My theory is (of course it is only a guess) that Chad maybe had problems with this fairly big and extensive 2005 tour schedule. Australia, India, South Africa together with the usual US and Europe, it was really a big five-months-world tour with a lot of travelling involved. With having (whatsoever) problems at home, maybe Chad was not happy with staying away for so long, you could also call it homesick, and because of that they decided to go separate ways. If he wasn't able to concentrate on his work with Mark, and not being able to fulfill Mark's high standards, he probably had no other chance than leaving. Today, for Chad, it seems that Neil Young is a very comfortable alternative with touring in the US mainly (as far as I know of course).
Chad is a family man obviously, and not everybody is built to stand extended touring...
LE
yesterday I saw Jonathan Demme 's
Neil Young heart of gold which filmed Young's show in Nashville on 18-19/08/2005.
Nice to see and hear Chad who obviously found another job very quickly after his departure from the Shangri-La tour.
There's also Emmy singing backing vocals on this gig, and the first shot of the movie is "Shangri-La"
, reffering to shangri-La studio of course, not to MK album
I don't see the point with Danny.
Mark's musicians have always changed
I agree with ds1984 : these are just "backing musicians", and this is music business, not a party between friends...
I was never a fan of Danny's work.
To me, it remind of the OES era, which is IMHO the worst DS era. So when Mark introduce him from "DS days", I feel a bit uncomfortable with this, because in my mind, the "DS days" were all but the 91-93 days....
all in all as ds1984 said "The main focus is the one and only Mark", I don't think that other musicians have a great influence on his work. We all know that he do and play what HE want.
Think about Richard (which was the original topic
)
Yes a great and subtil guitarist, a nice chap, etc...
but if you listen to all studio albums....the main interesting guitar parts were all played by Mark (except
Sucker row and
Summer of love). Each time there's a special rhythm, a particular riff, a special lick, it is Mark.
Richard is only here to play some acoustic, tremolo strummed chords, and a little bit of lap steel or bouzouki
A strange thing is :
on KTGC, Mark played all parts, so we could have expected some special rhythm parts in his particular style (things like
single handed sailor or
Skateway), but it's the less Knopflerish album in terms of guitar style.
And when Mark play some special rhythm parts (e.g. 12 strings on
Cleaning my gun, strat on
Silvertown blues, strummed chords on Tele on
Why ay man or
So far from the clyde, etc...) he could play by his own, and don't really need another guitarist, but he ask Richard to play some additionnal parts, with no really interest : acoustic chords, few chords, a 2nd 12 string guitar.....
I don't understand why ask another guitarist to play just some aditionnal parts, while he play all parts on other albums
Maybe Mark don't want to play "ininteresting" guitar parts
, so he ask to a session musician to do the" bad" job....like he did with David, Hal, Jack or Phil : the 2nd guitarist on Mark's studio albums was never "in the light."
However, Richard is great player, and obviously add some subtil touch live, but in studio......
