Some session musicians turn up on more than one of my maps, and until you draw the whole catalogue you have no way of knowing who. I have now mapped over 70 artists, and the same names keep reappearing in other people's credits: a drummer from one band playing on another band's album, an arranger from one map earning a line on a completely different one. This post is about those crossings, because they are the one thing a single discography list can never show you.
The best example sits on one record. Different Days, The Charlatans album from 2017, carries nineteen credited musicians, and four of them have their own map in my catalogue.
What counts as a crossing, and what does not
One rule governs every map I draw: a person only gets a line if they are credited playing or arranging something on the record. Producing it is not enough. Someone who produced an album but did not play on it does not appear anywhere on the diagram.
That rule is why this post is shorter than it could be. Plenty of producers and engineers work across many of these catalogues, and none of them show up as crossings unless they also picked up an instrument. What is left is a smaller and more interesting group: people who actually made a sound on somebody else's record.
Different Days: four map-holders on one album
Johnny Marr, Paul Weller, Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert are all credited on Different Days, and all four have a map of their own. Marr has both the Johnny Marr map and The Smiths map. Weller has his own. Morris and Gilbert are both on the Joy Division and New Order map.
None of them appears on any other Charlatans record. On the print, that reads as four separate branch lines converging on one station in 2017, touching it once, and leaving. It is the single busiest station on the Charlatans map, and the reason is a guest list rather than a bigger band.
Stephen Morris appears on three separate maps
Morris is the most widely travelled name I have found so far. He is a permanent line on the Joy Division and New Order map, he plays drums on "Soul Kitchen" on the Echo and the Bunnymen self-titled album of 1987, and he is credited on Different Days thirty years later.
The 1987 credit has a pleasing symmetry to it. On that same Bunnymen record, Ray Manzarek of The Doors plays keyboards on "Bedbugs and Ballyhoo", so a Doors keyboard player and a Joy Division drummer are on the same album, and Morris is playing on a Doors cover.
Roy Bittan crosses from the E Street Band to Dire Straits
Roy Bittan's piano line runs through most of the Bruce Springsteen map, from Born to Run in 1975 onwards, stepping aside only for the records Springsteen made stripped back and solo. He is about as embedded as a session player gets.
He also plays keyboards on Making Movies, the Dire Straits album of 1980, and appears nowhere else in that catalogue. Making Movies is the leanest station on the Dire Straits map, with five names in total, so one of those five is on loan from another map entirely. That is my favourite crossing in the whole range, because it links two catalogues that otherwise share nothing.
George Martin earns his line for arranging, not producing
George Martin is the cleanest illustration of the producer rule anywhere in the catalogue. He is on the Beatles map, and he is also on the Dire Straits map, but not for the reason most people would guess.
His Dire Straits line exists because he is credited as string arranger and conductor on track 9 of On Every Street in 1991. That is a musical credit, so it qualifies. Had he only produced the record, he would not be on the diagram at all. A Beatles producer turning up on the last Dire Straits album is not something you find by reading a track listing.
Liam Gallagher on an Echo and the Bunnymen record
Liam Gallagher is credited with backing vocals on "Nothing Lasts Forever", from the Bunnymen's 1997 reunion album Evergreen. He has his own map, and Oasis have a separate one, so this is a third catalogue he touches exactly once.
Crossings like that tend to date a moment rather than a relationship. Everyone was in the same few studios in 1997, and the credits quietly record it.
The crossings I have mapped so far
| Musician | Their own map | Where else they appear |
|---|---|---|
| Stephen Morris | Joy Division and New Order | Echo and the Bunnymen (1987), The Charlatans (2017) |
| Gillian Gilbert | Joy Division and New Order | The Charlatans (2017) |
| Johnny Marr | Johnny Marr, and The Smiths | The Charlatans (2017) |
| Paul Weller | Paul Weller | The Charlatans (2017) |
| Roy Bittan | Bruce Springsteen | Dire Straits, Making Movies (1980) |
| George Martin | The Beatles | Dire Straits, On Every Street (1991) |
| Liam Gallagher | Liam Gallagher, and Oasis | Echo and the Bunnymen, Evergreen (1997) |
Why session musicians only become visible when you draw them
A discography list tells you what an artist released. It cannot tell you that the pianist on a 1980 Dire Straits record spent the previous five years in the E Street Band, because that fact lives in two separate sets of liner notes that nobody puts side by side.
Drawing every credited musician as a named line is what surfaces it. Once one person has a line on two maps, the two maps stop being separate objects and start being two views of the same overlapping population of players. That is the part of this work I find most rewarding, and it only accumulates: every new map I research adds crossings to maps I finished years ago.
Sizes and prints
Each map is a Giclée on 230gsm premium acid-free matte fine art paper. Sizes are A2 (420 x 594mm) and A1 (594 x 841mm), plus 24x18 in and 36x24 in, supplied unframed or ready to hang in a black wood frame, from £42. A few of the denser maps, such as the Levellers, are A1 only, because the credit density does not survive being shrunk.
If you are collecting more than one, the crossings above are a reasonable way to choose the second. A Springsteen map and a Dire Straits map share Roy Bittan. A New Order map and a Charlatans map share two people.
Questions about session musicians on the maps
Do producers get a line?
Only if they are also credited playing or arranging something on the record. George Martin qualifies on the Dire Straits map for a string arrangement. A producer who only produced does not appear.
What is not on the maps?
The maps chart studio records only. Live albums, compilations and soundtracks are left off by editorial choice. Engineers, mixers and sleeve designers do not get lines unless they also played. Where a map has a cutoff date, anything released after the artwork was drawn is not on it.
How do you find these crossings?
Slowly, and mostly by accident. I research each map from liner notes and session archives without looking for connections to other maps, then recognise a name I have drawn before. There is no database that does this, which is precisely why the crossings are worth writing down.
Is this list complete?
No. It is what I have confirmed so far across the maps I have drawn, and I expect it to grow. If you spot a crossing I have missed, I would genuinely like to hear about it.
Does the map show which track each musician played on?
No. Each line calls at the albums a musician appears on. Only the Goats Head Soup album map goes to track level, because it covers a single record.
The maps mentioned here
Every map in this post is in the music wall art prints collection. The ones that cross over are the Joy Division and New Order map, the Charlatans map, the Bruce Springsteen map, the Dire Straits map, the Echo and the Bunnymen map, the Paul Weller map, the Johnny Marr map and the Beatles map.
If you are buying for someone else and cannot decide which of two connected maps they would rather have, an art print gift card lets them make the call themselves.
