apropos PF od 8 smej minuty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnC7TdkRnP4
choć nie przesłuchanie tego w całości uważam za świętokradztwo
[quote='Mateusz' pid='454631' dateline='1415487116']
To powiedz mi jeszcze co jest na 1szej płycie black sabbath, podoba mi sie ten drewniany klik basu?
z tego co pamiętam z wywiadu w bass player:
69 Pbass
Laney
i wg legendy kolumna park 4x12 z trzema głośnikami w tym jednym sprawnym
.
tu masz kawałek innego wywiadu:
Geezer found it hard to find a like-minded producer when it came to his trademark tone, which he achieved by blasting his Fender Precision Bass through a blown guitar cabinet: Every producer we played to said, You cant have that soundits a bass, not a bloody guitar! Roger Bain, the one producer who went, Oh yeah, thats a good sound, was the one who got the job.
Taking its name from a once-popular Boris Karloff horror movie, Black Sabbath formed in a suburb of the rainy, bleak industrial city of Birmingham, England, in the late 60s. It was a band of misfits: a bassist who couldnt afford a proper set of strings, a guitarist who had lost his fingertips in an industrial accident, and a singer with a police record for petty thievery. Geezers most thunderous, expressive bass work is on the eight albums Black Sabbath produced before Ozzys 1979 departure, which have been re-released in a Rhino Records box set retrospective, Black Box: The Complete Original Black Sabbath, 19701978.
You were one of the early pioneers in using a distorted bass tone. How did you achieve that sound?
When we recorded Black Sabbath, I had a 70-watt Laney guitar amp and a Park 4x12 cabinet with only three speakers in itand two of them were wrecked! Thats how I got that really distorted sound. Actually, I hated the tone of that record at the time, but Ive gotten used to it now. Its nostalgic. I didnt have any alternative; I couldnt afford to buy new speakers. We had only two days to record, so we just plugged in and performed our live set in the studio. We were allowed one take for each song and stopped only if someone made a horrible mistake. It was out of our hands. No time to dial in the perfect bass tone.
Looking back, do you feel there are benefits to recording that quickly?
Oh yeah, absolutely. The first three Sabbath albums were done quickly, and you can hear the spontaneity. You cant get too critical; you start listening to things that arent really there, or you keep thinking you can do better. By the time the music is all polished and clean and technically brilliant, youve lost the soul.
Subsequent albums like Technical Ecstasy sound as if they took much longer to record.
In my opinion, the longer we took recording, the worse the album turned out. I think the only time it really paid off was on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. With that record, we felt like we had to come out with something different or just call it a day, so we took our time. We enjoyed the whole process of recording it, and it was worth the effort we put into it.
Which Sabbath album captured your favorite bass tone?
Its hard to say, because during each recording I felt I could do much better tone-wise. My favorite tone would probably be on Master of Reality. So many people ask me how I got the bass tone on the first album. It was by accident! At times I have hated my sound, and Ive tried to dial in whatever sounded modern at the time. It never worked. I remember trying to sound like Chris Squire. Ozzys reaction was, What the hell is that? I was attempting to get a sound I liked to listen to, but it didnt fit my playing style.
What did you use for effects?
I had two Tycobrahe pedals. With their wah-wah, which was a big blue pedal, you could get a weird sub-bass effect. Combined with their flanger, it created a really ethereal sound. I used that on the beginning of The Writ and on Zero the Hero. People think its a keyboard making those sounds, but its bass through the Tycobrahe pedals. On Ozzfest, Ill be using my old Tycobrahe wah, although its a bit worse for wear these days.
Since you are not currently using fried speakers, how do you get a distorted sound? Do you use a pedal?
I dont like using distortion pedals. They sound false to me. Its almost impossible to get a natural distorted bass sound, especially now that amps are built so well. It just comes down to sheer volume. When recording, we would have to put the bass cabs in a different studio completely. It was deafeningly loud. You have to crank it up, but Ozzy doesnt understand thatit drove him nuts on the last tour. He would never stand in front of the bass rig. He told me to turn it down one night, so for a laugh I turned it up.
Its been about 35 years since Black Sabbath formed. Do you remember your first gig?
We had a week to prepare for it, and I didnt even own a bass! It sounds ridiculous now, but I couldnt afford one. So I tuned down the strings on my Fender Telecaster, and we learned 18 songs. I cant even imagine what the Tele must have sounded like. The other guys had to have a lot of faith in me [laughs].
I borrowed a Hofner Beatle bass for the gigthat was the very first time I played a bass guitar. It had only three strings on it, but it was much better than the detuned Tele. I didnt know how to set the amps properly, and people were throwing bottles at me! That was a tough, nerve-racking gig.
