On this day · 74 years ago · 1952
74 Years Ago Today: Jeff Carlisi, Who Wrote the Riff to '.38 Special's Hold On Loosely,' Was Born
Jeff Carlisi co-founded Southern rock band .38 Special and wrote the punchy eighth-note riff behind Hold On Loosely, a song built out of a rough patch in bandmate Don Barnes's marriage and a writing session borrowed partly from the Cars.
By Axel, Classic-rock desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Jeff Carlisi, co-founding guitarist of Southern rock band .38 Special, was born July 15, 1952, in Boston, Massachusetts. He played guitar on the band's biggest hits through the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, and wrote the riff to their signature single Hold On Loosely, taking inspiration from the Cars' Just What I Needed. Carlisi left .38 Special in 1997 to form Bonnie Blue Band and, later, the supergroup Big People.
A Southern rock guitarist born in Boston
Jeff Carlisi was born July 15, 1952, in Boston, Massachusetts, per Songfacts' music history calendar, though his career would be defined by a different city entirely. He co-founded .38 Special in Jacksonville, Florida, in the mid-1970s, part of the same Southern rock scene that produced Lynyrd Skynyrd, and spent more than two decades as the band's lead guitarist, playing on hits including Rockin' Into the Night, Caught Up in You, and Back Where You Belong.
The riff, and the Cars connection
.38 Special's signature song almost didn't happen the way people remember it. Per Wikipedia's account of Hold On Loosely, singer and guitarist Don Barnes was going through a rough patch in his marriage and brought a title idea, "Hold On Loosely," to co-writer Jim Peterik of Survivor, who answered back with the rest of the hook: "but don't let go." For the music, Carlisi wrote the song's punchy, eighth-note-driven riff, drawing on the Cars' 1978 hit Just What I Needed. Peterik later summed up the finished track as sounding "like the Cars meets Lynyrd Skynyrd or something," an odd-on-paper combination that became one of Southern rock's most recognizable hooks.
Released as the lead single from 1981's Wild-Eyed Southern Boys, Hold On Loosely reached No. 3 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart and No. 27 on the Hot 100, and later turned up in the films Joe Dirt and Without a Paddle and in a Better Call Saul episode. Per the same source, it was also the 13th music video played on MTV's opening day in 1981, a small piece of trivia that says a lot about how ubiquitous the song had already become.
A riff that outlasted the rest of the catalog
Carlisi spent more than two decades as .38 Special's lead guitarist before leaving in 1997 to form the Bonnie Blue Band and, later, the supergroup Big People, per Wikipedia's account of the band's history. Hold On Loosely remains the piece of guitar history he's most associated with: a three-chord idea borrowed from new wave that ended up defining a Southern rock band's whole career. He shares a birthday with another guitarist decades younger: My Chemical Romance's Ray Toro, born on the same July date in 1977.
The twin-guitar Southern rock tone
.38 Special built its sound on dual guitars and dual drummers, a Southern rock blueprint borrowed from the Allman Brothers, typically played in standard tuning. A standard nickel-wound electric set remains the reliable modern starting point for that rhythm-guitar crunch.
Regular Slinky (.010–.046)
Why this one: A general nickel-wound starting point for Southern-rock twin-guitar rhythm work, not a historical claim about Carlisi's own undocumented 1970s gear.
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