If Guy Pratt were a food he’d be Allen’s Fantales. The irresistible muso-cum-raconteur has accumulated a wealth of tasty real-life celebrity tales that – and this is where he and the confectionary differ -provide genuine insight into lives of the famous. Only an idiot would eat fantales for breakfast, so in a convoluted way it is apt that his new stand-up show is entitled Breakfast of Idiots. Armed with razor-sharp wit and raw honesty, Pratt is set to serve up another round of hilarious yarns from his extensive professional bass career. Michael Jackson, Madonna, David Bowie, The Smiths, Iggy Pop, Bryan Ferry, Elton John and Robert Palmer are just a few names on what promises to be a scrumptious menu for music fans young and old.
Pratt’s story is every music-lover’s fantasy. At fourteen his father bought him an electric bass guitar and a copy of Pink Floyd ’s classic Dark Side of the Moon. Little did he know that over the next thirty-odd years his son would play thousands of shows with numerous musical legends, appear as a recording hand on countless hit records and foster friendships with rock-royalty. Incredibly, the very band Pratt Senior packaged with that first bass guitar would ultimately become Pratt Junior’s band-mates, and closest comrades. “I actually completely forgot about that (receiving Dark Side of the Moon with his first bass) until I played with Pink Floyd at Wembley Stadium,” he chuckles. “I just kind of walked on stage and thought – œFuck!’ It was bonkers, you know, mad is the only way to describe it.”
In fact it’s a good description for his entire career to date, considering that when he chose to pursue a music career at the age of seventeen Pratt had no idea whether things would work out. “I always like to think that – œcareer’ isn’t something I had, it’s more something I did, you know, I just careered around bouncing off walls. And it just seemed to take its own shape. Every person who asked me to play for them was kind of one step up from the last and so the next thing you know, you find yourself at the top of the tree. I never really wanted to be a top session bass player, I just wanted to be in a band. And quite early on people I really wanted to play with, knew and admired, kept asking me to play for them. You know, then suddenly you’re 30 and you realise that’s what you do.”
Though he grew up in the musical boiling pot of 1970s London, it was here in Australia where Pratt embarked on his first professional tour – in 1982 as a member of Icehouse . “Back then , musically (Australia) seemed really alien to me in that we’d just kind of got over the whole new wave thing and we were very much into hip-hop kind of stuff in England,” Pratt reminisces, “but looking back now, it was actually an amazing time for music in Australia; there were so many great bands – Hoodoo Gurus , Hunters and Collectors , The Church , Deckchairs Overboard , Crowded House , Midnight Oil – you look back now and just go – œGod that was an incredibly fertile time!’”
And having amassed a monumental musical resume, Pratt has an interesting perspective of the live-dominated Australian scene. “Australia was always very much about live music. That has always been the deal. And the funny thing is now, since technology has made records worthless, the rest of the world has become like that. Now, over here (England) everything is just about live music, so funnily enough – whether deliberately or not – Australia was always 25 years ahead of the curve.”
It is clear that Pratt knows his music, but to those who have had the pleasure of meeting him, seeing him perform comedy or reading his autobiographical novel My Bass and Other Animals , his bright wit is as glaringly obvious as his bass-playing prowess. Indeed close friend David Gilmour once said of him “bass players are ten a penny, but good wit is hard to find,” suggesting that it was Pratt’s magnetic personality that led to his selection as Pink Floyd’s post – Roger Waters bassist. But whilst he clearly has a rich creative streak, Pratt prefers to see himself as a normal, if not lucky guy, and attributes his perceived talents to the subjective nature of music and comedy. “They are two indefinable things aren’t they? You can’t really define what a laugh is and you can’t really define what good music is. In that way they’re very similar. And they’re both great ways of conveying serious and not so serious points.”
Despite his many talents, this deep-seated humility is Pratt’s most endearing feature. How could you not like a guy who has played with the world’s most famous bands yet still admits that he could never talk to The Who ’s Pete Townshend because he’d be “too star-struck”? Pratt’s explanation is simple. “It’s something that David Gilmore used to say. You’ve gotta be a fan, otherwise there’s no point.”
Dates:
Friday July 10 -Ballarat Her Majesty’s Theatre
Saturday July 11 -Bendigo Capital Theatre
Tuesday July 14 -Melbourne The Corner Hotel
Wednesday July 15 – Adelaide The Governor Hindmarsh Hotel
Friday July 17 -Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre
Saturday July 18 -Albany Albany Town Hall
Sunday July 19 -Perth Burswood Casino,Grand Ballroom
Tuesday July 21 -Wodonga Wodonga Civic Centre
Wednesday July 22 – Wagga Wagga Civic Theatre
Thursday July 23 -Canberra Playhouse Theatre
Friday July 24 -Wollongong Illawarra Performance Arts Centre
Saturday July 25 -Sydney The Factory
Sunday July 26 -Sydney The Factory
Sunday August 02 -Byron Bay Byron Bay Community Centre
Tuesday July 28 -Southport Paradise Showroom
Wednesday July 29 – Maroochydore Lake Kawana Theatre
Thursday July 30 – Toowoomba Highfields Cultural Centre
Friday July 31 -Brisbane Sit Down Comedy Club
Saturday August 01 -Brisbane Sit Down Comedy Club
