“It’s not the world’s greatest solo, but we spent hours on it”: Session legend Dann Huff recalls recording with Michael Jackson and Shania Twain – and begging Michael Bolton to let him play a solo with a Peavey acoustic
Vertex Effects has continued its heritage of intriguing interviews with session gurus by chewing the fat with Dann Huff – a seasoned guitarist whose session credits include cuts with Michael Jackson, Michael Bolton, and Shania Twain.
Following conversations with Dean Parks and Ray Parker Jr, Vertex’s latest interview sees Huff dissect some of his most notable features – and reflect on Michael Bolton’s meticulous approach in the studio.
Recalling the tracking of 1993’s Said I Loved You… But I Lied, a song Huff was eager to feature on, he reflects: “You want to play on hit records and I loved the changes on this track. Michael’s vocals: it doesn’t get better than that.”
Recording with Bolton could prove to be an intense gig, though: “He wanted textures, and we would do take after take because he’d want the arc of the volume pedal and the vibrato [to be perfect],” Huff goes on. “We’d sit there for two hours just doing chord strums – it was that deep.
“He was just waiting for that right relationship between the dynamics and the rhythm; everything just had to be right on the backside of the kick drum. That’s just how he heard music.”
Huff also mentions how he had to beg Bolton to let him track a guitar solo for the song, a section the singer had earmarked for another instrument. In the end, he bargained for an acoustic guitar solo – on an affordable Peavey.
“I had a Peavey. No disrespect to Peavey, but it wasn’t a high-value instrument. It’s not the world’s greatest solo,” he adds, “but we spent hours on it. It was simple, but it wasn’t simple doing to get what we did to get what we got.”
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It wasn’t the only time he’d be worked hard in the studio. Recording Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like A Woman! with Mutt Lange in ‘97 proved to be an equally intricate process.
“He was programming humans,” Huff recalls. “We didn’t have Pro Tools back then. He’d work with the band learning the song, and he would work with everybody on every facet of the way they played their parts.
“That’s what he was interested in. The rhythm part in was just ZZ Top, the key was in the articulation. We probably tracked that bend [in the verse] for eight hours until we got it right.
“I had no reason to be ego’d out, but I was a lead guitar player. I said, ‘You don’t need me for these piddly rhythm parts’. He said, ‘You can play any solo you want, but I want this rhythm part to be just right.’ So I fell in line. He’d track every bar of every part until it was how he wanted it.”
The interview also detailed his vintage, heavily modded ‘64 Fender Stratocaster, a guitar he said was “pretty much the only guitar I used for a decade”.
Dan Huff’s ’64 Stratocaster (Image credit: Vertex Effects YouTube)
“It was mint condition when I got it,” he explains. “I wanted a guitar like Steve Lukather had, and this looked like his. [Esteem luthier] Jim Tyler did all these taps on the pickups [for] if I wanted a little bit of a thinner sound on the bridge.
“He also gave me a mid boost and a push/push that meant you could have the bridge and the neck pickup at the same time, or all three. It’s a pretty versatile guitar.”
The instrument helped him dial in a sound that he says allowed him “to cut through all the synthesizers of the ’80s”. The Strat’s sound, which he bought at around 22 years old, helped establish him as a go-to guy in the ‘80s. The rest, as they say, is history.
Visit Vertex Effects’ YouTube channel to watch the full video, which sees Huff discuss his contributions on Lead Me On by Amy Grant, Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror and more.
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