Tim May Breaks Down His Most Iconic Guitar Parts
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2023
Mason Marangella: Wow. Tim May in Deep River Woman. That is a classic intro. So good to have you here today. Thank you. And, uh, talking about your amazing career with not only the great Lionel Richie, but uh. We're going to go through a lot of your career, some of the hit songs that you've played on that we've heard on the radio, that maybe was, uh, even, you know, scored some people's weddings.
This is their first dance song in some cases. There's just so many amazing songs that you've been on, and I'm just, I'm just, uh, so grateful to have you here at Igloo in Burbank and just, uh, taking us through memory lane with, uh, some of these amazing. Song so, uh, let's talk about deep river woman since we started there and get into maybe some of the details that you can walk Us through about gear the sessions and so forth.
Absolutely, but this is the guitar that was used This was it the Valley Arts. Yeah, and so you said that that you did 50 different variations of that intro
Tim May: Well that when we did the date there was nothing written and you know, the we had corn chip chord changes for the tune And, you know, and I'd say, hey, play a little intro or something, you know.
So I probably played a, you know, just off the top of my head, because, you know, I said, okay, you know, didn't have too much time to put thought into it, which is sometimes good, you know, spontaneity. But, uh, yeah, played a few different ones, and that seemed to be the one that made the record, for some reason.
Mason Marangella: I mean, you were kind of the guy for Lionel Richie for his string of like, just huge records for pretty much spanning a decade. Uh, and I always just loved that sound. I always assumed it was some sort of strat. I had no idea that it was a Valley Arts, although I guess it should have made sense given the time.
Every session guy. Of a certain level, especially that of yours was using Valley Arts. Yeah. Mike was making guitars
Tim May: for everybody.
Mason Marangella: What was the, what is the story behind this particular guitar? This was used on other Lionel Richie sessions, I presume as well. Oh yeah. This was used on, this was my main
Tim May: strat for all that era, you know.
Mason Marangella: And we'll get more into those particular songs, but just tell us about this guitar, just so we kind of know.
Tim May: Well, Mike McGuire at Valley Arts back in the day when they were on, Ventura Boulevard, uh, put this together for me. He was making them and this is number 25 that he's made. It says on the back there.
And, uh, I just said, Mike, go, you know, he made, uh, his, his things that he wanted and he'd put the very hard maple neck, nice ebony fingerboard and this Rosewood, like we were talking about. Yeah. Rosewood body. Yeah. Which makes it heavy, but you know, it's, it's manageable. And it's just, uh, turned out to be a great guitar.
I have a theory about guitars that you can get all the best ingredients you can think of and put them together, but if they don't really work together It doesn't work, and you can get some marginal, inexpensive guitars that just sync together, all the neck and the body, the woods and the whole thing. I might be all wrong about that, but it seems like that's how they interact, you know.
Mason Marangella: I mean, you're taking dissimilar species of woods that come from potentially different continents, and you're gluing them together, and it's, it could be like swinging out a piñata, you know. Yeah,
Tim May: that's right. Well, that's one of the reasons why, especially, uh, it's apparent with acoustic guitars, it seems you play Five of the same exact guitar, and there are going to be five different guitars.
Absolutely. Similarities, but, you know, that's, that's the nature of the guitar. But yeah, Mike made this.
Mason Marangella: Did you have a lot of influence over, like, what he put, like, did you say, I want EMGs, I want a mid boost, I want the ebony board and the rosewood body and the, the bird's eye maple neck, or was it You
Tim May: know, I think I left a lot of that to him.
We, he kind of knew what I wanted. I didn't want anything unusual. It was pretty much a common thing. The mid range boost, um, we probably spoke about that. Yeah. Because that's good just to get a little more, hitting the amp a little harder. Yeah. And hitting that thing. Um, especially with a, you know, just a single coil amp.
Yeah. So that beefs that up. Um, and then of course the Floyd was a big thing. When the first, the very first guitars that he made, um, they didn't have the tuning, uh, pieces on them. Oh, like the little micro tuners. Yeah. Yeah. And it was, oh, it was brutal because you'd get the guitar nice and tuned and you'd crank these up.
And then it twists everything, so these go flat, this goes sharp, and then you gotta really compensate when I'm tuning this string, because I know I'm gonna tune this, you know, and it was a real challenge. Then this came in shortly after and saved all that.
Mason Marangella: Yeah, yeah, well everybody seemed to use these, and it seems like all, when we were talking with Paul Jackson, He has a Rosewood Strat, a really heavy one from Valley Arts.
It seemed like people weren't afraid of the heavy Strats back in the 80s.
Tim May: No, no. I didn't even think about it to be honest with you, it was just, the weight didn't even occur to me so much. But I knew it wasn't going to be ridiculous.
Mason Marangella: It turns out to be a real hit maker after all.
Tim May: It was a great guitar.
Yeah, it is a great guitar I should say.
