Column #7: Image Is Nothing
Published October, 2000

I’ve been thinking about going for a new look. You know, so I can get more gigs.

Crafting the right stage persona has always been a challenge. The mental scars inflicted upon me in ’94 by the director of Late Night with Conan O’Brien still haunt me. It was Conan’s first season. It also happened to be my very first professional gig, on national TV with Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa, complete with a slap bass solo. (My, how times have changed.) The shot of me during my solo was unusually far. I later learned a closer angle was available, but the sight of me holding my breath and looking constipated was deemed too cruel an image to foist on America.

None of this would have mattered had I been a taxidermist--but no, I had to be a musician. And while bassists generally aren’t held to the same stage-presence standards as lead guitarists, you still have to do something. Now I kind of sway back and forth a little, shuffle my feet sometimes, and involuntarily move my lips in the rhythm of whatever I’m playing. Room for improvement remains utterly intact.

The jazzers have it easy. They can wear whatever they want as long as it carries an air of (big quotes here) “respectability.” It’s all right to use a plain black strap and adjust it so the bass sits just underneath your neck. In jazz, there’s no such thing as a major-label showcase or cattle-call audition. If there were, music-biz lackeys would stand around making remarks like, “That Patitucci is great on the fast swing stuff, but the hair is just … I don’t know. And he keeps staring at his bass neck. He’s just not projecting very well, is he?” But then again, with the stages they’re on, jazz musicians usually don’t have room to move around anyway, and the few with enough money for a serious wardrobe are probably saving up for a second tux. And they have to practice more, leaving less time for things like shopping.

Some new threads might be a good place to start. The baggy, oversize look is big now, right? I could go white-boy hip-hop, up my street cred, get some of that crossover action going on. But then I think about the time I wore an XXL hockey jersey on a gig and the sleeves kept getting caught between the strings and the pickups, resulting in some unique muting. Another time I tried overalls and workboots (at what point this was “in” I’m not quite sure), and the right pant leg got caught around my boot heel as I went to step on my octave pedal. Only the hand of God kept me upright, but witnesses saw an impromptu Les Claypool impersonation. The baggy-clothes thing might not be a good idea after all.

Maybe it’s the way I wear my bass. I’ve got it about as low as I can and still play the thing, but lower would definitely be cooler. Fishbone’s Norwood Fisher has his axe so low the output jack practically touches the ground--and he plays over the bridge pickup! Can someone please tell me how you slap like that? The big clothes don’t seem to bother him any, and he even moves around sometimes.

Then there’s Fieldy from Korn. He holds his bass straight up and down. How does he adjust his strap for such a look? Wouldn’t it be easier if he had a retractable stand mounted to his bass’s bottom, like an upright? He hits the strings like a 1930s upright slapper already. Perhaps that’s why he looks so angry all the time--no one told him until it was too late that an electric bass is actually amplified, so he doesn’t have to nail the thing so damn hard. How can I get that angry? Where’s my motivation?

There must be something to this anger thing. I’ve been studying the latest MTV videos, and there’s a hot new look I keep seeing. The bass player tilts his head away from the camera but shifts his eyes directly into the lens and makes an angry face, like, “I’m comin’ to get you, man. Yeah, you!” Then his head starts shaking like someone stuck an electric massager into the back of his neck. Finally he slowly stutter-steps toward the camera, with the eyes shifted, the head convulsing, and the angry face, until the intensity is too great to bear and the shot switches to something else (usually a closeup of the singer’s open mouth). I’ve been practicing that move, just so you label guys out there know.

But I don’t have any ink, man. No tats. No piercings, either. How can I get these gigs when the guy next to me has something resembling the Experience Music Project building tattooed on his chest and a chain-link fence between his earlobes and nipples?

Not long ago I got some inside info from the bassist for a leading rock act. This guy was dressed for success--ink, rings, multiple piercings, dreads, you name it. I asked him if he looked like that before he had the gig, and he told me, “No way, man. I got the audition, and once the music and the hang was all good, they asked me, ‘So, you think you could grow dreads and a beard, get all inked up, spit blood, that kind of stuff?’ And I was like, ‘Hell, yeah!’”

I was left seriously wondering if I would spit blood for the right gig.

These transformations happen all the time. I see guys who just got signed coming back from the stylist with bleach-blond hair, multi-colored hair, or maybe no hair at all. They’ve got new threads, new gear, a new attitude. Sometimes even a new name. A guy I’ve known for almost ten years--a very mellow, laid-back dude--now has a number for a last name, and when dressed in stage regalia, looks like a cross between the Terminator and the Hellion from the cover of Judas Priest’s Screaming for Vengeance. And he’s happily touring the country in a top-selling rock band.

What would I look like in a similar outfit--swaying back and forth, shuffling my feet a little, my lips moving in rhythm with my right hand? Would I project? Could I pull that off?

Could you?

By Bryan Beller, copyright 2000 United Entertainment Media. Reprinted from the October, 2000 issue of BASS PLAYER. Reprinted with permission from BASS PLAYER. For subscription information, please call (850) 682-7644 or visit www.bassplayer.com