Bass Player: Percy Jones

Transcribing Percy Jones bass parts is problematic as a lot of his stylistic idiosyncracies are very personal and unconventional. Sliding harmonics, non-specific notes and phrases etc peppper the more fundamental notes but what is particularly important with Percy’s playing is the sound! It is often the case that a bass part comes from a certain conventional sonic space and that almost any bass player can perform it and sound convincing e.g. a walking bass line, a 12-bar shuffle, root five Latin bass etc. WIth Percy, it is almost impossible to play anything he does on anythin other than a fretless bass but, even then, it rarely sounds like Percy.

Another request that came through the website (hi, Tony), the tune ‘Cambodia’, from the 1980 Brand X album ‘Do They Hurt’?, is one of the more ‘conventional’ of Percy’s performances but still has a few massive harmonic slides and perculasting details that are hard to pinpoint and even harder to execute. Percy has some unconventional right hand techniques that result in a very personal sound. Massively influential, Bilbo’s own Wal Custom Fretless bass was bought as a direct result of his admiration for Percy Jones whose CV includes work with Brand X, Nova, Brain Eno, Steve Vai/L.Shankar and a brief sting with Soft Machine.