Confessions of a Glorified Sideman

Stephen Stills and his Tele­caster — © ROGER BARONE 1994 — www.rogerbarone.com

Dis­claimer: In the fol­low­ing, I dis­cuss my use of ille­gal drugs. Let me be clear, I no longer do ille­gal drugs or have plans to ever do them again, nor do I wish to con­done or encour­age their use by any­one. Ille­gal drugs were a part of my life in the past and I can’t change that.

I used to do ses­sions in the late 80’s/early 90’s for a very tal­ented key­board player and pro­ducer named Kim Bullard. He had played with Stephen Stills in a group called Man­as­sas.

Around mid­night one night in 1994, I get a phone call from Kim. He’s in a ses­sion at his stu­dio in the Val­ley (or on the Bene­dict Canyon side of it, any­way), and he needs me to play harp on some­thing right now. I asked if it couldn’t wait, and he explained he was work­ing with Steve Stills, who was there, and the song had to be fin­ished mixed and turned in by the morn­ing for a movie called The Cross­ing Guard. Jack Nichol­son starred in it and Sean Penn had some­thing to do with it. He needed me now!

Well, when duty calls… I said sure, got the address and imme­di­ately called my dealer. I fig­ured I’d be mak­ing dou­ble scale (around $600 at the time) so some refresh­ments might come in handy. It turns out he was at a night club called Num­ber One which was located right on the way – on Sun­set just past the Strip as you’re head­ing into Bev­erly Hills. I only needed to run in and I didn’t want to valet and park­ing is a bitch so I’m think­ing of things to say to secu­rity when I pull up and who do I see but Steve Maruchi, an old friend from my Rod Stew­art days. He was Rod’s body­guard. I was dri­ving my black Mus­tang 5.0 and how I didn’t kill myself and oth­ers with that car I’ll never know. I was a speed demon to the max. I pull up and he’s about to tell me I can’t park there when Steve rec­og­nizes me. We have a laugh together and I tell him I just need a minute in the club so he let’s me park right in front. I find my guy, cop a bindle, and I’m on my way.

Kim’s stu­dio was on a very nice piece of prop­erty with some kind of creek run­ning through it. If you didn’t know bet­ter you’d think you were in the coun­try and not in the mid­dle of a major city. LA can be like that. I meet Steve and he was not in a good mood.

After I was intro­duced we lis­tened to the track and he said some­thing in a gruff, grav­elly, impa­tient, cig­a­rette voice, “Well… ya think ya can play some­thing on it?

I fig­ured out what key the song was in. I believe in D as I played a G harp. How I remem­ber these things I will never know… and wish I could tell you because I’ve for­got­ten what the hell I was sup­posed to be doing today… oh yeah!! Write!!!

I start play­ing some harp in the con­trol room with the track and he’s already dig­gin’ it and his mood is get­ting way bet­ter. I go in the room play it through a few times with input from Steve and Kim and Whommp! There it is!! We’re done.

Everybody’s happy and now we’re just hangin’ and Steve asks if I’d like a glass of wine and I say why not. The stu­dio had a big porch with sofas and chairs like an old south­ern house and I was doing a hit of blow when Steve walked up with the wine. He asked what I had there so I offered him some. He accepted. We drank wine, I told him what a big fan I was of Buf­falo Spring­field when I was grow­ing up and how much I loved one his songs, Blue­bird. I was hang­ing with Steve Stills… and he dug what I’d just played…

Life was good…

At the time, I was liv­ing in a Hol­ly­wood Hills apart­ment on North Fuller, which I had rented when I’d got­ten the part in a Jen­nifer Jason Leigh movie, Geor­gia. We filmed it on loca­tion in Seat­tle. (Go rent the movie — I did a great job play­ing a musi­cian – it was a stretch, but I pulled it off.)

I don’t think the neigh­bors appre­ci­ated my lifestyle. I had moved in with Heather – a 22 year old, recent grad of the Uni­ver­sity of Ken­tucky (yes, that one). She was beau­ti­ful, blonde, mes­mer­iz­ing green eyes, long legged and full of ambi­tion… with an incred­i­ble thirst for cocaine an insa­tiable sex­ual appetite to go along with it. It was quite a cir­cus at times try­ing to feed both of them. It was pure heaven and hell with her. I suf­fered through it like the trooper I am.

