From his early gigs with Hall and Oates back in ’75, to working with artists such as Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, Mick Fleetwood and Bob Welch to Rod Stewart, Delbert McClinton, Randy Meisner, Carlene Carter, Richard Marx, Aussie icon Jimmy Barnes and French legend Eddy Mitchell.
Todd has also worked alongside greats such as Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, Glen Clark, David Crosby, Al Stewart, Rick Braun, Eric Carmen, Steve Winwood and many others.
In addition to an extensive touring and recording career with many great rock & roll bands, Todd also has two solo records to his credit; “Who AM I” (MCA, 1986, prod. Don Gehman), and “Walking All the Way” (WannaPlay, 2002, prod. Sharp, & Stephen Bruton).
Todd’s songwriting achievements include co-writing the top ten hit; “Got a Hold On Me” with Christine McVie (1983), Juice Newton’s “A Little Love” (1984), along with other notable covers by McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Bob Welch, Jeff Healey, Rick Braun and others.
Sharp has lived a full musical life – he’s been playing guitar and working with amps and electronics since 1963 and has been polishing tone for an equally impressive clientele as proprietor of Nashville Amplifier Service for the past 20 years.
Todd is also an occasional guest author for The Tone Quest Report and Audio Xpress.
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Morse CodeHam Radio - Audio Electronics1963 & beyond
Todd Sharp – Guitar Amplifier technician/consultant:
“My approach to guitar amplifiers is primarily as a player first, and manipulator of electrons second. I have been playing rock & roll guitar for more than 40 years. I started playing music when I was about 11 but a few years prior to that I was interested in electronics – ham radio”.
I got my Radio Amateur Operators novice license and built my first transmitter in 1963, when I was seven years old. My father, Fred Sharp was not only a really great jazz player but a man of many other interests including ham radio so I had a great mentor as a young lad and we had a rockin’ radio shack in our basement.
I lost interest in electronics when I started playing music but I always tinkered here and there. It was probably that first AC 30 lured me back. Damn thing blew up so often I had to fix it every third time I turned it on.
Needless to say I have been playing, studying, messing with, in, about, around and all up into guitar amps for a long time and eventually founded Nashville Amplifier Service in 1994. Myself and my expert team have had the pleasure of providing amplifier repairs, restoration and other technical services along with occasional psychological counseling for a great many of the many greats.
Todd Sharp
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Musical RootsBeatles anyone?1964
I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio the product of musical parents. My Mother Iris Sharp was a great singer – with a real easy phrasing that was very Billie Holiday. My Father, Fred Sharp was a great Jazz guitarist. He lived at the corner of Freddie Green and George Van Epps, and was a brilliant accompanist to Iris. A real chord man – played a lot like a piano player.
Dad was also a Django Reinhardt aficionado and had become something of a world authority on Django. He compiled and shared the definitive record collection along with a few other Django freaks around the world and helped chronicle the definitive Django discography. At one point he and Iris travelled to Paris and recorded an album with Reinhardt producer Charles Delaunay and a few of the original Hot Club of France members, but also with Django’s son Babik on the session. Unfortunately, Verve Records declined to release it. Fred even had one of Django’s guitars for a while. It was an Epiphone arch top with a hole literally hacked in the back so they could mount a p90 pickup in it! This was the guitar Django played on his first and only tour of the US. Babik had given it to Dad.
Obviously at the Sharp house – there was plenty of music around. Surely the vibe alone rubbed off but my folks were not ever very pushy about any of us kids playing music. In fact, I signed on just like most people my age – Beatles, Ed Sullivan show 1964. Something about the sound they made just….changed my life. Then, the hair, the boots. I’m just saying.
I started on drums and switched to guitar about a year later. I remember my father staring at me while I tried to get my arm around his Epiphone arch top. He declared me a natural and took me to Chaiken music the next day, and bought me a Teisco del Ray with black flat wound strings. Fred used to tell people –“I showed him how to hold a pick, the rest he did on his own”. Fred Sharp was chunking a different chord for every quarter note while I was trying to figure out how to play Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry riffs. They were different worlds so he let me find my own way.
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mentors - coming upGrowing up - Showing up1966 - 1975
Fred would occasionally kick me into a gig. First one being a feature spot with an orchestra when I was twelve. Dad had the guitar chair in a local orchestra and was asked to play Classical Gas, which was a huge hit at the time. He said “I can’t play Classical Gas, but my son can”. He then told me about it and I immediately declared – “I can’t play Classical Gas” and he said – “sure you can, rehearsal is Wednesday”. So that was my first professional gig at 12, with a 30 piece orchestra at a shopping center playing Classical Gas. They also carved me a spot for a blues tune.
Somewhere early on, Fred dropped me off at Bill deArango’s guitar studio. Bill was a huge mentor and guide in my musical upbringing. I could write a book about all this stuff but I will try to keep it as succinct as possible. Bill deArango won the Downbeat Poll for top jazz guitarist in the country about 1941 or so. A Bop player in the style of Charlie Christian, but a bit further out there.
