Herbie Flowers and Ronnie Ross – the bass and sax solos in Walk on the Wild Side

When you think – as we are – of famous musical parts or breaks, it’s hard not to start with Lou Reed’s 1972 hit, which has not one but two famous instrumental breaks. Although Reed’s lyrics – which detail the lives of various Warhol/Factory drag queens – are rightly famous, the song hinges on the bass hook devised by session musician Herbie Flowers and performed by him on upright double bass overlaid by electric bass. Not that the modest musician will himself blow his own trumpet. “You do the job and get your arse away,” he once said, humbly, of his vital contribution to one of the best-known songs in rock. “You take a £12 fee, you can’t play a load of bollocks. Wouldn’t it be awful if someone came up to me on the street and congratulated me for Transformer?” In fact, Flowers received the grand sum of £17 for his now legendary work. At those eyewatering rates, it’s unsurprising that producer David Bowie pushed the boat out for further additional musicians, booking his own jazz tutor – saxophonist Ronnie Ross – to nail the famous solo in one take. Furious debate has raged for years over just why the song fades out while that melliflous sax solo is still in all its sublime glory. Perhaps allowing it to run a bitlonger might have cost them another 50p.

Ray Jackson – the mandolin solo in Maggie May

As BBC1’s The One Show put it in 2011, the mandolin part on “one of the best-loved records of all time” is “instantly recognisable, even though the man who played it isn’t”. That may be a bit harsh on Newcastle-bornJackson – who enjoyed a lengthy career in folk rockers Lindisfarne. However, his work on Rod Stewart’s Maggie May has undoubtedly taken his playing into the lives of people who’ve never heard of him. This song transformed Rod from mod to superstar, despite having no recognisable chorus. In fact, the catchiest bit of the song is arguably Jackson’s big moment. Sadly, he was paid just a £15 session fee for his part and didn’t even get a credit on the sleevenotes – Rod crediting “the mandolin player in Lindisfarne … the name slips my mind.” To add insult to injury, Rod performed the song on Top of the Pops with pal John Peel miming on mandolin, meaning a generation grew up thinking it was played by a Radio 1 DJ.

Steve Gregory – the sax breaks on Careless Whisper

Few wine bars in the 1980s were complete without the sound of George Michael’s Careless Whisper wafting over the clink of glasses. Where George had previously been known for putting a shuttlecock down his shorts on stage, he was suddenly seen as a serious artist and writer of mature ballads. Pivotal to Careless Whisper’s softly cross-generational appeal was the gently evocative saxophone played by Steve Gregory, a long-term session musician who had played with everyone from the Rolling Stones to Fleetwood Mac. It remains one of the most distinctive solos in pop, which makes it rather baffling that the great man is currently playing his world-renowned trade in Pastiche Band, “a live band for hire for your wedding, party, jazz evening, barn dance or corporate function”.

Al Kooper – organ on Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone

Green On Red frontman Dan Stuart once accurately described the distinctive wail that drives this famous 1965 Bob Dylan classic as “that amazing Al Kooper squeezed organ sound”, indicating the reverence with which the man is held among musicians, even though Kooper is hardly a household name. His role in the song came about by inspired accident. A friend of his – producer Tom Wilson – was recording the Highway 61 Revisited sessions and asked young guitarist Kooper along to watch proceedings. As the young man observed Dylan and band struggling to nail the song in an awkward 3/4 time, Kooper suggested he have a go on organ. “Tom said: ‘You’re a guitar player, not an organ player,’” Kooper recalled, much later. “Then he went to take a phone call and I thought to myself, ‘Well, he didn’t say no.’” So he sat down at the organ, and – with the producer in another room – unleashed the primal organ roar that fires a stone cold rock classic.

Billy Preston – the piano solo on Get Back
David Mason – trumpet on Penny Lane

Billy Preston has the distinction of being the only musician beside the Beatles to be billed on one of their records: Get Back, from 1969, was released under the name “the Beatles with Billy Preston”. The keyboard player’s unlikely status as “the fifth Beatle” came about when both Ringo Starr and George Harrison had walked out on the group’s increasingly acrimonious recording session. Harrison agreed to return only if he could bring a friend. They’d all met Preston when he ws a young musician and fan in Hamburg in 1962, and his presence undoubtedly calmed the waters for a while, and provided one of the Fab Four’s most famous solos, a jazzy, soulful piece of piano playing which was broadcast to the world as Preston accompanied the Beatles on the roof of the Apple building as they performed live for the last time. But the greatest undersung Fabs special guest is David Mason, whose legendary piccolo trumpet solo on Penny Lane was described by Beatles producer Sir George Martin as “unique, something that had never been attempted in pop music before”.

