Gary James' Interview With Bassist
Matt Bissonette



Matt Bissonette's resume is beyond impressive. He's been Elton John's bassist for the last several years. He's done two world tours and one album with David Lee Roth. He's toured with Joe Satriani all over the world and recorded on five of his albums. Matt has also worked with Brian Wilson, Don Henley, Steve Perry (of Journey), Peter Frampton, Sheena Easton and Gino Vanelli. And that's just some of the artists he's worked with. What a career! We spoke with Matt Bissonette about his life in music, both past and present.

Q - Matt, how are there enough hours in the day for you to be involved in all of the projects you have going on? Do you ever sleep?

A - (laughs) That's a funny question. It's funny because there's times in my life where I feel like I'm not doing anything. My scariest part is when I'm sitting at home, looking for something to do. I love hanging out with my dog and goofing off and doing stuff, but I have to have something musically to look forward to or I go kind of out of my tree. So, the thing that takes the most time for me is the production of thing things and the actual recording and the writing and planning. Because I don't really have an engineer that does my stuff, I do everything myself. It seems like it takes forever to do a little bit of work now, whereas in the old days, when I was younger, I could bust through things a lot faster and get more done. It's kind of like one of the curses of getting older. It just seems like you have to take time for real life stuff like taking your vitamins. So, it's kind of funny. I'm trying to learn about time management and appreciation of time and how quickly it goes. It just seems to go quicker when you get older. I'm really starting to value my time and try to put it in the right spots, a lot of music, but more importantly a lot of family stuff and real stuff. Music is just the blessing on top of everything. So, it's a hard question to answer.

Q - Do you have to live in L.A. to be in the music business these days? Couldn't you live anywhere?

A - My brother and I were both at North Texas State around 1979. In those days growing up you had to go to where everything was happening. North Texas was the school we wanted to go to. So, we took our truck and moved to Denton, Texas. It's kind of like in the old days you kind of had to go to where everything was happening. In the last twenty years it's easier for a band to get signed in Topeka, Kansas or wherever in the world because the world has changed with the internet and the way labels are and the way music is. So now I could probably move some place and do what I'm doing now, recording online with my buddies, but it kind of begs the question, where else would I want to go besides L.A.? Not only is it a great place for music, but it's just a beautiful place to live, as crazy as it is now. It's still the place where I want to live. The fortunate thing about my life right now is I travel a lot, so I get to see everywhere where I might possibly want to live and I keep thinking at the end of the day that I'd rather stay where I am in Orange Country, California. It's kind of where I've been for awhile. Home is where the heart is. With the music today you can go anywhere and do anything now. It's just L.A. is where all my friends and family are, so I'll probably be here 'til the day I croak.

Q - You just got off a tour with R.E.O. Speedwagon.

A - Yes.

Q - What kind of venues were you performing in?

A - I got in the band temporarily because Bruce Hall, the bass player, had some back issues and he had some surgery and took some time off. So, I'm kind of the fill-in guy here 'til he comes back. They called me probably four months ago kind of in a panic because they had a gig at The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas and they were auditioning for a residency there. They really wanted that gig and then Bruce went down. So, Dave Amato, the guitar player, called me in a panic and said, "Can you come and sub for us awhile?" I said, "When do you need me?" He goes, "Right now." (laughs) "Okay. Can you give me a day to learn some songs?" So, I learned the songs. Wrote 'em all down on charts and showed up the next day and we did the residency at The Venetian and we got the gig there. Did really well there. And then we did a bunch of gigs with Styx and different bands, Cheap Trick. Kind of a lot of the shed gigs. Probably about five thousand seaters or smaller. And then we'd go out in the Summer with Train and were playing the bigger clubs. We're playing The Forum in Los Angeles. These guys can work forever because of their songs. That album, "Hi Infidelity" was so huge, you plant your feet in an album like that and as long as you can physically go out and support and go out and play, you're probably guaranteed a lifelong life playing that music, especially now. Look at how many cover bands there are playing '70s and '80s music. They're making a killing because people just love that kind of music. It's interesting to see how the music business is kind of looking back more now and honoring the '80s and '90s. It's kind of a cool thing.

Q - Is word of mouth how you get to work with all these established bands or do you have an agent or manager or somebody who is out there promoting you?