Her Daddy was a mil­lion­aire high roller – what they call “a whale.” Caesar’s Palace used to send their jet to fly him in from Ken­tucky. I saw him drop $100,000 in a few hours play­ing black­jack in Vegas.

When I met her I thought I’d try and shel­ter her from my deca­dent lifestyle. Yeah right. One day she said she had to pick up some­thing at her hairdresser’s place for her Daddy who she was to meet in Vegas. We drove in her late model sports car to a funky apart­ment build­ing in Hol­ly­wood. I waited in the car. She goes in and comes out in 15 min­utes, jumps in the dri­ver seat and tosses me a ten­nis ball. I’m think­ing Huh? She says squeeze the ball. I do and inside was a small bag­gie stuffed full of sparkly flakes of crys­tal meth. She’d just copped a half-ounce of meth for him to gam­ble on. Yeah I’m gonna keep this girl pure as the dri­ven snow.

Any­way… few days after the record­ing ses­sion for the song on The Cross­ing Guard I get a call from Steve’s man­age­ment. They said Steve wanted me to come up to his house in Bev­erly Hills to play the song we’d recorded. Now I’m con­fused. I ask the agent, “He wants me to come over and play the song?” He says, “Yeah”

So of course I ask why? I mean, it’s already recorded and mixed. We’re done. WTF? He says with some atti­tude, “How the hell do I know? Steve wants ya up there around 2:00 Sat­ur­day after­noon.” He gives me an address on Sum­mit Drive.

My girl had a job as a recep­tion­ist at a Hol­ly­wood record­ing stu­dio. Besides doing fair amounts of blow together we were in the midst of an erotica/ sex­ual toy phase of our rela­tion­ship. I mean it seemed this girl didn’t see a sex­ual toy/dildo she didn’t want to try. Who was I to argue?  After a while we had a small gym bag full of these things.

So it’s the Fri­day night before the Sat­ur­day that I’m to go to Stills house. My girl and I are on an all night binge of sex, drugs, video… and sex toys!!! We were like two lit­tle mani­a­cal bunny rab­bits all over that apart­ment till the sun came up. Whole lotta fun!! So I come to my senses the next day, look at my watch and it’s 1:30 pm. I jump out of bed and she’s out to the world. Fuck. I’ve got to be at Steve’s in 30 min­utes. The apart­ment is trashed. Bot­tles, drinks, toys all over the place. I take a quick shower and usu­ally I always take all my axes (harps, saxes, flute) when­ever I go to a ses­sion or rehearsal. But this was… hell, I didn’t know what it was so I grab just one G harp for the song I played on. I fig­ured we’d play it a few times and I’m out of there. Big mis­take.

As I’m walk­ing out of the apart­ment I see a note on the door from the build­ing man­ager say­ing they had to come in and check some­thing in about an hour. Fuck. I gather up all the toys and dil­dos and put them on the kitchen counter and run back to the bed­room and tell my girl the manager’s going to be there in an hour and to clean up a bit ‘cause I had to run up to Steve Stills. She mum­bles some­thing and I’m gone.

We didn’t have GPS then. The old handy Thomas Guide was my best friend. So I’m nav­i­gat­ing to Steve’s and I take Cold­wa­ter Canyon Drive and then start dri­ving up… and up. It ain’t called Sum­mit Drive for nothing.

I get to the top and you have a 360-degree view of Los Ange­les, the Ocean, down­town, etc. I find the place and it’s a huge incred­i­ble house. I was told later it was Bar­bra Streisand’s place and that Steve was rent­ing it for $10,000 a month. Nice. It’s all right for some, eh?

I knock on the door and some­one answers and tell’s me Steve is rehears­ing in the barn. Rehears­ing? Hmm­mmm. They give me direc­tions to the “barn” and as I’m get­ting closer to this actual large barn I hear a band play­ing very loud one of Steve’s hits, For What It’s Worth. How apropos.

