Chris Squire - Early Career

Early Career

Squire was fond of experimenting with LSD in the 1960s, until an incident where he had a bad acid trip. He recalled that "it was the last time I ever took it, having ended up in St Stephen's Hospital in Fulham for a couple of days not knowing who I was, or what I was, or who anybody else was." He also recalled that he spent months inside his girlfriend's apartment, afraid to leave, and it was during this time that he developed his style on the bass. He recovered and never used LSD again.

Squire's first bass was a Futurama, "very cheap, but good enough to learn on." He acquired his signature Rickenbacker 4001 bass in 1965, while working at Boosey & Hawkes. His early influences were diverse, ranging from church and choral music to the Merseybeat sounds of the early 1960s and he studied the bass styles of John Entwistle, Jack Bruce, and Larry Graham. Squire's first musical groups The Selfs, The Syn (both including Jackman), and later, Mabel Greer's Toyshop, would introduce him to his early Yes collaborators Peter Banks and Jon Anderson. In 1965, he made his first public appearance with the Selfs at "The Graveyard" club in St Andrew's Church Hall.