On the opening track of Blind Faith, Grech locks with Baker, Clapton, and Winwood in a unison riff that’s dark and heavy (Ex. 1., bars 1–2). At the verse (bar 9), Grech outlines the C7 chord with a syncopated pattern that pits the upper root (C) in beats one and two against the 3rd (E) in beat three, followed by a chromatic climb up to the 5th of the chord, G. In the chorus (Ex. 2), Grech follows Winwood’s clever descending progression (in 6/4). In walking through the C#m chord in bar 2, note how Grech grabs that low E in beat one before ascending up to navigate that bar’s minor–major tonality shift.
Post-Faith, Grech continued to play with Winwood and Baker in Ginger Baker’s Air Force, and stuck with Winwood to make two records with a re-formed Traffic. He also did session work with artists such as Rod Stewart, Muddy Waters, Gram Parsons, and the Crickets. As part of the Palpitations, Grech teamed once more with Clapton for EC’s 1973 Rainbow Concert, and the next year he Joined KGB with guitarist Michael Bloomfeld and drummer Carmine Appice. Grech retired from music in 1977 to sell carpets, and died in 1990 from a brain hemorrhage.
LISTEN UP
Blind Faith, Blind Faith [Polydor, 1969]
SELECT DISCOGRAPHY
With Blind Faith Blind Faith, Polydor, 1969. With Family (both on Reprise) Music in a Doll’s House, 1968; Family Entertainment, 1969. With Traffic (both on Island) Welcome To the Canteen, 1971; The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys, 1971. With The Palpitations Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert, Polydor, 1973. With KGB KGB, MCA, 1975. Solo The Last Five Years, RSO, 1973.
HYDE TIMES
On June 7th, 1969, 100,000 people gathered at London’s Hyde Park for a free concert with Blind Faith. In one of the band’s only taped performances, Rich Grech rocks a sunburst Fender Jazz Bass (with foam stuffed back by the bridge) through a Marshall stack. Look for it on youtube.com.
Technique Tip
Killer Warm-upWELCOME TO TECHNIQUE TIPS, AN occasional column designed to home-in on a particular aspect of technique in the quickest and/or dirtiest way possible. This time, let’s focus on a useful little warmup/ conditioning exercise for the fretting hand. It isolates a narrow range of muscles and joint angles. I’ve found it quickly orients my hands back into playing mode after some time off.
Here’s how it works. Play a steady stream of one fretted pitch in eighth-notes at a comfortable tempo, like a D on the G string. Typically, the fretting hand would use just one finger to fret the note, with the others ready to play other frets. But in this exercise, we want to switch fretting-hand fingers, oscillating between the 1st and 2nd; 2nd and 3rd; 3rd and 4th; and any other combination therein, all the while playing the same note. Keep your thumb locked onto the back of the neck in a single position. Check out the photos below and then go to bassplayer.tv to see me do it. BY JONATHAN HERRERA