Paul Gray Interview

In 2001 I had the honor of interviewing Paul Gray for the original Limit Club site. Here it is again for your reading pleasure...

November 16th 2001: Paul has always been regarded by most Damned fans as being their best bassist. He's definitely one of my favorites, Damned or otherwise. He joined The Damned in 1980 and stayed until 1983 recording Live At Shepperton, The Black Album, Friday The 13th EP, and Strawberries with them. He then joined UFO. Previously he'd been in Eddie And The Hotrods who's group photo, as most Damned fans know, graced the back sleeve of some of the first copies of The Damned's debut album in"error" in 1977. He also participated in several Damned reunion tours from the late 80's until the mid 90's. Paul's a busy guy these days and has his own website, www.paulgraybass.co.uk

I didn't ask Paul too many Damned related questions since pretty much everything related to his Damned days is covered in depth on his personal website. This interview mainly focuses on him and his bass playing history in general.

Very special thanks to Paul for doing this interview for me!

Q:How old were you when you first took up bass and what
made you decide on bass? Did you take lessons or are
you self taught?

Paul: Self taught - have a look on my website for more on the above.

Q:Do you recall the first song you ever learned?

Paul: er, no idea. Might have been "Is it love", a T.Rex b-side, only cos I
didn't know how to tune a bass and whenever I plonked along to it it
sounded about right! Probably something fron "Deep Purple in Rock" too
ad "Get down & get with it" by Slade - crackin' song.

Q:What was your first bass/amp setup?

Paul: see my website, I'll be addig loads about this later.

Q: What other bassists had the biggest influence on you?

Paul: Roger Glover, Lemmy, John Entwistle. Rather gives the game away
doesn't it!!

Q: How soon after starting to play did you form your
first band and what did you call yourselves?

Paul: First concert was school, I was 13, about a year after I got my first
bass. I played alomg with the school orchestra for some dodgy rock
operathe music teacher had written. It was actually the hardest thing I've
ever had to play! He wrote all the bass parts out in notation and it
meant bugger all to me, so I learnt the whole thing by ear and
pretendedto read along. Basically I bluffed it! After taht I did one gig in a
dockers club in Tilbury, Essex, with a bunch of older guys, i remember
doing "Black Magic Woman" by Santana and "Hey Joe", but the rest is a
blank. The rest of the time I was a bedroom bassist - Black Sabbath,
Hawkwind - until I answered the ad for Eddie and the Hot Rods in June
1975.

Q:What/Where was your first live gig and who were you playing with at the time?

Paul: Apart from the two above it was at the Queens Hall, Westcliff, near
Southend, a week after I joined the Hot Rods, supporting a local r'n'b
bloke called Mikey Jupp. I was 16 and had to learn 15 songs in a week!
There were about 300 punters and it was fantastic. Exactly a week
later we had our first London gig at a pub called "The Kensington".
Just four months later we signed to Island Records. I never really stopped
until a couple of years ago!

Q: You favor the Gibson Thunderbird from what I've noticed but earlier on you used Rickenbackers correct?What made you change to the TBird? And can you shed any light on the age old debate about Rickenbacker 4001's necks not being able to handle the heavier tension of roundwound strings?

Paul: Yeah rickies were great, but no two were the same, you had to be careful. The necks went on all the ones I used for gigging - hot gig,cold truck constntly I guess, nothing to do with the strings. The truss rods were a bugger to fix, there was only so much you could do. Thelast gig I did with one was in Budapest with UFO in 1985. It was my mono one,no character to it. I trashed it on stage during the last song. Too late I realised that basses werent exactly 10 a penny in Communist Hungary! The next gig was in Stockholm, and when we arrived 2 days later and my basstech JJ rang the record company and got them to take us round all the vintage guitar shops. He'd worked for Slade and was full of Brummieblag - "bet I can get the fookin' label to pay for it!" he said. And he did, too. I've never seen so many lovely basses, including a Gibson"fuzz bass" which i'd never seen before. Loads of Gibsons and fenders,all vintage, but no Rickies. I disliked Fenders and tried a couple of Thunderbirds - terrific! The best was a 76 reverse body reissue- I didn't even plug it in, it just felt completely right. And when I did, t growled, so i wanted it even more. It was $1500 - thank youPhonogram! They said they'd bill our British label but if they did Inever heard about it. I've used it on every single gig since, the headstock's been broken off 3 times and just superglued back!

