Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, George Clinton: 2024 San Diego Music Awards honoree Stevie Salas has played with them all

Three years before whiz kid guitarist Stevie Salas moved from Carlsbad to Los Angeles in 1985 to seek fame and fortune as a musician, he vowed he would one day perform with Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger and David Bowie.

Four years later, Salas was on stage with Stewart at the San Diego Sports Arena, where the homegrown six-string ace received a returning hero’s welcome from the sold-out crowd. In 2001, he was Mick Jagger’s guitarist and musical director when the Rolling Stones singer promoted his “Goddess in the Doorway” solo album with a Los Angeles concert and a performance on TV’s “Saturday Night Live.”

“I tell kids all the time: ‘You don’t have to be the best, you just have to be the best when it counts.’ And I had that gift,” said Salas, who on Tuesday will receive the Country Dick Montana Lifetime Achievement Award at the 33rd annual San Diego Music Awards. He will also perform at the event, which takes place at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay on Shelter Island.

Granted, his hoped-for teaming with Bowie never materialized, although Salas wistfully recalls that prior to Bowie’s death in 2016 the two had discussed working together Regardless, two — Jagger and Stewart — out of three is still an impressive feat for any guitarist.

“Yeah, but I wanted three out of three!” said Salas, 61, speaking from his principal home in the Texas capital of Austin. “Then, in 2019, I ended up going out on tour with (former Bowie keyboardist) Mike Garson and the Bowie band on the ‘A Bowie Celebration: The David Bowie Alumni Tour.’”

The versatile guitarist’s many other collaborators have ranged from George Clinton, Public Enemy, Was (Not Was) and Buddy Miles to Adam Lambert, Terence Trent D’Arby, cutting-edge jazz drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and Justin Timberlake.

From 2006 to 2010, Salas was a music director and consultant for “American Idol.” It was a position that saw him work closely with singers Chris Daughtry, David Cook, Allison Iraheta, Kris Allen, former San Diegan Adam Lambert and Jordin Sparks.

He also mentored a number of other young musicians, including the now-deceased Taylor Hawkins, who credited Salas for instilling in him the drive and discipline that were keys to Hawkins becoming the drummer in the Foo Fighters.

Salas hired Hawkins in 1994 to do a European tour backing Canadian singer Sass Jordan. Salas — Jordan’s band leader at the time — saw potential in Hawkins, who joined Foo Fighters in 1997 and died while on tour with the Dave Grohl-led group in 2022.

When Salas hired him for Jordan’s tour, Hawkins regarded himself “the best drummer in the world.” Salas did not share that assessment.

“Stevie Salas would be screaming in my face during the shows: ‘This ain’t no high school gig!’ and would tell me he thought I should probably go home,” Hawkins recalled in a 2014 interview with Classic Rock magazine.

“He tortured me! (Expletive) tortured me! For six months. And I still love him. He’ll always be one of my mentors, like Dave (Grohl). He was the one guy who beat it into my brain that I wasn’t the best drummer in the world, that I have work to do. But he said I had something that couldn’t be taught. (Stevie) ripped my ego out of my body and put it back the way it should have.”

Not coincidentally, Salas had undergone a similar trial by fire during his extensive 1988 tour with Rod Stewart, which included a sold-out San Diego show at Southwestern College’s Devore Stadium.

Salas will likely acknowledge some of his famous musical partners when he accepts his Lifetime Achievement Award on Tuesday. But one of his biggest shout-outs will be to the San Diego music scene that so greatly nurtured and inspired him in the early 1980s.

Guitarist Stevie Salas is shown performing with Mick Jagger at Los Angeles’ El Rey Theater at a private concert celebrating the release of Jagger’s solo album, “Goddess in the Doorway.” Salas hails Jagger, now 80, as “the ultimate rock star.”

(KMazur / WireImage)

‘A big impact on me’

“I’ve been going through my speech for the award I’m getting, and it’s not about me,” stressed the Oceanside native. “It’s about Jerry Raney, Joey Harris, Paul Shaffer, Four Eyes, The Penetrators, Fingers, and all these San Diego bands that were so good when I was a kid. My band, This Kids, would open for them when I was in high school and they really made a big impact on me.

“I mean, the Joey Harris/Fingers’ song, ‘Too Young?’ That’s superior songwriting! I don’t think people remember how many great musicians were playing in San Diego back in the 1980s. I used to sneak into the Belly Up to see Rosie Flores and her band, The Screamers, with Lee Barnes on guitar.”

These are more than distant memories for Salas.

