When I heard BB King's 'Sweet Sixteen,' I knew I wanted to play bass because that was the thing that made that record: the bass player.
I've been in a band, so I understand the politics. Sometimes the bass player doesn't like what the guitar player is doing, and you have to sort of even that out.
Every time I want to impress someone about samples and hip-hop, I play 'Portrait of Tracy.' It's one of the greatest bass players ever doing a whole composition with only the two harmonics of electric bass; then a three-second loop in it became every...
The bass player's function, along with the drums, is to be the engine that drives the car... everything else is merely colours.
So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.
Eliminating the piano means that I've always worked closer with the bass than most players.
To be a great band it's like you have that telepathy. You know when the bass player's in back of you without even looking. You know when your guitar player's coming up to you to lean up to you and sing into your microphone. You just know these things...
My dad was a bass player in a Latino band when I was growing up. So we always had musical instruments in our basement.
I am more of a solo bass player and he needed somebody who would keep the role.
I always just wanted to be the singer or the bass player in the band. I'd love to have a band, where I was obviously the singer, but where it wasn't me, it wasn't my name.
I knew when I got to play with Al Jackson I would be a better bass player because he was the best drummer in the world. I worshipped him.
I actually met Chick Corea in New York, where I was staying with a bass player friend.
I wasn't originally a bass player. I just found out I was needed, because everyone wants to play guitar.
I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing. There was a piano player, a...
None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.
Jack Bruce, as soon as I saw him, it changed me. I didn't even know what bass players did until I saw Cream.
My brother Carl taught me how to play bass. I'm a self-taught keyboard player, though - I figured out our harmonies at the piano.
I love playing with Jeff. That's something I never really say in the press, but he's my favorite bass player. I've played right next to him for 10 years.
There are people who think the film 'This Is Spinal Tap' is simply a very funny 'mockumentary.' Well, with Yes, we lived it. Take the hilarious scene in the film in which the bass player is trapped in a giant pod - that actually happened to Alan one ...
I love my music, so I want to produce, write, and serve my music. I've had to learn about EQ frequencies and programming and space and clutter and how to be a better piano or bass player - everything.
I never forget the first time I was on 'Top of the Pops', my bass player said: 'You've made it!' I did used to think, when I was younger, that I'd be on there one day.
