Herbie Flowers

"Herbie" Flowers is an English musician specializing in electric bass, double bass, and tuba, he is highly regarded as one of Britain's best-known session bass players, and contributed to an estimated 500 hit recordings by the end of the 1970s. Born Brian Keith Flowers on May 19, 1938, in Isleworth, Middlesex, England, Flowers began his musical training in 1956 when he was drafted into the Royal Air Force. He chose service in the RAF Central Band as an alternative to combat training, played tuba for nine years, and later took up the double bass as a second instrument to secure his "junior technician" stripe. Once Flowers completed his military service in the early 1960s, he joined several Dixieland jazz bands and discovered modern jazz. In 1965 he became a bandsman on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth, which allowed him to visit New York, where he heard an electric bass at a New York nightclub. Inspired, he acquired his own electric instrument, a Lake Placid Blue 1960 Fender Jazz Bass, alongside his double bass a ‘Professor’ flatback, Flowers has used the same two instruments for his professional career spanning over 50 years. Preferring his classic instruments Flowers stated “I don’t like effects on basses: I like just that raw sound, like James Jamerson and Paul Chambers. When I was a kid, my father gave me a pair of earphones to try: I discovered that if I pressed the earphones to my head, I could hear the bass! And I just love the sound of the bass, it’s my first love.”

In the late 1960s, Flowers earned a reputation as a session player, working for record producers like Shel Talmy, Richard Perry, Gus Dudgeon, Tony Visconti, and more. Flower is also known for having composed the novelty hit "Grandad" for Clive Dunn in 1970. In 1969, Flowers co-founded the group Blue Mink, a British six-piece pop group, with Madeline Bell and Roger Cook. Flowers co-authored numerous songs with Cook, including "Stay With Me" which charted at No. 11 in November 1972. From 1969 to 1977 Blue Mink had six Top 20 hit singles on the UK Singles Chart, including "Melting Pot" which reached No. 3 on the UK Singles Chart, and released five studio-based albums. Flowers left the group in 1974 to join David Bowie's band for the Diamond Dogs album tour. After the tour, he joined T. Rex for a brief period before returning to Blue Mink in the late 70s. Flowers also played and recorded with Marc Bolan from late 1976 until Bolan's death, in September 1977. In addition, Flowers was a member of the groups CCS and Dino Dines.

Flowers main activity during the 1970s, however, was as a session bassist, he played on recordings by Elton John, David Bowie, Lou Reed, David Essex, Ian Gomm, Allan Clarke, Al Kooper, Harry Nilsson, Pauk McCartney, Ringo Starr, Cat Stevens and many more. It is his bass that opens Reed's Walk On The Wild Side in 1972 the only song by Reed to reach the Top 20 in the US and underpins Bowie's Space Oddity as well as the Harry Nilsson song Jump Into The Fire. Flowers also recorded two solo albums, Plant Life (1975) and A Little Potty (1980) on the Philips Records label, but neither record made a major impression. In 1979 he became a co-founder of the band Sky, a progressive rock/jazz fusion ensemble, with guitarist John Williams, keyboard virtuoso Francis Monkman, guitarist Kevin Peek, and drummer Tristan Fry, which had success in the United Kingdom and Australia. Since the band's demise in the early 1990s, Flowers has spent most of his time playing jazz. He also worked as a bass guitar teacher at Ardingly College, Trinity College, and the Dartington International Summer School, and leads many 'rock shops' at schools, helping children to create and perform their own songs, as well as covering many others.

In 1998, session drummer Peter Boita teamed up with Flowers to form a rhythm section on the album Betjeman & Read. Flowers also spent some time performing in the London Symphony Orchestra and has anchored scores of film and television scores, like the Wedding Crashers (2005), The Sweeney (1974) and East Is East (1999), as well as theater performances. In September 2009, Flowers founded a community choir, Shoreham Singers-by-Sea, which has over 150 members, “It’s the Shoreham Singers By Sea. By accident, I said on a gig, ‘How many of you would join a choir if we put one together?’ And 150 people put their hands up! You know, I have to create my own work, because it’s part of my beliefs that every penny you earn, you’ve got to earn it for someone else.” Flowers continues to perform and record today, in 2018 he played bass guitar on the 40th Anniversary UK Arena Tour of "Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of H.G.Wells' War of the Worlds".