Bass Player

From the Grammys to Glastonbury, @livthompsonbass has played her beloved – and, dare we say, incredibly cool-looking – @fbassinc BN5 on some of the biggest stages in the world with the likes of Raye, Little Mix, Zara Larsson, and many others. Versatile and punchy, Thompson says she simply can’t play a show without it #livthompson #raye #fbass #bassplayer #zaralarsson

As bassist for Cher, Ashley Reeve has a front-row seat to the onstage spectacle of one of the world’s most celebrated stars – from top-tier choreography to iconic costume changes. “Once a show like that gets going, it’s like an unstoppable train,” says Reeve. “Everything is timed – to the lights, the dancing, the entire sequence – so you have to know it inside and out.” Reeve’s development hit a growth spurt prior to landing the bass chair with Cher, having already tackled the excitable heaviness of rock band Filter, alongside her husband Chris Reeve on drums, and the groovy, often quirky music of CeeLo Green, and Adam Lambert. “Your talent is all in your hands – you can make a $200 bass guitar sound great, if you know what tone you’re looking for. I have a soft touch because I've always liked a fat, round tone. I usually play with my plucking hand over the neck and use the edge of the neck as a thumbrest. “With Filter it was way different, because all of the players before me used picks, so I had to emulate that tone. I got acrylic nails, because my mom told me that’s what Dolly Parton did. It allowed me to play in a flamenco style, instead of playing up and down with a pick. When I jammed with Ryan Adams, he nicknamed it ‘the flipper.’”

In a candid recollection, Pepper Keenan has opened up about his bid to join Metallica as their bassist after Jason Newsted's departure in 2001. “There was one part in the movie [Some Kind of Monster] where they made me play bass on a new song,” he says. “I guess they were trying to stump me with something I’d never heard before… St. Anger or some shit like that. It was a drop-tuned song and I hit the blower knob on my bass and just blasted through. They were like ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ It sounded as heavy as lead to me, totally ripping from all the overdrive on my short-scale SG bass set to the front pickup. It was some Cream-sounding shit... actually, it sounded more like Fudge Tunnel. I can still see them shaking their heads. I knew I’d lost the gig right there. [laughs]”. Nonetheless, Keenan had a blast ripping through Sad But True, Nothing Else Matters and Master of Puppets. The gig ultimately went to Robert Trujillo – Metallica bassist to this day

Gibson has revived the Thunderbird bass guitar with some key upgrades – building a low-end beast that looks like a vintage gem, but performs like a contemporary one. Mahogany is the tonewood choice for the neck and body, and it also retains its iconic raised center block and glued-in set neck. But a closer look at its neck – which now gets a SlimTaper profile and Graph Tech nut for its 20-fret rosewood fingerboard – and there are contemporary flourishes aplenty. The Non-Reverse headstock has also been put under the microscope, with a slightly more streamlined taper on the upper edge that promises more intuitive tuning. It's capped with Hipshot Ultralite Mini Clover tuners for good measure. Hipshot is present again via a Supertone bridge, complete with adjustable action height, while high-output EB Bass humbuckers are voiced for thunderous impact. What do you reckon to the Thunderbird's revival?

Anthony Jackson, low-end legend who pioneered the concept of the modern six-string bass, has died aged 73. The news has been confirmed by high-end bass manufacturer Fodera Guitars, with whom Jackson worked very closely. Jazz fusion virtuoso Al Di Meola has also paid tribute to Jackson’s inventive legacy. “We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Anthony Jackson – one of the most visionary and influential bassists in the history of our instrument,” Fodera Guitars wrote. “Anthony’s impact extended far beyond the notes he played,” it says. “He pioneered the concept of the six-string ‘contrabass guitar,’ revolutionizing the role of the electric bass in art, jazz, funk, and beyond.” Jackson had started working with Fodera back in 1984, and the firm helped “embody” Jackson’s six-string bass vision and turn it into a reality. Jackson and his unique instrument – which was tuned BEADGC, and referred to as a ‘contrabass guitar’ – pushed the bass to new frontiers. Armed with his actualized contrabass concept, which unshackled him from what he felt was the limited four-string design, Jackson sprinkled his distinct low-end magic on the work of some of the biggest names in the business. From Steely Dan to long-time Michael Jackson producer Quincy Jones, Luther Vandross, Pat Metheny, and Paul Simon, he showed that bass players need not just hold down a supportive musical role. They could be harmonic and imaginative. “Anthony was one of the most extraordinary musicians I’ve ever had the honor to play with – a true innovator whose genius on the six-string contrabass reshaped modern music,” wrote Di Meola. “His sound, precision, and soul were unmatched.” 📸 Getty

