Guitarist and songwriter Mac Gayden – best known for his work on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and co-writing the long-standing pop hit Everlasting Love – has died at the age of 83, at his home in Nashville. According to his cousin, Tommye Maddox Working, the cause of death was complications due to Parkinson's disease.
Gayden played a key role in helping turn Nashville into the cross-genre recording hub it is today. As part of an elite group of session players known as the “Nashville Cats,” Gayden gained a solid reputation for being the first call from that group. Bob Dylan producer Bob Johnston once dubbed him, “The best guitar player I ever heard.”
One of his most notable contributions was his work on Dylan's seventh studio album Blonde on Blonde. His percussive guitar work on Absolutely Sweet Marie showcases his breadth as a player – which makes it all the more unfortunate that it went uncredited for decades.
Non-country artists flocked to Nashville to work with Gayden – which is why he ended up on records by Elvis, Simon & Garfunkel, The Valentines, Linda Ronstadt, Leonard Cohen, Bobby Vinton, and The Pointer Sisters.
“I first met Gregg and Duane [Allman] when they first came to Nashville and played the Briarpatch for a while. Jammed a little with Greg one night and did a session with Duane at RCA studio B one night,” he told Blues GR in 2013, giving a sneak peek into his day-to-day life as one of Nashville's hottest tickets.
“We were both beginning to play slide guitar at the time. So we would swap licks with each other in between songs. Everyone thought that it sounded cool but it didn’t go down on record.”
In fact, it was his slide guitar and wah pedal combination – epitomized on J.J. Cale’s 1971 Top 40 single Crazy Mama – that cemented his signature technique and sound.
“A few years ago, a writer called me ‘father of the wah slide,’” Gayden wrote in his 2013 autobiography, Missing String Theory: A Musician’s Uncommon Spiritual Journey. “It’s humbling to realize I developed a stylistic approach to playing slide.”
As a songwriter, his most enduring success came in the form of Everlasting Love – the evergreen song he co-wrote with Buzz Cason and which eventually found its way onto records by artists as diverse as Town Criers, Gloria Estefan, Sandra Cretu, Love Affair, and even U2.
However, his exploits didn't end there. As the ’60s rolled into the '70s, Gayden and a couple of other alumni of the early ’60s pop combo the Escorts formed two improvisational country-rock outfits: Area Code 615 and later, Barefoot Jerry.
The former – a supergroup of sorts consisting of some of Nashville's most prolific session musicians – was formed in the wake of Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album and managed to record two albums, which included their best-known track, Stone Fox Chase, before resuming their session work.
Barefoot Jerry, on the other hand, was an early Southern rock group, which also featured Gayden on vocals and a hodgepodge of Nashville session players. Gayden would depart after just one album to record his first solo album, McGavock Gayden, in 1971.
After a series of other projects and accomplishments – including being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame as part of the Nashville Cats, and being featured in the 2015 exhibit Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville – Gayden released his last album, Come Along, in 2020.
Speaking about his intimate relationship with music and its links to spirituality in the Blues GR interview, Gayden concluded, “I knew from an early age that music comes from another dimension, because it grounded me. In other words it relaxed my physiology and allowed me to feel Bliss, something as child that comes naturally.”
“On days when I didn’t have some music or art, I felt something was missing. So as an adult, meditation takes me every day to that subtle place of experiencing the world, and thus feeling that inspiration and bliss once again.”
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