Mar 172016
A chain of little music events led me to ask this question. Some songs were playing on the car stereo, a web article about a music producer was seen, and a musician with an unusual name came to mind, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen a photo of the guy. A little web image search landed me on the following web page, and it is definitely the guy, as can be seen from the bio provided.
Who is this real estate agent and former musician? I guarantee you have heard his playing in more than one extremely well-known rock song. More clues will be provided as needed; think of this as a visual “Mystery Date” thread….
(click to see full-size image; I have blanked out the guy’s name)
Who *is* this real estate agent?!
This is a great challenge. He strikes me as a guy who would have produced hair metal bands.
I tried to cheat with Snip and Google Image search and I got nothing.
Was our Mystery Date involved in home- or real estate-related songs, like Talking Heads’ “Houses in Motion” or one of those “This Property Is Condemned by the Blues”-type numbers?
Ha! Not to my knowledge. My reading of his discography is that he was primarily a session musician who contributed as player (keyboards, piano, and occasional writing or arranging credit) on numerous artists’ recordings starting in the early ’70s, but heavily in the late ’70s and early ’80s. As his real estate bio indicates, he was L.A.-based, and the recording on which I first saw his name is from a non-L.A. band, recorded in L.A. in 1978.
Okay, so I cheated and figured it out, but I never would have heard of him, though I am very familiar with his father, also a musician, and from his discog there’s no question I’ve hear a lot of things he played on, many of them really awful.
There is a piano under my KISS records.
I hate to judge somebody by their looks, but this guy looks he doesn’t have a soul. If he worked with a lot of artist in the 70’s I’m guessing he worked with people like Rupert Holmes, Atlanta Rhythm Section and maybe even Meatloaf. I can’t remember the history of the band involved in the making of Bat Out Of Hell but I’m pretty sure it was a bunch of LA hotshots. Am I getting warmer?
That’s harsh, Cliff!
His discography is as wide as work for Mötley Crüe, Cherie & Marie Currie, Michael Jackson, Jackson Browne, Madonna, Karla Bonoff, England Dan, Boz Skaggs, and Molly Hatchett.
Because of his unusual name and where I first saw it credited, I weirdly assumed he was some Japanese guy — credited with keyboards on Cheap Trick’s album Heaven Tonight.
I never heard of that guy! Still, I loved this novel Mystery Date.
To make it official, this keyboard player is Jai Winding. He got the small print on the back of the album cover:
https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/HEAVEN-TONIGHT-BACK.jpg
A lot of work credited:
http://www.artistdirect.com/artist/credits/jai-winding/589707
Wow — that’s a good one — cool way to spell Jay! I wonder if hit on Stevie Nicks and Emmylou?
Why do you keep your Kiss records on the piano?
That was an ultimately useless hint for this thread: Jai Winding plays the piano part underneath the line “rolling numbers, rock and rolling, got my Kiss records out” on the song “Surrender”.
Ahh…very clever. I’d have never figured this out, even if you said “Jai Winding is the answer.” His name sounds like something they need to do in Jai Alai, which I know nothing about, except it happens in Florida somewhere.