BASS PLAYER: B Lovers/Turning Curious, Blown, The Jans Project
“I’ve got a new one, if you guys feel like workin’ it up…”
The magic words from Nick Rudd that I always longed to hear in any of our rehearsal settings. A thrill would shoot through me every time Nick said it, similar to that thrill of the anticipation of opening your presents on xmas morning when you were kid. Would this “new one” be merely great, or another special Nick Rudd song for the ages? Nick would then play us the naked guitar riff or melody, and BOOM! Yes! Of course! Let’s go, let’s get it, let’s play this new song and make it something special! Most rehearsals Nick had a new one. Or two. Or three. And he was so generous in the way he let us, his bandmates, make our contributions to his songs. It was always a thrill.
My earliest memory of Nick was when I was playing with Jeff in the Nancy Boys in 1979. Nick was working with Jeff at Co-Op, he was maybe 19 or 20 years old. Just this cool kid, who came out a couple times and watched us rehearse. In December of 1980 Jeff, Nick, and Berni had been playing together and were looking for a new bass player. Got a call from Jeff: “You remember Nick, right…well he’s a pretty good guitar player and he’s got some pretty cool songs…” Jeff sent me a tape, two or three songs that were really good, and I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll come up…” First rehearsal…this is good, this is the band, these are the dudes I wanna play with, let’s go!
We were all on the same wavelength, all listening to the same records, in that guys working in record stores thing, calling each other when new stuff comes out… The dBs, Pretenders, Screams, Soft Boys, Psychedelic Furs, Teardrop Explodes, Echo & The Bunnymen, U2… Our sound was pretty schizophrenic when you look back at it…from this thing to this thing…our gigs, 20 people dancing…next tune…clear the dance floor! We had plenty of dance floor clearing songs! It’s kind of a blur now…it felt like we were doing a lot, living together, rehearsing, a ton of songs coming all the time. By the time of our last Mabel’s show in 1985, the shit was fucking great, and it was all Nick, all our own sound. Certainly wasn’t dance floor friendly! Ha! But it could stand side by side with our heroes.
Blown: We had all gone off and done other things, so it was like putting on an old pair of shoes, but it’s not an old pair of shoes, it’s like, $500 custom made Italian jobs — cause that’s how good the songs were. Water was under the bridge… older and wiser, better players, we were on fire again.
There’s so much about Nick that just can’t be put into words.
What I’m missing most now is the laughter. Forty years of laughing with Nick. We laughed A LOT. Nick was a very funny, often hilarious guy. Funny in his own enigmatic Nick Rudd way. Two constants of our rehearsals over the years, from when we were in our twenties on through playing together in our fifties, was the working up of great new Nick Rudd songs and lots and lots and lots of laughter. I’m missing those rehearsal moments of love and laughter so much.