Quotes About Bass Guitar

#1. 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.

Suzi Quatro

#2. As Mick Jagger will tell you, performing is an aerobic work-out. I've got the bass guitar, which is the heaviest of all the instruments, and I'm a little girl, in boiling-hot leather under the lights. You have to keep the fitness level up if you want to look good up there.

Suzi Quatro

#3. When I was 14 I would pick up my brother's bass guitar, and I would just pound on it, having no idea how to play it.

Steve Burns

#4. Music has always been in my family, but it was mainly keyboards. I learned to play classical piano, but when I first heard the amazing bass guitar of James Jamerson, who played on all the big Motown hits of the '60s and '70s, I knew bass guitar was my instrument.

Suzi Quatro

#5. I'm starting to play all the melodies with kind of keyboard sound but playing it from the bass guitar.

Tom Jenkinson

#6. Ridley Pearson also plays bass guitar and sings with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band made up of such successful authors as Amy Tan, Stephen King, and Dave Barry-a band that, according to Barry, "plays music as well as Metallica writes novels".

Otto Penzler

#7. Drums, bass, guitar, keys, I play a little of each of those.

Mayer Hawthorne

#8. During college I realized I had a music predisposition and really got involved in it. I started playing bass guitar. That was how I began to fit in.

Ronnie Dunn

#9. You have to understand that the bass guitar is the party instrument. It only has four strings. If you see a bass player playing five strings, take your shoe off and throw it at him.

Keith Morris

#10. I know melody. I know rhythm; I know bass guitar; I know the piano. I know everything about music that helps build the music that go along with creating the whole art form, you know what I'm saying?

Nayvadius Cash

#11. So by the time I taught myself the bass guitar at the age of 14, my hands were already pretty nimble.

John Entwistle

#12. I used to be a session musician before I was a wrestler. I played bass guitar. I was big pals with Lars Ulrich and he asked me if I wanted to play bass with Metallica in their early days but it didn't work out.

Hulk Hogan

#13. I didn't know anything about music when I started a band. I barely knew how to play a guitar. I didn't know how to produce records. I learned how to play bass guitar and keyboards in Rilo Kiley. I picked up a lot from my collaborators.

Jenny Lewis

#14. I drive my family nuts because when I watch something on TV, I'm likely to watch it with a bass guitar. But I don't plug it in!

Steve Capus

#15. But yeah, I played bass guitar in high school and in college and then I actually fractured my thumb, so my bass career went bye-bye.

Colin Hanks

#16. I started playing with a group of young people when I was 13. I turned professional when I was 15 and I played dance halls, this on bass guitar.

Dave Holland

#17. Bass guitar is the engine of the band.

Suzi Quatro

#18. I even played bass for a while. Besides playing electric guitar, I'd also get asked to play some acoustic stuff. But, since I didn't have an acoustic guitar at the time, I used to borrow one from a friend so I could play folk joints.

Mark Knopfler

#19. A bass player has to think and play like a bass player. A drummer has to play and think like a drummer, and stay out of the way of the vocalist. The guitar player has to respect everybody else.

Hunter Hayes

#20. Kat: You can't just buy me a guitar every time you mess up, you know.
Pat: I know, but there's still drums, and a bass, and maybe even someday a tambourine.

David Levithan

#21. My favorite guitar now is my Martin HD-7 because it's got everything. It's got the jingle-jangle thing from the twelve string, it's got the flexibility of the six string, and the bass notes where you can do bass runs and that sort of thing.

Roger McGuinn

#22. I was an original Elvis fan. He was the voice of my generation. I was listening to him on the radio when he released his great Sun records with Scotty Moore on electric guitar and Bill Black on bass.

Ronnie Milsap

#23. I play guitar, piano, bass and percussion.

Teena Marie

#24. Yes, I love to play drums and bass and guitar and piano. Those are the main instruments I play. That is it.

Jeff Lynne

#25. I've never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I've always played with other musicians. It's how I play, there's no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away. I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play.

Ringo Starr

#26. I heard the Beatles and the Stones, and Mom bought me an electric guitar. I played lead for four years and then switched to bass. One day someone suggested that I should sing, so I sheepishly stepped up to the microphone and the rest is rock history.

