Musical Inspirations #2, #3 & #4!

This post is about the three bassists that have influenced my bass playing and made me want to pick up the bass in the first place.

#2 Tina Weymouth

The bassist for Talking Heads throughout the 80’s and then the co-founder of Tom Tom Club- Tina Weymouth is one of the first bassists that made me want to pick up the bass guitar and get funky! Her bass lines are simplistic yet they give a lot of punch to the music and are quite iconic- e.g. the opening bass line to Psycho Killer. Some of the other really notable bass lines are in Heaven, Slippery People, Warning Sign, Genius Of Love and Cities. (I will put Spotify links on these songs later).

#3 Tony Garnier

The longest-serving musician on Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour. He’s also been declared by some to be the musical director but what I do know for sure is that he’s been playing bass for Bob for 21 years and he wears cool hats. When playing live his bass is low and rumbly and you have to listen carefully to hear his melodies- whether this is as a result of the acoustics of the arena or whether he likes his sound that way- it rocks! He is also an upright bass player and has really made me want to buy one… which I cannot afford right now. One of my favourite bass lines is in Cold Irons Bound– I still can’t work out how to play it!

#4 Tim Commerford

The bassist for Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave. In short- he rocks! One of the most memorable bass line of his is Bullet In The Head. The bass solo just oozes coolness and for ages I really wanted to learn it on the bass flute I burrowed. It’s also interesting how he apparently plays chords on the bass guitar- something which I will look more into in the future.

So these are the bassists that have inspired me; if you listen to the songs that I have picked as my favourites you will notice that they are completely different styles of music- maybe I will try to fuse them all together with my playing of the bass guitar.