Yesobit: Chris Squire

Chris Squire, bassist with Yes, has died.

The band released an official statement:

It’s with the heaviest of hearts and unbearable sadness that we must inform you of the passing of our dear friend and Yes co-founder, Chris Squire.

Chris peacefully passed away last night (27 June 2015) in Phoenix, Arizona.

We will have more information for you soon.

Thankyou for all your heartfelt tributes on Facebook and Twitter.

Talking to For Bass Players Only in 2013, Squire explained that his interest in music was actually divine intervention:

[My musical upbringing] was mainly in the Church of England, at my local church, where I was in the choir. I got very good musical training there because we had a very good choirmaster. He was very enthusiastic about music and he was young, so he made it really interesting for me and the other guys in the choir. By the time I became 15 and the Beatles broke, that shifted my reality from that kind of music to another kind of music! That’s when my rock & roll education started.

Equally, he credited some of his success to dodgy wiring:

Yeah, the headphone output I had was very tinny sounding. It didn’t have much low end on it. So the engineer at the time was surprised when the producer was saying, “I need to hear more bass, I need more bass,” because he wasn’t getting much bass on his headphones. He had decided to mix the album on headphones and that a lot to do with my general success, I think, because of that weak headphone socket. [Laughs]

Squire was generous and humorous in ascribing a lot of his (and the band's) success to luck and chance. Talking to Ultimate Classic Rock, he suggested that luck was an element even in the artistic freedom the band enjoyed:

I think we were just lucky that we were in a time when record company executives were more open to the artist’s approach and it wasn’t so reliant upon a producer, at least not in our case anyway. So we just were lucky to be in a niche I think and especially of course, Ahmet Ertegun had signed us personally to Atlantic Records, so he liked our vision and our experimentation that we were up to. There was nobody really on our case at the record company saying that we should be doing something like this or something like that. With the Roger Dean artwork and everything playing into the image of Yes [including] the triple live album Yessongs with the huge gatefold cover, we [also] had Ahmet’s support on all of that. It was pretty hassle-free as far as being told by the record company anything.

Luck? Or trust that came from being a band that knew what it was doing?

Chris Squire was 67. He died Saturday.

Bassobit: Marshall Lytle

Marshall Lytle, Bill Haley's bassist, has died.

Lytle wasn't Haley's original bassist; he wasn't even a bassist when Haley recruited him - although Bill chucked in a thirty minute lesson in how to play.

He left The Comets after a row about pay, forming a new act, The Jodimars; on the advice of an agent he changed his name to Tommy Page to avoid being associated with Haley at all. The split was acrimonious and deep - the Comets had to wait a quarter of a century to follow Bill Haley into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.

The Jodimars landed a residency in Las Vegas - a first for a rock band - but never quite hit; eventually Page would make the bulk of his living from real estate.

The original Comets reunited in 1987; they started to spin a career out being wry about being older:

In 2003, Lytle predicted that he'd "rock till he dropped"; although he officially retired in 2009, he did keep playing.

Marshall Lytle died from lung cancer May 25th; he was 79.

Tame Impala split

Alright, they don't - it's more a little crumble at the edge, but we're all SEO whores, aren't we?

Nick Allbrook has had enough of bassing for the band:

Hey friends, fans and followers,

We have big news. It's the end of an era. Tonight Nick play's his last gig with us. Nick Roland Paisley Adams Allbrook is hopping off the Tame Impala band wagon so that he can try and screw his head back on, and make an attempt to assimilate back into society. A task the rest of us fear we will one day have to perform....

Anyway, heir to the throne is our long time super best musical blood brother Cam Avery, ape/womaniser/former pro golfer. You may remember Cam from such bands as The Growl and POND, neither of which he actually plays bass for but uuuh that's how we roll.

Anyway anyone who saw us during the Allbrook era will know how awesome nick is, so cam has big shoes to fill, which is fortunate because Cam has big feet. big stinky feet that leave sock footprints in your house when he comes in and he's like, hey man can I sleep on youz guysez' couch?

So Nick plays his last gig at Belvoir Amphitheatre tonight, the very same place he played his first gig with us some 4 or 5 or 6 years ago, not sure on that... Lost track of time...

We're super happy for our bro Nick and wish him well in all his various fucking awesome artistic spewings and endeavours that he'll actually have time for now.. Good on ya brah.

Spending more time with society. That's the official reason, then.

Billy Corgan tries whimsy, gets found out, shot down

Billy Corgan tweeted a couple of days ago that new Smashing Pumpkins bassist Nicole Fiorentino is one of the girls on the cover of Siamese Dreams:

Just found out the weirdest news: our bass player Nicole (@xocoleyf) just admitted she is one of the girls on the cover of Siamese Dream

That would be an amazing coincidence, right?

The only problem is it isn't true, as Ali Laenger, the other girl on the sleeve, says so:

-- Nicole's age doesn't match. Doing the math, Nicole would have been about 14 when the pic was shot ... the girl on the album is clearly around 7.
-- Ali says the photo was shot specifically for the album, and not a candid pic as Nicole has claimed.

You could understand why Nicole might have wanted to be the girl on the sleeve. It'd be the only chance she's got of appearing on a half-decent Smashing Pumpkins record.

Funkobit: Robert Wilson

The bassist with The Gap Band, Robert Wilson, has died.

