Who/What started you on your journey and why?

[snorkie635]

I suppose everyone on BC has their own story regarding why they first started playing bass. For some it might have been to emulate a 'hero'; others may have started simply to get into playing; perhaps it was to gain 'coolness', to attract someone, to make money, to become 'famous'? Perhaps your parents had a role? Could have been friends?
 

I began playing whilst in High School, when a bunch of 15-year olds decided to form a band. We had zero idea how to play, what to buy, how to rehearse, gig, or even to tune our instruments. It sounded like you might imagine, but somehow, I owe it to these guys from half a century ago. All but two of us stopped playing decades ago - some never made it to gigging, but they helped me enter a world, which although it cost me a fortune over the years, I would never have dreamed was out there.

 

So, c'mon, who/what gave you your inspiration? Give them a shout and we'll see commonality we all share.

[EssexBuccaneer]

I was never inspired to play bass - I was a teenage guitarist. Strictly rhythm, as the song goes. Always wanted to be a shredding lead player like Dimebag, but never had the chops. 
 

Anyways, I was playing guitar in a band and socialising on the local live scene every week, when one of the bands that had befriended me lost their bass player with a gig imminent - they asked me to step in (I had no bass, no amp, nothing). We all chipped in and got me some cheap gear, I learned the 30 min set (root notes only!) and we were off to the races! I relied on my energy and ‘presence’ over musicianship in those early days (and probably still do!)

 

After giving up gigging for *many* years due to shift work, I eventually found myself in management with a regular 9-5, and wanted to get back into playing. I once again picked up the guitar. Still frustrated at my lack of widdlyness, I returned to the bass ‘for a few hours’ to relax. Whaddya know? The four-stringer felt like an old friend, like I’d never left.

 

A month or so later I was rehearsing for the band I’m now in.

[Doctor J]

10th of May, 1988. I was getting into Heavy Metal and went, with my friends, to see Megadeth, supported by Sanctuary. Back then, they used to do a cover of These Boots Were Made for Walking at gigs and, during the extended bass intro, I realised I was going to be a bassist, having never considered playing an instrument prior to that.

 

Edited November 26, 2023 by Doctor J

[Lozz196]

Three things:

 

Hearing the bass in Seasons of The Sun by Terry Jacks, I just loved the sound, no idea what it was but from then on I listened out for it in other songs.

 

Seeing the “live” bit in the Bohemian Rhapsody video by Queen, I knew at that point I wanted to play music when I got older (and I could also hear John Deacons bass, that sound again).

 

Hearing Pretty Vacant by The Sex Pistols, I now knew what type of music I wanted to play.

Edited November 25, 2023 by Lozz196

[Dad3353]

I bought a (very cheap...) guitar with my first brown wages envelope, mid '60s. Struggled with Mickey Baker chords, then bought a Hofner President guitar. The chords got a little easier. With a younger brother and some of his school mates, we played strange compositions and a few equally strange covers. The bottom strings of my Hofner became the bass, for lack of any other instrument. We played a few 'gigs' (a willing pub in Hounslow, a couple of church hall youth clubs...). It was the drumming from Fairport Convention (Martin Lamble, RIP...) that turned my attention to drums, and I never really looked back. I still play bass, and guitar, on and off, but basically I'm a drummer, and that was how it came to be. 

[martin8708]

I was at a mates house in the 1980’s and he had VHS video of Duran Duran .

It was the song The Reflex , I just watched John Taylor strutting up and down the stage with 1000’s of women screaming at him ( for him? ) 

That was the precise moment I knew i had to be a bass player . 
( Still waiting for the hoardes of women , though ) 

[Cosmo Valdemar]

This, aged 8.

 

[police squad]

When I was 6, I wanted to play the violin. No idea why but I did till I was 13.

Then I wanted to play the bass, again no idea why. My older brothers both played and they helped me starting out.

Within 6 months I did my first gig. 3 piece, playing T.Rex, Buddy Holly, The Jam. This was 1981

 

Tonight I'm doing my first show with the Americana Revue band. It's sold out. I'm mildly scared!!

[Franticsmurf]

I went to a friend's house with some mates. He was a musician and the house had a music room in which there were drums, guitars, bass and keyboards. I played nothing at the time while the others managed to fill the available instrument slots and I was left with a big bass guitar hanging around my neck, and I was shown the two notes to play for 'Flash'. The 'band' proceeded to jam and sometimes I was able to keep up. 

 

I learned to play the guitar while I was in college and when I returned home, formed a band with my best mate (a drummer) and another school chum on keyboards. It was going to be a largely instrumental outfit playing backing to performance dancers. The keyboardist was the ideas man and main writer and he was very good. The ideas were interesting and creative but perhaps a little beyond our means at the time. He went on to be a published writer. We played a few gigs in the local pubs and clubs playing mainly originals penned by the drummer and me. We went through number of bassists and my 20/20 hindsight points out that if I'd taken up bass from the start (I was a mediocre guitarist at best) we probably would have done better with a more stable line-up.

