These bass player quotes will inspire you. A bassist, or bass player, is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass (upright bass, contrabass, wood bass), bass guitar (electric bass, acoustic bass), synth bass, keyboard bass, or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or trombone.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, knowledgeable, and encouraging bass player quotes, bass player sayings, and bass player proverbs.
Best Bass Player Quotes
- “The bass player’s function, along with the drums, is to be the engine that drives the car… everything else is merely colours.” ~ Suzi Quatro
- “Guitar is for the head, drums are for the chest, but bass gets you in the groin” ~ Suzi Quatro
- “Bass players and drummers are brothers in the basement cooking up the groove that makes people move.” ~ John Densmore
- “The bass, no matter what kind of music you’re playing, it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops, the bottom kind of drops out of everything.” ~ Charlie Haden
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“I’m the quiet bass player.” ~ Colin Hanks
- “I wasn’t originally a bass player. I just found out I was needed, because everyone wants to play guitar.” ~ Tina Weymouth
- “Jack Bruce, as soon as I saw him, it changed me. I didn’t even know what bass players did until I saw Cream.” ~ Geezer Butler
- “None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.” ~ Paul McCartney
- “There are a lot of people who can do it on the guitar and sing at the same time, but I think what is harder is bass players that can play the bass and sing.” ~ Graham Coxon
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“I always got great respect as a bass player.” ~ Bill Wyman
- “I set myself up to be a bass guitarist and bass players get a lot more work than people like me.” ~ John Entwistle
- “A bass player has to think and play like a bass player. A drummer has to play and think like a drummer, and stay out of the way of the vocalist. The guitar player has to respect everybody else.” ~ Hunter Hayes
- “The worst thing I could be thinking is how could I be a cool bass player.” ~ Mike Gordon
- “Bach is really the ultimate in bass players you know” ~ Jack Bruce
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“I was never much of a bass player.” ~ Ryan Adams
- “The absence of a bass player always makes things go faster and hit harder in the high-end range.” ~ Mark Lanegan
- “When I heard BB Kings Sweet Sixteen, I knew I wanted to play bass because that was the thing that made that record: the bass player.” ~ Donald Dunn
- “Imagine if you were a drummer, and you accidentally picked up two magic wands instead of sticks. There you are, keeping the beat, the next thing you know, your bass player turns into a can of soup.” ~ Mitch Hedberg
- “It infuriates me that stuff from the Internet routinely doesn’t include all the credits. Because as soon as I listen to something, if I like it, I want to know, “Who’s the bass player?” “Who did that?” “Who’s the engineer on this?” ~ Brian Eno
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“I was always the sexy bass player in the background while Robin stood centre. Barry and I played it up a bit, gave ’em a bit of thigh.” ~ Maurice Gibb
- “Without getting real personal, we liked our bass player Ed. He was a great guy and he was a good bass player but his playing was suited for a different style of band.” ~ Lou Gramm
- “In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead.” ~ David Amram
- “I don’t really have a favorite bass player. I listen to a lot of bluegrass. But then again, I’m not a typical bluegrass bass player. I was really into the Grateful Dead, and I still am – I don’t listen to them too much, but for me they are a big influence.” ~ Mike Gordon
- “As I said, when we needed to move over to rock’n’roll, Sam and Vernon couldn’t quite make the shift. So that’s when Larry took over on drums, and we needed a bass player.” ~ Neil Innes
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“So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.” ~ Miroslav Vitous
- “I actually met Chick Corea in New York, where I was staying with a bass player friend.” ~ Miroslav Vitous
- “I can understand why some of these drummers and bass players become cult figures with all of their equipment and the incredible amount of technique they have. But there’s very little that I think satisfies you intellectually or emotionally.” ~ Ken Burns
- “I like a lot of bass players. I like a lot of tuba players too.” ~ Rick Danko
- “I love playing with Jeff. That’s something I never really say in the press, but he’s my favorite bass player. I’ve played right next to him for 10 years.” ~ Mike McCready
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“I’m a bass player from way back and Paul is a guitar player and we’ve been in many bands.” ~ Adam Jones
- “I recruited my dad to be my bass player and fired him on several occasions. He stayed on as a bus driver.” ~ Chely Wright
- “From the first moment that I can remember, I had identified myself as a bass player and it had everything to do with my father, who was a bass player. And he loved music, you know, as much as anybody Ive ever seen. And that dynamic I just thought as somehow was a straight pass to me.” ~ Edgar Meyer
- “It’s really easy to play harmonics, anyone can do it. It’s another thing to be able to swing, to make to make a band swing, to create a groove. Harmonics ain’t everything. Being able to play harmonics certainly does not make you a good bass player. Cleverness is no substitute for true awareness.” ~ Jaco Pastorius
- “I always just wanted to be the singer or the bass player in the band. I’d love to have a band, where I was obviously the singer, but where it wasn’t me, it wasn’t my name.” ~ Bryan Adams
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“Bass players are always the intellectual kind, but nobody knows it.” ~ Stanley Clarke
- “Poetry is music though, unfortunately, not all music is poetry. Because music has other carriers to take its message – beats, lyrics, singers, bass players – anyone in music can rise to make a major statement but in poetry there are only words to do the work. And they do sometimes have to sweat.” ~ Nikki Giovanni
- “Louis ‘Thunder Thumbs’ Johnson was one of the greatest bass players to ever pick up the instrument, as a member of the Brothers Johnson, we shared decades of magical times working together in the studio and touring the world. From my albums ‘Body Heat’ and ‘Mellow Madness,’ to their platinum albums ‘Look Out for #1,’ ‘Right On Time,’ ‘Blam’ and ‘Light Up the Night,’ which I produced, to Michael’s solo debut ‘Off the Wall,’ I considered Louis a core member of my production team. He was a dear and beloved friend and brother, and I will miss his presence and joy of life every day.” ~ Quincy Jones
