Session Musicians Quotes

I was a good sight reader and I could sing two or three of these jingles a day. An orchestra would come in for half an hour, and then the singers would come in and knock 'em out, and go on to the next one. I was the voice of Budweiser and Almond Joy.

When I started out, even though you had your rhythm section, they were big horn sections, strings, live people laying on every part of the floor in the studio waiting for their chance to get on that one little track.

I got to play with the big guys, the Wrecking Crew. They just blew me away. I learned a lot of stuff from those guys.

There are two types of session guitar players. One reads and only plays what the 'dots' say. The other adds that something special and plays notes and solos you dream of. Big Jim Sullivan was such a player.

Well, when the Raspberries ended in early 1975 suddenly I didn't have to write to anybody's strengths or weaknesses. I was completely wide open and I thought wow, I can write anything I want now. I can use session musicians. I can find another band that sings like the Beach Boys, I can do all kinds of things.

... there are a lot of shredders in country music - Redd Volkaert, Brent Mason, Dan Huff .. and guys like that

I mean, I could just go round and use session musicians for every song, but I don't find that helps when it comes to setting up a band for live. Derrick has been with me for donkey's years.

The beauty of recording in L.A. is that most of the musicians that are on the record live here, so it was easy to get world class artists like Rick Braun to swing by and play a little trumpet, Everette Harp on sax, guitarist Paul Jackson.

There is no one like Toto in history in that we were both successful as session musicians and also had a band that sold so many million records.

Ah, the Wrecking Crew! They played on everything that came out of L.A. Oh, that was a good band. You really enjoyed going to work. You played for everyone; it didn't matter what it was.

I've played with the best drummers in rock, ranging from Josh Freese to Brooks Wackerman to even Dave Lombardo.

I've got a band that I tour with, and they're not session musicians; they're my friends.

I once took a ride to the beach in L.A., and all along the shore there were all these so-called jazz places. And I saw these college guys and session players playing this fusion Muzak stuff. It was just a lot of notes, and the more notes they played, the more it kept them from expressing anything. So I came back home and got out my Zeppelin albums.

I went down to London with the idea that I was going to do vocals over this crazy, crazy trip-hop digital beat. Within two or three months, I heard Hunky Dory by David Bowie and that changed me in one way, and I realized what I actually wanted was to have an E Street Band - individuals, not session musicians.

I think we did our first session in 1958. There were no black background singers - there were only white singers. They weren't even called background singers; they were just called singers. I don't know who gave us the name 'background singers,' but I think that came about when The Blossoms started doing background.

On Eye of the Zombie, I had so-called studio musicians.

James Ralston, my guitar player, has performed with Tina Turner for about 22 years. Jim Hanson on bass has played with Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell and Bruce Springsteen, and they're fantastic musicians and amazing singers they get a really cool vocal sound together.

I played a lot of real normal, straight sessions.

I used to play on Phil Spector's records, and he liked to use three pianists.

But ya know what, I am a part of something that happened. I'm a part of the music that happened. My voice is one more instrument, is what it is. So that's the way I feel about people who play on sessions.

There's a band of studio session - hot players - that play on my albums... They're an eclectic bunch of misfits that I've worked with for years and years.

And then the last album, 'Get It', was done over a shorter period of time and I started using other musicians, as opposed to playing all the instruments myself like I did on the other two.

Marvin Gaye was a killer drummer. I think he just played during the soundchecks and he'd have another guy sing his parts while he played the drums. He just wanted to play the drums and have some fun.

Originally a record producer more or less hired a bunch of professionals to participate in a recording session, the performers and the technicians, and a music director was put in charge. That directly related to a film producer's job.