THE ORIGINAL CHAMELEON: CHRIS SPEDDING

If all of the albums on which Chris Spedding has played guitar were to suddenly disappear tomorrow, the world would be deprived of a considerable body of music. As one of England’s most sought-after session guitarists, Spedding has found himself on an incredible array of albums, playing an even more incredible array of musical styles. In the process, he’s become somewhat of a legend in his own right.

Although he has recently taken to adopting an ersatz James Dean motorbikin’ guitar-jockey pose in return for some new wave appeal, Spedding’s roots are nothing if not deep. A contemporary of the first wave of rockin’ Englishmen, he was playing in bands as early as 1960 (don’t let those boyish good looks fool you) before entering the limelight supporting such artists as Alan Price, Paul Jones, and Pete Brown. He first appeared as a session player on Jack Bruce’s Songs For A Tailor LP, and though he worked for a while with the Battered Ornaments and Ian Carr’s jazz band Nucleus, session work began to dominate his time.

For a while it seemed that Spedding had a knack for showing up on some of the coolest albums to emerge from the English art rock scene, one of the few things happening during the early 70’s. He added a razor sharp edge to John Cale’s dynamic Slow Dazzle and Helen Of Troy sets, and also appeared with Bryan Ferry on the latter’s Let’s Stick Together solo album. Spedding also formed part of the starstudded entourage that gave us Roy Harper’s remarkable HQ/When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease LP, and also toured with Harper to promote it.

On the other hand, when you’ve had your finger in as many pies as Spedding has, they can’t all have been cherry. His work with such notable ho-hums as Donovan, Dusty Springfield, David Essex, Gilbert O’Sullivan and Lulu characterizes his “plug me in anywhere” approach. Even more revealing, however, is the fact that for a time, Spedding was a full-fledged (albeit heavily disguised) member of the Wombles, a furTy-animal kiddies group roughly equivalent to America’s old afterschool favorites, the Banana Splits! How’s that for artistic credibility?

As a sidelight to his session work for others, Spedding found time in ’71 and ’72 to record a pair of interesting but unexceptional solo albums that bore the typical albatross of sideman-turned-frontman LPs: they were all chops with nowhere to go. Following these, Spedding joined up with ex-Free bassist Andy Fraser and singer Snips to form Sharks, and together they released a pair of tasteful hard rock LPs and toured America with Roxy Music. Their debut First Water was well received by the few people who heard it, but not enough people heard it to matter much, and after recording the follow-up Jab It In Yore Eye with the indomitable Busta Jones replacing Fraser, the band split up.

With the advent of punk and its myriad offshoots and antecedents, Spedding took another shot at solo success, and this time he had a minor hit with the Mickie Mostproduced “Motorbikin”’ (which wasn’t anything great but still better than Gilbert O’Sullivan). He has since put out several albums in addition to working with Robert Gordon, whose studiously excellent rockabilly reworkings were complemented perfectly by Spedding’s impeccably sharp guitar work.

In all of his many setting Spedding has always maintained his crisp, flashy style and an ability to keep one step ahead of the perfunctoriness that plagues many session players. So Snorky, Fleagle, if you’re out there and reading this, and looking for a really hot guitar player, I know just the fellow...

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