Glenn, your bass lines on 2
are so soulful and melodic—
even in such a hard-rock context. Who are your influences,
and how do you go about
writing bass lines?
Hughes: It all goes back to
when I was a boy in short
trousers living in the north of
England and getting into the
Beatles and, later, the Stones
as a sort of rebellious thing.
Then, in my late teens, I started
getting excited about sounds
from black America—some
blues, but mostly Motown and
Tamla soul records . . . players
like James Jamerson and Carol
Kaye. All of these sounds came
together to inform my sound,
and I obviously wear my influences upon my sleeve.
I’m a singer, and the bass is
an extension of my voice, so
what I write on the bass tends
to be highly melodic. I also
tend to bend the strings a lot to
get a vocal-like sound. Because
of that, I’ve used light-gauge
strings since the 1960s, and
I’ve never had a problem with
them going out of tune. I’m not
a hammer-on bass player—I
don’t come from the ’80s school
of thought, where more notes
are better. In a nutshell, I write
simple bass lines where what
I don’t play is as important as
what I do—tuneful bass lines
that have a nice, old-school
groove and anchor the song
rather than busy it up.
What is your songwriting
process like?
Hughes: It’s very natural—the
cornerstone of my life, really.
What I mainly do is hatch an
idea for a song and watch it
develop. It often begins for me
late at night when my wife and
I go into the bedroom, where
four dogs are usually hanging
out on the bed and an acoustic
guitar is sitting next to it on a
stand—a very relaxed environment for writing, unlike sitting
Bonamassa and one of his many Gibson Les Pauls basking in the spotlight at a BCC show.
at a desk and forcing myself to
write. I believe, by the way, that
all of the greatest songs were
written on acoustic—take, for
example, “Satisfaction” and “A
Day in the Life.” In any case, as
my wife and I wind down from
the day, I’ll just pick up the gui-
tar and play for a while, record-
ing it onto a Dictaphone. The
next morning, I’ll have a listen
to the tape and see if I captured
anything worth expanding into
a complete song with lyrics.
For this particular album,
even though I was working with
brilliant improvisers, I didn’t
want to just go into the studio
and jam. It’s nothing against
jam music—in fact we’ll probably morph into jamming a