Bill was a master player but even more he was a master musician. I took a few lessons from him but he quickly figured that I should be working with one of the younger rock players so he handed me off to a great guy and great player named Donnie Baker. Bill would sort of keep an ear on me and every now and then would bring me into his office and play records. All kind of stuff – Miles Davis, Lester Young, James Brown, Hendrix. He loved it all. He would point out things that were not about playing the guitar but about playing music. He was teaching me how to listen.
Bill played a super 400 and his store was the place in Cleveland to get Marshall Amps when they first came on the scene. Just imagine a 50 something former bebop legend, who raves about how deep Charlie Watts pocket is and loves Sly Stone, plugging a Gibson Super 400 (with a deArmond pickup) through a Univox Fuzz into a 50W Marshall with the 8×10 cab – cranked, just wailing. Grinning away behind a pair of Ray Bans. That was Bill. The store shared a building with a Ski haus. They would occasionally report that the skis were mysteriously falling off the wall at night.
Bill deArango put me in my first band:
Bill took me and a few other guys my age that he thought could play, and arranged for us to meet at his store where he put us in the basement with a drum kit and a few amps and said – go. He started to book gigs for us and we had a pretty hot little cover band from about age 13 -15 called Fleet. We gigged solid every weekend. Sidebar: I heard an NPR interview a few weeks ago with Judd Apatow who is doing some brilliant TV writing. Judd mentions his grandfather – a jazz record producer named Bob Shad and it comes back to me that my band Fleet had a standing offer from Bob Shad to record an album for his label Mainstream Records. A Detroit outfit. At that time Big Brother and the Holding Company w/Janis Joplin and the Ted Nugent’s Amboy Dukes were on Mainstream. We managed to break up before the summer when we were scheduled to go to Criteria Studio in Miami to record. Creative differences you know.
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the road - and beyondKeep moving1975 on
So – I played in a number of bands in the Cleveland bars and the occasional hullabaloo club. Started studying music at the Cleveland Institute of Music, while barely getting through high school. My intention was to go off to New York and attend a music school there – I don’t remember exactly where, I think it was in Bearsville.
Fate intersected. My then girlfriend’s (now wife) sister Christine was in Philadelphia sharing an apartment with a sweet woman name of Sarah who was dating a guy named Daryl Hall who had a record out with John Oates (Whole Oates). I was also working part time at a record store at the time so I was familiar with the record. It was kind of folky really. I was shedding Freddie King around that time. Through Christine, the connection was made. About a year later Hall & Oates came to play at a Cleveland club called the Agora where I was playing downstairs. I went up and met them and gave them a demo tape of the band I was in at the time.
About a year later their manager called me and invited me to come up to New York and audition for Daryl & John’s new band. So my father bought me a plane ticket and I went to New York. It’s a good story:
At that time Daryl & John hadn’t really cracked the code yet. They had a few records but nothing was sticking. I walked into SIR on 54th street in NYC and immediately realized that I was one of a cattle call. At that point I just figured that in NYC there must be plenty of really good players who will get this gig. Nice of them to give me a shot though. Anyhow, I walked in, we re- acquaint but they had evolved so much since I heard them play in Cleveland a few years prior. These guys sang great, wrote great music, were total pro’s and they had an underlying confidence the likes of which I’d never seen. All of it blew my socks off.
They had also moved into a really exciting new direction musically with a great (yet unreleased) record that was produced by Christopher Bond – who also played lead guitar. Their manager sent it to me in advance with 5 songs circled that I was to learn. Chris is an astounding guitarist and arranger but was obviously not going to tour with them. At that point, Hall & Oates were about to release their fourth record and they had 2 gigs – both in England. The word was that they apparently had some fans there.
Anyhow, I got the gig. We shedded hard for about 10 days and then flew to London for two shows. The first was at the New Victoria Theatre, and the other was at Ronnie Scott’s – a legendary London jazz club where we were playing a private show for the record label – RCA.
October 1975: Here is how I remember it: We walk on stage at the New Victoria Theatre and the place is full. There are whispers that Steely Dan is in the audience and Pete Townsend and David Bowie and god knows who else. We play a show which goes down very well. I was 19 at the time and had possibly reached my pinnacle of playing white boy blues on the Cleveland bar scene but this was something! People were applauding the solos. I had Goosebumps for days.
The next day – Hall & Oates were on the cover of every music magazine in England. BFD bros and sisters! It was like it all just came together that night in London England for Hall & Oates. Of course I had little to do with it but for being able to help deliver a message live on stage, but I got to stand right in the middle of that sort of exhilaration when things broke for them. It was awesome. It took them four records, a lot of mixed reviews and probably a few empty clubs to get there. I learned a lot from Daryl and John. If at first you don’t succeed – keep going. Those two guys are nothing short of amazing musicians.
We flew back to NY the next day – A UK tour was booked and the record was released in America where the B side of the first single was getting played by a “black” station in Cleveland. The song was “Sarah Smile”. The rest is history. The next two years were filled with some of the best gigs I have ever done. That was when the US was full of median sized beautiful sounding 1500 – 2500 seat theatres. I think we played every one of them at least once. So that happened but after two years they decided to hire Elton John’s rhythm section including Caleb Quaye on guitar, so I was out. Angela and I were in LA already and that is where I met up with Bob Welch and his manager – Mick Fleetwood.