I walk in and it’s a full on band rehearsal. Shit! They’re in the mid­dle of a song. Steve sees me but looks right through me like I wasn’t there. So I just hang off to the side and lis­ten to the music. I knew a cou­ple of the cats, the bass player Ger­ald John­son and piano/organist extra­or­di­naire Mike Finni­gan.

They fin­ished the song and went right into another one. I’m think­ing shit, this is a band rehearsal for a show — not a ses­sion. I’ve got to get Steve’s atten­tion or I could be here lis­ten­ing to this all day. So they fin­ish that song and I walk up to Steve and ask if we should play the Cross­ing Guard song so I can get out of his hair and he can get on with his rehearsal. He looked up at me with an annoyed, con­fused look and said gruffly, “Just play what you played the other day!!!”

There was silence and a preg­nant pause you could stick a fork in. Finally, Finni­gan in his sten­to­rian voice (God bless him), said into the micro­phone, “…uh Steve… Jimmy wasn’t here the other day.” Talk about awk­ward. Fuck! He thought I was some­one else! Steve is look­ing flus­tered and in a split sec­ond I’m think­ing there’s a gig to be had here. I say real fast, “Hey, it’s cool Steve. I just live down the hill and I could go grab my sax and harps and be back in half and hour.” Yeah right. He says “Yeah, go get ‘em.” And they launch into another song.

I’m dri­ving my Mus­tang 5.0 and I’m fly­ing down that fuck­ing hill. A gig!!! With Stills!!

“Down the hill” was more like thirty min­utes min­i­mum from Stills place to mine. I get to my apart­ment door and there’s a note on the door. It’s from the man­ager say­ing they let them­selves in because no one answered and that they had fixed the prob­lem. I walk in and the place is just as I left it. Dil­dos, bot­tles, full ash­trays, and shit every­where. Jeeeeez!!!

I go to the bed­room and my girl is still in a coma. Great! I say, “Baby, I told you to clean up cuz the man­ager was com­ing over! He’s come and gone (no pun intended) and there’re dil­dos every­where!” It didn’t seem to bother her or be of any impor­tance at all at the time to her. She just rolled over and went back to sleep. Oh well, too late now.

I grabbed all my axes and bolted out the door. I get back to the barn and set up all my stuff and fin­ish off the rehearsal. Every­thing seemed cool but I had no idea if I had the gig or not. The next week I get a call from Steve’s man­age­ment telling me about a gig in Las Vegas. It was a cor­po­rate gig at the Hotel Rio Casino. At the time I had no idea what a cor­po­rate gig was. All I knew was there was a gig. I asked if I could get a CD or tape of the show/songs with which I could rehearse the songs. They said they’d get one over to me. I never got one.

The British have a quaint phrase for how I felt on that first gig. I felt “like a spare prick at a wed­ding.” At sound check no one had thought to tell the sound peo­ple or any­one else for that mat­ter about a sax/harp player in the band. No one had given any thought to where I should set up on stage. It seemed I was just in the way. Since I didn’t know the mate­r­ial I fig­ured I’d try to set up near Finni­gan so I could see the key­board and fol­low the changes. Smart move. Mike was so cool shout­ing changes to me that night and I will always be thank­ful. I stum­bled through the gig and didn’t feel to good about it but I got the call for another gig in South Lake Tahoe.

We arrived the night before the gig in a mas­sive snow­storm. I remem­ber smok­ing coke all night watch­ing these huge flakes come down out of my hotel win­dow. I had grown up in Sacra­mento and every sum­mer since I can remem­ber we had spent at Don­ner Lake. The Lake Tahoe/Reno area was my stomp­ing ground and I had lots of friends. A cou­ple of pals came to the gig and it went a lot bet­ter this time.

Right before we were to go on stage I see a tele­phone on the wall right on the stage. I checked and it had a dial tone so I called my girl. We hadn’t been get­ting along and sure enough we start get­ting into it on the phone. Steve hears this and comes up to me and says, “Hang the fuck up! Are you outta your fuck­ing mind! Never, EVER, talk to your chick before going on stage!” He was right. I should have known bet­ter because all I did was think about how pissed I was at her instead of the music. Good advice, indeed.

