Pete Townshend
This time I’m looking at one of Pete Townshend’s solo albums – White City from 1985. The song I’ve chosen for my Amazing Bass! series is ‘Give Blood’.
Continuing a path I’ve kind of, inadvertently meandered down, I’m championing fretless bass player Pino Palladino once again. All my AB! posts so far, have been celebrating this amazing and sought after bass player.
Fresh from his Paul Young sessions, Pino started to get the right phone calls and Pete Townshend was one of the big names of the day to grab Pino’s skills, and sound on fretless bass, which led to some amazing bass lines on the White City album. Another great name to feature on this album was Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and it’s his guitar arpeggio which drives Give Blood along with Pino’s expressive bass.
Pete Townshend – White City
The song starts atmospherically before launching into an almost hypnotic and tight groove provided by Simon Phillips on drums, Gilmour and Townshend on guitars and Palladino on bass.
Here’s the nerdy bit – there are some lovely, sliding ‘double stops’ on this bass line (these are 2 notes played at the same time but on different strings) and they are so musically expressive for a fretless instrument – OK, nerdy bit over!
It’s a great album by a great name in rock. I’m sure I don’t need to go into details about Townshend’s career with The Who!
Here’s Give Blood…
mikeytbull 