the boot, and on the Lou Reed recording it
was such a sparse track – all Lou Reed’s
songs, very easy, very simple – and it was
just three chords in the whole song. And
I – the line I played was C to an F, to a C to
an F, and a C and a D and an F and a D,
and he said “do that again, Herbie, yeah,
just … just do that again”. And – it sounded
okay and then the engineer said “got any
ideas how we can beef it up a bit?” and I
said if I go and overlay another bass line,
not on the double bass but on the electric
bass, and it’ll fill in that bit of the register
between the low notes and the higher
notes and it sounded great. Portamento –
that means a musical term that describes
pitch sliding from one note to another and
Lou said “that’s divine, that’s absolutely
lovely”. And that was the end of that. It’s
a distinctive bass sound and I only did it
once, but that’s my job, you know?
When we did Rock On, David Essex’s big
hit that launched him in America, it was a
number one all round the world – I asked
the engineer if he would ‘put me in the
bathroom’ – that means put a lot of echo on
the bass sound …so it sounds as though
you’re in the Albert Hall, or in the bathroom.
And also, can you put a repeat on it, so
that my note that I play, it plays itself again
a quarter of a second later so it’s going,
instead of boom it’s going boom-boomboom-boom-boom…so that you get this
duh-duh-duh-duh-duh, da-da-da-da-da.
And it worked, but you could only do that
on that one record. If you tried to do it on
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another record it would sound like Rock
On. And it works on that, but I don’t get
royalties for coming up with that. It’s
not the song, it’s the arrangement. And
arrangements don’t generate income,
not in this country anyway.
I went home not thinking about it and
six months later Johnnie Walker, a disc
jockey, phoned me up and said “I’m
going to play that record”. I said “which
one? He said that “Walk on the Wild
Side”. I said “what’s that?” “Because,
you know, you did that track for Lou
Reed”. I said “oh yeah, oh yeah”. I had
been in and out of the studio in three
days and we recorded 12 songs, which
included Goodnight Ladies, it also
included Perfect Day, which in their own
way are classics.
I only knew him for three days. Never
spoke to him from that day to this. He’s
not my friend, it was a case of I worked
for him. A job, you know. If you had a job
ten years ago, you wouldn’t go back to
that office and say “oh, hello!” You’d be,
why did I go back there?
I sing to the cat when she comes in. I
don’t ask whether she’s hungry. I sing
a little song to her. She looks at me so
adoringly. That’s why you have cats. You
can be soppy with them, you know. They
keep you company.
or painters. We have a little thing that
we can do like even play music, that
implies childhood and that sort of thing.
A lot of people, they don’t play at all,
they don’t lark about at all, and half the
time in a music situation the musicians
are larking about, all the jazz players I
know, any old footage you see, the band
are having an absolute whale of a time,
‘cause they’re doing something with
other people of a like mind where they’re
not actually having to talk to each other.
When you’re making nice music, you
actually stop saying things like “I’m
going to make a cup of coffee”. You don’t
have to say something to yourself. It’s
just – you’re playing music and you’re
looking at people either sitting there
entranced or jumping up and down.
Something that Jon Lord [Jonathan
Douglas “Jon” Lord was an English
composer, pianist, and Hammond
organ player known for his pioneering
work in fusing rock with classical or
baroque forms, especially with Deep
Purple] wrote to me a couple of lines
that Shakespeare borrowed from a chap
called Edwards about how music softens
the hardest heart of man. It’s really
beautiful and I totally agree with it.
If there was just more music…
Interviewed by Liza Laws
And we don’t get enough chance to
be soppy except for actors, musicians
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