Gibson Interview: Session Great Waddy Wachtel

Waddy Wachtel

On Neil Young's latest album Storytone, the legendary session musician Waddy Wachtel played a prominent role -- lead guitar on a Neil Young album -- a first.

From an interview with the session great Waddy Wachtel in Gibson Magazine by Michael Leonard:

“I recently played with Neil Young for Storytone. That was wonderful. His new album is live, straight to 2-track. I got the call, walk in, and there's this big band playing swing blues. What the hell is this? I couldn't even see Neil. So I just plugged in and played. Dialled up a clean sound, a bit of lead here and there. Then Niko Bolas, producer of Neil's record and a dear friend of mine, comes over and says 'where's the real Waddy? That dirty sound you have?' I had that, of course. I thought they wanted me to do some swing kinda thing?

“So I get into that sound, and finally see Neil across this big room. He was behind all the baffles with headphones on. He says, 'I'm not playing on this, just singing.' But then I got called back for the next week at the Sony Sound Stage, California. For a beautiful song Neil had written with a full, full string section.

“They wanted me to do what I call my 'phoney' steel guitar. It's a Les Paul and a volume pedal. The '60 burst. I got a lot of gigs in L.A. early on just by doing that. The Les Paul and Bigsby plus a volume pedal – I could sound like a pedal steel guitar. So there's footage of that with the 'new' '60 from Neil's new record somewhere.”

Thanks Ron, LAOL!!

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