 

I was offered a bass gig by an acquaintance who became a good mate and played bass and guitar in a series of fairly successful (in South Wales) covers/function band. I drifted to becoming bass only and have never looked back.

[Bassassin]

Pretty much the same as the OP - it was 1978, I was 16, me & a bunch of schoolmates decided to form a band as we walked home from what was the first gig I (and probably they) went to, having underaged our way into a boozer to watch a bunch of local heroes. I was happy to be bassist, as my listening included The Stranglers, Motorhead, The Who, The Jam etc, so upfront, aggressive bass playing was very much on my radar.

 

The decision to start a band was really just the result of being a bit the worse for wear after a couple of halves of bitter shandy, nonetheless a few weeks later I got a bass & started to learn. Several of the others ended up in bands, although none of us ever actually played together!

 

 

 

 

[KingBollock]

In 1987, 12 year old me wanted nothing more in all the world than a Tamiya Lunchbox radio controlled monster truck. My dad, however, had other ideas…

 

He was a mug for get rich quick schemes (some of which are illegal now), and he decided he could get rich managing a band made up of my brothers and me… For some reason he decided that I would play the drums. I wasn’t going to let him get it all his own way though, and being a huge Motörhead and Iron Maiden fan, bass felt  more “me”. Besides, I knew some guitarists and drummers, but didn’t know a single bass player. So I figured that I would always be in demand (which I was, until things went tits up about five years later…). I suggested my playing bass to my dad and he went for it, having not even considered bass.

 

One of my brothers was a natural on guitar, he kept going for a few years but, in the end, I was the only one of the four of us that kept it up. And I was the only one that ever played in bands.

 

I finally got my Lunchbox a couple of years ago.

[ahpook]

God made me do it.

[EssexBuccaneer]

10 minutes ago, ahpook said:

God made me do it.

Lemmy told you?

[snorkie635]

2 hours ago, police squad said:

When I was 6, I wanted to play the violin. No idea why but I did till I was 13.

Then I wanted to play the bass, again no idea why. My older brothers both played and they helped me starting out.

Within 6 months I did my first gig. 3 piece, playing T.Rex, Buddy Holly, The Jam. This was 1981

 

Tonight I'm doing my first show with the Americana Revue band. It's sold out. I'm mildly scared!!

Good luck tonight. You'll nail it. Remember to let us all know how it went (with accompanying photos).

[snorkie635]

 

1 hour ago, Bassassin said:

Pretty much the same as the OP - it was 1978, I was 16, me & a bunch of schoolmates decided to form a band as we walked home from what was the first gig I (and probably they) went to, having underaged our way into a boozer to watch a bunch of local heroes. I was happy to be bassist, as my listening included The Stranglers, Motorhead, The Who, The Jam etc, so upfront, aggressive bass playing was very much on my radar.

 

The decision to start a band was really just the result of being a bit the worse for wear after a couple of halves of bitter shandy, nonetheless a few weeks later I got a bass & started to learn. Several of the others ended up in bands, although none of us ever actually played together!

 

 

 

 

Sounds very familiar. 👍

[Skybone]

Growing up, listening to rock music, and being fascinated by it all. Hearing bands who were bass driven or had very distinct bass presence made me want to do that over anything else.

 

 

[MacDaddy]

 

This is why I started playing bass. 

Nikki Sixx c1987.

Not because he was a handsome devil, but he was running around and throwing shapes and posing. It was very impressionable.

I don't play like or sound like him, but he's the original influence that made me want to do it.

Having come from classical guitar, when I started on bass, technique-wise it just felt right.

[knirirr]

I think it went something like this:

 

Before leaving school  I discovered The Shadows, and thought that this electric guitar music sounded awesome, much better than what my peers at school were listening to (this was the 80s) and more exciting than the classical music pushed via school music lessons. Listening only is never enough, so I saved money from holiday jobs to get a cheap electric guitar (Hohner flying V).

But, good as it was, there was something lacking, so I tried listening to blues, rock & roll, funk etc. to see if I could find what I was after. Eventually, I discovered that it was jazz I wanted to listen to and play. As an undergraduate, I learned how to do big band style rhythm guitar and joined the university band.

When in this band, I realised that bass sounded rather cool. There wasn't any opportunity to play bass at the time, but when I graduated I bought an unlined fretless electric and switched over (here's an example from a year later).

[Bluewine]

I'm a proud member of the February 9th, 1964 club.  I watched The Beatles  American debut on our Ed Sullivan Show.

