Hamish Stuart - Interview

by Eoghan Lyng

published: 20 / 3 / 2023

Guitarist to the stars - and Ringo Starr - Hamish Stuart brightens Eoghan Lyng’s night with some great anecdotes from the rock era.

Article

It's six o'clock on a December evening, but Hamish Stuart doesn't seem bothered by the weather. It's not just because it's the Christmas season or because he has a solo album that he intends to complete in the next year. Stuart is happy because he's speaking about The Beatles, a band that led him on his personal trajectory from playing guitar and bass with Average White Band to performing alongside Ringo Starr on a variety of All-Starr tours. "There was a jam night in a studio during the 1970s," Stuart recalls. "This was during John Lennon's 'Lost Weekend', and I think it happened at Record Plant. We were all playing, and suddenly [Lennon] and Harry Nilsson appeared out of nowhere. We started playing 'Stand By Me' with them for what must have been twenty minutes, before they got bored and left. They must have gone somewhere like The Troubadour,” he laughs. As Beatle anecdotes go, it's a dynamite one. Stuart has interacted with all four members, working closely with two on their solo material. "Ringo was the first one I met," he tells me. He says the two didn't work together until 2006, but he recalls speaking to Starr during the ‘Ringo's Rotogravure’ era. "He was doing a lot of work with Arif Mardin at the time," Stuart says. "Arif went on to produce 'Against All Odds' for Phil Collins. Arif also produced Norah Jones, and decided that what suited her best was a small four-piece band. It's the mark of a good producer when they can see the best framework for an artist." Stuart agrees with me when I suggest that George Martin also had that gift ("Oh, he definitely did") which made him a very different proposition to Phil Spector, who tended to stamp his sound on the artist no matter who they were ("Lots and lots of musicians playing over the song, yeah.") Stuart's talking to Pennyblack to promote ‘Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band Live At The Greek Theater 2019’, a live DVD that showcases the most exciting iteration of the band, but he's happy to discuss his connection to Paul McCartney, especially the ‘Flowers In The Dirt’ album, a work Stuart is evidently quite proud of. "He recorded some of the stuff before the band got involved," Stuart says, "but it's a very textured album. I didn't listen to it for a long time after we finished recording it, but when I did listen to it, I felt it was a very strong album. 'Put It There' was a very important song for Paul, because it represented the lessons he learned from his father that he was passing on to his son. It's a very circular song." It doesn't hurt that all three generations of McCartney bore the same first name: James (McCartney never changed his first name and in 1997 was knighted as Sir James Paul McCartney). "There's a lot of Jameses around," Stuart cackles. "It's my name - Hamish is Scots Gaelic for James. Seamas is Irish for James [cackles again]." He asks me how I would pronounce my name, and when I say "Eoghan, like Owen" he asks if it's Welsh. I divert him back to Scotland, the Celtic country where he grew up. "I had to leave Glasgow in 1969 for London. In those days there were no studios in Glasgow so I had to go down there." Well, he wasn't alone. Phil Lynott realised that if he wanted to make it as a rock star, he had to make his mark as a songwriter on the British mainland, where his roguish ballads bore a new meaning and pathos. "Yes, I knew Phil well," Stuart says. "And I knew some of the people who played with Rory Gallagher." And yet he didn't cross paths with the solo Beatles until he had acquired a certain amount of fame as a member of Average White Band. The imprint the Liverpool quartet held on him was infectious. "The Beatles were the reason I took up guitar," says Stuart. "Ringo and Paul were the most unique rhythm section. The stuff they did together on 'Come Together' and 'Ticket To Ride' were incredible." He cites McCartney's melodicism as one of his formative influences as a bassist ("The other was James Jamerson, who played on all the Motown stuff.") As his interest in funk widened, Stuart started to double as a guitarist and a bassist, which served him well on the 'Flowers In The Dirt' tour. "I could play guitar," he says, "but I could also take over on bass whenever Paul wanted to play guitar, or to play piano like he did on 'Lady Madonna'." McCartney, Stuart says, is a chameleonic musician: a man capable of working out any instrument in a matter of minutes. "But John Lennon was a very good rhythm guitar player," he adds. "They all had their elements." I'm anxious to hear what Stuart made of George Harrison, a garrulous but grumpy guitarist who was famous for his dislike of rock stars. "I only met him a couple of times, but I got on very well with him. I was surprised by his dark sense of humour, if I'm honest. It was very like my Glasgow sense of humour." Stuart defines Harrison as a Scouser who never lost his sight of his roots, but he also holds McCartney in high esteem. He gets a little cagey when I ask an admittedly bullish question: is it true that he taught McCartney the chords to 'Getting Better' in 1989? "What that was...," he begins, clearly looking for an elegant answer. Then he finds it: "Many of the songs we played were done after The Beatles had stopped touring. Some of us had played the songs live in our bands, but we had the records for reference. Clearly Paul knew the songs from writing them for the albums, but he had never played them live. That's all it was." Working with Starr presented a different type of challenge, although Stuart says he told the Beatle he was happy to work with him in any capacity. In 2019, he received a call to rejoin The All Starr Band. "I actually replaced Graham Gouldman," Stuart says. "I met him at an industry function, and he said, 'You're my replacement!'" Numerous bassists have locked in with Starr, and Stuart is the latest to put his mark on the band. "I think an album with The All Starr Band would be a great thing," he muses. "The talent is there." Would it, I suggest, be something of a Wilburyesque concept? "Well, that's kind of how it is on stage. We play Ringo's stuff, and I do my stuff, and the Toto guys do their stuff. Colin Hay does stuff from Men at Work." An album, he suggests, could follow a similar philosophy, with the individual members of the band building a blanket behind the song presented to them by the singer-songwriter in question. "I'm amazed at Ringo's energy," Stuart says, laughing as he recalls the memory of the drummer whizzing past him on a staircase in Japan. "I'm ten years younger than him, but he's so much fitter than me!" But like Starr - not forgetting McCartney, who headlined a heroic stint at Glastonbury earlier this year - Stuart shows no interest in resting on his laurels. "I think the DVD shows the band playing really well together," he says. "There is a lot of talent in the All Starr Band. Ringo was sick with covid, but he came back into the band full of energy, and we probably played the best shows we did this year. We have some shows to play next year, probably to make up for the ones we missed due to covid, but then I hope to record some ideas for an album of my own." Satisfied with his lot, Stuart hangs up, and I contemplate the anecdotes I've heard on a rainy night in Dublin. This December night doesn't seem so damp after all.