GUN FOR HIRE - Jamie Moses

- With a seemingly different band for every night of the week and more than enough top gigs to fill his days, Jamie Moses is probably responsible for the current high unemployment figures among session men.

- He's shared a stage with Slash and Paul McCartney, had stints with the Pretenders, The Hollies and  the Boomtown Rats, and provided energetic six string backup for "Tommy" and, most recently, for Brian May's first world tour. On top of that he goes out regularly with all-star conglomeration The SAS Band (more later), fronts Los Pacaminos with Paul Young and leads vibrant pub-band-for-hire World Famous Red Socks. But for Jamie Moses, entry into the gun for hire world of professional playing began in the 70s with his own band, Merlin.

"At the time we were called Madrigal," Jamie says, "but then the name changed - this was 73 - and we got a production deal with Roger Greenaway, who decided he wanted a pop band. We did an album for CBS and toured supporting David Essex who was at Number One at the time, so it was great for us. The band was doing really well and Greenaway promised us the world. But the tour ended and he finished paying us. We asked him what we were supposed to do and he said, Give up, I don't give a toss. So we did."

- Sessions with stars like Olivia Newton-John became the order of Jamie's day, before an old friend opened the way for a two and a half year tour with the Boomtown Rats.

"Andy Hamilton - the sax player with George Michael and Duran Duran - and Spike Edney [Queen's keyboard player] used to be in a band called Smiling Hard at the same time as I was with Merlin, and so we were mates. I never heard from them for about 15 years, and suddenly out of the blue I got a call from Andy saying, Would you do a couple of promos and videos for Geldof? He had been playing horns in the Rats along with Spike, and they were looking for a guitarist to tour with. Spike suggested me and I
auditioned; they said I was crap but they'd have me anyway." The Geldof connection was to lead to bigger things, but not before Jamie had another solo blast at the charts, this time as Broken English.

"That was good fun and we scored a couple of hit singles. We put "Coming On Strong" out as an anonymous white label and it got loads of attention because the DJs thought it sounded like the Stones! I think it got to Number 18 or something in the end, so that wasn't bad.

"After that I was actually with the Pretenders for about a year and a half. That was weird: we didn't do one gig or record one note but we rehearsed shitloads! We did a couple of videos and loads of TV as well, but I think Chrissie just needed to be busy."

- Time spent in Townshend's West End production of "Tommy" followed before another high profile rhythm job produced itself - again through a friend - as part of The Brian May Band.

"Eventually Spike left the Rats to join Queen on the road, and then Brian's solo band. Chris Thompson was originally in Brian's band as a backing singer, but he wanted to do his own thing. I don't know what happened to the guitarist they had, but Spike suggested me for both gigs.

"Brian's been a long time hero of mine, since the Merlin days in fact. We had a thing set up by Melody Maker where they profiled Merlin and Queen next to each other. It was a thing called "Hype in the Pop Market" or something. Queen were the EMI band, Merlin were the CBS band, and they were saying that there was loads of money being put into both, and that we were both aiming at the same kind of market. Obviously one band did a bit better than the other! When we started rehearsals for Brian's first tour, I brought this article in to show Brian and his jaw dropped. He said, I remember Merlin! Were you in that band? Then he did his "Uuuummmmm" that he does, you know, and his eyebrows go up. Very amusing."

- The tour took the band the world over, usually as headliners, but sometimes as support for Guns N' Roses. Was it a case of superstars together when it came to the travelling arrangements?

"No, never, or maybe once, because they badgered him into it. They said, Oh come on our plane, and I remember him saying to us, You don't mind, do you guys? I thought, Christ, it's your gig, you do what you want! The next time he went he took us with him on their plane, which is quite something. Surfing in the aisles as you're taking off and everything - the usual airline etiquette doesn't apply on the Guns N' Roses plane. But they had their own creche at the back for all the kids, quite unbelievable; they certainly travelled in style.

"We were worried that they were going to be hard to open for because the fans want to see Guns. And in America Queen are obviously huge, but not to the extent that everyone knows their names, except for Freddie. So when we were announced as Brian May they said, Who? But as soon as Brian said, I used to play with a little group called Queen, then everybody would go, Woahhhhhhhh! and from that moment on everything's cool. But we went down incredibly well, considering who we were opening for."

- For a rhythm player, Jamie got a fair share of solos with Brian....

"Yeah, they seemed to increase as the tour went on, sometimes on the spur of the moment. We'd be doing  "Tie Your Mother Down" or something, and suddenly Brian would just nod to me, and I'd have to go flying out the front busking furiously, thinking, Christ, what's he going to think of this? Unfortunately it wasn't the punters I was playing to; in the back of my mind I've got Brian May standing there looking at me, which is a little bit disconcerting."

- Just as awe inspiring as playing Brian's Red Special guitar.

"Yeah, sometimes if he didn't go to soundchecks I'd have to soundcheck it. It's an unbelievable guitar. His string gauges are like hair, so light you wouldn't think that you would get the sound out that you do. He's pretty loud onstage, so I'd just nudge the volume control and say, Give us Brian's guitar, and when you play the whole stage moves three inches left. Wonderful, beautiful sound; sustains forever.

"I've got one of the Guild copies - a green one which Brian gave to me, and they're great guitars. But you see, half of his sound is in his setup - his Voxes and a couple of those little Pete Cornish boxes. So although mine sounds a lot like his guitar going through the rig I was using, it will never sound completely like him unless you duplicate his whole rig.

