Luck and Strange: Bassist Guy Pratt’s Career in Rock

If Guy Pratt’s name doesn’t resonate with you, his bass playing certainly has. He’s held the low end down for Pink Floyd and David Gilmour since 1987’s Momentary Lapse of Reason tour, and elsewhere in the Floydian universe he’s a member of Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, which specializes in the legendary band’s early music.

But wait, as the old huckster’s line goes, there’s more. Lots more. He’s also a longtime member of Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry’s band, and has toured with the Smiths. As part of the new wave band Icehouse in the early ’80s, he scored on the European and Australian charts and opened for David Bowie, and then springboarded into a series of higher profile gigs. In the studio, those have included sessions for recordings by Gary Moore, Michael Jackson (“Earth Song”), Tears for Fears, Echo & the Bunnymen, Iggy Pop, Tom Jones, Whitesnake, the Orb, Debbie Harry, Robbie Robertson, Madonna (“Like a Prayer”), and, in 2022, Pete Townshend. He also shared a Grammy for his playing on “Marooned” from Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell.

And yes, there’s still more. In addition to Pratt’s many TV, film, and theater scores, the amiable London native embarked on a sideline of stand-up comedy beginning in 2005, when he took his one-man-plus-bass show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. That show, My Bass and Other Animals, spawned his book, and he’s toured two more original comedy productions since. In his spare time, he started a podcast, Rockontours, with Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp, a co-conspirator in the Saucerfull of Secrets band. Their famous guests, spinning tales of the musical life, have included Nick Mason, Bob Geldorf, Phil Manzanera, Trevor Horn, Chris Difford, and Adam Duritz over 213 episodes.

Last year, fortunate concertgoers got a chance to hear Pratt on Gilmour’s 21-concert, four-city tour behind Luck and Strange, an album where Pratt’s playing is woven into the deep currents that support the gorgeous tide of music created by the guitar giant and his hand-picked ensemble in the studio.

There’s an old saying among musicians that if you always want a gig, play bass or drums. Just before his teens, Pratt settled for bass. “I wanted an electric guitar,” he recalls. “I fell in love with electric guitar. Simple as that. I begged my parents, and of course mum said, ‘Oh darling, why don’t you get a nice Spanish guitar?’ ‘Spanish?! I’ll do that at school.’ Rock ’n’ roll was outside the school gates back then; it wasn't where we are now. And it had to be electric. The joke I would say is that actually a toaster would have been closer to what I was after than a Spanish guitar. So I asked for a bass. My mum and dad clubbed together and got me—because my birthday’s near Christmas—a bass guitar for Christmas and birthday. It was really weird … huge and kind of confusing, and I didn’t have an amp. But when I went back to school two weeks later, there were three kids who had got electric guitars for Christmas. Of course, if they wanted to be a band, they needed me, so I had my pick.” And so Pratt’s career began.