Robbie McIntosh

A while ago I stumbled across this video: John Mayer doing an amazing cover that seriously is way better than Tom Petty's original.



(watch a better version here without the lyrics)

I wondered who that sympathetic fellow with the white hair and the steel guitar was, and found out that this is an Englishman who has played with more than 30 well-known acts. Most prominently he provided guitar for The Pretenders and Sir Paul McCartney, but he also played with (for?) Norah Jones, Mike and the Mechanics, Joe Cocker, Roger Daltrey, Talk Talk, Mark Knopfler and - holy crap - Boyzone. Dude's been around.




McIntosh playing a small solo piece on stage with Paul McCartney. It's a tiny joy of melodical sweetness, seriously, I really like it. It doesn't seem like much, but he sounds like two guitars at once, which makes this song almost classical. And he delivers the melody with such a breathtaking precision that it's just a joy to watch.
Little anecdote: McIntosh was a very good friend of Douglas Adams, who actually urged McIntosh to record a solo album. From his homepage:

"Prior to [recording his band's debut], at his mate Douglas Adams' insistence, Robbie had recorded all his instrumental tunes. "This was a collection of compositions and arrangements that I just played for fun at home to amuse myself. Douglas insisted that I record them. This collection became the album Unsung, which was to be my second album, even though it was recorded before Emotional Bends."

 Douglas Adams and Robbie McIntosh jamming away on Adams' 42nd birthday. Did you notice Adams was a lefty? Never knew. RIP.

Image belongs to RobbieMcIntosh.com.

 While a master with the acoustic guitar, McIntosh shows some intense skills on the slide guitar and the bottle neck. Watch in awe:





Incredible. A nice blues and a beautiful sound due to the metal bottle neck, and again just perfect precision. I'm really not a fan of anything country-like, but this is grand.

Something else I found out: one of the initial band members of McIntosh's band project was Pino Palladino, a bass guitar grandeur with a long life of stage presence. He also accompanied John Mayer on his Try!-Tour, where he and Steve Jordan (Steve Jordan!) formed the rhythm section to Mayer's guitar. The videoclip from the beginning of this post was taken from Mayer's live DVD Where the Light is, where Mayer performed an acoustic set, a Trio set and a set with his pop band, ending the show with all his band members on stage for three more songs - reuniting Palladino and McIntosh on stage. I know it's not important or anything, but I really like how music always seems to come full circle, this being another good example.