One of the longest running and most commercially successful acts to come from London’s ‘acid jazz’ scene, Jamiroquai came to the attention of UK audiences in the early 1990s with two successful albums – Emergency On Planet Earth (1993) and Return Of The Space Cowboy (1994) – that blended a number of influences from funk, soul, jazz and pop into a winning formula.
The group found international fame following the release of 1997’s Travelling Without Moving, which spawned the hit singles ‘Cosmic Girl’ and ‘Virtual Insanity’, which won no less than 4 categories at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, bringing Jamiroquai to the attention of North America and beyond.
Frequent lineup changes would occur in the years following the band’s third album, including the departure of founding member (and bassist) Stuart Zender in 1998. As the roster of musicians evolved so did the musical direction of the group, with later albums Synkronized (1998) and A Funk Odyssey (2001) displaying more prominent dance and disco influences.
‘Runaway’ is taken from Jamiroquai’s compilation album High Times: Singles 1992-2016 that was principally released to fulfill their contractual obligations with Sony and allow them to switch labels to Columbia. The album featured two new tracks, ‘Runaway’ and ‘Radio’, the former featuring a cracking bass line courtesy of Paul Turner. (https://davidsinstruments.com)
After a rather ominous-sounding synth bass appearance at bar 5 of the introduction, the bass guitar makes its entrance for the verse, immediately stealing the spotlight with a syncopated semiquaver motif that spans almost 2 octaves. The range of the line means that it won’t sit comfortably in one position unless you’ve got more than 5 strings on your bass, which means that most of us will have quite a lot of fretting hand gymnastics in order to be in the right places at the right times.
While we’re looking at the main riff, fans of the original 1970s jazz/funk era might find the line quite familiar. Let’s take a listen to Roy Ayers’ ‘Running Away’ (from 1977’s Lifeline):
Similar tempo, similar melodic contour within the bass line, similar song title. I’m never quite sure where an homage ends and a pastiche or a rip-off (or a lawsuit) begins, although it’s a question I ask myself every time I hear a new Bruno Mars single.