Q: Your bass tone, especially with The Damned, is verydistinct. One song in particular that always comes to mind is 13th Floor Vendetta from The Black Album. You got an absolutely wicked tone on that song! Do you remember what sort of setup you using when recording the Black Album and namely how you got such a tone on that song? Its been the subject of much discussion on the Damned message board quite a number of times!

Paul: See "basstuff" to be added to my site in December, I'll go into this in some detail.

Q: Billy Bad Breaks is one of my favorite Damned songs, from probably what is my favorite era of The Damned(Fri 13th EP circa 1981) It has what I condsider one of the best bass parts of any rock song ever, still blows me away everytime I hear it. I'd always assumed it was one of your songs due to the bassline being the main part of the song, is this correct? If so did you write the lyrics as well? Is "Billy Bad Breaks" based on anyone in particular?

Paul: Well thank you kindly! It was one of the first things I wrote on my portastudio. 20 minutes it took I think. Yes lyrics as well. Its about a character in a book called "Snowblind", about cocaine
smuggling, who was always getting busted, silly sod. Captain played drums on it I think.

Q:You mention on your site that you've also been teaching bass, have you found that to be a rewarding experience? Do you ever have students come in wanting to learn Hot Rods or Damned songs?

Paul: I don't have a traditional way of teaching - too bloody boring! I show'em the shortcuts and teach them how to work stuff out for themselves. I've got loads of stuff pre-recorded on cassette and use Cubase or Logic Audio too. It all depends what they wanna learn. I draw a line at musos and Mark King fans, they can go elsewhere!

There's so much crap written in rags like Guitarist. The bass line to "Beginning of the End", a Hot Rods track, was tabbed out a few years ago. They made up a load of guff that wastotally misleading about how I played it and it was full of mistakes. It took me 2 days to work it out! Since then I've had an anti - crusade against tab! Funnily enough I did a seminar a few years back for "Bassist" magazine at the Wembley Music Fair in London with the unfortunately named Guy Pratt who is Pink Floyd's bassist. "What are we gonna start with" I asked him. "Fucked if I know, lets go get a beer" he replied, so we did. His approach to inventing basslines turned out to be the same as mine, just go for it! The assembled muso masses couldn't comprehend this at all. I'll be putting more about this up on my site next month.
As long as you know wether its major or minor and you know your pentatonics the world's your lobster. Its like a musical "join the dots".

Not many want Damned or Rods stuff, oddly enough more want UFO. At the moment its Blink 182, Sum 41, and Alien Ant Farm with a bit of Slipknot (a bit tricky on a 4 string bass!) that they're into god help me.

Q: Can you tell us a little about tinnitus? What are the symptoms like? Any advice you can give for others who have it or how to prevent it?

Paul: Its a bloody nuisance. Its effectively stopped me touring. Its a constant ringing, around 5k. Its a bit like having a phone ringing in both ears constantly. I've had it 8 years and can point to a particular
loud gig with Captain in France in 1994 (due to abysmal monitoring)after which it kicked in big time and got progressively worse. That and playing with cymbal-mad drummers for 20 years. I know I played loudly but tinnitus is exacerbated by high frequencies. I think tho' the main cause was songwriting on headphones. I always used headphone monitoring, partly cos'I preferred it and partly cos' I used to write thru' the night. After a few beers your top end of hearing goes, so you whack it up a bit. Your ears start to get used to teh volume so you whack it up bit more. before you know it you've been working 6 hours and don't realise how loud its got. I have to wear special earplugs every gig I go to now, and its even hard to enjoy going to a pub if its noisy, even traffic noise is sometimes hard to handle. Its a bummer! i've been with this Professor who was Pete Townsends consultant - apparantly my tinnitus level is one of the loudest ever recorded, which I could well have done without knowing! Advice- try not to let it stress you out but its easier said than done. I find a few gins always helps too! Theres gonna be a whole lot more younger people with it soon - walkmans are deadly - and the level in dance clubs is way up on most gigs. I generally find newsgroups and website useless.

Q: Anything else you'd like to say...advice for aspiring bassists or other snappy comments? :)

Paul: Don't worry about getting it note perfect. i've probably never played the same song in the same way twice, ever. If its been recorded then history, someones already done it, theres no point trying to work it out note for note. Its all down to inventiveness and feel. Take the basics and make it your own. I think my best playing is on "Hubble Bubble", the Mischief album which will be available at the beginning of 2002. It was great fun to record. Theres some pretty mad basstuff on there that, makes me laugh every time I hear it! I defy anyone to work out "Hyperventilating"!!