Pelle Gustavsson – Bass
A hard rocker converted to blues

One afternoon some twenty years ago, a friend of mine called me on the phone and said “I‘m forming a band and I want you to play bass” and I remember thinking, yeah right, like I’m going to embarrass my self trying to do something I have absolutely no talent for…, when I heard my self answering “OK!”
And that’s how it all started, I was playing the bass, or rather putting my index finger where on the neck my friend told me to.

We were rehearsing in a garage on borrowed stuff, I was spoiled early with a Rickenbacker-bass and an Orange amp and Orange 4x12 cab. After a while I bought my first bass, it was a  second hand Duke and had only the E and A strings on.
At the time I was still in school so I had to get my dad to pay for it, he wasn’t to keen on my new hobby, so we had a little fight about it but he eventually gave in and paid the 150 Skr ($20). If only he knew how much money I was gonna spend over the years on my music.

My first ever band was called Heavy Verkstad(Heavy Workshop) with Christer Pettersson (Git) and Kent Gustavsson (Drums), I’m not really sure what kind of music we played and I don’t think I cared – Hey, I was in a band!

The next band I joined was Bonehead, Peter Asp (Git), Mattias Andersson (Git), Mats Larspers (Vocals) and Pelle Fyrby (Drums). Oh, there were some heavy Black Sabbath influences here.

Then came Trigger, a band I formed with my best friend Johan Rombin (Git;Vocals)This band had a few member changes over the years but the core was me, J R and
P-H Karlsson (Drums).

Those are the bands that got me started and I have never looked back since, in the following years there are a few band worth some extra attention: Handsome Stranger, Orango Tango, Bravado, Jeremy (UK), Scullys Wonderbra (UK) and Impact Machine.

In 1997 I went to London  for a year to study music at LMS (London Music School).
At one occasion we had a guest tutor, the famous Bernard Purdie, who at his lecture told us that if you were older than 30 you are out of the pop industry for good and the only ones that’s gonna call you are the blues guys.
I had been back in Sweden maybe a month or so when CC called me and asked if I wanted to join his new…. blues band!
And I’ve been a blues rocker by CC’s side since that day.

Here’s a list of some other excellent musicians I’ve played with at some point in my career.
PH Karlsson (Josh's Lemontree), Lars Sköld (Tiamat), Ulrich Carlsson (Million), Ulf Åhman (Åhman band), Petra Kvännå (Sky High), Magnus Åkerlund (Blender. Voted: Best Dance band guitarist 2005), Mats Östensson (Sky High)
 

"I’ve been a blues rocker by CC’s side since that day"
                                      GUS

GEAR

CC