The Last Bass Outpost
Gear Discussion Forums => Gibson Basses => Topic started by: uwe on October 23, 2013, 02:32:46 PM
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... all rolled into one! NSFW from 1:54 onwards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=askM_9UQ5us
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other than the speedo that is a great video......
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that was simply awesome - my day was chock full 'o shite until I saw that.
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I'd never seen Black........er........that fellow play a Telecaster before. A nice Gibson Bass too! Did you read the Bass Player interview with Glover, Uwe? He talks about how he came to replace Nick Simper.
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Quite the set of mutton chops too! ;D
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I'd never seen Black........er........that fellow play a Telecaster before. A nice Gibson Bass too! Did you read the Bass Player interview with Glover, Uwe? He talks about how he came to replace Nick Simper.
No, I didn't. The Purps were not exactly transparent on firing Simper. Paice has said "Nick was too old school rock'n'roll, anything he played, you knew where he came from". Blackmore was cryptic: "There were personal issues, that will all one day come out in the papers no doubt". Jon Lord said something about "mood swings, hard to get along on an everyday basis" (from a man who spent much of his life with Ritchie "sunshine" Blackmore! :rolleyes:). Simper himself said something along the lines of "even Roger probably agrees with me that I'm the better bass player, but he is the stronger songwriter, that is what they thought they needed back then".
I always thought that basically Gillan and Glover joined from Episode Six as a twosome and that Blackmore, Lord and Paice thought they would have Gillan more securely if Glover received a job offer as well. Glover, who to this day believes that he is the weakest instrumentalist within Purple, has said "because I knew I couldn't compete with any one of them on that level, I made myself indispensable doing other things: arranging, producing, songwriting, but I always felt that my contribution wasn't quite theirs and Ritchie could be extremely disheartening about my bass playing, if I couldn't follow one of his faster riffs immediately, he'd put the Strat down and just walk out with distaste on his face, Steve (Morse) otoh sits down with me and practices for hours if need be showing me everything note for note".
I liked Simper's bass playing on those early albums, but there is indeed something old-schoolish to it: It's the combination of largely pentatonic notes, using flats with a pick and a middish sound, he's also slightly ahead of the beat which makes his bass playing always seem a bit busier than it actually is (I share that trait btw). Glover is in fact a no less busy bass player than Nick, but his busy-ness is dead on the beat, laid back and unobstrusive plus he is all treble and low bass leaving the mids for Ritchie's and Jon's guitar/organ battles. That uncluttered DP's sound and explains part of the sonic jump they took from Mk 1 to Mk 2, they began to sound "seventies" as opposed to "sixties". And while Nick played nicely and very unrepetetively, he didn't lock in as much with Paice as Roger did who took the advice from Paice after their first rehearsal "Btw, I don't follow in the rhythm section, I lead!". Paice has said that Roger gives him 70% freedom to do his thing while Roger has 30% whereas "with Glenn Hughes it was more a 50:50 split between bass and drums, Roger leaves me more room".
This is archtypical Nick Simper to me,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-Ve0YGyqXA
that buoyant boppin' groove and the "lead bass" he does around 1:17, lovely (and drawing a smile on my face to this day), but a little old-fashioned already for the late sixties. Compare how Roger plays here a year or so later:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yGVCYmkaCY
Prior to Purple, Simper played with Lord in one-hit-wonders The Flowerpot Men and though he is not on this recording of their famous Beach Boys pastiche, he very much patterned his bass playing after that style.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puuWsTitPa4
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I'd never seen Black........er........that fellow play a Telecaster before.
Maybe that was his contribution to the "act silly" order they got from the director? :mrgreen:
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He adored Albert Lee, so he wasn't per se against Teles, but at the time of the vid (1968) he was still firmly a Gibson man with his beloved cherry ES-335. It's what you hear even on a lot of In Rock, he was only introduced to Strats by Clapton around that time. I believe those instruments in the spoof vid were just rented out to them - to my knowledge Nick Simper never owned or really played an EB-2 for instance, I've never seen him play anything else but a P- or Tele Bass.
Blackmore does play a Fender Tele Thinline with Blackmore's Night today though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnFp_1zJYPE
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Those Flowerpot men evoke the Beach Boys sound very well. Flats and a pick don't always sound that way. For example McCartney or even Joe Osborn who with the same set up got a much deeper tone on tracks like Midnight Confession by the Grass Roots.
What's old is new and I could imagine Nick Simper filling in nicely for Justin Meldal-Johnsen with Beck.
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Hey, I like click bass too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJwXUw4uj0o
Good ole Nick has meanwhile somewhat "modernized" his bass sound though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9O3U-QIlig
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BP: What about original bassist Nick Simper?
