Strat bass with bridge humbucker – designed by me, built by Roger Giffin 1978/9
Tony Horkins examines the guts of the snake in the form of Neil Murray, bass and Ian Paice, drums.
We’d hardly closed the door behind us when he whipped it out. And what a size it was too! The same shape as a normal one, but a hell of a lot bigger. I’m referring, of course, to a bass guitar
belonging to Neil Murray, well-spoken thick string plonker with Whitesnake.
It’s a large kind of Stratocaster bass. 31″ scale and 24 frets because I wanted something I could really zoom about on. It’s got three Schecter jazz bass pickups on it, which are the third sets of pickups I’ve had on it. I started off with some Vox ones, but because they’re small it made it look like a Woolworth’s guitar. Right now, this is as good as it’s going to get.
So basically what the man’s talking about is a custom built guitar made to look like a Stratocaster. He’s even had a Fender transfer put onto the top of the head to make it look convincing or, as he puts it, ‘to stop it from looking like a copy.’
Originally I had a Fender fretless bass neck on it but I’ve had a new neck made for it. I really didn’t like the Fender neck. The shape was bad.
It transpires that one Roger Giffin is responsible for the making of the beast, and it’s not only its size that’s different. For instance it has a five way pick-up selector switch which gives except one position of the pick-ups available at his fingertips.
After all that, though, it’s not his main guitar. You may have noticed that Neil plays Kramer basses.
I use the 4001, though it has been altered a little. I changed the pick-ups because I don’t really like the ones they put on them. I’ve now got two pick-ups on it really close together. One is in the Precision position and one right next to it. They’re standard Di Marzio Precisions but round the wrong way, like on the Yamaha BB1200. It gives a much tighter sound.
Have you had any tuning problems due to heat?
Not that you’d notice really, I think perhaps once. It’s a very good guitar in a lot of ways, The body is so dense, creating a lot more sustain and volume. But in a way it makes it a more toppy sound which sometimes you don’t want. The neck’s very good. The action is very low which lets you bend the notes on it, which I do a lot, without the note going klunk.
So what amps do you use?
The main one is a Sunn Coliseum which is about 300 watts. It gives a fairly distorted kind of sound. I use that with an Acoustic 4 x 15 cabinet. My spare amp is a Peavey which I started off in the band with.
Neil’s musical background goes back as far as when he was a mere eight year old strapped to a piano stool.
I had piano lessons for five years, and I wish I had kept it up. The biggest mistake I ever made.
When he dropped piano lessons, he took up the trombone for a couple of years, took a few grades, then gave that up. Before that, when he was about 11, he started getting really interested in drums.
I used to play down at school in various groups.
He then ‘sort of’ graduated from there to bass when he was 17.
There’d been a guitar that had been converted to bass lying around school. I got hold of it and started practising on it. I took bits and pieces off of it and practically made a new bass from it in the woodwork room. When somebody came around looking for the original bass I just told them I didn’t know where it had got to.
He joined his first ‘real’ band after he got himself a Mustang bass, which again he felt the need to chop around and continually change.
I added loads of pick-ups to it and eventually ended up changing it back to the way it was originally.
The first real band was a thing called Gilgamesh. It was a jazz rock band which he got into after bumping into a guy at a party who needed a bass player. This was about six years ago, and he practised with them and did a few gigs for about nine months. That band was involved in one way or another with a band called Hatfield and the North, and the two bands eventually combined to form what is now known as ‘National Health. Neil went back to play with them for a while a few years later, but after that, through a guy called Clive Chaman who used to play with Jeff Beck and Kevin Coyne, he got into a band called Hanson who was led by the guitarist who’s now with Bob Marley and the Wailers.
He now calls himself Junior Marvin.
He went to the States with that lot for around six months and then, through Clive again, he replaced him in Cozy Powell’s band which, at the time, featured Bernie Marsden and Don Airey. When that finished Don joined Colosseum and, a few weeks later, Neil did too.
They were really looking for a singing bass player, but they couldn’t find one that could play well enough, so they settled for me. It was great playing with Gary (Moore) because he was one of my all-time favourites.”
The problem with Colosseum, from Neil’s point of view, was that there was so much going on that there wasn’t much for him to do.
If you’re playing with a really good drummer, and you’re both playing full board then it just sounds a mess. One of you has to shut up, and it had to be me. I got more and more fed up with that, so…
They say ‘once a jazz musician, always a jazz musician’. So doesn’t Neil ever miss what appears to be his roots? After all, Whitesnake is fairly straightforward.
Yes, though on the other hand we do a lot of jamming and messing around on things that are quite jazzy. Frankly, the kind of thing that I would really like to do which I haven’t really done much of at all is much more black funk stuff. But I don’t see the point of doing that over here when you’re just playing second fiddle to the Americans. If I wanted to do that I’d have to go to America, but if I went to America there are thousands of bass players who are ten times better than me at that kind of thing.”
So how do you rate your bass playing?
