At the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, Bowie saw Stevie Ray Vaughan play guitar. At the time, Vaughan was an unknown 28-year-old blues guitarist from Texas; his debut album with his band Double Trouble was still unreleased. After Vaughan's performance, Bowie was so impressed with the guitarist that he tracked him down months later to play lead guitar on the album. Rodgers was initially unimpressed with Bowie's choice of Vaughan, believing he sounded like Albert King. Bowie however felt Vaughan was different, telling him "he's got a whole other thing going on." Vaughan recorded his guitar overdubs towards the end of the sessions. According to biographer Paul Trynka, Vaughan used an old Fender Stratocaster plugged into an old Fender amplifier, "all the tone coming from the player". In a contemporary interview, Vaughan described the recording sessions for the album: "Bowie is real easy to work with. He knows what he's doing in the studio and he doesn't mess around...He'd give his opinion on the stuff he liked and the stuff that needed work. Almost everything was cut in one or two takes. I think there was only one thing that needed three takes." According to Vaughan biographers Joe Patoski and Bill Crawford, Vaughan played on six of the album's eight songs. In "Strange Fascination", Buckley found Vaughan to be a "bizarre" choice for lead guitarist, as at the time, he was "about as far away from Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew as you could get." Nevertheless, Bowie and Rodgers offered unanimous praise to Vaughan's work on the album, with Rodgers becoming one of Vaughan's closet friends after the sessions.