About two or three years ago, Guthrie Trapp walks into the house and hands me a present from John Oates who he had just done a few gigs with. It’s a Hall & Oates CD collection set and story booklet chronicling their entire career called “Do What You Want, Be What You Are”. John signed it for me and wrote “You played yo ass off!” I thought WTF? So I open the thing and disc one has 5 tracks recorded live at the New Victoria Theatre, Oct 1975. My first walk on stage with them. It’s pretty good too. I never even knew it was recorded! Anyhow – kind of a nice thing to have 40 years later. But I can’t be that old?
Bob Welch 1978- 1979
New in LA, freshly released from Hall & Oates, I get a message on my box one day to be at SIR stage #4 at 5pm for the Bob Weir audition. I think hmm. I’m not really much of a grateful dead fan so I call the number on the message and it’s a bit of a mix-up. Apparently they thought I was already contacted and it’s not Bob Weir – it’s Bob Welch who I am certainly familiar with as I have Bare Trees, Mystery to Me and Future Games in my record collection.
So – I run out to the record store and pick up Bob’s first solo record “French Kiss” and spend about 2 hours with it before showing up to audition. I walk in and Bob is there with a Bass around his neck and Mick Fleetwood is on the drums! I think the three of us hit it off really well and this begins a period of 18 -24 months of playing a ton of concerts with Bob (many opening Fleetwood Mac shows) and recording on a few of his records. Bob also cut one of my songs called “Hideaway” on his “The Other One” album.
Got to know John Carter (Bob’s producer) who was a great guy, great producer recently passed. Also struck up a great friendship with Mick and eventually with Christine McVie as well. I was always a Fleetwood Mac fan and I always thought Christine McVie had a really special and pure quality. I also had tremendous admiration for Mick and John McVie as a standout and legendary rhythm section. A couple more people who proved to me that if you keep at it……
Bob was a great person and funny MF. He loved to eat too. Skinny as a rail but would sit down at a Denny’s and order for 5 people and eat it all. He also played all kind of Jazz guitar. He was a Wes Montgomery freak. You can hear some of that with Bob’s Mac work, but his solo stuff was almost like he took on another persona. He never seemed to take himself too serious which was refreshing.
Bob and his wife Wendy also moved to Nashville a few years back and we talked occasionally. Actually was talking to him about coming and sitting in on a monthly gig I do in Franklin. So, so sad that Bob took his own life about a year ago. I don’t know all the details but he had told me last time we talked that he had some sort of horrible neck or back problem that was very painful and that he was in decline. Great guy. Miss him.
I left Bob’s band in 79 to play with a great singer/writer named Danny Douma. Played guitar on Danny’s WB album “Night Eyes” and then toured for about 6 months. Danny and I remained good friends and wrote some good songs together including “Who’s Dreaming this Dream” for Christine McVie (84) and “A Little Love” for Juice Newton (84). Rich Feldman helped us write that one.
I worked on writing music and attempts to put a band together while landing various sessions and fall into situations including a short touring stint with Randy Meisner from the Eagles and some TV & film work.
In 1980 I get a phone call from Mick Fleetwood’s personal assistant who says “Mick is in Australia, but he has put the African adventure together, (a wild musical idea that we had talked about a few times on a few late nights). He had asked me to meet him in Ghana in 8 weeks. Get some ideas going for material and bone up on a few songs and also on Ghanaian music.
This was an amazing adventure that would just take too long to tell. There is an album called Mick Fleetwood “The Visitor” and there was also a 1 hour film made of it. I spent 6 weeks in Accra, Ghana 90 degrees, 90% humidity, working at a somewhat dilapidated film/sound stage that was built in the 50’s but had sat idle since 1959.
We brought recording gear, film for the movie camera’s and Mick brought a satchel of money for the Ghanaian musician’s union fund and set up a royalty distribution for the local artists who participated. I believe this was the first time anyone ever even thought about paying Africans for the privilege of recording them. The music there was amazing and it was everywhere. Deeply imbedded in the culture and in just about everyone. Never been to a happier place. It was the closest thing to what I would imagine Heaven might be like if there was one, and if it wasn’t so humid.
I will try to find some pics of us there. It was just an amazing eye opening experience in so many ways for me but particularly to get a taste of the musical culture of West Africa. It’s so good and so rich, and largely – unheard outside of Africa. Mick sent me home and went to England to finish it up with a few other guitar players. Amateurs: I think their names were Jimmy Page, George Harrison and Peter Green.
Angela and I were becoming pretty good friends with Christine Mcvie and one night I played her a few of my demos. Christine insisted to come to the studio and do some BG vocals on one of my songs. It was a pinch me moment. Christine McVie wants to sings BG’s on my demo?? An even bigger pinch me moment came when Christine invited me to help her put a band together and to write with her for a solo record she was due to make.
We got on great, and spent a few months hanging and writing songs for her 1984 solo record “Christine McVie” we flushed out a band which included Stephen Ferrone on drums and George Hawkins on bass. George was also invited to Africa with Fleetwood. I struck up a friendship with George Hawkins back when he was with Kenny Loggins (Hall & Oates did a summer long tour with Kenny Loggins in about 77). We also had a band together prior to Christine’s project with Tris Imboden (Loggins, now Chicago), Tom Canning (Al Jareau) and Stephen Bruton called the Lucky Dogs.