His voice literally jumped with excitement as he recalled playing countless local gigs across San Diego County with his group, during which time he soaked up as much musical information and inspiration as he could.

“I started This Kids when I was in 11th grade and we opened up for all the local bands,” Salas said. “I remember doing a gig with Four Eyes and they were writing (new) songs at their sound check. We opened for The Penetrators, and every song of theirs was a masterpiece.

“And if Mick Jagger would have cut the DFX2 song, ‘Emotion,’ it was like the best Stones song they never recorded! As a matter of fact, I wish I would have played the song for Jagger when I was working with him.”

Salas laughed.

“The (San Diego band) Bratz were a bit more corporate-sounding than I liked at the time, but they had this massive rock-star swagger, and they were so far beyond me in wisdom and experience,” he said. “Their singer, Paul Shaffer, was the first guy I ever saw wearing purple shoes on stage! I hope he can come do a song with me at Humphreys when I get my award.

“I have so much respect for those legendary San Diego musicians because they were so bad ass. And you had to be bad ass to even be able to play on the same stages as them. If you think about everything I’ve done — from George Clinton, Rod Stewart, Terence Trent D’Arby, Duran Duran, Bootsy Collins, Mick Jagger — it was all built on my having learned to do music playing alongside all these great San Diego bands.”

Salas, who is of Mescalero Apache heritage, clearly learned his lessons well.

In addition to performing on nearly 80 albums by other artists, he has 14 solo albums to his credit. The first, 1988’s “Stevie Salas Colorcode” features such high-profile guests as Collins on bass and Talking Heads/Funkadelic veteran Bernie Worell on keyboards. His second album, “The Electric Tree,” teamed him with members of Cheap Trick, Stray Cats and Ozzy Osbourne’s band.

Salas’ entertaning memoir, “When We Were the Boys,” was published in 2014. In more recent years, he has been branching out into film and television work.

Stevie Salas is shown at the 2015 edition of the National Association of Music Merchants show at the Anaheim Convention Center. He is seen with one of his Framus Idolmaker series of guitars.

(John Gastaldo/John Gastaldo)

‘Anything is possible’

His 2017 music documentary, “Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World,” won acclaim at film festivals here and abroad. The movie was an outgrowth of his work as the co-curator of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian’s “Up Where We Belong: Native Musicians in Popular Culture” exhibit. Salas recently returned from visits to Toronto and Cannes, France, where he drummed up interest for his two latest film projects.

“I’m living proof that anything is possible,” he said. “I’m not that great a guitarist and I’m not that smart. You’ve gotta get lucky, and you just have to visualize yourself there and do it.”

It was Salas’ vision that compelled him to leave This Kids, the band he formed while attending high school, and move to Los Angeles in 1985.

Once there, he hustled more than he played, trying to get his foot through as many doors as he could. Months passed and he had little to show for his efforts. Homeless at one point, Salas struck a deal to sleep on the couch of Baby O, a Los Angeles recording studio, in return for doing custodial work.

“The studio belonged to Rick Peratta and David Pahoa, who were in the band The Plimsouls,” he recalled. “They said I could stay there if I swept the floors. And I did — for six months. I met all these people who came to the studio. I’d say; ‘I’m Stevie Salas. I play guitar!’ Most of them ignored me. Gene Simmons from Kiss was like: ‘(Screw) off.’

“One night, George Clinton — the founder of Parliament-Funkadelic — was recording late and gave me a shot, and everything grew from there. If he hadn’t, you probably would not be talking to me right now and I’d be serving pizza somewhere.”

In fact, Clinton had hired another guitarist for the recording session, Jack Sherman, an early member of Red Hot Chili Peppers. Salas was impressed by Sherman’s playing. Clinton was not.

“Jack was playing what I thought was incredible stuff,” Salas said. “He was doing was the best Parliament-Funkadelic impersonation anyone could do. I realized Clinton wasn’t interested in (revisiting) his past; he was only interested in his future.

“I saw that you had to understand where he came from, musically, but do something else, something new, on top of it. So, I started doing all this Steve Stevens-styled dive-bombing on my guitar, and George perked up.”

The Clinton session put Salas on the map with other musicians and his profile began to steadily grow. Yet, while his career trajectory appeared to head straight up, he readily acknowledges that was not the case.

A prime example came in 1987 when Salas turned down an offer to work with Thomas Dolby — of “She Blinded Me With Science” fame — to instead do Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor’s debut U.S. solo tour. It was scheduled to include a date here at the SDSU Open Air Theater as the opening act for Psychedelic Furs.

