FIRST PINT

Steve: "My blue Fender Precision is my favourite bass, but I've also had some built by Lado, a Canadian maker. The original design I wanted them to build was actually similar to a Gibson Thunderbird.

"I don't actually like Thunderbirds: the necks hang away from you, you can't really see what you're playing properly. I just like the shape of them now.

"I used to have a Thunderbird some time ago — basically I bought it because so many of me favourite bass players had them then: Martin Turner from Wishbone Ash got a great sound — Christ knows how, it must have been his amps and his style, it couldn't have been that guitar!

"So I bought one cos I was after his sound, thought this is it, here we go, instant sound. And of course it turned out to be... well, terrible. Sounded like a buffalo fart. Soon got rid of that."

Adrian: I usually start a tour with loads of stuff — what I've used in the studio, usually, but it doesn't always work live. You tend to strip it down to what you actually need. The most reliable set-up you can have, I've found, is one that you can just go straight on with and use.

"We don't bother doing soundchecks now cos we feel much better just going on-stage with the attitude of playing. Straight to it. We'd have long soundchecks at one point, that's how we used to do it, and it ended up not doing any good at all. It fucks you up mentally.

"Cos the sound changes — you might get a great sound at the soundcheck, then you go away, all the crowd comes in, fills the place up, you go out on the gig and it's nowhere near as good. Well obviously, that freaks you out. So we don't do it any more."



There was the time on the World Slavery tour when singer Bruce Dickinson gets to the bit in the set when he plays guitar. On one particular gig, which was being filmed for TV broadcast, Bruce managed to hit himself on the head with the guitar as he's strapping himself in, and blood starts to stream down his face. So he runs over to the monitor guy at the side of the stage to see what can be done. And runs straight into the monitor desk, smashing the neck off the guitar. Back he comes onstage, with blood still streaming down his face, plus he now holds a sorry guitar with the neck hanging on just by the strings. And remember, all on TV. He must've looked a bit strange, eh? "It was like: who is this fucking maniac who's just walked on stage?" explains Adrian.

MORE PEANUTS?

Steve: "I've got four Precisions, actually, and I use the other three sometimes as back-up to my favourite blue sparkle one, which I think is about 1971. It's a little bit battered about and that, but it's the best sound I've heard from a Precision, different even to other Fenders.

"The Fenders I've got are made from really heavy woods, which I think is responsible for their good solid bottom end. I think it's the actual density of the wood that makes the difference, specially to bass guitars.

"I've changed the bridges on my Fenders, which most people do because the original isn't that clever. It's lasted me a few years as it is, but I've got a Badass on there now, they're much easier to get on with, you can adjust everything easier and individually. Also, the springs tend to get a bit rusted on the Fenders because I sweat so much on-stage. I don't know whether it's unnatural or not, but me roadie's always complaining about having to seal up the pots cos me sweat gets inside and rots everything away.

"I like the way Precision necks are quite fat — I used to have a Jazz and it took me a good while to get used to that narrowness at the nut. I find it weird playing something else now — even one of the Lados, which has a really thick neck — it's fantastic to play, but definitely feels weird.

"I've tried different nuts on the Fenders over the years ivory, brass and so on, and now I've come back to using the good old plastic ones, which are best really. The brass ones can mess up the tuning a bit, I found. And I use heavy Fender machine heads still — again, I've tried Schallers and all that, but I find the big heavy cogs on the Fenders are best — they keep me in tune!"

Adrian: "Of course there's me Les Paul Gold Top, and that's the equivalent really of Steve's old blue bass, something you can always go back to if you get in a bit of trouble.

"I know exactly where I am with the Les Paul — I must have had it for ten years now, I suppose, I got it out the back of Melody Maker, I think. It's beaten to fuck now, but it's a great guitar: you plug it into anything and it sounds good. It's like an old friend."

SECOND PINT

Steve: "I've not tried any of those basses with all the stuff built into the actual bass. I s'pose I've not really bothered to experiment because for the last three or four years I've been very happy with me sound — a combination of the Fenders, dbx compressors, RSD amps and Marshall cabs. It's very clear.

"It cuts through the two guitars either side of me, and a lot of our music's really fast so I have to be able to hear eveerything clearly, I can't just have the bottom end.

"So I was really striving to get that cut, but still with bollocks to it. That's what I've managed to get. So unless someone comes along with something outrageous and totally bowls me over, I'm not gonna change."

Adrian: "I've been trying the Roland 700 guitar synth — that's another world, that is. I saw a bloke' demonstrating it in a shop and he made it look easy. The sounds are outrageous.

"It's got great string sounds, Hammond organ, real dinosaur bass. Even drums - I freaked out Nicko (McBrain, drummer) the other day: I suddenly switched to a drum sound on it and he's looking round, where's that coming from?

"I think I'll be able to use the guitar synth, but if you're using, say, the string sound, it's not something you can just bash away on. You've got to be very precise on what you do, hitting each string evenly. And you mustn't slide the chords otherwise you get all these sounds you don't want.

"It'd be nice to use it on new stuff — I don't know about the old stuff cos it's pretty much set, although it might work on some of the more atmospheric stuff, 'Mariner', maybe, or 'Children Of The Damned'."



