What’s It Like To Be Paul McCartney’s Right-Hand Man?

Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years, if not decades. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their complete stories, giving an up-close look at life on music’s A list. This edition features guitarist Rusty Anderson.

Rusty Anderson has been consistently creating music with Paul McCartney for the past 22 years. He’s not only the lead guitarist in McCartney’s touring band; he’s also played on every single album that McCartney has created since the turn of the millennium, with the exception of the 2012 jazz standards collection Kisses on the Bottom. For comparison’s sake, McCartney’s entire creative relationship with John Lennon lasted 14 years. Wings broke up after just a decade.

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That means Anderson has played songs like “Helter Skelter,” “Yesterday,” “Hey Jude,” and “Let It Be” with McCartney hundreds and hundreds of times. In many cases, the Beatles played those songs only when they cut the original in the studio. “I try not to overthink it,” Anderson tells Rolling Stone on Zoom from his recording studio in Malibu, California. “I just try to count all my blessings. I feel incredibly grateful and glad that Paul gave me this opportunity.”

Touring the world with McCartney and playing on his records has been Anderson’s focus for the past two decades, but he’s also worked with Stevie Nicks, Elton John, Miley Cyrus, Lana Del Rey, and many others. You can hear his guitar work on Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” the Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian,” New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give,” and the original version of Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn,” which was first recorded by Anderson’s Nineties band Ednaswap.

Long before he heard his guitar blaring out of car radios in the Eighties and Nineties or soccer stadium PAs in the 2000s, Anderson was a kid in La Habra, California, who worshipped the Beatles. “I had this recurring dream as a kid since I was such a big Beatles fan,” he says. “In the dream, the Beatles would pull up at my front door with all of their guitars and their other instruments. They’d ring the doorbell and go, ‘Hey, wanna play?'”

When he was just five years old, his older brother died from a kidney ailment. “All of a sudden I felt that real life was a bummer,” he says. “Music became my escape. I completely tunnel-visioned into it. I bought Help! and Axis: Bold as Love.”

Three years later, he bought a pawn shop guitar and an amp, and began taking lessons. They didn’t go well. “They made me play ‘Twinkle Twinkle,’ and I just hated it,” he says. “I wanted to rock and started learning chords from books. When I was 14, I took jazz lessons from a local guy. That lasted six months. I largely just learned on my own.”

During his downtime, he started seeing concerts all over town. When David Bowie brought his Ziggy Stardust Tour to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in October 1972 — a show that was heavily bootlegged thanks to a radio broadcast — Anderson was in the audience. The following December he saw Genesis play one of their legendary gigs with Peter Gabriel at the Roxy. “My mind was instantly blown at that first Genesis show,” he says. “Their record covers were cryptic, and I didn’t know much about them. I just had chills when they came out. They were so theatrical. And really, it was all Peter [Gabriel] doing the theatrics, and the rest of the band were just incredible musicians. I wound up going back a day or two later to see them again.”

These experiences persuaded him to devote his life to music. He mainlined the work of Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page before he moved on to jazz figures like Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery, slowly developing a guitar sound of his own. At 13, he formed a band called Eulogy and began playing clubs around Los Angeles. At some of their early shows, they shared the bill with a pre-fame Van Halen. “I remember walking into soundcheck and watching Eddie play a Kiss song,” he says. “They weren’t trying to do the big thing yet. He kicked it up a bunch of notches later on.”

They also gigged with the Runaways, the Ramones, and the Police. “We had a pre-punk, slightly proggy sound,” Anderson says. “Imagine a combination of the Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper, and Genesis.”

Most teenagers wouldn’t be allowed to spend their nights playing dingy bars and clubs across Los Angeles, chilling backstage with Johnny Ramone, Lita Ford, and David Lee Roth, but it wasn’t an issue for his parents. “They checked out a little bit after my brother passed away,” he says. “They also just saw how passionate I was. There was one time when my mom said, ‘What if this music thing doesn’t work out?’ I said [brimming with confidence], ‘It will.’ And then she didn’t bother me any more.”

Anderson had a lot of lean years in the Eighties, including a stint in a group called the Living Daylights that never went anywhere. He supplemented his income by giving guitar lessons and booking studio work. Things picked up when he got the chance to record with a new band called the Bangles. Once they landed some huge hits on the radio, it set him on a path that eventually led him to Paul McCartney.

How did you wind up as a session guitarist for the Bangles?
David Kahne, a producer/A&R guy at Columbia, was interested in the Living Daylights after we made a little single. Nothing happened, but he liked me and started bringing me in to play on records. One of them was Different Light by the Bangles.

Are you on “Manic Monday” or “Walk Like an Egyptian?”
I’m playing acoustic guitar on “Manic Monday.” I did some power chords on “Walk Like an Egyptian” and different things, but there’s a solo I didn’t do. I’m also on “If She Knew What She Wants.” I really like how that one came out. There’s a bunch of cool tunes on that record.

How did you feel when those songs blew up and you were on the radio?
It was very cool. It was fantastic. But it all happened so quick. I was down there at the studio, meeting these girls, and they’re these cute, mythical creatures. They’re all there and working together. It was strange meeting all these people at once. I’d never been at Sunset Sound before, but I’d be in there a lot after that.

