We are very saddened to hear that the incredible musician, Danny Thompson, has passed away at the age of 86. We only recently featured him a couple of weeks ago as our Hounds of Love Person of the day…we know that Kate adored him. Pull Out The Pin, Watching You Without Me, Rubberband Girl (Director’s Cut) and Misty are all Kate Bush tracks that Danny played on.
Update: Kate has remembered her friend Danny Thompson on her official site:
You never just worked with Danny. You also worked with his double bass he called Victoria. The two of them were joined at the hip and together they were the most fascinating storytellers – earthy and of the wild.
Danny was the sweetest, dearest man and a real character. A rare and special treasure.
I remember seeing him play live many times with the brilliant John Martyn and I never dreamed that I would get to work with such an incredible talent.
Thank you Danny for setting the work on fire with Victoria. I’m going to miss you so much!
Kate.
Danny was an English multi-instrumentalist best known as a double bassist. He had a long musical career playing with a large variety of other musicians, particularly Richard Thompson and John Martyn, as well as Nick Drake, Donovan and Bert Jansch, and was a founding member of the British folk-jazz band Pentangle.
Danny first worked with Kate on The Dreaming album, adding string bass to Pull Out the Pin. “She used to come and see me with John Martyn. She is a wonderful lady, fantastic. On Pull Out the Pin they put the bass through a sampler. Instead of having a pure acoustic sound they did their own thing. They asked ‘Is that ok?’ I said ‘I’m just the server. You paid me to work for you, do what you like.’ I am not going to get precious, ‘Don’t mess with my bass sound.’” On Hounds of Love, Danny can be heard playing on Watching You Without Me. “She is a dream person to work with. People assume that these iconic people are beyond touch. You pull out to her house and she says ‘Hello Danny, want a cup of tea?’ Then you go in the studio and it is the other person that is serious about the music. It is a great profession to be in when you work with great artists who are also really fine people.”
As with Eberhard Weber, Kate knew where best to use Danny’s unique bass gifts. Writing in the Kate Bush Club newsletter, she said: “With Danny we used a quite live sound–you can hear him plucking and pulling the strings in the ambient room, which we found attractive. Paul (Hardiman, engineer) got a great sound and balance between the sound of the bass and the ambience of the room, and Danny got a fabulous feel for the track — like a jungle cat, and very moody. Danny is a very sensitive player, and again, he loves to know what the track’s about, and who or what he’s meant to be; he has a real “feel”.“
Later in Kate’s career, Danny was asked back to add his bass touches to the re-worked Rubberband Girl on Director’s Cut and Danny’s bass also underscores Kate’s magnificent epic track, Misty, from 50 Words For Snow, both released in 2011. Last year, when interviewed for Louder magazine, Danny had this to say about Kate: “It was just a great creative process. She was definitely in control. I saw her recently, and she was just that same beautiful person. It’s so refreshing…the really great ones are always ‘normal’ – they’re not different at all or affected by it all. They’re not touched by all that’s going on around them; they’re just doing something they really love.”
The great producer, Tony Visconti, remembered Danny on his Facebook page yesterday: “Even though he was a first call bassist for recording sessions, he was actually a bit insecure about his status. Other musos would fall over to work with him, but Danny didn’t think he was all that good, because he was a humble man, a charming man, a salt of the earth man, and, man, he could make that bass of his sing!”
p.s. Danny has left us with a wealth of wonderful clips on his official Youtube page. Check them out and get to know this lovely musical genius a bit more. Farewell, humble, brilliant Danny x
Leave a Reply