We had a good show and the house was a rockin’. It was a large casino show­room and we had rooms in that hotel. After the show my pals and I were hangin’ at the casino bar when we see Steve rum­ble through to a black­jack table. He looked in a surly mood. My buddy was a really good black­jack player. A few years before he’d had a card count­ing team and they did pretty well until they were all rounded up one day by some casino thugs who threat­ened to smash up their knees and knuck­les if they ever tried that shit again. He wanted to meet Steve and I tried to con­vince him that now might not be the best time. He didn’t lis­ten. Steve was alone at the table and when my pal sat down with him Steve told him to fuck off. Pretty funny. Steve was fucked up drunk and his pen­chant for blow was no state secret so he was prob­a­bly gacked out of his brain because I saw him at 6 am across the street gam­bling at another casino.

My pals and I finally got back to my room and ordered some food from room ser­vice. One thing lead to another and a food fight ensued. And then we started trash­ing the room. I know… not too intel­li­gent. When I woke up in this trashed room I look at my watch and real­ize I’ve missed the shut­tle to Reno for the flight back to LA. I quickly dressed and inquired about a ride to the air­port. If I hus­tled I might still make my flight. My room was a com­plete wreck. I left.

As I’m wait­ing for my ride in front of the casino this tricked out early 60’s Ford Fair­lane screeches to halt right in front of me with the motor revving hard. Sounded like a fuck­ing tank. Stills is dri­ving. He yells at me to get in, we’re going to the air­port. It wasn’t snow­ing but it had the last two days and the shit was piled up every­where. I’m think­ing no way I’m get­ting in that rocket with that maniac behind the wheel who’s been up all night drink­ing and doing blow. Not to men­tion we had to drive over the Mt. Rose sum­mit to get to the Reno Air­port. He’s get­ting really pissed off now yelling at me to get in the car and I’m say­ing it’s cool. I’ve got a ride com­ing. It must have looked hilar­i­ous. Finally I tell him there is no way I’m get­ting in that fuck­ing car with him and he roars off all pissed off.

The next week in LA I get a call from my man­ager, Gary Ballen. He says he just got off the phone with Stills man­age­ment. Appar­ently my ser­vices will no longer be needed. He asked what the fuck went on up there. The hotel is ask­ing for a lot of money in dam­ages. I said that’s bull­shit. Just some food on the walls and some chairs turned over. Then he got me. He asks, “Well, what did you do with the door to your room?” WHAT?! He says the door to your hotel room is miss­ing. Wait a minute. Those doors are heavy. I’m not sure but I would think you’d need tools to get the damn thing off and where could I carry it. Of course, I deny it. But now I’m not sure. I could’ve sworn there was a door to the room when I had left… LOL.

Another gig bites the dust.

Dis­claimer: In the fol­low­ing, I dis­cuss my use of ille­gal drugs. Let me be clear, I no longer do ille­gal drugs or have plans to ever do them again, nor do I wish to con­done or encour­age their use by any­one. Ille­gal drugs were a part of my life in the past and I can’t change that.

Eddie and I first hooked up in the early ‘80s through my band­mates from the Rod Stew­art Group, Jay Davis (bass) and Danny John­son (gui­tar). We all came in at the same time so we will always have the cama­raderie of being called the Sep­tic Tank Yanks (see my post about my days with Rod and the boys).

Back then, Rod wrote songs with the band so we all played on each oth­ers demos. Jay wrote Rod’s hit Baby Jane on which I played the alto sax solo.

They had a side project going at the time — ’82 or 83 -  called Pri­vate Life — There was a female singer, Kelly Breznik, and Jay & Danny were writ­ing and play­ing on it. Eddie Van Halen was involved with the project as co-producer, so con­se­quently we got to know each other in the stu­dio and rehearsals.

