Warrant - live vs. session musician

toomanycats · Sat Mar 05, 2022 10:16 am

Back in the day there was a reason why serious musicians would direct the pejorative term "poser" at some people, and deservedly so in many cases.

Rollin Hand · Sat Mar 05, 2022 10:43 am

TBH, this isn't news, really. Beau Hill thought they weren't good enough to cut it, so he brought in help. He wanted to bring in "help" for a guy named DeMartini at one point, though that may have been a motivational ploy. CC Deville played the solo on "Cherry Pie."

And the differences in the solo could be attributed to live vs. studio as well. When you have all day to nail a solo, you can do the little percussive things and get it just so. With screaming fans in a TV studio, it won't be so easy to add nuance.

PsychoCid · Sat Mar 05, 2022 11:09 am

Rollin Hand wrote: ↑Sat Mar 05, 2022 10:43 am TBH, this isn't news, really. Beau Hill thought they weren't good enough to cut it, so he brought in help. He wanted to bring in "help" for a guy named DeMartini at one point, though that may have been a motivational ploy. CC Deville played the solo on "Cherry Pie."

And the differences in the solo could be attributed to live vs. studio as well. When you have all day to nail a solo, you can do the little percussive things and get it just so. With screaming fans in a TV studio, it won't be so easy to add nuance.

Not that I've exhaustively searched for every clip of Vito playing the Wait solo

But every one I've seen, it's usually slightly flubbed in some way compared to the album

Not that he didn't do the album, it's just a hard solo, and they often played it faster live heh

PsychoCid · Sat Mar 05, 2022 11:11 am

toomanycats wrote: ↑Sat Mar 05, 2022 10:16 am Back in the day there was a reason why serious musicians would direct the pejorative term "poser" at some people, and deservedly so in many cases.

Haha hey, I'm transparent. Except for the early pentatonic ones most of my slicker solos are either Kevin or Ahmad.

Also the solo on "The Weekend" is straight up a Tom Keifer lick. I've always said I'm a player, not a bonafide musician!

toomanycats · Sat Mar 05, 2022 11:18 am

The live/session revelation that really surprised me was about Aerosmith's version of "Train Kept-a- Rollin.'" Session player Steve Hunter played the opening guitar leads. What is more, it was pretty much off the cuff.

"Aerosmith was in Studio C of The Record Plant and I was doing work with Bob Ezrin in Studio A. I had a long wait between dubs and was waiting in the lobby. Jack Douglas popped his head out of Studio C and asked 'Hey, do you feel like playing?' I said sure, so I grabbed my guitar and went in ... I had two run thru’s [sic], then Jack said 'great that's it!' That turned out to be the opening solos on 'Train Kept A Rollin'". -Steve Hunter

PsychoCid · Sat Mar 05, 2022 11:33 am

toomanycats wrote: ↑Sat Mar 05, 2022 11:18 am The live/session revelation that really surprised me was about Aerosmith's version of "Train Kept-a- Rollin.'" Session player Steve Hunter played the opening guitar leads. What is more, it was pretty much off the cuff.

"Aerosmith was in Studio C of The Record Plant and I was doing work with Bob Ezrin in Studio A. I had a long wait between dubs and was waiting in the lobby. Jack Douglas popped his head out of Studio C and asked 'Hey, do you feel like playing?' I said sure, so I grabbed my guitar and went in ... I had two run thru’s [sic], then Jack said 'great that's it!' That turned out to be the opening solos on 'Train Kept A Rollin'". -Steve Hunter

Interesting

We had an old AGFer haven't seen in years that strongly suggested Lukather played Lynch's solos.

Rollin Hand · Sat Mar 05, 2022 11:52 am

I always doubted that one because Lynch sounds like Lynch. I think that I made that argument then, too.

That said, we'll never know how much of the 87 Whitesnake album was Dann Huff. Apparently he fixed a few things on the sly. The question is, how few? It sure still sounded like Sykes in the end, using Blue Murder as a reference point.

glasshand · Tue Mar 08, 2022 5:31 pm

Some interesting analysis there, but ultimately I don't think anyone should be surprised. I mean, yeah, there's this cult of legitimacy, but the truth is that there's a lot going on in the studio, and the use of session musicians is part of it. IIRC, most of Aerosmith's early solos were not Joe Perry. I remember hearing that most of EVH's solos and the solos on "Rust In Peace" were pieced together in the studio, not played in one go. That doesn't make them bad or invalid - obviously all of those guys are monster players who did play those solos live - but the idea that every solo on an album was the result of this one genius player just effortlessly improvising it was just never credible.

And as someone who records and plays live, I can tell you that comparing one of my live solos to one of my album ones probably wouldn't sound the same either! There are a lot of reasons I might change something up: I might have decided the solo sounded better a different way, I might have been having a particularly good or bad day, I might have just decided to play around with a new idea.

PsychoCid · Thu Mar 10, 2022 8:51 pm

glasshand wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 5:31 pm Some interesting analysis there, but ultimately I don't think anyone should be surprised. I mean, yeah, there's this cult of legitimacy, but the truth is that there's a lot going on in the studio, and the use of session musicians is part of it. IIRC, most of Aerosmith's early solos were not Joe Perry. I remember hearing that most of EVH's solos and the solos on "Rust In Peace" were pieced together in the studio, not played in one go. That doesn't make them bad or invalid - obviously all of those guys are monster players who did play those solos live - but the idea that every solo on an album was the result of this one genius player just effortlessly improvising it was just never credible.

And as someone who records and plays live, I can tell you that comparing one of my live solos to one of my album ones probably wouldn't sound the same either! There are a lot of reasons I might change something up: I might have decided the solo sounded better a different way, I might have been having a particularly good or bad day, I might have just decided to play around with a new idea.

There's something to be said for studio magic.

And there's something to be said for being real and transparent.

Personally I don't care if the studio cut is magic'd together. As long as you're a real man and disclose it. Lying and hiding isn't manly or adult-ly.

Maybe we as a people will grow out of that, maybe we won't. But the folks who can discuss progress, not attack people's families, will always win.