The axeman cometh

The jobbing guitarist is the hard man of pop. He is both its constant factor and its artful dodger. A few, like Andy Summers, go from studio to centre stage. By David Jeffcock

You've strummed through Bert Weedon's Play in a Day, you've copped the licks from all your favourite records, you know how to play F#13(9). What's next for the would-be star axeman, or axelady? You can't write off to your favourite band for a trial.

If you've really got your chops down, session work could be the answer. Stax maestro Steve Cropper is, after all, now nearly as well known as the singers he backed.

But he's the exception. How many pop-pickers have heard of Big Jim Sullivan, for example, who played sessions for everyone from Tom Jones to The Kinks, Marty Wilde to The Walker Brothers?

Slightly better known are two of Big Jim's proteges, Ritchie Blackmore and "Little Jim" - Jimmy Page. Bored with session work, Page had the bright idea of forming the biggest band in the world. Blackmore came up with the most boring riff in it.

But before the arrival of the extended solo, your non-singing axeman was seldom in the spotlight. So there was Duane Eddy and Hank Marvin, but how many fans of Elvis, Gene Vincent or Ricky Nelson knew the names of Scotty Moore, Cliff Gallup or James Burton?

Many a well-regarded guitarist never made it big at all, even by proxy - Ollie Halsall, for example, who played with such as Neil Innes, Kevin Ayers, Boxer, Jon Hiseman's Tempest and Patto. If only you could bottle hindsight.

So, if you can't sing or you don't click with the record-buying public yourself, the next best thing is to play with someone who can. Players like Ry Cooder, pedal steel meister "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow, Al Kooper, Robert Fripp, Albert Lee, Wayne Perkins, Nils Lofgren, Dann Huff, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai could just about write their own contracts. Grateful employers include Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Emmylou Harris, Eric Clapton, Jackson Browne, Randy Newman, Captain Beefheart, Little Feat, Talking Heads, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, the Wailers, Elton John, Alice Cooper, Frank Zappa, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder and Peter Gabriel. To name but a few.

Getting the call from one of these 600lb gorillas is the rock 'n' roll equivalent of a lead in the next Woody Allen film. But it isn't always so angst-free. The late Mick Ronson, after Bowie, played for such easy- going types as Dylan, Van Morrison, Lou Reed, Roger McGuinn and Morrissey.

Today, guitarists like ex-Smith Johnny Marr (Paul McCartney, Bryan Ferry, Talking Heads, The The, The Pretenders, Electronic) and, coming up on the rails, Bernard Butler (Suede, McAlmont/ Butler) are staking their claim as the guys you just have to have on your next album or tour. And we mustn't forget Mark Knopfler.

Of course, you can be playing in the biggest band in the world and still be standing in the shadows - Mick Taylor, for example. But when he left the Stones in 1974, there was no shortage of pretenders. Among those tipped by the music press, along with Tiny Tim, Tessie O'Shea and Uncle Tom Cobleigh, were Jeff Beck, Ry Cooder, Gram Parsons, Harvey Mandel, Wayne Perkins, and Rory Gallagher. And Ron Wood. Oh, and a certain Andy Summers.

"Small, frail, and good-looking" (but aren't we all?), Summers was the Melody Maker's nap. He, it thought, "would contrast with the hungry, debauched Keith Richards and avoid upstaging Mick".

History knew better, but it wasn't a bad shout. Joining the Stones would have been just one more surprising twist and turn in a career that's given us as good a route through the British rock scene as any.

In the early Eighties Andy Summers became famous with The Police, providing impossible-to-copy chords for a string of hit singles. But before that he'd done the lot. From record-player accompanist to hard-working, hump- our-own-gear musician, classical student to session man, jobbing guitarist to guitar superstar, these are the staging posts of his personal pop odyssey.

Zoot Money's Big Roll Band

Formed in 1964, the BRB made their name as house band at the renowned Flamingo all-niters, taking over from Georgie Fame. "You'd drive into Wardour Street at 11 o'clock, carefully manoeuvring past pill-popping mods. It was like Hades - hookers, drugs, knife fights. There was a stabbing on the stairs right as we stood there wedged up against the Hammond organ."

Dantalian's Chariot

The Big Roll Band metamorphosised into the full psychedelic monty - oil slides, white costumes and equipment, long trippy raga-tinged solos at the UFO and Middle Earth. The band broke up, and so did Summers's nose, after a car crash on the Yorkshire Moors.

The Soft Machine

In 1968 Summers briefly joined the band at Wyatt's invitation for a tour of the mid-West. Walking down Main Street, Columbus, Ohio, with shoulder- length hair and "as I remember it, a purple cloak", he and Kevin Ayers were booed and hissed. Nor was The Soft Machine's brand of Dadaist jazz/ rock smiled upon by audiences more familiar with Merle Haggard. "We used to do one riff called 'We Did It Again', that went 'we did it again... we did it again... that could go on for 30 minutes. It would send people into a trance-like state, or we'd get thrown off, whichever was the quicker." After a few months, Kevin Ayers decided that while three was a magic number, four was a crowd. "So I was out of the band."

The (New) Animals

Later in 1968 Summers joined up with Eric Burdon's new band. A tour of Japan came to an unscheduled halt when a local branch of the Yakuza kidnapped their manager and threatened to chop off his little finger. Having forced him to write out a cheque for several thousand dollars, they suggested the band might like to leave the country. Now.

Rock Goes to College

A four-year course at Northridge University, LA was Summers's next gig, "studying classical repertoire, harmony, composing, theory, piano, conducting, the whole nine yards".

The Session Man

On his return to England, in 1973, a poverty-stricken Summers worked for a variety of popsters. His first break came backing Neil Sedaka on tour, a deal brokered by the unlikely intermediary of Robert Fripp, who knew Sedaka's drummer.

"It was a pretty weird period." Some of it so weird, indeed, as to have been lost in the mists of denial. "Dana - is that an Irish girl singer? Oh yeah, I think it was a TV appearance."

A spell with the original Rocky Horror Show was followed by a performance of Tubular Bells at Newcastle City Hall, in which he impersonated the reclusive Mike Oldfield. (The support act featured a curiously named local muso called Sting.) Then recording work with Joan Armatrading (her tour manager, one Stewart Copeland).

My Two Kevins Period

Kevin Number One was ex-psychiatric therapist Coyne. "It was a great band, but rehearsals were very difficult. We'd have to get them in between 3 and 6, while the pubs were closed. As soon as they opened we'd have to sit around all night and do these heavy psycho-analytical sessions with Kevin."

Kevin Number Two was Summers's old friend Kevin Ayers. "Kevin had already gone to New York to prepare the way for a tour, and we were supposed to set off a few days later. But then he just disappeared, went off to the south of France."

Police Work

After a year of "severe poverty", a self-financed three-week tour of the States cracked it for the boys. "Message in a Bottle" put them into orbit, and by 1983 "Every Breath You Take" and Synchronicity were number one on both sides of the Atlantic. Nineteen years at the stump, and Andy Summers was in the biggest band in the world.

Summers Time

The band split at the height of their success. Since then Andy Summers has released seven solo albums, and two collaborations with Robert Fripp. The latest solo effort is Synaesthesia. Come again? The unifying of all the senses, squire, a mystic experience achieved through art, as explored by such standard rock influences as Baudelaire, Scriabin, Schoenberg, Messiaen, Ouspensky, Madame Blavatsky and Kandinsky. And Rick Parfitt. Well, you did ask.

n Andy Summers's 'Synaesthesia' is released 29 Jan (CMP Records)