Mason Marangella: So this was the guitar that was used on Deep River Woman. What about for amps, do you remember anything about what you used for that? You
Tim May: know, I've had so many, well, you know, half a dozen different rigs. I think at that time, there's a good chance I was using a couple of Fender, the newer ones that they made, the Blackface Deluxe and the Vibrolux, I think.
Mason Marangella: Uh huh.
Tim May: And they made, Paul Rivera probably modded them up a little bit for me. And, uh, in my, gosh, I can't remember, I think the pedal board I had, was one of the first ones Paul Rivera made for me. Mm hmm. Which had a Mutron Bi-Phase. It kind of built along the side of the chair. Uh huh. And, and I had all my foot stuff here, and then the Bi-Phase, and it, it was a cool little board with all the buffers and stuff like that.
Yeah,
Mason Marangella: yeah, he was the, the godfather
Tim May: of the pedal board at that time. Yeah, yeah. But it was that, I probably had the original chorus, the Roland 3 one. Yeah, yeah. And, uh Do you
Mason Marangella: suspect that was what was on that intro originally for the, like, Most likely. Deep River Woman?
Tim May: Most likely, yeah.
Mason Marangella: Yeah. Yeah.
Tim May: But I guess I can't be sure, but I'm pretty sure that's, that's probably what it would've been.
Mason Marangella: Yeah. Yeah. It's a, I mean, that that clean tone on there is, is always amazing and it sounds, you know, super strati, beautiful cleans, and then all of the, all of like, the fills that you do in it are also just like really gorgeous. The tone works
Tim May: really good with the track and with the Lionel's piano and stuff.
Uh, and he was playing the piano in it.
Yeah. Yeah. That's him.
Tim May: He played it. And the good thing about, um, rec recording with Lionels, he would. Most often, almost always sing the song while we were tracking. Really? At least in the beginning, maybe not every single time, but for the most part. And that, boy, that was the whole thing, because so many times you go in and do a record and you don't really have an idea of what you're backing up.
Yeah. You know, they, well, we're going to put the vocal on later and, you know, it, it works. You deal with it and, and, but it's, there's nothing like hearing the real vocal. So you get a complete thing of, of what you're accompanying. And was he in the
Mason Marangella: room with you? Was that done live or did he? A
Tim May: lot of those we did at, yeah, that was, we did it at A& M.
I think it was, um. Uh, let's see, maybe Paul Lyne may have been on drums. Uh, who would have been on I forgot who else was on the session actually, but Yeah, we did him live, and Lionel would be in there playing and singing with us, yeah. I don't, I'm not sure if he kept his, what he performed at the You know, he just played Rhodes or sometimes piano.
But yeah, we did him live. So he was a legit musician,
Mason Marangella: I mean, he could
Tim May: really play. Oh yeah, he was good. You know, yeah, he was a legit musician, a learned musician. Yeah. But he had the intuitive part too. You could learn all you want, but if you don't have that musical instinct, it doesn't mean much. That's
Mason Marangella: incredible.
I had no idea. I had no idea. I kind of just, I mean, so many guys in that era were just kind of like the voice, but everything was written for them. Of course, that wasn't the case for Lionel Richie. That's right. I want to go now to another huge song that we all know, uh, the song Hello. And, uh, can you tell us anything about what, what happened on that session, that song?
Well,
Tim May: that was, um, pretty straight ahead, uh, typical Lionel Richie session, which was very well run, and, but Lionel made everybody very comfortable, very professional, you know, but he was the coolest, is the coolest, but it was, it was nice, and that was, I remember I played acoustic guitar. Yeah. I played my Martin D 18 on that.
Uh huh. It's got a 61 D 18. Cause you're doing those, like, really nice arpeggios and stuff, yeah. Yeah, and just, just some, uh, the kind of just fingerpicking things like that. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, it was, I remember we, we played it several times and the, the trick, not the trick, but the thing was, because Lionel always played piano when he played and the thing that I always try to do is play stuff that complimented his piano playing and, and fit, you know, the right way.
And a lot of it is, well, like, like playing on anybody else's material. It's not about, man, what a great guitar player, what a hot, you know, it's about supporting the song. So, you know, sometimes the best thing that you can do for the song is not the most fiery, rippy kind of guitar hero thing, you know. But that was Hello, it was a very nice thing.
The whole key with that was just playing in time and locking in the With, I think Paul Lyon was playing drums. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was a nice date. And did you play the solo on that as well? That was Louis Shelton. That was Louis Shelton. Louis overdubbed that, yeah, um, it sounded great too. Were you there when he did the solo?
No, no, no, I wasn't, that was one of the overdubs.
Mason Marangella: No,
Tim May: I wasn't there. Um, Nice track though, no question about it.
Mason Marangella: Do you remember anything about like, uh, like when, when you, with your Martin, do you remember anything about like, did you have like a mic compliment that you would often use when you were doing this sort of stuff, as far as like getting the, the right acoustic tone for that?
