Rusty Anderson

Guitarist and songwriter Rusty Anderson is a musician who has balanced a well-respected career on his own with a very successful part-time gig as a sideman and studio musician, which has seen him work with everyone from Paul McCartney to Neil Diamond. Rusty Anderson grew up in La Habra, CA, and in the mid-'70s formed his first band, a hard rock outfit called Eulogy, when he was only 13. Eulogy won a sizable local following and earned an audition with Arista Records head Clive Davis, but the band was never signed and broke up without releasing a recording. Anderson soon formed a new band, the Living Daylights, which gave him a greater opportunity to indulge his fondness for offbeat psychedelic and progressive rock; while the Living Daylights also failed to break into the big time, a copy of their demo tape made its way to producer David Kahne, who was impressed with Anderson's guitar skills and invited him to contribute some solos to an album he was producing for the Bangles, 1986's Different Light.

Anderson continued to work as a session musician while pursuing his own projects; he was briefly a member of Animal Logic, a short-lived supergroup featuring former Police drummer Stewart Copeland and Return to Forever bassist Stanley Clarke, and later was guitarist and songwriter with the alternative rock band Ednaswap, who released three albums between 1995 and 1998, but received their greatest success through another artist when Natalie Imbruglia scored an international hit with the song "Torn," originally recorded by Ednaswap on their album Wacko Magneto. In 1999, Ednaswap broke up, the same year that Anderson once again found himself being heard all around the world through someone else's record when he contributed the guitar solo to Ricky Martin's breakthrough hit "Livin' la Vida Loca."

But Anderson's biggest break came in 2001, when he was invited to play guitar on Paul McCartney's album Driving Rain and subsequently signed on as a guitarist with McCartney's road band for his world tour, which was documented on the albums Back in the U.S. and Back in the World. Anderson later appeared on McCartney's 2005 release Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, and again joined the ex-Beatle for his subsequent road work. In 2003, Anderson finally released his first solo album, Undressing Underwater, which featured contributions from McCartney, Stewart Copeland, David Kahne, and a number of other musicians who'd worked with him over the years. Anderson continued to be an in-demand guitar player, and it was seven years before he released his sophomore album, Born on Earth, in 2010.