We hit it off imme­di­ately. He is such an open and friendly guy — but very intense when it comes to the music. On one song we were rehears­ing I had a harp solo. I tore through it as I would with EVH play­ing along and watch­ing and I did one of my sig­na­ture fast harp licks. He rolls his eyes and smiles yelling, “Whoa!!!!”

So after the song’s done, he comes right up to me with gui­tar on and says, “Do that again. Do that riff!” So I do. He starts try­ing to pick it out on his gui­tar and pretty much almost got it but says, “One more time. Do it again.” To which I reply dead­pan, “Sorry man, one pass is all ya get. After that ya gotta pay.” He looked at me like he was gonna hit me and then we all started laugh­ing and we bonded. He even­tu­ally came up with his ver­sion of the lick which he prob­a­bly never played again… lol…

He was and is a musi­cal freak o’nature and a hel­luva nice guy. He starts telling me how his dad was a sax player when he was a kid, how he loves it, how it really influ­enced him and he still had his Dad’s sax. One thing lead to another and I found myself being EVH’s sax­o­phone teacher…

He was mar­ried to the actress Valerie Bertinelli at the time and she was on his ass about drink­ing and smok­ing. It seemed Eddie always had a cig­a­rette and a Coors in his hand all the time… if not a gui­tar. They had a house at the beach in Mal­ibu and I’d go out there from West Hol­ly­wood to give him lessons.

At the first les­son, I brought a begin­ner sax book so he could learn the fin­ger­ings. He took one look at the book and tossed it down say­ing, “I don’t wanna learn from no fuckin’ book! Just show me some licks!” I tried to rea­son with him but he was hav­ing none of it. So I told him to put his sax on. I pro­ceed to blow a cou­ple of blues licks.

He said, “Ok, cool. What was that?”

- “Hit a Eb to E up to G then A and repeat fast.”

- “How do I hit an Eb?” then looked at me and he knew I had him.

- “Oh what luck. There’s a fin­ger­ing chart in this book I brought!”

- “Mutha­fucker!” and I’m laughing.

He started learn­ing the fin­ger­ing that day.

Dur­ing this time a gig was booked for a Pri­vate Life show­case at the infa­mous Tran­cas Night­club, right down the hill from Eddie’s house in Mal­ibu (see my post about when Eric Bur­don & I played there).

Word had got out that EVH was gonna play a few songs so the place was packed. I’d got­ten to know Valerie a bit dur­ing my les­son vis­its so we said hello backstage.

We’re all back there drink­ing and get­ting psy­ched to go on stage and every­body goes except me because I didn’t play on the first song or two. I find myself alone in the room and pull out a bindle of coke and pro­ceed to do a cou­ple snorts off a key and the door opens and Eddie pops his head in with gui­tar on and says “I knew it!!! Gimme a bump!”

For some rea­son we were right by the door and just as I’m putting a key full of blow up to his nose the door opens and Valerie is look­ing right at Eddie and then at me as he still sniffs it all up his nose. We were lit­er­ally in each oth­ers face and she loses it, yelling over and over “You moth­er­fucker!!!! I can’t believe you!!!…” and on and on… She gave me the stink eye from hell, yelled at Eddie some more then stalked out.

Eddie just shrugged and wanted more blow. I said some­thing like, “Well, so much for the home sax lessons.”

We laughed and then did a hel­luva show. We traded licks all night and just tore the roof off the place. Great fuck­ing night.

I recently had a great time tour­ing Swe­den with Swedish blues­man Slidin’ Slim. Besides play­ing in tra­di­tional venues, Slim also arranged for us to teach & per­form at two music clinics.

Now, I’ve been inter­viewed many times, but the Clinic/Question & Answer and then play songs type of gig was new to me, but I really came to dig it.

I like telling sto­ries… OK, let’s be hon­est I love talk­ing shit or basi­cally hear­ing myself pon­tif­i­cate on any­thing. And I got a lot sto­ries. I gotta mil­lion of ‘em… Rule #1 is I have to be louder than any­one else in the band when I solo!

I did enjoy these clin­ics and I actu­ally felt maybe some of my insights could make a dif­fer­ence. Oh who am I kid­ding???!!!

