Top 20 Simple Minds Bass Lines: Nos. 10 - 1 / Tribute to Derek Forbes (bass & backing track covers)

This is my top 10 Simple Minds bass lines.
There's another video with numbers 11 - 20 to complete my Top 20. Link at the end of this video.

00:00 In Trance As Mission
00:53 Promised You A Miracle
01:36 This Fear Of Gods
02:20 New Gold Dream (81-81-83-84)
03:05 Waterfront
03:45 Premonition
04:20 Glittering Prize
04:56 I Travel
05:30 Colours Fly And Catherine Wheel
06:14 Theme For Great Cities

I started playing bass guitar in 1984 at 15 years old and my Simple Minds records were among the first to play along to. Derek Forbes wrote some great repetitive bass lines that seemed doable. But don’t dismiss the bass part from In Trance As Mission for example as too easy. Just keep that up for 6 minutes locked in the groove. These couple of bass notes are the home base from which the track keeps developing. The brilliance of Forbes’ bass lines is not complexity but propulsiveness. It’s motorik.
Repetitious grooves are tribal, trancey. That’s what I like in techno music, Fela Kuti or a band like LCD Soundsystem for example. Simple Minds was the first band that got me hooked on, well, repetitive hooks.

When recording the bass lines for this top 10 I realised that they needed the context of the songs and arrangements to really show their brilliant functionality. So I recorded backing tracks also. Some for better some for worse. I made some use of free midi downloads but had to adjust quite a few parts. Some of the lesser known earlier songs I had to recreate myself with software instruments and electric guitar.
In post production I adjusted the sound of my bass parts to fit the tracks. Forbes was not merely the bass player but also helped sculpting Simple Minds’ sound.

Anyhow. Here’s to a bass hero.


Bass: Fender Classic 50s Precision
Strings: at least 5 year old Fender roundwounds
Interface: iRig Pro Duo
DAW: GarageBand
GB bass amp simulator: Big Stack (aka Ampeg SVT)
Effects: GB/LogicPro internal pedal board compressor and flanger (on some of the tracks). Subtle saturation and overdrive to taste with GB overdrive plug-in.