Glenn Hughes

#27. I play a bunch of instruments, like piano, drums, guitar and bass. And the kazoo every now and then. I'm trying to learn how to play the trumpet and the saxophone. That's what I'm learning how to play.

Mac Miller

#28. The bass should be the note of the bass drum, and then you've got the engine of the band that everything else builds on. Everything else, the guitar, the keyboards, is a colour.

Suzi Quatro

#29. James Ralston, my guitar player, has performed with Tina Turner for about 22 years. Jim Hanson on bass has played with Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell and Bruce Springsteen, and they're fantastic musicians and amazing singers they get a really cool vocal sound together.

Vonda Shepard

#30. I've always said the bass just happens to be the crayon I picked out of the box. I'd still be drawing the same pictures ... should I have picked trumpet or accordion or guitar, whatever it may be. The sounds in my head are still the same.

Les Claypool

#31. 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.

Donald Dunn

#32. I wasn't originally a bass player. I just found out I was needed, because everyone wants to play guitar.

Tina Weymouth

#33. Now they have banging guitar and no bass and call it rock, but that's not what I call rock.

Little Richard

#34. There are a lot of people who can do it on the guitar and sing at the same time, but I think what is harder is bass players that can play the bass and sing.

Graham Coxon

#35. You know, I only claim to play three instruments. My dad is a banker, but a drummer at heart; and my mom used to teach piano lessons when she was younger. So I can play some piano, play a little drums, and fake the bass - but banjo, mandolin, and guitar are my thing.

Charlie Worsham

#36. Dorsey played the upright bass and steel guitar, as well as acoustic guitar. Johnny played acoustic guitar and together they were fabulous songwriters and singers.

Jimmy Griffin

#37. Guitar is for the head, drums are for the chest, but bass gets you in the groin

Suzi Quatro

#38. The bass is just the crayon that I picked out of the box. I'd probably be writing similar stuff if I played guitar or trumpet. The pictures I want to draw I do with this crayon I chose, which is the bass.

Les Claypool

#39. Bass is for people who can't play guitar

Eddie Van Halen

#40. That was the reasoning behind learning to play bass, and then after that it was more like it was neat to play songs together - for me to play bass and for him to play guitar.

Tom Araya

#41. I have always been drawn to percussion and drums, to bass and piano, in music much more then I am drawn to the guitar and the other lead instruments.

Dave Matthews

#42. My mom always told me I should have a Plan B. I said that if I'm not going to play guitar I'm going to play drums. And if I'm not going to play drums, I'm going to play bass. I always just wanted to play music. I was completely obsessed.

Gary Clark Jr.

#43. I wrote all my songs on my main instruments, and the songs I would record in my bedroom were just acoustic guitar, mandolin, and sometimes bass. I really like the texture the mandolin added to my music, but my fingers were too big to play it ... I could only do little riffs and whatever.

Shamir

#44. Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything.

Quincy Jones

#45. I played guitar and bass. I didn't do much vocals, although I did have one band where I was the lead singer. But that was when I was in college.

Oscar Isaac

#46. bass line and the cry of a pedal steel guitar, which always sounded to him like chrome teardrops. Even in happy songs. She

Stephen King

#47. I had different bands. I played with the Acoustic Warriors for the most part, without girl singers. It was the same kind of sound, acoustic guitar, bass, with violin and sometimes accordion, and the guys would sing, that kind of thing.

Dan Hicks

#48. Where I grew up, I could be a punk rocker and a jock. But in college, it became apparent that those two worlds didn't mix. When I brought my guitar back to school after Thanksgiving break, a friend handed me his bass and said, 'Listen to the Ramones.'

Jeff Ament

#49. Age isn't a barrier to playing the bass, and I've definitely improved over the years, although maybe I'm not as flash as I once was. But looking back, I can't imagine a life without a guitar.

Suzi Quatro

#50. You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass.

Douglas Adams

#51. I've been in a band, so I understand the politics. Sometimes the bass player doesn't like what the guitar player is doing, and you have to sort of even that out.

Ric Ocasek

#52. Actually, there was another band where we were three girls, around '84 when I met John Zorn, called Sunset Chorus. It was just bass and drums and guitar- we didn't make any records but we played a lot of different clubs in New York.

