If you were a bass player in a big British pop band in the early Eighties, we envy you: it was a golden era for the instrument, especially if the music leaned more heavily on keyboards than guitars. New Order, Duran Duran, Japan, Kajagoogoo, A Flock Of Seagulls and the other nicely-coiffured big names all placed melodic, mids-heavy bass guitar at front and centre in their arrangements, and equally high in the mix. Add to that list the Scottish quintet Simple Minds, whose original bassist Derek Forbes gifted his band and fans with a ton of earworm lines.
Forbes, now 67, looks back on his seven-year stint with Simple Minds with good humour, both in this interview and in his new autobiography, A Very Simple Mind. As he remarks: “What bassists like me did at the time was in response to whoever said, ‘Bass should be felt and not heard’. To me, bass should be like warfare – you want the first few rows to shit themselves!”
