Nick Beggs – Bass

The British bassist, Stick player and songwriter has a footprint that’s stamped across a wide range of genres including progressive rock, pop, Celtic, funk, and soul. Collectively, his own band and project releases have sold more than four million copies. He’s the prime architect of Kajagoogoo, a synth-pop band that catapulted to success in 1983 with the global smash “Too Shy” and periodically reemerges for recordings and performances.

After Kajagoogoo’s heyday, Beggs embarked on a career that found him working with some of the biggest names in rock and pop, including Belinda Carlisle, John Paul Jones, Howard Jones, Gary Numan, Maddy Prior, Cliff Richard, Midge Ure, Seal, and Tina Turner, just to name a few. In the progressive rock universe, he’s performed with Steve Hackett, Steve Howe, and Rick Wakeman on numerous tours and recordings. Beggs has also served as a primary band member and contributor to the progressive acts Iona, Lifesigns and Fish on Friday.

Currently, his focus is working with Steven Wilson, the progressive rock artist enjoying significant acclaim and commercial success with Hand. Cannot. Erase., his latest release. Beggs features prominently on all of Wilson’s last three studio albums and associated tours.

As a solo artist, Beggs has explored the solo Stick instrumental space across two albums: Stick Insect and The Maverick Helmsman. A recent compilation, The Darkness in Men’s Hearts, brings together the best of the two recordings, along with unreleased material. The discs showcase Beggs’ deft touch on the Stick, shifting from the kinetic to the ambient as he explores the wide-ranging melodic and rhythmic possibilities of the instrument.

Beggs is unique in that he also had a brief career as an A&R man for Phonogram Records in the early ‘90s. He experienced the cutthroat, numbers-driven world of major labels in a way few artists ever have. It helped further his pragmatic streak, one which finds him balancing aesthetics and audience appeal in order to propel his output as far as it can go. In addition, he’s a celebrated illustrator, best known for Dangerous Potatoes: 13 Stories About Evil Vegetables, a series of quirky children’s stories.

On stage, Beggs is known for his animated, commanding and occasionally show-stealing presence. Those tendencies also translate into his social media posts, often featuring incendiary and hilarious photos and content. When you’re in Beggs’ orbit, there’s never a dull moment.

The recording ‘The Raven That Refused To Sing’ explores the story of “an old man at the end of his life who is waiting to die. He thinks back to a time in his childhood when he was incredibly close to his older sister. She was everything to him, and he was everything to her. Unfortunately, she died when they were both very young.” The man becomes convinced that a raven, who visits the man’s garden, is something of “a symbol or a manifestation of his sister. The thing is, his sister would sing to him whenever he was afraid or insecure, and it was a calming influence on him. In his ignorance, he decides that if he can get the raven to sing to him, it will be the final proof that this is, in fact, his sister who has come back to take him with her to the next life.” The bass part is not massively demanding and the chart reflects that. The main challenge is the alternating bars of 3:4 and 4:4. There are a couple of fills that you can ignore if you want. The last note is the low C on a five string but you can play it higher and it still works.

I put the lyrics in the early stages as a guide to avoid having to count too much.