Quote:
Originally Posted by Rdkopper
Hear him vocally or guitar?
Regardless, he was obviously involved with some of the recording and backing vocals... And for good reason if Jon wants to put him on the album cover... But his input is probably no more than Dave or Ticos...
As far as song development goes:
I truly think that Jon gives Shanks a final acoustic version of a song with no real direction. Maybe a basic medley (We heard songs like Reunion, Do What You Can, Working Man all prior to album releases) and then Shanks takes over from there. He's the guy who develops the song structure including writing most of the instruments. He also co writes lyrics with Jon too...He is way more Richie Part 2 than Phil is... but at the same time, he was doing most of that while Richie was still in the band. He just took on more of it since Richie left.
Like Shanks or not, he is a musical genius in his own right.
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Guitar-wise. Checking my notes he only did backing vocals on Do What You Can, Limitless and Beautiful Drug. 2 and 3 are gang vocals so it's hard to pick him out. I don't really hear him as well on DWYC.
Guitar wise, yeah, I hear his style on most of the songs he's credited on. Some I don't hear his style as much but honestly....is kind of the point of a good session guitarist. Don't stand out, serve the song, add your flair when you can. You can tell the ones recorded live off the floor were Beautiful Drug, Let it Rain, Blood in the Water, Brothers in Arms and mayyybe Luv Can. It's a very controversial thing to say here but....they sound like a band playing. Not the band we want or are as crazy about but it's a world of difference. Last album there were a lot of studio-built songs.
I hear your point about us hearing early versions of all those songs but we didn't hear how the structure was built, we heard Jon do them acoustically. For all we know he stripped it down to fit these shows. There's a lot we don't know about how the songs are recorded. The common rhetoric around here is how little the band hand to do with WAN when engineers of the record say different. Tough to say how involved Shanks is. Past records, yeah but again, Jon wrote the bulk of this record along. Sure Shanks helped arrange the songs, as the producer it's his job. I just don't think he's the kingpin of the operation making the songs his own because Jon doesn't want to.