“Well, I was under contract at the time to Bearsville Records when Utopia became an equal four man band. Everybody signed collectively to Bearsville Records, and individually, as well. So Bearsville had the rights to my first solo record, and at that stage in my career, I was a kid, I was like 22 years old and I wanted nothing more than to do a solo record – that was my goal in life I made demos and I submitted them to the record company, and the record company said, “You’re not ready yet. It’s not right, it’s not good enough. Just keep writing, keep writing.” And at a certain point I got so frustrated that I said, “You guys, you’ve got to let me go.” Because I have interest from other labels and if I can put a solo record together with, say Warner Brothers or Capitol or Elektra or a number of other record labels at the time, then that’s what I want to do. Albert Grossman actually said to me, “That’s fine. You’re more than welcome to go. That’ll be $50,000 and 15 percent of all the royalties that you’ll ever make for the rest of your life.” And I freaked out and I wrote “Set Me Free.” A lot of people over the years have thought that “Set Me Free” was boy/girl: boy loses girl, boy wants out of relationship, like it’s just a boy/girl pop song. But it’s not. It’s about me wanting to get out of a record contract.”Kasim Sulton (471)