RG: Well, the band politics were horrible. Nick didn't know he'd been replaced until someone told him, and on the "Hallelujah" session I used his bass and amp. I felt bad; both (original Vocalist) Rod Evans and Nick were let go without notice, which must have hurt terribly. I've never met Nick, but we have mutual friends and I hear he's a great guy. His playing definitely had an impact on me because I had to play his parts. I thought he had a great big plucking sound; you can really hear it on "Hush" - I could never get that sound. Conversely, when Glenn Hughes replaced me in 1973, we became friends and I invited him and David Coverdale to sing on my first solo album a year later. Glenn is much more of an R&B /funk player than I am, a very talented man with an amazing voice.
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He adored Albert Lee, so he wasn't per se against Teles, but at the time of the vid (1968) he was still firmly a Gibson man with his beloved cherry ES-335. It's what you hear even on a lot of In Rock, he was only introduced to Strats by Clapton around that time. I believe those instruments in the spoof vid were just rented out to them - to my knowledge Nick Simper never owned or really played an EB-2 for instance, I've never seen him play anything else but a P- or Tele Bass.
Blackmore does play a Fender Tele Thinline with Blackmore's Night today though.
Mr Bl..uh, you know... did actually play a Tele back in the Mk I Purple days. He used it as his "beater" for doing the destructo routine. It's in his bio. As I recall, Simper said he tried to destroy it every night but the thing kept hanging in there, refusing to die. Recommended only for the doggedly determined: skip ahead to 15:30. Really hard on the eyes but if you bear with it you'll get the slightest glimpse of said Tele here and there. Might even be the same one as in the above video, but who could say for sure?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbQQ1U3kUbI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbQQ1U3kUbI)
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Nick Simper was playing with another Nasty Habits! There can be only one!
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BP: What about original bassist Nick Simper?
RG: Well, the band politics were horrible. Nick didn't know he'd been replaced until someone told him, and on the "Hallelujah" session I used his bass and amp. I felt bad; both (original Vocalist) Rod Evans and Nick were let go without notice, which must have hurt terribly. I've never met Nick, but we have mutual friends and I hear he's a great guy. His playing definitely had an impact on me because I had to play his parts. I thought he had a great big plucking sound; you can really hear it on "Hush" - I could never get that sound. Conversely, when Glenn Hughes replaced me in 1973, we became friends and I invited him and David Coverdale to sing on my first solo album a year later. Glenn is much more of an R&B /funk player than I am, a very talented man with an amazing voice.
That's just Roger, always a nice word to say about everyone. He is the glue that holds the band together. A true gentleman.
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Mr Bl..uh, you know... did actually play a Tele back in the Mk I Purple days. He used it as his "beater" for doing the destructo routine. It's in his bio. As I recall, Simper said he tried to destroy it every night but the thing kept hanging in there, refusing to die. Recommended only for the doggedly determined: skip ahead to 15:30. Really hard on the eyes but if you bear with it you'll get the slightest glimpse of said Tele here and there. Might even be the same one as in the above video, but who could say for sure?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbQQ1U3kUbI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbQQ1U3kUbI)
Here I am the resident DP nerd and you shame me most thoroughly with something from the vaults even I didn't know!!! I knew the Inglewood tapes (circulated as bootlegs forever and with an official fan release a decade ago), but had never seen the footage. And the Tele was a secret to me - sturdy little guitar. Blackers is strange ... he plays an ES 335 (never really an optimal guitar for his style even when it was still developing) for years, has a Tele, but obviously doesn't like it and then switches to a Strat Clapton has given up on for being unplayable!
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Nick Simper was playing with another Nasty Habits! There can be only one!
I know, these Austrians can't beat the one and only Habitual Originasties! And what are Herr Simper's legs compared to Veronica Steed's I cry? That said, there is a little bit of Gary Thain in Nick Simper's playing if you listen very closely though Thain, a finger player, had more rhythmic nuances and was not quite as pentatonic - Veronica might just forgive Herr Simper for playing with those impostors for that alone.
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That's just Roger, always a nice word to say about everyone. He is the glue that holds the band together. A true gentleman.
I interviewed Roger on the news of the Deep Purple Mk II reunion, and you are absolutely correct. He is very gracious and humble. I gave him a little ribbing about his comment two months prior to my interview where he stated emphatically that Deep Purple would never reunite, and that Rainbow was the band to stay. He chuckled and took it well. He told me that he was brought into Rainbow as a producer first, and bassist second. His job was to get the band in shape and solidify their sound.
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Compared to Deep Purple, Rainbow always was shallow sepia. In his blind quest for total control, Blackmore forgot that Deep Purple was always the musical environment that challenged him most and got the best out of him.