Sometimes one of us will have a riff or a bass line from home but it really gels when we come together. We really have a strong special chemistry that we take advantage of when we get together.
Let there be bass.
We went to a small lake, Bass Lake. It was beautiful. It was perfectly still when we got there in the morning. The fog was lifting off the water. It was just magical. And we did catch some fish, 13 fish.
As Mick Jagger will tell you, performing is an aerobic work-out. I’ve got the bass guitar, which is the heaviest of all the instruments, and I’m a little girl, in boiling-hot leather under the lights. You have to keep the fitness level up if you want to look good up there.
Jack Bruce, as soon as I saw him, it changed me. I didn’t even know what bass players did until I saw Cream.
I never picked a bass up before Sabbath started.
I didn’t start off as a bass player, and Guns was the first band I really, like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be a bass player. This is what I’m gonna do.’ And I really dove into it head first.
The kind of fishing that I do is pretty much bass, trout or freshwater fishing.
I was a bass fisherman. I liked bass. That was my thing.
As I said, when we needed to move over to rock’n’roll, Sam and Vernon couldn’t quite make the shift. So that’s when Larry took over on drums, and we needed a bass player.
I heard the Beatles and the Stones, and Mom bought me an electric guitar. I played lead for four years and then switched to bass. One day someone suggested that I should sing, so I sheepishly stepped up to the microphone and the rest is rock history.
Today, somewhere in America, there’s a kid who’s got a laptop and a guitar and a couple of his friends he’s putting together to play drums and bass, who’s gonna change the way we say things, the way that we dress, the way we view things, the music we hear, everything.
I’ve been a fan of bass fishing for as long as I can remember.
I compose, produce, arrange – I don’t just perform. I’m playing keyboards, playing bass, doing everything.
The rap game without me would be like woofers without bass.
Hip-hop and electronic music are so similar, in the fact that they’re both very visceral, have so much bass; a lot of times, it’s the same tempos. The culture and some of the sound design is different but a lot of times, it’s the same stuff.
Marketers have long known that a name can make all the difference when you’re trying to move the merch. The kiwifruit was once the Chinese gooseberry, after all – at least until the produce peddlers wised up – and the Chilean sea bass was once the singularly unappetizing Patagonian toothfish.
There was a time when fast playing and fretboard pyrotechnics on the bass were important to me and when I am recording a bass track, that is still very important to me.
I’ve always been the DJ or the bass player or the drummer, somebody in the background. I don’t think anybody who knows me personally would say that I’m particularly shy or introverted, but I’m definitely not like Mr. Attention.
My dad taught me how to fish. When I am stand in a trout stream now, and I have the waders on, and I’ve got a fly rod in my hand, or I am fishing for bass, I think of sitting in a boat with my dad. How can that be a bad experience?
Producers like to record all the drums first, then they do the bass, then all the guitars, so you’re constantly moving from one song to another.
I remember swallowing my tooth up in a high chair, but I definitely don’t remember the first time I played bass.
I got my first real bass guitar in my hands when I was 14 – a 1957 Fender Precision, which is still hanging on the wall in my front room. I loved the heaviness of it and the feel of the wood. I still do.
Where I grew up, I could be a punk rocker and a jock. But in college, it became apparent that those two worlds didn’t mix. When I brought my guitar back to school after Thanksgiving break, a friend handed me his bass and said, ‘Listen to the Ramones.’
People like my beats because of the crazy flow with the hi-hats and the bass.
I’d be willing to do anything once. I did live bass fishing on TV. I’ve done horse jumping… so clearly I’m not very picky.
My high school teacher, Reggie Andrews, was a huge factor in my learning my instrument. He didn’t play bass, but it was the part where he gave me a knowledgeable perspective of what it was that I was doing.
I really love Dinah Washington and anything live from her – she had some of the greatest jazz musicians in the whole world, and sometimes she would be with a big band, and sometimes she’d just be on stage with a muted trumpet, upright bass, and a piano.
