I have nothing against Uriah, when WS toured Frankfurt he was in the clothes boutique my son worked at during an internship and my son said he was nice enough. That doesn't make his bass playing on the last WS CD inventive though, Ter, you have mentioned here how you saw Cream in the late sixties, you know all about inventive bass playing then. Name me one inventive or even just musically interesting or unusual or memorable bass line on that CD. There is none, it's almost all root note "beefing up the bass drum". And that makes Uriah's bass playing on that album plain, not him as a person. I'm sure he can do better.
I've been a WS fan since 1977 and have just seen too many line ups come and go to get excited about individual players who play on tours and CDs but have no musical input whatsoever. For a band whose music was once shaped by the mighty Paice/Murray rhythm section, that hurts.
I also wonder whether Coverdale would ditch his musicians quite as freely and often if he thought them to be vital to his music. He doesn't. With the exception od perhaps Doug Aldrich they are all hired, uncommitted hands, immediately replaceable and they know it and act like it too.
All that doesn't say any thing about Uriah as a person, but having seen him on stage, you could see that his heart wasn't really into what he was doing. I'm not surprised he didn't last long. The one person in the band he seemed genuinely attracted to/be friends with was Reb Beach. And Reb is certainly only in WS for the buck, at times he even seems to be amused about the music he plays there and the more traditional guitar hero stance Doug Aldrich takes in the line up. On stage, Reb and Uriah came across - for lack of a better comparison - like a couple freshly in love. I don't know about the sexual orientation of either of the two gentlemen and it doesn't affect my judgement whether they have a place in WS or not, but they were genuinely enthused with each other, it was cute to watch, they were giggling schoolgirls, always looking for close contact to each other.
Uwe