Nikita Bass Cover

“Counting ten tin soldiers in a row”
I think it’s a little poignant that, nearly 35 years after this song was written, we could still be writing sad songs about borders and walls.

After, literally, years of cajoling by the likes of FrustratedNameSearch, Bao Ho, and LarrysNetTube, among others, I finally got around to covering this song - “Nikita” by Elton John. It is off of his album, Ice on Fire, which came out in 1985 and featured the wonderful David Paton on bass.

Not considering myself as being a big fan of the later (if '85 can be considered "later") EJ material, I finally gave it a serious listen and actually liked it. I think David Paton (Pilot, Alan Parsons Project) laid down a nice fretless line, full of tasty fills. I’ve got videos set aside on my desktop that are years old but, as usual, I’m most fired up about the video I’ve just done. I started on this song last weekend and have been working hard on it since, recording it just this morning. I had a surprisingly hard time committing all the little details to memory. I actually found David Paton’s phrasing on some of the licks to be along the lines of what I might play if I were asked to write the bass line. It wasn’t the notes or the phrasing that I had difficulty with, it was putting them in the proper sequence. Go figure. In fact, at 2:34 I missed something small…small, but serious enough to garner an eye-roll.

While I'm a bit early, I'd like to wish you all a happy and healthy New Year in 2019.

I'm playing one of my favorite (and least expensive) basses - A Legend with upgraded pick-ups and a Mighty-Mite HAZ clone pre-amp. If this bass had a slightly chunkier neck, it might be my one and only.

A small point of interest, if you watch the music video for Nikita, in one scene, Elton can be seen wearing the oversized, Pinball Wizard boots that he wore in Tommy.