Limp Bizkit bassist Sam Rivers has died, aged 48. The band confirmed the bass player’s death in a statement on social media. “Today we lost our brother. Our bandmate. Our heartbeat,” they said. “Sam Rivers wasn’t just our bass player — he was pure magic. The pulse beneath every song, the calm in the chaos, the soul in the sound. “From the first note we ever played together, Sam brought a light and a rhythm that could never be replaced. His talent was effortless, his presence unforgettable, his heart enormous. He was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of human. A true legend of legends. And his spirit will live forever in every groove, every stage, every memory.” Sam Rivers was a founding member of Limp Bizkit. He was born in September 1977, in Jacksonville, Florida, where he later formed the nu metal trailblazers with frontman Fred Durst. He played on all of the band’s studio albums – playing both guitar and bass on their 2003 album, Results May Vary – although he did have time out from the band between 2015-2018, as he battled liver disease, a result of chronic alcohol abuse. In 2020, he revealed that his drinking had almost killed him: “The doctor said, ‘If you don’t stop, you’re going to die,’” he told author Jon Wiederhorn for his book, Raising Hell. “I had really bad liver disease. I quit drinking and did everything the doctors told me. “I fought liver disease for a couple years and it won. I had to get a liver transplant in 2017.” Rivers rejoined Limp Bizkit in 2018, and won Best Bassist at the Gibson Awards in 2000. In October that year, he was the cover star of Bass Player magazine. 📸 Chelsea Lauren/Getty

Happy birthday to bonafide bass legend Pino Palladino, born on this day in 1957. 📸 Karjean Levine/Getty Images

Happy birthday to Tommy Stinson (Replacements/Guns N’ Roses/Bash & Pop), born on this day in 1966. 📸 Lorne Thomson/Redferns via Getty Images, London, 2015

Do you know the three bass players on this album? Roxy Music’s Flesh & Blood album turned 45 years old this year. The album was a huge commercial success and is notable for the appearance of three great bass players. 1. Gary Tibbs is best known as the bassist for Adam and the Ants - joining the band at their Prince Charming (1981) peak - Tibbs had been a member of punk/pub rockers The Vibrators before getting a call up for a reformed/reactivated Roxy, playing on their Manifesto album, and on one track on Flesh: In The Midnight Hour. 2. Neil Jason: session guy and Saturday Night Live band alumni (1980-83), Jason has played with including John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, Paul Simon, Kiss, Michael Jackson, and a bazillion more genuine A-listers. He played on the UK top 5 single Oh Yeah, and on the cover version of the Byrds’ Eight Miles High. 3. Alan Spenner: a name that should be better known, Spenner played in Joe Cocker’s Grease Band, performing at Woodstock, before embarking on a career that included spots with Spooky Tooth, John Martyn, Joe Cocker, Alvin Lee, Paul Kossoff, Donovan, Ted Nugent., David Coverdale, Bryan Ferry, Steve Winwood, Whitesnake, Fairport Convention and Roxy on the albums Manifesto, Avalon, The High Road, Heart Still Beating as well as Flesh And Blood. His exemplary bass playing can be heard bobbing and weaving all over the rest of the album, particularly the title track and Same Old Scene, another hit single from the album. Spenner’s best-selling recording, though, was the original cast recording of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. He died, aged just 43, in 1991.