How did you meet Stewart Copeland and wind up joining Animal Logic?
By then, I started playing on a bunch of different records. I went over to [record label] I.R.S. since they were looking for a guitar player, maybe through the Bangles thing. I just came in and auditioned. They said, “Yeah. Let’s do it.” It was Stewart Copeland and Stanley Clarke. It was a wild band.

You toured with them?
Yeah. My favorite thing about that band was their soundcheck. We’d do incredible jams, just freeforms. They were amazing. I always felt they should have recorded them and turned them into performances.

Stewart is a sick drummer. Playing with him every night must have been incredible.
Yeah. Stewart is a very good friend of mine. That’s where I met him, actually. I’ve done some things with him in the not-too-distant past. We just put out a record where he did orchestral arrangements of Police songs. He called them de-arrangements. They were elaborately arranged diversions from the Police music. I did that record with him. We did some touring together with that thing. Then I had to stop because I was playing with Paul.

Was the Animal Logic tour your first big tour?
I toured with Susanna Hoffs [of the Bangles]. I toured on her solo record [When You’re a Boy] and did some dates opening for Don Henley. It was a whole summer tour. And with Sting. The Animal Logic tour was right before that.

How did your band Ednaswap form?
Ednaswap formed because I had a relationship with [songwriter Scott Cutler]. He was playing on songwriting demos. He was always writing and had a publishing deal with different artists. I played guitar on those. I sort of folded into the Ednaswap thing, which had the same members for most of its duration.

Tell me how “Torn” came together.
We went to England to record, and we did a demo of it. This was before Ednaswap got a deal. On the demo, I played all the guitars and came up with that whole slide lick at the end. Then the band completely formed right after that. Sylvia Rhone [East West Records’ then-CEO] signed us, mostly on that song, but other songs too. When we started doing the record, she got bummed out because it didn’t sound exactly like the demo. The whole thing faded, and then we got on a different label. In the meantime, Natalie Imbruglia covered the song and had a hit with it. They just karaoked all the guitar things I did.

How did you feel about that?
It’s what happened. It was kind of a bummer that we didn’t have the success with that song. It was a really interesting band. There was some cool music that we made. There’s one song that ended up on a movie. They used a song called “Shrapnel” by Ednaswap. I forgot about the band a little bit. Once your band breaks up, you’re like, “What do I do now?” You move onto the next. It had been a bunch of years since I heard the music. When I went back and listened, it sounded unique.

People are always stunned to learn that “Torn” is a cover. Everyone thinks it was written by Natalie Imbruglia.
That’s what people want. They want to bond with a song and have it as their identity. It’s funny because that’s the case with a lot of songs when you go back in history. You connect with a song, and then you learn they didn’t write it.

I think with “Torn,” the song just feels so personal. The same goes with the video. It seemed like it was coming from her soul.
Yeah. It’s that kind of song. It’s very much a personal story song.

You guys toured with No Doubt and Weezer.
Yeah. We started doing shows with No Doubt when their record first came out, but before they blew up. They were more of a local thing. Then we did another one with Weezer and them after the record blew up. That was really cool and a lot of fun.

When Ednaswap collapsed, did you start getting frustrated? You were in all these bands that didn’t quite make it.
Of course. Yeah. [Laughs.] What do you do? I think the one nice thing is that I played with different artists in the studio and live, and I felt like I could continue to do that. Ednaswap pulled me out of that world. We played a lot of live shows, and had a lot of experiences. You can always look back and go, “That was a good idea” or “That was a bad idea,” but it doesn’t matter. It is what it is. It’s part of the story.

Tell me about playing on “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals.
That was another huge song. I played guitar effects on all that and the guitar solo. I played nearly all the guitars on that record. I thought it was a fantastic record.

Then you were on “Livin’ la Vida Loca.”
That came through a friend of mine, Draco Rosa. He came over one day. We’d done a lot of stuff together. I played on his records. And he had co-written a song for Ricky Martin. He comes to me and is like, “I just want to put some guitar on this.” I go, “OK, great.” We put it down quickly, in an hour or two.

That song was “Livin’ la Vida Loca.” Then the record company was like, “Actually, we’re going to use that demo on the record.” I’m like, “Great.” Then they’re like, “It’s going to be the first song on the record.” I’m like, “OK!” Then they go, “By the way, that’s the first single … By the way, that song is huge.”

I remember working out on the treadmill at the gym. All of a sudden, I hear the music. I’m like, “Oh, my god.” It freaked me out since I thought they were going to put reverb on the guitar, and they didn’t. It was just my little junky demo guitar. I’m like, “It’s a little out of tune,” since I was playing this guitar tuned down low.

I came to embrace this weird version of it that I never would have done had it been in a proper studio setting with an engineer and my own amps. It became such a huge song.

How do mechanical royalties work in a situation like that? If you play on songs as massive as “Livin’ la Vida Loca” or “You Get What You Give,” but you’re not credited as a writer, how much do you get?
Not a lot. Little bits. You get a tiny sliver of the pie every time something happens, like if a song gets reused or sells a ton of records. Usually, if a song is a big hit, it has a big thrust [at first]. That’s where you’re going to make most of your money.

