The Last Bass Outpost

Glover is busy, but unobstrusive, Hughes economic, but clamoring for attention! And getting it too.

I disagree with the conclusion.  This "modification" is retarded, and I would restore it.  The important parts - neck, hardware and electronics are all there.  That is the hardest stuff to find in one piece on old Gibsons.  I would scout out an EB-2/Ravioli with a broken neck and use it as a donor. Yank the neck, reset the good neck on the good body, hook up the parts, boom.

Where is the difference between that and parting it out?  It won't be the same bass then.

It's more Hughes' playing than what bass he plays. He sounds similar whether he plays a Mustang, Ric, P, Jazz, Manne, Vigier or ESP. He hits those strings hard with his pick and does a lot of dampening and controlled vibratos with his left hand. Plus his ubiquitous bending and intentionally sloppy sliding. Funnily enough, he probably sounded the least distinctive with the Ric, which is a very distinctive sounding bass per se, but Hughes and Ric never gelled. He dumped it quickly on the first Burn tour after he had started out with it in the Burn recordings, most likely to lend some continuity in the bass department as Roger Glover had played a Ric in the last years of DP Mk 2. The Ric on the Burn album comes nowhere near as well out as on the albums Glover recorded with the Ric while in Purple (Machine Head, Made in Japan and Who do we think we are). By the time of Stormbringer, where you hear the bass well, Hughes was playing the California Jam P. Same on Come Taste the Band.

The amps might have something to do with it. Glover played Marshalls and the distortion they gave him (which he hated, he always wanted a clear or as he put it "American" bass sound) enhanced the Ric's midrange making it quite prominent. Hughes played Hiwatts which worked great with the P, but not so much with the Ric. His bass sound on Burn is if anything to deep with too little mids which is why you have a hard time hearing him whereas Roger Glover was always easy to pick out. And that is even though Hughes is the much edgier "I want to be heard too!" player whereas Glover is more melodious "flowing with the music", but not looking for attention. Notewise, Glover is actually busier than Hughes, Hughes is funkier and more ahead of the beat, but actually play less notes if rhytmically more prominent.

Ah, "Der dicke Holländer"! Now that is a nice name for a bass, even a Warwick one, keep it then.

Sonya Kristina. Her relationship with Stewart Copeland ended at the height of Police's fame, when the stretch limos finally came to pick her up in her capacity as the superstar drummer's significant other, albeit not as the frontwoman of a proggie band.

Curved Air were also home to Eddie Jobson at one time (he was 17 when he joined, his parents had to give their ok), before he moved on to Roxy Music and to UK. He still plays with them occasionally today, unlike with Roxy he has happy memories with them.

To me, Curved Air always sounded a bit as if Jefferson Airplane had listened to too much English folk - Jefferson Airplane meets Renaissance and along the way they stumble about a couple of odd meters! -, Sonya certainly had some Grace in her (this is a pre-Copeland and pre-Jobson line up):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKpYq9zxLhc&feature=related

The Warwick is called Doug Stryker? 

What else is new?  

Purple never made a secret that Bombay Calling spawned Child in Time, even at the time. Zep stole and tried to hide the truth, had to be dragged to court for the obvious etc. DP, otoh, were gentlemen or at least tongue in cheek about the whole thing. But It's a Beautiful Day even more so:

When DP were recording In Rock in 69 they all heard that It's a Beautiful Day album 24/7. The whole band loved it. Then one day Jon Lord starts jamming the song in the studio on Hammond, Gillan fools around with it, they slow it down ... The rest is history.

So they send the guys from It's a Beautiful Day a copy of the finished In Rock LP, "in case you haven't heard ...". And the guys from It's a Beautiful Day write back in good humor and say "We heard alright and you just wait for it!!!".

So what happens? No litigation, but rather the next It's a Beautiful Day release features a song which - uncredited - is a carbon copy of Deep Purple's instrumental Wring that Neck/Hard Road. Roger Glover: "I almost fell over laughing when I heard that, It's a Beautiful Day were real sports about it".

The stolen melody starts at 1.24:



It's a Beautiful Day pay homage/get their own back at 0.35:



There is a lesson to be learned here. The whole world could be a better place if people acted like IABD and DP. And as we've mentioned sports in the above text: You don't always have to smash other people's toy cars either.

That said, there is no denying that, commercially, DP drew more from Child in Time than IABD from Don & Dewey. CIT became Gillan's vocal-artistic calling card and that organ intro which note for note copied IABD's version became signature Lord in the ears of DP fans. For decades it was a part of their set until Gillan refused to sing it anymore because he could no longer reach the high screaming parts of the original version yet did not want it transposed either (actually a bone of contention which in part led to Blackmore's departure in the early nineties because he demanded the song to remain in DP's set and Gillan refused). As such IABD would have surely had a case to go after DP, yet didn't. Pretty much unthinkable in this day and age.