As a bassist’s bassist, Billy Sheehan has, not surprisingly, played with an assortment of similarly accomplished electric guitarists — from Dave Constantino in his first band, Talas, to Mike (K.) Krompass in his current group, the Fell.
The Buffalo native was, most famously, part of former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth’s band on his first solo album, Eat ’Em and Smile, and the accompanying tour, with Steve Vai on both. He formed Mr. Big after that with Paul Gilbert and has also logged time with Explorer’s Club, Niacin, the Winery Dogs (with Richie Kotzen), Sons of the Apollo (with Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal) and more. You’ll also find him on Kotzen’s solo albums and on recordings with Terry Bozzio, Tony MacAlpine, Michael Kocab and others.
“I’ve just started to create a catalog of everyone I’ve recorded with, and what songs I did, and it’s going to be gargantuan,” Sheehan tells us with a laugh via Zoom from his home studio in Nashville. “It’s a Herculean task. It’s a reminder of all the great players I’ve been fortunate enough to work with… ’cause you never really stop and think about it all at once. You look at it all together and it’s just, like, ‘Wow…’”
Sheehan is just as excited about the Fell, which also includes frontman Toby Rand and drummer Nick Chiarore. The hard-hitting quartet started about 10 years ago, according to Sheehan, and released its first EP, Killswitch, last October. A full album is on the horizon, too, giving Sheehan another entry for his bulging résumé.
“I’ve just gotta play,” he explains. “I want to play. I’ll play till I can’t play, or until my playing isn’t as good as it should be. But I feel like I’m still improving every single day, so to be out playing is very important to me. And having the opportunity to have the Fell and make more music has just been great.”
That said, we tapped Sheehan for a personally guided trip through his past and the guitarists he’s shared stage and studio time with.
Steve Vai
“I got him in the David Lee Roth band. The original idea was Steve Stevens, but he was busy with Billy Idol and wisely decided to stay with him. I told Dave I know another Steve, ’cause at the time my band Talas was on Relativity Records out of New York City, and Steve was also on that label and we’d talked about doing something together before the Roth thing happened.
“Steve, because of his association with Frank Zappa, had a sense of humor about his playing, which was very important for the Roth band. I was into Zappa in my early years as well. Being into Zappa will do things to you — in a good way. It was impossibly complicated music, and I learned how to dissect it and play it.
“I didn’t end up playing music like that, but that lesson was great, and Steve and I can sit down and recite side two of Live at the Fillmore together. Zappa. That had a lot to do with his playing. His guitar playing became kind of quirky. He had all the fundamentals very, very down, then added the quirkiness from the Zappa thing.
“So Vai came in and was just awesome, a great, great player. So he was in and we had a great time putting that Eat ’Em and Smile tour together. And he’s such a dedicated player. We’d be in the dressing room before the show and he’d be there for hours, just working on stuff, head down for hours at a time before every show, pretty much. That also shows how much he cares about the audience, too, ’cause you want to do the absolute best for them all the time. Steve is definitely in that club.
“And on the road we had a blast. Some things changed after that, and I left the band, but I’m forever thankful to David. He was a huge help in my career, and I learned so much. It was a real Ph.D. in Showbiz 101.
“I did some of Steve’s solo tours, and it was always a blast. We had so much fun on those tours — no nonsense, no drugs, drinking, disrespectful rock star bullshit. We were all just legitimately having fun, and it was like a 24-hour comedy show. There was a lot of mutual respect in the bands I played in with Steve. I have nothing but great things to say.”
Paul Gilbert
“Paul came to see me play in Talas when he was a kid, still a teenager. We were playing in Pittsburgh once, and I remember a tall guy in the audience; the stage was only about this high — there wasn’t any space between the stage and the crowd — and Paul was standing in front of me.
“I did my very first bass guitar clinic in Pittsburgh, and Paul was there. Then we started having opening acts and we wanted to help promote the local scene, so we’d hire an opening act from the city we were playing. And one of the bands that opened up for us was Paul’s band — ‘Oh, that’s that tall kid!’
“We became acquaintances, and when he moved out to L.A. I’d go see him at the Musicians Institute. One night I judged this contest at Gazzarri’s and there he was, and I told the other judges, ‘Watch this guy…’
“When it came time to put Mr. Big together, I thought Paul would be a great addition to it. I talked with Pat Torpey first, then got Paul, then found our singer [Eric Martin]. I watched Paul grow from a really great and competent guitarist, which he already was, into a consummate musician who knows so much — great songwriter, singer, performer, entertainer.
“He’s the whole package. But when we were starting Mr. Big it was his very beginning in that, and I watched him grow through the years. I’m very, very proud of what he’s accomplished for himself — and he’s a sweet, wonderful guy as well.”
Richie Kotzen
“One of the reasons I wanted to do the Winery Dogs was to let the world know about Richie, ’cause he’s so great, yet somehow wasn’t hugely famous, which I think is an abomination. I wanted people to hear him sing and play and write, ’cause he’s great. And he’s another wonderful guy, just a great, hardworking player dedicated to his craft.
“He’s way more bluesy and less of a, let’s say, technician, but his technical abilities are more influenced by jazz from that brief stint he had with Stanley Clarke. I hear that a lot in his playing. One of the first things we did, I could hear, like, the pads of a saxophone. There was no sax, but he phrased it so expertly that you can almost hear the same kind of pads, which is a really cool aspect of his playing.”
Steve Lukather
“I’ve known Steve and seen him and hung with him a lot of times. Great guy. So he came in to do the solo on ‘Things Ain’t Like They Used to Be’ [on 2000’s Niacin album, Deep] — Glenn Hughes sang on it — and Steve just flew in from somewhere. He was probably jet-lagged, and his gear showed up and we played him a little bit of the song. It got to the solo part and he played this solo off the top of his head — just picked up his guitar and played it. Didn’t think it through or plan anything.
“Then we spent three hours trying to top it before we finally said, ‘Let’s just use the first thing,’ ’cause it was so good. To me that spoke volumes about his capabilities; he just came in and, bang, it’s done. We were foolish enough to think we should get something different. Sometimes you’ve gotta let an artist do his thing, and with Steve I’ll tell anybody, ‘Just let him do it. I guarantee you’re gonna be happy.’”
Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal
“What a genius player. I don’t know when I met him initially — I think in L.A. at some of the jams he was around — but I’ve known him for years and years and years. He is a supremely capable and competent musician. That fretless double-neck — he kills on that thing. It’s very unique; it sounds very much like a slide guitar, the way he phrases some of his passages on that. It’s just brilliant.
“I don’t know if there’s a better player out there, and he’s another wonderful, sweet, giving, honest, righteous human being, which is very important. He knows all the Talas songs, which I think is pretty cool. I took that as a great compliment that he knew about Talas and could play the songs.”