Do you think that’s fair? I always think of those Motown house musicians that played on these huge songs and only got paid scale. It feels pretty unfair.
It’s so not fair. When you think of creativity and money, they are really sort of enemies. It’s the incongruity of it, the paradox, that’s really the essence of all life. When you get down to every aspect of life, there’s always a paradox. Music and money is definitely one of them.

I felt this way about “Torn.” I’d see a commercial that just loops the section where I was at the forefront. I created the parts. It’s a strange phenomenon in music. I can imagine the guy that wrote the bass part for “My Girl” feels the same way.

I really love Elton John’s Songs From the West Coast. How was the experience of working on that record?
It was fantastic. I’d never worked with Elton before. I came into the studio. The thing that was really a trip for me was meeting Bernie [Taupin]. He had all these lyrics he’d written. I think he had 80 sheets of lyrics. They were all printed out. It reminded me of that video on YouTube of Elton playing “Tiny Dancer.”

This was the later version. He’d just hand a set of lyrics to Elton. Within 15 minutes, he’d written the song. Then I sat down by him and learned the parts, and we’d start creating together. It was so organic and so quick. It was mind-blowin’.

He has this freakish gift where melodies pour out of his his brain like a firehose. It’s crazy.
Yeah. What an incredible talent. Bernie too. As a team, they are unbeatable.

You’re on “American Triangle” and “Original Sin.”
I was really, really thankful and felt sort of blessed to be able to play on the record. Once you start to get known as someone that can do a good job in the studio, those opportunities happen. But it takes a while. Anything you do, it takes a while for people to catch on to your skill set.

You’re also on Dido’s “Hunter.“
Yeah. “White Flag” too. I’m on a bunch of Dido stuff. That was through the songwriter Rick Nowels. I did Lana Del Rey with him. There was a great record I played on with the Sneaker Pimps singer, Kelli Ali. It was a fantastic record, but I don’t think it did anything at all.

Going back a bit, you’re on Neil Diamond’s Lovescape.
Yeah. There’s a lot of one-offs like that. I did a song with Little Richard, which was amazing. There’s a song called “Rock Island Line.” It was a tribute to Woody Guthrie. I played guitar on that. I just went in and played real quick, but I was happy with the way it turned out. What a talent. He was one of the archetypes.

Was Little Richard there?
He was not. I remember seeing him drive up as I was leaving. I never really got to hang out with him. His whole band was there. We hung out. He just came in to cut the vocals on it.

You’re also on Sinead O’Connor’s Faith and Courage.
Yes. The wild thing is I did a bunch of TV shows with her. I was her musical director. It was a whole thing where you go on David Letterman and Jay Leno, that kind of thing. It was a bunch of those kind of promotion deals. I put the band together.

She was nice. Very nice. But the feeling of … distraction. She had a whole swimmy soup of things going on in her head that I wasn’t really privy to. Sometimes those things would be there, and sometimes we’d just work, and it would be fun.

I guess I never tried to get super close to her. I always thought she was an incredible talent. Every time I heard her sing, doing Irish folk songs or whatever, her voice just blew me away. It seemed to me there was a whole string of female singers from here to the moon that were influenced by her.

Let’s move on to Breakout by Miley Cyrus.
That was interesting. [Laughs.] I met her later, actually. I didn’t see her at that recording session. It was just another day at the office, in a way.

Now tell me about your first meeting with Paul McCartney.
I was talking to David [Kahne] on the phone. He goes, “Turns out I’m going to do the new Paul McCartney record.” I go, “Great. If you need any guitar playing, let me know.” He goes, “I was thinking the same thing.”

I didn’t really talk about it with anyone. But then two months later, I walked into Henson studio [in Los Angeles] and met a number of English blokes. Then I met Paul. Within like half an hour, we were jamming, playing music.

Paul is friggin’ Paul McCartney. It took me a few days to get used to being around him. Even though he’s very disarming and very warm. He was cool. It was just hard to connect those dots between having him as an almost mythical figure to having him in front of me and conversing with him, and being in the moment.

The beautiful thing about music is that you can just get to it and start playing. Your focus is on that. It’s a great way to communicate.

Did you think this was just going to be a one-off job with Paul, like with Elton or Neil Diamond?
I think the idea was to kind of turn it into a live thing. You don’t want to assume anything, though. In Hollywood, you hear a lot of stuff that doesn’t happen. I can’t tell you how many times, especially back as a teenager or in my twenties, things looked like they were happening, but people were just full of shit or something changes or whatever. I try not to assume anything. It took a while. We did the Concert for New York before the tour.

Was that your first time playing onstage with Paul?
It was the second time. The first one was this small benefit thing. We just played a few songs. The Concert for New York was just ridiculous. All of a sudden, being in his orbit and having this event …Everyone was afraid to fly. Drew Barrymore wouldn’t even get on an airplane. No one wanted to get on an airplane. I didn’t want to get on one. But I was like, “If Paul can do it, I can do it.”

I flew there and all of a sudden it was like, “Here’s Pete Townshend. Here’s Eric Clapton. The Stones are over here.” It was a who’s who. President Clinton was there. Bush was in office, but he was a recent president. It was just a lot at once.

This was basically the biggest rock event of the year. You’re playing with the headliner. This was a pretty big step up for you.
It was a lot. You can’t really process it at the time. You’d just hang out. I’d worked with Elton already. He came up to me and gave me a big kiss. That was super cool. It made me feel a little bit relaxed and at home.