Here are videos of our clinic on Octo­ber 25th at the Music Börsen store in Linköping. They were shot by Dave Maakestad.

I hope you find them as inter­est­ing and enter­tain­ing as the crowd there did.

Part 1 — The Bose peo­ple were so kind to sup­ply the sound sys­tem but we had to crank the vol­ume after the first song. This clip show­cases my ram­bling, coma induc­ing style of Q & A.

Part 2 — Talk­ing a lit­tle about record­ing and tour­ing with Rod Stew­art and how I made it in the music biz before I learned how to read music.

Part 3 — I don’t know if Slim wrote this but it’s our theme song to each other. It’s called “You’ve Been a Waste of Time”… haha… and my sig­na­ture tune, Howlin’ Wolf’s clas­sic “I’m Wor­ried About You” with me on harp and vocals.

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Part 4 — Decod­ing the Jimmy Z fast triplet lick. Prac­tice, know your ax and be a good hang.

Part 5 — Dis­cussing record­ing with Eury­th­mics and Rod Stew­art and why they were the best. The worst: Gene Sim­mons on Kiss ses­sion. Not really all that bad… just funny.

Part 6 — Some sax & vocals for ya on Willie Dixon’s “Ain’t Super­sti­tious”… kinda Howlin’ Wolf style. Big Fred joins us on piano on “Coun­try Girl.”

Part 7 — More songs — Please excuse the abrupt cut-off on ‘My Babe’, but we were close to the YouTube time limit. It was our last num­ber anyway.

When I was young…

I was born in 1955 and my first mem­ory of music was when I was 4 years old and my mom got a record player for her birth­day. It was a small portable with a fake alli­ga­tor skin cover and it played 33’s, 45’s and 78’s. My lit­tle sis­ter Denise and I loved to play records at 78 rpm to get that Alvin and the Chip­munks thing going. Not too much has changed.

My mom, Dolores Zavala, also got the lat­est Bobby Darin record, which included “Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea.” I still love Bobby’s ver­sions of those clas­sics. Up to that point I don’t think I’d ever seen her so excited. She loved Bobby Darin and Tony Ben­nett and we used to play the shit out it. I loved look­ing at the album cov­ers and beg­ging my dad to read the liner notes to me. I remem­ber Darin’s album cover hav­ing a telegram from Sammy Davis, Jr. printed on the back and I thought that was so cool. Sammy was wish­ing him luck with some gig or the record and some­thing about it all seemed mag­i­cal. I’d even devour the inner sleeve that adver­tised other artist’s releases and I wanted to know all about them.

My dad, Roberto Zavala, was a blue-eyed Mex­i­can devil, and he loved his Mari­achi Records. He spoke flu­ent Span­ish and new the words to every song. All us kids could sing “Guadala­jara” by the time we were 6. We still have those records and I think I came up with this triplet riff on the harp that has become a sig­na­ture of mine off those Mari­achi records.

My older sis­ter and brother, Karen and Gary were born in “48 and ’49 which is sig­nif­i­cant in the fact that in the six­ties when they came of age I really ben­e­fited because they were buy­ing all the hip music that was com­ing out which I couldn’t have afforded or prob­a­bly would not even have thought about it. I was only 9 when the Bea­t­les started the British Inva­sion and of course my older sis­ter Karen loved them and I loved them too but the Stones were my boys. They were just so dirty look­ing and play­ing the blues with a raw­ness that struck a chord in me. I couldn’t get enough of that shit. I used to carry the Stones’ album “Beg­gars Ban­quet” to school and hook up at a buddy’s house before to have a cou­ple of smokes and lis­ten to “Para­chute Woman” and “Sym­pa­thy For the Devil.” It kind of got us into the groove for the day, not to men­tion a joint or two.

