The guitar solo on “Peg” is among the most discussed passages in the band’s recorded work, and the discussion is not about what it contains. It is about how it was obtained.
The story is well known, and I will give it only in outline. Several of the best session guitarists in Los Angeles are reported to have attempted the solo before Jay Graydon’s performance was kept. Accounts differ on the number, and on the order, and I have not attempted to settle either. What is not in dispute is that the solo on the record was chosen, from among several, by the two men who wrote the song, and that it was chosen because it was the one they wanted.
Please note what that means. The solo on the record is not a part of the song. It is a part of the record: a performance by one person, on one day, selected by two others. It is the result of a decision. To reproduce it is to make a copy of someone else’s decision, and to present the copy as a performance.
The takes
I did not reach this position immediately. The arrangement log records 41 takes of a prepared guitar solo for “Peg,” made at the keyboard with a guitar voice and the pitch wheel, in three periods.
| Takes | Period | Approach | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–12 | 2011 | An original solo in the idiom of the record. | Too close to the record. Take 9 was, on review, approximately 60 percent the record. |
| 13–29 | 2012 | An original solo in my own idiom. | My own idiom is a pianist’s. The bends were measured in cents and were correct, and they were not convincing. |
| 30–41 | 2019 | An original solo in the idiom of the record, prepared with a revised bend table and new velocity curves. | Technically satisfactory. Not kept. |
Take 38 was the best of them. I say so for the record, because I recognize that it will be asked. It was well shaped, it sat correctly against the harmony, and its bends arrived where a guitarist’s would. I listened to it on 14 occasions over three weeks in August 2019. On the fifteenth I deleted it from the arrangement, although not from the log.
Why none was kept
The difficulty with take 38 was not its quality. The difficulty was that a solo is the one part of an arrangement that ought not to be prepared.
Every other additional part in the program is prepared, and I have written elsewhere about why I regard that as correct. A horn line is written. A backing vocal is written. A drum part, for my purposes, is written. They are all parts, and parts are prepared. A solo is different in kind. Its value, when it is good, is that it was not prepared: that a player heard the harmony at that moment and answered it. Graydon’s solo is valued, among other things, as an answer.
A prepared solo is therefore a contradiction. I cannot improvise on the guitar, and I will not present a prepared part as an improvisation. There were two honest courses available. One was to reproduce the record’s solo exactly, and to credit it, which is a reproducer’s course and not mine. The other was to leave the solo out.
I am aware that the solo can be programmed by ear, note for note. I am told that it has been. I express no view on this.
What is played instead
The bars remain. The form of the song is not altered, and the solo section occupies exactly the length it occupies on the record. What is heard in those bars is the harmony beneath the solo, played at the piano with the pedals, voiced in the right hand in the manner described in the note on the mu major, and not decorated. The prepared drums continue, and the bass continues on the pedals. The prepared guitars are silent.
The effect, I am told, is that the listener hears the space in which a solo occurs. That is the intention. The harmony was written by the songwriters, and it is theirs. The solo was played by someone else, and it is his. Only the first is the concern of an interpreter. Where the second belongs, it is on the record, which is widely available and very good.
It has been suggested to me that the passage is, in effect, a rest of several bars in the most celebrated place in the song. I would put it differently. It is a place where nothing has been added.
The backing vocals
For completeness: the backing vocals on the record, including Michael McDonald’s, are among its most recognizable features, and they are also prepared in the program. They are sung by me, in four layers, to parts I have written after the record’s voicing but not in imitation of any singer. A backing vocal is a part. It is written, and it may therefore be prepared. The distinction is consistent, and I have found that it answers most of the questions it raises.
A note on requests
Take 27 has been requested, once, by a listener who heard it at the house in 2012. It will not be released. It was not one of the better takes, and I have not been able to establish how it came to be heard.