Paying tribute to the prolific Alan Parsons/ Kate Bush guitar virtuoso, who died in April.
Former bandmate Alan Parsons has been among those paying tribute to guitarist John‘Ian’Bairnson, who died on April 7, aged 69.
Born in Lerwick, Shetland, Bairnson learned to play guitar aged six and started out as a session guitarist. In 1974 he joined power pop band Pilot who had hits with Magic and January, both produced by Parsons. Alongside his fellow Pilot members David Paton (bass) and initially Stuart Tosh (drums) and Billy Lyall (keys), Bairnson would be a musical mainstay of the Alan Parsons Project, featuring on all their albums, as well as four of Parsons’own records.
In a moving social media post, Parsons paid tribute: “I have always considered Ian a musical genius. He was a true master of the guitar – he knew every possible playable guitar chord and how to describe it […] Another indication of his incredible talent was when he picked up the saxophone and played it like a pro on stage with the British incarnation of The Alan Parsons Live Project, he had only spent a few short weeks of learning the instrument.”
According to Parsons, when he was losing interest in Eye In The Sky during the song’s production, it was Bairnson who convinced him the song was going to be a hit. It was their biggest, landing at No.3 in the US, and No.1 in both Canada and Spain.
Bairnson also played guitar on Kate Bush’s first four
