Bassists

"“I think I know it all, relatively speaking.”"

"You shall not covet thy neighbor's wife? Well, how about if she goddamn covets me? What do you think about that?"

""You can't buy love with money." Only a poor person says that."

"A whore, in my estimation, has more credibility than a wife, and I'll tell you why. A wife is supposed to marry you for love. A whore is not there for love, she's there to service you. Now, the difference between them is a whore, before she does her work, will tell you exactly what it is. She'll tell you, "Blow job? This'll cost you seventy-five dollars. This is not love, and after I'm done I never want to see you again." Full disclosure is what they call it in court. A wife will tell you shit. A wife will tell you nothing. She's about to marry you. If you get divorced, she's going to take 50 percent of your gross pretax dollars and try to get more. Now, before you get married, if you dare bring up the notion, "By the way, let's just be completely honest with each other, what happens if we break up?" she will cry and tell you, "That's so unromantic." You know who's more credible? The whore."

"People say, "I want to get laid a lot and make lots of money." That's not the right order."

"Anybody who picks up a guitar and tells you that there's some inner message that they're trying to convey . . . it's nonsense. They're not being honest. The reason they're doing this is they wanna get lots of chicks and they don't want to work for a living."

"Prostitute yourself. As far as I'm concerned, that's even braver than waiting for the public to catch on."

"KISS is the number-one American band in gold-record sales. In the world, only the Beatles and the Stones are ahead of us. Every other band should be wiping my ass. The line forms over there to the left."

"You can't argue with facts and figures. Either people want it, in which case they pay for it, or it's two guys sitting around at the Plaza having a discussion, which means nothing. I mean, Titanic. I wasn't crazy about the movie. But you know what? I'm gonna shut up, because the people have spoken. End of story!"

"The notion is that if you want to welcome me with open arms, I'm afraid you're also going to have to welcome me with open legs."

"My skin is more beautiful than yours. I would be quite more popular in jail if I so chose."

"My mother is probably the wisest person I've ever known. She's not schooled, she's not well read. But she has a philosophy of life that makes well-read people seem like morons."

""Earth has never been in better shape…I know — climate change and a polarised political thing — but there are no more world wars. I mean, imagine what London looked like 60 years ago. This is the best of times. Unemployment in the United States is the lowest it’s been in 50 years — 5-0…More people are working. More people are making more money. Unions are more powerful." (2019)"

"The most important thing in life is to be a selfish asshole. Do what you want, piss off everyone and stop hanging with the guys because they're not going to get you money or sex."

"I think Prince was heads, hands and feet about all the rest of them, I thought he left (Michael) Jackson in the dust. Prince was way beyond that. But how pathetic that he killed himself. Don't kid yourself, that's what he did. Slowly, I'll grant you … but that's what drugs and alcohol is: a slow death."

"Being a Jew, you realize your strongest weapon is your mind."

"Elvis is the king of rock and roll, who made white kids shake there shackle."

"We can't be The Beatles. I can't shine their shoes. I can't sing as well as Paul or John. I can't write those kind of songs. But they would die in my armour and my eight-inch platform heels, and Paul can't spit fire, so there you have it."

"You can be a jazz player and be respected by musicians, but the rest of the world doesn’t care. [...] We’re going to play a game: name a jazz player that means something."

"I'll probably die by the time I reach 25. But I'll have lived the way I wanted to."

"I'm not vicious really. I consider myself kind-hearted. I love my mum."

"Everybody wanted to be with Sid, but unfortunately he came with Nancy. She was unbelievably thick-skinned, one of the most unlikable people I've met. Everybody could see through her, except Sid."

"Like Johnny Gonzales said, "I wanna live till I die"."

"I'm not chic, I could never be chic. I was in it from its inception."

"All I did was cash in on the fact that I'm good-looking and I have a good figure and girls like me."

"We had a death pact. I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby in my leather jacket, jeans and motor cycle boots. Goodbye."

"I've met the man in the street, and he's a cxxt."

"You just pick a chord, go twang, and you've got music."

"The band broke up because I couldn't bear Rotten anymore because he was an embarrassment with his silly hats and his, like, shabby, dirty, nasty looking appearance."

"American audiences are just the same as anybody else. Except a bit more boring."

"Well, you know, like, I don't really give a fuck what the general public think."

