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Britpop bass players.

Blazer

Blazer

Nov 27, 2003
2,017
5,417
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The Netherlands
Disclosures
Rogue luthier employed at Knooren Handcrafted bass guitars
#1
I LOVED britpop and recently have been buying some seminal albums from that scene and have found out much to my delight that there are some really tasty basswork on them.

Although no acrobatics from this man.
oguigsy.jpg

Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan of Oasis was content with playing rootnotes and not much else. But that DID make him an extremely tight part of the Rhythm section he formed with Tony McCarrol and later with Allan White.

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The only Oasis songs I know which had memorable bass lines were the ones from the "Standing on the shoulder of giants" album which were recorded by Noel Gallagher. Such as on "Go let it out"

"Girls and boys" according to James himself he was emulating John Taylor's Duran Duran bass lines but he pulled it off effortlessly.
 
#3
the Arsonaut said:
yeah yeah yeah,
they're great and all...
but you are completely forgetting Simon Jones.
Between him and Pete Salisbury, there's a reason why there's britpop bands, and then there's the Verve.
Click to expand...

Well that's why I started a thread, to discuss them and so people can bring forth their own favorites.
 
#4
So how are you defining 'Britpop'? How far back do you want to go? The phrase was coined during that whole Blur vs Oasis thing, but they were - in my opinion - merely more mainstream/accessible versions of the likes of The Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets etc that preceded them.

Of course you could continue this reverse extrapolation all the way back to the dinosaurs (!), but I'm curious to know which particular era you want to discuss.

For what it's worth, I'd love to see some appreciation for Echo and the Bunnymens Les Pattinson. Great player.
 
#5
I was defining Britpop as in the mid nineties scene when it was actually called "Britpop"

The Smiths, XTC, the Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen were Indie bands, Inspiral carpets and Stone roses were part of the Madchester thing. (As was Blur ironically, the first album "Leisure" sound wise owes a lot to the Stone Roses although Damon Albarn now says that they should have been more weary about what the record company wanted them to do, they were too naive and just went "Okay." It also explains a song like "There's no other way" which was deliberate stab at the record company.) None of those bands were around at the height of Britpop.
 
#6
Blazer said:
I was defining Britpop as in the mid nineties scene when it was actually called "Britpop"

The Smiths, XTC, the Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen were Indie bands, Inspiral carpets and Stone roses were part of the Madchester thing. (As was Blur ironically, the first album "Leisure" sound wise owes a lot to the Stone Roses although Damon Albarn now says that they should have been more weary about what the record company wanted them to do, they were too naive and just went "Okay." It also explains a song like "There's no other way" which was deliberate stab at the record company.) None of those bands were around at the height of Britpop.
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Gotcha. Although Blur were most definitely not a Madchester band :)

As a Brit living in the north of England, it was an interesting time for pop music and no doubt some gems were unearthed. Ocean Colour Scene never quite hit the heights I thought they would, and bands like the Boo Radleys and the Free Radicals seem to disappear as quickly as they arrived.

Big fan of Alex James' work. Hugely gifted player. And an even better cheese maker.
 
#7
I know Blur were technically not a Madchester band but their debut album did have that sound. Which was all coming from their record company, who handed them some Happy Mondays and Stone roses albums and told them to make their songs sound like that.

It wasn't until "Modern life is rubbish" that Blur got their footing right and songs like "Colin Zeal" showed the acerbic and cynical way they were looking at Englishness which became their calling card showed itself.


Babies.
 
#9
I heard Sun Hits The Sky again recently and was impressed by Mickey Quinn's bass playing. I was just picking up guitar at the time that Britpop broke so I wasn't paying much attention to the basslines. But yes, just as Graham Coxon was my favourite guitarist from that scene (and one of my favourites full stop), Alex James would probably rank as my top Britpop bassist.

I remember when Blur first appeared in the Madchester days. To my Mancunian ears the music sounded right but the accent was all wrong. :D
 
#10
When I read the thread title I thought Stone Roses' Mani, but yeah, not brit pop. Pulp is a wonderful band, but not brit pop either I would say, as they were around from the late 70s.

BTW, just saw Pulp in Mexico City and it was a brilliant show, probably better than their '98 show in Manchester's Apollo. Hope the Stone Roses make it to this side of the Atlantic too.
 
#11
Uncle Ernie said:
When I read the thread title I thought Stone Roses' Mani, but yeah, not brit pop. Pulp is a wonderful band, but not brit pop either I would say, as they were around from the late 70s.

BTW, just saw Pulp in Mexico City and it was a brilliant show, probably better than their '98 show in Manchester's Apollo. Hope the Stone Roses make it to this side of the Atlantic too.
Click to expand...

Given Pulp's obscurity until the days of Britpop, I think it's fair to class them as such (as with Blur).
 
#15
Uncle Ernie said:
So is britpopness style or timing dependent? That's the trickiness of having categories.
Click to expand...

It's a good question. What defined Britpop? What did Blur and Oasis really have in common? My best attempt is: it was a label applied to most guitar-based mid-90s indie bands with clear 60s influences. And anyone else who happened to be nearby.
 
#16
Well, if my memory serves, the baggy madchester thing was happening concurrently with a lot of the shoegazing stuff (Ride, Curve, Swervedriver, Chapterhouse, etc.) and 4AD was releasing some great atmospheric stuff from the Cocteau twins (thinking later material like "Heaven Or Las Vegas) and it kind of all came together around Oasis' first album. Blur was already a chart band at that point, but they had that one/two wallop of Modern Life Is Rubbish and Parklife that pushed them ahead of some of the Shoegazers who sounded a bit old fashioned all of a sudden. For instance, Ride's albums of the same period were great, but they kind of got written off as yesterday's news.

Of course, it's not like time is cut and dry. A lot of things overlapped, but it was a pretty exciting time in retrospect.
 
#17
And there was the immediate precursor to Britpop, which actually overlapped quite heavily in timing and bands, the ridiculously-named 'New Wave of New Wave' (got to love the music press!). These Animal Men, Elastica, early Shed Seven, S*M*A*S*H etc - this must have been 93/94, thinking back.
 
#18
Came across this while oddly enough watching an Oasis concert from 95 on Youtube. Guigsy was probably one of the most uninspiring Bassists to watch, he just stands there and taps his foot....While his Bass playing was fairly simple, he was part of a strong rhythm section and it worked. I believe Noel actually recorded Bass on the Definitely Maybe album despite Guigsy being in the studio with the band.
 

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