R.I.P Trevor Bolder

[Hörnisse]

http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/news/trevor-bolder-dead-at-62/

[Basvarken]

62 is way too young to go.

RIP

[godofthunder]

 I always liked his playing. R.I.P. Trevor.

[patman]

I always wanted to see him with Heep...

[TBird1958]

Major Bummer!

Liked him with Bowie.

RIP

[Highlander]

Another one gone... rip...

[Hörnisse]

Major Bummer!

Liked him with Bowie.

RIP

Was just reading about the 40th anniversary release of Aladdin Sane.  He was a young kid playing those great lines in Ziggy's Band.

[Nocturnal]

R.I.P. Mr. Bolder

[uwe]

I saw this coming. When I read in a recent interview with him that his cancer was pancreatic cancer I could only think of Jon Lord who succumbed quickly to the same disease - that is one vicious cancer, a death warrant.  

Uriah Heep have lost their lead bassist. Someone else will have very large shoes to fill. Hat's off to him for admitting in this day and age as a bassist that he liked to play busy and very special thanks, Trevor, for always being the loudest instrumentalist within Heep live and eliciting from Edith the comment at a Heep concert: "Isn't the bass a little loud compared to the rest of the music?" , of course she has seen the errors of her ways since then ... "too loud bass" is an oxymoron.

"How did your bass playing style evolve? From Paul McCartney?

Not really from McCartney. Through the blues mainly, through listening to the blues players. I started out from listening to a lot of the old blues players from '30s and '40s, listening to a lot of Sonny Boy Williamson, a lot of early blues stuff, copying it. We didn't have a lot of blues albums in England when we were fourteen and learnt to play, but we liked it [the blues] so much that it was all we ever played. In Hull, we would go out just on Saturday with what money we had from mid-day working or whatever, and we used to buy every blues album we could find. We found all these great songs by all those people.

Then, along came a chap called Jack Bruce – I saw him play with Graham Bond and Ginger Baker, in Hull, before they formed CREAM, and then I saw him play with CREAM, and that was just unbelievable. I wanted to play like Jack Bruce, and I practiced to all his records continuously. He was unique, there was anything like it before him. Before that, the bass players were just standing back playing along with the drums and leaving it for the guitar players and singers, but when he came along, he turned the bass up. For me, it was stunning to watch him play, and he was a great singer as well – it was brilliant, the way he sang, much more than Clapton. I mean, Eric Clapton was no one at the time, with John Mayall and THE YARDBIRDS, and to me, the whole crux of the band [CREAM] was Jack Bruce. Also there was John McVie from FLEETWOOD MAC, who was with John Mayall at the time, a lot of his stuff I liked and I copied a lot of his style. A little bit of McCartney and John Entwistle, but mainly Jack Bruce, he was the big influence – for the feel, he had great feel, amazing!

Was it difficult fo you to play a kind of lead bass going along with the drums rhythmically, and following a voice or a guitar in a melodic way?

No. I think the thing that was good for me – like it was for Jack Bruce who played cello, which is a melodic instrument – was that I played trumpet and I adapted the trumpet stuff to the bass as well, playing melodic parts. And I never wanted to just be a bass player plonking away, I always wanted to have the edge to the sound and be able to play with a melodic feel. It took many years for another great bass player to come along, which was [Jaco] Pastorius, who also played in that style but with a jazz feel. My style's developed, and that's the way I play: I play a lot of notes... too many notes sometimes. (Laughs.) I actually found that if I was restricted in a way I play – if somebody said, "You don't play like that, play like this!" – I don't think I could do it. It would be difficult for me, because a bass player isn't just somebody who just sits back there and plonks away, it's somebody who adds a lot to the music. And if you can add more to the music, it's exciting, really exciting. If they took that away from me and said to play like a regular bass player, I think I'd be a terrible bass player."

[gearHed289]

RIP Trevor. Your influence will live on...

[westen44]

I suppose it must just be sheer coincidence.  But it seems the people who die from pancreatic cancer, one of the most aggressive cancers, tend to be gentle, kind, pleasant people.  This includes the mother of a friend I've known for years.  He is a multi-instrumentalist virtuoso (including bass.)  But his mother died of pancreatic cancer.  She was one of the kindest people I've ever known. 

Saddened to see the passing of Trevor Bolder, quite a loss for music.  

[uwe]

St. Peter (and his boss) will be jealous of those biblical sideburns!



Melodically slotheadin' with Herr Lawton, that progenitor of tasteful male make-up application:



And AWOL with Wishbone Ash in the 80ies:



Unplugged:

[gweimer]

I got this from someone on the old Pit (tacurtis?), and I've always dug the whole song and bass work.  From the credits, this looks like it's all Bolder - from the writing to the vocals.

[Highlander]

I didn't know that was what took him... that's one of two that took my mum at age 65...

[Hörnisse]

The opening bass line always gets me on this one.