Tim May: Well, you know, I always would, would go to the date and, and do everything I could with whatever the best guitar that I thought was appropriate. And then I let the engineer do his thing. Okay. And, and unless there was, you know, something I objected to. I always deferred to how he wanted to mic it. Right. And then if, you know, we could discuss whatever tweaks we may want to make, but I kind of defer to the engineer and, you know, a lot of, it's, it's funny.
A lot of times they would come in, you know, some three or four different mics all over there, bobbing their head all over the place and stuff like that. But then other guys would just put one mic and into the best mic and whatever was appropriate for the guitar and just dial it in the right way. And it's perfect.
Mason Marangella: Do you remember where that was recorded? Yeah. Yeah, I think that was at A& M Studios. Okay. And was there like a big chart for that or was it kind of just like a Chord chart. Most of Lionel's
Tim May: things were strictly chord cymbals, you know. Bar, bar chart with the changes written out. And then maybe some little, uh, little particular thing.
If something goes Some ensemble where everybody kind of plays a little part of the bar into the next section or something. Yeah. Those may be written out, but it's pretty much chord cymbals. That one was deeper for women. I'm saying
Mason Marangella: like I could hear it right away, like it's like an iconic like walk up, right?
Right, right. Yeah, a lot of those in that song. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I love that one. So on on hello he was He had his chord charts and would you? Did he tell you like I want this strummed? I want this picked. I want arpeggios here Would that be all up to you? Lionel was so
Tim May: It was smart and, and great that way because he would pretty much let everybody, he hired the players for their expertise.
Yeah. And the first, you know, I'm not going to hire a plumber and then tell him what to do. You know, he'd let everybody do, and then he would, you know, the producer, James Carmichael and different people would. Maybe suggest, you know, and tweak as the, as the takes were going on and playing, but he, he let a lot of freedom with the line, which was nice, you know.
Mason Marangella: Yeah.
Tim May: Um, like I said, he, he, that's, that's smart too. Yeah. He hired the best players to, and let
Mason Marangella: him do it. The proof is in the pudding. I mean, like, so many of those are, there's just hugely successful records. He's done okay. Yeah, yeah,
yeah.
Mason Marangella: Uh, Tim, would you be willing to play? Play any kind of, I know it's, you're not playing a D team, right?
But would you kind of be willing to play maybe some of like the little parts that you developed or any of the arpeggios for Hello? Yeah. It's, you know, like,
Tim May: it seems like it was that kind of a thing. Yeah. You know, and then, and then it got into some strumming. Yeah. A little bit of like. Yeah, like in the chords it
Mason Marangella: sounds like there's kind of like more of a strumming,
Tim May: like I do remember it was pretty gentle, everything was Even, even, well, it got a little more intense with the rhythm thing, but it was a pretty quiet.
Mason Marangella: Yeah.
Tim May: And were you using a pick or your
Mason Marangella: fingers for that? Fingers and pick. So that was Hello, but I also want to go to another song on the same, same record and do the song All Night Long. Now, this kind of had like, almost like a, like kind of like a, an Afro Caribbean sort of like sound to it. What was the story with, with that song and that session?
Tim May: Well, um, Lionel didn't set it up anyway, you know, we just said, let's start playing and right away we felt the vibe of what it was. Yeah. Um, And that was a good one, because it was a long intro and a long, very extended performance, the whole song. Uh, and that was, we just started playing it, you know, and again, like, all the stuff we, everybody plays it the first time you play the song, and you just kind of psych out what's happening, and then refine parts, and kind of get an idea of where you're going to do what, and so forth.
And that's what happened. We just ended up playing it that way.
Mason Marangella: And do you think the intent was always for it to kind of have like, it has like, kind of like all these like congas and like stuff like that. And you know, the, was there like an intent to go or like, do you know anything about sort of the, the, like what was the, the reason for that song was just to kind of make something that had that vibe or?
I think so.
Tim May: Yeah.
Mason Marangella: I don't know
Tim May: much of the backstory about it. Um, uh, but he definitely, he went into a dialogue course to get the syllables right. That he was saying. Yeah. Um, Yeah, I don't know too much other than that.
Mason Marangella: And so what was like the, what was that session like? Did he have, you know, standard charts?
Was he playing the, the piano or, yeah, he was,
Tim May: he always played and, and again it was chord symbols. Yeah, chord charts. And I remember, uh, in the beginning just volume thing here, there, there was, it was a very ethereal kind of the being with the little Yeah. Congas and different things. And I think I was doing some of the, some of those kind of, Yeah.
In the context of the vowel space thing. And then it started into the groove, uh, Da da da, and, and I remember, Let's see, that was in A flat. I, I think I, I think the first guitar in the rhythmic entrance
was like,
Tim May: That kind of thing.
Kind of a muted thing like that. And then, uh, Then there was one section, uh, Uh, uh, the A, I guess it would be the A section, where I remember I had the chorus going, and I'd I just came up with something, doing something, just a pad kind of thing. Then it went to the all night long, you know. And that was like, just using the thumb, because you can't really soften it up with a pick as well.
