Christopher Kuffner wears many musical hats! He’s an acclaimed producer, bassist, composer, musical director, and multi-instrumentalist with Regina Spektor, Ingrid Michaelson, Jay Stoler, Bess Rogers, and Gregory and the Hawk, to cite a select few.
In Season One of Know Your Bass Player On Film (2015) Mr. Kuffner reveals the powers of the bass unbeknownst to most civilians!
Chris Semal “The Joy of Bass”
OK, after the last blog post dealt with a lot of sadness, I promised to lighten up and write about something happy this time around. Since some people have a fear of circus clowns, I’ll avoid that topic and stick to a subject that certainly brings great joy to each and every person, especially me: the bass guitar! Perhaps there are some six string guitarists out there reading this who will snort with derision, but let us pity those poor, misguided souls.
I first picked one up as a freshman in high school when the bassist for the Deep Purple cover band in which I was singing had to leave school for a couple of months due to some reason I can no longer remember. He lent me his instrument so that the band could continue to rehearse and Steve, the guitarist, demonstrated zen-like patience in teaching me some of the songs. I’m sure you’re all thinking, “Ah, the first thing he learned was ‘Smoke On the Water’”, but no, believe it or not, that wasn’t in our repertoire. It was way too obvious, and I commend my band mates for their foresight at that tender age. The first song that Steve showed me was ‘Child In Time’, the ten-minute opus from their amazing album In Rock.
I suppose he thought that the beginning chords would be easy enough, and he was right, but then about halfway through the song, it’s off to the races and I can’t speculate on how many hours we spent trying to play this, just that there were many, many blisters acquired. I should point out that Steve was a European transfer student whose father was head of the Goethe Institute in New York, the offices of this association promoting German international cultural cooperation located directly across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 5th Avenue. The band was kindly allowed to use the auditorium and it’s a safe bet that in 1974, there were no other bands out there slamming their way through ‘Highway Star’ on the stages of institutions named for key figures of Weimar Classicism.
I’d always admired the shape of the electric guitar or bass in all its permutations but had never strapped one on until then. I’ve now been playing for thirty-eight years (gulp!) and can still remember the initial sensation, feeling the smooth wood against the front of my body and flicking the switch to turn the amp on. If you’ve never experienced this, go into a music store somewhere and give it a try. The vibration from the strings through the wood, into the pick-ups and then finally out of the amp speakers is a majestic revelation. The instrument resonates and reverberates with the massive sound. A fourteen-year-old boy with a bass slung down at crotch level, plucking the low E string? Well, as I said before, I’m still jamming at fifty-two and have no immediate plans of stopping. Somewhere along the way, I actually learned how to play the instrument and it’s been one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had.
P.S. I have to mention this: I always write with music playing and have some nine thousand songs in iTunes on my computer, invariably set to random play. Guess what started playing halfway through creating this post? You got it: ‘Smoke On the Water’.
Chris Semal was born in New York City in 1959 and has lived there all his life. He is aware that other places exist and likes to visit them from time to time, but the city is a hard mistress to resist, and he keeps going back to her. A musician, singer and songwriter, he has played pretty much every rock club in Manhattan at one time or another since the late 70s and went to school at the University of Miami to study Music Engineering, coming back north to do the only obvious thing possible, becoming a municipal bond broker and eventually working as a consultant building financial models. In the early part of the millennium, between both consulting and band gigs, he thought it might be interesting to see what would happen if he expanded on the 80 or so words he used in writing song lyrics and went for the 80,000 he would need for a novel. And so Trial Of Tears was born, along with a passion for developing plots and characters.
www.ChrisSemal.Com
Chris Campbell (Bob Seger Silver Bullet Band)
Courtesy of Bob Seger Com
As I was witness, The Silver Bullet Band were among the best backing ensembles of their era, rivaling Bruce’s E Street Band, Billy Joel’s Band, and Southside Johnny’s Jukes.
Working the pocket in the tradition of many a master bar band bassist, Chris moved seamlessly from rhythm & blues, funk, disco, soul, hard rock, 50s rock, to tender balladry.
Curiously Bob Seger chose to wax a considerable number of album tracks with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section – however to my ears, those cuts lacked the muscle of the Bullet Band’s classic lineup anchored by bassist Chris Campbell.
Courtesy of Bob Seger Com
Which is why Bob’s concert two-fer Live Bullet (1976) is the definitive Seger.
In the early 00’s when Johnny Marr produced Haven’s magnificent pair of dream pop platters Between the Senses – (perhaps a nod to the Stones’ Between the Buttons) – and the follow-up All For A Reason, Moz’s former mate was certainly enamored with the melodic pocket plectrum purveyance of bassist Iwan Gronow – whom he drafted into his touring and recording ensemble.
