A simple question that requires a complex answer. In six parts, to be exact. Truth be told, the sixth part alone is a nice summation. But do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. You're here already, right?

 

Part 1: To Destroy In Order To Create

I'd love to be able to say that, ever since I was a small boy, I dreamed of nothing but playing bass for a living, and that music has been my life's blood for all of my years on this earth. It just wouldn't be true.

Not that I don't love music-I do, always have. My parents say that I used to strap on headphones at the age of three and sing along loudly to the soundtrack of the Broadway musicals Pippen, and, most incongruously, Jesus Christ Superstar. I'd crawl around on the orange shag carpet and sing the words I'd memorized in a decent pitch for a toddler. According to Mom and Dad, that is.

Classical piano lessons began at age eight. I remember hearing and understanding everything in an instant, and then struggling to get my fingers to do what was required to produce the correct result. Mind you, I was forced to stay after school on several occasions to learn how to correctly cut with scissors, a condition described to me as "a fine motor coordination problem." Not a good prognosis for a budding classical pianist, one would think.

School orchestra was the next stop, and though at age ten I was a fairly good pianist, there was no slot for piano in orchestra. Pick another instrument, they said. I chose percussion, realizing the upside of being allowed to hit things hard. I also wanted to be a drummer one day. My parents caught wind of this and squelched it but quick. No way, they said, in a tone that a ten-year-old recognized as a real, legitimate, non-negotiable "no." Still wanting to make some kind of an obnoxious impact, I chose acoustic bass, simply because it was the largest instrument in the orchestra. Inspiring origins, no?

So bass it was, and I reveled in the ease of hearing and playing one note at a time; my technical handicap mattered less on this ungainly beast. I made steady progress until age thirteen, when The Stray Cats hit the scene. I heard "Rock This Town" and, boy, was I ready to rock Westfield, New Jersey with this great lick on acoustic bass. Problem was, after playing the lick for thirty minutes one day, my hands felt like someone had stuck them in a blender. Then I noticed that, in the junior high school jazz band, the bassist was playing an electric, and it sure did seem a hell of a lot easier to get around on. I began after-school electric bass lessons within days.

So thrilled was I with the ease at which I could produce a bass sound, I proclaimed my desire to play electric bass exclusively at the start of the eighth grade. This was not possible, I was informed by the school's music teacher-you must be enrolled in Classical Orchestra in order to play electric bass in the jazz band. I appealed to my parents, the school's administration, and to the teacher himself. No dice. It was a bad time to say no to me, as I was nearing a state of open rebellion regarding my life in general, and this incident lit the fuse. I proceeded to forge my parents' signature on a permission document, transfer out of school orchestra and into computer class, and then never show up to computer class, in essence giving myself a "free period" in the middle of the day, which I occupied by hanging out with the school's most frightening juvenile delinquents. The ruse lasted eleven school days before someone figured it out. My parents were called in, I was given ample amounts of detention, kicked out of orchestra, and barred from the jazz band indefinitely.

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Part 2: Sex , Drugs, and Muzo-Progressive Metal

The next three years were a pretty dark period for bass in my life. I systematically destroyed my then-perfect school academic record, estranged myself from my parents, smoked a lot of marijuana, and spent a lot of time playing classic rock tunes I'd learned by ear on piano. (A piano arrangement of Pink Floyd's "Shine On Your Crazy Diamond" undoubtedly sounds better when stoned.) Every once in a while, I'd take out the bass and learn some tunes for variety's sake. Led Zeppelin's "The Ocean", "The Song Remains The Same", and "The Lemon Song"; Rush's "Tom Sawyer", "Red Barchetta" and "YYZ"; Metallica's "Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)" and "Ride The Lightning". It all came strikingly easy to me from an ear standpoint; technically I'd have to sit there and beat the patterns into my hands until my fingers finally cooperated with my brain. Marijuana did not help in this process.

Finally, when I turned seventeen, my parents and I declared a truce. I began hearing about a place called Berklee College Of Music, and the light bulb began flickering: this music thing could be a way out of a town I wholly despised. I hadn't taken a piano lesson in years, and I was astute enough to realize that there were plenty of pianists who could already play circles around me. I hadn't noticed any bassists my age who could do much of anything but pedal eighth notes. After some private jazz lessons, I took a five-week summer course at Berklee in the summer of 1988, between my junior and senior year of high school. My parents told me that if I aced the program, they'd send me there for the full four years. I obliged.

The Berklee five-week program was strange. Remember, this was 1988. White Lion, Racer X and Yngwie Malmsteen were all the rage. I avoided the shred genre entirely, not wanting to run a race my fingers had no chance of winning. (I looked ridiculous in spandex as well, though no one in public ever had the chance to find out for themselves.) I was better than most of the bassists in the program, my knowledge of theory was fairly advanced, and my ears were really happening for someone my age. I left there feeling pretty damned good about my chances for acceptance, and four months later, my intuition was proven correct-I was accepted for college enrollment.

