Heavy Weather

We bring two titans of rock bass together to hear their combined wisdom on all things connected to the low frequencies. Let’s hear it for Thunder’s Chris Childs and Stone Sour’s Johny Chow…

“I DIDN’T REALLY KNOW WHAT BASS WAS, BUT I SAW MY FRIEND DOING IT AND ASSUMED I COULD DO IT TOO ”

It’s been 30 years since the British veterans Thunder first bestrode a stage, and a mere 22 since Chris Childs joined them (he reckons they still think of him as a new arrival). The Iowa-based rockers Stone Sour are right on their heels, having formed back in 1992, with their bassist Johny Chow (yes, there’s just one N in his name; we predict a flood of “corrections”) signing up seven years ago. Aged 59 and 46 respectively, the two fleet-fingered low-enders bring decades of experience to our front cover, with Childs coming up in the era of Led Zeppelin and jazz-rock, and Chow a punkrock upstart. What they have in common is a determination to deliver bass of the highest quality, thousands of accumulated air miles en route to the world’s biggest arenas – and a stack of useful knowledge to impart at our once-in-a-lifetime bass conference. Let’s pull up a couple of chairs, pop some beers and watch them go...

Welcome, gentlemen. Tell us what you’re up to at the moment?

Chris Our new album, Please Remain Seated, is reworkings of old Thunder songs – but literally the only things the new versions have in common with the originals is the chords and the lyrics. We stripped everything back and approached them all differently. One of them, which was a full-on rocker before, is a lounge tune now, and it has a bass solo on it – the first one on a Thunder album. We did the songs live, which I love doing. Johny It was the same for us on our last album Hydrograd – old-school, live, and together in the studio. It’s the best way.

Chris We have our 30th anniversary coming up this year, so it was great to come full circle. Johny Thirty years is a hell of an achievement. Stone Sour have been around for a while too, correct?

Johny Since the Nineties, yeah. I met those guys when my band at the time, Systematic, supported them on their first tour. After that, I stayed friends with Jim Root [then-Stone Sour guitarist, also of Slipknot] and when I knew that I’d have some time off from the band I was in, Cavalera Conspiracy, I called Ozzy’s bassist Rob Blasko – who has a management company, and his ear to the ground – and asked him if he knew any bands who needed a bassist. Stone Sour had just recorded an album with Rachel Bolan of Skid Row on bass, but Rachel couldn’t do the tour. That was 2012, and I’ve been with them ever since. We’re close to the end of the Hydrograd cycle now, after close to two years on the road. It’s a great time for us. How did you get started on bass?

Johny When I was younger, my favourite band was U2, and my dad bought Rolling Stone for me the first time they were on the cover. My first album was the Star Wars soundtrack LP, with the gatefold sleeve; I listened to that a million times. My dad loved classical and opera, so that was always around me.

Chris I’ve got really eclectic tastes in music; I discovered rock when I was around 11 years old, which was Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple. But I also loved Motown; I listened to all kinds of stuff. I started playing the guitar when I was 11, and by the time I got to 15 I realised that there were far more guitarists in my area than bass players. Bass seemed like an obvious thing to do.

Johny It’s a similar story for me. I knew I wanted to play music with my friends, but I didn’t know what music was, let alone how to play it. But around the same age as you, Chris, I had a neighbour across the street who played drums, and another friend from school who played guitar, so I wound up with a Gibson 335 guitar that only had the four low strings on it. I didn’t really know what bass was, but I saw my friend doing it and assumed I could do it too. My friend’s dad had an amp, so we rolled off all the treble and pushed up the bass, and he told me to play single notes with my fingers and follow him. The 335 had flatwound strings on it, which helped solidify the low end a little more.

Which bassists influenced you? Johny For me it was John Paul Jones. If you listen to what he does with the kick, the hi-hat and the snare, and the transitions he does with walking up and down, you can hear that he and the drummer John Bonham move as a rhythm section and not just as separate musicians.