- “I feel my spot is somewhere between a bass player and a rhythm guitar player. I play with a pick. I play very aggressively. I always have a distortion pedal in line, and I play less melodies and do more stuff against the guitars that create melodies.” ~ Nikki Sixx
- “I describe things in terms of body movements. I dance a bit to describe what sort of movement it ought to make, and that’s a good way of talking to musicians. Particularly bass players.” ~ Brian Eno
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“If you mess around with jazz, you better have a good drummer and a good bass player.” ~ Gunther Schuller
- “It’s really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is “The Judge.”” ~ Wynton Marsalis
- “Onstage I like to play with a an 18-inch speaker, which very few bass players do. I need that fat, underneath sound, which I’ve always had. It suits me admirably to do it like that, and I can imitate that sound by plugging directly into the board in the studio.” ~ Bill Wyman
- “I was off the scene for a while during the ska period and when I returned and joined the Treasure Isle studio, I came there with a different mood. The musicians picked up on that and we kept on going in that direction. The music became slower, which gave the bass player the time to play more notes. In 1965 I named it rocksteady. The first rocksteady song was ‘Girl I’ve Got A Date’. That one was still a bit up-tempo, leaning towards ska. It turned the tide and made Treasure Isle the number one studio.” ~ Alton Ellis
- “I knew when I got to play with Al Jackson I would be a better bass player because he was the best drummer in the world. I worshipped him.” ~ Donald Dunn
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“Women and rhythm-section first!?” ~ Jaco Pastorius
- “So I am one of those bass players who can do something and musically, it was back then and now it is even more, if you noticed on the new album, I am not playing all the time anymore.” ~ Miroslav Vitous
- “So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.” ~ Miroslav Vitous
- “My dad taught me to play bass. He’s a bass player; he still plays in a band in Michigan to this day. He taught me to play bass when I was about 6. I used to just go to band practice with him, and whoever didn’t show up for rehearsal that day, I would take their spot.” ~ Mayer Hawthorne
- “To be a great band it’s like you have that telepathy. You know when the bass player’s in back of you without even looking. You know when your guitar player’s coming up to you to lean up to you and sing into your microphone. You just know these things. You feel it. You feel the energy of it.” ~ Scott Weiland
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“I played a bass player and a singer in a movie once, but I totally lip-synced to everything.” ~ Jessica Pare
- “I wasn’t allowed to play in some universities in the United States and out of twenty-five concerts, twenty-three were canceled unless I would substitute my black bass player for my old white bass player, which I wouldn’t do.” ~ Dave Brubeck
- “I feel that whatever you put out is what you’ll get back. I always put out, ‘hey, hi, I’m a bass player, no bullshit,’ and that’s what I got back. I got the respect.” ~ Suzi Quatro
- “You have to understand that the bass guitar is the party instrument. It only has four strings. If you see a bass player playing five strings, take your shoe off and throw it at him.” ~ Keith Morris
- “One thing people always ask me is ‘How do you play outside?’ … I have no idea how to teach that, but when I was discussing this with our bass player Jesse Murphy, he said ‘tell them to go cliff diving’… In other words, when you’re jamming, you have to take risks if you want to find new sounds.” ~ John Scofield
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“While it’s a great indulgence, it’s also very interesting to have three bass players on the same track.” ~ Bryan Ferry
- “Art is my ‘solo career’ if you like. Musically, as a bass player, I depend on other musicians to play, whereas, with painting, I’m on my own. I find it quite easy to switch heads and I enjoy both the mayhem of being on tour and the serenity of being alone in my art studio.” ~ Horace Panter
- “Eventually as a teenager, I was pulled up on stage by James Brown’s saxophone player, Maceo Parker, during one of his concerts and scatted on his stage for 20 minutes. After I was done, Maceo’s bass player got down on one knee as if he were proposing, took a string off of his bass guitar and coiled it up around my ring finger. He hushed the crowd and said into the microphone, “Wendy, from this day forward you are married to music. You have a gift from God. You must devote your life to using this gift or else you will deprive the world of something so special.” I got the chills.” ~ Wendy Starland
- “My dream as a child was to play with a bass player like Ray Brown, who played with the Oscar Peterson Trio. The feeling I had listening to his work was almost carnal, so to actually play for him was earth-shattering for me.” ~ Diana Krall
- “When The Murderdolls started it was a really cool thing, especially for me because I had never done anything on that scale before. Even for our drummer and bass player it was their first really big band.” ~ Wednesday 13
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“I was charmed by a performance given by Crowded House at Toronto’s Massey Hall where the bass player broke a string.” ~ Alannah Myles
- “For my money, Ray Brown is the greatest living bass player. Every great thing that’s happened on bass since Ray Brown — all of us point back to him. That’s where it started, you know. Ray Brown is definitely a walking master, and to get to play with him is obviously an opportunity that no one should ever pass up.” ~ Christian McBride
- “I knew Glenn Frey. He called me up in 1977 and told me The Eagles were looking for a bass player, preferably someone who could write and had a high voice. That was me.” ~ Timothy B. Schmit
- “My dad was a bass player in a Latino band when I was growing up. So we always had musical instruments in our basement.” ~ Lindi Ortega
- “The first reason why I started to use the [electric] keyboard is because I really like the bending sound of the guitar and bass player. I can’t bend the piano sound. I really like the feel behind it. I feel it adds flavor and character to my music.” ~ Hiromi
- “If I have a dynamite bass player – I have Darryl Jones – it’s so easy to write for him because he’s such a funky kid and he’s gifted. He’s like a little genius.” ~ Miles Davis