Paul also has a very relaxing approach. I’m realizing the older I get, nerves are at the center … They are your enemy. They will keep you from really being your best. The whole thing is to just get into what you’re doing, and being in the moment for something like that.

The band that night was the same band Paul uses now?
Not quite. [Guitarist-bassist] Brian [Ray] came in just after that to flesh out the lineup.

How did it feel to you to play “I’m Down” and the other Beatles songs at the Garden that night?
Incredible. You can’t process it. You just want to do a good job. It was also surreal since I thought, “You go up onstage and it’ll be the big Woodstock lights. It’ll feel intoxicating and you’ll get into the groove and the moment.” If you’ll remember, Jim Carrey introduced us. Then we go onstage, and then I realized that because this whole thing is really about the firefighters, all the people in the call of duty, our fallen comrades, and just incredible valor … The job all these people did after 9/11. All these firefighters were in the front. They had these filming TV lights aimed at the audience.

You could see every single face, which is unusual. It’s almost like when you play a big show, the lights go to a certain people and everyone else is a soup. This one, I felt like I was in a giant classroom. I thought, “Wow. If I can do this, I can do anything.”

Paul hadn’t toured in almost a decade at this point. How did the talk of the 2002 tour start?
That was amazing. Working up to the first show was a lot, even though I was so familiar with a lot of the Beatles songs and the bigger Paul McCartney songs. Once you start figuring it out …

Who told you the tour was happening and you were on it?
[Tour promoter] Barrie Marshall probably did. That’s been Paul’s guy forever. He’s just an amazing bloke. He has an English medal of some sort. He’s a wonderful guy and he’s Mr. Detail, and he’s on it.

But I got word about these things. Then it just becomes, all of a sudden, the team. The machine starts kicking in. They all make it happen, and take care of business. That’s also very comforting. Touring on a very small level or a local level, there’s a lot of hats to wear you need to think about. You don’t need to think about any of them when you have a machine like that.

The rest of the band was insanely talented.
They’re so good. [Keyboardist] Wix [Wickens] is very multi-talented. Abe [Laboriel Jr.] is just mind-blowing. A fantastic drummer, and sings very well. Very musical guy. He can play other instruments too. Brian is an incredible guitar player. Super talented. I think once the whole band came together, we realized this was some sort of chemistry that went way beyond anything we could think about.

To zoom out to all these years later, it’s still fantastic to still be playing with these guys. It’s very spiritual. It’s almost sexual in a way since when you’re making music together, in a way, it’s very interactive. Everybody is in this sort of state. It’s hard to explain if you’re not a musician. But it’s very therapeutic as a human. I really miss it when I’m not making this incredible music with these guys. That’s why the band has stuck together a long time.

There’s so many incredible musicians, guitarists, drummers, bassists, keyboard players. There’s so much talent out there. The fact that it just sort of happened the way it happened isn’t lost on me.

Going back to 2002, where did you rehearse for the tour?
We rehearse all over the place. We’ve rehearsed in London, the countryside of England, New York, L.A., and sometimes in venues before the first show. It really depends.

He hadn’t gone out in almost a decade. It’s a new band besides Wix. And you’re playing songs like “Getting Better” and “Hello Goodbye” for the first time since he recorded them in the studio with the Beatles.

The thing about those songs, and I can just speak for myself, is you’re so familiar with them. You know the form of the song. That makes it easy. Then you start really listening to the songs. Speaking for myself, and the rest of the band, really, you want to honor the songs as they go, and the hooks. You want to make sure the hooks stand out, and you don’t mess that up.

You also want to give it some life, some expression, some slight English to it, and angles that are an expression of yourself as the player. Those things, I sort of did naturally. You have how you want to hear the song, how you want to express the song, how you want it to feel, especially in a live situation. You don’t want to be doing a karaoke of it. That wouldn’t really serve the song.

Was Wix helpful in this early period since he’d toured with Paul before?
A little bit. We all sort of figured out our parts and what to do. A lot of it fell into place. Paul plays a lot of instruments. On certain songs, he’s playing bass. On those ones, Brian and I will both be playing guitar. Then he’s playing piano or acoustic guitar, and Brian will switch to bass. It varies. People are switching up guitars and tunings and instruments. It sort of somehow all became intuitive.

That 2002 tour was super exciting since he’d been gone for so long. I’m sure you felt all that energy on the stage.
Absolutely. There’s nothing like it. Doing shows with Paul and to have that amount of appreciation and screaming, and looking into the audience and seeing people cry … It’s intense. You have to look away or you’ll get caught in it.

How did learning all this material deepen your appreciation for what George and John did as guitar players?
It’s amazing. Even to this day, just to see the evolution of George as a player, and his skills, and his influences … Paul came up with a lot of guitar bits too. They sort of helped each other out. It was incredible. Ringo came up accidentally with key lines in lyrics or titles of songs. It’s just the way they worked together.

What blew me away about the Beatles was that they were a gang. They were a band. They were buddies. Then you hear, “Oh, John and Paul wrote most of the stuff.” What heartened me so much about seeing Get Back was how reverent they were to each other, how much they loved each other, respected each other, and paid a lot of attention to teach other.

That was so beautiful. That was the thing I saw as a five-year-old, along with their incredible songs and sound. They made me really appreciate music.

