“A friend of mine, Steve Jordan, who now plays drums with the Rolling Stones, instigated my first meeting with Keith Richards,” Steve Bolton tells Guitar Player. “Steve liked to hang out with us while we were on tour, and we happened to end up in a hotel room in New York City, while the city was deep in winter snow drifts. Steve goes, ‘I'll call Keith,’ and my ears pricked up! So, he calls Keith, and Keith replies, ‘Sure, come around here!’”
Such is the ease with which Steve “Boltz” Bolton has made his way through rock and roll’s landscape. Often at the right place at the right time, the guitarist — who has performed since 2016 with a revised lineup of Atomic Rooster — has played with everyone from Pete Townshend (on the Who’s 1989 reunion tour) to Paul Young (as a fully paid member of the “Every Time You Go Away” singer’s band).
He’s previously regaled us with his tales of Townshend’s guitar-smashing exploits and Bob Dylan’s odd behavior on the set of his 1989 film, Hearts of Fire. Here he adds three more stories of his adventures with Ray Davies, David Bowie and Keith Richards.
Dave Davies and she who shall not be named
When the Kinks’ Ray Davies sought his guitar-playing services for his 2006 solo album, Other People's Lives, Bolton says friends cautioned him that Davies could be difficult. “They warned me to be careful with Ray as he was a really weird guy and didn’t suffer fools lightly.
“But I went up to his Konk Studios in North London to meet him, and he could not have been any nicer. Once he discovered I was a vegetarian too, like him, he would meet me at the studio with biscuits. He’d say, ‘Steve, have you tried these vegetarian biscuits?’ He was really sweet, and we got on like a house on fire after that.
“But with that said, there are certain things with Ray Davies you don’t ever talk about. And one of them is Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders.”
From 1980 to 1984, Hynde and Davies were in a volatile relationship that produced a daughter. They subsequently broke up and were still feuding more than 20 years later when Bolton was working with him.
“So it was an unwritten law to not mention her name,” Bolton continues.
Which made it inevitable that he would say something he shouldn’t.
“I’m in a control room one day with a lead from my electric guitar going out into my amp in the studio and I’m doing an overdub for this track. I’ve got a really cool guitar part happening, and as I get around the chord progression, I do a couple of runs at it. One’s a kind of a more regular rolling arpeggio thing, while the other is a bit more way out there, where I’m taking more liberties with it.
“Later, we’re listening back to both overdubs and the producer, Laurie Latham, says to me, ‘Steve, I prefer the first one, the more regular approach.’
“Then Ray looks at me and goes, ‘Yeah, Steve, I prefer the more regular approach too. I agree with Laurie.’
“And I go, ‘Well actually, I prefer the more laissez-faire version because the more regular approach sounds a bit too much like…’
“And then, suddenly, a voice in my head goes, ‘Go on! Say it, say it!’
“I go, ‘It sounds a bit too much like The Pretenders!’
“And the whole room goes eerily quiet. I look at Ray and say, ‘No offense.’ And Ray goes, ‘No offense taken. I know exactly what you mean.’ Whew, I got away with that one!”
(For the record, Davies and Hynde patched up their differences and recorded a duet in 2009.)
Bolton believes that the rapport he developed with Davies proved pivotal to changing Davies’s approach to his guitar sounds on the recording.
“I would go up there most days during the week to do guitar overdubs. Ray would put a bit of guitar on as well, but his guitar parts would be all sort of like flanging and chorus-y, and very ’80s sounding. I said to him one day, ‘Hey, no offense, but go get that Telecaster out, and give the parts some guts like you do on “All Day and All of the Night,” where you do that counter-rhythm thing.’
“And he turned to me and said, ‘Really?’ And I answered, ‘Absolutely! That’s what people love about the Kinks — that old sound.’
“He was trying to follow the ’80s fashion at that point, but I fired him up after that.”
David Bowie concurs
“One day, I got a call from producer Tony Visconti who said, ‘I've got a session for you tomorrow,’” Bolton recalls. “‘It's with somebody really famous and you can probably guess who it is. So, can you be at my studio, Good Earth Studios in London’s Soho tomorrow?’
“When I get there the next day, of course, David Bowie was there. The recording sessions were for the television program The Kenny Everett Video Show. David had to remake a number of tracks because the union required that artists re-record their material for broadcast.
“So here I am, in the recording booth playing acoustic guitar together with David on ‘Space Oddity,’ and I go, ‘Oh my god, David Bowie!’ And he looks at me and replies, ‘That’s right.’
“And then we both just carried on strumming.”
Keith Richards vs. Dr. John
In 2001, Bolton would be called upon to join Richards onstage for a handful of Save the Rainforest concerts for the Rainforest Alliance. After performing a show with guest artists in Santa Monica, the musicians gathered to rehearse for the pair of shows coming up at New York City’s Beacon Theater. Among them were the Memphis Horns, Dr. John, Kim Simmonds of Savoy Brown, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. Steve Jordan was serving as music director.
“We're rehearsing this Dr. John song, ‘Right Place, Wrong Time,’ for the planned finale and Steve’s trying to juggle all these egos in the room,” Bolton recalls. “Steve says, ‘Let's sort this out by having different solos.’ He points to Kim Simmonds first, and says, ‘You do the first solo on harmonica, and then, Boltz, you do a solo.’
“And Dr. John goes, ‘Yes, Boltz, you do a solo.’
“Then he points at Keith across the crowded room and starts giving him daggers and this voodoo vibe. He points at him and says, ‘As for you, motherfucker, you can kiss my goddamn ass.’ And the whole room goes really quiet. Keith goes and hides behind me.
“Afterwards I said to Steve, ‘What was all that about?’ He says, ‘Well, there’s really bad blood between The Rolling Stones and Dr. John and Ry Cooder. Because not only did Ry Cooder play a lot on Exile on Main St., but he and Dr. John instigated a lot of the songs and never got a credit for it.’”
Indeed, Mick Jagger confirmed to The Face that Dr. John had offered him a tape full of songs at the price of $50 a tune. Jagger turned him down, but apparently the Dr. was convinced his tunes were appropriated for Exile.
Fortunately, Bolton says, Gatemouth Brown helped lighten the vibe. He’d just bought a WAP mobile phone — which gave users access to news, weather, and sports information in the days before smartphones — and was thrilled with his purchase. “Gatemouth was being absolutely hilarious and cantankerous,” Bolton chuckles. “He lightened the tension between Dr. John and Richards by constantly exclaiming, ‘I got myself a WAP phone!’”