There was the time a couple of years back when the group had to write songs out of Britain for tax reasons. So now, every January they go to Jersey for six weeks. This has the required tax advantage, but it's suitably close to the UK and has the other necessity, good beer. There are no tourists there in January, either, which is handy. So presumably, wonder One Two, they hire a rehearsal room out there? "No, we hire a whole hotel, it's really cheap. We set up the gear in the ballroom, it's great. And if the road-crew, or families, want to come over, there's always rooms they can stay in. We've done it for the last two years now and it suits us well."

There was the time that the group toured Poland in August 84, at the beginning of their massive almost-a-year-long World Slavery tour. There they were at some bar, doing their best to take in a bit of local colour. And this bloke comes up to them who's got a wedding party going, and he discovers they're a group from England on tour and yes, they just must come to the party and get up and play for them. Well the group are actually fairly pissed by this time, and so they go along with it, and they get up on stage, and they do a blistering version of "Smoke On The Water". And... the party goes absolutely mad. They love it. They jump up and down on the tables. They scream their heads off. And this scene stays in the group's mind perhaps more vividly even than the five "official" gigs they did in Poland. "We'll definitely be going back there again," Steve assures the One Two people.

THIRD PINT

Adrian: "I just got a new guitar, a Jackson — that seems to be the name that Charvel are putting on their guitars now. I went in to Charvel to pick up a guitar they'd repaired for me, and they said why don't we build you a guitar? I said, well. I've got this old '55 Strat, I'll bring that in — I like it, but it's a bit of a relic, you know?

"So I took that in to them and they're all round it, got the old calipers out, measuring it, examining it, all this business. And they got the shape and the feel of that old neck in the guitar they built me — plus they did the neck in unfinished maple which makes it feel like an old guitar straight away. And I've got a Floyd Rose wang bar on it.

"There's a humbucker on the back with a coil splitter on it, a single coil in the middle, and a humbucker on the neck: I wanted that set-up so's I could split the coil on the back and use it with the middle for that typical Mark Knopfler-y Strat sound, then just with one flick of a switch I can be back into a humbucker sound.

"I haven't actually used it in a working situation yet, but it seems like it's gonna be a good guitar."

Steve: "I've got a couple of basses made by Lado — I found out about them through a Canadian band called Coney Hatch, they were supporting us and I got friends with the bass player, Andy, we used to play tennis a lot together. He showed me this bass he'd had made, and so I went to see Lado just outside Toronto.

"It's all one-piece, not like the bolt-on Fenders. That's the way Lado prefers to make them, and in fact the necks hold really good. He's a brilliant craftsman, Joe, he comes from Yugoslavia originally, very intense sort of bloke.

"There were a couple of points on the ones he made me, though. Rethought he was doing me a favour by making the body lighter, without consulting me, and then when I got it, it had actually lost some of that heavy bottom end.

"And we sorted out the neck on it when I didn't have me Precision with me — I should have taken it along, but we did it sort of trial and error. It didn't really come out exactly as I wanted it. Apparently he's supposed to be building me another one, and he's gonna try to do it a bit closer to what I want."



There was the time that Steve was offered a deal by Ibanez when they toured in Japan. You should know that Steve uses Rotosound Jazz Bass strings, which are flatwound. "Which a lot of people find pretty weird, cos I get a very trebly sound," he points out. But he finds the trouble is that every time he puts a set of these on an Ibanez or something similar, the neck can't take the strain and bows right out. So Ibanez come along and offer to make him anything he wants. So Steve says, here are the strings I use, make a guitar that'll stand up to them. Some time later, back comes a new Ibanez with... roundwounds on it. Off they come, on go the flatwounds, and... up bows the neck. "So I thought ah, it's a waste of time, they didn't do what I asked them to do."

SOME CRISPS, PERHAPS

Adrian: "I've tried quite a few different ways to Dave (Murray, the other guitarist). He does all the dive bombs, I just put in a little bit of vibrato here and there.

"Let's see: the Rockinger I found to be too rigid, that's on some guitars I had made by Lado. I find the Rockingers just go up or down, you can't really get anything in between, no sort of slow Gary Moore stuff.

"The Kahlers are too sensitive for me, you've really got to watch what you do or it goes berserk. Dave uses them, but he's used trems for years and years so he's got the hang of it.

"But I found Floyd Rose the right ones for me — it's a nice action, not too floppy, and works out just right for my needs."

Steve: "Everything's controlled from me amp — I give a signal to Mike, me roadie, and he does the change I want, volume, maybe, bass, or treble. I don't do nothing at the guitar, in fact the actual treble thing I more or less dewired so it didn't do anything.

"When we'd play in Britain we'd get right to the front, playing away, right near the edge of the stage, and they'd all whack their hands on the treble thing. Suddenly I'd think oh, it's gone dead sounding! So I've taken it completely out. I was gonna take the volume thing out too but then I thought no, certain things I do have to bring in and out with that. Mind you, I nearly always have the volume full on anyway. One of me guitars I had re-marked to go up to number 12..."



There was the time that Adrian went to see the film "Spinal Tap", in which the piss is effectively extracted from what we might safely call heavy rock. "There was the bit about the group's old drummers," he recalls. "Someone asks what happens to the first drummer. 'Oh, he exploded.' So they ask about the second one. 'Oh, he choked on vomit. It wasn't his vomit.'"