JOHN RICHARD DEACON

As Arranger

First of all, some things need to be cleared:

- John didn't arrange all the bass lines he played. Often, it'd be the song creator, or even somebody else (e.g. Fred came up with the bass-riff for Roger's A Kind of Magic)

- John didn't only arrange bass parts. He also organised guitar, vocal, percussion and keyboards.

Deacy used to get into certain type of arrangements for short periods:

- 1974 - 1976: Loads of vocal and guitar harmonies.

- 1977 - 1980: Spread Your Wings and In Only Seven Days both have a similar combo - piano, guitar harmonies, fingerpicked acoustic guitar, melodic bass, basic drum pattern, no backing vocals -, while Who Needs You is an anomaly (no bass, loads of percussion, several acoustic and electric guitars as well as vocal harmonies) and If You Can't Beat Them has a similar formula as 1980's Need Your Loving.

- 1980 - 1981: Another One Bites the Dust, Cool Cat and Back Chat rely on loops, funky Telecaster clean guitars, simple harmony vocals.

- 1983 - 1986: I Want to Break Free and Pain is So Close to Pleasure both have synthesisers as (a) main instrument, bass is very melodic and harmony vocals are arranged similarly to the '80-'81 period.

- 1986 - 1988: One Year of Love, Friends Will Be Friends and My Life Has Been Saved are three songs with different arrangements (synths, orchestra, sax, no guitar, chordal harmony vocals; synths, piano, clean & distorted guitars, anthemic harmony vocals; synths, piano, distorted electric guitar, no harmony vocals), but giving importance to keyboards and placing the lead vocal in the centre. None of them has an actual guitar solo - both FWBW and MLHBS have guitar playing the intro, which is different (e.g. Beatles' Day Tripper).