the resolution:
Peter (Gabriel) was blown away and said he planned to get Mac II's for his studio. Then, we shared with him the fact that we had planned to play “Red Rain” to introduce the Mac II to the world, but there was not enough time to clear it through the record company. Peter said that the record company didn’t have rights to “Red Rain”, but he did. He would be happy to give us a license to play the song to introduce the Mac. We immediately called Apple Legal (who at first thought we were pulling their leg) to quickly bring over a release form for Peter Gabriel, and he signed. And that is how the Mac was able to play “Red Rain” in full CD-quality glory when it was introduced to the world.
Excerpt from Inventing the Future. -> https://books.by/john-buck
