Muso Mirror Interviews: Classical Guitarist Carlos Bonell

In the first in a new series where we speak to musicians about their careers and experience using the Muso Mirror, we are joined by Spanish-British classical guitarist Carlos Bonell. Carlos has played on a Grammy-nominated album, worked with Paul McCartney, and is now a big fan of the Muso Mirror. He speaks to us from his home in a small village in the southeast of Spain. 

Carlos Bonell was born in London, but to Spanish parents. He grew up speaking Spanish. As a teenager in the 1960s he would go to Spain on holiday to visit his aunts and uncles. “All the local children would be in awe of me because I had come from England,” he says. “They would ask me ‘Do you know the Beatles?’ 

Image credit: Portsmouth Festivities 2018

Being a mischievous youth with a British sense of humour, Carlos’s response was natural. “I would really lead them on,” he says. “‘Yeah, course I do, course I do!’”

By some quirk of fate, 20 years later it was true. Carlos played guitar on Give My Regards to Broadstreet, a little known Paul McCartney album from 1984. He also played at Paul’s wedding to his second wife Heather Mills, and later helped the Beatle in composing a concerto for classical guitar. 

“It’s incredible,” says Carlos. “Life is really weird isn’t it?” 

Life has indeed been weird for Carlos. One of his earliest memories is sitting in school aged five, with a scary teacher looming over him. She was telling him off, in English, but he couldn’t understand a word of it. He soon picked it up. 

It was around the same age that he first picked up a guitar, the instrument to which he has devoted his life. He studied at the Royal College of Music, London, under celebrated classical guitarist John Williams. At 22, Carlos became the College’s youngest ever professor. In 1975 he played on John Williams and Friends, a classical album featuring two guitars, two marimbas and a bass. The album featured interpretations of Bach, Mozart and Vivaldi, and was nominated for a Grammy. “I've got a plaque which is hanging on my wall,” he says. “It’s nice to have that, really nice.”

Carlos has recorded a number of albums himself, including classical interpretations of Queen and the gorgeous Magical Mystery Guitar Tour, an album comprising covers of 13 Beatles songs. His version of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is enough to make you forget there’s a pandemic on. When he recorded the album around 2012, he sent some tracks to Paul McCartney, who replied immediately to say he really liked them. (Incidentally Carlos picks out ‘The Fool on the Hill’ and ‘She’s Leaving Home’ as his favourite Beatles songs.)

Carlos has contributed to several books and magazines about guitar playing and now teaches aspiring guitarists — albeit over Zoom in the last few months. Dodgy connections and compressed sound mean it’s not ideal, but he’s managed. He’s just about able to hear his students’ occasional mistakes. “Weren't you playing an F sharp in bar 17 when it should be an F natural?” he’ll say during a session.