Mac Gayden, Stellar Nashville Guitarist and Songwriter, Dies at 83

New York Times

18-04-2025

Mac Gayden, the co-writer of the pop evergreen 'Everlasting Love' and an innovative guitarist who recorded with Bob Dylan and helped establish Nashville as a recording hub for artists working outside the bounds of country music, died on Wednesday at his home in Nashville. He was 83.
His cousin Tommye Maddox Working said the cause was complications of Parkinson's disease.
Strangely enough, Mr. Gayden's most illustrious achievement — his percussive electric guitar work on 'Absolutely Sweet Marie,' a track on Mr. Dylan's 1966 opus, 'Blonde on Blonde,' most of which was recorded in Nashville — went uncredited for decades. It was only recently, when a new generation of researchers discovered the omission, that he received his due.
Mr. Gayden, who was self-taught, had a knack for inventing just the right rhythm or mood for an arrangement. In the late 1960s and early '70s, when Nashville was just beginning to break out of its conventional country bubble, he had a particular affinity for collaborating with cultural outsiders, among them Linda Ronstadt and the Pointer Sisters.
'Mac Gayden was a genius, genius, genius — the best guitar player I ever heard,' Bob Johnston, the producer of 'Blonde on Blonde,' was quoted as saying in 'Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City,' a 2015 exhibition at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.
On J.J. Cale's 1971 Top 40 single 'Crazy Mama,' Mr. Gayden played bluesy slide guitar with a wah-wah pedal, creating an uncanny sound later employed to droll effect on the Steve Miller Band's chart-topping 1973 pop hit 'The Joker.' Decades later, the steel guitarist Robert Randolph, a Pentecostal-bred star in jam-band circles, adopted the technique as well.
'A few years ago, a writer called me 'father of the wah slide,'' Mr. Gayden wrote in his autobiography, 'Missing String Theory: A Musician's Uncommon Spiritual Journey' (2013). 'It's humbling to realize I developed a stylistic approach to playing slide.'
Those accolades notwithstanding, Mr. Gayden's greatest — and most enduring — success came not for his playing but for 'Everlasting Love,' a declaration of boundless devotion written with Buzz Cason, who died last June. A perennial favorite at weddings, the song reached the Top 40 in four consecutive decades: It was a hit for the R&B singers Robert Knight in 1967 and Carl Carlton in 1974, for Gloria Estefan in 1995, and for the pop duo Rex Smith and Rachel Sweet in 1981.
U2 released a bare-bones take of the song as one of two B-sides of their 1989 single 'All I Want Is You.'
Mr. Gayden, who also sang on some recordings, wrote two other hits associated with Nashville's late-1960s R&B heyday: Clifford Curry's 'She Shot a Hole in My Soul' (1967) — later covered by both the Box Tops and Huey Lewis and the News — and the Valentines' 'Gotta Get Yourself Together' (1969). Along with 'Everlasting Love,' both those singles were included on the Grammy-winning 2004 compilation 'Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues.'
McGavock Dickinson Gayden was born on June 5, 1941, in Nashville, one of six children of Hamilton Virgil and Ann (Dickinson) Gayden. His father was an obstetrician and gynecologist; his mother was an equestrian whose career was cut short by a near-fatal fall in a competition at Madison Square Garden.
Mac attended the Storm King School in Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y., before completing high school in Nashville in 1958. After two years at George Peabody College for Teachers (now part of Vanderbilt University), he joined the U.S. Army Reserve and saw active duty during the Cuban missile crisis.
Mr. Gayden played in local bands during this period, mostly at fraternity parties and sock hops. In the early 1960s, he joined the Escorts, a pop combo led by the prolific studio musician Charlie McCoy, and through him Mr. Gayden gained entree to Nashville session work, including the chance to play on 'Blonde on Blonde.'
As the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, Mr. Gayden and several other alumni of the Escorts formed two improvisational country rock bands, Area Code 615 and then Barefoot Jerry.
Area Code 615 was best known for 'Stone Fox Chase,' the chuffing instrumental that became the theme for the BBC music show 'The Old Grey Whistle Test.' Barefoot Jerry, an early Southern rock band, featured Mr. Gayden's soulful lead vocals and guitar, but he left after just one album (the band would release six more) to pursue a more spiritual direction with a solo release, 'McGavock Gayden,' produced by Mr. Johnston and released in 1971.
Possessed of a mystical streak, Mr. Gayden next formed a group, Skyboat, that drew inspiration from sacred texts like 'Black Elk Speaks' and 'The Bhagavad Gita.' A prototypical jam band, Skyboat bore witness to Mr. Gayden's ever-expanding musical palette, embracing jazz, funk and psychedelia.
'Hymn to the Seeker,' Skyboat's second album for ABC-Dunhill, was recorded at Criteria in Miami in 1976 in a studio adjoining those where the Eagles were making 'Hotel California' and Fleetwood Mac was working on 'Rumors.' The Eagles' Randy Meisner, who died in 2023, sang on one track of Mr. Gayden's album.
Increasingly focused on nurturing his spiritual life, Mr. Gayden recorded only sporadically after that, releasing 'Nirvana Blues' in 1996. A decade later he played on and produced 'Cyber Gypsies,' a family project featuring his daughter Oceana Gayden as lead singer and songwriter and his son, Mac Jr., on guitar.
They survive him, as do Mr. Gayden's wife of 51 years, Diane Boyte (Haynie) Gayden; two other daughters, Kathryn Krispin and Kimberly Gayden; nine grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; a sister, Ida Gayden Ezell; and a brother, Kip. Another daughter, Kellie Nelson — who, like Mac Jr. and Kathryn, was from his marriage to Phyllis Phifer, which ended in divorce — died in 2021.
Mr. Gayden released his last album, 'Come Along,' in 2020.
'I look at music from a different angle than most people,' Mr. Gayden said, reflecting on his circuitous career, in a 2022 interview with the alternative weekly Nashville Scene.
'I got into meditation a few years ago, and it's been really good for me — for my personality and for my vibe, you know?' he continued. 'I started looking at music differently when I got into Eastern music, to see where they're coming from. They look at music as a life's journey, you know? It changed the way I looked at things.'