The golden rule for playing the bass is that’s it all about feel, not just plonking away. You need to feel the sound, not using a pick or a plectrum – which has meant plenty of calluses on my fingers.
Proof of the ‘hysterical strength’ phenomenon is still hearsay, mostly because it’s impossible to recreate those conditions in a lab. That said, try turning a doorknob when the bass drops on ‘Skyfall’ without ripping that door clean off of its hinges.
I can’t remember the first song I learned to play on bass, but the first song I learned to play on guitar was ‘For Your Love’ by the Yardbirds. That kind of was the beginning for me. I thought it was a great song and I loved the open chord progression at the beginning of that song.
With guitar, bass and drums, you’ve got limited horizons.
I have two main bass guitars, and my main bass is a four-string 1964 Fender Jazz, and I’ve named it Justine.
I actually met Chick Corea in New York, where I was staying with a bass player friend.
I tried the guitar, but it had two strings too many. It was just too complicated, man! Plus, I grew up with Steve Cropper. There were so many good guitar players, another one wasn’t needed. What was needed was a bass.
I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.
Once I’ve got something that I feel is strong, if I get long enough to think about it, it’ll turn into something. I’ll start thinking about the drums – what the drums are doing, what the bass is doing. Then, if I can remember it by the time I get to a recording device, it’ll turn into a song.
Hendrix was the bass player for Little Richard. We were both left-handed, but we would use a right-handed guitar held upside down and backwards. He developed my slides and my riffs. In fact he used to say, and this is documented, ‘I patterned my style after Dick Dale.’
My mum’s family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.
My earliest memories of rap music was mixed with my earliest memories of reggae music. They were big sounds around the way, heavy bass lines, strong messages, definitely.
I actually think that bass is probably the instrument that has evolved in a quantum leap compared to other instruments. It’s the instrument that’s evolved the most, especially with how it’s perceived. And even how it’s played, and how it’s viewed from a point of view of commerce, like with the music industry.
Prince might be bringing that low sound back, because he has that double bass.
I was playing bass when I was a kid; I play bass now. I used to draw pictures when I was a kid, and I draw pictures now. I talked backwards and weird when I was a kid, and I talk backwards now.
Reggae was always playing at home in East Ham when I was growing up. Loud music would be coming from the bedroom, and downstairs all you’d hear was the bass. My uncles had sound systems and we used to go to Jamaica a lot as a family.
I’m exactly where I want to be – we live out here on the James River outside Richmond. I have three ponds, and we catch the biggest, most beautiful bass you’ve ever looked at in your life.
I wrote all my songs on my main instruments, and the songs I would record in my bedroom were just acoustic guitar, mandolin, and sometimes bass. I really like the texture the mandolin added to my music, but my fingers were too big to play it… I could only do little riffs and whatever.
Elvis came along when I was 10. My father gave me a bass ukulele. I taught myself how to play from a book to play some chords, so I was laying down ‘Hound Dog’ and things like that when I was 10 years old in 1955. That’s the way I was. My ear was glued to the radio. I knew right then what I wanted to do.
I don’t really have a favorite bass player. I listen to a lot of bluegrass. But then again, I’m not a typical bluegrass bass player. I was really into the Grateful Dead, and I still am – I don’t listen to them too much, but for me they are a big influence.
My dad taught me to play bass. He’s a bass player; he still plays in a band in Michigan to this day. He taught me to play bass when I was about 6. I used to just go to band practice with him, and whoever didn’t show up for rehearsal that day, I would take their spot.
I didn’t play a lot of bass as a kid, but I sang it.
It’s really important for the bass and the drums to somehow blend.
Yes, I love to play drums and bass and guitar and piano. Those are the main instruments I play. That is it.
Because I write the music, I write the lyrics, I write the vocal melody lines – I write everything. Just because I let somebody sing something doesn’t mean they’re more important than the bass player or the keyboard player or the drummer.