Chris JPJ was a huge influence on me, absolutely. The way he worked within the song was incredible. My favourite bass players have always been those who play for the song. For example, John Entwistle wasn’t a particular favourite of mine when I was growing up, but having learned a few songs by the Who, I realised exactly what he does and how much he brings to the songs. There’s something that he did that I’ve never noticed before; in some passages, he will play the same rhythm as the lead vocal. Not necessarily the same melody, but exactly the same rhythm. Johny It’s funny that you say that, because the Who was another one of my favourite rock’n’roll experiences. When HBO first came out, they showed a concert by the Who and my dad let me stay up late to watch it. Much later in my playing, I became aware of exactly what you’re saying about the importance of Entwistle in that band. He made the bass very much its own instrument, especially later on, when rock bass was just there to fill things in. Back in the Nineties, bass didn’t have its own identity; it could have been substituted with a keyboard. I loved Chris Squire, too – there was something in his fingers. It was all about the way he played, rather than his tone. A lot of people don’t realise that tone is in the fingers. He had such an aggressive, in-your-face way of playing that you couldn’t fail to notice it.

What were the key moments in your bass careers?

Johny

Chris mentioned Motown earlier. When I was about 20 years old, I moved to New York City and started going to see club gigs. I remember hearing soul and funk bass parts, with slap bass driving the lines, and thinking ‘Whoa!’ After that I got into ska and then reggae, with those bass-lines that never stop moving and never quit. That led me into James Brown, and I really started to understand it. I’d sit there and I’d listen to Bootsy Collins and my jaw would be on the table.

Chris I did it the other way round; I got into Louis Johnson and Jaco Pastorius and then got into rock later on. I’d never heard a single Thunder song before I joined them in 1995. I was with Go West before that, which was Eighties pop with very precise bass parts. It was all about being really tight and technical, which was why I wasn’t a fan of John

Entwistle in the early days. As I’ve got older, my playing has got looser. You really need to have all of those styles under your belt, and be able to call on them all.

Johny I watched some clips of you on Top Of The Pops. I love it – that music is awesome. Chris Thanks! It was a great time to be a bass player. I was working in the Bass Centre in Romford, and on Saturdays it was hell, because it was the golden age of slapping. I worked with Stuart Watson, who designed the first Trace Elliot amplifier. Rob Green was in the next room, designing Status basses.

Johny I know a lot of musicians who got serious about their playing when they were 15

or 16, studying music, taking lessons and really understanding how to read and write music. To this day I’ve never had a lesson.

Chris Me neither.

Johny For me, the moment came when I got sucked into early punk and new wave. I went to a show in Buffalo where a local punk rock band, the Painkillers, were playing – and my jaw was on the floor. At the same time, though, it seemed attainable, because it was at a low level; the kids were all slamming into each other and sweating on each other. My other friends were all having their first concert experience with AC/DC in arenas full of 30,000 people. That seemed so unattainable to me – they were rock stars, untouchable – but punk rock made me think ‘I can do this’. That really drew me in to playing music.

Talk us through the basses you’ve played over the years.

Chris

Right at the very start, I built my own basses. Later I went through Music Man basses; I still have my fretless Stingray, which I absolutely love.

Johny Great basses.

Chris I had a couple of Status basses, which are now long gone – which is one of my greatest regrets, although I’d probably never play them nowdays if I still had them, because their tone was very much of its time. I’ve also got various Fender Precisions and Jazzes, but not vintage ones. I’ve also got a really nice Gretsch Electromatic, which I use when a semi-acoustic feel is needed. If I had a lot of money, I’d have a lot of basses.

“IN THE NINETIES, BASS DIDN’T HAVE ITS OWN IDENTITY; IT COULD HAVE BEEN SUBSTITUTED WITH THE KEYBOARD”

Johny Ha ha, I hear that!

Chris I also have a Rickenbacker which I bought because I’ve always loved Chris Squire’s playing and his tone, but I’ve never sounded like him because – as you said, Johny – it’s all in the fingers. A lot of people don’t realise this, but everybody’s playing is in their fingers. You won’t sound like another person, because you’re not that person. You can buy the same gear and study their playing, but if you’re not Chris Squire you’ll never sound like Chris Squire.

Johny Absolutely right. My very first bass was a Charvel – neck-through, pointy headstock, midnight blue sparkle. At the time I was just plugging into amps and messing around; I didn’t know about electronics or EQ-ing or anything because I was so young. From there I graduated to a Rickenbacker because I grew up in Buffalo, near Canada, and the radio stations up here always played Rush, so I was a huge fan of Geddy Lee. After that I wanted to get back to the bass tones of the music I grew up listening to, like the Clash. All those bands played four-string Precisions, so I bought a 1971 P-Bass in New York City and I still use it in the studio today. It has a tiger-stripe in the headstock wood, which a guy at Fender told me was extremely rare because it would have been considered a flaw. I bought it for $800

and the last time it was valued, it came out at $3500. It’s a great bass.