My brother had all the lat­est and coolest stuff out from 1963 to 1973. We started with the Beach Boys, then Bea­t­les and Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, The Band, Spencer Davis Group, Sly and the Fam­ily Stone, Traf­fic, Blind Faith, Cream, Steve Miller Band and Jimi Hen­drix and the list goes on. But dur­ing all that time my brother Gary also had the bad­dest blues col­lec­tion of Muddy Waters, Lit­tle Wal­ter, John May­all, Fleet­wood Mac Blues Band with Peter Green, Otis Spann, James Cot­ton and John Lee Hooker. We shared a room and had one of those old stereo record play­ers which you can stack up to six records on it and we’d drift off to sleep lis­ten­ing to some very inter­est­ing mixes of music of that era for the night.

I started play­ing har­mon­ica in the late six­ties and it was at this time when I really got into read­ing the liner notes of albums and want­ing to know who was play­ing which instru­ment in every band and on every ses­sion. I could tell you whether it was Brian Jones or Mick Jag­ger play­ing harp on a track or not. I could tell if it was Eric Clap­ton or George Har­ri­son play­ing the dif­fer­ent gui­tar tracks on the White Album or that Paul Butterfield’s drum­mer, Sam Lay used to be Muddy Waters’ drum­mer and was on at least another half dozen blues albums in our col­lec­tion. Or that Boz Skaggs was in the band for Steve Miller’s first cou­ple of albums. I became obsessed with hav­ing to know who was who on a record and start­ing buy­ing records depend­ing on who was in the rhythm sec­tion or any­one else on the record­ing date. If the great drum­mer Har­vey Mason was play­ing on a record I’d buy it. The ses­sion play­ers were stars to me. I remem­ber star­ing at a black and white photo of sax great King Cur­tis sit­ting on a stool in the stu­dio, hold­ing his sax with the micro­phone in front of him, hav­ing a cig­a­rette and star­ing off into space prob­a­bly wait­ing to do the next take or lis­ten­ing back to one and I would dream of being that guy in the photo. Some­times dur­ing a ses­sion that’s going well and I find myself in the exact posi­tion as King Cur­tis was in that photo, I smile to myself. I may not be rich finan­cially but I’ve had my share of magic moments in the stu­dio… and still do, thank God.

Then a cool thing started hap­pen­ing in the early sev­en­ties, just around the time I bor­rowed a tenor sax from a friend towards the end of my senior year in high school. Side­men like sax­o­phon­ist Tom Scott started to step out into the lime­light hav­ing suc­cess sell­ing records as lead­ers. Creed Taylor’s CTI Record label was one of my favorites, putting out clas­sic albums from Stan­ley Tur­ren­tine, Hank Craw­ford, David “Fat­head” New­man and Grover Wash­ing­ton just to men­tion a few. These guys had been on count­less clas­sic record­ings as side­men and had released many records as lead­ers but now they were get­ting national recog­ni­tion and sales. I ate it up and lived and breathed it.

So you ask “WTF is a side­man?” let alone a “glo­ri­fied side­man?” A side­man could be the gui­tar player or piano player in a band with a leg­endary star such as Rod Stew­art or Annie Lennox as the leader. They might even co-write songs with him or her and help put the live show together and make it work with arrange­ments and other input. Or be the drum­mer and the bass player that laid the groove down so solid no one even notices that they are so good. Or a sax and har­mon­ica player that can take a good song, whether it be in con­cert or in the stu­dio, and make it a great song and make a good con­cert an unfor­get­table expe­ri­ence. They travel and hang out with the lead­ers and seem like equal mem­bers of the band… but they are not. They live what seems like a glam­orous exis­tence from a far but in real­ity not a lot of peo­ple ever know who they are or how piv­otal they can be to the artist in the stu­dio or on a con­cert stage. They may make a decent salary and liv­ing but it is far from what the star is mak­ing and far from what the pub­lic might assume. Some­times crit­ics refer to them as stu­dio hacks. I’ve never really under­stood this term.

Through­out the sev­en­ties I learned how to run a band and be a leader. I would front the band and sing lead on a few songs but more often then not I would hire a lead vocal­ist and work my magic in the shad­ows and then step­ping out to solo when needed… which I thought should be every song to the con­ster­na­tion of some of my band mates, but what the hell… if it’s my band, I’m going to blow for a few choruses.

Just try and stop me.

© 2010 Zavala Songs, Inc.