November 6, 2014 – Rick Rosas (“Rick the Bass Player”) was born in West Los Angeles, Ca. on September 10th 1949. He came up through the ranks of remarkable players as a studio musician and went on to be one of the most sought after session musicians.
In the early 1980s he met Joe Walsh through drummer Joe Vitale and later played on Walsh’s 1985 album, The Confessor.
Rosas also joined Walsh for a short-lived stint in Australia as a member of the Creatures from America, that also featured Waddy Wachtel on guitar and Richard Harvey on drums. He also toured with Dan Fogelberg in 1985. In December 1986, the Walsh band joined Albert Collins and Etta James for the a Jazzvisions taping called “Jump the Blues Away.”
While playing in Walsh’s touring band, he met Neil Young at the Farm Aid III benefit. Young was impressed with the bass player’s musical skill as well as his soft-spoken, laid back manner, and invited him to join his new horn-driven big band, the Bluenotes.
After that he played with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Rivers, Ron Wood, Etta James, and the short-lived reunion of the Buffalo Springfield, among many others.
Since 2000, he had been the bassist for the Waddy Wachtel Band and performed bass with The Flash in Jonathan Demme’s movie Ricki and The Flash. The movie’s band was composed of guitarist Rick Springfield, drummer Joe Vitale and keyboardist Bernie Worrell, backing up Meryl Streep, as “Ricki,” on vocals and guitar. While touring with Pegi Young & the Survivors, he got the call from Neil Young to fill in for Crazy Horse bassist Billy Talbot, who had suffered a mild stroke a few weeks before their 2014 European Tour, making Rick the only bassist to have played with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Crazy Horse. He died shortly after wrapping up the movie fighting lung cancer on Nov 6, 2014 at age 65. (There’s a special tribute to him in the credits at the end of the movie.)