A tour with five-star hotels and private jets and big arenas was new territory for you in 2002.
Absolutely. It was more of a five-star situation than anything I’d done before. I have to say, if that would have happened to me in my twenties, it might have been spoiling, almost problematic. I feel bad looking at childhood stars like Michael Jackson since they don’t have any perspective on life. You don’t have any appreciation.

Having it happen later, I was much more able to appreciate the incredible gift of that situation. And it’s these same thing with my daughter, who I had later in life. I think if I had been in my twenties or something it would have been really hard.

I would imagine so many people you meet want tickets or they want a selfie with Paul or to go backstage or somehow get a message to him through you. It must get exhausting.
Well, that’s also a learning curve, I think, trying to navigate through that stuff. Maybe the first little show I did, I had people going, “I have this old original Beatles album signed by the band. I just need Paul’s signature!” All of a sudden, you make “friends,” but they want something. I try and be a nice guy. Then I realized that it was really not cool, and I had to protect the space of it all, protect my space, protect Paul’s space, really be careful.

Paul is such an incredibly generous, wonderful human. He’s had to navigate this stuff forever. And somehow he can still be like that. I’m so impressed. He wears a lot of hats.

That’s another thing I learned about this, all the hats one must wear to be in these situations. You’re in the middle of an arena or a stadium and playing one second. The next day, you’re sitting there in your living room by yourself and everyone is gone. Now I’m used to that. I like that. That’s part of the deal. It’s great. It took me a few years to process it.

A song like “Helter Skelter,” he last played in the studio when he made the White Album. Now it’s decades later and you need to figure out how to play it live. Walk me through that.
We just embraced it. On the record, I think it’s just one guitar. We turned it into two guitars, which seems obvious. Paul is playing bass on that. In the studio, I think someone else is playing bass. I don’t remember. [Editor’s note: John Lennon plays bass on the song.] You think of the Beatles as always on their one instrument, but they switched around a lot.

Paul even played drums sometimes.
Exactly. I don’t think you try and take it too literal. I started doing sound effect-y things on there I thought were cool and fit a live version of the song. That’s because the song was this super intense hard rock funky metal song. But that was before all that. This was before Blue Cheer and all that.

Did you ever take a step back and think, “The last time Paul played these parts, he was in Abbey Road alongside John, George, and Ringo. Now he’s playing it with me.”
Yeah. It’s incredible. I can’t even … it’s much deeper than I can even process. You have a job to do, you go up there, and do the best you can. The one thing I try and bring to the party is some element or some new sound or technique where the guitar doesn’t sound like a guitar. Maybe it sounds like something different. That helps with songs like “Helper Skelter” where I feel like it’s not just a karaoke of the original.

Then there’s songs like “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” that were never meant to be played live, and never were played live. How do you adapt a song like that?
Paul gets the award for being the most diverse artist in history. On the White Album, you had “Blackbird” and “Helter Skelter.” That’s what the tour is about. I love that because I have the same approach to music…. You listen to most people’s playlists. Most people don’t just listen to all reggae or all heavy metal or all pop. They have a bit of a mix. It just feels more artistically healthy to have that approach. That always excited me.

We did “She’s Leaving Home.” That was a really interesting study since you have all these harp parts and orchestra stuff. Brian and I notated all the harp parts and transcribed them to tablature. Then I took the high bit of the harp and Brian took the low part. We put it together. Wix played a lot of the orchestral stuff and a bit of harp-y things. We put some delay on the acoustics. All of a sudden, you started to get close to the studio version. And there’s no drums on it. It somehow worked. People loved it. That was really fun to do. It’s like you’re reimagining it to a degree.

A song like “Love Me Do” is a very different story. It’s much simpler and they did it live back in the day.
That’s the thing. When you think about how music evolved in the Sixties, so much happened so quickly. It was like Moore’s Law shoved into this little decade. You hear the inventions of all these new things. All of a sudden, the fuzz box becomes a thing. People are using tremolos and Leslies. They’re using all these techniques that didn’t exist before that. The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix are at the forefront of all that. And so it’s really cool to go all the way from “Love Me Do” to Sgt. Pepper tunes.

You’ve played way too many shows for us to delve into here, but I want to throw a few out there and hear your memories. Let’s start with the Super Bowl Halftime show in 2005.
The Super Bowl is such its own beast. You have very little time. The cost of doing the Super Bowl and the advertisement and the viewership is so intense. The songs had to be chopped down. We had no time between songs. They invented this whole stage for it. We’re standing on lights. And this is all out in the field.

It went by so quickly as opposed to a normal show. You run on, you do it. They had the rent-a-crowd right in front of the stage. They were like, “Everybody wear a different colored shirt.” It was all pre-planned.

We run off the stage and go, “That was great!” We go to box seats to watch the game, look down at the field, and the stage is gone. It’s been completely stripped. There’s not a shred of trash anywhere, like from a normal show. Those rent-a-crowd guys are really clean and quick. It’s just a surreal experience.

It must be weird to realize however many millions of people are watching you on that stage.
Yeah. In a way, I find that playing for one person is the hardest. Playing to one person is tough because when you have a crowd, you have an agreement. There’s a certain, “This is going well,” kind of feeling. “All these people are still here and listening to what I’m doing.” The camera is a whole different element. You can’t trip on a camera. It’s like you’re throwing it out into the ocean. You have no idea who is watching. You can’t control it.