A - No. I could never stomach the fact of getting a manager and having to give a percentage of what I make for that, even though I know a lot of people who do that and it works for them. When my brother and I originally came out to California we just started from scratch. I just started, pretty much seven nights a week, playing Top 40 music in clubs in L.A. and I got a gig playing five days a week playing covers at Disneyland. There's just a lot of work and a lot of gigs you do when you come to a new place, coming in cold to Los Angeles. Everybody is working and everybody is watching over their gigs. It's kind of hard to break into like any city, but if you stick with it long enough and just do the work, it usually pans out. So, it was just kind of a crescendo of events that would lead one to another thing. I know it's important to go to clubs and talk to people and I'm not really a big club person so I was never really good at that, but you just try to make yourself as visible as you can. You make friends and down the road one thing leads to another. It's like a lot of my friends, Rock guys in the early '80s and '90s would play softball every week. There was this Thursday morning softball league that we had. It was all musicians. It was like guys like Neil Geraldo and Chuck Wright. All these guys would show up and play softball and there was more gigs that were tossed around in that softball game than anything I've ever seen. You've got to be in the center of what's going on so you hear about these things. If you're living someplace in Siberia you can't really complain that you're not getting calls because nobody knows you're there. Fortunately with the music business, people remember you. If you go someplace and you see somebody you're reminded they're alive and on the planet. "Oh yeah. That guy is a great guy and and a great guitar player. I'm going to hire him for this song." It's kind of like association. You see somebody and you know that they're there and you like them, so you hire 'em. That's kind of the way it works, for better or worse. That's kind of the way the music business works. Of course you have to be talented and play the gig and work well with others and play nice, but the main things is being there.

Q - You were too young to fully understand Beatlemania, so what did it mean to you to be a part of Ringo's All Starr Band?

A - Well, my brother and I actually caught a lot of Beatlemania because that's what we grew up on. I was born in '61. Gregg was born in '59. So, by the time we were five years old we were jumping around the house, playing Beatles' songs for our Mom and Dad, playing concerts, pretending that we're Paul and John and Ringo. So, we were really, really into The Beatles. My Dad actually took us to see The Beatles in 1966 in Detroit and so we saw what was going on and it shaped our lives like it did everybody's. When we eventually got old enough to play Beatles' songs and really do music and to appreciate the songs and the music The Beatles did, it changed our lives. When we got called to play with Ringo and his band, The Roundheads, it was pretty surreal. I remember meeting Ringo and the first time I shook his hand. He gave me a hug and he said, "I only give hugs." I'm getting hugged by a Beatle. Gregg and I are looking at each other like this is just crazy. But Ringo is just a normal, nice guy that just loves to play music. When I record with Ringo and go to his house it's almost hard for me to go, "Oh, he's a Beatle,' because he's just a regular guy wanting to get work done, wanting to get a song done. Of course I look on the wall and I see all this Beatles stuff and I'm reminded of who he is. But, it's pretty weird when you meet a Beatle because you just don't want to screw up. You just want to say the right thing. In L.A. we call it dorking a Beatle. If you meet a Beatle and you say something stupid you'll forever be remembered as being that guy. I have a couple of friends of mine that would ask Ringo at a party, "Oh, I love the way you play drums on 'Taxman'." And then Ringo would go, "Well, that was Paul." And then you'd go, okay, I just got dorked by a Beatle. (laughs) Wrong Beatle information. Playing with Ringo has always been a blast. I know my brother just loves it so much, being out with the All Starr Band because Ringo is my brother's hero and he gets to play in his band every night. So, it's a pretty great opportunity that we're blessed with.

Q - That's the thing about The Beatles, you think you know the story, only to have someone come along and contradict what you've read or seen in a documentary. It's confusing and frustrating.

A - Yeah. That's the thing about life. We don't really, really know everything or half of the real picture. It's like real life with our families and friends. Because we're there and we really know people, we know the truth about what it is. That's the hard part about today. There's so much fake news. There's so much cloudiness in what truth is. Unless you were there it's impossible to know what happened. You can only kind of trust what you hear and think it would be true. I think a big percentage of this Beatle stuff never happened or happened differently that it was written down as. We'll never really know I guess.

Q - Ringo was offered two million dollars to write his story. But the catch was the book publisher only wanted him to write about his times with The Beatles from the time he joined in 1962 to the group's breakup in 1970, and Ringo said, "There's so much more to my life." But I say having Ringo write that part of his life would be better than having someone else write it because we would get it from Ringo himself.

A - Right. I'm sure Ringo could use two million dollars like anybody, but he's in a different place and he can do it on his own and get that money or money from somebody else to actually tell it the way he wants to tell it. I understand that. When people want something from you the way that they want it and you don't really want to do that, I mean, you have to go with your gut. I admire the fact that he turned that down because he didn't want to do it. Ringo is a pretty opinionated guy. He wants to do it the way he wants to do it. If you can get to that spot, then you're a successful person because you do your thing. I'm sure he had his reasons for doing that and it's shame it didn't come out. Hopefully he will do it and do it the way he wants to do it.

