Tag Archives: gedgrimes

Aces Of 1980s Brit Bass (Part 2)

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Kev Hopper

Some years ago, we showcased some of the British bass players who, mainly influenced by Bernard Edwards, Jaco Pastorius, Louis Johnson and Stanley Clarke, brought some of the freshest grooves to 1980s pop music.

It seemed that every half-decent post-punk, New Pop, New Romantic or Britfunk band had a good bassist, and the dancefloor was the main target.

But there was some great Brit bass players investigating other corners of music during the 1980s too – here are a few of them.

Martin McAloon
The Prefab Sprout man brought a meaty tone (often tuning down a half-step to accompany his brother Paddy’s guitar) and great hook-up with drummer Neil Conti. Deceptively simple bass parts which were little compositions in themselves. Key tracks: ‘Hey Manhattan!’, ‘When The Angels’, ‘When Love Breaks Down’, ‘Horsin’ Around’

Ged Grimes
The Danny Wilson man is the very definition of bass solidity, supplying endless well-composed parts especially in combination with drummer David Palmer (Grimes now plays with Simple Minds). Key tracks: ‘Mary’s Prayer’, ‘I Can’t Wait’, ‘I Was Wrong’, ‘Lorraine Parade’

Richard Nolan
The It Bites man had three distinct phases – there was the early poppy stuff, with a trebly WAL sound and light strings, the middle-period ‘rock’ sound, then the sophisticated six-string playing of the band’s late period. It was all good and others were listening – he was later recruited by Tony Banks and Ray Davies, with whom he works to this day. Key tracks: ‘Whole New World’, ‘Heartbreaker’, ‘Positively Animal’, ‘Midnight’, ‘Calling All The Heroes’

Steve Severin
The flanger/plectrum combo was invented for the Siouxsie & The Banshees man. Every track featured a good bassline or good idea. Key tracks: ‘Cascade’, ‘Monitor’, ‘Spellbound’.

Mo Foster
The London bass legend was a mainstay of the capital’s studios during the 1980s, playing with everyone from Cliff Richard to Scott Walker and contributing to many hits. He died in 2023. Key tracks: Jeff Beck’s ‘Space Boogie’, Dennis Waterman’s ‘I Could Be So Good For You’, Gary Moore’s ‘Empty Rooms’, Elkie Brooks’ ‘No More The Fool’, Howard Jones’ ‘No One Is To Blame’

Sting
In the early 1980s he came up with brilliant, memorable lines, often scrappily played, but returned for 1987’s …Nothing Like The Sun as a model of taste and groove. Key tracks: ‘Voices Inside My Head’, ‘Rehumanise Yourself’, ‘Secret Journey’, ‘Be Still My Beating Heart’, ‘Lazarus Heart’

Matthew Seligman
Cyprus-born Matthew played great bendy basslines with The Soft Boys, Thompson Twins and Thomas Dolby, and even ended up playing Live Aid with Bowie. He died in 2020. Key tracks: ‘Living In Europe’ by Thompson Twins, ‘Absolute Beginners’ by David Bowie, ‘Screen Kiss’ by Thomas Dolby, ‘Magic’s Wand’ by Whodini

John McKenzie
Son of actor Liz McKenzie (Mrs Brumby in ‘Get Carter’), the late London bassist played some fantastic stuff on the Morrissey Mullen album Life On The Wire, then worked extensively with Eurythmics. Pretenders, Five Star, Bob Dylan and Dexys Midnight Runners too. He died in 2020. Key tracks: ‘Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)’

Alan Thomson
Another of the many great Scottish bassists of the decade, Glasgow-born Thomson excelled himself on the fretless during his valuable collaboration with John Martyn, and also played with Julia Fordham, Rick Wakeman, Robert Palmer and others. Key tracks: John Martyn’s ‘Blood Money’, ‘Couldn’t Love You More’, ‘Glorious Fool’, ‘Hiss On The Tape’, ‘John Wayne’, especially the BBC In Concert version…

Kev Hopper
Influenced by Brand X’s Percy Jones, Hopper only made a few full-length recordings with Stump during the decade but left his mark with fantastically bendy fretless sounds/effects and intrepid lines. Has gone on to make some enjoyably weird music to this day. Key tracks: ‘Tupperware Stripper’, ‘Our Fathers’, ‘Eager Bereaver’, ‘Buffalo’, and everything, really…

