Original Inspiration

Schnozz

Got to see my original inspiration last night...

https://i.imgur.com/dVyuY7s.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/wQvQIdh.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/kNqpnCh.jpg
...And he threw his wristband to my dad and I, which was a wonderful moment.

When I was a kid, I had the 'Piece of Mind' album and Thin Lizzy's 'Black Rose' cassette tapes, which made me want to play bass.

WASP's 'Crimson Idol' and Big Country's 'The Buffalo Skinners' made me pick up the guitar too.

I don't listen to Steve (or Phil) much any more, because Jack Bruce and Chris Squire just took it that little bit further, but it was incredible and exhausting to watch him in action.

British Lion as a band are incredibly polished live, but the dynamics came through in a way that the albums just can't capture (modern technology). I'd thoroughly recommend the gig if you get the chance to see them.

https://imgur.com/1NYwJEd

So who made you pick up the bass?

blobb

Richard Sinclair / Hugh Hopper.

Kurtis

Mani.

And flea. 

Funkfingers

Levin, McCartney, Jamerson, Karn, Adamson, Weymouth, O'Hearn.

mart

Who made me play bass in the first place? Lancaster

Whose bass playing do I enjoy listening to most? Rutherford

Who do I most want to sound like? Karn or Palladino

fretmeister

Harris, Deacon, Burton, Sheehan. 

Schnozz

blobb said:

Richard Sinclair / Hugh Hopper.

Intrigued as to how you came across these two in yer youff...? (If you're not still in yer youff).

bassbora

Probably John Taylor first then Duff

Funkfingers

Schnozz said:

blobb said:

Richard Sinclair / Hugh Hopper.

Intrigued as to how you came across these two in yer youff...? (If you're not still in yer youff).

My version of how.

In 1977, my father purchased the Soft Machine three-disc retrospective compilation titled Triple Echo. The packaging included a booklet. The centre pages of this featured a Pete Frame "family tree" diagram to explain who had been in the successive Softs line-ups, what bands they were in before and what they went on to do after they left (or burnt themselves out or were sacked).

Needless to say Hopper and Sinclair are named several times in the "tree". 

Back in the day, bands like Hatfield And The North got to appear on television programmes such as Rock Goes To College.

I was fifteen at the time. I can not pretend that I "got" all of the music but I gave it a fair listen. 

One of my school contemporaries was a Hillage fan. See the name in the Frame diagram. Another cross-reference. (I didn't "get" some of the Hillage music either.)

blobb

Schnozz said:

blobb said:

Richard Sinclair / Hugh Hopper.

Intrigued as to how you came across these two in yer youff...? (If you're not still in yer youff).

Well, the question was who inspired you to pick up bass. Mr Sinclair did that via Caravan, probably early 90's. We found they still had a following and played a one off gig every year at the Park Hotel, Diss (near where the fan club organiser lived). So we traipsed off to Diss. Richard wasn't with them But Dave was (and his Hammond). but I saw Richard with them at a festival in Canterbury. Hugh I never got to see but I remember Soft Machine from some earlier exposure via radio.

All of these seeds really came to the fore when I met someone who had an encyclopedic knowledge of good music. And this was the direction they took me in, and they were right!

Schnozz

Well, I shall be listening to some Sinclair, Hopper and Karn soon.

blobb

Richard is simply the most accomplished bass player of the Canterbury scene (and they were all about complexity). The stuff he played with Hatfield is astonishing, they did two albums, both all time classics. But he does something else as well. He writes beautiful songs, which he sings with his beautiful canterbury choirboy voice. Words are not so important as the musical phrasing so a lot of the time you will hear him make stuff up or it can look like he forgot the words. But he hasn't. 

He lives in Italy now, and it hasn't taken him long to join up with anyone who wants to play music. You will find various clips of him guesting with local groups. Here's a lovely one of him with a band called Zenith, performing a real rarity. A RS song called Frozen Rose - which was originally meant for the most iconic of Canterbury albums: Land of Grey and Pink but didn't make the cut. LoG&P is a tour de force of the Sinclair cousins (Rich & 'cousin Dave', the greatest keyboard player of them all).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jX_SacDwps

blobb

Hugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6HhnuRgI7s

ICBM

Paul McCartney, Roger Glover and John Taylor.

p90fool

JJ Burnel and Lemmy. 

Adey

I picked up bass because the bass player in my band was a much better guitarist than I was, so we swapped!

(And I saw British Lion at Brighton last year - great gig! Small venue, up close to the players, two great support bands, and about £20 a ticket! What's not to like?)

Rocker

Nobody, musician or album, triggered my decision to try bass, I became intrigued enough to see what a bass brought to our band and it went from there…

GoFish

Bootsy, Duff, Novoselic, Harris, Bruce, McCartney, then Jamerson and Duck. (In that order)

That's quite the list!

Schnozz

I managed to get Bruce and Squire before they passed...

https://i.imgur.com/d1zzDsz.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/h1Y5txK.jpg

proggy

Chris Squire made me pick up the bass, and that's why I also picked up a Rickenbacker.

I play a Jazz Bass now though.

ICBM

proggy said:

Chris Squire made me pick up the bass, and that's why I also picked up a Rickenbacker.

All three of my influences above played Rickenbackers... although John Taylor only in the Planet Earth video, he didn't actually use it on the record. I'm not sure if that's why I was initially attracted to them, but I've found that they fit me better than any other bass with the possible exception of the Aria SBs which Taylor also played - which is actually quite surprising since he's a lot taller than me, and that seems to be one of the main factors in whether I'm comfortable with an instrument.