We know their riffs, the sonic skills they brought us both on records and on stage.
But we don’t know their names as well as we do the rock stars they supported — and sometimes saved.
The solo on Steely Dan’s 1977 hit “Peg”? That was guitarist Jay Graydon, called in to do what band leaders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker considered the impossible.
Brad Gillis? He had the unenviable job of replacing Ossy Osbourne’s guitarist Randy Rhoads after he was killed in a plane crash in 1982.
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Eric Singer donned cat makeup — and realized a childhood dream — when he replaced drummer Peter Criss in KISS.
Those stories and others are the subject of “Hired Gun: Out of the Shadows, Into the Spotlight,” a music documentary that is playing one night only — Thursday, June 29 — at 7:30 p.m at theaters all over the country. The film was made by Vision Films and Fathom Events, which is showing the film on its Digital Broadcast Network.
Here in Seattle, the documentary is playing at three theaters: The Thornton Place 14; The Lincoln Square Cinemas in Bellevue and the Bella Bottega 11 Cinema in Redmond.
The film, which played at the SXSW and Glastonbury Festivals, received praise for putting a spotlight on the unsung music-industry heroes who have helped artists top the charts, tour the world and survive.
They are the ones who back up singers like Pink, Alice Cooper and Katy Perry. They stepped in when bands like Bon Jovi and Metallica lost key members.
The film uses ample concert footage to show the featured musicians’ at work — just to the side or behind the star, and holding everything up.
And yet, a hired gun is just that. Their jobs are never guaranteed: “If you’re not great tonight, you may lose your gig tomorrow,” said drummer Liberty DeVitto, who played with Billy Joel for years.
DeVitto, described in the film as “the Keith Richards” of Joel’s band, helped show how a hired gun’s input can change a song into a hit. It was he who suggested that Joel change “Only the Good Die Young” from a reggae tune to the classic it became. (“If Billy Joel is the father of those songs, I am at least the uncle,” he says in the film.)
Despite that, and their years together, Joel dismissed DeVitto without explanation. He wasn’t even invited to Joel’s wedding.
Drummer Kenny Aronoff was at the risk of losing his job when he created the thunderous solo at the center of John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane.”
Some hired guns have appeared on 30 of the Billboard Top 100 songs at any certain point.
The film also features some of the famous artists who hired the musicians: Rob Zombie, David Foster and Alice Cooper among them.
“Everybody in my band is an A-list player,” Cooper tells the camera. “I just don’t have time for B-list guys.”
Said drummer Mark Schulman, who has played with Pink, Cher, Stevie Nicks and Foreigner: “I might not be the star, but I am having an amazing time … supporting other people.”