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December 15, 2003
The La Habra Journal
By
Sam
Williams, freelance writer
Long and Winding Road Less Traveled
Rusty Anderson knows better than to question fate.
As a guy who went from playing Beatles riffs in his bedroom as kid to
playing Beatles riffs onstage alongside Paul McCartney as an adult,
Anderson, a 40-something La Habra native who now lives in Los Angeles, will
be the first to admit that his life story exhibits a certain beautiful
symmetry. Beyond that, however, things get pretty complicated.
"You know, I always thought I was in it for the music," he says with a
laugh. "I think now I can finally admit to myself that I'm just in it for
the chicks."
Joking aside, Anderson is brutally honest when looking back on his musical
career, one that stretches past three decades. Things could have turned out
much differently, sure, but for a guy who fell in love with the guitar at
the age of five and never looked back, the number of parallel universe
outcomes is pretty small.
"Every young person asks, 'Am I doing the right thing?'" Anderson says.
"Looking back, I had those doubts all the time. One thing I never
questioned, though, was the guitar. On paper, I'll admit, the guitar isn't
really a good thing to do for a career, but I never questioned it. I focused
on it and that focusing gave me a sort of tunnel vision that helped me block
out other things."
Anderson's latest project, the solo studio album "Undressing Underwater," is
a chance to take the whirlwind impressions of his the last two years as a
lead guitarist for McCartney and connect them in a meaningful way with the
lifelong memories of a music fanatic. Recorded between touring and studio
commitments with McCartney & Co., it features many of the friends who have
nurtured Anderson's career. David Kahne, the producer who hired Anderson to
play on the 2001 McCartney solo album "Driving Rain", a gig that earned
Anderson a spot in McCartney's band, is one of three producers, alongside
ELO-producer Parthenon Huxley and Godsmack-producer Mudrock.
As for musicians, McCartney and the rest of Anderson's current bandmates
make a guest appearance on the album's lead track, "Hurt Myself" as does
ex-Police drummer Stewart Copeland, another old friend, on "Catbox Beach."
Such cameos are a testament to the good karma Anderson has accrued in an
industry known for short memories. They also give Anderson a chance to pay
tribute to the many friends who have helped Anderson keep his musical focus
laser-sharp.
"There's been some people who've definitely been a huge support and put
their ass on the line for me," Anderson says. "That's what it takes in this
business. You can't do it alone."
The theme of friendship goes all the way back to Anderson's days as a member
of La Habra High's class of 1976. As a teenager, he says, the primary
challenge wasn't how to find the local outdoor stadium or how to keep the
guitar tracks in phase but how to avoid attracting the attention of kids who
took a dim view of guitar geeks heavy into offbeat acts like Frank Zappa and
Captain Beefheart.
"My friends were all musicians," says Anderson, looking back. "If they
weren't musicians, I'd literally force them to become musicians. I'd say,
'You want to be my friend? Here, play bass.'"
Such challenges helped Anderson build his first rock group, Eulogy, at age
of 13. Stars of the local keg party ciruit and victors of an amateur "Battle
of the Bands" competition, the band built up enough buzz to attract the
attention of a few Hollywood record labels. Invited to audition for
legendary Arista Records executive Clive Davis, the band failed to impress
and quickly lost both confidence and momentum as a result.
Eulogy's demise, while frustrating, offered an early lesson in music
industry survival. As Van Halen, another veteran of the same late-1970s teen
party circuit, went on to international stardom, Anderson started up a new
group, the Living Daylights, and helped make ends meet by teaching guitar at
Whittier Music. A demo tape for the Daylights found its way to Kahne, then
working as a producer for the Bangles. Kahne hired Anderson to lay down a
few Hendrix-inspired reverse guitar tracks on the group's 1985 album, "A
Different Light."
For the next decade and half, Anderson achieved steady success as a studio
musician, performing and writing songs for the Wallflowers, Jewel, Perry
Farrel, not to mention his own group projects, Animal Logic and the
mid-1990s alternative rock band Ednaswap. In 1998, Anderson contributed the
signature guitar riff to Ricky Martin's breakout hit "Livin' La Vida Loca,"
chiseling is guitar style into the annals of pop history.
Finally, in 2001, he found himself sitting in the same studio with Paul
McCartney, the songwriter whose 1960s hits had triggered Anderson's lifelong
love-affair with the electric guitar in the first place.
"That's sort of the story of my life," says Anderson, looking back on the
initial failed audition that set everything in motion. "Good things have
happened. They seemed like failures at first, but they really were
successes. I never in million years would have thought I was going to be
playing with Paul McCartney."
Since joining McCartney, Anderson's career has been a steady succession of
"top this" moments: the Concert for New York City in 2001, a live charity
performance in the Roman Coliseum this spring. To communicate with crowds
in places like Tokyo, Stockholm, & Mexico City, Anderson has taken to
bringing a tape recorder onstage, playing back greetings translated into the
native language by a local musician or obliging celebrity.
"My sister Hope learned Russian fluently and now lives over there," Anderson
says. "When I went to Moscow, she came a long and played translator both in
the street and for the tape. That was really fun."
Playing songs like "Hey Jude" and "Jet," Anderson has had to reacquaint
himself with tunes and sounds he'd thought he'd completely memorized by the
age of 17. The relearning process has forced him to reassess his own
evolving memories. One of the most poignant songs on the album for Anderson
is "Electric Trains," a song that stitches together impressions from his
days as a kid growing up in La Habra with memories of an older brother who
died when Rusty was only five.
"It's about memories and what it means to come from a place and all the
experiences you have," Anderson says. "I wrote the song and then I realized
as I was rewriting it that my brother was really what the song was about. I
think anyone that has experienced someone, the loss of someone in their
family, it takes years to get it into some sort of life perspective. You go
through all these phases. At the end, you reach this phase where you're glad
that they were there and that you carry them with you all the time. I think
that's really the lineage that human beings leave on each other. We're all
products of the people that we've loved and cared about."
Anderson punctuates the thought with yet another laugh, "Growing up is
losing things and gaining things. Morphing into the freak that you're
destined to become."
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