The Lucky Dogs aspired only to play the Trancas Bar in Malibu every Thursday night and to drink Lucky Dog beer (champagne).
Mostly we drank. Anyhow – back to Christine Mcvie:
What a gas that was! We recorded her album in Montreux, Switzerland with Russ Titleman producing. We did a brief tour when we added another guitar to the band; Stephen Bruton and a brief stint with Billy Burnette, and Eddy Quintella also on keys and then the Mac fired it up again so it was a quick run.
We had one big hit “Got A Hold On Me” but the recording had a few awesome highlights. So we’re recording this record in Switzerland and we got most of it in a few weeks really, we’re finishing a few lyrics and o’dubbing a few things, driving to Italy for lunch ya know, and Christine says – why don’t I call Eric and see if we can get him on one of these tracks? I say – you know Eric Clapton? and she says “of course dahling”, then she says same thing about Steve Winwood I think they went to art school together or something like that. The brit Rock & Roll peeps are like that – they all know each other.
So we spend a week at Steve Winwood’s place in England. Russ and I stay at the local pub while Steve and Chris take a few days to write the song – “Ask Anybody” and then Steve sings duet on the song Chris and I wrote called “One in a Million”, and also puts a couple very choice key o’dubs on a few things and he’s just the nicest fellow you would ever want to know and he’s sooooo fookin good – as we all know. But what a great thing to have the opportunity to work alongside someone you grew up listening to and then to find them great people too?
A week later: Eric Clapton comes walking up the steps of Olympic Studio in London, with a gig bag over one shoulder and a tweed amp in each hand. I meet him halfway up the steps and I say something like “for fuck’s sake even I have cartage people lug my stuff, let me help you” and again, another childhood hero who is like the nicest dude you could want to know. I didn’t get the opportunity to play with Eric but he sat down and listened through the album and told me that he liked my playing. I told him that I stole most of it from him and he laughed and said it’s all stolen from somebody or something like that. It was a nice moment for me. Eric Clapton was probably the main reason I got deep into playing guitar. There were other influences but none as big as his for me.
He picked a track “The Challenge” did two passes – both of them great, and then I helped him put his shit back in his land Rover and thanked him for playing on our song. Sweet man. He offered to help me find another Strat (mine had just been stolen out of the studio at Montreux). I’m lucky that way. I didn’t take him up on the offer. I’m stupid that way.
84 – 86:
My first solo record for MCA “Who Am I” with George Hawkins on Bass, Randy Jackson on 2 cuts, Gary Furgeson from Eddie Money’s band on Drums, Stan Lynch on one cut and Bob Christopherson on keys, Christine McVie on a few tunes and also long time pals James House and Billy Burnette chimed in. The record was produced by Don Gehman fresh out of the John Mellencamp camp. Ugly record biz stuff happened with the FBI raiding MCA the day before my first single hit the streets and the album was otherwise received with a dull who cares? Let’s move on;
Rod Stewart:
I used to hang with Carmine Rojas in New York when I was with Hall & Oates and Carmine played bass with Labelle in those days. He went on to work with David Bowie and SRV on Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”. So I’m playing a show in LA with David Crosby (around 89) who I was about to go on tour with and Carmine is there and comes back after and we re-connect after some lost years. A few days later he calls and asks if I want to do a yearlong tour with Rod. I ask him when is the audition? And he says – no audition. You want to do it or not? I asked – what if Rod don’t like me? And Carmine says – “then he’ll fire you”. I said OK I’m in.
I played with Rod’s band for almost 6 years. (fired eventually). Recorded only a few things with Rod, notably “This Old Heart of Mine” with Rod and Ronnie Isley on the “Storyteller” album and then there’s some live stuff and video out there. Playing with Rod was a ball. Sold out all over the world every time you play. Audiences full of women. Underwear all over the stage. It was rough.
Here’s another great story about the Brit rock & rollers.
One night in Vancouver John Baldry came to see us:
Sidebar: John Baldry called me out of the blue one day in 1978 and asked me to join his band about 10 minutes after I joined Bob Welch’s band. He was at the Hall & Oates concert at the New Vic. I loved JB but I was already committed to Bob and Fleetwood so I had to decline. Anyhow:
John visits backstage and gives Rod a video of an old Newport Jazz/Blues fest. On the jet ride home, Rod has been watching it and he starts telling me about when he was a teenager and John Baldry was like a mentor to him and many others back in the day. So he says – something to the effect that “John Baldry gave me a copy of this Muddy Waters record and said – it’s yours for two weeks. Take care to put it back in the wrapper, don’t scratch it and then I need it back”. Something like that. He needs it back because it then goes to Jeff (Beck) and then to Ronnie (Wood), and so on. The same record! Apparently there was only one copy of this particular Muddy Waters record in the entire country and John Baldry had it and wanted to make sure that the right guys heard it.
It always amazes me that in the 50’s & 60’s in America – white people were paying no mind at all to Delta music or Chicago Blues. With little exception , (Paul Butterfield) the Brits brought it back to us white boys and girls via, Beck, Page, Clapton, as Yardbirds, and then later as Cream, Led Zep, Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and a few others right?. It’s astounding how that worked.