How was playing Red Square in Moscow?
Trippy. They had snipers on roofs. We met Gorbachev. That was incredible. I remember halfway through the show, all of a sudden, Putin walks into the area. He came with his people, his guards. I see this ripple through the middle of the seats. He comes to the center seat, sits down, and watches it. The song we were playing, ironically enough, was “Calico Skies.” That tune is really about the weapons of war we despise. It’s the closest that Paul gets to a protest song.

Tell me about playing the White House for Obama.
Oh man. The freaky thing about that was that we were touring. We did this huge concert at Zócalo square in Mexico City. That went really well. We had a mariachi band come out at a certain point. It was great.

Then we got on a plane and flew straight to the White House, where every time you come in and out, you show your passport and they write your names down. It’s like going on an airplane every time you leave the building or come in.

Seeing all the halls and meeting the president … It was all very surreal, hyperreal almost was the word for it. All these mythological people, the president and the first lady, are in front of you. We’re playing and it was honoring Paul. We play a couple of songs, and then Paul sits down next to Barack and watches us play these songs. What a trip was that. At the end of the show, Barack comes up and gives me a big hug. It was unsolicited. Man, you couldn’t ask for a cooler moment.

How about the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee?
I met the Queen there. I met Prince Charles, now King Charles. I met Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath. I met Brian May, Eric Clapton … And there’s Phil Collins, one of my heroes from Genesis. You can’t even glue it all together. It’s one of those big events that I would never have the luxury of being involved with if it wasn’t for Paul. I’m just very thankful.

At the 2012 Grammys, you played the Abbey Road medley at the end. It’s you, Springsteen, Dave Grohl, Joe Walsh, and Paul all taking solos at the end. What was that moment like for you?
We’d done some of that where different people sit in. Joe had sat in before. We’d done some stuff with Dave. That was another fantastic moment. Fortunately, we had done it enough times. We knew the deal. When you have this thing where there’s three guitars, you have to get used to, “You go first, you go second…” Then there’s four people, five people … You really have to keep an eye on the order of events, who just went, who goes after. It actually worked out. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a real celebratory event.

That’s a word I use a lot, “celebratory.” The whole thing is such a celebration, playing these shows with Paul. It’s a celebration of him. It’s a celebration of this incredible music and the Beatles. It’s a celebration of this era. It’s a celebration of people’s lives. It just all comes together.

It’s five of the biggest rock stars in history and you playing together.
I don’t really know how to connect all those dots. But you don’t have any choice in my position. You just do things. There it is. And it seems to be working.

When you share a mic with Paul for the “love you” coda at the end, you’re completely taking on the John role.
Yeah. I’ve done it so many times now. It’s part of the thing. It’s fun. It’s a moment. It’s not lost on me. I feel very, very lucky.

Ringo came out at Dodger Stadium and a couple of other special shows. That must have been fun too since you’re playing with half the Beatles.
Yeah. That’s really a buzz. Ringo is in the pocket. Even though he’s playing a really simple part, it speaks in a certain way that’s really great. Abe sort of follows Ringo, or Ringo follows Abe. They have their thing. We all kind of amalgamate together. When Ringo and Paul get together, it starts to get pretty Beatle-y. That’s super exciting.

Let’s talk about some of the Paul records you play on, starting with Memory Almost Full. What stands out in your mind about making that? What songs?
“Only Mama Knows” was cool. That was a fun song. That one had a medley. It was fun to put it together. David Kahne was producing. We were at Abbey Road. Geoff Emerick was engineering. That was the first time I had worked with Geoff. It was tricky since I was trying to get a guitar sound, but I had to play really quietly. At a certain point, we put the drums out. Studios have isolation rooms. At Abbey Road, they used to pull up soundproofed walls to minimize bleed-through.

There was still too much bleed, so we put the drums between the outer door and the inner door, creating this little space. Having space between two rooms soundproofs them. Abbey Road is in a residential/business area. That helped. I could now take my guitars and really get the amp to drive and sound great.

There was a lot of stuff like that, figuring out harmony parts. Paul would be like, “I want you to sing background on this.” And then we’d double it maybe. It was a really fun process.

That’s a very different experience than playing old songs at a stadium.
Yeah. A studio is such a different world. Your focus is completely different. When I’m onstage, I’m focusing on the other people on the stage. I’m looking at them. I’m looking at the audience. I might even close my eyes. In the studio, you might be looking at a chart or looking at lyrics, looking at the other people. It’s a very different orientation. You might have headphones on. You might not. They serve completely different purposes.

You’re on a bit of McCartney III, right?
Yeah. It was mainly a solo record, but he used an idea from a soundcheck. We learned it and played the riff. We ended up playing that song since that song was recorded during the Egypt Station sessions. It was called “Slidin’.” I think that song came out really cool. It has us playing on it. After we did that session, I think he wrote lyrics to it and fleshed it out into a whole song.

You’re also on Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.
We did bits and pieces for that. Nigel Goodrich was producing that one. That went through a lot of different phases. Before that was Memory Almost Full.

