I want to learn to sight-read music. And to play the bass pedals on the organ. Those are my only ambitions.
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?
My first computer was an IBM Display Writer. With all its components, it was roughly the size of a bass fishing boat.
That was the reasoning behind learning to play bass, and then after that it was more like it was neat to play songs together – for me to play bass and for him to play guitar.
If what you do for a living is play drums or bass, then that defines you. You don’t want to be some guy missing notes here and there; you want to really speak with it.
Cello is my first instrument, then piano, drums, bass, violin, recorder, saxophone, but I’d never play them live!
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.’
