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Interviewing bassist stories

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#963
Arthritic_Tom said:
.......When I next spoke to the all-male staff of Bass Player at the NAMM show and mentioned this tidbit, there was the ear-splitting silence that I imagine follows the detonation of a terrorist's fertilizer bomb. All those grown men went a toadstool gray contemplating this image, and someone finally croaked out, "You always have such, um, interesting stories to tell."
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Ok, now I literally have tears streaming down my face. STOP IT!!! (not really). L O friggin L, Tom. Great, great stuff.
 
#965
Arthritic_Tom said:
My cat wanted to change. He wanted to be a good cat. He didn't fight me every inch of the way. He had lapses where he bit me, but then he'd run out of the house and be depressed because he'd let me down again. I never hit him or yelled at him. I never forced him into changing. He did it all on his own, once he realized he didn't have to fight for every scrap of food or safe place to sleep.

I didn't save my cat; I only gave him the means and opportunity for him to save himself, which he did because he wanted to. He did it out of sheer willpower and force of character. He was happy and fulfilled when he died, but only because he made the choice to become a good cat.
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Tom, there is an old psychologist joke this reminds me of: How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb?

Just one, but the lightbulb has to want to change...

buh dump bum...
 
#966
Just finished Tom's first book, "In Cold Sweat", and I can confirm, it is fantastic. Tom's a skilled interviewer, and the interviews are surprisingly deep and honest, far more so than anything you'd see in BP today. The Scott Thunes interview in particular was something else. Is there any way to see the article that interview was turned into?

Also, Gene Simmons is a... well, I don't think I would get along with him.
 
#969
famousbirds said:
Just finished Tom's first book, "In Cold Sweat", and I can confirm, it is fantastic...
Also, Gene Simmons is a... well, I don't think I would get along with him.
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Thanks very much. Always gratifying to hear.

Simmons is a deeply complex man who took careful handling. When I first opened the studio door, he was standing there talking, facing away from me, for what seemed like hours. It was an intimidation tactic.

At the same time, I sensed that if I interested him he'd engage me, so after listening to him speak uninterrupted for about 15 minutes, I began challenging him in a way that showed him that I was going to allow him to get the best of me in the interview, but not out of deference. That would've bored him.

I somehow cued him in that it was a total free-for-all, in which he'd get to totally control the conversation but in exchange I would get to more energetically challenge him than most other interviewers. It was a work of art, the way my memoir will be. It was a performance, and a great one.

I always took my cues form my interview subjects, and it only got tense with one, where he told me to eff off for asking a question.
 
#974
Arthritic_Tom said:
Can't. They'll ban me. But I'll tease you:

I pursued a legendary bassist/singer for years. His people always said he was too busy. Then a guy who knew the guitarist told me that the bassist had never once played any of the bass lines on any of the albums. The guitarist had done all of them, and then the bassist would sort of struggle to learn a simplified version to play live.

That bassist/singer hasn't played a bass since he quit the band, so I'm pretty sure it's true. Plus, I read an interview with the guitarist years after the bassist quit, in which the guitarist said, when asked about one of their most famous songs, "________ played fretless? C'mon!" But that was all he had to say on the topic.

Too bad. I really liked him as a bassist as well as a singer.
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Roger Waters? :D

(I, too, have written off and on for Bass Player going back a long while - I did the Esperanza cover story a couple of years ago, among other pieces)
 
#976
Tampabass said:
Roger Waters? :D

(I, too, have written off and on for Bass Player going back a long while - I did the Esperanza cover story a couple of years ago, among other pieces)
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I can neither confirm nor deny. It just intrigued me that this bassist's record label said they had no contact information for him, including no contact information for his management. That's quite amazing. Did he just donate master tapes for his solo albums, sent in a package with no return address?

Did the master tapes come with a note that said, "Use these how you will. No need for us to sign a contract so I can get paid royalties"?

What a bighearted man, doing it all for free, simply for the sake of the art!
 
#977
I'm late to this thread, and still wading happily through it - thanks Tom and Scott, some inspiring and illuminating material here. At the risk of being branded a "derailer", I notice a lot of people posting saying that they've never listened to Zappa and I can't stop myself from mention a couple of wonderful "starter" albums for those folks:

1. "One Size Fits All" is a luxuriously produced studio album with lots of quirky but low-filth-quotient humor. More importantly, some really inventive, stirring music and fabbo playing.

2. "You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore Vol2" showcases much of the same material in a live setting with various live quirks thrown in by a band that knows the material well enough to turn it inside out and back again.

Zappaphiles will correct me, but if I recall the bassist in both cases is Tom Fowler.

Apologies again, all these mentions of Zappa, I couldn't help myself

</derail>
Mike
 
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#979
famousbirds said:
Much appreciated. I'd never really listened to Zappa before this thread. I made my through MAJNH, but any suggestions for particular or exemplary tracks would be great, especially those featuring the playing of Mr. Thunes.
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Here is what may be the best one minute and 43 seconds of bass on any Frank Zappa track, all courtesy of Scott Thunes. I always stop listening to the song after 1:43. Thunes refuses to take credit for it the bass line, telling me that Zappa wrote every note.

Not to take anything away from Zappa, but why didn't he ever write anything like this again for any of his other bassists?

Anyway, this one minute and 43 seconds expresses precisely why I was so haunted by the fact that Thunes had stopped playing live and only did musical favors for friends for so long. To me, this one minute and 43 seconds is packed with more creativity, emotion, and beauty than most musicians achieve in a lifetime of playing.

Frank Zappa - What's New In Baltimore? - YouTube
 
#980
famousbirds said:
Much appreciated. I'd never really listened to Zappa before this thread. I made my through MAJNH, but any suggestions for particular or exemplary tracks would be great, especially those featuring the playing of Mr. Thunes.
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Although this isn't a response to your question, I thought I'd use it as an opportunity to explain my deep reverence for Ray Shulman, who shares the throne with Scott Thunes as my favorite of favorite bassists.

As the intro to "What's New in Baltimore" distills everything I love about Thunes into a minute and 43 seconds, the bass passage from 2:47 to 3:41 in Gentle Giant's "The Moon is Down" (Acquiring the Taste [Fontana Island]) is like nothing I've ever heard any other bassist play. It achieves a level of artistic skill and beauty that leaves me breathless every time I listen to it.

It starts out slowly and builds. Give it time.

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