Jimmy Barnes: “Two Fires LP” 1990 Don Gehman produced. Played some wicked lead guitar on that record through my Dumble amp just before I sold one and someone stole the other. Did I tell you I am lucky that way?
Delbert McClinton:
Lap’s: “Room to Breathe”, “Nothing Personal” and a million miles on a tour bus. Delbert is one of the best singers in the world. He should be way better known and appreciated for his talent. He’s the kind of singer that when he opens his mouth – the right stuff just always comes out. Effortless. He also plays great harp. Great guy too.
I had the opportunity to borrow the Delbert band for a record I cut about 10 years ago called “Walking All the Way”. There are a few moments on that record that I am really proud of. Live stuff happening between musicians who had at that time been on stage together like 200 or 300 times. Magic starts to happen between players when you have that kind of time logged with each other.
Todd Sharp – Guitar Amplifier technician/consultant:
“My approach to guitar amplifiers is primarily as a player first, and manipulator of electrons second. I have been playing rock & roll guitar for more than 40 years. I started playing music when I was about 11 but a few years prior to that I was interested in electronics – ham radio”.
I got my Radio Amateur Operators novice license and built my first transmitter in 1963, when I was seven years old. My father, Fred Sharp was not only a really great jazz player but a man of many other interests including ham radio so I had a great mentor as a young lad and we had a rockin’ radio shack in our basement.
I lost interest in electronics when I started playing music but I always tinkered here and there. It was probably that first AC 30 lured me back. Damn thing blew up so often I had to fix it every third time I turned it on.
Needless to say I have been playing, studying, messing with, in, about, around and all up into guitar amps for a long time and eventually founded Nashville Amplifier Service in 1994. Myself and my expert team have had the pleasure of providing amplifier repairs, restoration and other technical services along with occasional psychological counseling for a great many of the many greats.
Todd Sharp
I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio the product of musical parents. My Mother Iris Sharp was a great singer – with a real easy phrasing that was very Billie Holiday. My Father, Fred Sharp was a great Jazz guitarist. He lived at the corner of Freddie Green and George Van Epps, and was a brilliant accompanist to Iris. A real chord man – played a lot like a piano player.
Dad was also a Django Reinhardt aficionado and had become something of a world authority on Django. He compiled and shared the definitive record collection along with a few other Django freaks around the world and helped chronicle the definitive Django discography. At one point he and Iris travelled to Paris and recorded an album with Reinhardt producer Charles Delaunay and a few of the original Hot Club of France members, but also with Django’s son Babik on the session. Unfortunately, Verve Records declined to release it. Fred even had one of Django’s guitars for a while. It was an Epiphone arch top with a hole literally hacked in the back so they could mount a p90 pickup in it! This was the guitar Django played on his first and only tour of the US. Babik had given it to Dad.
Obviously at the Sharp house – there was plenty of music around. Surely the vibe alone rubbed off but my folks were not ever very pushy about any of us kids playing music. In fact, I signed on just like most people my age – Beatles, Ed Sullivan show 1964. Something about the sound they made just….changed my life. Then, the hair, the boots. I’m just saying.
I started on drums and switched to guitar about a year later. I remember my father staring at me while I tried to get my arm around his Epiphone arch top. He declared me a natural and took me to Chaiken music the next day, and bought me a Teisco del Ray with black flat wound strings. Fred used to tell people –“I showed him how to hold a pick, the rest he did on his own”. Fred Sharp was chunking a different chord for every quarter note while I was trying to figure out how to play Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry riffs. They were different worlds so he let me find my own way.
Fred would occasionally kick me into a gig. First one being a feature spot with an orchestra when I was twelve. Dad had the guitar chair in a local orchestra and was asked to play Classical Gas, which was a huge hit at the time. He said “I can’t play Classical Gas, but my son can”. He then told me about it and I immediately declared – “I can’t play Classical Gas” and he said – “sure you can, rehearsal is Wednesday”. So that was my first professional gig at 12, with a 30 piece orchestra at a shopping center playing Classical Gas. They also carved me a spot for a blues tune.
Somewhere early on, Fred dropped me off at Bill deArango’s guitar studio. Bill was a huge mentor and guide in my musical upbringing. I could write a book about all this stuff but I will try to keep it as succinct as possible. Bill deArango won the Downbeat Poll for top jazz guitarist in the country about 1941 or so. A Bop player in the style of Charlie Christian, but a bit further out there.
Bill was a master player but even more he was a master musician. I took a few lessons from him but he quickly figured that I should be working with one of the younger rock players so he handed me off to a great guy and great player named Donnie Baker. Bill would sort of keep an ear on me and every now and then would bring me into his office and play records. All kind of stuff – Miles Davis, Lester Young, James Brown, Hendrix. He loved it all. He would point out things that were not about playing the guitar but about playing music. He was teaching me how to listen.
Bill played a super 400 and his store was the place in Cleveland to get Marshall Amps when they first came on the scene. Just imagine a 50 something former bebop legend, who raves about how deep Charlie Watts pocket is and loves Sly Stone, plugging a Gibson Super 400 (with a deArmond pickup) through a Univox Fuzz into a 50W Marshall with the 8×10 cab – cranked, just wailing. Grinning away behind a pair of Ray Bans. That was Bill. The store shared a building with a Ski haus. They would occasionally report that the skis were mysteriously falling off the wall at night.
