Influences

Phil Spalding

To my shame, most of Phil's stuff that I know is from his days with Toyah. He also did stuff with Bernie Torme and Mike Oldfield and some rock session men super group whose name escapes me. Just as well, they were rubbish. Stick a load of brilliant musicians together and watch them fail to write a decent song between them. Anyway, Phil is a great finger player and never seemed to play the same thing twice. He also pulled off some death defying fills. Watching him live, you wondered how he was going to get that one finished before the downbeat of the next bar, but it always collapsed into place. Not seen or heard of him in years....and then he cropped up on Robbie Williams' Sing When You're Winning. I pinched the fills style, very handy. Phil dropped me a message to the old board, which was good, but then the old board deleted itself, as usual.

Pino Palladino

Seen here with a fretted bass. Pino was a bit of a geeky looking session man in the eighties, and almost compulsory to have on your album if you were a solo artist. Did loads of stuff with Paul Young and had this really weird method of playing a fretless. I went out and got a fretless neck to stick on my brother's bass just to have a go. It's difficult to do well. Pino did a few tunes for Roy Harper that myself and my friend and fellow bass player John Smith tried to learn, and it was a task. Was also seen filling in for the late John Entwistle, a brave move to try and replace the irreplaceable, and I wish he hadn't bothered really. Anyway, he got me into fretless playing and our next bassist got me out of it.

Stuart Morrow

Stuart, seen here with sixty odd quid's worth of Kay Precision copy and Robert with very big hair, was the reason I got anywhere in the music biz. When New Model Army started to break in about 1983, Stuart's bass playing was very widely lauded in the media and by the fans. I felt a bit like I could do that, so I stuck the original neck back on my brother's Kay Precision copy (identical to the one in the picture) and had a bash. Piece of piss. That's not to denigrate Stuart in any way, he came up with J.J.'s sound and adapted it to his own style of busy lead bass to great effect, it's just that as a fellow Burnel understudy, I could play what Stuart did very naturally. This worked out very well for me when Stuart walked away from NMA in 1985. I got my foot in the door and kept it there for the best part of five years. Stuart's style has adapted over the years from 'pants on fire' approach to something a bit more solid and understated of late. Still a great player and a great bloke. We have a sort of mutual appreciation thing going on. I've got some stuff he did with Robert a while ago and it's darned good. Now plays with Into the Souls, and you can find them on MySpace.

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