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My friend Andrew Bodnar, who has died aged 71, was bass guitarist with Graham Parker & the Rumour.

One of the best British bassists of his generation, with a finely honed ability to play exactly what a song required and then embellish as the feeling took him, he also had a life outside the Rumour, playing the bass lines on Elvis Costello’s Watching the Detectives (1977) and Nick Lowe’s I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass (1978), while also touring with Thompson Twins.

Andrew was born in Kennington, south London, to John, an upholsterer, and Louise (nee Bailey), a homemaker. The youngest of three children, he soaked up the musical tastes of his siblings, Richard and Ann, which included bass-centric Motown records.

Andrew first felt the lure of four low-pitched strings at his local Catholic secondary school, Salesian college, where he learned classical double-bass. In 1970 he went electric, buying a cheap Futurama bass guitar, and at school met Stephen Goulding, who had his own drum kit. The two became friends and rhythm-section bandmates.

Initially they bashed out cover versions at social functions, before gigging under the name Bontemps Roulez on the London pub-rock scene of the early 70s, where they met Dave Robinson, co-founder of Stiff Records. They soon became Stiff’s go-to rhythm section at the label’s studio at the Hope & Anchor pub in Islington, north London, where Robinson introduced them to Bob Andrews (keyboards), Brinsley Schwarz and Martin Belmont (both guitars). Together they formed the Rumour, with Parker joining a little later as chief songwriter and vocalist.

The Graham Parker & the Rumour albums that appeared between 1975 and 1980 contained Andrew’s sparkling bass at its best, while he also played on Watching the Detectives and I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass, receiving a writing credit for the latter.

By 1981, after a long period of recording and touring with the Rumour, Andrew had begun to find the pressures of life on the road too much. He dropped out of the music business for a time, working for Southwark libraries as a senior library assistant, until resuming his work with Parker between 1987 and 1996.

Andrew met Peter Rayment, an architectural designer, through mutual friends in London in 2000, and they became long-term partners. Later he moved to Yorkshire to be with Peter, working at Malton library as a senior library assistant until his retirement, while continuing with his musical projects.

His last work with Parker began in 2011, when the Rumour reformed, recording two albums and appearing in Judd Apatow’s movie This Is 40 (2012), which featured the band’s music. He continued performing with the Rumour until their final tour in 2015.

After that, Andrew made most of his music at home until he was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2023. He is survived by Peter, Richard and Ann.