Hilda Woodward – piano on Mouldy Old Dough

Unlikely hits from the 1970s don’t come any more eyebrow-raising than Lieutenant Pigeon’s magnificent 1972 stomper, written by singer/tin whistler Rob Woodward and drummer Nigel Fletcher when they were calling themselves Staveley Makepeace. Mouldy Old Dough – a song about, well, mouldy old dough – was recorded in the front room of Woodward’s mother’s Coventry semi-detached house and features his mum Hilda playing the inimitable ragtime-meets-honky tonk piano. Her appearance may be one of the most transformative in pop, as her distinctive ivory tinkling took the song to to No 1 for four weeks in October 1972, making it the second best selling single of the year behind Nilsson’s Without You. Not only does Mouldy Old Dough remain the only British No 1 to feature a mother and son, but the Pigeons famously appeared on Top of the Pops alongside a stuffed bird.

Wesley Magoogan – sax on Will You

In the 1980 punk film Breaking Glass, a succession of knowing glances suggest that there might be more to the relationship between Hazel O’Connor (Kate) and Phil Daniels (Danny) than that of manager and singer. Simmering emotions finally erupt when – her voice all a tremor - Hazel starts to sing: “It’s getting kinda late now/ I wonder if you’ll stay now, stay now, stay now, stay now/ Or will you just politely say goodnight?” A saxophone plays, and the pair’s mutual affection becomes clear. That sax solo was played by Wesley Magoogan, who played in O’Connor’s band Megahype as life imitated art and the actor-playing-singer became a bona fide singing superstar with several hits including Will You. Cruelly, after he later played with the Beat and Joan Armatrading, Magoogan’s magic fingers were injured in an accident with a circular saw, a harsh fate for someone whose most famous moment moved people around the world to tears.

Tomas Mac Eoin – narrator on The Stolen Child

When the Waterboys were coming to the end of the mammoth sessions for Fisherman’s Blues, Mike Scott had the inspired idea of setting the words of WB Yeats to music. However, Scott was unhappy with just his own voice speaking the words. Luckily, he remembered a voice he’d come across on a tape in the local grocer’s. The band were duly dispatched to find local singer Mac Eoin, although at first the old chap wouldn’t answer his door. A noggin of whiskey duly coaxed Mac Eoin to record one of the Waterboys’ most revered tunes. “He was the kind of character rich old world gentleman of the kind that has faded in Britain but lingered on in Ireland,” recalled Scott last year. “He had something wrong with his foot and had lived most of his life with his mother, so he had this wonderful way. ‘Oh don’t pay attention to me. I’m just an old donkey.’ Tomas wasn’t a 99 takes man. We used take three or four. It was very special.”

Clare Torry – vocals on The Great Gig in the Sky

The credits to Pink Floyd’s 1973 colossus The Dark Side Of The Moon have Clare Torry down as “voice instrumental music”, which is perhaps the only way to describe her famous contribution. After trying everything from Bible speeches to recordings of Nasa astronauts to get the appropriate vibe on Richard Wright’s keyboard progression, someone in the band suggested “a female singer, wailing”. Faced with the prospect of riffling through the “wailing singers” section of Yellow Pages, producer Alan Parsons came up with 25-year old singer Torry, who laid down pop’s most famous wordless vocal in two takes. “I went in, put the headphones on, and started going ‘Ooh-aah, baby, baby – yeah, yeah, yeah,’” she later recalled. “They said, ‘No, no — we don’t want that. Try some longer notes.’ So I started doing that a bit. That was when I thought, ‘Maybe I should just pretend I’m an instrument.’” Receiving just £30 for her troubles, she was another of pop’s important-but-unpaid, until a 2004 lawsuit landed her a songwriting credit.

Dick Parry – sax on Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Another Pink Floyd one, but when you’re a guitar/keyboards/drums-based rock band with burgeoning ideas, it stands to reason that you’ll have to cast around for specialists to put them into practice. Indeed, Dick Parry boasts something of a triumvarite of terrific Floyd parts – he also plays on Us and Them and Money – but Shine On You Crazy Diamond is the saxophonist’s magnum opus. At exactly 11 minutes and 10 seconds into Wish You Were Here’s epic about the late Syd Barrett, the saxophone changes from a baritone to a tenor saxophone, as a time signature switch from 6/4 to 12/8 creates the impression that the tempo doubles up. Phew, prog rock.

23 Skidoo – bass riff on Block Rocking Beats

Delving into the labyrinthine world of sampling throws up hundreds of musicians whose largely unknown work has suddenly been catapulted to (usually unrecognised) international attention when they’ve been sampled by another act. This, though, is as good as an example as any of relocating a piece of music elsewhere. For years, the Fetish Records industrial-punk-funk band were best known to avid readers of the early 1980s NME and listeners to John Peel. Among them, presumably, were the Chemical Brothers, who audibly use a snatch of the distinctive mighty bassline (whether it’s played or sampled remains unclear) to 1984 12” Coup for Block Rockin’ Beats. From being barely active for years, 23 Skidoo suddenly found their bassline being heard on a UK No 1, along with rapper Schooly D, whose 1989 song Gucci Time provided the Chemicals with the phrase “Back with another of those block rockin’ beats.”