Born 1944 in Sheffield, England, Spedding picked up the violin at the age of nine, but the rock and roll rhythms beginning to emerge from across the Atlantic soon distracted him from his classical training. Hopped up on the sounds of Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, and British skiffle legend Lonnie Donegan, Spedding began to focus his energies on playing the guitar. Thanks lessons from a local jazz musician, he was soon versatile enough to divide his time between local beat groups and dance orchestras. By the end of the Sixties, he’d accepted the guitar spot in Pete Brown’s Battered Ornaments, and had begun a promising career as a session man, playing on dates for such popular British acts as Love Affair, the Fortunes, Lulu, Petula Clark, Julie Driscoll, and former Cream bassist Jack Bruce.

After waxing three albums with jazz-rockers Nucleus, as well as two poorly received records of his own, Spedding finally grabbed the spotlight as the guitarist of Sharks, a hard-rocking R&B outfit formed with erstwhile Free bassist Andy Fraser. Signed to Island, the group toured with Roxy Music and received glowing press notices, but failed to achieve much in the way of commercial success. When the group broke up in 1975, Spedding returned to the session scene, playing on hits by David Essex, the Wombles (who were sort of a primitive cross between the Muppets and the Teletubbies), as well as numerous other sessions.

1975 also saw Spedding score a sizeable solo hit with “Motorbikin’,” a song whose sound and attitude contrasted drastically with the glitter-rock conventions of the day, and helped pave the way for the British punk explosion of 1976. In fact, Spedding was actually asked to headline the first Punk Rock Festival at London’s 100 Club, which in turn led to short-lived but important collaborations with both the Vibrators and the Sex Pistols (though many claim that Spedding played guitar on the first Sex Pistols demos, he insists that his role was merely that of a producer).

Since then, Spedding has continued to juggle his solo outings with high-profile session work. After living in New York for over a decade, the dapper guitarist relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, and can occasionally be seen playing at Southern California clubs. “Love On Death Row,” a new collaboration with legendary MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, is a typically dry-humored look at serial killer groupies, complete with plenty of tasty guitar work. Fans of Spedding, Kramer, or even Tom Waits will dig it immensely.

-- Dan Epstein

Dan Epstein is a Los Angeles-based journalist and pop-culture historian whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, BAM, Raygun, Guitar World and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. His first book, Twentieth Century Pop Culture, was published in 1999 by Carlton Books.