I'm not a 'guitarist.' I'm trying to be a bassist.
It's really hard for me to sing and play bass.
My major influences were primarily guitar players and bands; I started playing bass by accident.
I think I've been playing bass for as long as I've played guitar, and I love them both.
I don't look at my instrument as having one specific role; I was raised to go as far as you can. But Raphael Saadiq hated my bass. He told me to throw it away. And playing in Snoop's band, there was a time when my bass was more annoying to everyone than helpful. They would get on my case: 'Can you make your bass sound like more of a bass?'
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 picked up the bass kind of postpunk-style. There's a real art to not learning how to play an instrument and being able to still play it.
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 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 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.
The rock and roll spirit. I learned a lot of that because I worked with Buddy Holly. I played bass with him, and he taught me a lot about that.
I think I've ascended to the point after a lot of years where I'm kind of OK on bass.
I feel my spot is somewhere between a bass player and a rhythm guitar player. I play with a pick. I play very aggressively. I always have a distortion pedal in line, and I play less melodies and do more stuff against the guitars that create melodies.
I've always been a fan of instructional videos. The bass-player ones are insane. The music on them is fascinating. It's not something you hear on CDs or would really ever play in bands. You listen to it and are like, 'What is happening?' It's this blizzard of notes in weird time signatures, and they're trying to teach you that.
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.
I tried to play bass in a punk band once, and it was an absolute disaster. I can’t play anything. I don’t know what it is.
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 have a couple of basses in my office. And I try to be courteous of my co-workers, but sometimes I get carried away and I crank up my amp and I rock out. It's kind of my stress reliever.
My first instrument was bass, and the first thing that I remember learning to play that was better than a few notes was Fleetwood Mac's 'The Chain.' If you're the guy who penned that bass riff, then you should probably be in some sort of fantasy band.
In the early days all I hoped was to make a living out of what I did best. But, since there's no real market for masturbation I had to fall back on my bass playing abilities.
When I started to pick up the bass, it was purely by random chance.
I like to believe that I play bass like Dusty Hill, and that's something nobody else can do as well as me. I'm the best Dusty Hill I know.
Eventually, my dad bought me a guitar for Christmas, and then I just went from there, man. I bought a drum kit a few years later and bought a bass, started producing, started singing.
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.
Jaco Pastorius gave the bass a new voice. I mean, he was very inspired by singers like Frank Sinatra. And in a lot of ways, maybe he wanted to be a singer himself.
