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Riding down low
Glenn Hughes got himself new favourite bass guitars — he is now playing instruments from a British company called Ashdown. Two models in particular caught his attention: The Low Rider and a P-style The Arc (pictured above).
He first spotted these basses at the 2020 NAMM, and they made their live debut at the Dead Daisies London gig on November 10.
“Glenn instantly fell in love with the look and playability of our Low Rider bass at the show,” the company said in a statement. “After sitting and playing it for quite some time we were asked if it came in gold, and could it have a tortoise shell pick guard?”
Hughes was also on the lookout for a P-style bass, which, – with its single custom wound split humbucker, vintage-style string-through bridge with brass saddles and optional gold finish – fit the description of the Arc.
Thanks to Guitar World for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
NEVER let the FACTS get in the way of a good story eh? The DP bass guitar hero or even the DP ‘Low End Ranger’?????? Hmmmmmmmm & here I was thinking Hughes had not been in that band for, now let me see Guitar World, is it now 45 years approximately?
December 3rd, 2021 at 07:22Still, if we can sell a few more copies with the Deep Purple brand, why not! Or perhaps to include a crucial word or two, former or previous or even the acronym ex. That just doesn’t look as sensational though does it? Cheers.
They’re listing bands he’s been associated with chronologically. I don’t see your problem
December 3rd, 2021 at 13:15I hate to break it to you, lieber Herr MacGregor, but within DP, Glenn was and is my my bass guitar hero. Glenn kicked the proverbial butt in the 3+ years he was with the gang, and, yes, both visually, sonically and vocally he was no shrinking violet. Why can’t people give him credit for that?
Every ex-DP member has also ridden on the coattails of that band’s popularity with perhaps the exception of Tommy Bolin. And anybody who played, sang and wrote on albums as iconic as Burn and Come Taste The Band is part of the legend if you ask me. Deep Purple is not just Mk II for chrissakes.
That said, Glenn does another equipment endorsement?! : – ) He’s about as steady doing that as he sticks to bands. Or Henry VIII stuck to his wives.
Ashdown, btw, rose from the ashes of Trace Elliot which in th 80ies and 90ies had quite a share in the bass rig market (you’ve all seen those green-lit bass amps with all the equalizer faders too, they were almost de rigueur at one point). Mark King of Level 42 used them. Trace Elliot eventually ran into financial difficulties and the people behind it founded Ashdown as played by people like John Entwistle and Adam Clayton of U2. They never produced basses until now though. And those two new bass models echo two classic bass designs: the (inevitable) Fender Precision and the (much more easy on the eye) Gibson Thunderbird (as played by Phil Mogg of UFO, Martin Turner of Wishbone Ash or Roger Glover in his early Rainbow days).
December 3rd, 2021 at 18:36@ 3 -merely pointing out the media headlines, so to speak. Not down playing Hughes roll in DP at all, he is a wonderful bass guitarist & he can sing well at times. I have always stated that.
December 3rd, 2021 at 21:54Every one is aware, or most are that Roger Glover is the bass guitarist for the band DP. Hughes is an ex member & for a brief period. Sure I might be nit picking, but certain media outlets deliberately mention certain things a specific way to add weight to their article, to grab a headline, so to speak. Why don’t they say it like it is, some do of course. It is all about marketing though, the writer of the article may not have even thought about the way it was being presented, possibly.
Glenn Hughes the former bass guitarist of Deep Purple etc. Do they say the same regarding Nick Simper?
Regarding Trace Elliot, yes I do remember seeing, hearing & reading about them back in the day, thanks for that update. Cheers.
But Nick Simper is of course a former Deep Purple bassist!!! Nobody in his right mind would count him out (well, the RRHoF did …). Who cares if the papers say it, WE SAY IT HERE.
And mere duration of membership isn’t always decisive, Mick Taylor played only for five years (Ronnie Wood more than nine times as long!) and on a mere five studio albums with the Stones, aren’t we allowed to call him a “former lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones”? There’s quite a few people – me included – who feel that he was way better than both his predecessor and his successor [Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts agree(d) on that]. People stand side by side: Ritchie WAS, Steve IS the lead guitarist of Dee Purple, simple as that.
Likewise, being a current member doesn’t eclipse what people did before you in your place. Go to any Status Quo forum and ask who “the Status Quo bassist” is and you’ll get a lot of answers naming “Alan Lancaster” and not “Rhino Edwards”. Rhino a fine player and humble man summed it up with: “I’ll always be Alan Lancaster’s replacement in Quo.”
For the record: Roger Glover’s role in Mk II and Mk V-VIII was/is pivotal, he’s a huge part of the history of Deep Purple – as a bassist, a songwriter, a producer and as someone keeping that outfit together, eternal thanks for that. But that doesn’t make Nick Simper and Glenn Hughes any less “ex-Deep Purple bassists”. In the 70ies, Roger had with DP only one studio album more under his belt than the other two, who both had three.
Finally: Glenn tried to escape the Purple tag for decades. Both “Play Me Out” and “Hughes Thrall” were among the most radical departures from the Deep Purple sound as you can find with any ex-member after the 1976 split (Blackmore in fact replicated the Purple sound the most). But it didn’t work, in public perception Glenn always remained an “ex-Deep Purple bassist and singer”. At one (much later) point in his career, he decided “if you can’t beat them, join them” and played the Purple card more openly. I see no problem with that, ‘Burn’, ‘Stormbringer’ and ‘Come Taste The Band’ are proud examples of the Purple canon. And he was also the man on stage at the California Jam, Purple’s most iconic filmed performance.
December 4th, 2021 at 01:18Hughes will never escape the Purple tag, and he shouldn’t as Burn and Stormbringer were great LP’s, CTTB is fine but for me hasn’t aged well. It’s his live performances towards the end that drag him down a bit for me with the whopping and screaming of course we all know about the addiction, but hey, that’s Rock n Roll!! I saw the Burn tour in “75 and was blown away (literally so LOUD) and Cal Jam is a fantastic memory! GH has survived and good for him that he continues to do well. Glover is my favorite bassist for DP and Hughes has every right to claim his role as “formerly of Deep Purple” and the media will usually use that to sell!
December 4th, 2021 at 12:34