Two men and a Ric ...

[Hörnisse]

Great info guys!  I guess that would explain this!   

[SeanS]

Great info guys!  I guess that would explain this!   

What an awesome shot, looks like Geezer was very happy with it.

[ack1961]

I'd kill to be that sloppy.

[uwe]

uwe, i will see your trapeze and raise you one nana.

Nana could sing. I have fond - pre-Deep Purple - childhood memories of her.



This was in a similar vein.



But my early musical influences wouldn't be complete without this first encounter with Dutch hard rock!

[Pekka]

What an awesome shot, looks like Geezer was very happy with it.

But didn't he use it only for the Hammersmith Odeon gig because he had forgotten his other basses (the John Birch basses) and his usual stage clothes? Most of the pics I've seen from the "Never Say Die" tour has him playing the Birch basses or a striped JayDee.

Some of the tracks on "Never Say Die" sound like a Ric and Geezer said in an interview that he played a fretless Ric on "Johnny Blade".

[Denis]

I found this interesting: Here is Glenn Hughes's (don't be fooled by the Roger Glover pic) isolated bass track from Burn:



And here is his predecessor Roger Glover with his bass track on Highway Star:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mLryrT1ZMc&feature=related

Neither bass track is perfect (nor does it need to be, nor would it sound perfect if I had played it), but Glenn is quite a bit sloppier than Roger and less tight! It's not surprising as Glenn has a reputation to be impatient in the studio and leave after the second take while Glover - the producer in him - immerses himself in the recording studio world.

Other than the obvious "uhum uhum" connection, which is the sole reason why I am posting this, the recordings are only about two years apart and were created with the same producer (Martin Birch), known for mixing the bass up quite prominently (just ask Steve Harris, Birch did the early Iron Maiden stuff too). And they are both undeniably Ric though Hughes' (probably in a conscious move to emulate Glover) 4001 is a different one to Glover's. Hughes didn't play the Ric for long though, he reverted to his beloved P Bass midway in the Burn tour.

I always found that the bass on Burn is the least audible on any seventies DP album, those two isolated tracks reveal why: Hughes had sub-bass and crisp to distorted attack, but was thin on the mids where Glover is prominent. The Burn bass track is not a typical Birch eq either, he generally adds a lot more mids to a bass sound (like on the Whitesnake albums with Murray). Which is strange because Blackmore's ooops, whatshisname's radical amp setting (full treble, full bass, all mids cut or even removed in the wiring) allowed any bass player quite a bit of "mid room". When the Burn remaster came out a couple of years ago, I hoped that Hughes' scooped bass sound had been tweaked somewhat, but unfortunately not so. You still don't hear him as well as Glover even though Hughes is the much more aggressive player and tends to be ahed of the beat clamoring for attention while Glover settles in. The neo-classical melodic chorus bit Hughes plays around 47 sec of his bass track for the first time sounds exactly like the type of guitar backing B... darn! "the guitarist in Glenn's band at the time"  preferred, I doubt that Glenn came up with it, it his not his style at all, he is a pentatonic man at heart who avoids classical scales.

Who/what do you guys prefer?

I definitely like Glover's playing better.

[uwe]

Hughes played Highway Star (albeit sloppily and without any respect for the song) in  Mk III and Mk IV though the key was neither good for Coverdale's nor his voice, it was discarded as their encore together with Don Nix' Going Down. Glover only played Burn in full during the Slaves & Masters tour - it was their opener then - with Joelene and  also post-reunion Gillan line-up sometimes as a short snippet during instrumental parts in Speed King when Blackers and Lord would exchange riffs.

Gillan refuses to sing anything from the Mk 3 and 4 line up, but is ok with doing Mk 1 stuff such as Hush. He rates Rod Evans highly as a singer.

Glover snuck into an Mk III concert in London on their first tour post-Burn unbeknownst to his former band-buddies and watched as he says "heartbroken". He didn't like what he saw, "but I was probably being judgmental". Gillan clains he has to this day never heard either Burn or Stormbringer, "but I heard some tracks off Come Taste the Band and was stunned by the funk thing".

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Man does Geezer EVER look like Cliff Burton in that pic! Synchronicity a decade apart I guess.

[Denis]

Funny, he reminds me of Joe Walsh!

