Growing up Bass Player (Playing in a Band)

I was the quiet one. I was then and I am now the quite one, introverted one might say. You could not tell, then or now but I took great pleasure in playing bass and playing Rock and Roll music. Of all the styles of music I have played I enjoy the rock and roll of the seventy the most. The next in line is the blues. This is no doubt because the blues and what is now referred to as Classic Rock of the seventies are very similar. Rock and Roll grew out of the blues back in the fifties with the help of artists like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, (Johnny B. Goode, what a wonderful song) Little Richard and many artists. Ah, but I digress….enough about me.

As I have said before, the seventies were a great time to play music. But, playing in a band is hard work. Learning the music, playing the songs, traveling, loading and unloading equipments, that’s the easy and fun part of play in a band. The hard work is developing and maintaining the relationship between the band members. Human being that make music (here after called musicians) are what you might say, a different breed of cat. Most musicians are, like me, a little introverted, sensitive, and again like me, sometime a little strange, weird, and hard to understand. I don’t want to offend anyone but most of the people I call friends are musicians and have all of the fore mentioned qualities. Yes I said qualities. You must be able to understand and grasp hold of these qualities or you will never survive playing music. I have seen many very talented musicians who jump from band to band and some who won’t come out of their basements because they can’t or won’t understand these qualities about themselves and other musicians.

You remember Russ (see growing up bass player part 3 4 & 5). Russ was a good example of what I am saying. Russ was a good guy and a talented musician. But he could not grasp the concept that all of us musicians are different and a “strange breed of cat”. It made him anger and his alcohol just fed his anger. His anger took him away from his music, and, I believe, in some way took his life.

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