Bassist John Giblin died at age 71 on May 14.
The Scottish bassist started working with Kate Bush in 1980 and continued with her until the end of Bush’s Before the Dawn London residency in 2014. During that time he appeared on six of her albums, after previously recording and touring with Peter Gabriel.
As a session musician, he earned credits with Paul McCartney, Elton John, Phil Collins and Eric Clapton, among many others, amassing more than 450 recording appearances. He was a member of Simple Minds in the ’80s and he had recently been working with the British Afro-rock band Osibisa, which announced his death at home in Cheltenham, England, after a long illness.
“Everyone loved John,” Bush wrote on her website. “He was a really beautiful man in every sense of the word. Everybody wanted to work with him because he was such a great talent, and everyone wanted to be his friend because he was such a wonderful person.”
She added, “I loved John so very much. He was one of my very dearest and closest friends for over 40 years. … I loved working with him, not just because he was such an extraordinary musician but because he was always huge amounts of fun. We would often laugh so much that we had to just give in to it and sit and roar with laughter for a while.”
Bush recalled that Giblin “loved to be pushed in a musical context,” and she found inspiration and joy when he responded by creating “gorgeous musical phrases that were only there for him.”
“We’ve all lost a great man, an unmatchable musician and I’ve lost my very special friend,” she said. “My world will never be the same again without him.”
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