Mike Deasy

Here's a guy I never heard of before, that I know of, but he played guitar on a lot of famous records. I came across his page at Facebook. His name is Mike Deasy.

Here's a page of some of the records he's on.

These include: Nancy Sinatra "Boots"; The Beach Boys "Pet Sounds"; The Monkees (multiple albums); Elvis "Double Trouble" and the '68 TV special; Richard Harris, the one with MacArthur Park; Tiny Tim "God Bless Tiny Tim;" Paul Revere & The Raiders "Spirit of '67", and Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart "It's All Happening On The Inside," where, on my copy of that, it looks like he's thanked as "Mike Dacey," unless there was another guy named Mike Dacey.

And there's bunches more!

I think it's safe to say a couple things about Mr. Deasy. 1) He must have been (and probably still is) a fantastic guitar player. I assume you have to be pretty good to be a session guy. 2) He must have been well known that all these recording artists were ringing him up. Or do session guys hang out on a street corner waiting for a group to drive by to hire him for a session? I doubt it.

I wish I knew how to play guitar reasonably well. I should've practiced, but I didn't. And when I did I didn't really improve.

As for these albums, I don't have the Elvis "Double Trouble" soundtrack. It seems hard (or expensive) to get. But I have the DVD and it's OK. (Any fault with the songs as songs wouldn't be Mike's fault.) I like the Elvis movies where Elvis is part of a band or is a club singer, which of course is most of them.

I just got the "Spirit of '67" on CD the other day for the first time. I've had the LP for quite a while but it's beat. So Mike's on there. But they didn't credit who was really playing on a lot of these records. Same thing with the Monkees, although on the CDs Rhino has the musicians listed where they're known.

As for "Pet Sounds" I wonder if Mike has any stories about Brian Wilson. And the same for Tiny Tim.