Released on this day in 2014: Stanley Clarke’s Up album. Stanley Clarke likes to use the phrase “bass liberation” and liberating the bass is pretty much his thing. Breaking through in the 70s, he redefined what the previously much-neglected instrument could do, what vocabulary it could work with, where it could go and how it was perceived. After Clarke had schooled that decade, bass players didn’t necessarily have to stand at the back, avoiding attention and looking humble. Sure, that was still an option, but Clarke had torn up the rulebook and taught us that the bass had the right to take up space in your face – especially if you could play as divinely as he could. Influential early solo works such as School Days and Journey To Love changed the way arrangements were perceived and the way music was listened to. In 2011, his album The Stanley Clarke Band won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album, and 2014’s Up was a whirl of diverse energy, with Clarke – switching between electric and acoustic bass (the latter was his first love, the former made him a star) and bringing in friends like Joe Walsh, Stewart Copeland and Corea – sounding buoyant and rejuvenated. Up included a revised version of School Days, with Jimmy Herring taking the lead guitar part. “I knew people might think, ‘Why is he doing that again?’” said Stanley. “Some people might say it’s blasphemy or suchlike. ‘How dare he?’ But y’know what? I’m not a rock musician. Miles Davis re-recorded his classics; so did Coltrane. Like three or four times. And I have so many musicians asking me to play on it. “If you notice my bass solo, I don’t try to outdo the original – I never could. Because what you hear on that isn’t just music. What you hear is a 20-something kid, who to all intents and purposes was wild, was trying to prove something to the world, was out there trying to change people’s impressions of the bass. That was me. “And now as an older guy, I feel some of us really did create and document a new language, with melody, rhythm and harmony, for the bass. We’ve done a job. We’ve put it out there.” Words: Chris Roberts

American jazz bass legend Oscar Pettiford was born on this day in 1922. Pettiford recorded with Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, Art Tatum and more – and accidently discovered Cannonball Adderley. “He was probably the most important bass player of that bebop generation,” said Christian McBride, “in terms of creating new language for the bass and playing what Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were playing on the bass.” Pettiford wrote the jazz bass standard “Tricotism” but he never lived long enough to see the influence he had – he died in 1960, aged just 37 from a polio-related virus. 📸 Getty

Pentangle and John Martyn bassist Danny Thompson has died, aged 86. 
Thompson was best-known as a member of folk rock pioneers Pentangle and as bass foil to the late John Martyn, but also worked with Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Nick Drake and many more. In a brief statement, his PR said: “Legendary acoustic bass player Danny Thompson died peacefully yesterday at his home in Rickmansworth, UK. “A musician who was both beloved and admired by everybody he worked with, his body of work is unparalleled in its quality and also in the incredibly varied number of musicians he worked with. “Danny was a force of nature. A player who served the song and who enriched the lives of every single person he met. He will be sorely missed.” Born in Devon, England, on 4th April 1939, Danny built his own bass out of a tea chest when he was just 13, stealing some piano wire to use for strings.  Aged 15, he got a beautiful 1865 Gand double bass, which he affectionately named “Victoria”. He played it ever since.  In 1963, he got a job playing electric bass with Roy Orbison on a tour supported by The Beatles, who were just starting out. It was the only time he ever played electric bass. In 1964, Danny joined Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated replacing a pre-Cream Jack Bruce. He played in bands with Ginger Baker and John McLaughlin and in 1967 joined forces with musicians John Renbourn, Jacqui McShee, Terry Cox and Bert Jansch to form Pentangle, one of the first supergroups. In the 70s, he became John Martyn’s sideman. A musician of extraordinary skills with an unbelievable CV, he played with Little Walter, Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, John Lee Hooker, Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, Rod Stewart, Donovan, Ralph McTell, Sandy Denny, Marc Bolan, Billy Bragg, John Williams, Kate Bush, Marianne Faithful, Nick Drake, Richard Thompson, Talk Talk and many more. 📸 Pete Sanders