Ahead of his upcoming tour with Pat Benatar that will kick off in July, Neil Giraldo sat down for an interview with Guitar World. Touching on his past work, he spoke about his 1981 team-up with Rick Springfield and shared his view on it.
During the chat, the interviewer pointed out that many people weren’t aware that the solo in ‘Jessie’s Girl’ belonged to Giraldo. Then, they followed with a question of whether it bothered the musician, to which he answered:
“Not at all. My life was moving so fast then. I had the Number 1 record with ‘Jessie’s Girl.’ I think ‘Crimes of Passion’ was right up there. I was getting ready to do John Waite’s solo record. Ozzy asked me to produce his record. There were so many things going on – I didn’t even think twice about it.
There was something Giraldo minded, though:
“What bothered me was seeing David Bowie doing the solo Stevie Ray Vaughan played [on ‘Let’s Dance’] because his fingers weren’t even close. That bothered me more than Rick miming my solo.”
He further added:
“I’ll tell you something funny: I play with Rick on stage whenever we’re doing shows together. His guitar player would always say, ‘Can you show me how to play this part?’ And I’d go, ‘Sure.’ And as soon as I played the song, I’d always turn my back on the part. [Laughs]”
In a 2020 interview with Guitar World, Giraldo claimed that he improvised the guitar solo in the song. The guitarist explained the process of creation by saying:
“So when we went to cut the track, that’s what was in my head. You can hear it in the beginning of the guitar part, the little boom-boom-boom-boom-boom intro. It had more of a swing. I cut it with Mike Baird, the drummer, and then I played bass on it. And Rick did a little keyboard part on it, and he sang on it, and next came a section for me to play a solo.”
Describing his approach, he went on:
“People looked at me: ‘What are you going to do?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. Let’s find out.’ What I did was something I like to do: I take the last note of the vocals and start there, and from that, I kind of know where I’m going to end. But I don’t know the middle until I start playing. That’s how that one went.”
Springfield’s track hit the top spot in Australia and the US after MTV launched it in 1981. In 2006, it was also included in VH1’s ‘100 Greatest Songs of the 80s.’
