"If I appear to be tall, it is because I am standing on the shoulders of those who came before..."
Ed Supple is a musician who, partly through circumstance and partly by design, has had a long career 'under the radar' of the music business.
Early Years
At a very young age, Ed was teaching himself by watching guitarists on TV and in person. Like so many kids of the time, he was influenced by the British Invasion. Seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan was a formative moment in which it occurred to him that he wanted to play guitar. Ed says he believes he was very fortunate to grow up in a time when radio and television offered extremely diverse programming - you may see or hear John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, the Beatles and Buck Owens practically back-to-back.
Ed's older brother also loved music, and he had a paper route, which funded their ever-growing record collection. They would buy the hits of the day, but they would also read label faces, liner notes and interviews, and then go in search of the related records. So from the Rolling Stones, they found the Chess blues players: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley. From the Beatles: Buck Owens, Carl Perkins. And so on. Even in his early years of listening to music, he was hearing the connections between types of music rather than the differences. That idea in itself is a sophisitcated approach that most people only learn much later in life - if at all.
Living in Niagara Falls, NY also played a huge part in Ed's musical development. He and his brother would walk across the bridge to Canada with their paper route money. There they could buy British imports not available in the US. They also had access to Canadian television stations that reached into Western New York, so he saw players like Lenny Breau and Randy Bachman on TV. Ed's parents - particularly his mother - knowing her boys had this unquenchable taste for music, would call them to the living room anytime there was a musician on television. One time it might be Segovia, another, Chet Atkins.
Times being what they were, there were very few resources for a young player. You couldn't tape a TV show and watch a guy's hands over and over, or go find it on YouTube. You watched him intently for the three minutes he was on, and that three minutes were the most important three minutes of your day. It was the same in bars. During the '60s, Niagara Falls and the surrounding Western New York area produced some really fine guitar players, many of whom left the area for successful careers in LA. These were the guys playing in local bands at the time. Ed began playing in bars long before he could drink in them, and the unwritten code was if you could play, you could stay. And you had to be able to play all sorts of music. Not just blues, or rock, or pop.
Ed and his brother also went to see as many live shows as they could. They saw all of the great players as they came through: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Peter Green. A moment for which Ed will be forever grateful is getting to meet Jimi Hendrix after a show. He spoke with him for a few minutes and shook his hand. (Now, when Ed talks with young players, he tells them this story and then shakes their hand. That makes for some wide-eyed, happy, and inspired kids.)
So this was the atmosphere in which Ed Supple developed musically, at once inspiring and intimidating. Another story he tells really emphasizes his own drive to become a player and illustrates just how creative he had to be in order to succeed. He didn't own an amp until about 1971. Until then, he borrowed amps. So his practice time was spent imagining how his guitar would sound. Although to many players, this might have been an obstacle, he turned it to an advantage that contributed to his development as a player and as an artist.
A Little Further Down the Road...
Knowing that he wanted to learn more than he could teach himself to improve his musicianship, Ed took lessons at different times from truly great players. Again, his timing was quite fortunate since several of his teachers are no longer with us. He had already begun developing formidable right- and left-hand techniques by the time he pursued more formal training with Lenny Breau, Tony DeCaprio and Ted Greene, among others. They inspired him to develop these unique approaches further, including the five-finger, right-hand "Suppling" technique named for him.
Another teacher of sorts for Ed was Tommy Tedesco. Tedesco - a fine studio player and member of the group of session players known as the Wrecking Crew - was also from Niagara Falls. He would come home from LA regularly to visit family. It was through family friends that Ed met him, and they became friendly. This was at a time when Ed was young and forming his ideas about his own musical career. Through Tedesco's stories of sessions gone well and others gone awry, Ed learned that there was another side of making music that didn't involve the high profile and pressure of being a front man. Tedesco also taught him the art of survival under the microscope of an LA studio before Ed ever made his move to LA. But that was yet to come.
Always thorough and creative, Ed took a job in the retail end of the music business in order to learn as much as he could about the business and marketing side of it. On the upside, this gave him access to all styles of music, and often he heard records that were either very limited in their release, or never officially released to the public. He was involved in music every waking moment, and always had his guitar around so if he wasn't listening, he was playing. On the downside, Ed saw that the people making the decisions about music were destroying the music itself in favor of creating 'stars.' Along with the things he learned from Tommy Tedesco, this experience influenced his decision to pursue music in a low-profile way. He didn't want to be a 'rock star' if it required him to work under the terms he saw before him in the business.
So This is LA
At a certain point, Ed realized that he could either stay in the retail end of the music business and be a part-time player, or he could make the move to LA and be a full-time musician. He knew he was a musician first and everything else second, so he made the move to LA. Once there, Ed forged his own path and became an accomplished, and sought after session player.
More interested at the time in making music, and less interested in making a name for himself, he worked largely uncredited, but if you listened to the radio from the '80s through the present, you have heard his work. Because he had mastered so many different musical styles, and he could learn songs so quickly, Ed joined a largely unknown sub-set of players who did 'ghost sessions' for well-known acts. For the uninitiated, this means that when bands succombed to the rock star lifestyle rather than devoting time to being actual musicians, players like Ed would be hired to either track, or re-track their records.
Sometimes the bands were aware of this practice, and sometimes they weren't. This type of work required complete discretion so as not to bruise fragile rockstar egos or create lawsuits. This 'ghosting' also went as far as live performance. Quite often a player couldn't make the call onstage due to, shall we say, overindulgence, so if Ed resembled the player closely enough, he would be called to make the gig happen.
He would also be called to improve projects. Something he calls PAT-ing it down. PAT meaning Polish-A-Turd. He would be given rough tracks, or half-written songs, whatever the studio had, and he would write, arrange, create parts, etc., to keep the project on track.
Of this part of his career, Ed says he has worked "with, for, behind and in front of some of the best and some of the worst in the business." He saw a lot of good people, some good players and some very bad players, become stars, and he didn't like what happened to them in the process. He walked away from situations that could have been very lucrative for him, but he saw through them to what he would lose - himself, his musicianship, his integrity - and he chose instead to keep those things intact.
During this time, he also forged relationships with various manufacturers with whom he developed product protoypes. Again his knowlege of so many varied styles of playing was helpful in testing and pushing the gear in every direction to make sure it would hold up under the various types of players who would use it. He considers himself extremely lucky to have known, worked with and become friends with some of the most innovative and influential people in the music business.
And Now...
After so much behind-the-scenes work, Ed realized that many people knew him but they had no idea what he really did. Or they might only be aware of one aspect of his musical ability. Something Tommy Tedesco told him years ago still rings true. He said, "You look like Led Zeppelin, but you can play like Joe Pass." Even those closest to Ed at the time didn't know about his ghost work, so he decided he needed to begin building a body of work under his own name. However, just as he made this decision, he had to put his career on hold to provide care for a seriously ill family member. What was initially going to be a short hiatus of a year or two, turned into almost a decade. For all practical purposes, Ed Supple had disappeared from the music business.
Now that he is again available for work, Ed is bringing his playing to the forefront, and he is currently working on several projects designed to do so. Few people have actually seen his Suppling technique, or heard the songs he has written, or seen him play live, so he is looking forward to changing that.
