{"id":891065,"date":"2026-02-08T04:19:01","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T10:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/08\/i-just-said-sell-all-the-assets-not-really-thinking-that-this-instrument-would-accrue-so-much-in-value-facing-mounting-debts-nick-beggs-sold-off-the-bas\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T04:19:01","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T10:19:01","slug":"i-just-said-sell-all-the-assets-not-really-thinking-that-this-instrument-would-accrue-so-much-in-value-facing-mounting-debts-nick-beggs-sold-off-the-bas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/08\/i-just-said-sell-all-the-assets-not-really-thinking-that-this-instrument-would-accrue-so-much-in-value-facing-mounting-debts-nick-beggs-sold-off-the-bas\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI just said, \u2018Sell all the assets\u2026\u2019 not really thinking that this instrument would accrue so much in value\u201d: Facing mounting debts, Nick Beggs sold off the bass he used on Kajagoogoo\u2019s Too Shy \u2013 40 years later his fans helped him buy it back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Music <\/p>\n

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Steven Wilson bassist Nick Beggs has been reunited with his long-lost bass guitar<\/a>, 40 years after he was forced to sell it, and it’s come at a high price.<\/p>\n

Beggs, a prolific player in the prog scene, began his music career with British synth-pop outfit Kajagoogoo. Early single Too Shy<\/em> dominated the airwaves in 1983, but what looked like a rosy future for the band soon grew darker.<\/p>\n

As Beggs told Bass Player<\/em><\/a> in 2021, Too Shy<\/em> \u201csold over three million copies and was the 13th biggest single of 1983\u201d.<\/p>\n

It has also featured in the TV series Black Mirror<\/em> and American Horror Story<\/em>, but Beggs has also dismissed the album from which it came, White Feathers<\/em>, as \u201ca triumph of style over content.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bass was built in 1979 by High Wycombe, UK-based firm Wal, which was then operating under the name Electric Wood Limited. Later purchased second-hand by Beggs, the instrument was used to record Too Shy <\/em>\u2013 but it quickly went from a prized possession to a victim of collateral damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had one owner before me,\u201d Beggs tells the BBC<\/em><\/a>. \u201cI saw an advert in the back of Melody Maker<\/em>, and went down to Vauxhall and bought it for, not an insignificant amount of money, but considerably less than it’s worth now; I had to buy it back for over \u00a315,000 [approximately $20,600].\u201d<\/p>\n

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Kajagoogoo – Too Shy (Official Music Video) – YouTube<\/span>
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By 1985, the band\u2019s success was dwindling, marred by internal strife and singles that failed to replicate the success of Too Shy<\/em>. Then financial troubles were afoot.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a company asset,\u201d Beggs says of the bass. \u201cWhen you have a record deal, you usually end up buying [the gear] with the money of the company that you set up. We had problems with our management, who left us insolvent to the tune of \u00a3250,000, and we had debts.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I could have bought the bass, but I was just so sick and tired of it all back then, I just said, \u2018Sell all the assets and pay off the debts,\u2019 and that’s what we did, not really thinking that this instrument would accrue so much in value.\u201d<\/p>\n

Time passed, and the bass became a thing of the past. Then, his daughter took the initiative to reverse the damage done all those years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s another nice side to this story, and that was that the fans rallied round, with the help of my wonderful daughter,\u201d Beggs continues. \u201cShe set up a GoFundMe page, and the fans chipped in \u00a35,000 towards this because I didn’t want to pay for my own providence. I sold a bass, I sold some of my artwork, and the fans brought the rest.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I made an album last year using this bass and made it freely available as a thank you to the fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I made an album last year using this bass and made it freely available as a thank you to the fans<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

The wittily titled Wal Mart<\/em> is available as a free download via Bandcamp <\/a>and is also streaming in full on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The reunion was also documented by the bassist in typically bonkers fashion, which you can see in the video above.<\/p>\n

In July last year, Beggs gave a candid interview with Bass Player<\/em><\/a>, discussing everything from his audition for the Blue Man Group to lessons learned from Frank Zappa<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog<\/em>, Guitar World<\/em>, and Total Guitar<\/em> magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis<\/a>, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He’s also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Music (Image credit: Getty Images) Steven Wilson bassist Nick Beggs has been reunited with his long-lost bass guitar, 40 years after he was forced to sell it, and it’s come at a high price. Beggs, a prolific player in the prog scene, began his music career with British synth-pop outfit Kajagoogoo. Early single Too Shy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":891066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[131522],"class_list":["post-891065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business-news","tag-podcast-music"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}