Eddie Martinez: How An Unknown Guitarist Turned A Lunch Date Into Session Work On The Biggest Hits Of The 1980s
Eddie Martinez's chance encounter made him a go-to session player for Mick Jagger, Steve Winwood, Robert Palmer and others
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Eddie Martinez had scored a few hot touring gigs during the late ‘70s — playing with LaBelle and then with Stanley Clarke and George Duke — but by the early ‘80s he set his sights on cracking the New York City session scene. “I probably couldn’t have picked a worse time,” he says. “All the hot players were in Manhattan, and everybody was out for the same jobs. I had a hell of a time getting noticed. Knocked on a lot of doors.”
It was at a particularly low point in 1982 when Martinez looked up an old friend: bassist and producer Bernard Edwards, famous for his groundbreaking work with the band Chic. The two met for lunch, and Martinez pitched himself as a guitarist for the solo album Edwards was cutting. “All at once, my life changed when Bernard said, ‘Come by the studio tomorrow and bring your guitar,’” Martinez recalls. “That was the real door opener for me. I can remember it so vividly.” He laughs. “I can even remember what Bernard was eating: fried flounder with chili sauce.”
Before long, Martinez, heretofore New York City’s best-kept guitar secret, would become the secret sauce on hit recordings by Run-DMC, Robert Palmer, Steve Winwood, Billy Ocean, Mick Jagger, David Lee Roth and a fleet of other music greats.
During much of the ‘80s, his diverse playing — everything from earth-moving rhythms to silky grooves to face-melting leads — seemed omnipresent on both MTV and radio. “I waited so long for my day in the sun, so it felt like validation when things finally happened,” he says. “I had seen a lot of my buddies get the big gigs. After a while, you start to feel like you’re standing around at the prom waiting to be asked to dance. That’s what was so frustrating: I knew I could play. I just needed the shot.”
Now living in Portland, Oregon, Martinez hasn’t exactly retired, but he doesn’t work on the clock anymore. “I play around town and throughout the country, and I’m finishing up an EP with my band,” he says. “I’m content with what I’ve accomplished. I don’t look back too often, but occasionally I’ll sit back and reminisce. I feel very blessed to have worked with a lot of special people, some of whom aren’t here anymore, sadly. That’s the really beautiful thing about music — the friendships you forge.”
Addicted To Love (1985)
“Robert Palmer had asked me to play on the Riptide album when he was doing the Power Station record. I went down to the Bahamas to work with him and Bernard Edwards. Robert played me a rough demo of Addicted To Love, and I thought it was great, but it wasn’t a situation where the demo was so perfect that you had to beat what was on it. There was some guide guitar work on it, but Robert wasn’t beholden to anything. It was a collaborative project in the best sense of the word.
“We cut the track live, and I started to play what I felt. Robert and Bernard knew my playing, so they let me explore the song. Most of what I did is emblematic of my sound — big crunchy parts, bordering on an orchestral feel, but I also played these clean, classy parts during certain parts. You might hear that kind of thing in funk or pop, not rock. I liked the two extremes. It gave your ears a lot of nice contrasts.
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"For the crunch stuff, I used my Hamer, a 50-watt Marshall and a Pro Co RAT distortion. On the classy B sections, I played a Strat into a Twin Reverb, and I added a little Boss chorus. I think we mixed in a little DI stuff, too. Later on, Andy Taylor from Duran Duran added some rhythm stuff in New York.
“The solo was something I ad-libbed on the spot. We were pretty much finished for the night, but Jason Corsaro, the engineer, and I stayed behind and worked on tones. I played the solo one time, and that was it. Instead of doing something fast and shreddy, I played slow and soulful, so each note really sticks out. It became a song within a song. I have to credit Jason for the sound — he pulled a lot of tricks to get it just right. When Robert heard what we’d done, he was floored. He really loved it. It was such a nice feeling when I could surprise him with something like that.”
Simply Irresistible (1988)
"This was a different process than what I’d done with Robert previously. We cut this track in Milan, Italy — Robert had moved to Switzerland for a variety of personal and professional reasons. When I got to Italy, a lot of tracks had already been cut, so we weren’t playing live. Robert was producing, and he’d had bass guitar, drums and keyboard parts laid down. But I’ll tell you, I had a blast. I had a big rig with me — I don’t know how many cabinets, it was just mondo — and I just went wild.
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"I cut crunchy rhythm guitars first — there’s no clean guitars at all. I even put a 12-string Hamer on there to fatten up what was already fat. It was just beautiful excess. My solo is nuts. It opens up with these intervals, and in the middle there’s a quasi-bop blues lick, and then there’s a sonic effect with a whammy bar sliding all these double stops, and then it ends with a whole tone scale and some kind of arbitrary, manic riff. It’s almost like three sections in one solo. Robert loved it. He called it ‘Large Marge’ from those Pee-Wee Herman movies. That’s what the song needed. It’s a very aggressive song, so it felt right to just go outside the box.
“In addition to that 12-string, my guitar was a Jackson Dinky Soloist. Grover Jackson had given it to me. It was one of three he made. I know Jeff Beck had one, and a friend of mine, John McCurry, had the other one. They were great guitars, and they really did the job.”
Joe Bosso (Guitar Player - 2024)
Voir aussi :
- Might As Well Face It: A Conversation With Guitarist Eddie Martinez (Spill Magazine - 2025)
- Eddie Martinez 2024 Interview (Guitar World - 2024)
- Eddie Martinez Shares The Studio Secrets Behind Classic Records (Guitar World - 2023)