Spotify chucks prog rock my way on the regular. Right now, I've got Rick Wakeman's Merlin The Magician squirting through my headphones.
Is that the Strangler's bassist on there? I swear that's a bassline from something on The Raven. Nuclear Device, maybe.
Richard Newell says the google. No Stranglers performance according to Discogs.
Weird. Allowing for different production styles, it's a very similar sounding bass. Has my synaesthesia fooled, anyway.
Not Richard but Roger Newell. He said in an interview that for his stint in The English Rock Ensemble he recorded
Merlin using a Fender Precision, tuned down to A. JJB was using a Precision as well in those days, as was, for example, Ray Shulman from Gentle Giant, and they all played with a pick. Shulman's sound is more overdriven than Newell's, while JJB's was overdriven and played through speakers with ripped cones.
When Newell was to perform on the King Arthur album tour, Wakeman had Ian Waller of a very embryonic Wal Basses build something to out-do other bands who already used double necked instruments, Mike Rutherford in Genesis particularly. Newell originally sketched out a triple necked bass – fretted, fretless and 8-string fretted – but he and Wal determined that would've been too heavy, so Newell opted for just a double necked bass. But Wakeman thought that wasn't visual enough, so he suggested Wal put a guitar neck on the top. Newell protested that he didn't play guitar on any of the band's other material, to which Wakeman retorted that he would write something.
There's a similarity in sound from that bass that may be down to Wal's use of (rather muddy sounding if you ask me) Fender Mustang pickups on the two bass necks. The Mustang p/us are split single coils in the same manner as P-bass p/us.
The irony in it all came later, when Wakeman wound down the band ('putting it on ice' perhaps, heh) and offered the Wal to Newell for a price, which Newell couldn't afford. When Yes came to tour their "Going For The One" album, Wakeman lent the triple neck it to Chris Squire, who had recorded "Awaken" with regular, fretless and 8-string parts. Squire converted the guitar neck to three-quarters of an 8-string and the show went on. Because the Wal triple neck had by then become a famous instrument, and so associated with Squire, Wakeman eventually gave the bass to him. Newell was apparently Not Happy about that!
My favourite part on the studio cut of Merlin is the Minimoog part (7'35" to 7'55") where Wakeman almost seamlessly switches between, I think, two instruments. The first is his usual lead sound, and the second a coarser sawtooth for the bassier part. The switch to #2 happens at 7'38" and then back to #1 at 7'53". Wakeman was no slouch at shifting the Mini's octave setting whilst playing, but I wonder if this is actually two studio takes on different instruments, fading from one to the other and back again. If it was done on the fly, I am impressed.
