The Classic Interview
TREVOR BOLDER
In every issue, we dig into the vaults to bring you an interview with a bass great. This month it’s the late Trevor Bolder, once of David Bowie’s band the Spiders From Mars, and in 2004 when we met him, enjoying a long career with Uriah Heep. He passed away in 2013 at the age of 62: rest in peace, Trevor.
Interview: Joel McIver Photography: Getty
Few bass players have as impressive a pedigree as Hull-born Trevor Bolder, who began his musical career playing cornet and trumpet in brass bands. After switching to guitar and then bass, he hooked up with his guitarist friend Mick Ronson, with whom he played gigs in the Hull area. Recruiting drummer Woody Woodmansey in 1970, Bolder renamed his band Ronno, only for the entire group to be adopted the following year by none other than David Bowie, who rechristened them the Spiders From Mars. They appeared on three seminal albums, including Hunky Dory, Aladdin Sane and Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, before their association with Bowie ended in 1973.
Bolder then toured with Ronson’s band before joining the venerable progressive rockers Uriah Heep in 1976, as a replacement for the departed John Wetton. And there he has remained ever since, apart from a brief two-year sabbatical in Wishbone Ash, in which his predecessor was also Wetton. Heep remain immensely popular and regularly tour worldwide, so it’s appropriate that as Bolder talks to us, he has just taken delivery of a luxurious new bass, made by the Brazilian Dalegria company.