 

By the next day thousands of us talked our parents into buying us electric guitars and we all started rock bands.

 

I know you've all heard this story a hundred times . Lol

 

Daryl

[andytoad]

My best mate at school started having guitar lessons, bought a cheapie. I thought it would be nice to do it with him. 32 years later, I'm glad I chose the bass. 😁

[bassbiscuits]

My older brother had some friends who played in a local teenage band, which inspired him to also start learning guitar. I wanted to be a drummer but had neither the space or the money, so settled instead on bass, (partly to annoy my older brother too). 
 

It was the mid-1980s - the era of the double live LP gatefold sleeve, and pictures of Steve Harris, Gene Simmons et al in full flight onstage just made me instantly realise “Wow. I want to do that!”

 

[lozkerr]

I'd fancied the idea for years without doing anything about it. A friend at uni had been the original bassist in the Dogs d'Amour and he tried to convince me to get a bass, but I bought a cheapo electric guitar instead because, well you know, guitar.

 

When I moved to Leeds in 1993 and started using dial-up bulletin boards, I encountered someone who had been a session bassist. I toyed with the idea of getting a bass but never took it any further, even when I wished I could play like John Deacon.

 

Then back in 2015 when my marriage collapsed, I finally decided to give it a go, as I wasn't getting any younger and I thought it might stop me spending the evenings inspecting the world through the bottom of a bottle. I stuck with it, and began to improve first from books and then from lessons from @wilko_66, who is a superb teacher. it helped that I'd played other instruments in the past, as my reading ability and theory came back and after several house moves and a few failed auditions, I ended up in my 80s post-punk band which consisted of people with far more experience than me. I really had to push myself to get up to something approaching their level and we played our first gig ten days before lockdown. Since then, we've gone from strength to strength and tonight we played to a packed venue as a two- band bill along with a 90s cover band. 

 

My start in the bass world was late and looks like it was unconventional, going by the posts above, but I'm glad I finally got there!

 

 

[Ed_S]

When I was in Y3 (age 7-8ish?) at school, I got sent to a room with a group of other kids to take a test. Turned out to be a musical aptitude (Bentley) test, and off the back of it I was offered lessons with a peripatetic violin teacher, so I ultimately learned violin and played in orchestras and string ensembles for the next 8 or so years. The first 4 years were really good fun, but when I moved to secondary school I had one violin teacher who was fixated on grade exams and then another who I think just liked the money, the school orchestra wasn't all that great, and as it became less fun I lost interest. I was playing grade 8 pieces, but had no interest in theory or taking exams, so kept on with it for long enough to get me out of PE lessons but ultimately gave it up.

 

By that time, though, I'd had a school music lesson where the nylon-strung classical guitars were handed out and we were all shown enough chords to strum along with Everybody Hurts by REM. It made me think that guitar would be a fun replacement, but electric would fit better with the music I liked to listen to and I certainly didn't want to play dots or have lessons. We knew a guy who played and was looking to sell his starter kit, so I ended up buying a cheap 'Session Pro' Strat copy and a Peavey Rage 158 for not very much at all. I got absolutely nowhere with it, so decided to trade it in and get a bass instead - not because it would be 'easier', but my logic was that with 4 strings and single notes rather than 6 and chords, it might feel more familiar.

 

My first bass in 1999 was a Squier P Special, and it rattled horribly but I could play stuff on it pretty much straight away. I took it back to the shop and was told they'd had issues with the entire batch so were refunding people and sending them back. After a bit of back and forth I managed to walk away with a Yamaha BBN4 instead of a refund, and I've been a self-taught bassist ever since.

[itu]

I think I told this earlier somewhere, but... I had played piano for +10 yrs, but wanted to try the g-word. Bought an old, red Hagström. My schoolmate was an avid g-word player at that time and looked at me and said: "You're so big and ugly, why wouldn't you play bass?"

 

My voice is low, and bass actually felt like mine. Bought an old 4001, then went to a music school to learn jazz and pop. My playing is not very flashy, although I try to overplay too often... so far I have played maybe 2000 gigs. Not very much compared to pros, but enjoying every opportunity.

[BassTractor]

J.S. Bach.
Taught me the essence of a good bass part, and had an immense impact on my musical thinking.

Stanley Clarke (Children of Forever, School Days) and Jaco Pastorius (Jaco, Jaco Pastorius, Hejira).

Rein van den Broek, trumpet player with Ekseption.
Trumpet?
No, but he did use a King Octavoice, an octave divider, and he pulled wonderfully raspy low tones out of it.

Now, I only had a short-scale kid's guitar, but ... think shrewdly with me now:
A second Octavoice doesn't know that the sound has already been through an Octavoice, now does it?  ...
[finger taps nose].


 

Edited December 5, 2023 by BassTractor