Tim Pierce

The session veteran looks back at a golden age of studio work with Bon Jovi, Rick Springfield, Belinda Carlisle and pretty much everyone else

- BY ANDREW DALY

WHEN SESSION MAN Tim Pierce looks back at his career, he doesn't view himself as a legend who's played on more than a thousand records; instead, his perspective is one of deep gratitude.

“It seemed like a dream I could fulfill,” he says. “It seemed like a scenario where I could be a working guitar player. But the real dream was to play on records.”

Man, did he do that — and quick. After moving to L.A. from his home town of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1979, Pierce grabbed all the work he could, learning along the way. “Somebody told me that songs on these records could typically have one, two, three or four guitar players,” he says. “That's a tradition that came down from Motown; there's so much unique personality that happens with guitar players.”

Few had more personality than Pierce. Behind the scenes, he starred on Bon Jovi’s "Runaway" single in 1984 (no, that's not Richie Sambora playing guitar on that track), Crowded House's “Don't Dream It's Over” two years later and parts of Belinda Carlisle's Heaven on Earth album in 1987. Oh, and he joined Rick Springfield's band. And that was just the Eighties!

In the Nineties, he lent his licks to everyone from Michael Jackson on 1991's Dangerous to Roger Waters on 1992's Amused to Death, to multitudes of records by Tina Turner, Whitney Houston and Celine Dion, and most notably the Goo Goo Dolls’ 1998 smash hit, “Iris,” where he knocked out the solo and layered in some gorgeous mandolin.

“I never wanted to be a rock star,” he says. “I wanted to be a musician creating parts and sounds, for lack of a better word, in a laboratory. I toured with Rick Springfield and thought, ‘This is cool, but it's not me.’ It seemed artificial, and I'd much rather be making records than going out there and imitating them for an audience.”