Hollywood de bum bum

In the summer of1993 after a brief stint in Iceland producing local band Ny Donsk, John went to Hollywood for a 10 day visit, hooking up with old friends Dalbello & Producer Rick Nowels.
With a hit record (Ordinary World) on the radio, and his car in the overnight parking lot at Heathrow Airport, John didn't have a lot of time to hang out and get to know the LA music scene. Within days he ended up producing tracks for producer Rick Nowels' aborted solo album before starting an album for EMI with Ex-Glass Tiger vocalist Alan Frew.
Yes, the car was recovered later, at great expense!

John then found a house in the Hollywood Hills and set up a studio in order to record Alan's album. By the spring they had written 4 songs together and completed the album Hold On.
When it was released at the end of 1994, Hold On was more a critical success than a sales success, but did reach #1 on the Canadian charts with the song So Blind co-written with Alan, which also won SOCAN awards for reaching #1 and being one of the Most Performed Songs of 1995 on Canadian radio.

In the summer of 1994 JJ returned to work with Duran Duran on their Thank You album, recording in a villa on the Cap d'Antibes in the south of France.
He had started the album with Warren and Nick in Battersea the year before and the group had continued to work on it with engineering legend Ken Scott at a variety of studios around the world.
A large truck full of recording equipment was driven from London and connected to form a studio with which Nick and JJ completed the overdubs and prepared the tapes for mixing.
John then headed back to Los Angeles to do some final overdubs before mixing began with Jason Corsaro and Ken Kessie.
Alanis Morrisette stayed in the Holywood studio house while JJ was away in France...

At the end of the year JJ joined Duran Duran on stage, playing piano and singing for their MTV Unplugged sessions at Sony Studios in New York. The second act on the stage that day was Nirvana...

1995 started with a bang on Hollywood Blvd when another car ran a Red Light and crashed into his recently acquired 911 Turbo Targa Slant Nose, which was then hit by the two cars following too close behind, breaking 2 vertabrae in his back and his tailbone before coming to rest in the front of an apartment building with a very totalled Porsche!
Having sufferred a few hits in the past playing Ice Hockey he continued that evening to a dinner party and then went to Las Vegas with DD to open the Hard Rock Hotel before resting in Palm Springs for the weekend. Back in Hollywood on Monday morning the full effects of the crash showed up and a visit to the hospital confirmed the damage which began a 5 year recovery program...

Strange as it seems, months later he found a cassette that was in the 911's stereo of a new song written on the day of the crash that had been forgotten - The Hollywood Sign - lucky to be alive?

Hollywood 2...