Pino Palladino - Career

Career

Born in Cardiff to a family with Italian ancestry, Pino Palladino began playing the electric guitar at age 14. By 17 he decided to play the bass guitar, and bought his first fretless bass one year later, playing mostly R&B, funk, and reggae within a rock and roll backbeat. His first professional gig, at age 20, was at a local television station in Cardiff, where he began playing in 1978. That same year he joined Jools Holland's band and is credited on Holland's album, Jools Holland and His Millionaires. Touring with Holland to support the album gave him the opportunity to purchase his own Music Man StingRay Fretless Bass. While Holland was touring with another new band, the Q-Tips, its frontman, Paul Young became acquainted with Palladino and a year later offered him a place in Young's own backing band.

Palladino was featured on Gary Numan's 1982 album I, Assassin, in which his fretless bass playing made a prominent contribution to the overall sound of the album. He went on to play fretless bass with a healthy number of high-profile artists that include David Gilmour, Tears for Fears, Pete Townshend, Peter Gabriel, Joan Armatrading, Phil Collins, Chaka Khan and Don Henley.

After Paul Young landed his own solo contract in 1982, Palladino was brought in as part of his backing band "The Royal Family" resulting in noticeable chart success with the No Parlez album, and major hit singles both in the UK and Europe. Examples of Young's newfound success were the band's cover of the Marvin Gaye classic Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home), which reached No. 1 in the UK singles chart for three weeks in summer of 1983, and Love of the Common People. Palladino toured extensively at this time with Paul Young, remaining in the band for five years. 1983 additionally proved to be the year of another ensemble featuring Palladino, Paul Rodgers (formerly of Bad Company), drummer Kenney Jones, along with a rotating cast of other celebrity performers. The band only released one album through Atlantic, The Law, although there were enough out-takes that another bootleg-styled album followed in 1991. Sales were unremarkable, despite the names of those who recorded on the album.

Throughout the 1980s Palladino was noted for his R&B roots on the fretless bass, even when supporting pop and rock heavy performers. One reviewer from Bass Player magazine points to Paul Young’s cover of the Bobby Womack/ Rufus tune Stop On By (on 1990’s Other Voices), with its "pre-hip-hop, swung funk groove" as the precursor to Palladino's later neo-soul focus.