Right. So it's
Mason Marangella: just Yep. It was like that. And so there's like that break that goes all night long, and then, and then, do you remember the guitar almost sounded like it was kind of doing like a Like like single note kind of like rhythm guitar stuff in there. Yeah.
Tim May: Yeah
I think
Tim May: I was getting a little used to some of those kind of thing.
Yeah, but again not making a Point of drawing attention to it. Yeah as much as Making it an element of the track.
Mason Marangella: Yeah, it's it's it's it's such a like a master class and like just beautiful rhythm playing cuz even in the Even in that part where like the intro you're doing the swells There's also like a thing that I could hear where it's almost like you're doing like a minor nine hammer on Oh, yeah, like comes in and out What was that?
One of those kind of things.
Tim May: Yeah, right, right. I do remember that now. Yeah. It was a minute ago.
Mason Marangella: Yeah, I mean, I make you recall something that's like, you know, 40 years old almost, you know. Yeah, I know. In this case. And so, I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry because I just
Tim May: love
Mason Marangella: hearing
Tim May: these stories. No, it's cool.
Yeah. It's, it's fun. So and that was also this guitar? That was this guitar. Yeah, this I used this electric on the whole record I don't think I used my 335 on any of that stuff.
Mason Marangella: And was it also likely the same Rivera amps that you? Yeah, that would have been the same era Setup that I was using. Were you typically running both the amps at the same time?
Is it stereo? Yeah. Oh really? I would run
Tim May: out of Either the board or I may have at that time had a small rack that I had built And I would just run left and right out of that into the two amps and dial them in that
Mason Marangella: way. Did you ever have producers or anybody, like, be irritated with the stereo setup or were they always accommodating?
No,
Tim May: um, but I would always accommodate if they said, well, we don't want to go stereo. Yeah. Okay, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm hired out, you know. Right. And I'll do, You know, the best I can do, but it's their gig and so, you know, I wouldn't say, no, no, we have to do this. Right. You know, I would, I would kind of try to push ideas that I had to a certain extent, but again, you know, I would defer to the people that want to do it.
Mason Marangella: And do you think that that was also the, the boss, CE 1, the big box chorus on that? Yeah, yeah. It would have been that and, uh, the Rivera
Tim May: amps and maybe just that. Do you think any compression on any of that stuff? Probably not.
Mason Marangella: Okay.
Tim May: You know, I, I, I tend to. Think that it, I wasn't using a compressor a lot in those days.
Okay. You know. It's funny, often times I'll use some compression, and it's good, and then I'll dial it in, yeah that's good, and then it sounds best when it's not in the structure. So it's okay, sometimes that happens, but you know, it's appropriate when it is.
Mason Marangella: Yeah, alright, so that was three huge Lionel Richie hits.
And again, I just can't appreciate you enough, Tim, for the beautiful work that you did there. I'm just, uh, I'm so in awe of you. The tones, the, just the tasteful guitar playing that's on all that, all the beautiful fills, and again, I, I think Other than you and Carlos Rios, there was really nobody that they were calling to do those records.
And so there must have just been something incredibly special about what you brought to the table for Lionel, where it's just like session after session after session, album after album, he's still calling on the great Tim May to play the guitar. Thank you. I'd like to think so,
Tim May: but
Mason Marangella: you know. I was available.
What do you think, you know, like, just to finish on Lionel Richie, what do you think was, like, the X factor that he really saw in what it is that you brought to the table that kept on having him call you back?
Tim May: Boy, you know what? I don't know. You know, it's, I hope, you know, hopefully he just thought I did a good job and did what he needed.
That's the bottom line. That's the best thing. I mean, I don't think, there's no other reason to have a player there or not. Yeah. Yeah, it just worked, and it worked nice, you know. Um, obviously I'm not the only guy that could have played those sessions. There's, you know, a lot of great players. But it just, it was a nice thing.
We all got along real good, too. And I got, you know, the rest of the guys in the band and I always played together for years, so. Yeah. It was just a nice, uh, Comfortable feeling, you know, I was glad to be there with the with that kind of quality of playing and
Mason Marangella: yeah And it must have felt so cool when you heard those records on the radio and you're like, I like that part
Tim May: That's that was kind of fun when I first started hearing things on the radio.
I think wow, that's pretty neat Yeah, because I always thought something I was just would kind of led me into the studio guitar scene Is it always intrigued me about the an anonymity of players that? You Wow, there's a guy sitting at the bus stop and he played this, you know, it's just kind of cool. I like the low profile thing about it.
And my other favorite thing about playing sessions was that we'd work on a tune, uh, you know, maybe ten minutes, maybe three hours, maybe a few different sessions. But then when you, you got it done, it's like, okay, don't ever play that anymore.
Yeah. You
Tim May: know, I love the next, to go on and play the same stuff over again.
