Paul McCartney's Rusty Anderson - Interview

Usually you’ll find sideman extraordinaire Rusty Anderson lending his guitar strings to the albums and tours of Paul McCartney, as he has for the past four and a half years, or to Stanley Clarke and Stewart Copeland in Animal Logic, Elton John, Santana, Stevie Nicks, Jewel, the Wallflowers, Gwen Stefani, and many more, but finally Anderson steps stage-front on his first solo record, Undressing Underwater (Surfdog).

“Every musician has something to try to get out and you want people to hear it,” says Anderson. “You want to connect with the outside world and I was just ready.”

From creating memorable riffs for others, like the guitar hook that drove Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” straight to the top of the international charts, Anderson moved to assembling his own hired guns on the just-released CD. Sir Paul makes a cameo on the track “Hurt Myself,” while Police drummer Stewart Copeland performs on “Catbox Beach.” Anderson’s neighbor/producer Mudrock (Godsmack, Alice Cooper, Avenged Sevenfold) joined in on production and longtime friend, Parthenon Huxley, agreed to co-produce. The result is the ultimate guitar album for non-guitarists.

“In a way I almost put the guitar on the back burner and focused more on lyrics and melodies and making sure songs were songy as opposed to guitar jams or something,” says Anderson. “I’ve been in so many head spaces as a musician…I just like music and I don’t like to be constricted to some sort of stereotype as far as being a guitar player and doing a guitar record, although I love the guitar as an instrument and I think it’s the greatest instrument ever. It’s very expressive and it has a lot of personality and a lot of anger and tenderness.”

Anderson began writing the record in between legs of the Paul McCartney tours and plans to continue performing with the former Beatle and others, but the process of creating something has become a new lift-off point in his career.

“I’m really stoked to be playing music for a living and I feel very blessed to be playing with Paul McCartney and to have played with the great artists that I have,” says Anderson. “It’s very therapeutic to make music and I think at the core of any artist, that’s kind of what keeps driving you. It returns you to yourself and gives you a feeling of wholeness. I think making a record almost gives you an excuse to commit to your own therapy—your own self-realization or something. That’s what I’ve experienced. I think its Picasso who said, ‘Art is never finished, only abandoned.’”

Anderson performs with Paul McCartney on October 4-5 at Madison Square Garden.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 9/21/05.

Rusty Anderson singing "I've Got A Feeling" with Paul McCartney.