I ran across the original lead sheet for this song recently. It was called “Room 314” – Why? I have no idea. I don’t know if that was a hotel room I was in when I got the idea for the melody, I have no idea. But anyway it was kind of funny to see that we had crossed through the “14” and made it “335”. The first recording of Room 335 was for a project that I was doing with the great composer Michel Colombier.
We were assigned to do a duet album and the first band to ever record Room 335 was Michel Colombier on keyboards, Jaco Pastorius on bass, and Steve Gadd on drums. I don’t have a copy of it and I’ve never heard the final mix of it, and it wasn’t released on Michel’s album, we saved it for my Warner Bros album.
As most of you know the classic version of Room 335 was Greg Mathieson on keyboards, Abe Laboriel on bass, Jeff Porcaro on drums – that’s the one we all kind of fell in love with.