Camelle Hinds
Ipswich-born Hinds was a founder member of Britfunk band Central Line and often the go-to guy when you needed excellent slap bass in the 1980s. He played great stuff with Beggar & Co, The The, B.E.F., Style Council and Heaven 17. Key tracks: The Kane Gang’s ‘Looking For Gold’

Bobby Paterson
The late Glasgow-born Love And Money bassist added some of the funkiest grooves of the late 1980s on his Fender Precision and MusicMan. Key tracks: ‘Jocelyn Square’, ‘Strange Kind Of Love’, ‘Candybar Express’.

Ewen Vernal
His playing on the two Deacon Blue albums of the late 1980s featured excellent, nimble five-string playing with loads of memorable lines and he always made sure each note was given its full value. Key tracks: ‘Fergus Sings The Blues’, ‘Chocolate Girl’, ‘When Will You Make My Telephone Ring’.

Gary ‘Gazza’ Johnson
His tenure with China Crisis brought some memorable lines and grooves. He played fretless on their early hits and was an early adopter of the octave pedal for added depth/punch. Key tracks: ‘Working With Fire And Steel’, ‘The Highest High’, ‘Day After Day’, ‘Strength Of Character’, ‘Red Sails’, ‘King In A Catholic Style’

This playlist brings together some of their best work.

Danny Wilson’s Gary Clark on the 30th Anniversary of Bebop Moptop

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The genre ‘sophisti-pop’ is bandied about quite a lot these days – mainly ’80s music of an ‘aspirational’, elegantly-appointed variety, jazzy in hue with slinky grooves and dense harmony.

Dundee band Danny Wilson were one of its key practitioners and their second and final album Bebop Moptop, released 30 years ago this week, is a key exhibit.

And yet, despite featuring hit single ‘The Second Summer Of Love’ and a host of other superb compositions, Bebop has somehow fallen off the ’80s pop radar – it has never received the deluxe re-release treatment. (Nor, for that matter, has Danny’s superb debut Meet Danny Wilson...)

But it’s definitely due a critical reappraisal. So we caught up with singer/principal songwriter Gary Clark to discuss the ‘lost’ Danny Wilson album and loads of other stuff.

MP: Preparing for album number two, were there record company expectations? Presumably ‘Mary’s Prayer’ opened the door and Virgin wanted ‘the big hit’? You give (Virgin MD) Simon Draper credit in the liner notes for staying out of the way…

GC: That pressure is there in some form but doesn’t necessarily come from the record label.  It comes from your own desire to be competitive, from management, from peers. The trick is trying to stay true to your artistic vision, and I think we always managed to fall on the artistic side of that seesaw.

There were rumours that a few big American producers almost came onboard for Bebop – is there any truth in that?

Our plan was always to record every song in Dundee with our friend Allan McGlone who had a studio in town, and at some point to bring in an outside influence to tie up the loose ends and add some perspective. We did that and throughout the process were keeping an open mind about that third party. We did meet Don Was. He came to the studio in Dundee. We played him a few tunes and went out on the town. A lovely, talented and very cool gentleman.  Schedules didn’t pan out though and no more came of it. Ged suggested Fred DeFaye as he’d been listening to Eurythmics’ Savage album. We met and hit it off and pretty quickly decided to work together.

Were there any more contemporary influences going into Bebop? I hear some Prince and Pogues here and there and you play a lot more lead guitar on this than you did on Meet Danny. A conscious decision or just doing what’s right for the songs?

On the guitar, definitely the latter. I probably play just as much guitar on Meet Danny but it’s maybe more upfront on Bebop. On our influences, I guess what people are listening to has a constantly fluctuating and evolving influence, and you had three individuals all with very eclectic taste contributing. We were very open in the creative process so nothing was off limits.

‘The Second Summer Of Love’ was incredibly prescient and the hit single from the album – where did it come from? Was it a late addition?

