Herbie Flowers, Walk On The Wild Side

[nofi]

a cool melding of two instruments.

[Rob]

Nice Piece

[nofi]

i like herbie. a very humble, self effacing man.

"sounds stupid, doesn't it."

"that electric thing".

some quotes from the clip.

rock music in particular could use a ton more guys like mr. flowers.

[wellREDman]

that village green in the opening clip is two villages along from me, Herbie's son is one of my best mates, but I've only met the man himself once in passing.

The crazy thing about the bassline from Wild Side is that years ago when sampling was starting to become a thing, one of the landmark cases was over a big hit over here called "Can I kick it" which used the bassline, Lou Reed's lawyers succesfully sued for thousands over it, yet not a penny went to Herbie, who only ever made £26 pounds for writing one of the most influential basslines ever.

the only serious royalty money Herbie made is for the song "Grandad we love you" which only the uk'ers of a certain age will remember

[Alanko]

I had "Grandad we love you" on a cassette when I was a kiddo.

I guess this was the flipside:

[Dave W]

that village green in the opening clip is two villages along from me, Herbie's son is one of my best mates, but I've only met the man himself once in passing.

The crazy thing about the bassline from Wild Side is that years ago when sampling was starting to become a thing, one of the landmark cases was over a big hit over here called "Can I kick it" which used the bassline, Lou Reed's lawyers succesfully sued for thousands over it, yet not a penny went to Herbie, who only ever made £26 pounds for writing one of the most influential basslines ever.

the only serious royalty money Herbie made is for the song "Grandad we love you" which only the uk'ers of a certain age will remember

That's what happens when you're a session man paid by the hour or session. Doesn't matter if you came up with the bassline.

[uwe]

I also liked his bass playing on Bowie's Diamond Dogs.

[wellREDman]

That's what happens when you're a session man paid by the hour or session. Doesn't matter if you came up with the bassline.

Oh i know, its just the perfect example of the disconnect between reality and copyright law,
two sets of people fighting it out in court for thousands of pounds over something neither of them wrote

with you one the Diamond Dogs Uwe, and just about everything else he played on. I get to see him do War of the Worlds live pretty much every year 

[nofi]

[Hörnisse]

If you pan this one in stereo you get a clean channel on one side and the reverb sound on the other.  Maybe one of the first times a bassist had detuned the E string?  I know Anthony Jackson also did this on the Billy Paul hit "Me And Mrs. Jones."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV_Wqomv8QU&index=5&list=PLg0uvz4jBTloDRGNj7h8qEdsTfXTsJ06I

[gweimer]

Well, Black Sabbath was playing detuned before David Essex released his hit in 1973.


Harry Nilsson released this in 1971?  I love how the bass gets tuned down as he plays, and then brought back up.

[Rob]

That's what happens when you're a session man paid by the hour or session. Doesn't matter if you came up with the bassline.

I've understood Jammerson was paid around $35 for a typical Motown session

[uwe]

Martin Turner of WA tuned his E string down to a D already in the 70ies as D was a preferred key of Wishbone Ash. He most likely wasn't the first one either.

[Hörnisse]

Herbie had his E string detuned much lower than D.  Perhaps I should have said "among the first to employ the technique on a US top 5 hit." 

[Dave W]

I've understood Jammerson was paid around $35 for a typical Motown session

Converted to today's dollars, that's probably not far off from today's rates. I remember an article (maybe in BP, maybe online) from the early 00s where one of the Nashville session guys said the going rate was $125 for a three hour session.