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An Interview with
Martin Simpson |
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| On behalf of every member of the South African Bass Players Collective, I would like to thank Martin Simpson for the diligence, perseverance and creativity he expends in keeping our club together and conducting our monthly meetings as chairman. Without him, the cameraderie between us would not have developed if he hadn’t put in the time and effort to contact us separately and bring us together in this one of a kind club in South Africa. Hopefully, the strength we accumulate as a collective will permeate the “bands” of other musicians who may even form similar clubs upon being impressed by our will and solidarity and our cd. The Bottom Line Magazine itself requires a huge amount of energy and I know I speak for all of us of our excitement when upon our arrival at each meeting, we find new bits of creativity made by Martin, i.e. the “trading”bookmarks, stickers, membership cards “The Bottom Line” etc. These add a sense of fun and anticipation to the most enjoyable meetings we are so fortunate to have. Thanks to Martin’s organisational capacity and intent to pursue and make something work and keep on working. For this, we owe it to him to offer our heartfelt support and praise. Thank you Martin, on behalf of your friends, thank you for believing in us. How much time (per week) do you work on compiling “The Bottom Line” and organising the monthly meetings? Firstly, before we get going, I would just like to say that I feel really honoured to be interviewed and I feel extremely humbled by your very kind words. Thank you. As for time put into “The Bottom Line” newsletter, I have to say that I don’t put anywhere near enough YET. Hopefully, sometime in the not too distant future, circumstances will allow me to put much more time in and we’ll see something much more professional. Membership of the collective will dictate to a large degree, the future of the newsletter. Whether it grows into something that remains in paper form or becomes a document to be downloaded from the website will be decided by our numbers. I can’t really take any credit for much in the way of organising meetings. Concs organised all the meets at the Bassline (even the one he didn’t attend) Steve organised our meet at his Café, Jason organised the meet at Braamfontein and Marc has organised the meet at Pretoria Tech so I really can’t take any credit there. I think that this is a good place to get some things cleared up. Sure, I came up with the initial idea of a compilation album but it was Concs that suggested we have meetings and Kai that suggested the website idea that has now become a reality. YOU are the reason that “The Bottom Line” exists. Had you not had the idea to bring a camera along to that first meeting, the minutes would have been printed out on both sides of an A4 piece of paper and the newsletter itself would probably never have come about. Inspired by your initiative, I put the first "Bassicly 4 U” together. You took nine pics so I used four for the front page, stuck the minutes in the middle with a few other little snippets and had no idea what to do for the back page so I just stuck the contacts list on the back which was about forty of us at the time. What drives you to keep this project together I really feel that it’s about time we had a brotherhood established in this country. I come from a totally non-musical family and I feel so lucky to have had so much fun playing a musical instrument these past thirty years – it’s taken me to lots of places I would never have been to otherwise and I thought to myself that I really should put something back in. The thing with me is that I never give up. I wonder if that sounds like a boast but it really isn’t meant to be, you see I’m a bit of a cheapskate really – I look back at the time I’ve already spent doing something and I don’t want all that energy to go to waste so I carry on going forward. I learnt how to ride a motorbike when I was a youngster and put in a lot of time working at keeping myself alive and every now and then, when I think about selling my Ninja, I look back at all that time and effort that I put in going to waste and look back to the future and just carry on. I don’t know if that makes much sense to you but that’s just the way I am! Adrian Lay once told me that he admires my tenacity with this project but I’m really not trying – I’m just being me! Where do you see this collective going? What’s it’s potential? I had quite a bit of a moan in this months editorial column because I feel this collective has the potential to become something bigger than any of us can imagine but it will only be so if all of us do one tiny little task each. At the moment I’m bigger than the collective because of my input but this is totally wrong – NOBODY should be bigger than the collective. The whole thing should be so strong that if a member falls, the collective would hardly feel it – at the moment, if I fall, we’ll all fall together and that must be corrected VERY SOON. I want to see you and Concord interviewed on Morning Live before the end of the year and if this doesn’t happen I’ll be extremely disappointed but then I’ll just push to get it to happen next year. Somewhere along the way we're going to be noticed but only if we all pull together to make it happen. We have to make it happen, it won’t happen by itself! What efforts would you like to see from your fellow members? Or what other features would you like to see at meetings or in the magazine? I’d really like to see people climbing over each other to have an active part of the collective. I’ve noticed which people are just passive members and which members want to get ’stuck in’. Kerry Hiles is probably the next most enthusiastic member and of course, there’s you taking care of the minutes when Concs is unavailable. Sello has the potential to be an active member – he shows a lot of enthusiasm. Llewellyn is another one that wants to play some sort of part – there are a few others as well. They have been noticed! On the subject of other features for the Bottom Line. I would like to see someone do a ‘At The Session’ article and I’d really love to see a ‘A Day In The Life Of…..’ type article where one of our younger members tags along with someone like yourself, Denny or Concs for the day (when you’ve got a busy schedule that is) and tells us all what you get up to. Are you happy with the progress we’ve made so far? And at this early stage, has it met with your expectations? I’m ecstatic about the progress made so far. You must remember that a whole new mentality has to be practised for this collective to become a success. We all have to keep in mind that we aren’t out there all alone anymore we’re a family and we’re going to be there for each other through thick and thin. That mentality is starting to develop – it’s got a long way to go, but the improvement this past six months is really encouraging and I think we’re going to make it. What’s your wish as a bass player? That’s a very difficult question to answer because I’m not really a bass player! I’m not really a musician either for that matter! Carlo seems to be the only person to have figured that out – man, that guy has got a pair of ears on him! These past five years have taught me that I’m more of an “ideas man” than anything else. Let me try to explain in a few sentences what I mean. Paul McCartney and Pino Paladino are bassists that simply ooze musicality. I ooze creativity. As I said earlier, I don’t come from a musical family – I don’t have a musical bone in my body. Have another listen to my album Bass To Bass – as a musician I SUCK but the album is cram packed with an hours worth of crazy lunatic ideas from the 4 3 2 1 intro to the huge splash at the end. 99% of musicians wouldn’t dare try to do the things I do – I make my own rules and break them when necessary! To my mind, a great musician is someone that’s got that right balance of natural musicality, technical ability and intense creativity – Mozart for instance. I have the intense creativity but weigh in woefully light in the other two departments so to answer your question in a nutshell – I have no wishes as a bass player because I’m not one. What equipment do you use and how many basses do you own? I think my equipment is probably the most documented out of all of us in the pages of the newsletter but for those that haven’t pieced it together, I’ve got a Gibson Thunderbird, a B.C Rich Mockingbird and a Hagstrom H8 eight string bass back in England and down here I have a Warwick Streamer 4 string and a Cort Artisan 5 string. The amp I’ve owned for the past seventeen years is a Peavy Combo 300, which has one 15” Black Widow speaker. I also have a 4 track Fostex desk which I use to get my ideas together on. What equipment is on your wish list? Actually I don’t really have a wish list. I’m perfectly happy with the Warwick and Cort. I suppose a fretless would be nice to have again but I’d have to get my intonation back to where I had it in the eighties and I don’t really have the time nowadays to put that much time in. My Peavy has been used as a stand for the t.v. for the last two years. I plug straight into the Fostex desk and put the earphones on when I’m playing at home and I usually use Roland Westgate’s amp (thanks mate) when I’m recording at B# Studios. What and when got you started in this industry? I got started in November 1972. I sent off an order form to a music shop in Surrey England and my bass – a Columbus Jazz copy, arrived in the post a few weeks later! What a weird start – I had no idea that you were supposed to try the thing out first! What’s your worst and best moments as a bassist? My worst moment in my musical history is the time I came out on stage with the band and someone shouted “Hey guys, your vans on fire!” We all rushed out the exit to see smoke pouring out the van – it turned out to be just some smouldering rags our roadie had left on the engine but it completely threw me for the entire evening. My best moment was at the tail end of ’85 – I was down in Cape Town on holiday and was enjoying an evening with some friends at a pub called The Perseverance and the bassist called me up on stage to play with the band while he sang. I got a huge round of applause from the crowd and walked on air for the next few days! How would you like to be remembered Well I doubt very much that I’ll be remembered as a great bassist (ha ha ha). But to be serious for a moment, I think my focus has shifted in the last few years from a player to an organiser. About five or six years ago I was talking to a youngster called André and he didn’t know I played bass guitars so he freely spoke his mind about bass players needing to get themselves a life. You see, in the eyes of the public, the bassist is the introspective guy in the band – very serious, into his music and nothing else which is utter trollop isn’t it? What I want to do is to bring to Joe publics attention that we’re really a fun loving bunch of people – sure, we love our music, but we also know how to live life – to the fullest! The way I’d like to be ‘preserved in history’ so to speak is for MAD magazine to do a send up of me and Jaco coming together. I can just imagine Jaco trying to impress me with all these outrageous harmonic concepts that he’s come up with and there’s me getting really irritated by him because he’s disturbing me while I’m trying to read ‘The Life and Times of Leonado Da Vinci’ who just happens to MY personal idol! And there I go again with another crazy idea! |
