About Chas Maguire

Chas has worked as a freelance bass guitarist for many years and has performed the length of Britain as well as Monaco, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Spain and the Czech Republic.

Chas has been playing bass ever since he was discovered in the school music room one lunchtime pretending he knew some musicians. As punishment, the teacher made him stay behind every Friday to become the bassist for the school band. This suited Chas as it meant he had something to do on Friday evenings when more popular kids would be outside playing with their friends.

In the time between leaving school and the present day, Chas has mostly been found standing slightly to the left of drummers, a position he maintains is thanks to that winning combination of bribery and van ownership. A good ear for harmony means backing vocals are accommodated easily (try and stop him!) and recent years have seen more lead vocals creeping into the performances.

His musical influences are many and wide ranging, and have led to Chas playing every style of music from smooth dinner jazz, passing through cheesy pop, avant-garde cartoon big band, blues, disco and funk, right up to prog, fusion, hard rock and heavy metal; very few genres haven’t had a look in at some point (and occasionally in the same gig…) His favourite bassists include: Norman Watt-Roy, Trevor Dunn, Carol Kaye, John Deacon, Roger Waters, Bootsy Collins, Paul McCartney, Tony Levin, Robert “Kool” Bell, Walter Becker and Donald “Duck” Dunn. He really doesn’t like a band beginning with O, and also dislikes two singers beginning with B.

Chas has an exciting new project in the pipeline, and when he’s not working on that he spends time trying to reduce the amount of bottom lip in his bass face.