It was definitely written in the fourth quarter of songs for that record. It was a day where we were all huddled round a phone at my girlfriend’s flat doing phone interview after phone interview. I needed to take a break so walked to the local store to buy snacks for everyone and it came to me in one piece. I had to grab a guitar when I got back, to work out and lay down on a Dictaphone what was in my head. It was originally a-minute-and-a-half long and the US label bosses heard it and asked us to extend it because they believed it was a potential radio hit. We went back into the studio and added a bridge and a harmonica solo. Ironically, it was never released as US single…

Talking of singles, I count ‘I Was Wrong’ as a missed opportunity…

After hearing a demo, the label thought so too and they encouraged us to record an early version with producer Phil Thornally. As often happens with early versions, it was never released and by the time it came to pick singles, everyone had lived with that song for around a year and it fell by the wayside when being held against newer songs that were fresher in peoples’ psyches.

The fantastic ‘Loneliness’ seems to be beamed in from a totally different world. Can you remember the genesis of that song?

Another song that I wrote mainly in my head, and indeed, in my bed.  I remember sitting up with a note pad writing out the lyric like a poem at 2 or 3 in the morning. I had a melody in mind, and hashed out the musical elements on the piano over the following days and weeks.

The ‘Imaginary Girl/Shirley MacLaine’ prologue/epilogue is such a neat touch – did you ever think of Bebop as a ‘concept’ album?

Not the album as a whole, but I was aware in the writing of pockets of songs that were designed, almost like musical theatre, to live together.

Bebop got some great reviews including a rave in Q magazine, but I also remember a snarky interview in the Melody Maker… Did you care about reviews?

The music press was very powerful at that period of time and, of course, bad reviews sting. And very occasionally, when they have the ring of truth, they actually influence your thought process. But generally I would say that by the time of the second album, we had become more hardened to reviews good and bad.

You toured Bebop (I was there at London’s Town & Country Club). Did you enjoy playing this stuff live? There was a rumour that the drummer (whose name escapes me) cost more than the rest of the band put together…

Drummer Bobby Clarke and percussionist Karlos Edwards were cousins, and came as a team. They auditioned for us in London and we knew immediately that we needed them in the band, and they were such wonderful guys and wonderful musicians who brought so much to the DW party.  All of the band were paid equally, but by album two we were playing bigger venues and so that would have meant higher wages than on the first album, just by the nature of economics of playing to more people.

Did you know during its recording that Bebop would be the band’s final album? Were there ever plans for record number three?

We started the songwriting process for number three and even recorded demos for a few songs that became part of my later solo album Ten Short Songs About Love but it became clear that everyone involved wanted a larger part of the writing and that would’ve meant me diminishing my input, which wasn’t going to happen, so I would say that – certainly for me – it was the underlying source of unhappiness that ultimately came to a head and ended the band.

What do you think of the Danny legacy now? Any regrets? Any temptation to do the ’80s nostalgia thing and reform, even just as a one-off?

I’m proud of what we achieved in a short period of time and I miss the creative process of working with Ged and Kit, who were and are exceptionally talented and creative people. Nostalgia is not something that any of us feed off but I would never say no to doing something if it was forward-thinking and creative. On regrets, I don’t really think about it, but if we had been able to take a break from living in each other’s pockets and faces, and stepped back a bit, we might’ve been able to keep the band going in some capacity. We are still great friends – Ged and Kit still occasionally play on music I’m involved in. They also both have amazing and separate careers in music, with a billion things going on (Ged is currently the bass player with Simple Minds – Ed.) so getting us all available at the same time would require a miracle of logistical organisation.

When we last spoke, you had just finished co-writing a lot of excellent songs for the movie ‘Sing Street’. What are you up to at the moment?

I’m executive music producer on John Carney’s new Amazon TV series ‘Modern Love’ and have played a large role in curating, producing, co-writing songs and and doing the score for that series. I even sing a little! ‘Sing Street’ is in production as a stage musical too, and is scheduled to open at the New York Theatre Workshop in their 2019/2020 season. The whole team and cast are incredible and I’m very excited about that. I’ve also been writing the musical ‘Nanny McPhee’ with Emma Thompson, which has been a thrill, and between Emma and John Carney I get to work with the most creative, talented, smart and funny collaborators that anyone could wish for. I feel very blessed and am, quite possibly, having the time of my life.