Before McCartney was coming together with Lennon, Harrison and Star on his trusty left-handed Hofner he was a rhythm guitarist. Before Sting was sending messages in a bottle he was playing piano with his mum. Before Flea was slappin’ the bass with the Chili Peppers he was playing jazz trumpet! Notice a pattern here? My point is bassists who started out on the low end of the musical spectrum are few and far between. It also just so happens that I am one of those few bassists who took the low road right of the bat.
See really I owe my love of the bass guitar to my dad. When I was younger he was the bassist in a country band called the Wooden Nickel. He never thought to make me or any of my brothers take music lessons like many musician parents. He instead went with the philosophy that we had to want to play music in order to learn.
This philosophy paid off when in my 12th year of existence on this earth I had an epiphany: I like girls and girls like musicians… I should be a musician! And so my quest began to woo the fairer sex with the charm and, dare I say, swagger of an artist.
The first step was choosing my instrument. As this was an important rite of passage in my family my dad sat me down and laid out the instruments I could choose from. He was a multi-instrumentalist so I had the option of piano, guitar, banjo, drums, and of course the bass guitar. Piano was fairy boys; one third of the kids I knew played guitar; banjo was for inbred hicks and drummers have an alarming mortality rate. Plus I was a pretty shy kid so choice was more than obvious. It also helped that my dad had a healthy collection of bass guitars to choose from.
After that fateful day I became absolutely enthralled with my 4-string wonder instrument. I promptly started a band with one of my guitar playing friends and started taking lessons at a local music shop. I realized at some point that I could substitute practicing music for doing homework without any domestic penal repercussions and voilà I was the best bass player I knew (I was also the only bass player I knew). And then there was high school, but I’ll save that story for next week. Until then checkout this amazing young bass player whom I will be talking about next week:
bassrespect 