From the Vaults: Brian Ray
No, that is not a typo. When I cracked open the July 2025 issue of Guitar World (Vol. 46, Issue No. 7), I initially read the headline as ‘Brian May’ and thought, “Wow, he has been getting a lot of press lately.” Upon closer inspection, I realized it actually said ‘McCartney’s Brian Ray’. It only took me a moment to realize my mistake but not before my mind began wondering what the Queen guitarist was doing playing with Paul McCartney. One of the things that always fascinates me about a musician is their back story: when did they get interested in music and how did they get to where they are today? Whether they are weekend warriors or professionals, their stories are always of interest to me. Obviously, seeing ‘McCartney’s Brian Ray’ on the cover of GW tells you he isn’t ‘a weekend warrior’, so let us dig a little deeper into his story.
If you have seen any videos (or perhaps even a live show) of Paul McCartney’s touring band over the last twenty years, you have seen Brian Ray. He has been the second guitar player in Sir Paul’s band since 2002. When McCartney wants to play guitar, it is Ray who slides over to bass. Ray came to be in Paul’s band after blowing an opportunity to tour with Shakira. Brian had worked on an album with Shakira and was asked to tour with her. He was satisfied with the salary they offered but with the extensive travel ahead, he requested flying in business class. When her management turned down his request and found someone else, he thought he had lost a long term gig of no small proportions.
When his old friend Abe Laboriel Jr. attended Ray’s birthday party, he mentioned McCartney was thinking of doing a song before the National Anthem at the upcoming Super Bowl in New Orleans. Brian asked Abe (who was already drumming in the band), “Who’s going to play guitar when Paul plays bass, and who’s going to play bass when Paul plays guitar?” Laboriel replied, “Actually, we’re looking for a guitar player who plays a little bass.” When Ray said, “I would love a shot at that,” his friend said he would put his name forward. Not long after, Paul’s long time producer, David Kahne, made contact. After he played some guitar and bass for him, Kahne said, “I’ve got a good feeling about this. I’ll put your name forward…but, I have to be honest: there are four other guys that are in the running. I don’t really have control over it, but I wish you good luck.”
Ray departed the meeting thinking he had been given a good shot at it and at least had an interesting story to tell. The next day, his phone rang: “Can you be on a plane tomorrow to go to New Orleans to play one song with Paul McCartney?” His audition, if you can call it that, was playing the song Freedom with Paul’s band before Super Bowl XXXVI. Over drinks after the game, Paul shared a lot of stories before announcing it was time to retire. Before he headed to bed, he told Ray, “Goodnight, Brian. Welcome aboard. Stick with Rusty (the other guitar player) – he’ll show you the ropes.” When Guitar World’s Joe Bosso said, “No pressure at all,” Brian laughed: “No. None!” (Incidentally, U2 did the halftime show at SB XXXVI).
As it turns out, Ray’s ‘no audition’ audition with McCartney isn’t the strangest route to a gig he has had in his career. He began playing guitar at the age of nine and, with his older sister Jean’s permission, began mining her collection of rock albums. Jean was in a folk duo called Jim and Jean and invited the 15 year-old Brian to play at the Troubadour with them. He points out that, “She was probably the most influential person in my early life.” Growing up in Glendale, California, he was in a high school band with a drummer named Bryan Englund whose mother was actor Cloris Leachman. Leachman was dating Bobby Pickett who happened to stop by when the band was rehearsing. Pickett liked what he heard and asked the band if they would like to do some gigs with him.
Pickett, best known for his novelty hit Monster Mash, took the Crypt-Kicker 5 to places like Six Flags in Texas, a gig in Missouri, and other assorted places. Brian told Bosso, “We did our own sort of zombie makeup, and my late sister came out with us and sang. It was a seasonal novelty 40-minute set based on The Twist, Monster Mash, and Me and My Mummy. He had an assistant who played Renfield (Count Dracula’s fanatically devoted servant). He’d come out and throw chicken wings at the kids. It was a lot of fun.”
A benefit gig with Pickett brought Brian his second opportunity when he met manager / producer Phil Kaufman. Kaufman informed Ray he was working with the legendary Etta James and invited the young guitarist to attend a rehearsal as their guitar player was unavailable. If rehearsing with James wasn’t enough to jangle his nerves, the location (the famous Troubadour club) may have been. Ray told GW, “It was wild – there was Etta James and all these killer players. I was shy and kind of sat there, but Etta said to Phil, ‘I like that little white kid.’”
“She asked me if I’d like to play the next night in Long Beach. I was so young. I had just turned 18.” Young or not, Ray ended up spending the next 14 years working in James’ band. Ray continued, “Etta loved guitar, and in concert she did a lot of bumping rhythm and blues. It was very blues rock. She wanted me to rip. When I would play a solo, she’d keep yelling at me, ‘Play! Play!’ I had a great experience with her, and eventually, I became her musical director.”
It is interesting that Ray felt so at home in a blues based act. Growing up in California, his influences were mostly power pop bands. “I’m a West Coast guy, so that stuff is in my roots,” he says. “The Plimsouls, Dwight Twilley, the Knack – they were awesome. Of course, power pop can be traced earlier to the Raspberries and the Sweet, and then that got adopted by Cheap Trick. Even Tom Petty was power pop at times. I have my rootsy side, but I also have my pop side. In my music, they sort of dance together.” The ‘my music’ part of the equation includes working with his side project garage band, The Bayonets. Together they have released, as Bosso explains it, “A series of punch power pop albums and singles that recall the ebullient, hard-driving, and hook-laden sounds that dominated the Southern California scene in the late Seventies.”
