It was the summer of 1984 and our band was recording an album at a studio in the Surrey countryside. One Saturday, the phone rang. “I’m Stevie Wonder’s manager,” the voice said. “Yeah, and I’m Isaac Hayes,” I replied.

But it really was him. He wanted to know if Stevie could borrow the studio we were using. Stevie was on tour in the UK but had some recording commitments to meet, and the studio had the same gear as his in the US. We said, “Are you kidding? It’s Stevie Wonder. He can come for a week if he wants.” I was brought up on his music – he’s the best singer in the world.

Our band was called Feelabeelia – an absolutely stupid name. We were a funk band from Leicester – with proper 80s mullets – and I was the drummer. We were signed to Warner Bros on Quincy Jones’s label, Qwest Records. That year, we’d recorded in Los Angeles while living at the Sheraton hotel; we used to hang around the pool with the actor Telly Savalas. I told my dad, “You ain’t going to believe this, I’m mates with Kojak.” It was a dream come true.

On the day Stevie’s manager rang, we were at Jacobs Studio, a state-of-the-art place near Farnham, with two recording rooms. All sorts of bands recorded there – the Smiths used it for The Queen Is Dead.

We were told Stevie would come to record and be gone the next morning. We didn’t think it would actually happen.

But he turned up at about 1am in a massive coach with 50 people. He’d come straight from playing the NEC in Birmingham. He was much bigger than I thought he’d be, but maybe that’s because he just had that superstar-ness about him. He shook our hands and said, “Good evening, gentlemen”, then went off to the studio while we all started partying in the kitchen. At one point he came through to go to the toilet. Someone went to show him where it was and he said, “I already know where it is. I can smell it.”

He came to record the vocals to I Just Called to Say I Love You. It was amazing to see him work; he didn’t spend a lot of time on it, just added a couple of ad libs. I think that song is the wackiest thing he’s done, but it’s the only solo No 1 he’s had in the UK.

Once Stevie had done his stuff, he asked what we were doing, so we played him our single Feel It. He liked it, but said it needed a bit of this and that in the middle section. Being a cheeky lad, I said, jokingly, “Well, you do it, then.”

He called in Wonderlove, his backing singers, and sang them a line that was better than the whole song. They went in and did their bit, then he suggested it needed a solo. I said, “What about a harmonica?” (You don’t ask, you don’t get.) “Yeah, OK, cool,” he said. We put the tape on a loop and he recorded this world-class solo. All of us in the band just looked at each other thinking, “Oh my God.” How he came up with that within a minute of hearing the song, I’ll never know. The song was pretty shit before he blessed it.

At about 7am, they all got on the coach and left. We were shellshocked. The studio was in an old farmhouse and there were geese on the grounds – even they looked as if they couldn’t believe it.

When I rang my dad later and told him Stevie Wonder was on our single, he said, “Come home, son. The drugs are too strong.”

But Motown, Stevie’s label, wasn’t happy: “What’s Stevie doing playing on a track for Warner Bros?” So we couldn’t credit him on the single, but we could credit him on the album – though only on the inside sleeve. When it was pressed, I got them to scratch “Thanks, Stevie” into the vinyl.

We did loads of interviews when the record was released, and whenever people asked who played the harmonica solo, we had to say something like, “Well, it’s not Larry Adler.” I got so fed up. In one interview I said it was Stevie Wonder, which caused a week of problems.

Feel It was massive in Italy and Japan, but it bombed in the UK. Eventually, we were dropped by the label. I cried on the plane home from the US.

It was still one of the most incredible days of my life. Sometimes people ask me if it’s true I played with Stevie Wonder. I say, no – he played with us.

• As told to Jeremy Clay

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