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Georg Wadenius - Jazz, Rock, and Everything In Between

Georg Wadenius thought he was going to be strictly a jazz player. But, after his career led him to BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS, fusion music, and the New York studio scene, he found out that jazz was only a small piece of his puzzle!

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Georg Wadenius has a career that has spanned three decades, including two countries, and a very long list of albums, projects, and musical styles. Some artists/bands which he has performed with include names like Blood Sweat and Tears, James Brown, Robert Plant, Marianne Faithfull, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Simon and Garfunkel, and Donald Fagen.

Besides just being a great guitar player, he is a composer and a producer. He has composed and arranged music for a number of television commercials such as McDonalds, Diet Coke, AT&T, and Coor's Light. He has also composed a few children's albums as well as a children's television show in Scandinavia.

Georg is currently doing a lot of composing, arranging, and producing for singers and jazz groups in Norway, his homeland.

Access Rock: You must have had a serious love affair with music to walk away from a career in medicine!

Georg: My Mother is a really great pianist, she's still playing actually. She was always practicing in the house and there was always music around, so I grew up with music. I was just not ready to be a doctor..so it was a combination of the two.

Access Rock: Why do you think you weren't ready?

Georg: I was too immature to go out and see patients. I studied for three years and was getting ready to do be an intern, and I felt that I was totally out of place. I really felt pressured in that situation, plus I wanted to play.

Access Rock: How did you start your music career?

Georg: I was working as a studio musician in Stockholm [Sweden] most of the time. Most of this work was on the electric bass. My mom used to listen a lot to Oscar Peterson and Dave Brubeck, so I used to be into Ray Brown on [stand up] bass. I knew all of the bass lines, but I had a guitar technique. About that time, which was 1967, they started using the electric bass more for recordings. I bought a new Fender jazz bass at the time and I started to do a lot of [studio] sessions. I was also playing guitar with some bands at the same time.

Access Rock: Did you take lessons on bass guitar?

Georg: I just kind of picked it up. I never really took any lessons. I got some lessons from a guitar player that my mother new when I was like thirteen or fourteen. He just showed me the most simple, basic chords. I did take some classical [guitar] lessons for a couple of months when I was nineteen. Whenever the stretches were too big, and it was a little too difficult, I used to improvise and change stuff around. The teacher didn't like that too much.

Access Rock: How would you describe the music of Made In Sweden, one of your first bands?

Georg: It was a pretty strange mixture because I came from a jazz background. I listened to Jim Hall, Jimmy Rainey, and Wes Montgomery. I hooked up with these two guys who were blues and rock players. The three of us formed this band. We were kind of like a fusion band in a sense. We got the guitar trio idea from Cream and Hendrix, but we didn't play music anything like that. We would listen to Wes Montgomery and redo his arrangements for "A Day in the Life", and "Eleanor Rigby". We would also pick up some songs from Charles Lloyd and Keith Jarrett. Usually the songs were like two or three part harmonies, but they weren't like the rock and roll or country harmonies. It was more like an Aminor7 to a D9. It was vamps like that and we would just jam on it. We were a fairly well-known underground band in Sweden.

Access Rock: Since you were mostly trained in jazz, did you listen to much rock at that point?

Georg: Not really. I was a little egotistical too, I thought that jazz was a much better music. I thought it didn't take that much to be a good rock player. That's what I thought until I met some really great [rock] players (laughs)!! It was a humbling experience to come to the United States, that's for sure.

Access Rock: When you started playing at fourteen, you were into the jazz artists. Who were the main artists that turned you on to jazz music?

Georg: Well, at that age I would listen to Dave Brubeck's quartet, Oscar Peterson's trio with Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen. I listened to these three records of Paul Desmond [saxophone player] on which Jim Hall played guitar. That really turned me on because Jim Hall's playing was so elegant. With just a few notes, he could say so much. Art Farmer had a quartet later with Jim Hall also. I was introduced to Miles [Davis] in the early sixties. I heard the records that he did in the fifties like "Kind of Blue" and "Porgy and Bess". I was also a huge fan of Cannonball Adderly's quartet. He used to come over once or twice to Sweden and played a concert house in Stockholm. I would go to all of those concerts. They played like a funky-jazz style that was really cool.

Access Rock: Yah, I listened to a lot of the same stuff when I was in my teens and early twenties. I was heavy into jazz when I was very young, then when I was about twenty six, I started checking out a lot of rock and blues music. Most guitar players do it the other way around!

Georg: Yah. I got into rock music little by little. Most of the bands that I played with in Sweden before I got with Blood Sweat and Tears were fusion, or in between rock and jazz. You could almost say that Blood Sweat and Tears was a sort-of fusion band with the horn section, even though it was more pop.

Access Rock: Did you hear much American rock music on Swedish radio in your younger years?

Georg: You heard Elvis, Bill Haley. In the mid sixties is when we started to hear Booker T. and the MG's and Otis Redding. I was with a band around 1966 that did some R&B stuff. We had two saxes and a singer. Seeing James Brown and Sam and Dave at the concert house in Stockholm was great.

Access Rock: You got the chance to play with James Brown on Saturday Night Live.

Georg: Yah, I played the second guitar with him on that show.

Access Rock: What was that like?

Georg: It was kind-of fun. He's a legend, you know. It's kind of weird sometimes because I come from such a totally different culture. I don't know how much common ground we had other than it was fun to play, and I think he enjoyed having me play with him. It seemed like that, anyway (laughs)! I love his stuff.. the band and the grooves that they were doing.

Access Rock: What Swedish bands or music influenced you?