Ikue Mori

#53. I'm a bass player from way back and Paul is a guitar player and we've been in many bands.

Adam Jones

#54. Obviously, a bass sounds like a bass and a guitar sounds like a guitar, but the way you play the guitar reflects your personality.

Paul Simonon

#55. I'm writing new songs for a Broadway version of Tarzan, which is very interesting. I think what I learned from the Brother Bear score side of things, I've brought into the new Tarzan songs. Thinking outside just guitar, bass, drums and keyboards.

Phil Collins

#56. The first song I wrote, in fifth grade, was totally ripped from Jeffrey Lewis. My aunt's boyfriend gave me bass lessons, and I played drums for a year in sixth grade. Around seventh grade, I got a guitar and forgot everything else.

Frankie Cosmos

#57. We decided to do some of Merle's things with modern instrumentation. We used a flute, a bass clarinet, a trumpet, a clarinet, drums, a guitar, vibes and a piano.

Tennessee Ernie Ford

#58. I like guitar. It just turned out that it's the instrument I learned to play. I have a lot of respect for it, and I'm learning more and more every day. For me, the classic band setup - guitars, drums, bass - will stay fresh forever. I don't know. I'm still into it.

Mac DeMarco

#59. I like the guitar better these days. I like the bass, too, but it's hard to fit a bass amp in a small car.

Dee Dee Ramone

#60. A lot of times, I played bass on songs. Gene plays guitar on some songs.

Ace Frehley

#61. Heaven to me is percussion and bass, a screaming guitar and a burbling Hammond B-3 organ. It's a soup I love being immersed in.

Dan Aykroyd

#62. I own a guitar, a piano, a bass.

Adam Driver

#63. Hendrix was the bass player for Little Richard. We were both left-handed, but we would use a right-handed guitar held upside down and backwards. He developed my slides and my riffs. In fact he used to say, and this is documented, 'I patterned my style after Dick Dale.'

Dick Dale

#64. 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.

Nikki Sixx

#65. This isn't a mass-produced ... instrument. Mike Lull Custom Guitars makes each bass right here in the NW. Over 20 years of collaborating, designing, and building basses has gone into my model.

Jeff Ament

#66. The ukulele was the first of many instruments they had bought for me. They got me a guitar when I was eleven, which my son Morgan uses until this day. They paid for 3 years of guitar lessons; they bought me a bass fiddle, which I still play.

Tony Visconti

#67. To be a great band it's like you have that telepathy. You know when the bass player's in back of you without even looking. You know when your guitar player's coming up to you to lean up to you and sing into your microphone. You just know these things. You feel it. You feel the energy of it.

Scott Weiland

#68. So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.

Thomas Dolby

#69. The first reason why I started to use the [electric] keyboard is because I really like the bending sound of the guitar and bass player. I can't bend the piano sound. I really like the feel behind it. I feel it adds flavour and character to my music.

Hiromi

#70. I'm a pretty good drummer. I'm pretty good at guitar, bass and piano. I can play accordion; I'm not virtuoso. I've played cello before. My sister played it, and I know how to play it, but I'm not the best. Violin is kind of the same thing.

Brendon Urie

#71. I don't really know why I chose bass except that it was different than guitar.

Trevor Dunn

#72. I've been into music for a long time. I started playing drums when I was 8 and piano when I was 10, then bass and guitar when I was 18.

Lukas Haas

#73. 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.

Geddy Lee

#74. My favorite moments are when the bass falls in the pocket with the drums, the guitar is on top just slicing it, and the melody is scraping across like a sidewinder shattering through the monitor. It's just, ahhh, I love it! That's the jones, the hit, the buzz right there. It gets me off.

Nikki Sixx

#75. Later in high school, I met Hillel Slovak, who was the original guitar player of the Chili Peppers, and we became really close. We had a band, and we didn't like the bass player, so I started playing bass, and I got a bass two weeks later.

Flea

#76. I played recorder in assembly, then I became passionate about the guitar, I don't know why. I started on electric then moved to acoustic - my brother was playing bass in the next room.

Ellie Goulding

#77. Around age 11 or 12, I started playing jazz bass. From there, I went to electric bass and then guitar, which I kept up for a long time.

Joshua Roman

#78. Nothing beats 2 guitars, drum and bass.

Lou Reed