Well the trouble is the more you know the more there is to know. Technically I’m sort of on the edge of a cliff. Either you jump off and you try and fly in which case, for me, that would mean going into jazz, doing lots of reading and becoming a good soloist, or stay where you are which, in my case, is in rock n’ roll.
I have been influenced by the likes of Jeff Berlin, Jaco Pastorius, but I wouldn’t consider myself any way near those sort of players. I can cope with the sort of things that Jeff Berlin, for instance, would do with Bill Bruford. I played all the material that’s on their first album in rehearsals, but being able to cope with it and being able to give something more creative to it are two different things. Jeff has the harmonic knowledge and the technique to be able to do a lot of things which I don’t have. That sort of playing is so specialised that you have to really want to do that, and I’m not sure if I do. When it comes down to it my roots are not in jazz, they’re in rock n’ roll. The reason I started playing bass was mostly because of Jack Bruce. I thought Cream were fantastic. That sort of approach, something that expresses both your personality and is exciting to listen to and doesn’t just plod along appeals to me. Finding a place for that sort of bass playing is very hard to do.
So what do you like now musically?
Very little. I go out and buy lots of albums just to listen to the bass playing. I play them about twice and then don’t bother any more. Mainly it’s jazz funk kind of stuff. I keep hoping that the next Billy Cobham or Lenny White album will come up with something good. One of my favourite all time records was the first electric Chick Corea record. That was really exciting on all levels. The composition and the way everybody played, really as if they were not holding back anything at all, was great. So few people want to play that kind of thing that you kind of start settling for second best.
Are there any current chart people you admire?
Yes, I like the Police. I hope that’s not a cliché. All the people who are supposed to be in the ‘old wave’ are allowed to say the Police are all right.
At this point in the conversation we were joined by ian Paice, who has just replaced Dave Dowle in the Whitesnake line up. The majority of you will know that Ian was drummer in Deep Purple for many years, and then went on to form Paice, Ashton and Lord. Well now he’s back with his old mates David Coverdale and Jon Lord. So what happened to David Dowle?
Ian: He wasn’t playing what he liked best.
Neil: His roots are more in r ‘n’b and soul and jazz rock, that’s what he really started listening to heavily. His sound and his playing is geared in that direction. He’s a very good rock drummer too, and I always enjoyed playing with him, but, in a way, you could say he was just too versatile. He was never a true rock drummer who had developed his style from the word go in line with a band like Whitesnake.
Ian: There isn’t that much room in a rock n’ roll bands for all those incredibly intricate frills. It just clutters it.
Neil was talking earlier of having to adapt his style of playing for each band he’s been in, so I wondered if he’s had to change his style much within the same band after the arrival of a new drummer.
Ian: I’ve got closer to the way I’d like to be playing. After 18 months of playing with one guy you know what each other’s going to do. You fit each other like a glove though you also get into a rut. When somebody new comes along with totally different ideas within the same framework then it really makes you sit up and think again. There are some numbers where you have to completely re-think the bass part altogether, and that’s good.
Especially if I’m playing a totally different bass drum line. It makes nonsense if Neil is trying to do the same bass line that he was doing with Dave.
How important do you think it is for the bass and drums to work closely together?
Neil: My ideal is to hear bass and drums really tight. When Ian was in Deep Purple he was much more the star doing the interesting things and the bass player would be holding everything down. Being a bass player that role is not so exciting. To me if both people are giving off equal intensity it’s more exciting.
Ian: I believe that you should have a little bit of freedom and every now and then just do one thing that smacks together, and that’s enough. I don’t believe you’ve got to be exactly together all the time. It’s just little magic points, because if you’re magic all the way through it stops being
magic.
Do you ever have trouble with either of you throwing the other off course?
Ian: Well I’m totally self-centred when I’m playing so I don’t really notice. I’ve probably thrown Neil a few times, and I probably will for another few gigs yet. We’ve only done two gigs together at the moment.
Neil: It’s not so much throwing me of, more leading me to think ‘Oh yea, let’s go off in that direction.’
Micky Moody, for want of something better to do, had just walked into the room where we were talking, so I took the opportunity to ask him what differences he, as an outsider within the same band, has noticed with the arrival of a new drummer?
Micky: It’s totally different now. The other chap was a smashing drummer, but he didn’t really play with the band.”
Is it affecting your playing at all?
Yes, I think so. Now you can actually hear the beat coming. I can feel it coming. David was a bit too delicate in leading up to the beat.
Ian uses a large Ludwig kit, with just the single bass drum.
Ian: I know very few drummers who can actually play with two bass drums like they should be played. The kit has a 26″ bass drum, and the rest of the kit is scaled up to match.
Neil: His bass drum is so powerful that the band doesn’t actually need a bass player. In fact they’re going to give me the sack!
Is the kit custom made?
Ian: I don’t think there’s that much you can do to a drum that warrants it being made specially for you, except for the size. After all it’s just a piece of wood with a bit of plastic on the outside with two bits of metal holding the skins on. But yes, the size is custom built for me. I’m down to seven toms now, but I only play five of them. The other two just balance the kit out visually.
Don’t you ever use them?
Well, maybe if I miss the cymbal I’ll hit it!