Guitarist 8 Grammy Wins Supernatural 2000 Today

Carlos watched from his apartment, eating ramen.

He hung up. He looked at his cracked ceiling. Then he picked up his Stratocaster, hit the reverb, and played a single, perfect B-flat. guitarist 8 grammy wins supernatural 2000

Carlos Mendez was a ghost in the machine. In 1999, he was a 24-year-old session guitarist living in a leaky apartment above a Korean grocery in Los Angeles. He could make a Stratocaster cry, scream, or whisper, but no one knew his name. His phone rarely rang. Carlos watched from his apartment, eating ramen

Over the next three months, Carlos became the secret weapon of Supernatural . He played on eleven of the album’s fifteen cuts, but his contract was a session player’s standard: flat fee, no royalties, no credit on the front cover. His name appeared in microscopic type under “Additional Musicians.” Then he picked up his Stratocaster, hit the

Carlos walked into the session with a 1962 Fender Stratocaster he’d pawned his car to keep. The studio was tense. The singer, gray-faced and chain-smoking, didn’t look at him. The rhythm track was a sluggish blues-rock dirge.