The background is a little complex so I’ll stick to basics.
I played a little acoustic guitar and knew maybe four chords. I had been playing just over a year and didn’t know anything about licks or riffs. I may possibly have been able to play “House of the rising sun” by then.
This was 1969 I was 17 and living in a small town on the coast of BC and met two other teenagers spending the summer in Canada who happened to be from Mendocino California. One was a drummer and one was a guitarist.
They wanted to form a group while they were living on a piece of rural land clearing trees for one of their dads to build a house. They needed a bass player and I got talked into it.
Only we had no bass nor was there one anywhere in the neighbouring villages to buy, beg, borrow or steal. So I borrowed a Harmony Meteor electric guitar and we took the two high strings off, borrowed a Sears amp and turned all the controls on the guitar and amp to “Bass.”
The guitarist then set to showing me bass patterns and I spent the summer memorizing them. I didn’t really “learn” to play bass that summer, but was taught the notes and learned them by rote and repeated them.
I had no ear for chord changes at all and actually 49 years later still struggle with that. But He showed me the basic boogie woogie pattern in A and I memorized a lick for “Season of the witch” and I learned “Wipe out” and “You really got me” and similar songs.
The guitarist really had a hard time with me because I couldn’t figure out the changes to the blues without memorizing how many times each pattern had to be repeated before switching to the next chord.
“You have to feel it, can’t you just feel it?” he said repeatedly. Well no, I didn’t and couldn’t.
Like I said before, I had never played single note licks before on anything, just chords, so I had to learn how to make my fingers move around and hit one note at a time.
Well, by the end of the summer we had enough songs together to play one gig; a dance at the local community hall and it was a great success.
I returned the Harmony to its owner and didn’t get a bass until 7 years later when my first wife bought me a fretless Japanese Jazz bass copy off a Czech political refugee who had taken up banjo. I still have the bass. And the wife. You keep a woman who buys you a fretless electric bass.
I played a little acoustic guitar and knew maybe four chords. I had been playing just over a year and didn’t know anything about licks or riffs. I may possibly have been able to play “House of the rising sun” by then.
This was 1969 I was 17 and living in a small town on the coast of BC and met two other teenagers spending the summer in Canada who happened to be from Mendocino California. One was a drummer and one was a guitarist.
They wanted to form a group while they were living on a piece of rural land clearing trees for one of their dads to build a house. They needed a bass player and I got talked into it.
Only we had no bass nor was there one anywhere in the neighbouring villages to buy, beg, borrow or steal. So I borrowed a Harmony Meteor electric guitar and we took the two high strings off, borrowed a Sears amp and turned all the controls on the guitar and amp to “Bass.”
The guitarist then set to showing me bass patterns and I spent the summer memorizing them. I didn’t really “learn” to play bass that summer, but was taught the notes and learned them by rote and repeated them.
I had no ear for chord changes at all and actually 49 years later still struggle with that. But He showed me the basic boogie woogie pattern in A and I memorized a lick for “Season of the witch” and I learned “Wipe out” and “You really got me” and similar songs.
The guitarist really had a hard time with me because I couldn’t figure out the changes to the blues without memorizing how many times each pattern had to be repeated before switching to the next chord.
“You have to feel it, can’t you just feel it?” he said repeatedly. Well no, I didn’t and couldn’t.
Like I said before, I had never played single note licks before on anything, just chords, so I had to learn how to make my fingers move around and hit one note at a time.
Well, by the end of the summer we had enough songs together to play one gig; a dance at the local community hall and it was a great success.
I returned the Harmony to its owner and didn’t get a bass until 7 years later when my first wife bought me a fretless Japanese Jazz bass copy off a Czech political refugee who had taken up banjo. I still have the bass. And the wife. You keep a woman who buys you a fretless electric bass.
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