Hugh Hopper

Hugh Hopper was best known as the electric bassist for Soft Machine during the band's most creative and critically acclaimed period, but his musical career extended far beyond his time spent with that particular group. He arguably manifested the Canterbury scene's progressive spirit -- at least on the instrumental side of the equation -- longer than any other musician, from the late '60s through to nearly the end of the new millennium's first decade, a period spanning over 40 years, although he took a break from music for a brief stretch. Hopper was also the indisputable king of the fuzz bass, introducing the instrument's sustained burning tones into early Soft Machine's sonic palette and laying the groundwork for other bassists' fuzzed and buzzed excursions across subsequent decades on both sides of the Atlantic. Born in Whitstable, Kent, in April of 1945, like other future Soft Machine members Robert Wyatt and Mike Ratledge, Hopper attended Canterbury's Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys; he was in the same class as Wyatt (then Robert Ellidge) and two grades behind Ratledge. Like the other future Softs, he also fell under the somewhat renegade influence of Australian-born vocalist/guitarist Daevid Allen -- Hopper's first documented gig was as bassist for the Daevid Allen Trio (also featuring Wyatt on drums) in 1963, and the following year Hopper visited Allen and Gilli Smyth in Paris and became acquainted with Allen's tape loop experiments (which were influenced by Terry Riley). However, nascent experimentation with poetry and jazz and travels to the Continent were not bearing fruit, and in 1964 Hugh and his older brother Brian (in the same Simon Langton class as Ratledge, incidentally) formed the Wilde Flowers, now seen as forerunners of pretty much anything that...