Friday Jam | “The Salt in My Tears” | Martin Briley |1983

You may not know Martin Briley, but chances are you might have heard him.
The singer, songwriter, and session guitarist from England played with a number of recording artists throughout his career, including Meat Loaf, Julian Lennon, Bonnie Tyler, Donna Summer, Olivia Newton-John, Ian Hunter, and others.

In 1983, Briley popped onto MTV with “The Salt in My Tears.” A biting, sarcastic, even humorous “break-up” song, littered with witty, cutting retorts on a failed relationship. The lyrics are framed by some great, old-fashioned, Fender Stratocaster chimney guitar riffs that point to Briley’s recording session sensibilities— dropping well-crafted, slightly familiar phrases in between a driving, walking bass and snappy drum groove.

The guitar parts are straightforward and crisp, propelling the verse and chorus into the song’s bridge, which includes a wonderful chromatic walkdown that leads into a quirky and pretty much perfect pop-rock guitar solo.

It’s a fun tune to jam on.

A “one-hit wonder” for Briley, the tune was in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV, landing in the low 30’s on Billboard’s Top 100.

FYI, Logan is my recording engineer.

Gear Used: My Ibanez Andy Timmons ATZ10P with a Nano Cortex providing the amps and effects. Neural DSP boasts that the Nano is a mobile recording studio, so I thought I’d give it a test. All the tracks were recorded in the family room with just the guitar, the pedal, headphones, and my laptop— which is running Logic Pro.