This is seriously the most interesting thread on TB in a long time.
I worry that I'm going to bore people or make them think I'm showing off.
Seriously, though, the floodgates have opened since I made my peace with not being able to play anymore. Suddenly I can talk about this without getting depressed or angry.
Here's an insider's story:
I was actually in the
Bass Player editor's office (one of the two visionary editors) pitching Ray Shulman to him when the phone rang. It was a bassist who's extremely famous in the bass world but hardly a household name. He's also a famously arrogant, opinionated jackass who's convinced he's God's gift to the bass and who's technically brilliant but whose work has always left me cold.
He was furious over what the editor--who'd conducted an interview with him--had titled the article. I offered to leave, but the editor motioned for me to stay. I could hear all this high-pitched yammering coming out of the phone, and I pictured this angry cartoon pig getting roasted on a spit, turning over and over, squealing and thrashing. I started laughing, and the editor shot me the finger and had to cover his mouth because he was laughing, too.
It went on forever, and it was ridiculous because the article was nothing but laudatory, since this is one of the Towering Figures in the bass world, but his pride had been deeply injured by someone even bringing up the possibility that maybe he sometimes went too far in praising his own exalted abilities and making sweeping pronouncements about what "real" bass playing was.
When the call ended, the editor--who was usually a hip, snarky guy--slumped and said, "Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it. You put your heart and soul into this, and people hate you for it."
I knew what he meant, because every issue they would post a letter from some mental patient who had it in for me. He was a troll long before every other commenter on the 'Net became a troll. He had some ridiculous triple-barreled name, I think, with a number, like Milton Walker Studebaker III. No matter what I wrote, there'd be a letter from the guy complaining that I was a no-talent hack who should be fired. He once wrote "I'm still scratching my head over Wictor's statement that John Taylor is a brilliant bassist."
(Just as an addendum, Taylor was also the kindest, most polite, cooperative, humble, appreciative, and thoroughly pleasant person I ever interviewed, bar none.)
They asked me if I wanted to respond to the mental patient, so I sent them the following:
"If you're still scratching your head after three weeks, you need to see a doctor right away, because that means your cholinergic brain synapses have stopped releasing the acetylcholinesterase that neutralizes the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is responsible for initiating voluntary motion. You could end up scratching your head forever!"
But they thought that was too esoteric.
Years later, that guy e-mailed me out of the blue and apologized for harassing me the whole time I worked for
Bass Player. I'm not a very forgiving person; I wanted to tell him to shove his apology, but I figured he'd probably gotten some bad medical news and was trying to make amends before the Big Gulp, so I told him all was forgiven.
One of the hardest things I ever did.
