HERBIE FLOWERS
Herbie Flowers (born Brian Keith Flowers, 19 May 1938, in Isleworth, Middlesex) is an English musician specializing in bass guitar, double-bass and tuba. He is noted as a member of Blue Mink, T. Rex and Sky and as one of Britain’s best-known session bass-players, having contributed to recordings by Elton John (Tumbleweed Connection, etc.), David Bowie (Space Oddity/Diamond Dogs), Lou Reed (Transformer including the prominent bass line of “Walk on the Wild Side”), Paul McCartney, and George Harrison: he also played bass on Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. By the end of the 1970’s, Flowers had played bass on an estimated 500 hit recordings. (More from Wikipedia)
In 1978, Chris Spedding was a key musician in one of the most ambitious concept albums of all time (and the best selling British concert/cast album ever), Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. Actor Richard Burton handled the narration, and the musicians are a virtual Who’s Who of the British rock scene of that era: Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, Chris Thompson of Manfred Mann, Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, bass guitarist Herbie Flowers (that’s him playing the prominent bass line on Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”), David Essex (“Rock On”), and actress/vocalist Julie Covington; she and Essex had been appearing together in early performances of the rock musical Evita. The album tells the story pretty much as The War of the Worlds was written by H. G. Wells (much of Burton’s narration is word-for-word from the novel) decades before Steven Spielberg’s film basically did the same; I consider War of the Worlds to be one of Spielberg.’s best movies and certainly his most disturbing.
(November 2011)
