Hired Gun Page #3

Jason got the Mandy Moore gig and I

remember thinking, "Good for you."

I mean, it's a little lighter than what I

thought he would probably go for but...

He was working, making a good living.

[Hook] People might not understand

me in the Mandy Moore gig,

but all I thought was, like, "Part

one of the plan in motion."

Like most of those gigs, I'm

not in control of it at all.

Right, I'm just the rented guitar player.

So...

At some point they decided to do

some left turn with business,

she was going to go make a movie,

or we're going to shut down the music part...

She was going to focus on acting or whatever...

Whatever the reason was.

And you, just in one nano second,

you're job is over.

And then you start to realize, "Hmm, okay.

There is no security here."

When you're a kid, you're like,

"I want to be a rock star.

I want to be a rock star."

I never said that.

I always said I want to be a session guy.

To be a studio musician,

to be a great studio musician,

you have to be a great musician.

I mean, you just do.

There's just no two ways about

it. You can't be mediocre.

Because there's,

you know, good is the enemy of great.

So, if you're only good,

there's a thousand great guys

that are gonna take your place.

[Robinson] Our producer wants

to cast the right people

for the right role of this record.

So, they go out and they find the best player

that fits the role.

They find the best guy for the drums,

they find the best guy for the bass, they find

the best guy with the keyboards,

they find the best guy for the guitars.

But they also want these guys,

to be able to blend as if they were in a band.

The guys on the record not playing on the record,

never cross my mind.

In fact, when someone go,

"You know, that's not even,

whatever Ace Frehley playing that?"

That's so and so... That's... Than"

"I don't think that's Joe Perry." it's so and so...

I go, "Well, how is that possible?"

It never even crossed my mind that that ever went on.

If you look at the whole dynamic

of the L.A sessions scene,

all of us in that generation that-that replaced,

obviously, the generation before us.

We were all aspiring studio musicians.

Everybody who was anybody had to

go through the record playing.

So, I had my guitar in one hand,

my amp in the other hand,

and my opening line

which is the same line I'd use to sell songs was,

"You can sit here and I could

tell you how great you are

and we could talk for 20 minutes,

or you could just let me play for five

minutes and I could get out of your hair.

We didn't carry ourselves like

rock stars might carry themselves.

We took a lot of sh*t for it in the press.

They made it, like, being a session musician was bad.

"Anybody can do that. You just

sit and read music all clay."

Well, I said, "No man, that's not what we did.

We often times polished the turd."

[Jay] Before pro tools there were pro's.

I'm a studio musician.

I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I've

gotta save this, now, in real time.

That's my job.

[Foster] Jay Graydon and I have

been buddies for 45 years.

I came into a club and I saw him play,

and I had just moved to Los Angeles.

I was so in awe of what I heard and what I saw.

This amazing technician with heart.

We became fast friends,

and have worked together over the decades ever since.

[Vai] Jay is like a forensic scientist.

He is so in to what he does,

and he has such an inner ear

for production and for playing.

You know, obviously, he's a great player.

I'm working with Roger Nichols.

He's a recording engineer.

And he realized I was a good

player in his eyes and said,

"Steely Dan's having a really hard

time with this one guitar solo.

I'm gonna recommend you for the gig."

And I said, "Roger, that would be great."

Because every studio musician,

wants to be on a Steely Dan record.

This is as good as it gets.

Whether you like that band or not,

you know that if they were ever

on a Steely Dan record,

they are one of the baddest motherfuckers walking.

[Jay] I am five milliseconds away from

crashing in the middle of the solo

and hitting a wall.

So I'll take a chance and I'll step on my dick.

Fagen says to me, the key words,

"Think blues."

And when I walked out of there I

had no idea I was the final guy.

I'm thinking, "Well, I'm just probably

just another guy they're going to try."

I know I was the seventh guy.

And they were gonna, "Who's

eight, who's ninth, who's tenth?"

They loved the solo.

Record comes out and I'm on it.

And I'm going, "Eh, good, I won!"

So, good for me.

[Lukather] I was the guy that was, like,

if I said that's a hit record it was clue.

When Africa... The song, Africa,

almost didn't make the record.

I miss the rains Down in Africa

When I played on Beat It

I thought that was hilarious.

I heard just the lyric and I cracked up,

and I went, "Beat It! Oh, yeah, that's...

destined for a hit."

And I played all the guitar

parts, and the bass parts.

Beat it beat it

No one wants To be defeated

I said if this song's a hit I would run

naked down Hollywood boulevard, okay.

Fortunately, at this point nobody's

ever called me out on that, but...

We're seeing reviews saying

Quincy Jones manages to get the members

of Toto to play with some kind of taste.

On, you know, Thriller,

They just hated the fact that

we were on something so huge.

[Foster] Most of us didn't stay

as studio musicians very long.

We realized that it was kind of a dead

end even though it was a great living.

But it was a dead end.

And all of us would watch the producers

on the other side of the glass.

And I just know, me personally, I was going, like,

"Wow, I know I can do that. I'm

positive I can do what they're doing."

They're relying on us to come up with the music.

Anyway, so, I'm sure I can do that.

I went from six figures a year,

to the first year I produced,

I made a total of $5000.

Three albums. All three of them stiffed.

No sales. No nothing.

And I was very discouraged.

Because I used to think that,

producing meant just getting a

bunch of great musicians together

and making a great track.

But it's not what producing is.

Producing, fundamentally, is finding great songs

and pairing them with great artists.

And I didn't have that part together yet.

The break out,

was when I met Earth, Wind and Fire.

And again that ties in to jay Graydon

because we wrote After the love is

Gone together along with Bill Chaplin.

After the love is gone

How could you lead me on

And it just... It propelled me into the 80s,

into, uh,

Alice Cooper, and Chicago, and Chaka Khan,

and Kenny Rogers and Kenny Loggins...

It was in a hell of a decade.

I got called by Tommy LiPuma at Warner Brothers

to produce George Benson.

I've got four days to come up with a song.

After two days,

I have nothing.

I'm trying to write something and I'm just a blank.

I don't have anything I like.

I came over and he goes, "Well,

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