Bill deArango put me in my first band:
Bill took me and a few other guys my age that he thought could play, and arranged for us to meet at his store where he put us in the basement with a drum kit and a few amps and said – go. He started to book gigs for us and we had a pretty hot little cover band from about age 13 -15 called Fleet. We gigged solid every weekend. Sidebar: I heard an NPR interview a few weeks ago with Judd Apatow who is doing some brilliant TV writing. Judd mentions his grandfather – a jazz record producer named Bob Shad and it comes back to me that my band Fleet had a standing offer from Bob Shad to record an album for his label Mainstream Records. A Detroit outfit. At that time Big Brother and the Holding Company w/Janis Joplin and the Ted Nugent’s Amboy Dukes were on Mainstream. We managed to break up before the summer when we were scheduled to go to Criteria Studio in Miami to record. Creative differences you know.
So – I played in a number of bands in the Cleveland bars and the occasional hullabaloo club. Started studying music at the Cleveland Institute of Music, while barely getting through high school. My intention was to go off to New York and attend a music school there – I don’t remember exactly where, I think it was in Bearsville.
Fate intersected. My then girlfriend’s (now wife) sister Christine was in Philadelphia sharing an apartment with a sweet woman name of Sarah who was dating a guy named Daryl Hall who had a record out with John Oates (Whole Oates). I was also working part time at a record store at the time so I was familiar with the record. It was kind of folky really. I was shedding Freddie King around that time. Through Christine, the connection was made. About a year later Hall & Oates came to play at a Cleveland club called the Agora where I was playing downstairs. I went up and met them and gave them a demo tape of the band I was in at the time.
About a year later their manager called me and invited me to come up to New York and audition for Daryl & John’s new band. So my father bought me a plane ticket and I went to New York. It’s a good story:
At that time Daryl & John hadn’t really cracked the code yet. They had a few records but nothing was sticking. I walked into SIR on 54th street in NYC and immediately realized that I was one of a cattle call. At that point I just figured that in NYC there must be plenty of really good players who will get this gig. Nice of them to give me a shot though. Anyhow, I walked in, we re- acquaint but they had evolved so much since I heard them play in Cleveland a few years prior. These guys sang great, wrote great music, were total pro’s and they had an underlying confidence the likes of which I’d never seen. All of it blew my socks off.
They had also moved into a really exciting new direction musically with a great (yet unreleased) record that was produced by Christopher Bond – who also played lead guitar. Their manager sent it to me in advance with 5 songs circled that I was to learn. Chris is an astounding guitarist and arranger but was obviously not going to tour with them. At that point, Hall & Oates were about to release their fourth record and they had 2 gigs – both in England. The word was that they apparently had some fans there.
Anyhow, I got the gig. We shedded hard for about 10 days and then flew to London for two shows. The first was at the New Victoria Theatre, and the other was at Ronnie Scott’s – a legendary London jazz club where we were playing a private show for the record label – RCA.
October 1975: Here is how I remember it: We walk on stage at the New Victoria Theatre and the place is full. There are whispers that Steely Dan is in the audience and Pete Townsend and David Bowie and god knows who else. We play a show which goes down very well. I was 19 at the time and had possibly reached my pinnacle of playing white boy blues on the Cleveland bar scene but this was something! People were applauding the solos. I had Goosebumps for days.
The next day – Hall & Oates were on the cover of every music magazine in England. BFD bros and sisters! It was like it all just came together that night in London England for Hall & Oates. Of course I had little to do with it but for being able to help deliver a message live on stage, but I got to stand right in the middle of that sort of exhilaration when things broke for them. It was awesome. It took them four records, a lot of mixed reviews and probably a few empty clubs to get there. I learned a lot from Daryl and John. If at first you don’t succeed – keep going. Those two guys are nothing short of amazing musicians.
We flew back to NY the next day – A UK tour was booked and the record was released in America where the B side of the first single was getting played by a “black” station in Cleveland. The song was “Sarah Smile”. The rest is history. The next two years were filled with some of the best gigs I have ever done. That was when the US was full of median sized beautiful sounding 1500 – 2500 seat theatres. I think we played every one of them at least once. So that happened but after two years they decided to hire Elton John’s rhythm section including Caleb Quaye on guitar, so I was out. Angela and I were in LA already and that is where I met up with Bob Welch and his manager – Mick Fleetwood.
About two or three years ago, Guthrie Trapp walks into the house and hands me a present from John Oates who he had just done a few gigs with. It’s a Hall & Oates CD collection set and story booklet chronicling their entire career called “Do What You Want, Be What You Are”. John signed it for me and wrote “You played yo ass off!” I thought WTF? So I open the thing and disc one has 5 tracks recorded live at the New Victoria Theatre, Oct 1975. My first walk on stage with them. It’s pretty good too. I never even knew it was recorded! Anyhow – kind of a nice thing to have 40 years later. But I can’t be that old?
Bob Welch 1978- 1979
New in LA, freshly released from Hall & Oates, I get a message on my box one day to be at SIR stage #4 at 5pm for the Bob Weir audition. I think hmm. I’m not really much of a grateful dead fan so I call the number on the message and it’s a bit of a mix-up. Apparently they thought I was already contacted and it’s not Bob Weir – it’s Bob Welch who I am certainly familiar with as I have Bare Trees, Mystery to Me and Future Games in my record collection.
