What Bowie, McCartney and Lou Reed all owe to Herbie Flowers

Herbie Flowers (left) with the British pop group Blue Mink in 1973
Herbie Flowers (left) with the British pop group Blue Mink in 1973 - Hulton/Getty

Herbie Flowers has passed away, at the grand age of 86. His is not a name that rings loud in the annals of rock ’n’ roll, unless you are one of those who likes to pour over the small-print credits on old vinyl albums from the 1960s and ’70s. But I guarantee you know his work. His nimble fingers gave us what’s probably the most famous bassline in history: the slippery descent and ascent that forms the framework of Lou Reed’s classic 1972 hit, Walk on the Wild Side.

Can you hear it now, echoing in the air, a ghost summoned by the mere invocation of the song’s title? That cool slide up and down the frets, between two perfectly rounded notes, takes us on an elegant stroll through Reed’s seedy vision of New York. But listen closely: buried inside, in surreptitious resonance, another bass reverberates a “10th” above it, the same notes played in a higher octave on an electric bass. That’s all the work of Flowers, who came up with the twin basslines and played them both, the lower on a double bass, the higher on an electric fretless.

The effect utterly transformed Reed’s dry, dark, thoughtful song, as producers David Bowie and Mick Ronson sat in the studio control room at Trident in London and marvelled. Flowers once said that “in those days, the recording rate for a three-hour session was £12 but if you overdubbed another instrument, you got double the money. Not that I did it for that reason.” It was 20 minutes’ work that earned Flowers £24 and has resonated in rock history ever since.

An unassuming man who referred to himself as “an old jazzer,” Flowers worked his cool bass magic on some of the greatest records ever made, becoming one of the most in-demand session players in the world in the late 1960s, 70s and 80s. Glancing through his discography, I’m in awe of how many of my personal all-time favourite records he played on, songs where (I belatedly realise) the bass does much of the heavy lifting.

Here are a few: the 1969 soul fusion classic Melting Pot by Blue Mink (a band of which Flowers was a member); David Bowie’s weightless Space Oddity, also 1969; Melanie’s gorgeously overwrought 1970 epic Lay Down (Candle in the Rain); the dubby 1971 rocker Jump Into the Fire by Harry Nilsson; Cat Stevens’s 1972 reclamation of his brokenhearted soul ballad The First Cut is the Deepest; David Essex’s spookily nostalgic 1973 smash Rock On (for which Flowers created another immaculate double-tracked bassline).

In his prime session years, it’s said that Flowers played on 500 hits, and worked with George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Dusty Springfield, Hank Marvin, Justin Hayward, Cliff Richard, Steve Harley, Roger Daltrey, Allan Clarke and Olivia Newton-John. That’s Flowers on Tim Rose’s heartrending take on the Bee Gees’ I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You (1971), Elton John’s epic Indian Sunset (1971), T Rex’s cosmically weird Dandy in the Underworld (1977), Chris Spedding’s taut rocker Wild in the Street (1977), Paul McCartney’s glistening ballad No More Lonely Nights (1984), and Bryan Ferry’s achingly beautiful version of the Irish folk lament Carrickfergus (1978).

Flowers also wrote songs himself, albeit not all are remembered with the same fondness as the above. His biggest success came with Grandad, a novelty song he wrote for Dad’s Army star Clive Dunn: it featured the St Winifred’s School Choir and tortured the nation with three weeks as a Christmas number one in 1971. (You don’t hear that one so much today.) And Flowers made some quirky solo jazz albums, while his band Sky released seven albums of progressive rock jazz fusion between 1979 and 1987. From the 1990s on, he focused almost entirely on playing jazz and teaching bass guitar. It was the quiet life of a quiet man, lived entirely out of the glare of showbusiness headlines, yet his liquid basslines pulse on through the history of pop.

Flowers with David Bowie and Marc Bolan on the TV show Marc in 1977
Flowers with David Bowie and Marc Bolan on the TV show Marc in 1977 - Avalon

I like a story I heard about the making of Lou Reed’s Transformer album. The quirky Goodnight Ladies was the final track to be recorded at the end of exhausting and highly strung sessions. The story goes that Bowie, Ronson and Reed had got stuck trying to work out an arrangement for Reed’s odd little ditty, and all disappeared for a liquid lunch, leaving Flowers and a horn section in the studio twiddling their thumbs. Flowers got out a tuba and, on the spot, concocted the bizarre music-hall-meets-Dixieland arrangement – just to have something to do.

When Reed returned, suitably refreshed, he loved it, he sang a vocal, and the album was done. Transformer went on to be acclaimed as one of the greatest albums ever made; Flowers would have packed up his instruments, collected his £12 fee, and rolled onto his next gig. It’s nice to think of his passing in the same light. Like many great musicians before, Flowers has left the stage; but the music just keeps on playing.