But after butting heads with Taylor, Salas got fired before the tour even began. His hometown return evaporated overnight.

“All my friends and my mom and dad had bought tickets to see me at SDSU with Andy, and I was not there. I was so embarrassed,” Salas recalled. “Then, I got a call to go perform on the ‘Top of the Pops’ TV show in England with Was (Not Was). When I got back to L.A., I got the call to audition for Rod Stewart’s band.

“So, getting fired by Andy was the worst day of my life. But it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Jessica Matten, Michelle Thrush and Stevie Salas attend the 2024 “Jam for Janie” Grammy Awards Viewing Party at the Hollywood Palladium on Feb. 4.

(Araya Doheny / Getty Images for Janie’s Fund)

‘This is Mick Jagger’

The lessons Salas learned from his breakthrough recording session with Clinton — including the importance of standing out musically and paying attention to details — proved long lasting.

“Mick Jagger only auditioned five guitar players: me; Dave Navarro from Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane’s Addiction; Rusty Anderson, who is a longtime member of Paul McCartney’s band; Doyle Bramhall II, who’s worked with Eric Clapton for a long time; and Tori Ruffin, who played with Morris Day & The Time,” Salas said.

“I went there — this was in L.A. — and did my thing. And I got the gig. I became the guitarist and music director for Mick, as well as getting to hire the second guitar player, Nick Lashley, who had worked with Alanis Morrisette for years.

“Jagger would call me five times a day to talk about every little detail. He liked the fact I was also so detail oriented. He had amazing ideas. And what was great about him was he would listen to your ideas. He didn’t act like he knew everything. He was like a kid, in terms of enthusiasm, which was awesome.

“Whenever Mick left a phone message, he’d always say: ‘This is Mick Jagger.’ He never just say: ‘This is Mick’.”

And how would Salas compare fellow Brits Jagger and Stewart, two of the most famous singers in rock history?

“They are a lot different,” he replied. “Stewart is more talented and his voice is insane. But Jagger is the ultimate rock star.”

Salas laughed.

“One day I was sitting on Rod Stewart’s jet,” he said. “Rod was standing there. I looked at him — I was 23 — and I thought: ‘He’s old.’ I think he was 42 or 43 at the time! Then, I thought: ‘Why the hell is he still doing this? If I was his age, I’d be (retired) and living on some tropical island.’

“Now, that I’m old I don’t know why I’d ever stop. I think when you stop, you die. Music keeps you young.”

While Salas is now focusing more on film production, he hasn’t turned his back on music.

In 2017, “Chubby Groove” his joint album with singer Koshi Inaba, topped the charts in Japan. The two then embarked on a sold-out tour together.

In 2022, Salas toured in the final iteration of the pioneering Detroit rock band MC5, whose leader, Wayne Kramer, died early this year. On April 21 it was announced that MC5 — which had been on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ballot six different times — would be inducted this year in the Musical Excellence category.

“Stevie is a wonderful musician,” Kramer said in a 2022 San Diego Union-Tribune interview. “He understands the value of the art of playing rhythm guitar. He’s such a sweetheart of a man, and I’m honored to have him in the band.”

Salas performed at the 2015 San Diego Music Awards and at the 2022 Aimloan.com San Diego Blues Festival, where he traded guitar licks with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, a longtime pal.

When not caught up with production work for other artists or at home in Austin, Salas spends as much time as he can on his boat in Oceanside and his home in Carlsbad.

He proudly notes that when he put “American Idol” alum Chris Daughtry’s touring band together, he hired a friend — Carlsbad guitarist Josh Steely — to be in the group. When Salas played at the San Diego Sports Arena in 2008 with “American Idol” alum Jordin Sparks, the band he led included two other San Diego buddies, bassist Jara Harris and drummer Mike Bedard.

“I’m still best friends with all the kids I grew up with in Carlsbad from sixth grade on,” Salas said. “We were in Little League, played Pop Warner football and went surfing together. I see them all the time and they’ll all be at Humphreys for the San Diego Music Awards. I can’t wait.”

33rd annual San Diego Music Awards

Featuring performances by: Stevie Salas, Kimmi Bitter, Mitchy Slick, Joshua Taylor, Ash Easton, Boostive and We The Commas

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Humphreys Concerts by the Bay, 2241 Shelter Island Drive, Shelter Island

Tickets: $40 (general admission) and $125 (VIP)

Online: sandiegomusicawards.com

george.varga@sduniontribune.com