Background When
Larry Heard was growing up he had a piano in his house and as a child would try to emulate television show theme songs. Heard would later learn to play guitar and quickly moved on to the bass, and then to drums, where he felt most comfortable. Heard initially was interested in pursuing a career as either a teacher, a lawyer, or an architect but moved on to playing drums in local groups. Later Heard became interested in starting to put some distance in between him and some of the groups, stating that in his last group he found himself "having to buy [his] own
synthesizer, and then buy a
drum machine to keep the time since I wasn't gonna be able to hold the sticks and do the keyboard part." Heard's first synthesizer purchased was a
Roland Jupiter-6.
Production synthesizer On the first night of purchasing the synthesizer in 1984, Heard created "Mystery of Love" and "Washing Machine", which he described as "my first drafts ever. I was lucky enough to catch it on a cassette tape, which has been lost since then, of course." Heard described the influence to make these tracks, as he "always had ideas when I was behind the drums, but the other band members weren't really receptive, again, to the drummer having ideas, and I think there's pretty much rich history of drummers, like
Phil Collins, and
Narada Michael Walden, and people like that, that step out. But you have to express your ideas, or it's not fulfilling." The tracks were recorded to two cassette decks with one pass on one cassette, and then, once Heard decided what he wanted over the top, he ran the next pass, and played the parts live. Heard reflected on these recordings in 2016, describing both "Mystery of Love" and "Washing Machine" as a "happy accident, a product of youthful excitement" due to his excitement to work on new equipment and the lessons learned from listening to his parents play the piano. There are multiple iterations of "Mystery of Love". The first was an original version, which Heard described as his "personal prototype" which he made three acetate copies of, one copy owned by Heard, and others given to Chicago DJs
Frankie Knuckles,
Ron Hardy. According to Heard, these acetates have changed hands several times. The 1985 version of the track is at a slow
tempo, at about 110 beats per minute. A second version was credited to
Fingers Inc. and made for the label
DJ International Records. This version was re-recorded in a studio with vocals by Heard's friend
Robert Owens. This version is credited to
Fingers Inc. Heard felt that " the first one is just special for me, it just holds the essence of what I was doing, what just naturally flowed out of me. The next ones ended up being more rehearsed, so I don't really feel the same intensity in those versions, but that's showbiz, I guess." ==Release==