You think of most of the great bass players in rock’n’roll – John Paul Jones, John Entwistle, Bill Wyman – and with very few exceptions, the archetype is of ‘the quiet one’; the sturdy rhythmic pillar around which the more flamboyant members of the group (in other words, the singer and the guitarist) can basically show off.
Then you come to Bad Company bassist Boz Burrell, who may have appeared, on the surface at least, to have conformed to this stereotype – the cool cat in the cowboy hat, smiling serenely behind his fretless bass – but who could not possibly have answered to the description of ‘the quiet one’. Certainly not in any sense that anyone who ever knew him might recognise.
