peteb

I would have thought that these days, £1.5k would be a really good price (especially from a London based shop)! A very nice bass.

I used to have a bright red 4 string bolt-on neck Japanese Burner that I bought back in the early 90s for £520. I ended up selling it for just under a grand about 13 or 14 years ago. It was a great bass - sweet sounding, very light and played really well. Virtually every bassist I knew used to ask if I still had it whenever I bumped into them. It was the bass that I wished I had found several years before, when I switched from Fenders to active basses. I played a lot of gigs with it throughout the 90s, but in those old rock days I used to give my basses a bit of stick onstage and I was always worried that I was going break the damn thing (that headstock angle)! I was constantly re-adjusting the truss rod and in the end I retired it and got a couple of Streamers, which felt much more robust. I finally sold it when I decided I needed a P bass for a blues band. Predictably, I now pretty much exclusively play Fenders and FSOs these days, going full circle back to when I first started gigging!

That's a hell of a track! @dmccombe7, it's on the excellent Itch album - dunno how easy it is to get hold of these days, but well worth getting if you can track it down.

Dave - I'm sure that our tastes won't be too dissimilar, although you may well run to the proggy end of things! As I mentioned before, the ones I would go for are 'Itch' & 'Rocklandwonderland', along with the first album. His last album, 'Ain't Life Amazing' has its moments as well, especially the title track and 'In the Stars Tonight' (which we played at our wedding)!. I'm not keen on his attempts to be be more commercial ('Patio Lanterns'), which doesn't really work for me, but he has done a lot of great stuff - a little more straight-ahead than Max Webster, but still have plenty of quirks and left turns. One of my favourite artists... One of his more strait forward rock tunes, but this always makes me smile when I see it on YouTube

To be a touch pedantic, that would have been Max Webster supporting Rush and it most likely would have been the Hemispheres tour (at least that's the tour I saw)! I loved the Kim Mitchell solo stuff (preferred it to MW myself). He made a few wrong turns, but there are some great albums out there (check out Itch & Rocklandwonderland).

Yep, that's the big difference between a lot of bassists who can play a bit and the real top guys.

RB was tapping comping parts when I saw the Robben Ford & the Blue Line trio about 30 years ago!

I've seen a lot of great bass players play live, and he could well be the best...!

When it comes down to it, it is difficult to convincingly recreate rhythm guitar or keys parts on a bass guitar. Of course there are exceptions - check out the great Roscoe Beck, who started tapping out organ parts on bass when he played an early tour with Robben Ford because they couldn't afford to take a keys player out! On the flip side, I have seen an interview with Philthy Taylor and Fast Eddie where they said that they developed the classic Motorhead sound to compensate for Lemmy playing more like a rhythm guitarist than a traditional bass player (creating a whole new sub-genre in the process)! Also, listen to early DLR era Van Halen, where Michael Anthony will often play busier parts during under the guitar solos.

No, @chris_b is right. I've mainly played in rock bands with just one guitar over the years and you just develop a feel over the years on how to fill things out. First of all you need the right tone and attack, but being in a three piece can give you the opportunity to play a bit busier at times (particularly under solos), to work on your note lengths, you might throw in a few octaves or sometimes you just embrace the spaces in the music (someone mentioned Robin Trower above, which is a pretty good example). However, you are never going sound the same as if you have a rhythm guitar or Hammond or whatever playing, but a three piece can still sound great! I'm playing in a pretty busy Zep tribute these days and I certainly don't use any effects or change my EQ every time there is a guitar solo! You just find a way to make it work.

That's awful mate. Not much you can say, but best wishes to the family.

I agree - it's just a lazy, patronising label to deride perfectly legitimate top quality musicians. It also has a slight whiff of racism about it! Quincy Jones produced polished RnB based pop music with strong jazz, soul, fusion and rock influences, which everyone praises to the skies. Toto produced polished rock based pop music with strong jazz, soul, fusion and RnB influences and all the would be hipsters form a queue to sneer. Quincy even used the same players, not to mention that Steely Dan used guys who played on Aretha Franklin hits (as well as QJ records).

The trouble is that you're completely wrong! As a producer, Beato worked with a number of punk and garage rock bands. His big break was co-writing a number one country hit, which led to him working with several big time country songwriters. One of the things I like about RB is that he has a pretty wide background in lots of musical styles - he might love Steely Dan, but he also sees the value in The Clash. He used to be a lecturer in music, so he does come from an academic background, which is probably what you don't like about him. For me, he seems likable and is very enthusiastic / knowledgeable about lots of different types of music and I generally find his content interesting. Each to his own...

F***, Bruce is starting to look his age! Dunno about calling it a day, but perhaps a younger drummer along with shorter sets and tours might help them to keep going a bit longer. I was never a Maiden fan - I was always more impressed that Nicko had played with Pat Travers in his earlier career. I never met the guy, but I was sat next to him on a train once! Him and Bruce were busy chatting to some girls who were going to a show that night. He seemed a nice enough guy.

A mate (of sorts) of mine is a very good bass player and used to tour with Paul Carrack in the late 90’s among others. He says that he had this discussion with Pino Palladino many years ago. Apparently Pino said to him “Everything you’ll ever need can be found in the playing of Jaco, Jamerson, Aston Barrett and Bernard Edwards and there’s a lifetime’s work there”. That seems fair enough! Having never really studied any of those guys, I would say my top four were: Mars Cowling, John Paul Jones, Alan Spenner and Boz Burrell (you could also add Neil Murray and Andy Fraser). I suppose that kinda shows what my personal tastes were when I started playing.