![]() ![]() That was the great thing about the Pretenders, him and her meeting.Īnyway, he phoned me in September. She was into Mitch Ryder, Question Mark and the Mysterians, and punk stuff like the Ramones and the New York Dolls. Chrissie, of course, was more into garage rock. Jimmy was into the Beach Boys and the Beatles, the Who, and the Kinks. She just thrashes away on the Telecaster. He found that he was a bit restricted with just Chrissie’s strum. He just wanted to flesh the sound out a little bit for live. He wanted another guitar player so he could play a bit of piano. The year that he died, he got back in touch with me since he wanted to augment the band. One of the times he came up was when he did the audition with Chrissie. He came up to London and stayed with Graham and hung out with us. The Foster Brothers, going back a couple of years, Graham Foster, the head of the band, his ex-girlfriend moved to Hereford and started going out with James. How did you meet original Pretenders guitarist James Honeyman-Scott? I learned so much in a few short weeks just working with that guy. We weren’t working to a click in those days. They don’t speed up when they go through drum fills, those guys. Then having to create acoustic guitar overdubs, I’d just listen to the backbeat. The biggest penny of my life dropped at that moment. He just said, “Just listen to the hi-hat. Within two bars of me doing the intro, I was ahead of Rick’s count. The first track we did together was just an eye-opener for me. And Rick Marotta, Jim Keltner, all these guys played very much in the pocket, a very lazy backbeat. I’d just come from playing in pub bands in the U.K. And playing with him was the biggest learning curve ever in my career. I remember talking to him about The Royal Scam. He played with Linda Ronstadt for a long time. Rick played on loads of my favorite records by Randy Newman. He got rid of the drummer in the band and the keyboard player in the band, and brought in Nicky Hopkins on piano and Rick Marotta on drums. What happened is that Richard Perry was notoriously fussy as a record producer. He joined the Pretenders as lead guitarist in 1983, shortly after the death of founding member James Honeyman-Scott, and played on classics like “Middle of the Road” and “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” before stepping aside in 1987 to spend more time with his family. But McIntosh’s work with McCartney represents just a tiny percent of his musical resume. McCartney used McIntosh in the studio when he cut Flowers in the Dirt and Off the Ground, and he brought the guitarist back on the road for his 1993 New World Tour. “That tour was the high point of my life,” McIntosh tells Rolling Stone via Zoom from his home in Weymouth, England. McCartney had his choice of big-name players for the job, but he went with Robbie McIntosh. Pulling this off would require a guitarist who was capable of re-creating some very famous parts originally played by George Harrison and John Lennon. The Wings tours of the Seventies had featured only a smattering of Beatles songs, but this time around he was going to play nearly 20 a night. In the summer of 1989, Paul McCartney hit the road for the first time as a solo artist. ![]()
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