Georg: There is a guitar player named Rune Gustavsson. He was like the jazz player of his generation, which was the generation before mine. He was a big influence. There was also a trumpet player named Jan Allan, also. Both of these guys are still playing. I actually used Jan on this last record which I produced.

Access Rock: You did the Saturday Night Live gig for a while. What did that gig require of you?

Georg: It required that I play like a studio musician, in essence. I had to play various styles, some leads, solos, and rhythm.

Access Rock: Did you do any arranging for them?

Georg: No. The musical director did most of the arranging. There was a lot of money in it, and he had the time to do it.

Access Rock: You managed to work, like in the SNL band, in every style of music. What combination of things allowed this to happen?

Georg: I think the fact that I grew up with a mother that was both classically trained and a jazz player also. And the fact that she listened to jazz a lot, plus then you can't avoid listening to pop music. Then the Bossa Nova came in which was the beginning of the sixties. That was a big influence for me. I was listening to Stan Get'z first album. That was a big thing, just figuring out how to play those chord progressions. I spent a lot of time doing that. Then I think it's just grown from playing in different situations and being somewhat of a studio musician in Norway. Also, playing with Blood Sweat and Tears, listening to a lot of styles of music, and getting a lot of respect for different styles of music. It's kind of my nature to be into different kinds of music..I couldn't really settle for focusing on one thing, it's not me.

Access Rock: You never wanted to be a jazz player?

Georg: Yah, I did. But, at the time I didn't feel like I would get anywhere by being a jazz player. I also did have an affinity for a lot of other music. Jazz is my roots still when I play. I regard myself as a jazz player. But, it seems like the hardcore jazz fans don't, and the hardcore rock fans probably don't see me as as rock player either (laughs)!! I just like a lot of different types of music. Being a fusion player there for a while in the seventies suited me pretty well. I really didn't learn to play rhythm very well until I started doing studio work in New York which was in '78 or '79. I felt that I was learning to play rhythm much better. My mind was focused more on lead before that.

Access Rock: Yah, I know starting out as a jazz player, that is where your mind is at.

Georg: Yah, you do kind of think a lot about scales, how they work, and harmonic concepts.

Access Rock: I know for myself that after I started playing a lot of different music, my rhythm playing improved a lot from playing in different grooves. I guess that's what happened to you in the studio?

Georg: Also, when I started working in the studio which was at the end of the seventies, there were two guitar players on most [studio] gigs. You did all the basic tracks live. The thing that was neat about it was that I got to play with Jeff Mironov, Steve Kahn, a couple of guys that were really excellent all-around players. I got to sit right next to them and check out what they were doing.

Access Rock: Do you think that there was a learning curve coming from the studios in Sweden to the studios in New York?

Georg: I'd say so. I hadn't done studio work in Sweden for a long time before I started doing it in the states. It was a whole different level of efficiency and expectation of what you could do in New York. Basically, in New York, everybody just played great immediately (laughs)!!

Access Rock: How did you break into the studio scene in New York?

Georg: It kind of came gradually. First, I played with Blood Sweat and Tears which meant quite a few people in the music scene had heard my name. I think that now just about everybody has played with them, but at that point there weren't that many people who had. Also, I did a thing on the first Blood Sweat and Tears album that I played on that got a lot of recognition. I did the scat solo on the "Maiden Voyage" track on an album called New Blood.

I played in some bands on the side in New York which played on a demo for some commercials. The guy who was hiring us was a big wig at this advertising agency. He remembered me when I came back to the States after being in Sweden for a couple of years. I talked to an arranger friend of mine when I got back, and he told me that this guy was asking about me. So, I called him up and he had me on a session the next week. I didn't have a clue what I was supposed to be doing (laughs)!! He put me on a session with some really nice musicians.

The first session that I did was with Eric Weissberg and Charlie Brown, the two players who did the Deliverance soundtrack. Charlie was a great country player and Eric is a great banjo player. So, I asked them 'What do I do?', and they said "Oh, you just play acoustic guitar..just play the chords." I was doing maybe one or two sessions a week picking up on things. Then I started getting all of these sessions and I didn't have much experience yet, plus my reading wasn't all that happening. I had to focus on getting my reading skills together.

In the summer of '79, after being in New York for a year, I got called to audition for Saturday Night Live. The reason I did is because a couple of the guys that were in Blood Sweat and Tears with me, were in the band. We were still hangin' out in New York and when the guitar chair was open, they recommended me and I got the gig. That was a big help in getting other studio work because it gave me a lot of recognition immediately. I started to get more experience doing studio work and playing rhythm on different things.

Access Rock: What kind of equipment were you bringing in to the studio back then?

Georg: At that time, they had the amps in the studio. I had a hybrid guitar with a '67 tele neck and a body built by Carl Thompson. I used that for a lot of sessions, then I bought a Pensa Suhr guitar in '82. I still have it and it's one of my favorite guitars. I also had a Cry Baby wah wah pedal and Boss pedals. Then in the nineties I had a GP-100 and a GT-5 multieffects unit.

Access Rock: What kind of projects are you doing now?

Georg: I had produced two albums with this Norwegian jazz singer. I think they are excellent albums. They aren't out in the United States yet. I was more of a producer than a player on them. I also produced a record with a Swedish singer who does musicals. So, I'm getting into more production now. I have a studio in Oslo [Norway] which I have with a bass player named Leif Johanssen. We have a workshop situation there. I'm also playing in different areas of Sweden. I just did a couple of weekends with a big band that is playing arrangements of a bunch of Steely Dan songs. I'm doing all kinds of stuff here. I'm really enjoying my life here..musically I get to do a lot of different things. I think I like to have different challenges because I learn music pretty fast. After a while it's like, 'All right, time to learn something new!'