Interviewing Bassists Stories part 2

[Arthritic_Tom]

I was invited to the Bass Player Live! show. I declined.

It may be hard for people to understand why I didn't want to go. Although I'm not angry at Bass Player anymore, and although I have no negative feelings toward the person who invited me, I declined because it would've been a betrayal of the guy who wanted so badly to be a music journalist and whose dreams were destroyed for no reason.

Accepting the invitation would've made it seems as though everything was fine. It isn't. I'm not angry, but for me to accept that invitation, I would need an apology from Bass Player and an acknowledgment that what was done to me was wrong.

There's a notion out there that forgiveness is the responsibility of the person who was victimized. That's incorrect. Forgiveness can only happen when the perpetrator asks for it. The victimized can let go of his or her anger, move forward, and accept the deficits of the perpetrator, but one can only forgive when the perpetrator asks for it.

When people automatically "forgive," such as after a mass shooting or at the sentencing hearing of the the Green River Killer, it isn't real. If someone expresses no remorse, for you to forgive them is to commit an injustice against yourself. And it won't make you feel any better. One of my demands for interaction these days is that people take responsibility for their actions and try to make amends. If that isn't forthcoming, I can't engage.

So I declined.

Still, here's a clip of Tony Levin playing better than I've ever seen him play, and it was at Bass Player Live!

In another era, under different circumstances, I would've been thrilled out of my mind to go and see that, but currently I'm happy to watch it on YouTube.

Enjoy!

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[eb3mike]

Started the Part I on Oct. 5th. Just finished part II. Have recommended it to every musician friend I have. G&B will be the first new book I have bought in well over 30 years. I also subscribe to BP and enjoy it.

Thank You!

 

[ewe2]

Thanks, Tom, for this conversation, music journalism of the highest order. I haven't read something like this since the 80's when RAM magazine still existed here in Australia. As a mostly-retired bassist (first gig in 20+ years coming up at the end of the year), your love for the instrument and its practitioners shines through and has greatly encouraged me to the point I am gearing up again.

Thanks too for the Levin, he is such a tasteful player and his self-deprecation about bass solos was charming. I'd heard a bunch of his session work on various albums but wasn't a fan until I heard him on Fripp's Exposure which continues to be a favourite.

I understand your anger towards Bass Player and its to your credit that you've overcome it and found peace. Anger and other negative emotions are so addictive that its a great victory to get free of them in any degree.

 

[Arthritic_Tom]

Starting the thread and then writing Ghosts has set me free. I can now revisit aspects of my life that were simply too painful to contemplate.

I hope everyone buys Bass Player these days and enjoys it. I'll buy it, too, if I get a letter of apology and an acknowledgement that what was done to me was wrong.

In the meantime, I can review things that were once off limits.

For example, this guy--Yoshihiro Naruse--is one of the Bass Gods of Japan. He played one of my songs onstage. Actually, it was the only song I ever wrote, called "The Dinosaur Song." I describe it in the book.



Now I can watch him again. And I can look at the flyer for my band's first show in Tokyo, at the Crocodile Club, and all I feel now is happiness. There's my dinosaur! "The Dinosaur Song" became our signature. We ended every show with it.

It's not time that heals all wounds; it's letting go. Paradoxically, when you let go, you find that you suddenly have much more. If your hands are clenching tight to something, they can't open up to receive what might be given by someone or something you didn't even know was there.

 

[jswingchun]

...I would need an apology from Bass Player and an acknowledgment that what was done to me was wrong.

Was the person that invited you from BP magazine? If so, could the invitation possibly be interpreted as an attempt (or the beginning of an attempt) to make amends?

Do the people that screwed you still work there? If not, who are you looking to get an apology from?

 

[jswingchun]

I hope everyone buys Bass Player these days and enjoys it. I'll buy it, too, if I get a letter of apology and an acknowledgement that what was done to me was wrong.

It's not time that heals all wounds; it's letting go. Paradoxically, when you let go, you find that you suddenly have much more. If your hands are clenching tight to something, they can't open up to receive what might be given by someone or something you didn't even know was there.

Aren't these two things in direct opposition to each other? You missed out on seeing a bassist you love because you require an apology from a magazine. Could that not be seen as clenching tight to something and not receiving something given by someone?

I'm not judging and I'm don't presume to tell you you should have handled it any differently. I'm also not saying that I would have handled it differently if I were in your position. I am just asking because I'm curious.

