Roger Glover

[patman]

Like being able to hear separate and individual notes?

[uwe]

  Yes, that makes things difficult again and again. Good bassists don't care for witnesses.

[mc2NY]

I'm unable to even get a word out, gulp!



Roger never liked his Ric sound, he thought there was too much distortion, he wanted a smoother "more American sound", "the grass was always greener" for him "on the other side". During the remaster and remix of Machine Head he even described it as "messy with too much side noise".  And that is why he has what he has with his Vigiers today, a very clean and pure sound with no nasty frequencies (which we all tend to love but he doesn't!). Very much a "producer's bass sound".

He never realized that that Ric sound on Machine Head





and its even more distorted version on the Made in Japan album influenced a whole generation of bass players. I believe he used stacks of Martin bins in the 70ies to boost his sublows (but he probably never heard those sublows on stage with the racket Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore were making). I certainly never found his Machine Head/Made in Japan-era sound anything but full and not too trebly at all.

Did they say anything about Ritchie at RRHOF?

Uwe.....You'd get along well with Patrice Vigier, head of Vigier Guitars. Like you, he is a mega Blackmore/Deep Purple fan. I think Blackmore is his favorite guitarist.

My guitarist was a Vigier endorser for 20 years. I me most of Vigier's various endorsers that she olayed with at NAMM and Frankfurt over the years.

...except Patrice HATES beer and is a wine drinker. His sentiment almost got us killed in a redneck Nashville bar one night when he couldn't understand the southern barmaid asking what kind of beer he wanted....I translated and he started yelling "Beer? I HATE Beer! I am FRENCH!! We drink WINE, not BEER! I HATE BEER...I HATE PLAID SHIRTS..AND FIDDLES AND COUNTRY MUSIC AND...." By then the band stopped playing and everyone was looking at him and I grabbed his arm and said "Um...let's go."  Friggn' hilarious. It had been a long day and the fiddles and pedal steel did him in.

[uwe]

  Well, at least he didn't ask for frog legs!  Wine availability in Nashvill has become better too over the years.

I'm not much of a beer drinker myself, German or not. I prefer a glass of good red Yank wine.

[ilan]

I tried a Vigier once in Paris and it left me cold. Especially compared to a certain used Sadowsky in that shop, which played and sounded like a dream.

[Alanko]

You'll always have Paris. 

[patman]

The "Machine Head" bass sound was always to me the backbone of the Deep Purple sound.

[uwe]

That was certainly the pinnacle of the Glover sound though it came about by accident/luck, not intent (Roger was always searching from album to album for a "better" sound). Hughes tried to emulate it on Burn, playing a Ric (which he had never done before), but even with the same engineer (Martin Birch) the sound wasn't the same. Though Hughes is a pick player like Roger, the bass on Burn lacked mids and wasn't really that audible (for Purple standards at least). It took Hughes until Stormbringer, when he reverted to a P Bass, to find his own studio sound (which he certainly has, live he was plenty individual from day one with ze Pürps) and stop the aping. His bass can be heard well on Stormbringer, though overall the production (courtesy of Musicland Studios, Munich) is a bit squeaky-clean (but has probably aged better than the Burn production sound, courtesy of the Rolling Stones Mobile Unit which had already served for Machine Head and Who Do We Think We Are).

But for some reason - and  Gene Simmons is with me - I could always hear the bass better on DP albums than on Zep ones. I can't put a finger on why that is, these days - with decades of bass playing behind me - I can tune in on the JPJ sound no sweat. His bass wasn't mixed any less loud, he played with a pick too often enough and unlike Roger he didn't even have to battle with a raging Hammond in the frequency department, JPJ's bass lines were no less complex (sometimes even more so, Roger's bass playing is perhaps more accessible?), yet there are very few tracks where the bass line on a Zep song grabs you with immediacy.

[uwe]

You'll always have Paris. 

Staying in Hilton, are we?

[gearHed289]

I'm a huge Zep and JPJ fan, but Uwe is right - something about the bass tone on those records... I would call it an afterthought, but I don't know if there was much thought put into it at all. Very nondescript, and never really the same from album to album. Definitely some nice tones here and there, but there wasn't any real consistency, even sometimes from track to track on the same album!

[uwe]

Perhaps it had to do with the allround musician/sessioneer aspect in JPJ's persona and work experience. He did what the song called for, gracefully and with technical ability, but not in an attempt to put his own stamp on it.

Not that Glover was or is a domineering bassist. He actually plays quite a lot, but all in a very smooth groove and timing (and in generally conventional rhythms) that doesn't clamour for attention. Very different to Glenn Hughes who plays one single root note somewhere, but makes sure it gets itself heard and stands/sticks out.

[Pekka]

I'm a huge Zep and JPJ fan, but Uwe is right - something about the bass tone on those records... I would call it an afterthought, but I don't know if there was much thought put into it at all. Very nondescript, and never really the same from album to album. Definitely some nice tones here and there, but there wasn't any real consistency, even sometimes from track to track on the same album!

I rather like JPJ's differing tones within the same album. It's a bit like Chris Squire who used different basses and tones "("Going For The One" has a different bass for almost every song, and in case of "Awaken", two).

Jonesy's raunchy '52 Precision throught the Acoustic rig is my fav sounds of his and it's also usually most audible of his bass sounds. Jazz with flats was used more smoothly and I'm not sure how much he used his Alembics in the studio. Definitely on "Ozone Baby" and "Wearing And Tearing" but the bass on other "In Through The Outdoor" -session tracks could be the Jazz.

[nofi]

hmmm. all this talk of multiple basses. i must say that i have never seen a bass player switch basses live, and that covers well over 100 concerts over the years. in the studio i guess anything goes, but then you have to replicate it live,  usually on one bass. most importantly, how will a player establish his signature sound with all this swapping going on.

[gearHed289]

hmmm. all this talk of multiple basses. i must say that i have never seen a bass player switch basses live, and that covers well over 100 concerts over the years. in the studio i guess anything goes, but then you have to replicate it live,  usually on one bass. most importantly, how will a player establish his signature sound with all this swapping going on.

You've never been to a Yes concert.  Squire was a terrible influence on me. He made it seem perfectly normal to use a half dozen basses during one concert.

[Pekka]

And he did seem to establish a signature sound didn't he?

I love the fact the he took the trouble to use the same or similar axe on stage he used in the studio even 'though he could've used the Ric on everything.

Why is it usually looked upon as 'showing off' when a bass player uses different basses for different song? Geddy doesn't count, he did it on purpose on the last tour to show off his collection and I think most people loved it.