We used to do these horrible gigs in Europe playing six or seven 45-minute sets per night. We started out as a blues band; we had only two original songs, Black Sabbath and Wicked World. The rest of the set was 12-bar blues. So we would extend the original songs to fill up the time. On the record, the jam at the end of Black Sabbath was about a minute long, but wed do it for over 25 minutes live.
Were many Sabbath songs written from jams?
Yeah, everything we did. We would jam for hours and hours. When we came up with something we all liked, wed stop and build around that riff. We never had to tell each other what to play; wed just do it without thinking. It was pure. In those days we didnt have tape recorders, so we had to remember absolutely everything. Id love to have a tape of the stuff we didnt record.
Many Sabbath riffs have a kind of call and response between you and Tony. How did that style develop?
Thats the good thing about being in a band with just bass, drums, and one guitar. Because our music was so uncluttered, there was space for the bass to riff. I think we messed it up a bit when we started doing loads of overdubs in the studio later on. All those open spaces were taken up with keyboards and extra guitars.
Which Sabbath riffs stand out as personal favorites?
Ive always loved Black Sabbath, because it was the first song we wrote. But there are so many of them. Sweet Leaf, Hole in the Sky, and of course, Iron Man. Symptom of the Universe is one of the best riffs of all time. There are a lot of songs that I cant even remember writing or recording. For the last Ozzfest, we went through all the old albums to decide on a set list. It was really strange hearing the songs again after so long.
Which riffs did you write?
National Acrobat and Behind the Wall of Sleep were definitely my riffs. Behind the Wall of Sleep was weird; I dreamt it. I dreamt the whole songlyrics and everything. I wish I could do that every night.
Did you study music formally?
No, never. It was mainly Tony and Bill that taught me how to play. They were so good that I had to come up to their level. I dont read music at all. It looks like Japanese to me.
Who are your bass influences?
Seeing Cream live is what turned me onto the bass. I never even considered playing bass before that. I used to love watching Jack Bruce play. He was the first bassist Id ever seen bending the stringsthats where I picked up that technique. When I switched from guitar to bass I fell into that kind of style because I loved the way Jack played. I bend the strings on practically everything Ive done.
I got a lot of my bass licks from Ten Years Afters Leo Lyons. They always encouraged us as a band. Ive also always loved Paul McCartney. When the Beatles came out, McCartney was like a god to me. But I never really considered him a bass player as much as a member of the Beatles.
What have you been listening to recently?
I dont really listen to a lot of heavy stuff at the momentmostly just jazz or bluesbut I listen to an increasingly wide range of music. I always love to hear interesting bass playing. Usually I only find that in jazz, but there can be some great bass riffs in drum-n-bass. I love the riff in Paper Bag by Roni Size, for instance. Ive recently discovered lots of great jazz, like the Bob James trio, the Brad Mehldau trio, John Scofield, the Bad Plus, Jimmy Cobb, and such. Ive always loved Coltrane, Mingus, Methany, but I never liked fusion very much. Ive tried to incorporate some jazz into my new songs, but I dont want to do it just for the sake of it, or to just regurgitate what other bassists are more accomplished at playing.
You tend to pluck near the neck, sometimes directly on top of the fingerboard. How and why did that style develop?
Probably because I didnt realize that I could take the pickup covers off of my P-Bass [laughs]. Also, I am relatively small in height, and it just felt natural that way. I think every player gets to a comfortable position onstage and keeps with it.
You also hit your strings rather hard.
Oh yeah, ridiculously hard. I have to consciously pull back. Producers always tell me to back off in the studio, because when I play hard they hear more of the strings against the fretsmetal bashing on metalthan the actual note.
Your plucking hand is extremely fast. Are you using two or three fingers?
I use primarily two fingers, though I use three fingers on some songs. I sometimes use a pick for clarity, to make the bass stand out a bit more. Sometimes Ill go a whole night without using a pick, but if I have blisters or am playing a repetitious part, its more comfortable to pick. I vary it depending on how my arm is feeling. When I did a tour with Ozzys band I played with a pick on a lot, because Bob Daisley used a pick on Ozzys original solo recordings.
Bobs bass lines are quite different from yours.
Totally, absolutely different. I had to figure out what the hell he was doing. He is an amazing, totally underrated bass player. Some of his lines are so fast that I would just do a reasonable facsimile of it. I used to fake most of the songs! On the slow songs, Bob is very McCartney-ish. Id never played like that in my life, so it was a new experience and challenge.
Tony Iommi was one of the first rock guitar players to tune lower than standard pitch. How did this affect your basss setup?
