WA2K Radio is now on the air, Part 3

Chris Martin sings on a version of your song Gold in Them Hills. I heard that he didn't ask permission, he just went into the studio and added his vocals

Yeah! Well, it wasn't so much him … I was touring when my record was being mixed in LA and the producer asked Chris to replace my piano part, because I'm a terrible piano player. That's how it started, but he ended up singing on the record. I wasn't around at the time so they couldn't ask my permission. It sort of bothered me that they sent me this CD with "Gold in Them Hills Remix" written on it and I didn't even know who it was singing. I thought it was me at first, but it didn't sound like me. It took me a while to get anyone on the phone to explain who it was. Obviously the record company were desperate for me to release it once they knew it had Chris Martin on it.

“We had a night off, so [tourmate] Chris Difford told me to cancel my hotel and come stay with him at his place out in the country, in Sussex,” says Sexsmith. “On the way there he says, ‘You’ll never guess who lives up there.’ And I was like, ‘Paul McCartney?’ My first guess. And he nods. I ask if he’s ever been up there and he says a few times. And then he goes, ‘Maybe I’ll give him a call tomorrow.’”

In the morning McCartney’s late wife, Linda, invited them over, and only a few minutes later the former Beatle answered the door in his pajamas. He invited Sexsmith and Difford into the kitchen where they discussed music as Linda made the McCartney brood breakfast.

“I was asking him mostly about Wings because that was more my era, and we ended up breaking out the guitars and singing [the Wings’ hit] ‘Listen To What The Man Said’ together.”

That’s largely how Sexsmith’s two-decade plus career has gone. You may not know him, but the artists you know and love do.

Elvis Costello once said Sexsmith “has got one of the purest senses of melody since Paul McCartney,” and Elton John personally called him to praise his 2007 album, Time Being.

Even Bob Dylan handpicked a couple Sexsmith tunes to play on his Sirius radio show, Theme Time Radio Hour. And this for a musician who’s never scored a top 40 hit.