PS - Those show posters you posted were awesome!

 

[Arthritic_Tom]

Was the person that invited you from BP magazine? If so, could the invitation possibly be interpreted as an attempt (or the beginning of an attempt) to make amends?

Do the people that screwed you still work there? If not, who are you looking to get an apology from?

Yes, it was a Bass Player employee. An invitation is fine, but it's not the same as an acknowledgement and an apology. If I'm being invited to an official Bass Player function, then there should be an official acknowledgement that I--a former Bass Player employee--was wronged. It's done all the time. Corporations and even nations issue apologies for what their predecessors did, even though the individual person making the statement of atonement had nothing to do with it.

I don't know who works there anymore. At least one of the people with whom I had trouble still does, and--oddly enough--when I contacted him for help in completing my book, he treated me with the same utter lack of respect as he did when I worked there and when I wrote my first book.

We're simply from different worlds, that's all. When I wrote my first book, nobody at Bass Player had any reaction whatsoever. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen.

I sent the manuscript and photos for Ghosts to former Bass Player employees out of a sense of fair play, and again, no reaction whatsoever. Not "Good job!" and not "This is horrible! You can't publish this!" Nothing.

It's too late in my life to engage with inexplicable people. I prefer those with the same range of reactions that I have have. People here, for example, have made comments on what they've read.

What kind of people read an entire book and have no reaction at all? It's incomprehensible to me, but it's no longer important. We're just from different planets.

 

[RoadRanger]

Speaking of the dirty underbelly of the music biz - a new TV show called "Nashville" looks promising (I'm watching the pilot right now ).

 

[Arthritic_Tom]

Aren't these two things in direct opposition to each other? You missed out on seeing a bassist you love because you require an apology from a magazine. Could that not be seen as clenching tight to something and not receiving something given by someone?

Actually, the letting go has allowed me to not be angry anymore, which I'm not. That's all that matters.

But attending an official function without receiving an explicit acknowledgement that I was wronged is different. It allows the organization off the hook and requires me to be magnanimous toward a group that has yet to own up to the fact that my treatment was horribly wrong.

To make a crude, somewhat unfair analogy, it's like the battering husband buying his wife candy and flowers after he breaks her nose, but he never says, "I was wrong to break your nose."

I declined without any rancor. See, the real advancement on my part is my willingness to accept an apology. Accepting an invitation in lieu of an apology would be a compromise of my principles, done simply because I'd like to see someone like Tony Levin play live. I can't do that. I gave up ten years of my life for Bass Player, in an attempt to appease them. I can't do that anymore. If the invitation is an apology, it needs to be stated explicitly.

Besides, I got to see Scott Thunes play live from only ten feet away. That'll last me the rest of my life.

 

[Arthritic_Tom]

Speaking of the dirty underbelly of the music biz - a new TV show called "Nashville" looks promising (I'm watching the pilot right now ).

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[RoadRanger]

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[timmus]

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[jeffbrown]

Tom Wrote:

For example, this guy--Yoshihiro Naruse--is one of the Bass Gods of Japan. He played one of my songs onstage. Actually, it was the only song I ever wrote, called "The Dinosaur Song." I describe it in the book.



Now I can watch him again. And I can look at the flyer for my band's first show in Tokyo, at the Crocodile Club, and all I feel now is happiness. There's my dinosaur! "The Dinosaur Song" became our signature. We ended every show with it.

======================

Naruse is interesting! That said, I suggested by email that BP take a look at Tetsuo Sakurai, his predecessor w/Casiopea, who has chops in his own right. Nary a reply. Oh, well. One must wonder why BP neglects the talent coming out of Asia.

 

[Arthritic_Tom]

I suggested by email that BP take a look at Tetsuo Sakurai, his predecessor w/Casiopea, who has chops in his own right. Nary a reply. Oh, well. One must wonder why BP neglects the talent coming out of Asia.

The first article I wrote for Bass Player was about Naruse, Sakurai, and Hojin Egawa, the "Bass Gods" of Japan. It appears in the March 1992 issue.

The way entertainment works is most producers, directors, writers, editors, and publishers see themselves as taste makers who will tell you what to like. That's why most publications, TV shows, and films are commercial bombs. Nobody can force you to like something. Not yet, anyway.

The people who create entertainment have a hugely inflated sense of self-importance. They aren't really interested in hearing from the smelly masses unless it's a celebration of the creator's brilliance.