So – I run out to the record store and pick up Bob’s first solo record “French Kiss” and spend about 2 hours with it before showing up to audition. I walk in and Bob is there with a Bass around his neck and Mick Fleetwood is on the drums! I think the three of us hit it off really well and this begins a period of 18 -24 months of playing a ton of concerts with Bob (many opening Fleetwood Mac shows) and recording on a few of his records. Bob also cut one of my songs called “Hideaway” on his “The Other One” album.
Got to know John Carter (Bob’s producer) who was a great guy, great producer recently passed. Also struck up a great friendship with Mick and eventually with Christine McVie as well. I was always a Fleetwood Mac fan and I always thought Christine McVie had a really special and pure quality. I also had tremendous admiration for Mick and John McVie as a standout and legendary rhythm section. A couple more people who proved to me that if you keep at it……
Bob was a great person and funny MF. He loved to eat too. Skinny as a rail but would sit down at a Denny’s and order for 5 people and eat it all. He also played all kind of Jazz guitar. He was a Wes Montgomery freak. You can hear some of that with Bob’s Mac work, but his solo stuff was almost like he took on another persona. He never seemed to take himself too serious which was refreshing.
Bob and his wife Wendy also moved to Nashville a few years back and we talked occasionally. Actually was talking to him about coming and sitting in on a monthly gig I do in Franklin. So, so sad that Bob took his own life about a year ago. I don’t know all the details but he had told me last time we talked that he had some sort of horrible neck or back problem that was very painful and that he was in decline. Great guy. Miss him.
I left Bob’s band in 79 to play with a great singer/writer named Danny Douma. Played guitar on Danny’s WB album “Night Eyes” and then toured for about 6 months. Danny and I remained good friends and wrote some good songs together including “Who’s Dreaming this Dream” for Christine McVie (84) and “A Little Love” for Juice Newton (84). Rich Feldman helped us write that one.
I worked on writing music and attempts to put a band together while landing various sessions and fall into situations including a short touring stint with Randy Meisner from the Eagles and some TV & film work.
In 1980 I get a phone call from Mick Fleetwood’s personal assistant who says “Mick is in Australia, but he has put the African adventure together, (a wild musical idea that we had talked about a few times on a few late nights). He had asked me to meet him in Ghana in 8 weeks. Get some ideas going for material and bone up on a few songs and also on Ghanaian music.
This was an amazing adventure that would just take too long to tell. There is an album called Mick Fleetwood “The Visitor” and there was also a 1 hour film made of it. I spent 6 weeks in Accra, Ghana 90 degrees, 90% humidity, working at a somewhat dilapidated film/sound stage that was built in the 50’s but had sat idle since 1959.
We brought recording gear, film for the movie camera’s and Mick brought a satchel of money for the Ghanaian musician’s union fund and set up a royalty distribution for the local artists who participated. I believe this was the first time anyone ever even thought about paying Africans for the privilege of recording them. The music there was amazing and it was everywhere. Deeply imbedded in the culture and in just about everyone. Never been to a happier place. It was the closest thing to what I would imagine Heaven might be like if there was one, and if it wasn’t so humid.
I will try to find some pics of us there. It was just an amazing eye opening experience in so many ways for me but particularly to get a taste of the musical culture of West Africa. It’s so good and so rich, and largely – unheard outside of Africa. Mick sent me home and went to England to finish it up with a few other guitar players. Amateurs: I think their names were Jimmy Page, George Harrison and Peter Green.
Angela and I were becoming pretty good friends with Christine Mcvie and one night I played her a few of my demos. Christine insisted to come to the studio and do some BG vocals on one of my songs. It was a pinch me moment. Christine McVie wants to sings BG’s on my demo?? An even bigger pinch me moment came when Christine invited me to help her put a band together and to write with her for a solo record she was due to make.
We got on great, and spent a few months hanging and writing songs for her 1984 solo record “Christine McVie” we flushed out a band which included Stephen Ferrone on drums and George Hawkins on bass. George was also invited to Africa with Fleetwood. I struck up a friendship with George Hawkins back when he was with Kenny Loggins (Hall & Oates did a summer long tour with Kenny Loggins in about 77). We also had a band together prior to Christine’s project with Tris Imboden (Loggins, now Chicago), Tom Canning (Al Jareau) and Stephen Bruton called the Lucky Dogs.
The Lucky Dogs aspired only to play the Trancas Bar in Malibu every Thursday night and to drink Lucky Dog beer (champagne).
Mostly we drank. Anyhow – back to Christine Mcvie:
What a gas that was! We recorded her album in Montreux, Switzerland with Russ Titleman producing. We did a brief tour when we added another guitar to the band; Stephen Bruton and a brief stint with Billy Burnette, and Eddy Quintella also on keys and then the Mac fired it up again so it was a quick run.
We had one big hit “Got A Hold On Me” but the recording had a few awesome highlights. So we’re recording this record in Switzerland and we got most of it in a few weeks really, we’re finishing a few lyrics and o’dubbing a few things, driving to Italy for lunch ya know, and Christine says – why don’t I call Eric and see if we can get him on one of these tracks? I say – you know Eric Clapton? and she says “of course dahling”, then she says same thing about Steve Winwood I think they went to art school together or something like that. The brit Rock & Roll peeps are like that – they all know each other.