It's not my favorite idea, you know. Well, you never thought you'd be sitting here and having to replay
Mason Marangella: this stuff. I know. Forty years later. That's right. I would have written it down. And the last thing, and I'm sorry to keep bugging you about Lionel Richie, it's just it's very exciting to me because I really love these songs.
Like, did you have a sense that these were going to be huge hits when you were playing them? And was there already sort of like, uh, like when you're hearing it come together, like, oh yeah, this is going to be. You know, big or was there not that vibe at the time? Uh,
Tim May: you know, I think anytime we did any record or any kind of thing, we'd hoped it would be a big hit, but it wasn't a priority.
I never thought about too much of it. Uhhuh, I think, 'cause you know, when you went into a session, the whole focus was to. Do what you need to do now and everything else is kind of peripheral didn't really I didn't think about well This will be that or if I do this that'll happen, you know, you kind of have to focus on There was no like pressure on you to like we need a manufacturer hit in you know, well, there's always that implied You know, nobody goes into a project.
They go. Well, we want this to be big, you know And there's a, you know, then there's also every musician has the personal pride of you want to go in there and you want to play good, even if it never sees the light of day. Yeah. It's just a musician thing.
Mason Marangella: Yeah, I hear that. Well, speaking of things that did see the light of day, uh, this is one of the coolest stories I think about, about your guitar work, uh, is, The movie Back to the Future, obviously, was a huge hit, 1985, and there was some amazing music on there, uh, Huey Lewis had a big hit that was on the soundtrack for that, this is in the days where soundtracks mattered, but one of the most important scenes in the entire movie is at the end when Michael J.
Fox, uh, Marty McFly, has a, uh, what is it, an ES 355 45. 45 that he's playing, the red one. Yeah. And he's playing the song Johnny B. Good to this group of, of, uh, high school students at like a prom or something like that, right? That, that, that sort of is, is, is a decade later than what, you know, the music is that they had available to them at the time.
Yeah. And it turns out it's not, uh, Michael J. Fox that was playing that. It was actually you playing Johnny B. Good. Yeah, it was me. And on this very guitar.
Tim May: This was the guitar. Yeah. And the reason I chose this guitar, because I had my choice of my Les Paul or my 335, is the direction I was given was, okay, we want to go in this performance, uh, from Chuck Berry 50's style to the current, which was like Van Halen and that sort of thing.
And we want to encompass the guitar, history of the guitar from there to there. Okay, so, you know, we just played a few takes and I just did whatever I did and it seemed to work But I chose this because I had that I was doing the hammer ons and the
Mason Marangella: yeah Cuz you're you do like almost like an eruption type like tapping thing.
Yeah. Yeah, they're
Tim May: holding and I needed the the Floyd for that. Yeah, and it worked out good. It was you know, it covered all the bases for me Do you remember how you were pitched the idea of doing this? Well, we were on the date and I think we did another couple, uh, couple of tunes that they used in that scene, that particular scene, maybe Night Train I think we played and some other tunes.
You know, Chuck DeMonaco was playing. Uh huh. Um, maybe, uh, Mike Lang may have been playing piano. I forgot who else was playing. But we did a few tunes, and then they were more like standards, or? Well, I think, I think we did, oh, um, Earth Angel was one of them. Remember he played that? Yeah, because
Mason Marangella: it was sort of like music that was, that was supposed to be concurrent, uh, for, uh, for the time of, of when this, this school dance was taking place in that scene.
That's right, and they were
Tim May: playing. I think that was what, the scene we were working on primarily that day. And then they said, okay, this is this one, and we gotta do, uh, There was a funny story about that, though, because, We, we played the, the track, and, and all that stuff, and, and, uh, You know, I did whatever I did, and, you know, I, And then, uh, you know, I went home, and, and, My wife said, oh, there's, you got a call from a, a new guitar player, Uh, in town, who would like to, you know, see, see a session, Go on a session with you, and I said, yeah, sure.
So, you know, I looked at my book and I said, Oh, here's another Back to the Future date coming up. That should be guitar heavy. Again, this will be a good one for him to watch. Mark Carter was his name. He's a good guitar player. Lives in Orange County, I think. Anyway, so he showed up at this session. It was at Group 4 Studios.
And I remember it was just me overdubbing. I didn't know what it was going to be. I walked in and it was just me and the guitar set up. And he's sitting there all excited. And uh, They go, okay, Tim, here's what we need to do. Do you remember the scene in the movie where he plugged in that amplifier? Yeah.
And he had the guitar and then, bzz, you hear the thing. Yeah. He plays that big power chord. Yeah. That was the scene they were working on. So, so, so they go, okay, now, first thing you need to do is take out your guitar chord and go, bzz, bzz, bzz, with the, with the thing. Okay, because we're making all the ambient sounds of that scene where they're plugged in.