"As soon as (Sid) realised how much everyone hated Nancy, man, he stuck to her like a stamp to a letter. That´s why he was called "Sid": he hated the name Sid, so everyone called him Sid. That´s what that whole scene was about. But when we got fucked up, he got very violent actually. He was shooting speed before he met Nancy, and when she got him into dope it was a very easy switch to make; then it was all over for him. He`d never been with a woman before, where she had that kind of control over him... Nancy was an opportunist. I'm not even going to say whether I liked her or not, but she had a negative effect on Sid and he didn't need that."

"For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song."

"Working at Perfekt, Got me down on my knees. Success to failure, Just a matter of degrees. Working at Perfekt, Got me down on my knees..."

"Rush's greatness was always the sum of its individually talented three parts. Yet, Lee seemed to be the consistent face of the band. In fact, many pray to the altar of Rush, specifically Lee. While best known for his signature countertenor vocals, Lee always mastered the strings on his bass and continues to do so in life after Rush. He was exceptional in incorporating high treble to counter Alex Lifeson’s guitar, making a more fluid unity between the two instruments. Bass gods Cliff Burton and Steve Harris are just two of the countless musicians who consider Lee a major influence on their successful careers."

"There is nothing he can’t do, with his bass playing veering from the subtle, via the atmospheric, to an all-out riff storm. That doesn’t mean that he shows off, though: his playing is often a masterclass in economy and restraint. Even his bass gear is relatively reductive these days, with a signature Fender Jazz and a Tech21 SansAmp with this name on it going into an Orange amp."

"Regardless of what you want to say about KISS, musically or otherwise, there was no harder-working band than KISS. And there was no band more determined to put on a spectacular show and give people their money's worth than KISS. That was a great thing to see as an opening act. We were so impressionable, and we were so green...they were very good to us. Those guys liked to have a good time!"

"Once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process."

"Music is all about wanting to be better at it."

"I love to write. It's my first love."

"Cinderella man, Doing what you can, They can't understand what it means Cinderella man, Hang on to your plans, Try as they might, they cannot steal your dreams"

"I’m not famous, only Chris (Martin) is famous. Chris can’t walk around in Bangkok, he’ll get mobbed! But I can walk anywhere and no one would give a shit. [laughs] But I like it this way, I don’t want any attention in that kind of way, I like to stay home and being able to go anywhere, can go shopping anywhere, something like that. Well, I’m in a really famous band but I’m just not famous, you know what I mean? And I think that’s perfect. source"

"We have very similar brains. But they come out in different personalities."

"Magne Furuholmen is a very dear friend of mine. A-ha are a classic pop band and they've got some brilliant songs. I'd say 'The Living Daylights' was one of my favourite Bond tunes: regardless of it being a Bond song, it stands alone as a great piece of music. source"

"I don't concentrate on technical things like where a microphone is placed and things like that. As a producer, I try to keep the initial feeling from when I first heard a song and make sure we do what were initially aiming for. source"

"I'm in love with a lot of things. Some of those things love me back. And some of them don't--and one of them is Radiohead."

"I think I've kind of got the best position. I get all the benefits of being in one of the biggest bands in the world and have a certain anonymity as well. So I'm perfectly happy with the situation. source"

"A fiery and muscular player, Jaco Pastorius, who passed away in 1987 at the age of 35, remains one of the most influential electric bassists in jazz. His 1975 self-titled debut album is hailed by some as the best jazz bass album ever; it should be required listening for any aspiring bass player, especially his interpretation of Charlie Parker's "Donna Lee," or his harmonic work on "Continuum" and "Portrait of Tracy." Pastorius used to say he was the greatest bass player in the world, and dude could back it up with his virtuosic abilities."

"Saying Pastorius is the greatest jazz-based bassist of all time would not be a stretch. Unfortunately, Pastorius' off-stage demons seemed to get in the way of sustaining that greatness. In addition to his drug addiction, Pastorius dealt with bipolar disorder and harbored a nasty temper. Pastorius, who collaborated with the likes of Joni Mitchell and Ian Hunter, died in 1987 at 35 due to injuries suffered in a bar fight, ending a celebrated musical career where his innovative funk harmonies on the electric bass are still an influence on bassists to this day."

"I never practiced a fretless ever, because the strings eat the neck up. So I would only play it on gigs."