I used to watch The History Channel a lot. One day they had a program about the history of the flamethrower. They showed a photo of Richard Fiedler, the German mechanical engineer who patented the modern flamethrower in 1900. The photo they showed depicted a young man in a Nazi uniform.

It was a different Richard Fiedler, which they would've known if they'd simply realized that the uniform in question dated from the 1930s, and the man in the photo was about thirty-five at most.

Maybe they thought he was so smart he patented his first flamethrower when he was five? I looked at their Web site, and they said they don't accept ideas about shows from viewers, so I didn't bother correcting their mistake. The rest of the show was riddled with mistakes, but as taste makers, they know best.

Hojin Egawa's technique relies on up-and-down slapping. It's absolute murder on the thumb joint. I never understood how people could do it.

 

[Betrayer_Bass]

Hot damn i want to master that technique! As a technical death metal player, it could really add some crazy edge to our songs!

 

[Arthritic_Tom]

Hot damn i want to master that technique! As a technical death metal player, it could really add some crazy edge to our songs!

They key is to play lightly. Don't hit the strings hard, because it'll waste a lot of energy and slow you down. And it'll hurt your thumb!

 

[Stumbo]

I was invited to the Bass Player Live! show.

Read between the lines. That was their apology.

 

[Arthritic_Tom]

Read between the lines. That was their apology.

Maybe. But sincere apologies need to be explicitly stated.

When I contacted Scott Thunes earlier this year after cutting him out of my life in 2003, I apologized and explained to him that I had to do so because I felt like the biggest loser on the planet. I felt that he and his wife were only tolerating me out of pity, so I had to let the relationship die in order to relieve them of the burden of maintaining it for old times' sake. I acknowledged that this perception was all my own, and I said I was sorry. I also apologized for pressuring him to write his memoirs and get back into playing music.

He accepted my apologies, and we've been able to resume our weird friendship.

That's how it's done. I owed it to him to explain that I understood fully that I'd wronged him. Most people would say something like, "Don't worry about it," but Scott thanked me and accepted my apologies.

Bryan Beller did the same thing when I apologized to him, too. So did Stephen Jay. They all simply accepted my apologies and thanked me.

I'm honestly, seriously not angry at Bass Player anymore. Heck, I bought the last issue! But if an apology is meant, I'm owed an acknowledgement in plain English that I was wronged.

One of the main reasons the world is in the trouble it's in is because people have become utterly adverse to ever admitting they did something wrong. If you read my book, you'll see that the person closet to me in my life is my brother Tim.

When we were growing up, he was an absolute monstrosity who terrorized the rest of us and beat us up. I went to college, spent five years in Japan, and then three years in San Francisco, so I didn't see much of Tim until 1993, when I moved in with him.

Almost the first thing he did was apologize profusely for the way he'd treated me when we were kids. It haunted him until he was thirty years old.

The past can be overcome, but only when sincere, explicit apologies are offered.

 

[Inverse Kinetix]

The way entertainment works is most producers, directors, writers, editors, and publishers see themselves as taste makers who will tell you what to like. That's why most publications, TV shows, and films are commercial bombs. Nobody can force you to like something. Not yet, anyway.

I didn't read the whole thread, so I don't know why you were pissed at whoever, but this quote is so true.

The sad thing is, they can and do force people to like stuff, through a systematic dumbing down of the populous over the last 20 years through lower education standards and narrower and narrower mainstream media.

It's a sorry state of affairs, I'm so glad I am just old enough to have caught the last days of the analog world.

 

[Arthritic_Tom]

I didn't read the whole thread, so I don't know why you were pissed at whoever, but this quote is so true.

The sad thing is, they can and do force people to like stuff, through a systematic dumbing down of the populous over the last 20 years through lower education standards and narrower and narrower mainstream media.

It's a sorry state of affairs, I'm so glad I am just old enough to have caught the last days of the analog world.

I use my TV to watch DVDs. I haven't watched any TV or cable for over a year. I keep my cable subscription because I want to watch in real time when the regional war in the Middle East breaks out, but the rest of the time I just watch movies from my ever-growing collection of DVDs.

When I interviewed Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, I asked him if he thought about chart success, and he laughed and said, "We're so far out of the mainstream that chart success doesn't even enter into the equation."

That's how I feel. I just do what I do, watch what I watch, listen to what I listen to, and write what I write.

And there's still good new stuff out there.