Are there any Beatles songs you haven’t played live that you’re hoping to play one day?
There’s some that we’ve played in rehearsal and didn’t quite make it to stage. I’ve suggested songs. We all have. I suggested “Getting Better “or “Helter Skelter.” They’re all on the tree. They’re fruit waiting to be plucked. You go, “That piece of fruit would be amazing. That one might be a little hard to do.”

“Getting Better” happened pretty quickly. That one came together and it was great. “Helter Skelter” was my suggestion. Paul said [super softly], “Yeah. Oh, yeah.” That one wound up happening later. I remember there was a preshow of dancers and a sort of Cirque du Soleil type of vibe. They were all hanging out in the audience. It was a rehearsal. We started playing “Helter Skelter,” and they all stated dancing like crazy. Paul went, “Ah! This actually will work.” They realized how great of a life song it is, the energy, the rhythms.

You also did “A Hard Day’s Night,” which had never been done.
Paul suggested that. I was really amazed that he would suggest that. For whatever reason, it just clicked in his head that that would be a good opener.

That first chord is so famous. People have been debating for decades who is playing what on that. How did you figure it out?
That was a really big process. There’s all these YouTube clips about, “Here’s how they did it!” You realize, “Oh, it’s not just one instrument. It’s the bass and acoustic and maybe is that piano in there?” We did some research and sort of figured it out. Then we figured out a way to do it where everyone is playing their special part. Then the sound man has to mix it right. It’s all the things coming together to make it sound like that chord. It’s such a magnificent moment.

All that work for about one second of sound.
Exactly. That’s one thing about music. When you get up onstage and you play all this music together, and it goes from song to song, part to part, I don’t know that the audience was aware of how one part is really difficult to play and you have to play over and over so your fingers will do it. And there’s other bits that are quick and easy, you don’t give it any thought. It’s stringing all these bits together that creates the magic of having a good live performance.

I’m stunned he still plays for three hours a night at age 80. It’s sort of a miracle.
It really is. He defies age. He doesn’t really think about it. I remember asking him, “It’s weird, Paul, how you never complain about anything. You never complain about your health or anything.” I think that was a real superpower, to get older and not say anything. He sort of said, “When I was a kid, I remember hearing all these older folks and these ladies getting together and complaining about their rheumatoid arthritis or whatever. I was like, ‘Note to self. I’m never going to be that person.'” Between his DNA and his mental mindset, I think he embodies healthy, future, creative visualization for himself.

How much time you spend with him offstage?
Here and there. A lot of times, you go on a tour and you spend a lot of time with these people, the band and Paul. We’ll get together and have dinners or sit on an airplane together or backstage, rehearsing. You spend a lot of time with them. When we go on break, we’ll occasionally text or whatever, have phone calls, maybe a dinner. But it’s sort of the way it is. If you have just a friend, you might be like, “Let’s go bowling or see a movie or go on a hike,” you might see them once a week. Then you have your day job and you do those kind of things.

When you’re touring with people, it’s really condensed. You see these people a lot. Because of that, when you’re on a break, you might not have a tendency to go, “Let’s hang out again. I’ll see you every week.” That’s because now you’re on a break and you have your other friends at home.

I’ve met Paul once or twice. I see what happens when he meets new people. The most jaded people in the world get very tongue-tied and really dumbfounded. You must see that all the time.
Oh, my God, yes. Some of my family members have said silly things. I’ve always felt that it’s really hard. How do you talk to Paul? I mean, you say hello. I went through this too. Your immediate thing is to try and bond with him. But if you know you’re just meeting him for a second — “This might be it” — you want to say something really smart. It’s just not a normal situation that you’re in. You have all those years of the media flooding into your head. You can’t separate the two.

People are like, “I saw you on The Ed Sullivan Show and it changed my life.” He has to hear about this stuff over and over and over again.
Exactly. I’ve noticed that with other people. I remember I saw an Alice Cooper show back with the old band in the day. It was absolutely mind-blowing. It was a real moment. That’s when you thought he was scary and actually going to throw an ax at somebody. It was creepy. But it was incredible music. I really loved that show.

I met him and I was hanging out and talking to him. I told him I was at that show. I almost had a feeling like he would go, “Oh, wow. You were at that one!! Wow!” But for him, it was just another night. He was putting out all this energy, but it was a job. He was passionate about this job. When you’re a fan, and you just see this moment, it’s an impactful moment. For the artist, how could it be different than just another show unless something really unusual happened?

Let’s move on to your solo records. You made your first one around 2005. Why did you wait so long?
Well, I had been in bands. I did the Eulogy thing, Living Daylights. I was the primary writer in Living Daylights. It was a band where everyone participated. I felt a lot of investment in that band. Then I started doing more work with other artists and doing tours and recordings with people. All the while, I was writing and putting demos together. Some of those were what ended up on my first record, which I made in 2003.

Paul plays on it.
He’s on “Hurt Myself.” I had the nerve after working with Paul on the first leg of the 2002 tour. I said, “Paul, I’m working on a record. I’d love if you could play on a song.” He said, “Sure.” I was like, “Wow. Cool.”

Then I asked David Kahne to produce and everyone else in the band, Brian, Wix, and Abe. They all said, “Sure.” We went to Sunset Sound, the same studio where I worked with the Bangles all those years earlier. And we recorded the song.