Q - Now, did you tour or record with Brian Wilson, Don Henley and Steve Perry?

A - I recorded with each one of those guys. We recorded with Brian Wilson I think at East West Studios and we did a couple of songs for him. I remember Brian came up to me when we were getting our sounds, and tapped me on the shoulder and said, "I play bass too!" I looked at him and laughed and said, "Yes, you do." He's a great bass player. The guy's a genius. all these guys you've mentioned are just some of the people that we were fortunate enough to work with because we were there and we knew somebody who knew somebody and they called us. With Steve Perry, my friend Jack White, the drummer, called me to go into the studio. I can't remember where it was. It was right around when Steve Perry did "Oh, Sherry". Steve was looking to do more solo stuff. So, we recorded that with him. Steve would call me for a month straight. He'd call me every other day. So, he would just talk about stuff on the phone and I didn't even know Steve at all. Then we were like best buddies for a month. Then I didn't talk to him anymore. So, it's kind of the way life goes. With Henley it's the same thing. Stan Lynch called my brother and I to go into the studio with Don to do a couple of songs. So, we recorded for him. We were going to go on the road with him, but it didn't work out.

Q - You also worked with Julien Lennon. What was he like to work with?

A - Bob Ezrin was going produce David Lee Roth, but that didn't work out. He remembered me and called me to go in to record with Julien on his album. I can't remember the album. "Salt Water" was one of the songs. A really good album. He called me to do that. I just went in there and spent like a month recording bass. Once again it was one of those things where I got to know Julien and we'd go play darts in a pub between songs. We'd just hang out for a month and then I haven't seen him since then either. You get these pockets of time where you get to hang out with these guys and you've just got to hold on to it because by the end of that time you might never see them again. (laughs) It's kind of funny.

Q - How demanding was David Lee Roth on the guys in his band?

A - Well, there's different ways to approach being a sideman. I love having my own band doing my own thing, but when I am in charge of everything I have to be that guy that kind of pulls everybody along. Sometimes that means I'm the bad guy or I'm the good guy or the guy with all the answers and that's fun and fine, but it's also a lot of work. It's very stressful. I kind of learned earlier I like to do both, that and being a sideman. And by being a sideman you chuck all that stuff and you work with the situation you're in. Through all those years I've learned how to get along with the people I'm working with. My main things is, whoever I'm working for, I want to honor that person as my boss and do a great job so that they're happy no matter what their personality is or what the thing is. Dave is an amazing person all the way around. He has his way of doing it because he was in Van Halen and was in charge of a lot of things with that band, the success of the band. He's a very smart person. He knows exactly what he wants to do. You have to realize right off the bat that he's going to want input, he's going to want you to be your own person and bring what you have to the table. But there's a parameter of what artists like Dave want and what they demand. It's like with Elton John. He's the same way. He demands that you are a great musician every night and that you just don't go out there and make stupid mistakes. If you do, you won't be there anymore. So, you have to realize that music is great, but it's a job and you have to be professional about it. With Dave it was you just go there every night and give 110%. You sweat onstage. You just do the job and if you do that, everybody gets along and it's a great thing. You've just got to be ahead of yourself and make sure you don't make stupid mistakes. That means not only musically, but like in the dressing room. You just don't go and put your hands all over the food or do whatever people will do. I don't want to be that guy. The music is important, but it's also the character that you have that people want to be around or don't want to be around. That's equally as important as how you play. Nine times out of ten I get calls to do gigs because they didn't like the guy that I'm replacing. There were just certain personality things and quirks that were just unbearable, so they needed someone else because they didn't want that guy. And that's the thing. You just don't want to be that guy. You just get along with people and be a good guy.

Q - You bring up a very important point, Matt. As important as your musical talent is, your personality is just as important, maybe more.

A - And that happens every day. I'm here out on the road, watching my son play baseball. He's a baseball player. With sports it's like if you hit fifty home runs a year and do all this great stuff you can be the biggest jerk in the world and you're going to get a huge contract because of what your performance is on the field. And that's proven every day in sports, by a bad guy with a horrible reputation and do horrible things, yet they get rewarded. It's not really like that in the music business because it's music, number one, and people like to make music with people that they like. Being onstage with four or five guys is not like a team of twenty guys. I think the personality aspect is probably 75% of your value on the road, 25% being the playing, because once you learn a show and you're out on the road you're constantly playing the same songs every night and once you do it enough times you're probably gonna play it good each night. But then you go backstage and that's when the lights really come on because you're exposed for the person you really are. In life, that's really most important. What kind of person are you? What is your value to serve other people and to love other people and not be self-serving, to be someone who lifts other people up and doesn't bring people down. Unfortunately in the music business there are people who are real downers. They make everything about themselves. It's like a family member. Do you really want to be around that cousin that always talks about themselves? You're exposed really quickly on the road for your value as a person. For young people, not to sound like an old person thing, "When I was your age," but it's a huge thing, your personality, and how you play with others is way more important than how you play. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the way I look at it.

