Hired Gun

Forget about the guy who bitched about Steve Vai and wrote a whiny review. This documentary doesn't look at the most famous session players (Like Vai), it follows people you may have never heard of (but whose talents you may have heard). The depth and honesty of the documentary is palpable. The players it does focus on show just how high the highs and how low the lows are when you dedicate your life to playing someone else's music. A couple superstar artists come out looking like douche bags for the way they treat their side men, but for the most part, the documentary steers clear of drama.

You'll never look at Billy Joel the same way again, that's for damn sure.

The fact that millionaires regularly treat session musicians so poorly goes to show that the music industry is even sleazier than we ever thought possible.

Absolutely incredible! if you are a fan of music you MUST see this film. Ideally on the big screen! I have seen the film 3 times, at SXSW, in the theater, and on DVD, and I well up every time. The "Hired Guns" featured are the most talented musicians in the world and each of their stories are incredible. Highly recommended.

Really enjoyed watching this and learned a lot about the lives these guys had.

What struck me in the end was nobody was overly bitter (at least in this film) or resentful other than the lack of communication when their time was up.

They seemed to know the precarious edge that chose to live on and what that meant in job security.But happy to have been part of something big and creative.

I have to admit that it took me fifty years to understand that some band players are just 'hired guns', never knew about that, I always thought they just played in different bands as full members. So for that only this documentary was an eye opener for me, and a good reason to watch it. It was very interesting to see the view of those artists on the bands they played with, and how some of those 'celebrities' are just a bunch of egoistic egocentric bastards, like Billy Joel in this documentary. He's a heartless very self-centered egoistic prick that doesn't deserve anybody buying his music. On the other hand you can witness what a wonderful guy his drummer Liberty DeVitto is, still forgiving everything and playing for peanuts. But there are also others than Billy Joel that are just wannabe good people and I guess that once you got a bit of success you just look at other people like they are your possession. In this documentary you also discover nice celebrities, with a golden heart, like Alice Cooper, Ozzy and Pink, not directly people that I would have thought being nice persons in daily life. So never judge a book by it's cover. The documentary is very well made, with tons of relevant interviews of great side artists, guitar and drum virtuoses that made the name of some big bands without ever being recognized. Interviews with hired guns, producers, artists and so on, it all passes the revue and it's very interesting and pleasant to listen to. If you are a music fan you should definitely watch Hired Gun. I will always listen to music in a different way now.