Wilson joined his two brothers' band after their first bassist quit, and had been funkily percussive ever since. Still playing live earlier this month, the 53 year-old suffered a fatal heart attack at his Palmdale home.

Bassobit: Andy Hummel

Andy Hummel, original bassist with Big Star, has died at the age of 59.

Although the immediate cause of death was a heart attack, Hummel had been fighting cancer for quite a period. He'd recently had a hip operation, during which doctors had discovered the cancer had advanced, diagnosing that it was probably terminal.

Although beset with health problems, Hummel played as part of a Big Star tribute at this year's SXSW festival.

A founder member of Big Star, Hummel had quit in the mid-1970s; he'd been reluctant to join any of the recent revivals of the band.

Rockobit: Paul Gray

Paul Gray, bassist with Slipknot, has been found dead in a hotel room in Des Moines.

Gray was a founder member of the masks-and-mumble-metal act, bringing the band together in 1995. At the outset, his 'mask' consisted of tape, but as the band sold more and more - gathering number one albums and Grammy awards - he moved on to more elaborate face-coverings.

For a man from a band who market nihilism, Gray's personal life was relatively quiet - a 2003 car crash led to a drugs conviction, but he hadn't appeared to be spiraling down Doherty-style.

He'd been working on a metal supergroup, Hail!, and had been about to head out on tour. Gray was taking over the bass from David Ellefson, who had been recalled to day job duties in Megadeath.

Hail! manager Mark Abbattista told Blabbermouth:

"I spoke to Paul over the weekend, and we had a great conversation. He was so upbeat and excited as we discussed all our final gear and travel details, went through our new setlist and joked about the most fun way to 'unmask' him onstage.

"We were so looking forward to playing with Paul on our upcoming tour and this is a complete tragedy.

"We are all in a state of shock and our heartfelt condolences go out to [Paul's wife] Brenna, his family, SLIPKNOT, their management and all his friends. This is a horrible loss and a very sad day."

Police aren't looking for anyone in connection with the death. An autopsy and toxicology reports are expected today.

Paul Gray leaves a wife, Brenna Paul. He was 38.

Flea to become the Kwik Save of the bass market

There's any number of rubbishy products with famous names and large price tickets attached, so it's surprising to see a celeb product which is trying the reverse. Flea is doing his own range of basses, but he's producing high-quality, low-price instruments:

"I found that a lot of the kids I was teaching were coming in with inexpensive basses, which were pieces of s---," Flea explained. "The necks were warped and were falling apart. They were like toys. I wanted to make something that kids could afford but were quality, play well and last a long time."

It's like Britney Spears decided to try and make a perfume which smelled nice instead of starting with the mark-up and trying to work backwards.

Popobit: Kelly Groucutt

Former ELO bassist Kelly Groucutt suffered a fatal heart attack earlier this week.

Born Michael William Groucutt, he was recruited to the Electric Light Orchestra in 1974 after a spell in The Sight & Sound. The band were already doing well, and he took over as bassist in time for the band to tour Eldorado; his first studio work - which included vocals - came on 1975's Face The Music.

As with many long-running acts, money would eventually sour relations, and Groucott quit ELO after taking umbrage at royalty arrangements. After leaving in 1983, he embarked on a lawsuit against the band management and Jeff Lynne, securing an out-of-court settlement.

He then joined the dissident, Lynne-free ELO II and the subsequent, even more dissident The Orchestra; he had also been playing with a smaller band, Session 60.

Bassobit: Kenny MacLean

The bassist with Platinum Blonde, Kenny MacLean, has died.

Scotland-born Kenny joined the Canadian group for their second album, Alien Shores when Mark Holmes wanted to concentrate on singing. Although successful in Canada, the band never achieved the hoped-for sales and, after one last attempt at a relaunch as The Blondes, they fell apart. A 1999 reboot didn't feature MacLean and this, too petered out after a few months.

MacLean went on to have a wide range of solo successes - on the night of his death he had been at a part celebrating his third solo album, but he had also been active in classical music and soundtrack writing. Kenny had been working on a show Rock Through The Ages which offered a whistle-stop singalong tour through five decades of music - somewhat heavy on Beatles, U2 and Keane and, perhaps less surprisingly, featuring great chunks of the Platinum Blonde songbook.

The cause of death has not been reported.

CSS splits a little

CSS bassist Ira is off, as she can't square the carbon-footprint of the band with her conscience:

“I decided to move forward and dedicate more of my time to fashion and other projects. Just a big change of priorities, as I will never stop playing music.

“I am also a bit worried about climate change. People should care more and do something about it. I decided to fly less.

“CSS will always be in my heart. They said goodbye to their bass player, but they won a new life time fan. In health and sickness, in happiness and so forth. Blah blah blah, so help us God.”

Okay, it looks like the desire to do other things than tour with CSS - and, god knows, she must have bassed her way through Lets Make Love a thousand times a thousand times by now, at every festival on the planet - but the green angle makes for a more interesting story.

Jamie T chases his own tale

Jamie T can play the bass guitar. But he chooses not to on stage. Which is simple enough, but manages to get him caught in some sort of knots:

"I could if I practised, but I like running around and strumming. The bass is meant to stand still. Plus I don't like the idea of looking like Sting. That's uncool.

[Sting's solo material] makes me wanna be sick, but hey he's good, he's good..."

Perhaps Jamie T enjoys being sick?