Interview for Melody Maker

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A longer version of this interview with David Spinozza was published in Hit Parader in November 1971.

DAVID SPINOZZA is 21 years old. He’s a session musician since he was 17. In an average week, without even trying, he can make $1,500 and a lot more if he does more sessions (the MU rate for musician here is $90 per three-hour session).

He’s rated as the top session guy, but not that, he’s rated as being the most original, exciting, imaginative and broadest guitarist in the business, alongside Hendrix, B.B. King, Clapton and every heavy you can think of. He can play anything, but whatever it is, it’s David Spinozza.

He started out in the black scene, learning from an upright bass player who taught guitar in music stores. He had a guitar when he was 6, played through school and is now studying the classical guitar. He’s the guitarist on Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold,” in fact he’s on just about everyone’s record — and he’s just recently been recording with Paul McCartney. He’s on the single “Another Day” and he’s on the new album “Ram.”

He was only ever in two groups, both with the same guys. One was The Sidewinders, the other Giant. He says that from 17:

“I went into the studio. I missed out on the whole travelling scene. I just did it for a year and a half. Most of the guys I like to play with are in the studio, there are better musicians there.”

“I get lines from the older guys like ‘you didn’t pay your dues.’ But I think that’s an old thing like your mother saying ‘when I was your age.’ Things have changed, you don’t have to go on the road for fifteen years to learn music. I just did a lot of playing in my house and a lot of listening to records.”

“A lot of people put down studio musicians. They say they’re stiff and that. It’s only true of the older guys who have, I guess, paid their dues and done their fifteen years. They’ve made their money and now they’re ready to retire and they don’t want to create. But people like myself, Hugh McCracken, Donald McDonald, Denny Seiwell and all, we give all on a session. Most of the people that say that about session guys are jive groups. These groups that learn four chords and they try to get out and express such a big feeling and such a big statement on world politics, and they think they’ve found the answer for world peace when they play their little blues licks. Those are the people that say we’re stiff, because we’re able to go in and do something in three hours that these groups take thirty, forty or more hours in the studio to do.”

“Working with Paul was fun, in as much as it was good to see how he works and where he’s coming from. But as a musician it wasn’t fun because it wasn’t challenging or anything like that. But it was very good. McCartney is definitely a song-writer, not a musician, but he writes beautiful songs. In the studio he’s incredibly prompt and business like. No smoking pot, no drinks or carrying on, nothing. Just straight ahead.

“He came in at 9.00 a.m. in the morning. We were all there and we’d listen to what we’d done the day before so that it would get us psyched ready to do the day’s work, then we went into the studio and it was 8 hours of just playing. He’s not a very loose cat, not eccentric in any way at all. Very much of a family man. He just wants to make good music.

“All I remember is getting a phone call from Linda McCartney addressing herself as ‘Mrs. McCartney’ and I said ‘who?’ She said ‘my husband would like to meet you’ and I said ‘did I ever work for your husband before?’ and she was indignant and said ‘This is Linda McCartney, and my husband is Paul McCartney,’ like I was supposed to know Paul McCartney was calling my house, that kind of thing. She didn’t make it clear what they wanted me for, I thought it was a meeting or a recording session, but it turned out to be for an audition.

“So I went to this place on 45th Street, some dirty loft, and they must have been there for three days auditioning people. I’d heard that some of the studio guys had given them a hard time, which I really didn’t want to do ‘cos I wanted to work with him. So when I get there, there’s 3 guitar players, but you had to be called, like you couldn’t walk in off the street with your guitar.

“He introduced himself to me, with a three-day old beard and we’re alone in this gigantic room, and there’s nothing but amplifiers, piano, drums and Linda — the Queen! So he wanted me to play something. He played a blues, and a solo and some folk and said he wanted me to do that. I played it and he just said ‘Sorry I couldn’t spend more time but I have a lot of people to see … blah blah,’ so I said ‘fine.’ As soon as I got home the ’phone rang and Linda wanted me to do the sessions the following week.”

“The studio was fine, Paul knew what he wanted. I think the whole album was done in the same form as the McCartney album, only we played the parts for him. It was done in the way there was no freedom. We were told exactly what to play, he knew what he wanted and he just used us to do it. He just sang us the parts he wanted and the tune developed as we went along. I mean we added things, we made suggestions, but I would say that two out of 10 times he took one of our suggestions or at least if he did, he modified it, and made it into a Paul McCartney sounding thing. It always came out Paul McCartney regardless of the suggestion.

“Linda didn’t have much to do in the studio, she just took care of the kids. You know the kids were there all the time. Every day. They brought the whole family every day to the studio, and they just stayed no matter how long Paul stayed. If he was there to 4.00 in the morning, everybody stayed.

“I thought to a certain degree it was distracting. It was a nice, loose atmosphere but distracting. Linda, I really don’t know what she did in the studio aside from sit there and make her comments on what she thought was good and what she thought was bad. However, I don’t know where she’s coming from. I don’t know if she has any kind of musical background. I know she was into photography. But now she thinks she’s a producer. The album says ‘Produced by Linda and Paul McCartney.’

“My personal opinion is that everybody, especially in the music business, when they finally find an old lady that they really dig, they try to get her into everything, which I don’t believe in. It just didn’t make sense to me. She sang all right — I heard some of the things she sang on the album. She can sing fine — like any girl that worked in a high-school glee club. She can hold a note and sing background. So Paul gives her the note and say ‘Here, Linda, you sing this and I’m going to sing this’ and she does it, evidently feels it’s creative or something. But it’s all McCartney — Paul McCartney, I mean.

“I played acoustic. There’s one track which is a cute thing, a blues tune, which I think has a pretty unique sound on and I had fun doing — ‘3 Legs.’”

“Paul likes to double-track a lot of things. We both played acoustic on some tracks. and then tripled. Denny Seiwell was on drums, myself and Paul on guitars. Sometimes Paul played piano, but he never played bass while we were there. He overdubbed the bass. It was a little weird, ‘cos bass, drums and guitar would have been more comfortable, but that’s the way he works.

“It seemed weird for him to come to town and audition the heaviest musicians in the business. Cats had been in music for 15 years and played with just everyone and who as musicians, the Beatles just couldn’t stand next to as instrumentalists. You don’t have to audition these cats, they can play anything under the sun.”