The Guitar World article was spawned by the release of Ray’s most recent album, My Town.
It is a kind of greatest hits collection but also includes four new tracks recorded with his old friend (and McCartney band drummer) Abe Laboriel Jr, bassists Scott Shriner (from Weezer) and Davey Farragner (from Elvis Costello’s the Imposters). The lead single, Bad 4 U was co-written with the head of his label (and another music legend), Steven Van Zandt. Van Zandt is perhaps more widely known as ‘Little Steven’ from Bruce Springsteen’s band but that is only one the musical things that keeps him busy.
From his days as a founding member of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes to his latest solo band project (The Disciples of Soul), Little Steven has been deeply involved producing records with younger musicians. Many of the artists he signs to his Wicked Cool record label also get airplay on Steven’s Sirius radio show, Underground Garage. The Wicked Cool label is geared toward garage rock, so this makes sense. Ray says his label boss , “…will pick a track and put it on his ‘Coolest Songs in the World’ channel. He’s a big believer in what he plays and gets involved in, and I’m very happy to work with him.”
Ray likens Van Zant to the old style A&R guys who groomed bands for their labels. They spend a lot of time talking about music and Little Steven’s contributions are taken seriously. Brian described how he thought he had finished his song Bad 4 U but Van Zant had other ideas:
“I had the music all done, but Steven said, ‘This lyric, you’ve got to move it into the chorus. We have to hear the chorus in a big way, because it’s everything.’ I didn’t want to do it at first because I thought it was finished, but then, I was like, ‘(Expletive deleted), he’s right. That is a better idea.’ He was great about hooks moving into hooks. He understands that so well.”
Brian had a lot of help getting adjusted to McCartney’s music with Rusty Anderson guiding him. First, Ray had to go home and brush up on his bass playing. He had always played the bass parts on his solo recordings, but playing Paul McCartney’s iconic lines was a bit different. After woodshedding the vast catalog of songs Sir Paul is likely to play, he found himself getting comfortable with the situation. He describes McCartney’s playing as ‘iconic and memorable and musical’: “Thankfully, Paul’s bass lines are not really technically challenging. Because they are so listenable, they’re easy to understand. Let’s face it – they’re in our bloodstreams. Even if you’re not a bass player, you know those parts. They’re in your head.”
Anderson was the first guitar player in the band so Ray followed his lead. Rusty plays the lion’s share of the solos, but over time Paul has asked Brian to play more and more of them. Brian says, “We just naturally fall into who plays what, though sometimes we talk about it. ‘Why don’t you play the lower part here,’ or ‘You want to play the higher part?’ At the end of the show, we do the guitar shoot-out on The End with Paul, Rusty, and me doing solos. I come in last, so I do the John Lennon parts.”
As for his song writing style, Bosso asked if he was a fast writer or one who labors over songs: “I’m pretty fast. Sometimes it starts with a guitar lick, but it could be a vocal melody or lyric idea. I try to figure out what the song is about, then I’m good. In the case of Bad 4 U, it’s basically autobiographical. I was a blond, smiley kid from Glendale, California, but I wanted to be Robert De Niro because I thought that’s what the girls liked.
When asked about the guitars he used on My Town, Ray counted down his 1965 Epiphone Casino, Les Pauls, and SGs: “I like vintage stuff, it just sounds better. On some things I played a Hofner bass – don’t tell Paul [laughs] – sometimes I used Fender basses and a Vox Phantom IV bass.” I watched a clip of his first gig with McCartney (at the Super Bowl) and he was playing bass (McCartney was on acoustic guitar). It wasn’t a Hofner bass, but it sounded good. You would never have known it was his first gig with the band.
During his days with Etta James, Ray shared the stage with a lot of famous musicians including Keith Richards, Santana, Joe Cocker, Bonnie Raitt, John Lee Hooker, and Bo Diddley. When he moved into more songwriting, he found himself collaborating with the likes of Peter Frampton, Rita Coolidge, Nicolette Larson, Michael Steele (of the Bangles), and Steve LeGassick with whom he spent 13 years as a songwriting partner. When he asked James to sing on one of his solo albums, she simply said, “I would do anything for Brian,”
No doubt the downtime he is experiencing in 2025 will be filled with session work, playing out with his side projects, and writing more new music for his next solo album. McCartney has not scheduled any tour dates this year and hints there may be a new album in the works. With that said, people are already looking forward to seeing Sir Paul on the road again in 2026. Even as he approaches the age of 83, McCartney does like to keep himself busy.
Bosso reminded Ray of his ‘outrageous demand’ to fly business class, the lynch pin that scuttled his spot touring with Shakira. He asked if his travels with Paul via private jet was a step up: “Paul is very generous and he takes really good care of us. He takes us on little excursions between dates when we’re out in the middle of nowhere. He’ll find some cool resort to take us to, which is lovely. It’s a combination of every kind of travel you can imagine.” Bosso asks, “No complaints there, huh?” Ray’s final words on the subject clearly show he has landed in the right spot: “Oh, no. None at all!”
Top Piece Video: Brian Ray’s Super Bowl audition for Paul McCartney’s band. That would be him on Sir Paul’s left playing bass.