So I'm going, bzzz, bzzz, bzzz, and okay, now it's just noise in the amp. Now, uh, bang the reverb, you know, so it's like, those kind of, and just all ambient sounds. And this guy Marcus, you know, going, big time studio stuff, huh? He's going, what am I doing? And we, we, I know him, we joked about that since then, but, uh.
That was that scene. Well, you know, there's usually much more we have to do than you have to actually play something. He's like, ah, I'm going home. But anyway, that was kind of interesting.
Mason Marangella: And, and, was it the, was it the music, or the, the movie studio that contacted you to say, like, hey, we need a guitar player that can, that can not only do like these jazz standards, but can also do, you know, Van Halen stuff?
Or, like, Right. Because usually there wouldn't be much crossover. The guy that's going to be playing Earth Angel is not usually the guy that's going to be tapping.
Tim May: Right. That's right. Well, no, I mean, we were, we were contracted. There was, uh, Alan Silvestri was doing the music for that, and we had worked already several sessions on the rest of the, the score.
And this was another thing. So it was the contractor, I believe it was Sandy DeCrescent, called and said, Hey, we're doing another date. And, you know. Yeah. She just, you know, the guys were called that do that, you know, and most of the players were, you know, all the players were versatile enough to do whatever they needed.
It wasn't like, yeah, you know, they didn't specifically pinpoint a guitar style that they needed. Yeah. They just needed a guitar player. They could do whatever they needed. So. So that's how I was, you know, um, that's how that worked.
Mason Marangella: You were the guy. And, and, uh, so this was the guitar. This was it. And what was the amp?
Because obviously you needed something that had
Tim May: a little gain. Those, I think those must have been, if I, because I remember pounding on them. That was, uh, that was the Fender, the Blackface 80's vintage, uh, Fender Vibrolux. Like the, like the,
Mason Marangella: okay, okay. And
Tim May: these are the Rivera era ones? No, this was a little after that.
But Paul, I'm sure, did some tweaking on those amps. Okay. But they were the Fender, uh. I think it was called a Vibrolux.
Mason Marangella: Okay.
Tim May: And a Deluxe. I had two of them. Okay. And those are probably the same amps. So they were
Mason Marangella: just kind of contemporary for that time, for the mid 80s? Yeah.
Tim May: Fender made a run of those amps with Blackface.
They're probably in that early 80s. Yeah, they
Mason Marangella: had the Concerts. That's right. I
Tim May: think one of them was a Concert. Yeah. Yeah.
Mason Marangella: Yeah. Very cool. Well, uh, would you mind playing a little bit of kind of what you did on, uh, Johnny B. Goode? Yeah, I'll try it.
All right.
Mason Marangella: Yeah That's incredible. That's, it's such a, it's such a great and memorable song. Like that scene is, you know, it's sort of the, you know, just like the crescendo of everything that's going on. And as, as a, as a kid watching the back, the future series, like, you know, being a fan of guitar, it's like, that's the best scene in the whole thing.
I had absolutely no idea. I was, you know, just like, okay, Michael J. Fox, so multi talented. This is sort of perfect timing because we did break a string, but we got the, the take. And uh, I think that what I want to do is move to not only a different guitar because we are going to need a different guitar, but also because for the next couple of sessions I want to talk to you about are all based in the semi hollow body 335.
So let's change guitars and give a little suspense to our audience to see what those songs might be. Okay. All right, Tim So we've changed guitars. We now have your beautiful 1961 ES 335 electric Spanish electric Spanish as as as many of us know And we're gonna go in to your beautiful guitar work with Eddie Rabbit now This is something that actually I had learned about a couple years ago that just showed up to me, uh, in a Spotify playlist.
And I thought, Oh, this is like a really cool kind of vibe y like sound that this guy has. Like it's, it's got some really cool grooves. I had no idea who he was or that he was even a thing back in the, the late seventies and early eighties. But he had some great songs. One of which was the song suspicions that you played on and, uh, this was the guitar that was used.
Yep. Yep. Yep. And do you have a sense of what was, uh, like the, the other gear components of it? It's kind of got this really nice like vibey clean tone, really cool kind of like drum, drum sound, really cool kind of bass and Yeah. Um,
Tim May: well, let's see. I remember I was in the booth and running out. That rig may have been at the time I was using a big Marshall head and a little 12 inch speaker with that and the usual array of pedals and stuff.
This may have been that Marshall
Mason Marangella: head. Uh, was it like a, a JMP or a JCM 800, if it were a 75, it was a JMP? It
Tim May: was possibly a JMP, I can't remember. Was it a
Mason Marangella: 100 or a 50, or do you remember? It was a 100, it
Tim May: was a big head.
Mason Marangella: Okay, and uh, was it a 4 input or was it a 2 input? 2 input. Okay, yeah.
Tim May: If I'm not mistaken,
Mason Marangella: yeah.
Okay, yeah, those are, those are still great amps. Good amps, yeah. And, and you can actually get some pretty good kind of glassy clean tones out of them, uh. You can
Tim May: get a great, but the Marshalls always had a real organic sound to me. Yeah. Natural. Sound I don't know what how to describe it better than that, but they're all I've got one of those little little tiny MP whatever 15.
