Nick Beggs Turn Your Back I Never Spoke to Him Again
Nick Beggs on his best (and worst) bass albums
"I'm a professional person musician, considering that's what I'1000 supposed to do," says Nick Beggs. "As ridiculous as it sounds, some people are called to the ministry building and some people are called to the music industry, and they're very different, but there is absolutely a parity of headspace. Y'all know why yous were born."
Beggs, the co-founder of the pop human activity Kajagoogoo, was well-nigh inescapable throughout the '80s, cheers to the huge hits that ring scored and the equally huge bass guitar parts heard on said hits, but he's been meliorate known later on for his work with a range of musicians of the progressive rock persuasion, notably Steve Hackett and Steven Wilson.
Along the way he'due south led a variety of more or less remarkable bands, such as Ellis, Beggs & Howard, the Mute Gods, and most recently Trifecta, and he's also a solo artist and songwriter of phenomenal ability.
We asked Beggs to discuss five albums from his large recorded catalog – 4 that he admires, plus 1 with which he is less enamored – and he came upwardly with these five choices. It'due south interesting to note that the album which put him on the map is the one with which he has the most circuitous relationship...
Must-accept album: Trifecta – Fragments (2021)
"I'm not but putting this here because it's my latest album: it'southward one of my favorite things that I've done then far. Information technology's also unlike anything else that I've always done. If I had to pigeonhole it, I'd say it's fission, which is like fusion but more unsafe, and possibly with fallout.
"Trifecta is me and two other musicians, both of whom I'm lucky to have worked with – a keyboard thespian who worked with Miles Davis, Adam Holtzman, and the drummer Craig Blundell, both of whom were in Steven Wilson's ring with me.
"They're immaculate players. Adam brings the jazz gene, and Craig was the master architect of the project without really beingness aware of information technology. During Steve Wilson's soundchecks, afterwards everyone else cleared the phase, the iii of us used to hang back and jam. We called it Jazz Club, and we started recording it. I'd listen to it and call up, 'Wow, accept you lot heard this groove?' Craig would play these 5/4, 7/8, or 21/8 rhythms, and nosotros would jam along.
"When the band stopped touring, nosotros file-shared stuff that I'd written, stuff that Adam had written, and stuff that had been inspired by Craig'southward jazz. The bass is brittle and angular – quite Chris Squire-influenced. A lot of the music is similar Lightheaded Gillespie on LSD, armed with an oscillator and a band modulator."
Worthy contender: Mute Gods – Tardigrades Will Inherit The Earth (2017)
"This was the second album by my band the Mute Gods, and my favorite of the iii nosotros've done. It appealed to the prog market place, which I've become so affiliated to, and I'm very grateful for that. Having been a public administrator to pop music, to be embraced as a more grown-up, elderberry-statesman person is a neat award.
"Many of my heroes come from that movement – Chris Squire, John Paul Jones, Jaco Pastorius, and then on. And like all the above, one of my guitar heroes, Pat Metheny, is on a constant journey to refine who he is as a musician, and re-examines his playing all the fourth dimension. I try to take a picayune bit of that philosophy with me, but it'southward really tough facing up to the fact that I'm not a fraction of the player I desire to be.
"This album also has popular sensitivity, although it'due south non the most popular of the three Mute Gods albums. Bass-wise, it'due south about delivering interesting things in an unusual way. I apply five- and 8-string basses, I utilize slap, I use Chapman Stick.
"My basses are made past Spector: with them I observe I can get all kinds of tones. They have a glassy overtone which I find quite unusual. On these records I also play some guitar and keyboards, and I do some soft synth programming, and so I was trying to think about the whole moving-picture show."
Cool grooves: Ellis, Beggs and Howard – Homelands (1988)
"This is an '80s album, but information technology doesn't audio like one, which I like. It's the volte-face up of Kajagoogoo's White Feathers. Was that deliberate? Maybe, in that nosotros all felt that we couldn't reference Kajagoogoo in whatever style.
"It was a hit in Deutschland and Holland, and information technology became quite a cult album. It was a actually interesting grouping of musicians: Simon Ellis has gone on to be a very successful producer-songwriter, MD-ing the Spice Girls and Britney Spears, and he as well wrote for S Gild Seven, amongst other popular bands.
"I used a variety of bass gear on this anthology, but the principal bass was a custom-built Wal five-string. It was one of the last ones that Ian Waller made and hung on the wall with Paul McCartney'south before they had their frets added. I remember looking at them at the mill, left- and correct-handed. I think they're cracking instruments, and may even go some other fabricated ane day.
"I also had a very prissy 5-string Warwick, which I used along with my Chapman Stick. Nowadays I utilize Spector basses. Their 5-string instruments are also very skilful. Furnishings-wise, I try to keep it to a minimum, merely I guess it's what suits the tune. For example, on the single Large Bubbles No Troubles, I used a TC Electronic phaser, which became my signature Stick sound."
Wild card: Nick Beggs – Words Fail Me (2019)
"This is a triple box set of all my Chapman Stick instrumental material. My outset solo Stick album was Stick Insect (2002), the second album was The Maverick Helmsman (2004), and and so at that place's likewise an album of cover versions titled Words Neglect Me, which is an exasperation metaphor. For that one, I just picked a handful of songs that I really loved, including Midnight Cowboy by John Barry and JS Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze.
"The songs were recorded on 2 different Chapman Sticks over 20 years – a standard 10-string ironwood instrument and a 10-cord Thou bamboo Stick. The bamboo instrument has more than of a folk lilt to it, whereas the ironwood Stick has more of a rock audio.
"Stick Insect utilized a lot of sampling and MIDI Stick playing, so some of the performances are washed in 1 take where I'thou triggering a parallel MIDI role – like an orchestra or synth office. I loved the soft synth Reason, which was heard everywhere in the '90s: I used it on a few tracks.
"These albums have their flaws, I admit: they're desperately recorded, because I engineered and produced everything myself, but they have something that is identifiably Beggs about them – maybe the essence of my playing."
Avert at all costs: Kajagoogoo – White Feathers (1983)
"I appreciate the massive irony of putting this album in this slot, because it'south outsold many of the artists that I've worked with since. One of the singles, Too Shy, sold over three meg copies, and was the 13th biggest single of 1983. It was even synced in the Tv set series Black Mirror and American Horror Story. The album besides got to Number 5 in the United kingdom charts and gave us three Top 15 hits including a Number 1, merely to me it will e'er exist a triumph of style over content.
"I will say that White Feathers has got some expert basslines, and some interesting songs, just on the whole, it's an anachronism of the '80s. I still make a lot of money from the Kajagoogoo catalog, for which I'one thousand grateful, but I've been trying to escape the shadow of those songs all my professional person life. At the same fourth dimension, there is a duality there, considering without this anthology nobody would know who I was.
"I'm proud of aspects of this tape. I'thou still friends with some of the guys in the ring, and we even so do business together. The album took me around the world and started my career as a musician, and with every royalty payment that comes in, I go downward on my hands and knees and I praise the God of Kajagoogoo. At the aforementioned time, it's like the gravitational pull of a planet that I can't escape!"
- Fragments is out now via KSCOPE.
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Source: https://www.guitarworld.com/features/nick-beggs-best-and-worst-bass-albums
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