Weve always played like that since day one. Tony tuned down to make it easier to grip the strings; he had his fingertips chopped off in an accident, and he has plastic fingertips. I just tuned to match Tonys guitar. I didnt really think about it at the time. I tune a whole tone down for songs like Paranoid, N.I.B., and Iron Man, and three semitones down for Black Sabbath, Into the Void, and Sweet Leaf. The heavier the riff, the lower the tuning goes. Tony would go down an octave, if he could!
Do you compensate by using heavier-gauge strings?
When we started out, there was only one gauge of string you could get. They were heavy, so I didnt lose much tension by tuning low. I think they were Rotosounds. I used to steal them most of the time! In the old days, I used to boil my strings to renew them. I probably had the same set of strings on for about a year. Tony did the same with his guitar strings. We were broke and literally could not afford to buy anything at that time. Now I usually have them changed about every two or three gigs. Thats the best sound for me, when they dont have that bright twang. Id keep strings on for the whole tour if I could get away with it, but these days techs look at you as if you just landed when you say things like that!
Have you gone through a lot of basses over the years?
Oh yeah. Fender, B.C. Rich, Spector, and Dan Armstrong, to name a few. My first bass was called a Top Twenty. It cost about 30 dollars. I cant even remember where I got it, but like that Hofner, it had only three strings. It was my ambition to get up enough money to buy a fourth string! Once I knew that I could make a go of playing bass, I bought a Fender Precision.
I used a fretless Rickenbacker bass on one part of Johnny Blade, and then never used it again. We experimented with all kinds of instruments back then. I used an 8-string bass on Born Again. I believe John Birch made it; I got it in 1973 or so. It was the first guitar to have crosses inlayed on the fretboard, but Tony stole that idea from me. The 8-string was a horrible thing to play. Tuning it was a nightmare. I just bought a beautiful 63 P-Bass. Ive been playing it every day since I found it.
In the Never Say Die tour video you are using a Rickenbacker for the whole show.
Yeah, thats because I forgot my proper bass! [Laughs.] I had just gotten that Rickenbacker from [Deep Purples] Glenn Hughes. I swapped a Gibson Thunderbird for it. I completely forgot my stage clothes and bass for that show, and now it is captured on video.
When Ronnie James Dio became Sabbaths vocalist after Ozzy left in 1979, did your playing change?
Ronnie took over all the lyric-writing, so that freed me up to concentrate more on my bass playing. It gave me time to experiment a bit more. As a result, I played with the riffs and used more runs. I felt like my playing was back to what it used to be. I think Heaven &Hell was a great album.
For this tour, Bill Ward will be playing drums, but when Sabbath headlined Ozzfest in 97, Faith No Mores Mike Bordin, who also plays in Ozzys band, toured as Sabbaths drummer. How did that affect your playing?
Obviously, no one can play Sabbath like Bill Wardhe is as much a part of the band as Ozzy, Tony, or myself. Mike is a great drummer in his own right, but with Bill theres a chemistry which no amount of rehearsal can replace. Playing and improvising with him is effortless. With anyone else, I have to concentrate more, and improvisation doesnt happen as naturally.
How are you preparing for this tour?
First of all, I have to decide which basses to bring. Im planning on using my Laklands, and maybe one of my vintage Fender Precisions. Ill also be doing some low-stress exercising, like walking downstairs instead of sliding down the banister. Plus, Ill be packing my cases with lots of English food, like Heinz baked beans, PG Tips teabags, Uncle Joes mint balls, and pot noodles. Plus, Ill be recording lots of English TV so I can watch it on the long bus journeys.
Will Black Sabbath be performing any new material?
No, but its been so long since we last played together, it will all feel like new material. Ill have a new solo album out early next year. Ohmwork is its working title. It would have been out this year, but Ive had to delay it because of Ozzfest.
Black Sabbaths career has enabled you to perform for multiple generations of fans. What is the key to Sabbaths longevity?
I have absolutely no idea. It amazes me that every time we go out on tour, 95 percent of the audience is young people. We still get incredibly young fans. Bands like Metallica have cited Sabbath as an influence, so that gives us credibility with the younger kids. And of course Ozzy has never lost his fans. They are so loyal to him.
What do you feel is the bands most important contribution?
Its hard to say. To me we were like another version of what Cream and Hendrix and Zeppelin were doing. Perhaps we made music more accessible to average players. You dont need a degree in music to play our stuff. Its fun. Loads of people can pick up a guitar and play Iron Man. Its not brain surgery. Its gives kids encouragement to play. I think we wrote songs that your average working-class person could relate to.