Yeah, little effect and this stupid thing sounds really good. Yeah, it's just it's just got a good sound
Mason Marangella: Yeah, and in was and that was that Paul Rivera pedal board that you were using on that one. Um, Or is that pre data instead of 79? No, no, that would have been a Paul Rivera. Okay, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, okay And was there, it sounded like maybe there was some chorus and some processing on there?
What kind of stuff were you using? I may have,
Tim May: may have used a little bit of chorus. There was a lot of chorus going on in those days. Um, it may have been the Roland.
Mason Marangella: Yeah.
Tim May: Yeah. I had another, uh, couple of choruses in the rack that used to use the delay in it's Probably not in 79, though, you think? You had a rack back then?
Well, let's see. No, maybe not. No.
Mason Marangella: I'm
Tim May: sorry, you're right. Yeah, that was Is that the year this was? Yeah, I mean, the record
Mason Marangella: came out in 79, but probably you might have recorded I mean, there used to be more of a gap between, like, the sessions and the release back then, right?
Tim May: Well, yeah, in that case it would have been, uh, Well, then it wasn't the Marshall, probably.
Then it was probably the, um, oh gosh, Fender Paul Rivera Princeton's, maybe? Oh, like,
Mason Marangella: so it was just like a, like one of the, like the, like either Silver Face or like the Mid 60s.
Tim May: yeah,
Mason Marangella: yeah. And it was just modded with all of his kind of stage mods that he would do? Yeah, Paul put his hands on most of my amps.
Ironically, the, the amp that we've been using the whole time today for both the clean and the dirty is the newest Paul Rivera Stage 4, which is basically an incarnation of His modded Fender platforms with all of the specialty mods, effects loops, push pulls, and all that stuff. It's a great sounding amp.
Tim May: Yeah,
Mason Marangella: um, That's, do you remember anything Specific about the the session? Like how you got the call for it? Was Eddie there? Like any of the production Things?
Tim May: I do remember that date. It was just me overdubbing. I went in and overdubbed the track. And I don't think Eddie was there. If I remember, I think it was at Westlake Studio, maybe the C, the small room.
And, um, gosh, you know, I honestly don't remember who was there. It must have been the producer. Yeah. Um, but it was just, I was the only player. And it was, it was an interesting day because it was, you know, I had the freedom to right away do whatever. Yeah. You know, okay, what do you think? So you start playing some stuff and, and I, first I came up with that little, uh, the muted.
Uh, part in the
Which, you know, it was a pretty subtle little thing, but it worked good with the track and the whole little sneaky kind of vibe it had. And, uh, And then I would do some of the,
uh, We
Tim May: overdubbed some of those little lines that, you know, became a part of the thing. And then with the chorus, the, um, I was having, I tried some different thing.
And again, you know, there's 4, 000 ways to approach any piece of music. So I remember I was trying something, and, eh, it didn't go over so good, and, eh, nobody seemed to be happy with what I was trying to do. And I tried a few different things. So you start digging into your bag of tricks. And just, you know, you don't even, I don't even put too much thought into, I guess I do to an extent, but it's like, do you want to, what naturally feels good?
Because if you start over analyzing it, for me, it doesn't, it takes longer, it doesn't, it doesn't achieve the goal of the best musical product. Anyway, so we're, I was fooling around and, you know, I was just about ready to say, well, I don't know if we need anything there. And then I just came in with that, Uh, uh.
That little thing, and it just really worked around the lyric and everything like that. I believe the lyric was on there when I did that track.
Mason Marangella: Yeah, how sparse was it when you were playing your parts? Was there drum and bass? Oh yeah.
Tim May: I think it was pretty complete with that. And there's also like, it sounds
Mason Marangella: like a Rhodes or something like that is also on there?
Tim May: Yeah. I'm pretty sure that was all there. The bass, the It's a great groove. It's a really great groove. It's a great groove. Yeah. I love the piece. It was fun. And I was glad that I did that little thing and that really became Like, you know, you try this. No, no, no. Then boom. Yeah. And everybody loved it. And it's just, that's what you want all the time.
Mason Marangella: Do you remember hearing that on the radio for the first time? I mean like, Oh sure. Yeah.
Tim May: Yeah.
Mason Marangella: Cause it, I mean, you know, I feel like maybe we don't hear about it so much now cause it kind of didn't come out during the Spotify. Yeah. Like, you know, kind of releases, but you know, so sometimes when you look, you know, at least when I've looked at sort of like, you know, the playability of, of a song that's maybe from the seventies or even the sixties, like they don't.
even compare with stuff that music that's released now in terms of the numbers is because that's not how it was consumed at that time, but that was like big hit like back at that time. It was big. And, uh, I would, I would love to hear, we actually have the track for this. Okay. And I would love it if you would be willing to kind of play through the, the different sections of it in your parts.