The amazing thing was that Paul came in a little later. He started playing bass. He’d curse himself when he made a little mistake. It was so endearing. I know that feeling of, “Why do I keep making that mistake?” It’s the learning process, especially if you aren’t reading the music and just following it. That’s how people in our world flesh it out.

It was very surreal. Paul called me the next day and goes, “What a cool song. That was really fun.” He plays bass, did some background vocals, and even played a little guitar for an intro part. We came up with an arrangement together in the studio with everybody. He goes, “You know that one section?” He called it the “rescue bit.” That’s one section of the song that wasn’t anything yet. It was maybe just chords. He goes, “I had a thought. It would be really cool if you came in there with some orchestral instruments. An oboe or a flute or a trumpet.” I thought, “OK. Why not. That sounds cool.”

We got Probyn Gregory. He played with Brian Wilson. He’s a multi-talent. He came in and brought a flugelhorn. He tried a few other things. It was cool to see the way Paul’s brain works and have that be part of the song.

After doing these big tours and albums with Paul, it must be nice to go in the studio and be the guy totally in charge.
That’s the thing. It’s hard to separate the hobby or creative passion and the actual day job. That’s all part of the same thing. That’s been part of my formula. I have to write. I have to create. I have to come up with musical bits and lyrics and sing. It’s all part of the same pie.

It’s nice when they can combine like that on different levels. Having Paul play on that record was amazing. Stewart Copeland played on that same record. We’ve done a bunch of stuff together. He played on a song called “Catbox Beach.” And I have a song that I released just last year called “Firefly” that he played drums on.

I’ve done some stuff with Bunk Gardner. I was a huge Mothers of Invention fan. He played woodwinds. That’s something I recorded and haven’t released yet. It’s more this experimental, jazzy kind of thing.

Tell me about RAA, your new project.
Rusty Anderson Afternoon was a creation because I started working a lot with my pal Todd [O’Keefe], who started off as someone to play the live shows with. Then we started writing together. He started singing more. I felt, “This should be a band.” But I didn’t want to start off with a band name. All of a sudden, you’re called the Piece of Wood or whatever it is. And you don’t have any attachment to the things that I’ve built up over time, like my other solo albums.

And so I called it Rusty Anderson Afternoon to suggest that it’s actually a band, primarily between Todd and I. The last bits I haven’t really released yet because how the formula of the music is made has changed a lot. Combined with the librarian aspect of it, the category of Spotify and Apple and the way that music is indexed is different now. It keeps changing and evolving. I felt it was getting too far away from just “Rusty Anderson” where people would see this song, and not that song. I didn’t want anyone to be confused.

When you play live, you play under your own name, right?
Yeah. We just did a California tour around Sacramento and Carmel and Menlo Park. There’s a great venue in Menlo Park called The Guild. It’s amazing because it’s a dream for anyone playing these medium and small venues. They have their own filming. They do in-house videos. They have a lighting guy, a sound guy, a monitor guy. Everyone is real nice and incredible at their job. There’s good acoustics. The dressing rooms are beautiful.

You’ve played basically all the biggest venues on the planet. It must be nice to play clubs and have a very different experience.
Yeah. Here’s the thing about that. The biggest difference [on a big tour] is having this whole team behind you that can set up all your gear, change your strings. There’s so many aspects to the crew. There’s the driving, the airplane, all the hotels. All that stuff is dealt with. That’s amazing.

Having said that, with Paul, we’ve played these big enormodomes, whether that’s the Tokyo Dome or the Super Bowl or the Olympics or whatever. Then we’ve also done these little promo shows at small clubs like Pappy and Harriet’s or we’ll play the Electric Ballroom. We played on a flatbed truck in Times Square.

I saw you play at Grand Central Station.
There’s another one-off. We’ve done so many different versions, from little tiny clubs to flatbed trucks. Grand Central was tricky. It’s so echoey in there since it’s all marble. Figuring the acoustics was tricky.

Paul has taken the past year off. That gave you a lot of time to do your own work.
Yeah. I realized. “Oh my gosh, I have a summer off where we’re not touring.” We’re going to Australia in the fall. It was the perfect opportunity to do that kind of thing. The studio is easier since it’s an environment you can control. You can put out music and get it out in the whole digital world or wherever it goes these days. With live shows, you can’t control that many aspects of them. You have to deal with hotels and airplanes and all that stuff. This was a nice respite.

What are your goals over the next five years?
Release a lot of my own music, which I’ve got some in the can. It’s going to come out soon. Doing more shows with Paul. Hanging out with my daughter and my family, which is great. She’s 12 now. Getting to be a part of her life and that world … I’ve been doing some soundtrack stuff too. I just did a short movie for a friend.

Another piece wound up in a documentary. The guy’s name is Donick Cary. He’s a great writer that’s worked on The Simpsons and Parks and Recreation, and he made a cool documentary about Native Americans [and the former name of the Washington, D.C., football team]. It gave me this idea to turn it into a piece of music. That found a home with him, which I was very happy about.

I’m into the idea of doing more soundtracks and that kind of thing. It also sort of seems to have a mind of its own about what’s up. It’s always been that way. You can’t always control exactly where it goes.

I see no reason why Paul can’t be doing shows at age 90. Why not?
I know. I stopped trying to predict that one years ago.

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