Anchoring Mr. Marr’s muscular post-Smiths bands, Iwan serves the mercurial Mancunian guitar hero quite effectively by way of gritty, pedal pushing Fender P tones and supportive passages with an occasional harmonic foray into the upper register.
He was a prolific Grammy Award winning composer, filmmaker, producer, solo recording artist, multi-instrumentalist, and founding member of the Patti Smith Group wherein he shared bass duties with Lenny Kaye.
His numerous collaborations and band memberships include Blondie, Iggy Pop, John Cale, and John Waite, to site a scant few.
As a bassist – and given his formidable skills as a composer, Ivan was the consummate song player, working the pocket and outlining the changes in the service of the singer…as so many of us do!
A soulful pocket player given to supportive harmonic extensions and grooves, the late Stephen Thompson was a magnificent anchor for John Mayall – especially the Bluesbreaker bandleader’s brilliant drummer-less ensemble as captured on the iconic live collection The Turning Point (1969). An in-demand session player, Thompson also waxed seminal sides with Jesse Ed Davis, Stone the Crows, Denny Laine, Alvin Lee, and Kevin Coyne, among others.
He is giant of the instrument though known mostly to musos despite the fact that his band, The Dixie Dregs, which he formed with guitarist Steve Morse in 1973 at my alma mater University of Miami, were among the most groundbreaking and “commercially accessible” fusion ensembles of their generation.
A master of fretless, extended range, trad four, plectrum, slap, and finger-style – Andy and the Dregs were truly an “American music” collective, boundlessly incorporating country, hard rock, jazz, blues, and folk in their remarkable canon of recorded and live work.
Andy’s weapons of choice included Alembic, Steinberger XL, and Geoff Gould basses. Nowadays, between Dregs reunions, Andy West enjoys an equally stellar career as a software programmer / consultant. During his time with The Dregs, and later as a sideman, collaborator, and solo recording artist – Andy expanded the language of the bass guitar as an improviser, ensemble player, and sonic visionary.
Though they flirted with mainstream acceptance towards “The Dregs” end of their initial run, they curiously never achieved the recognition bestowed the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Herbie’s Headhunters, and Weather Report. Go figure!
Behold the pure power of pop as purveyed in New York City 1981! Bassist Bruce Gordon anchors The Mod Frames with buoyant pocket grooves, upper register grace notes, and graceful contrapuntal passages akin to such masters as Sir Paul, Dee Murray, and Colin Moulding.
With Billy Altman (vocals/guitar), multi-instrumentalist Ben Rosenblatt, my drummer pallie David Donen and guitarist Mark Michaels, dig Bruce almighty on “I Don’t Want to Cry” http://bit.ly/2FtCp7w and “Anyone After You.” http://bit.ly/2FWUr03
How did the big time elude these maestros of melody?
The Mod Frames live at St. John’s University
Jahn Xavier (Richard Hell & The Voidoids)
I’ve been hired to play guitar and bass on a friend’s tracks, so I’ve been pulling my bass chops back into shape. Different muscles, different head. I love to play bass. If I could sing lead while doing so I would have saved myself many a runaround and played it in my own bands over the years, as good bass players have always come dear. (I might be a bit picky in that regard, too.
When I first joined Richard Hell & The Voidoids in early 1979 I didn’t own a bass guitar, so I used one of Richard’s during the beginning of my tenure. I had been rehearsing with them for the first two months of that year, but nobody ever bothered to tell me that I was in the band during that time – I figured they were just trying me out, maybe waiting to see if they wanted someone else instead. I was sixteen and having fun just playing with Bob Quine and Ivan Julian and didn’t want to rock the boat; but I also didn’t want to invest in a bass if I wasn’t going to get the gig.
One day in early March I finally asked if I was an official member and they all laughed, assuming that the four-day-a-week rehearsal schedule might have been a tip-off that I already had the job. Before each session, I had been meeting Richard at his apartment on 12th & A so I could carry the bass to the studio near Union Square. The day after I was anointed a Voidoid, Richard said: “OK, Mister Bass Player, it’s time you got your own.”
I went to We Buy Guitars on 48th Street and got this 1976 Fender Precision Bass for $325. Many years later when I was at my lowest ebb of drunkenness and depression, I would run to pay off the pawn ticket at the shop that held it, always just a day ahead of it being sold off. I’ll always remember how happy I was when I pulled my life together enough to get it out of hock. It’s a wonderful slab of wood, and every time I play it I remember how truly fortunate I have been, and how fortunate I am today.
Love to you, wherever you are. Yes, you.
Jahn Xavier 2017
PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN: On The Record with Bassist Paul Gray!
PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN: ON THE RECORD WITH BASSIST PAUL GRAY (By Tom Semioli)
For the first fifteen or so years of my career as a music journalist, my beat was new artists, mostly from the UK. I wrote tens of thousands of words documenting young guns waxing their first record, playing their first gigs in the Promised Land that is/was the United States and so forth. From several South by Southwest sojourns to backstage at Late Night with Conan, and The Late Show with David Letterman, among other venues of dubious distinction, I was (mostly) impressed with the musicianship, song-craft, and their reverence for the rock and roll bands that came before them. It was steady work, but there was something missing.
After a bit of research on life expectancy, and the collapse of the US economy, record industry, and a rock / pop musical landscape which, to my ears, rewards abject rubbish, I decided to spend whatever time I had left above ground writing stories about the artists who inspired me to pick up a bass and get in the game. One of those players I made a mental note of was Paul Gray. Not a household name, none of my heroes are, yet he anchored two essential ensembles – Eddie & The Hot Rods, and The Damned, two brilliant collectives which prompted thousands like me to join a band – regardless of the consequences!
So when I heard that Paul was available by way of a new slab he appears on by the group which works under the moniker of Professor and the Madman (PATM)- I jumped! Unfortunately I could not make the trip to Old Blighty to speak with Mr. Gray in the flesh, but I’ll get there soon enough and I’ll buy him a round for all those bass parts he taught me.
PATM are a quartet of veteran rockers – Alfie Agnew (Adolescents, D.I.) and Sean Elliott (D.I. Mind Over Four), with Paul’s former Damned bandmate Rat Scabies in the drum chair. The new collection is aptly entitled Disintegrate Me.
Messrs. Gray and Scabies will not be touring with PATM given their other musical commitments – Paul has Damned dates and Rat has a new record coming out.
Disintegrate Me is PATM’s third long-player and the first to feature Gray. In this age of streaming and YouTube.Com pilfering, far be it from me to describe the music to you. The best I can relate to you, my dear rock and roll readers, is that these cats are the sonic sum of their parts and their storied history. The melodies, musicianship, and energy are boundless!
With all due respect to newer artists, PATM proves that old chickens make the best rock and roll soup!
Rather than my usual weaving of quotes into text, I hereby afford you Paul Gray’s opinions, observations, and prognostications unedited and unfiltered. He’s a bass player, he knows what he’s talking about!
Let’s set the record straight about “punk” – which oft times is used as a rather dismissive tag. To my ears and recollection the best “punk” bands, some of which you worked in, were comprised of creative/innovative musicians and extraordinary writers – many of whom not only continue to influence generations, but are still on the bandstand and in the recording studio. Thoughts?
Punk is different things to different people. The UK punk scene really started when groups of kids who wanted to make their own style of music started to get together in different places simultaneously. They were fed up with the stuff that was around in the mid ’70s — all of that overblown triple album prog stuff and bland disco music. I’d say Dr. Feelgood was the prototype punk band in sound and attitude. Others would say the Damned or Clash or Pistols. The last two were way too contrived for me. Once certain journalists got hold of it the boxes appeared — pub rock, new wave, punk, blah blah. It was the start of it being commercialized, which is always the kiss of death. It went from being an independent movement to everyone dressing the same. I had no time for any of that. That’s why I always loved the Damned — they stayed true, original, and unique.
How do you define punk?
I prefer the original punk stuff as defined by those great ’60s groups like The Seeds and 13th Floor Elevators. All those Nuggets bands. Great psychedelic pop songs played with spirit and attitude through shitty amps and recorded on a budget of 10 bucks with no expectations of world domination. That’ll do for me!
My goddaughter and her friends love The Damned, Eddie & the Hotrods, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Joy Division, The Stranglers, New Order… she has all of my old records, and even wears the same clothes! Why does this era, wherein you started your career, speak to teenagers in the 21st Century?
I’d say because it’s honest. It’s music written and played from the heart. It connects with people who can relate to the lyrical content and musical honesty. There’s no writing-by-numbers, no following of a fad, no overblown production or musical pretensions, or big marketing. The songs stand or fall on their own merit. That’s why that music is effectively timeless.
What prompted you to join forces with P&TM? The songs? The players?
Both! Sean and Alf sent me a song to see if I’d like to put a bit of bass down on a coupla tracks. I was blown away for all the reasons above. They were continuing that legacy in a way that immediately spoke to me. It was absolutely honest music, the most exciting I’d heard in eons, and chock full of melodies. I’m a sucker for a good melody. I knew what I could add straight away. They may or may not agree but my first thoughts were Damned meets vintage Cheap Trick via The Kinks — that’s a pretty heady mixture!
Disintegrate Me runs like a greatest hits album: strong melodies, big hooks, supportive playing, hot mixes, bravura musicianship — no filler whatsoever. How much did the band work in pre-production? Did you sit down and plan the record or did it just come about organically?
