Laurence Cottle (born 16 December 1961) is a Welsh bass guitarist and composer.
Career
His solo recordings have been mostly in
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
and
jazz fusion
Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, ...
. He was a member of the fusion quartet The Fents and appeared on their second album, ''The Other Side'', released on the
Passport Jazz label in 1987.
He played with
The Alan Parsons Project
The Alan Parsons Project was a British rock band active between 1975 and 1990, whose core membership consisted of producer, audio engineer, musician and composer Alan Parsons and singer, songwriter and pianist Eric Woolfson. They were accompanie ...
on ''
Gaudi'', their final album for
Arista, and on ''
Freudiana'', Parsons's final collaboration with
Eric Woolfson
Eric Norman Woolfson (18 March 1945 – 2 December 2009) was a Scottish songwriter, lyricist, vocalist, executive producer, pianist, and co-creator of The Alan Parsons Project. Together with Parsons they sold over 50 million albums worldwide. ...
. He is the brother of Richard Cottle (also a musician), playing with him during his time with The Alan Parsons Project.
Shortly after, he was hired by British
heavy metal band
Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath were an English rock music, rock band formed in Birmingham in 1968 by guitarist Tony Iommi, drummer Bill Ward (musician), Bill Ward, bassist Geezer Butler and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne. They are often cited as pioneers of heavy met ...
to play bass on the studio sessions that would become their 1989 album ''
Headless Cross''. Cottle wrote and played all the bass parts for the album and appeared on the music video for the song "Headless Cross" but didn't perform live or tour with the band.
In the 1990s, he produced three albums for guitarist
Jim Mullen
Jim Mullen (born 26 November 1945) is a Scottish, Glasgow-born jazz guitarist with a distinctive style, like Wes Montgomery before him, picking with the thumb rather than a plectrum.
Biography
Jim Mullen was guitarist with Pete Brown & Piblo ...
and recorded with British jazz musicians
Mornington Lockett
Mornington Edward Lockett (born 19 November 1961) is an English jazz saxophonist.
Career
Lockett began playing clarinet at the age of 14 while he was a student at Cowes High School, before switching to tenor saxophone. He studied at Dartington ...
,
Tim Garland
Tim Garland (born 19 October 1966) is a British jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. His compositions draw from modern jazz and classical concert music.
Career
Garland was born in Ilford, Essex and grew up in Canterbury, Kent. He starte ...
,
Django Bates
Django Bates (born Leon Bates, 2 October 1960) is a British jazz musician, composer, multi-instrumentalist, band leader and educator. He plays the piano, keyboards and the tenor horn. Bates has been described as "one of the most talented musici ...
,
Gerard Presencer
Gerard Presencer (born 12 September 1972) is an English jazz trumpeter.
Biography
Presencer showed his first interest in what was to become his chosen instrument, the trumpet, at nine. He attributes his early determination to become a trumpete ...
, and John Graham. In 2000, Cottle appeared on the album ''
Iommi'' from
Tony Iommi
Anthony Frank Iommi () (born 19 February 1948) is a British musician. He co-founded the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and was the band's guitarist, leader and primary composer and sole continuous member for nearly five decades. I ...
. From 2003 to 2006, he was a member of
Bill Bruford
William Scott Bruford (born 17 May 1949) is an English former drummer and percussionist who first gained prominence as a founding member of the progressive rock band Yes. After leaving Yes in 1972, Bruford spent the rest of the 1970s recording ...
's
Earthworks
Earthworks may refer to:
Construction
*Earthworks (archaeology), human-made constructions that modify the land contour
* Earthworks (engineering), civil engineering works created by moving or processing quantities of soil
*Earthworks (military), m ...
. In 2009, he produced albums for
Claire Martin, Gareth Williams, and
Mark Nightingale
Mark Daryl Nightingale (born 29 May 1967) is an English jazz trombonist, composer, and arranger.
Career
He began on trombone at age nine, and played in the Midland Youth Jazz Orchestra and the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in his teens. He at ...
. He leads his own Laurence Cottle Big Band playing a variety of standards and his own material.
Cottle has also played on
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton (born 1945) is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is often regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarists in rock music. Clapton ranked second in ''Rolling Stone''s list of ...
's 1986 album ''
August
August is the eighth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, and the fifth of seven months to have a length of 31 days. Its zodiac sign is Leo and was originally named ''Sextilis'' in Latin because it was the 6th month in ...
'' as well as
Van Morrison
Sir George Ivan Morrison (born 31 August 1945), known professionally as Van Morrison, is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose recording career spans seven decades. He has won two Grammy Awards.
As a teenager in t ...
's ''
Keep Me Singing'' and ''
Roll with the Punches''.
References
External links
Official site*
1961 births
Living people
Black Sabbath members
Musicians from Swansea
British jazz composers
Jazz fusion bass guitarists
Earthworks (band) members
Human Chain members
The Alan Parsons Project members
Welsh guitarists
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