"My normal guitar is my trusty purple Blade, but I've also got a nice "silverstreak" which has a humbucker on the back and two single coils. It's the most striking looking guitar, it's got a silver chrome scratchplate and it's also got silver pickup covers, flat ones, and all chrome bits. And they do this great thing where they spray the guitar silver, sand it all down so the silver is left only in the grain, then put a black see-through sunburst over the top of it. My purple one is beaten up to shit, but I like it like that. I've put stripes on the back to correspond with the fret monitor. Because I have this theory - call me old fashioned - that as you look down at the guitar, you don't see the front of the neck, you see the back, so even on a darkened stage I make the 12th fret a different colour, the others white if it's a dark neck, and I do most of my guitars like that, so you can instantly see where you are. Tiger stripe effect. Funky.

"Setup-wise, with Brian I was using two AC30 heads, going into a couple of Hi-Watt 100 heads, slaved up and then going into four 4x12 cabs. Now they were actually Marshall 4x12s, but the crew had them recovered with Vox fronts. We asked Vox to give us four 4x12s but they said we had enough. So we approached Marshall and they said, No, but you can have them at a god price. In the end we bought the Marshalls but we weren't going to give them the publicity for using them, so we covered them in Vox who didn't get a thing off us, because we didn't buy anything off them!

"For my normal setup I use a couple of cherished old Fender 75s, which are very rare. They're the closest thing that Fender have ever done to a Boogie, in fact they're designed by Paul Rivera, who designed the Boogie. They were only made in 1980 for a year. They give a wonderful sound, a beautiful warm, smooth sound.

"I had a rack full of stuff as well, until I got one of those MESA/ Boogie V Twin pedals, which is a great pedal that'll turn a pile of shit into a great sounding amp. Other than that I've got a rack with a SE70 Boss, and an old SD1000 delay, a Boss Graphic, a Multiverb and a tuner in it. I've got myself a little pedalboard together with the V Twin, a little Boss chorus pedal, a tuner pedal and a little analogue delay thing, and it's given the guitar more bollocks."

- With Brian, Jamie took lead duties on the country style "Let Your Heart Rule Your Head". Was Mr May not up to it, perhaps?

"Well, I'm not better than him at anything, but maybe I've played more of it; being brought up on US air force bases we used to do the Airmen's Club, the Officers' Club and the MCO Club all on the same airbase. The Officers' Club wanted country, the Airmen's Club wanted soul, and at the MCO Club you could get away with a bit of Hendrix, a bit of Creedence Clearwater and some Sly And The Family Stone; you had to do everything and do it convincingly."

- Such country grounding has proved useful for his latest gig, backing rising C&W star Deana Carter.

"Actually, she said the last thing she wants to be known as is country, although with that accent I suppose it's kinda hard for her to get away from that. But she's from Nashville, her old man is Fred Carter Junior, a Nashville session guitarist who's been going for many years, playing with Elvis and Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. They're all mates of her dad's, so they knew her as a kid. Then one day she said, Oh, I've written some songs, y'all wanna hear 'em. Uncle Willie heard them and said, You've just passed your audtion for Farm Aid - and so she was the only female on the bill."

- The Brian May Tour may have finished, but Jamie and Co have stayed together, regularly going out as the SAS Band.

"Yeah we do weddings, funerals, whatever!" he laughs. "The band is basically Brian's band without Brian: Neil Murray, Spike, myself, Cozy Powell and Cathy Porter. And we've got Chris Thompson from Manfred Mann doing lead vocals; I sing a couple, he does most of them, but then we have these guest singers come up. In the past we've had everyone from PJ Proby to Brian and Roger from Queen, Paul Young, Kiki Dee, Tony Hadley, Fish, Mark Shaw and recently, Paul Rodgers. We've just done a month of Saturdays at the Bottom Line in Shepherd's Bush, which went down great, and we'll be back there again soon.

"I've also got a pub band which is great fun, called the World Famous Red Socks, so if you see them anywhere come along. It's a very informal thing. We do requests, whatever anyone shouts up."

- They also do private parties...

"I got this call from someone who said she'd like to book us. She said it was her 25th birthday and there was a silver theme, so we had to hire silver lame suits. She said her name was Mary, and as we were talking I just got this feeling: the party was at her parents' farm in Sussex, she was half American like me, only it was on her mother's side; and the family was all vegetarian. She left me a works number so after she went I couldn't resist and phoned back and this voice said, Hello, MPL Productions. I couldn't believe she was Paul McCartney's daughter and we were playing at his house! "We did a bit of rehearsing and even tried out the Beatles' "Birthday". I was a bit worried about that in case he was there, so I cleared it with someone at MPL. When the night came, it was great, and Paul and Linda were there standing at the back. When it came to Birthday I looked at him and he actually came up on stage. He really got into it, although he kept pulling me towards him and saying, I can't remember the words!"

- Finally, any words of advice for would-be players?

"You've just got to play and play and play, do pubs, clubs, whatever you can and do them for very little money or nothing in order to get to know the people, in the hopes that the next time they do something they're gonna say, Ooh, how about that guy..., if their normal guy can't make it. Also, learn to sing because it means they can take on one person when they would've had to take on two. They're not only saving a wage, they're saving a hotel room, flights, everything."