Well there ya go! No pre-production, no planning. They sent me the backing tracks, which were pretty basic with guitar, vocals and drums, and I did two or three different passes on the bass so that they could pick and choose what they liked best as I have never played the same thing, the same way, twice. One track has two basses panned left and right as they couldn’t decide which they preferred. My kinda band! Seriously, I was blown away, and having heard the final mixes, they’ve achieved something that is at once accessible and fresh and exciting but very individual sounding. Those guys are genius writers. In fact, I enjoyed playing every track so much that I probably did a dozen different takes as I came up with different melodies each time. I really didn’t want to stop playing!
P&TM’s group members were not in the same room when the tracks were cut, yet the songs exude the energy of a live performance. How did you pull that off?
I really have no idea except to say that it’s pretty rare for it to happen in my experience. Everything just sparked from the first moment, so I guess it’s that excitement of playing songs that just work for our particular individual styles shining through collectively. Very similar to The Damned, in fact. I’m a lucky sod, ain’t I!
Do you miss having your mates in the studio, cutting a track, and then knocking back a pint or two, then doing it all over again? Of course, you all reside far from each other, and digital technology allows us to tour with holograms – but is there something missing when you sweat, curse, laugh, argue, and make a record together?
They both have their merits, I guess. Studios can get pretty tedious once you’ve done your bit. This is the first time I’ve done an entire album remotely and I have to say it suited me very well. I worked when I wanted to, got my own mix and bass sound as I liked in my own time, and monitored without damaging my hearing any more, without all the unnecessary hanging around. And at my age that suited me very well! Haha!
I’ve had the good fortune to interview and converse with a few of my rock and roll heroes – Ian Hunter, Lou Reed, Garland Jeffreys, Dave Davies, Graham Parker. They tell me that they love making records, their fans love records – so they’re going to keep making them until they depart this mortal coil. Is Paul Gray in that mindset?
When I first developed tinnitus and Hyperacusis I never thought I’d play or record again. It was that bad. I ducked out of music for a few years, had to, and it wasn’t a good place for me to be. It was my life, not just my career, so I had to slowly figure out how to dip my feet back into it again. That was 20 years ago. I seriously would never have thought that 20 years later I’d be back working with two such fantastic bands. Never say never, right? So yeah, gimme the opportunities and I’ll carry on till I drop — recording at least. I’m about to head out on tour with The Damned again so we’ll have to see how that goes. I’m pretty apprehensive about how I’ll manage with all the noise but life’s too short not to give it another go at least. In the immortal words of Janis Joplin, “Get it while ya can …”
There was a time when you sat down and listened to a record, whether it was punk, jazz, or blues. Now we live in a streaming world where folks “consume” music. Is the album relevant anymore? Is it a niche artform?
Vinyl’s coming back, right? People are excited about actually buying a record again and all that goes with it — the artwork, lyrics, running order, turntable ritual. How fantastic is that? I never liked MP3s and streaming; it offends my ears more than most because of the damage I’ve done. We all live in such a disposable, quick-fix society these days. I’m afraid I”m pretty old fashioned. I’m so pleased Disintegrate Me is coming out on vinyl — it’s gonna sound HUGE!
Given the fact that most people nowadays listen to a single track rather than an entire album, does that affect the way you write or produce a song?
Not in the slightest. Everything I’ve ever done has been done for myself, first and foremost. My initial idea, whether it’s for my own song or someone else’s song, is usually the one that ends up being used on the record. It’s from the heart — always has been, always will be.
On the topic of videos, you came to prominence in the pre-MTV era. Do you think the art-form helped or hindered rock and roll? On the upside it was a great promotional tool, on the downside it pigeonholed many an artist and genre.
Well, I guess the artists with the biggest promo budgets and best pluggers got pole positions, right? It kinda became visuals first, music second throughout the ’80s. I was never really an MTV person. You could smell the stink of the corporate hand everywhere. Not for me, thank you very much!
The bass sounds amazing in the mix – crisp, I can hear every note, every rattle of those Rotosound roundwounds!
Glad ya like the bass sound — toaster pickup on a 77 Rickenbacker, good old Roto’s as always, a Vox AC30 cranked way up, and shedloads of compression. Works for me!
Looking back over your career, which record are you most proud of?
Oh man … so many for different reasons! I still love the Hot Rods’ Life on the Line, which was recorded in two days. And The Black Album. But I have to say that on Disintegrate Me, and the new Damned album, I’m most proud of my playing. And that’s a pretty bloody fine state of affairs 42 years after I first joined the Hot Rods as a spotty 15 year old!
Clockwise from top left: Paul Gray, Sean Elliott, Rat Scabies, Alfie Agnew
Disintegrate Me is released on vinyl, CD and download on February 23 via FullerTone Records/Alliance Distribution. For all things PATM visit www.professorandthemadman.com.
And if you must know more about PATM – get ahold of Randy Haecker at Prime Mover Media www.primemovermedia.com .
