Bassplayers who were a Key influence on your playing.

[Rhythm N. Bliss]

Good to see lots of Berry Oakley here...& JTE mentioned David Hood--He was great LIVE with Traffic & he's played on twice as many recordings as Tony Levin!!

Another superb bassplayer/singer nobody's mentioned is the late fokken great JAMES DEWAR!

[Freuds_Cat]

Yep +1 for James Dewar. Great singer as well.

[SKATE RAT]

lots of people but i think the first bass player that made me want to play was Geezer! not that anyone cares

[Rhythm N. Bliss]

I care, SR! Geezer's great~ one of my favs in high school.

Just learned that James Dewar made a lot more albums than I thot!!!!!!!!!!!
This link explains nicely that he just sang on a few recordings:

http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/diner/2674/jdewa_b.htm

...& just played bass sometimes while someone else (like Frankie Miller) sang.

Gotta get some of these...or maybe ALL of these!!!!!!!!!
Beginning with the ones he sang AND played bass on after Bridge of Sighs...

[n!k]

I picked up a bass because of Les Claypool and I love Geezer Butler, but I don't play much like either of them.

[godofthunder]

Paul McCartney, Jim Lea, John Entwistle, Overend Watts, Martin Turner, Dennis Dunaway, Geezer Butler, Roger Glover, Gene Simmons to name a few.

[luve2fli]

Mine - JPJ, Kenny Gradney, Randy Jo Hobbs, Rocco Prestia, Mark King, Alain Caron, Leland Sklar, Johnny B. Gayden, Lee Rocker, Lee Allan Zeno, George Porter, Gary Talent, Paul Spencer Denman and Duck Dunn.

[leftybass]

The late, great Dee Murray is to blame.

[Pilgrim]

Pretty simple:

Duck Dunn (in the Booker T & The MGs days, and in The Blues Brothers)
J. Jamerson (in everything)
Chas Chandler (The Animals)
Tommy Shannon (SRV & Double Trouble)

[slinkp]

Well, first there was Paul McCartney.  I wasn't even really aware of what bass was in those days. But I had pretty much memorized all the Beatles albums, including subconsciously the basslines, by the time I was 10. I am still in awe of some of his beautifully simple bass melodies; "Dear Prudence" comes to mind.

Then there was the Entwistle era. Right around the time I got interested in bass, I also got obsessed with the Who. From the intro of "Pinball Wizard" I was hooked. I dug out my Dad's copy of "Live at Leeds" and used to love playing with the balance knob on the stereo to figure out what Pete and John were doing. If there's a single formative album in my playing, that would be it.

Then there was Tony Levin.  A friend turned me on to Peter Gabriel; I picked up a copy of "Plays Live"  and I was fascinated by all these weird (and very prominent) bass parts among all the synths. I played along to that album easily dozens of times, even tuning down to C# for "In a Humdrum".

Then came Mike Watt. The same friend turned me on to various punk-related things; the Minutemen were far and away my favorite of the bunch. Such an inventive and physical approach, and funky too.   I went out and bought Ballot Result and learned to play along with all that stuff.  (I have a thing for live albums, apparently).

Lots of others, but those are the big four.

[uwe]

Paul McCartney, Jim Lea, John Entwistle, Overend Watts, Martin Turner, Dennis Dunaway, Geezer Butler, Roger Glover, Gene Simmons to name a few.

Scott stole almost all my choices!!! I'd only add Nick Simper, Glenn Hughes, Alan Lancaster (Status Quo) and the late Charles Tumahai (spelling?) of Be Bop De Luxe.

[Basvarken]

This thread could easily be confused with which bass player do you admire the most. But since that is not the case I'm going to have to dig real deep in how things got started...

When I was ten years old I saw Sting on TopPop with The Police. I thought it was very cool that the lead singer was playing the bass. I think it must have been the first time I noticed the difference between a six string guitar and a bass.
Anyway I decided that I wanted to be a bassplayer too. And I built my own "bass guitar" out of a piece of chipwood, fish wire for strings and some Coca Cola capsules for the controls.

When I was thirteen me and a few friends decided we wanted to perform a song during the music lesson at highschool. Most kids did a playback act, or a little dance. But we wanted something different. We wanted to ROCK. So we chose the Black Sabbath classic Paranoid. But I did not have a clue how to figure out the bass part. Plus I only had a spanish guitar that my parents gave me when I turned twelve.
So I went to the older brother of a buddy of mine down the street. He was a bass player in a real band. And I asked him if he could tell me how to play Paranoid. Which he patiently did. So he actually learned me the first things about playing a bass.

A few months later one of the friends in that one-off-school-band had formed a band. And at a certain point he asked me if I'd like to be their bass player. I didn't own a bass guitar, but it was okay if I used the bass guitar from their former bas player (who had moved on to a better band).
We did lots of covers and a few originals. We were big fans of Iron Maiden. I practiced all of those typical Steve Harris bass parts. I remember hour after hour of trying to get Phantom Of The Opera right.

A few years later David Lee Roth released Eat 'm and Smile. And there was Billy Sheehan. He made me forget all about Steve Harris. Sheehan was the new God.

A few years later all of a sudden I grew tired of the whole complicated virtuoso noodling thing.
I (re)discovered ZZ Top and AC/DC. Plus Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble.
I formed a band called "De SRV Mannen". Most SRV stuff of course, but also Johnny Winter and Jimi Hendrix.
So I got into Blues Rock and figured out all these Tommy Shannon and Noel Redding parts.

Around the same time I formed another band called Live & Dangerous. I had been a big fan of Thin Lizzy since the early eighties. So we formed a Thin Lizzy cover band. This was before the hausse of the tribute bands. Tribute band wasn't even a word back then. I learned how to use a plectrum (pick). Phil Lynott may not have been the best bass player around, but he was pretty tight. And his songwriting was awesome. Big influence!

In 1993 Cry Of Love released their debut album Brother. To this very day that album is still one of my favorites. Bass player Robert Kearns has a very melodic yet rock solid way of playing the bass. Plus he used this weird little bas with that huge sound: a Gibson Les Paul Bass (aka Triumph)!!
When my band Superfloor first got started we covered about half the Brother CD to get things started for ourselves.


Lately I don't think I've been very much influenced by bassplayers. It's more bands or songs that influence me. Or who ever you play with at that time.

[gweimer]

Well, the ones I tried to copy were (lots of recurring names in my list, too):

Jack Bruce
James Jamerson
Geezer Butler
Dennis Dunaway
Martin Turner
Chris Squire
John Wetton
Dee Murray


In the end, when I finally started writing my own bass lines, it was a surprise to listen to myself.  A guy that I had never consciously tried to copy was the biggest influence of all:

Gary Thain

(I'm not convinced the audio for this is the actual live performance)

[lowend1]

(I'm not convinced the audio for this is the actual live performance)

I've seen this before and have the same reservations (you can't hear the screaming Japanese, who always seem to dominate live recordings from there). I always thought that the "poor man's Deep Purple" comments were unjustified. Purple may have had the more accomplished musicians, but the Heepsters were always underrated - especially Thain and Byron.

[TBird1958]

Gary Thain!

I'll never get tired of Uriah Heep. As far as I can tell the vid and audio are from two different performances, it just doesn't sync up that well. Doesn't matter! They were a great band, wish I could have seen Gary play, he died about two weeks before their show in Seattle......