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“I said, ‘Why don’t you just do all the guitars?’ He said, ‘I ain’t got the grease like you, mate!’”: Michael Thompson on living his “rock ’n’ roll fantasy” with Mutt Lange and Shania Twain – and the stories behind his biggest session hits

By Jonathan Horsley | Music Radar | July 12, 2024

Working with Mutt and Shania starts at 1hour 30min mark

Michael Thompson has tracked guitars for some of the biggest hits in popular music, recording sessions with Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Toni Braxton, and Michael Bolton, working with R&B kingpin Babyface and Canadian über-producer David Foster in the process. 

But in a new interview, in which the session ace breaks down his biggest hits, talking tone, gear and his approach to studio collaboration, he admits that working with Mutt Lange was the ultimate experience, a “personal dream” come true – and shared some insight into what makes the South African producer one of the biggest legends in the game.

But the session that takes the cake for Thompson was recording Shania Twain’s fourth studio album, Up!, when she was then married to Lange. Finally, Thompson would become a select band of session guitarists to work with Mutt Lange. He admits that, for a time, he did not think he would ever get the chance. When the moment arrived it did not disappoint.

“As a session player, he wasn’t just another producer whom you might happen to work with,” says Thompson. But lo, one day he came home and his answering machine was flashing. There was a message.

As Thompson remembers it, it went something like this: “‘Hi, Michael, this is Mutt, Mutt Lange, I wonder if you’d be interested in working with me on my wife’s album?’” 

There was more.

“Then he said, in the same message, ‘Of course, I’ve been aware of you for some time.’ How is this guy aware of me!?” says Thompson. “It was like you couldn’t have bought a better rock ’n’ roll fantasy dream.”

Reality, however, is complicated. Thompson was in Switzerland, tracking with the Italian guitarist and actor/director Adriano Celentano (Celentano is a massive star in Italy, has a cameo in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and starred in Sergio Corbucci crime-comedy The Con Artists). 

That was okay, Lange and co would come to him. They’d take the train, the music with them, and when they got there, in a rented studio, Thompson got acquainted with a set of tracks that were nearly finished. There were guitar tracks all over it but Lange wanted more. That’s where Thompson came in. He was going to be what Lange refers to as “the grease guy”.

“I came in and there were all these guitars on the tracks, electric guitars, and I always had suspected that [Lange] played on his stuff but he never credited himself,” says Thompson. “He credits himself on background vocals but not guitars. So there were all these [parts]. Every tune had these meat-and-potatoes basic parts. 

“I remember he had this Boss – because I had the same box – that had all their amp models and their pedals in the one space, and he had done everything with that. And he had one guitar… You’d expect that he had all these guitars and amps, and all this stuff, but no.”

What Lange did have was an ear, and that you can’t buy. If you have waited a lifetime to work with the best producer in the business then you are waiting for that moment when for the genius to reveal itself. 

It duly did. Not least in Lange’s temperament as they worked from 11am to 3am. “It never was a drag,” says Thompson. “He is such a nice, gentlemanly guy.” But also in his ability to pick out details in a take and pull them together to make the ultimate take. This blew Thompson’s mind.

“He would put Pro Tools in loop record, and we had figured out a verse part, and I would just play,” says Thompson. “It would keep looping and recording, and he would remember that 11 times back he heard a good shhbrang! Or 14 times back he had a good chukka. So he would sit there and make this comp of the killer pass, and then he would take other stuff you did and make a double of it.”

Given what Def Leppard’s Phil Collen has said about Lange before, it begs the question why he didn’t just play the parts on it before. Thompson wondered that himself, but just as Dann Huff had told him, Lange preferred to bring a pinch-hitter onboard. He knew that the tracks needed something else, a six-string specialist.

“I said to him, ‘Why don’t you just do all the guitars?’ He said, ‘I ain’t got the grease like you, mate!’ I saw that’s what he wants, that upfront guitar that’s got the grease,” says Thompson. “Prior to me doing that album, Dann had been the guy.”

With that, it was time for Thompson to play Up! for Marangella, on the Rickenbacker 12-string guitar that he used on the session. Check out the video above, and be sure to subscribe to the Vertex Effects YouTube channel because these conversations are gold, bringing new perspectives to songs that have become part of the very fabric of popular culture.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/michael-thompson-on-working-with-mutt-lange-shania-twain