Bass Player is the world's most comprehensive, trusted and insightful bass publication for passionate bassists and active musicians of all ages. Each issue delivers the latest tips and techniques that are guaranteed to make you a better player.
When Geezer Butler’s band Black Sabbath called it a day in 2017, after 49 years as a planet-sized metal behemoth, he didn’t do what you or I would have done and immediately hit the beach for a permanent vacation. No, he formed a new band, Deadland Ritual, acquired a seven-string bass to work on his playing skills, and even assembled a brand-new box set of his solo work. That’s a serious work ethic by any standards, and one from which we could all learn. In our cover interview with the godfather of heavy metal bass, Butler looks back at his prolific career and forward to the future. Will he ever make his long-awaited jazz album? We ask him that very question. As always, this issue of Bass Player is packed…
Tampa, Florida-based bassist Mike Leon is best known for his fleet-fingered playing in the heavy metal band Soulfly, but he’s also served time in other unsociably loud acts such as The Absence, Havok, and Sorcerer. Where he differs from most other metal bassists is that he brings an abundance of thumps, pops and taps into his lines, using a range of heavily percussive thumb techniques that are rarely, if ever, deployed in that style of music. His technical skills notwithstanding, Leon is big news in bass world because he’s cracked the tricky task of making an income out of playing online, raking in a sum in the high five figures over the pandemic through streaming performances on the Twitch platform. His brand, Mike Leon Shreds, currently has over 5000 followers…
Fretless maestro Percy Jones has announced the formation of a new supergroup, PAKT, an acronym that refers to guitarist Alex Skolnick (also of thrash metallers Testament), drummer Kenny Grohowski, and guitarist Tim Motzer. A new album, Live In Pawling, July 22, 2021 has been released, and is available at Bandcamp. “Here we were, playing completely and spontaneously improvised music,” says Skolnick. “We weren’t 100 percent sure how it would turn out. As soon as the lights went down, the traveling began... It was as though we’d planned our arrangements as meticulously as a tune by Hall & Oates.”…
Hello again, and I hope you’re doing well. It’s officially fall now, and my band Unkle Bob are ramping up our preparations for our next album session. I’m so excited for this record! This month’s assumption anecdote comes from California. The jazz double bassist and singer Sam Montooth has told me how, due to his young age, it’s often assumed by other musicians when he first meets them that he can’t play jazz. While his youth can sometimes give him an edge, because people assume that he possesses superhuman ear training ability—and who wouldn’t want that as a superpower?—he also says that it can be a drag knowing that he has to double his efforts, argue his case and ultimately prove those assumptions wrong. If he only came up against…
West Bromwich, the town in Staffordshire, England where the late bassist and singer Phil Lynott was born in 1949, recently unveiled a statue of the Thin Lizzy frontman. Crowdfunded by fans of the band and designed by local sculptor Luke Perry, the statue was unveiled on what would have been Lynott’s 72nd birthday, and boasts an engraving that reads “Phil Lynott. Son of West Bromwich. Born in this town 20th August 1949.” Though indisputably deserving of the honor, some controversy has arisen over the West Bromwich statue’s appearance, which some say doesn’t quite capture Lynott’s essence. Having co-founded Thin Lizzy in 1969, Lynott served as the band’s main songwriter, singer and bassist until their first dissolution in 1983. He died of pneumonia and heart failure caused by septicaemia in 1986,…
Here at BP, we don’t pander to fashions in the bass world, and we don’t attempt to stay ahead of the curve. Far from it—we like to celebrate the cheesy and the tacky as much as the awe-inspiring when it comes to the low end. This month we’re tipping our hat to the mighty Cher, or Cherilyn Sarkisian, as literally no-one calls her, but we’re not bothering to examine her earlier career, when her music possessed some vestiges of cool. The Sonny & Cher material was definitely listenable if you squinted a bit and tried not to think about it too hard, especially after seeing Groundhog Day for the eighteenth time. No, for today’s dose of Cher we’re heading straight to the motherlode of cheese—the late Eighties, when basses were…
