Brian Ray

Throughout a career spanning multiple decades that started in the mid-1970s, guitarist Brian Ray compiled an extensive list of prominent credits, launching as musical director and guitarist for soul icon Etta James. Years of road work, session contributions, and original songwriting eventually secured his signature position on guitar and bass alongside Paul McCartney, an affiliation that commenced in the early 2000s and continued through the subsequent ten years. Ray initiated his own recording path via two melodic power-pop albums, among them 2010’s This Way Up, before assembling the garage-rock outfit the Bayonets, whose full-length appeared in 2014.

Raised in Southern California, Ray took up the guitar at age nine after discovering rock albums in the collection of his older sister Jean. Jean Ray and her husband Jim Glover achieved recognition in the folk era as the duo Jim & Jean; Brian has repeatedly credited their example as a formative influence. By his late teens he held a regular slot in the band of Bobby Pickett, known for “Monster Mash,” which introduced him to producer Phil Kaufman—already noted for the desert cremation of country-rock figure Gram Parsons. As a member of Pickett’s Crypt Kicker 5, Ray performed at a 1973 benefit intended to defray Kaufman’s legal costs from that incident and soon came under the producer’s guidance. Kaufman in turn connected Ray with Etta James, then staging a return; for the balance of the 1970s and into the 1980s, Ray served as her guitarist and musical director, traveling globally and sharing stages with John Lee Hooker, the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, and Bo Diddley. Late in the decade he began a songwriting collaboration with Steve LeGassick that yielded the title track for Smokey Robinson’s 1987 Motown album One Heartbeat. During the 1990s Ray also worked in France with French-Canadian pop vocalist Mylène Farmer and French rock pioneer Johnny Hallyday.

Ray’s next major chapter opened in 2002 upon learning that Paul McCartney sought a guitarist equally capable on bass. Ray refreshed his bass technique and earned entry with a single performance of McCartney’s “Freedom” at a Super Bowl pre-game event in New Orleans, after which he joined the Driving Rain tour. Over the following decade he remained a core member of Sir Paul’s ensemble, contributing to live sets such as Paul McCartney in Red Square (2005) and Good Evening New York City (2009) as well as studio releases including Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005) and Memory Almost Full (2007). While McCartney’s band constituted his central commitment, Ray also guested on mainstream pop projects by Shakira and Kelly Clarkson.

Following years supporting other artists, Ray issued his solo debut, the energetic power-pop album Mondo Magneto, in 2005; it included a guest vocal from Etta James on the blues track “Soft Machine.” He returned with This Way Up in 2010, again collaborating with Oliver Leiber, son of the celebrated songwriter Jerry Leiber. In 2011 the pair founded the garage-inflected power-pop group the Bayonets, releasing Crash Boom Bang! in 2014. Ray sustained his McCartney duties while pursuing independent projects, issuing the 2017 single “Here for You” backed with “Cinnamon Girl/Mr. Soul” and, in 2018, a pair of joint recordings with Smokey Robinson.