CHRIS SPEDDING’S LONG career has seen him move from first-call session musician for 1960s pop producers to solo chart success at the height of the U.K. glam-pop scene, in 1975. In later years, his most visible role for U.S. audiences has been as Robert Gordon’s longest-standing collaborator. Along the way, he contributed to many of the biggest-selling solo albums by Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry.
For someone with such an extensive catalog, Spedding makes a surprising admission. “I don’t really listen to anything that I’ve played on,” he says. “For about 99 percent of it, there’s always something I wish I’d done better. I did record ‘It’s So Easy to Fall In Love’ a few years ago for a tribute to Buddy Holly, where I played an extended solo that I look back on as really great. That’s probably a favorite of mine, but it’s not actually on any of my own albums.”
Spedding applied the same sense of perfectionism to the work he did for other artists. “Time constraints were always an issue, and I would usually be the only one who wasn’t satisfied,” he explains. “I’d go by the reactionwas the most important thing. I learned early on not to ask if I can go for another take as, invariably, it often wasn’t as good as the first one anyway. Really, you’re just happy that you’re getting the work and people like what you’re doing.”
