Steve Brown, who produced Sanctuary, told me when I was plucking away with a pick that it sounded pretty flat and needed some character. Before that we played a lot of clubs and universities. The single She Sells Sanctuary was a big hit in the middle of 1985, and then all of a sudden we were selling out bigger places. “Love was the most groundbreaking one I did, for sure. Which album do you think has matured best? There’s no slap bass, but I did pop a bit, because it sounded interesting and different, like on Ressurection Joe, which was built around a bass-line. Some of those songs have bass that is all over the shop. “For example, the song Spiritwalker is in G, so I played a G on the fifth fret of the D string alongside the open G string, just because it sounded cool and it gave me more oomph. The same went for the Cult there was a lot of double-string stuff going on. The bass player is pretty prominent in Theatre Of Hate, for instance he’s up in the mix and the songs are built around bass-lines. Until the Love album, we were part of a scene where bass players did quite a lot of playing. “I guess so! I learned how to groove through trial and error. You had some pretty inventive bass parts on the early Cult singles and the first album, Dreamtime. I think mine was a ’67, and I toured with that for a long time.” Still, because I was a punk kind of guy and played it low down, the fat neck was a bit of a challenge, so I discovered that I preferred Jazz basses, which sound similar. Billy picked up a 1961 white Precision, which had the sound that only good Precisions have, and he lent it to me occasionally, so you’ll see it in videos and so on throughout the Cult’s history, along with a Precision that I owned. Until the Love album, we were part of a scene where bass players did quite a lot of playing Learned how to groove through trial and error. You played a Fender Precision for some years, didn’t you? Uncool though that may appear, it actually sounded really good, certainly for live stuff.” Later I graduated to a Music Man Stingray, which was cool, with a nice sound, and someone gave me a Tokai Hard Puncher when we were in Japan. Image and character were important in a band like the Cult, so playing a no-name bass wouldn’t have worked. “It was partly because the bass player in Billy’s old band, Theatre Of Hate, had used one, and therefore the 4001 was a known quantity we knew what it could do. Why that bass? The Cult’s style wasn’t obviously suitable for a Ricky. (Image credit: Jeff Kravitz / Getty) Precision and picking I hacked through a few songs and they offered me the gig, so I bought a Rickenbacker 4001. It was one of those no-name copies with black nylon strings. I went to my local music shop in Harrow and asked if I could borrow a bass for an audition. Ritual’s drummer got poached by Ian and Billy, who were looking to form a band, and he recommended me as a bass player - even though I’d barely played bass, other than a bit of faffing about. We released a couple of independent singles around 1981. “I was in a post-punk sort of goth band called Ritual when I was 16, in north London. There’s a part where Visconti stops in mid-song and goes for a fag. I was influenced by Tony Visconti on David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World album, because his bass playing is extraordinary. When you’re trying to assemble music sonically, you figure out what a bass player is supposed to do. I only really learned how to be a bass player after I left the Cult and became a producer. “I started as a guitarist, and I never really considered myself a bass player, just a member of a band. Now a stalwart in the software industry, Stewart has spent the last quarter-century out of the public eye, but thanks to the gift of social media, we requested an interview and duly took him to the pub… Their fourth album from this golden era, 1989’s Sonic Temple, didn’t get the same treatment, but with its 30th anniversary coming next year, who knows? While it should be pointed out that Astbury and Duffy have continued to tour and record fine music with new line-ups since then, their most recent career high points have come when two of their albums - Love (1984) and Electric (1987) - were celebrated with 25th anniversary tours in the last decade. When you’re trying to assemble music sonically, you figure out what a bass player is supposed to do Not long after his departure, grunge arrived and the Cult’s brand of Led Zeppelin and AC/DC-influenced hard rock was rendered obsolete virtually overnight. Stewart, who was with the band from its formation as Death Cult in 1983 and left in 1990, was on board for the quartet’s most celebrated period, recording four landmark albums and touring with huge bands such as Metallica and Guns N’ Roses.
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