[uwe]

Both kind of! I like his playing. It's not so much hard as heavy and warm. You can be pentatonic and melodic.

The Sabs were underrated as musicians, right down to Bill Ward who could outswing all successors whether Appice, Powell or Singer of name.

[ack1961]

The Sabs were underrated as musicians, right down to Bill Ward who could outswing all successors whether Appice, Powell or Singer of name.

I love Bill Ward, but outswing Cozy Powell? He brought big wood to the pajama party.

[uwe]

Powell could never swing. Neither could Bonham. Ian Paice could (and can), Brian Downey could and Bill Ward could. I will forever find Bonham and Powell leaden on drums though Bonham's being behind the beat has something in its own way. But it doesn't swing in my ears.

And a great part why I found Rainbow never as musically flowing as Deep Purple was what Powell did to the music, it was brutish, but hardly musical. (Let's not speak ill of the dead, I know that Cozy had charm as a person and as a drummer, but being the bassist with him as a drummer I always found more of a chore than a privilege.) In my ears, Cozy's battering of the music also ruined Whitesnake's Slide it in for me.

In case nobody understands what I mean:

This swings:



This doesn't:



And here at 7.50 is the studio version with Ian Paice:



Case closed. But I know that I'm in a minority and that a legion of drummers in the wake of Bonham and Powell have decided that swing is something to ignore. It flabbergasts me to this day that something as vital to an instrument has been jettisoned by a majority of today's drummers. Modern drumming seems to be all about getting a maximum of volume with the utmost amount of precision. Where is Buddy Rich when you need him?  


A drummer once told me: "The reason why most people cite Bonham and not Paice as an influence is that everybody can learn a few Bonhamesque chops and get away with it, but that Ian Paice swing thing is a dying art and so much harder to pull off."

[Hörnisse]

I fully agree Uwe.  I spent nearly 12 years in a cover band and 8 of those years were spent with the guy who had "swing".  It did not hurt that he and the guitarist were brothers (and all 3 of us hispanic  ) but it was a joy to play with a drummer of his caliber. (cue the John Holmes jokes!)    The drummer who is now in the band is so heavy handed and off time we actually had to click track him on the non click track songs. 

Another (off topic but good) example of bassist and drummer joined at the hip courtesy Chuck Rainey and Bernard Purdie.

[ack1961]

Wow. You were talking about Swing (the genre), not swing (the brutish, hardly musical battering of drum heads). I apologize for my density, however, you slid heavily off course on your "here's why Cozy Powell sucks" diatribe.

It's a stretch to insinuate that he was a key factor in bringing Rainbow down to earth (that was lame, I know) - Rainbow had enough on-going internal strife that the band was bound for the member-only revolving door and inevitable flame-out. I doubt that many of Rainbow's 700 break-ups/make-ups/reformations/Mk 3, 4, 5, etc.) were due to drum play.
Some of my favorite music of all time are those Rio/Blackmore/Bain/Powell songs like Stargazer and A Light in the Black off of "Rising". Epic stuff. His drumming on Kill the King is so wickedly inspirational (and tiring) that it confounds me how folks look at him only as a beater.

Swing is not dead in modern music, either. Take a guy like JP Gaster of Clutch - he's a big hitter, but has sinister chops and cites Buddy Rich and Elvin Jones as key influences.  If you listen to JP speak about drumming, he also cites John Bonham (who I don't particularly care for) as a huge influence on his playing style.

My son's drum instructor is heavily into the hitters like Bill Ward and Powell, but is enjoying teaching the different passions that many influential drummers brought to music. I love the fact that my 14 year old loves some of the old (and dead) guys like Powell, Paice, Ward as well as some of the new beasties like Jordison and Lombardo

Although everyone is entitled to their own opinion about music and the effect that music has on them, there is no "case closed" on any topic...although I totally agree that Ian Paice may be the most overlooked drummer in the history of music. I grew up (I'm 51) with 2 older brothers shoving DP down my throat at a very early age, and my oldest brother (being a drummer) trying to show me every nuance to Paice's playing.  One thing about DP is that even their more recent stuff is chock full of great drumming.  The man is a machine.

Steve

[patman]

Why I don't like working with young guys on drums...old guys know how to swing, and how to play the pocket