Q - If you're doing the same songs in the same order every night, doesn't that get boring?

A - The parameters of framing it like that are kind of difficult because nobody goes up every night and adlibs every song. You're going to have to have some kind of order of what you're doing. These are your songs. These are the songs people want to hear. Every band that I've worked with that's been a famous band, they'll play their big hits songs and the people are going crazy. But as soon as you play a song from your new album, Elton would call it, that's when their pee break would happen. You would see people stand up and walk out and that's human nature. If you pay a hundred bucks for a ticket... I remember when I used to see Kansas all the time, 'cause Kansas was one of my favorite bands growing up in Detroit. I would just freak out over the songs. When they would play a new songs I would do the same thing. It's just the way that we're wired, that we want to hear what we know. That's one of those things when you go to hear a band and the lead singer is singing different melodies because he's bored with it and he wants to keep it interesting and sooner or later you're going, "That's not the same song and I'm paying to hear that song that I love so much." So, familiarity is a big deal for the listener and it's a big deal for me too. If you want to hear avantgard something different every night, you go to a Jazz club and you just listen to something that has no form and that's just great. But, that's the hard part about Pop songs and touring Rock bands. You have to find that fine line between playing your hits that people paid to see and expressing yourself in something that you don't get bored with because it's the same thing every night. With Elton, he would play the same set every night and bring in some new songs once in awhile, but he would never play the song the same way twice. It was always different because there's no click track. There's no background vocals on tape. We would be on our shoelaces every night, thinking, "Which way is gonna go?" He would just jam. He's been doing it so long. For him to keep his sanity he has to do it differently every night. He will not stand for the same thing over and over. He just won't do it. He would've quit a long time ago if he didn't have the freshness of playing something new every day. But, there's not a lot of artists like Elton who are able to do that. That's a good question because where do you draw the line between trying to be artistic in your head and expressing yourself while maintaining what people have paid to see? It's a tough one.

Q - So, I was watching your podcast, "Song In A Day". Writing a song in a day, that's what it's all about. Some of the songwriters I've interviewed over the years have told me that hit songs have been written in as little as ten minutes, maybe half an hour. Where does your inspiration come from to write a song?

A - Well, I think writing a concept of a song can come in a blink of an eye because you get a basic idea of what you want to write a song about and that takes a second. But then spelling out that song and producing that song takes the time and how you want the song to be presented. I personally believe in God and I believe I'm constantly inspired with an idea that I have no explanation for besides it came from someplace out of this earth. I believe that God gives me ideas every day. God tells me how to live my life and I try to live my life along that way. Down that road I think there's an inspiration where things come from. But as far as this show, "Song For A Day", the fun part is it's the three of us, my brother and Paul, my good friend and producer of the show. It's more about friends getting together and doing stuff that we like to do. Having a cup of coffee and talking about whatever is going on in the world that day, and in a funny way going, "Okay. Let's write a song about Ukraine," or "Let's write a song about the Lakers." It's not like we're trying to change the world with amazing songs. The show isn't called "A Fantastic Song In A Day", it's called "A Song In A Day". So, the goal is to try and write and produce a song within twenty-four hours that goes from whoever is in the room at the time, whoever we can have in the room, we want them to be there. We're doing files. It's kind of like an assembly line of a song. So, it's just a funny way of going, "This is a song from a bunch of friends from point "A" to point "B" and how it happens and how stressful it can be to actually get a song done in a day because it's one thing to write a song, record it and then three weeks later come back to it. The funny part of the show is dragging everybody to the finish line to physically get a song mixed and produced and recorded in a day. So, it's a lot of fun, but it's actually really stressful because you're trying to work all these angles all the time. But it's a fun show and we love doing it. Thanks for asking.

Q - You have a group at present called The Reddcoats. What are you planning to do with that group? Tour?