Tell us about your signature bass guitars. Chris

Mine is a Sandberg, who I signed up with a couple of years ago. They’re a small company and they keep volume down and quality up. The basses are beautifully finished and they’re not incredibly expensive. I started with a California VM, and I loved it; it has such an aggressive sound, but it didn’t look rock’n’roll enough for Thunder, so I mocked up a bass shape in Photoshop using the paint job from the Sandberg Forty Eight, their Thunderbirdstyle bass, and they took it from there.

Johny German engineering – you can’t beat it. I’m endorsed by Warwick, who make amazing basses. I played in local punk-rock bands in New York City for 12 or 13 years, and then I moved to Los Angeles around 2001 to join the band My Ruin, who asked me to tour the UK with them. All I had was my Fender P and a few pedals in my suitcase. After that I hooked up with Systematic, who were endorsed by ESP, so they got me a few basses; I played them for five years or so. Then I played with Fireball Ministry, a southern rock band, and eventually with Cavalera Conspiracy. Around 2010 I went to the Musikmesse in Frankfurt with Seymour Duncan, who were distributed by Warwick in Europe, and that was how I got to know the artists guy there. My custom Streamer is very versatile; I used it in Cavalera Conspiracy, which is an extremely fast, heavy band, and in Stone Sour, where a song like ‘Through Glass’ is almost like a prom song. I wanted it to have a classic Fender P tone, so we used a swamp ash body, a maple neck and a rosewood fretboard. I use Nordstrand pickups, which are amazingly versatile.

Are you both equally happy with four or five strings?

Chris

I tend to play five-strings most of the time now. I’m happy with four too, but most of the things I do require a B string. I don’t play six-strings; when you go that far, you’re entering guitarist world! I’m not a soloist, although I admire bassists who can do it. I hung out with Snow Owl at the last London Bass Guitar Show. He’s the nicest guy you’ll ever meet, and when I saw him play I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or shit myself. He’s a real virtuoso soloist – the sort of bassist who should play a six-string bass.

Johny I agree. Just because I don’t play a certain style, it doesn’t mean I don’t have an appreciation for that style. For myself, what I enjoy playing doesn’t require six strings, or even five most of the time. The same goes for eight-string and 12-string basses; I’ve tried them, and the tones are amazing, but the tuning issues are terrible unless you’re in E. All my basses are four-strings, although on the last Cavalera tour I did, I took a five-string along to cover the low B tunings.

How many basses do you take out live? Johny

With Stone Sour we take out six basses; three front-runners for different tunings, and three backups.

Chris I take out two with Thunder.

Johny I wish it was only two, believe me! Chris We keep it simple; there aren’t any dropped tunings in Thunder. What’s funny is that I also play in an Eagles tribute band with four guitarists. They take out about 25 guitars between them, and I take a single Sandberg! The one I take has a humbucker and a splitcoil pickup, so it has all the tones I need.

So what does the future hold? Chris

We fall into the classic rock category now, I feel; if you’re around long enough, and you can still play, that happens. Thunder has a second generation of fans now, with parents bringing their kids to the shows. Our singer Danny Bowes, who is also Thunder’s manager, and our guitarist Luke Morley are very smart people in their respective fields. Danny is so forward-thinking, and Luke is incredibly prolific when it comes to songwriting.

Johny When I’m off the road, I spend time running our restaurant in Buffalo, Misuta Chows. Japan is my favourite country and Tokyo my favourite city, and the inside of our restaurant is made to look like it’s outdoors, serving Japanese street food. The second floor has pinball machines and classic arcade games like Defender and Pac-Man, because I’m a child of the Eighties.

Chris We’re very fortunate, but we also work very hard. I’m also an audio mixer and a graphic designer, so I’m always busy.

Johny I’ve also been very fortunate, but I don’t think it has anything to do with my bass-playing – it’s because I’m an easygoing, laid-back guy. Half of being employable in a band is your talent, the other half is determined by whether people can live with you on a tourbus for six months!

Any final nuggets of wisdom for our readers? Chris

If you’re a bassist, you’re born with it. If you’re gonna play, you’re gonna play, regardless.

Johny I agree with that. Bassists for life!