My buddy and neighbour Mo Foster, who has died aged 78, was a session bass guitar participant within the Nineteen Seventies and 80s working with such individuals as Jeff Beck, Phil Collins, Gerry Rafferty, Joan Armatrading and Gary Moore.
Through the years he performed on a lot of hit singles together with Don’t Cry for Me Argentina by Julie Covington (1976), I May Be So Good for You by Dennis Waterman (1979) and No One is to Blame by Howard Jones (1986), in addition to on many albums, together with Beck’s There and Again (1980) and Collins’s Hiya, I Should Be Going! (1982).
Born in Wolverhampton to Ethel (nee Billings), a housewife, and her husband, Charles Foster, a senior supervisor at Goodyear Tyres, Mo was educated at St Dominic’s grammar college within the village of Brewood, Staffordshire. He then went to Sussex College, the place he studied physics earlier than leaving early to observe his musical pursuits.
In 1959, Mo and a gaggle of schoolfriends shaped the Tradewinds, a band whose repertoire consisted of American guitar instrumentals, skiffle songs and excerpts from The Goon Present. At Sussex he performed drums for the college’s jazz trio, who served because the help act to visiting musicians comparable to Cream, the Who and Jimi Hendrix.
Mo moved to London and, after dwelling in numerous places, settled in Belsize Park. His first skilled success got here in 1968 when the jazz trio morphed into the progressive jazz/rock band Affinity with the singer Linda Hoyle, and attracted the eye of the jazz membership impresario Ronnie Scott, who turned their supervisor. An album was launched in 1970, however didn’t promote nicely, leaving Mo to hunt employment as a session bass guitarist.
After putting a labeled advert in Melody Maker he was unexpectedly provided a job with the previous Manfred Mann singer Mike d’Abo’s group, and on his first studio session (for a Russ Ballard music) he labored with Clem Cattini on drums, Ray Cooper on percussion, Mike Moran on keyboards and Ray Fenwick on guitar. He additionally established an in depth working relationship with the jazz/rock guitarist Ray Russell, with whom he performed his remaining gig at Pizza Specific, Soho, earlier this 12 months.
In his later years he primarily recorded jazz albums, the latest of which was Mo Foster & Buddies in Live performance (2021). His final classes had been in August 2022 for Music n the Bones, an album and US movie mission. The primary two tracks from it had been launched in July.
Mo was additionally the writer of Seventeen Watts?: The First 20 Years of British Rock Guitar (1997), which contained anecdotes from rock musicians about their escapades, with a foreword by Hank Marvin of the Shadows, and a follow-up, British Rock Guitar: The First 50 Years (2011).
In 2014 Mo was honoured with a Gold Badge award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors in recognition of his contribution to music.
He’s survived by his spouse, Kay (nee Morgan), a New Zealander whom he met at Stringfellows nightclub in 1986 and married the next 12 months.
