Herbie Flowers

English studio musician born 19 May 1938, in Isleworth, Middlesex. Died 5 September 2024. Flowers specialized in bass guitar, double-bass, and tuba, and became prominent performing with David Bowie, Elton John and then later Lou Reed. It is his bass that opens Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side and underpins Bowie’s Space Oddity as well as the Harry Nilsson song Jump Into The Fire. In 1969, Flowers co-founded the group Blue Mink. He was a member of CCS and later featured in a mid-1970s line-up of T. Rex. In 1979 he became a co-founder of the band Sky. Since the band’s demise in the early 1990s, Flowers had spent most of his time playing jazz. He also works as a bass guitar teacher, and leads many ‘rockshops’ at schools, helping children to create and perform their own songs, as well as covering many others. Flowers is also known for having composed the novelty hit Grandad for Clive Dunn.