SHOW BUSINESS: David Foster: The True King of Pop

If a song's No. 1, look for David Foster's name on the label

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But you won't find Foster on street corners or in clubs looking for new talent. He spends most of his time in studios or at home, in hopes that devotion to work will not wreck his third marriage as it did his first two. A garden-ringed house near the beach in Malibu, California, is home base for Foster and current wife Linda Thompson, and his four daughters and her two sons from earlier marriages. Thompson's is a fascinating story in its own right: a songwriter (she wrote Houston's I Have Nothing with Foster) and actress (15 years on the country-music TV show Hee Haw), she once lived for . five years with Elvis Presley and was later married to Olympian Bruce Jenner.

Foster's musical talent and the advent of synthesized sounds have made it possible for him to produce a record almost single-handedly. "I'm a control freak," he admits. Sometimes he cuts demos in which he plays everything from "drums" to "cellos" on his computerized keyboards, hires a studio singer to lay down the vocal and then presents the polished product to a recording artist, saying, "Here's what your song could sound like." In fact, he did that with I Will Always Love You for Houston.

Behind Foster's relentless perfectionism is a surprising strain of insecurity. He knows that in his fickle industry complacency can quickly lead to a fall from the charts. "I always work under the assumption that my latest hit is my last," says the producer. "So I Swear is my last hit." Maybe so, but not many people in the music business would bet on it.

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