A - We've done some gigs in the past. It's kind like the band we put together because we've all been sidemen for so long and love being sidemen. This music of The Reddcoats is kind of like the music we would like to play if we could play one thing. We all love playing Pop. We all love playing Rock. We love playing Jazz, Experimental music. That's what The Reddcoats is to me. It's all those things we grew up listening to on AM radio when we were kids. You could go to the radio stations and hear every style. We kind of throw all that music into an album and just go, "This is what we would like to play if we were in one band for the rest of our lives." So, we have no big aspirations of going on the road and becoming the Pop sensation because we're all older and we know that we're all busy doing our stuff. But it's a fun thing for us just to get out and play really challenging music and making it sound good. As far as going on the road, I doubt that we'll be hitting the road for six months and going out and touring, but we are getting some traction from radio stations that are playing our songs. This music isn't supper poppy where it's going to be the next to a Katy Perry song, but for now we just enjoy doing records that we like to do that shows everybody's playing and all these years of practicing and playing we get to do what we can't do on other people's records that we play on. So, it's just a fun, challenging thing we get to do with friends. We get to hang out with our buddies that are good friends and play music together. That's kind of what's in it at the end of the day. That's all that really matters to me. The rest of it, the business side of music is one thing, but this is purely just for fun, for the joy of playing.

Q - When you're asked to be a part of Elton John's band or David Lee Roth's band, how does the negotiation for for salary? You don't have an agent or a manager. Are you told what the gig pays or do they ask you what you want? How does that work?

A - With Elton John, my good friend Bob Birch, who used to be my high school band director in Michigan, he died. They were desperately looking for somebody because they had gigs a week later, or two weeks later after he died. So, it was an emergency. I knew Davey Johnstone and he called me up and gave me the gig and then he said, "Just call the Manager." Same thing with REO and Bruce. Went down, I just talked to the manager. With Dave, when Billy left the band they called me up. So, you're taking the place of somebody else and somebody calls you for a gig. If you had a manager I'm sure the manager would call their manager and negotiate for you so you don't have to deal with all that. And that's the beauty of having a manager. But I don't want to do that and most musicians don't because they want to negotiate for themselves. So, I'll talk to the manager. What I learned over the years is not saying anything first about what you want. It's negotiation in life, like in business. A lot of band managers will go, "This is what we're paying." Then you go, "This is what I was thinking." But I've learned over the years to just go, "What are you offering?" Several times my brother and I have been called for gigs and then we'll tell them what we want and they they'll go, "Okay. That's fine." And then we look at each other like, "Why didn't we ask for a lot more?" Because they didn't blink an eye. (laughs) I've learned to just kind of be silent and to ask them, "What are you willing to do?" Usually it ends up being higher than what I would've asked for. So, I'm glad I don't shoot myself in the foot. The good thing about doing the Elton gig is now when people call me for gigs they go, "Well, we can't really pay you Elton money, but what can we offer you?" It's one of those things where the progression of your life and you start doing more gigs, people think they need to pay you more because you're of more value. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But unfortunately in the last twenty years, since music has been devalued more and people are paying less for music, unfortunately for the younger people the gigs pay a lot less than they did say twenty years ago. They're probably going to keep continuing to do that to the point where it's almost not worth going out on the road because the revenue of gigs isn't that much anymore. I'm glad now that I'm older and kind of getting to the end of touring or whatever I'm going to do and that people I'm working with still pay really well. It's kind of a fight. You have to fight for whatever you need and hopefully be in a position of strength where you don't really have to go out on the road. You tell 'em what you want and if they can't do it, then you say, "I can't do it." So, it's just business.

Q - I know your time with Elton John is up because he says he's not going to tour anymore. Do you think the phone will ring one day and Elton will say, "I'm putting the band back together for a few gigs."?

A - (laughs) Well, it's funny you should say that because I'm doing a gig with him next week in Vegas. We're doing a one-off show at a football stadium. I'm not too sure about the details. He's done a few solo gigs since then and it's kind of hard to tell with Elton because you never know what he's thinking. I know he is the most driven person I've ever seen in my life. I can't imaging him just sitting home, doing nothing. I know right now he's doing tons of stuff for his foundation and musical stuff with young artists. It's kind of like you can't sit around and wait for him to call. I think your natural beat is to wait for him to call because it's such a great gig, but as soon as we were done with the tour last year (2023) I kind of realized that I just need to do whatever I need to do to stay busy and keep working. I mean, I worked with Elton for twelve years. So, if there is more stuff down the road I would love to do it if I can. But, there hasn't been any talk of anything happening and usually you would kind of hear about that. So, I don't know. Maybe he really is taking time off and being with his family. But I would doubt that next week we get a call and he's got something going. You never know with him. That's why he's Elton John.

Official Website: www.TheReddcoats.com

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