So we spend a week at Steve Winwood’s place in England. Russ and I stay at the local pub while Steve and Chris take a few days to write the song – “Ask Anybody” and then Steve sings duet on the song Chris and I wrote called “One in a Million”, and also puts a couple very choice key o’dubs on a few things and he’s just the nicest fellow you would ever want to know and he’s sooooo fookin good – as we all know. But what a great thing to have the opportunity to work alongside someone you grew up listening to and then to find them great people too?
A week later: Eric Clapton comes walking up the steps of Olympic Studio in London, with a gig bag over one shoulder and a tweed amp in each hand. I meet him halfway up the steps and I say something like “for fuck’s sake even I have cartage people lug my stuff, let me help you” and again, another childhood hero who is like the nicest dude you could want to know. I didn’t get the opportunity to play with Eric but he sat down and listened through the album and told me that he liked my playing. I told him that I stole most of it from him and he laughed and said it’s all stolen from somebody or something like that. It was a nice moment for me. Eric Clapton was probably the main reason I got deep into playing guitar. There were other influences but none as big as his for me.
He picked a track “The Challenge” did two passes – both of them great, and then I helped him put his shit back in his land Rover and thanked him for playing on our song. Sweet man. He offered to help me find another Strat (mine had just been stolen out of the studio at Montreux). I’m lucky that way. I didn’t take him up on the offer. I’m stupid that way.
84 – 86:
My first solo record for MCA “Who Am I” with George Hawkins on Bass, Randy Jackson on 2 cuts, Gary Furgeson from Eddie Money’s band on Drums, Stan Lynch on one cut and Bob Christopherson on keys, Christine McVie on a few tunes and also long time pals James House and Billy Burnette chimed in. The record was produced by Don Gehman fresh out of the John Mellencamp camp. Ugly record biz stuff happened with the FBI raiding MCA the day before my first single hit the streets and the album was otherwise received with a dull who cares? Let’s move on;
Rod Stewart:
I used to hang with Carmine Rojas in New York when I was with Hall & Oates and Carmine played bass with Labelle in those days. He went on to work with David Bowie and SRV on Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”. So I’m playing a show in LA with David Crosby (around 89) who I was about to go on tour with and Carmine is there and comes back after and we re-connect after some lost years. A few days later he calls and asks if I want to do a yearlong tour with Rod. I ask him when is the audition? And he says – no audition. You want to do it or not? I asked – what if Rod don’t like me? And Carmine says – “then he’ll fire you”. I said OK I’m in.
I played with Rod’s band for almost 6 years. (fired eventually). Recorded only a few things with Rod, notably “This Old Heart of Mine” with Rod and Ronnie Isley on the “Storyteller” album and then there’s some live stuff and video out there. Playing with Rod was a ball. Sold out all over the world every time you play. Audiences full of women. Underwear all over the stage. It was rough.
Here’s another great story about the Brit rock & rollers.
One night in Vancouver John Baldry came to see us:
Sidebar: John Baldry called me out of the blue one day in 1978 and asked me to join his band about 10 minutes after I joined Bob Welch’s band. He was at the Hall & Oates concert at the New Vic. I loved JB but I was already committed to Bob and Fleetwood so I had to decline. Anyhow:
John visits backstage and gives Rod a video of an old Newport Jazz/Blues fest. On the jet ride home, Rod has been watching it and he starts telling me about when he was a teenager and John Baldry was like a mentor to him and many others back in the day. So he says – something to the effect that “John Baldry gave me a copy of this Muddy Waters record and said – it’s yours for two weeks. Take care to put it back in the wrapper, don’t scratch it and then I need it back”. Something like that. He needs it back because it then goes to Jeff (Beck) and then to Ronnie (Wood), and so on. The same record! Apparently there was only one copy of this particular Muddy Waters record in the entire country and John Baldry had it and wanted to make sure that the right guys heard it.
It always amazes me that in the 50’s & 60’s in America – white people were paying no mind at all to Delta music or Chicago Blues. With little exception , (Paul Butterfield) the Brits brought it back to us white boys and girls via, Beck, Page, Clapton, as Yardbirds, and then later as Cream, Led Zep, Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and a few others right?. It’s astounding how that worked.
Jimmy Barnes: “Two Fires LP” 1990 Don Gehman produced. Played some wicked lead guitar on that record through my Dumble amp just before I sold one and someone stole the other. Did I tell you I am lucky that way?
Delbert McClinton:
Lap’s: “Room to Breathe”, “Nothing Personal” and a million miles on a tour bus. Delbert is one of the best singers in the world. He should be way better known and appreciated for his talent. He’s the kind of singer that when he opens his mouth – the right stuff just always comes out. Effortless. He also plays great harp. Great guy too.
I had the opportunity to borrow the Delbert band for a record I cut about 10 years ago called “Walking All the Way”. There are a few moments on that record that I am really proud of. Live stuff happening between musicians who had at that time been on stage together like 200 or 300 times. Magic starts to happen between players when you have that kind of time logged with each other.