I'll do what I can. Sure. Let's do it. Haha. I'll do what I can.
Tim May: Yeah,
that's pretty much that.
Tim May: Amazing. Yeah, the parts seem to just work well with the track, and you know, again, every musician wants to go in there and, okay, play something. Play, wow, that's the best thing we ever heard, but you know that that took a minute to try different things and get the Producer to an artist and whoever is making the decisions to to love it.
You know, that's what you always want
Mason Marangella: man, it's it's a Yeah, I mean, you nailed it masterfully, you know, it's, uh, and again, you know, that's 79. Yeah. So again, we're talking well over 40 years here between presumably the last, I mean, you never like toured this song or anything like that. I was just
Tim May: about four years old when I did that.
Mason Marangella: And this guitar sounds incredible. This is a good one.
Tim May: Yeah. So what's the story with this guitar? It's great. Well, this guitar I got when I was living in Cleveland and playing a lot of cover bands and stuff like that. And, uh, I just found it at a store, wanted a 335. Couldn't afford the new one. This must have been in about 72 or something like that.
Thank God you didn't get a new one. And they said, well, we got this one. They were real dogs at that point. Oh, man. And it just, it lucked out. It's one of those really good guitars. John Carruthers did a, you know, he put his hands on it and refined it. Yeah. Yeah. I think I had one of the humbuckers replaced because it was getting a little funky somehow.
But he saw the PAFs and he put new tuners on for me.
Mason Marangella: So you had like the Grovers and then you added the toggle switch. Right.
Tim May: This switch is a pickup splitter and it'll split both pickups at once. And it's just, it's just, can I play it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. That's really good. And then,
Just takes a little bit of that medium, low, mid out of it, and the reason that becomes so useful for me is that sometimes in the track, you know, you can sit down and play, I've done this before, you play the guitar, that's a great sound, sounds good, and then you put it in the context of a track, and it's just not as perfect as it should be, so this is one of those things Just thins it out, just makes it fit in the track.
Yeah. Technically, I don't know what it does harmonically, but it
Mm-hmm.
Tim May: It just makes it fit in the track better. Yeah. And it's a very useful little thing, although I put about a $30,000 hole in this guitar .
Mason Marangella: Right.
Tim May: But it sounds great.
Mason Marangella: Right? Well, no matter what, if you paid, you know, 150 bucks Yeah. 200 bucks for this thing.
Yeah, yeah. You definitely will come
Tim May: out ahead. Plus, I got my, I got my money's worth out of the guitar. I used it a million times.
Mason Marangella: Yeah, well, I want to go to another song that used this guitar, as we've already spoken about a little bit offline, uh, which is the great Herb Alpert's song, Rise. Now the ironic thing about Rise is that it's probably gotten equal, if not more play in its sampled version by the, the late great Notorious B.I.G. in the song Hypnotize, where your guitar part Is just looped in that kind of echoing. I have to say.
Tim May: I played all the rhythm stuff on that, that guitar part was played by, uh, Chris Pinnock, that, that, who was with Chicago. He, he did that , that, that Echoplex. So he just added that in. Yeah. That was an overdub.
He, that was an overdub. And, uh, yeah, I, I wasn't there when he did it, but, but that was done. So all the
Mason Marangella: other guitar parts were you, but that part was not you. That's right. And it was an echo flex.
Tim May: I imagine he some sort of echo thing He did obviously with, you know, with that piece.
Mason Marangella: Do you remember what year that you, it was that you recorded that?
Tim May: Well,
Mason Marangella: do we know what year it is? It must have been 79. 70. So around the time of the Eddie Rabbit.
Tim May: Yeah. Yeah. Around the same era.
Mason Marangella: Do we, do we have a date on 79 or 79? Yeah, that
Tim May: sounds right. So I would've been using the same pedal board, Paul. Yeah. In fact, no, I specifically remember that that was at a and m Studios.
We did those. Okay. And I remember using that 'cause I, I used the octave divider. Yeah. And then I think maybe the MuTron and the Bi-Phase I had. Yeah. Great. Deep biface thing. And, uh, yeah, that and the Modded.
Mason Marangella: Paul River, I'm sure it was. And Fender modded. And, and were you using, uh, uh, oh, you know, obviously he would mod whatever you brought him, but do you remember if it was a Vibrolux, a Deluxe, a Princeton?
Tim May: I had a Princeton and a deluxe.
Mason Marangella: Okay. Um, did it have those like concentric knobs that you would see on, on, uh, some of like the Steve Lukather one had like this? Kind of funny, kin centric knob that almost looked like a, like a master combo lock that you'd put on like your high school locker. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, it had a
Tim May: little round gray thing.
It was like a fat switch. Okay. And I think I had some push pull things in there too to get different filters going. Yeah. But Paul, boy, he did it. Yeah, I mean,
Mason Marangella: he's the guy. And, you know, God bless him. He brought us an amp today for us
