Why I play bass this way

My first “serious” band (as in, “band that got out of the garage and played a bunch of gigs”) couldn’t find a bass player to complete the lineup. I used to play guitar back then and felt that playing bass was below me, somehow. But hey, we couldn’t find a bass player and guitarists practically grew on trees so I took one for the team and took up the bass. We figured that it would be much easier to find a guitarist than a bass player.

And something odd happened. It was about 1982, synth pop was the big thing. Only nobody told the guitarists we were auditioning. We auditioned 27 (yep, 27!) of them and we didn’t bond with any of them. They were mostly stuck-in-the-70s guys from the suburbs, with permed hair and a bunch of Blackmore licks. Very good players, just not what we wanted.

In the end, we decided that, if the band was ever going to get started, we’d do without a guitarist. You can play barre chords and stuff like that on bass anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal either way. So that’s why I play the way I do these days.