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Rick

Rick Kemp

To a band without a drummer, Rick Kemp's bass obviously plays a vital role in underpinning the entire rhythm of the band - though as a matter of fact he does play drums on a couple of tracks on their new album. But it is only briefly, during the funky intro to the brief "Robbery with Violins" duo he plays with Peter Knight - and raises the roof - that the brilliance of his bass playing becomes obvious to any, but the most careful listeners.

While he's not quite as self-effacing as his predecessor on the bass guitar with steeleye, neither is he the sort of basest who tries to become an intrusive addition to the front line, doing a Jack Bruce with none of the technique. Actually, the quietly melodic counterpoints he plays are reminiscent of Bruce's approach to a bass-player's role, though with quite different results, and his technique is pretty remarkable as well.

And though, like Bob Johnson, he has a solid rock background, his musical career started like that of so many folk stalwarts, in the skiffle movement which grew out of the jazz scene of the mid-fifties.

He'd had a jazz club in which he'd attempted to play jazz guitar on an imitation Macaferri like Django - "Luckily there are no recordings, it was dire" - and by the time skiffle had started he had a group which was to win the all-England skiffle championship at the Cafe de Paris.

"Larry Parnes offered me a contract but I was only l3 and my old man wouldn't hear of it. He thought I was going to be an airline pilot or a brain surgeon or something, a lawyer. But some of my friends did quite well, Reg Smith who became Marty Wilde and another friend of mine who became Mark Wynter but the only one who is still valid is Georgie Fame because he was the only real musician out of the lot of us."

Rick and his parents moved to hull and he continued to play guitar with local groups on a semi-pro basis until he was offered a professional gig playing bass with a band the Aces. "That was when people suddenly started getting very good on the guitar, bending strings and sustaining notes which was quite hard for me. I'd always wanted to be a drummer and I couldn't manage it. I'd always wanted to play the guitar and I couldn't do that very well either. I was closer to the drums playing bass so took the job. Besides, it was more money."

"After a while really fell in love with the bass because I was at the bottom of it All instead of being out In front and that quite appealed to me."

When the band fell to pieces he went to work in a music store where he met Mike Chapman, a regular customer. "I used to sit and play with him in the store because there was nothing else to do, nobody else ever seemed to come in to buy anything. He said if he ever formed a band I'd have a job and he kept his word. But by then I'd played on his first two albums while I still worked at the store."

Rick toured America with Chapman, but when he started working solo again Rick was sufficiently well known to pick up session work, which was how he met Sandy Robertson, then Steeleye's producer who put him in touch with the band when Ashley Hutchings left. "I think everything just fell into place. I was lucky because Steeleye were the only band in England with the possible exception of Free that I was really interested in. Apart from that, I was a big American music fan and most English bands were a washout to me."

"Mike Chapman played me the first Steeleye album, the one with Terry And Gay Woods on it and I'd been, very impressed. In fact, I used to pester him so much to put it on when I went round to his place that he bought me one." Though the influence that Bob Johnson has had is more obvious, in many ways the changes resulting from Rick's taking over from Tyger have been more profound. I remember the time I heard him with the band at an early rehearsal the sound so percussive I looked round to see if someone was beating a bass drum.

And at the other end of the sound spectrum, he often gives his long, sustained notes the clear, pure tonal quality of a bassoon or even an oboe. It's funny to think that he switched from guitar because he couldn't play sustained notes, because they're much harder to play on the bass guitar.