My senior year was one of a false sense of accomplishment. At the invitation of the high school's jazz band instructor (yes, it tasted good to be invited back) I joined the Westfield High School Jazz Band and won the Louis Armstrong Award for outstanding high school jazz musician. This decision caused an uproar among the parents of several six-year jazz band veterans, who'd perhaps been counting on their kid getting the award to boost their chances of a college acceptance to god-knows-where. Instead, a barely-reformed "burnout" (Jersey term for "metalhead/drug addict/general ne'er-do-well") won it going away. It said more about the state of Westfield High School's music program than it did me.

I also joined my first real band, called Navaria, with some fellow five-week-Berklee hot shots from twenty miles away in Parsippany, NJ. It was muzo/progressive/hair metal, and mainly a showcase for the drummer, local standout Dan Fadel. He had a younger brother named Mike, who had only been playing bass for a year, but was well on his way to being better than me in every respect. I should have taken it as an ominous sign, but instead I spent the rest of my senior year drinking, smoking and fucking. The whole summer before my first semester at Berklee, I think I played bass maybe three times.

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Part 3: Swimming With Cats

My first week at Real Berklee (as I was calling it in my head) was the fiercest wake-up call I'd ever gotten. I watched seniors, juniors, and even freshman bassists playing in a manner I could only dream of. Matt Garrison was in one of my first-semester bass labs. Abe Laboriel, Jr. was a freshman drummer. I looked around and concluded the obvious: I sucked. It was time to hit the woodshed. Not necessarily out of any undying love for the electric bass. This was to avoid embarrassment. I wasn't used to being anything but The Best Guy In Town. Now I wasn't even the best guy in my dorm corridor.

I dug into the music I loved the most and learned it all, however painfully. Entire records by The Red Hot Chili Peppers (Mother's Milk and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, specifically) taught me how to slap and play faster. I swallowed the Led Zeppelin catalog whole. I began listening to Eye Of The Beholder by Chick Corea's Electric Band, and though I was years away from technically being able to play along, I could hear everything that John Patitucci was doing.and I was astounded. Then, Jaco. "Come On, Come Over." The entire Invitation record. Again, I couldn't play along with all of it, but now I was getting closer to a real groove. My poor roommate suffered through hour after hour of me beating my hands into submission, sometimes watching in fear as I threw my bass down in frustration and kicked over whatever was in foot's reach, screaming as I stormed out of the room.

I took five consecutive semesters: Fall '89, Spring '90, Summer '90, Fall '90, Spring '91. Even when I finally took a semester off in the summer of '91, I never went back to Westfield. I stayed in Boston, gigging and practicing. I don't know when it happened, but suddenly I looked around and I didn't suck anymore. I had just enough flash to get by, I could groove, and I could play with drummers who were over my head. But no one was choosing me to play in their "recitals" or "cafeteria shows," the venues of choice for Berklee's musically popular. I wasn't a "knockout punch" kind of player. My lack of natural technical firepower wouldn't allow it. I couldn't necessarily make you stop in your tracks and say, "Man, that guy's burning!" So I took matters into my own hands, forming my own shows, and making sure to get players on board who had the megachops to draw interest while I settled into a role that was a harbinger for my professional life to come: the "organizer" behind the front lines.

I carefully selected tunes that would showcase my strengths and hide my weaknesses. The bands I formed were large, eventually culminating in a seventeen-piece project called Cosmic Chicken, a rollicking funk project with a high-drawing, heavy-grooving drummer named Joe Travers behind the kit. The partnership and the subsequent show finally, after two long, solitary years, cemented my status at Berklee as one of the bassists you might actually want to go see play.

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Part 4: Escape From Berklee

Just after I achieved success at Berklee, I came upon a cruel realization: it didn't mean a fucking thing in the real world. Boston-a bitter town to begin with-hated Berklee musicians with a passion usually reserved for Yankee fans. They wanted to hear "real" music, not this lounge-jazz muzo shit we were cranking out to show our fellow students how good we were. And real music meant blues.

I was no student of the blues, but I formed a band with two guitarists that were, and again enlisted Joe Travers to play drums. This became very comfortable for me. It was a way to showcase my playing without having to display over-the-top pyrotechnics every other tune, and in a legitimate form of music to boot. We began gigging around Boston regularly, and a serious scene developed. Three hour gigs were not unheard of. We did plenty of them. Until then I'd been devoid of harsh, "real world" gigging experience. After playing the greater Boston area's blues circuit for two years, I wasn't a grizzled veteran, but I was hardened enough.

And now I finally had the instrument I wanted. After years on an Ibanez Soundgear, and then two different Alembics, I scored an original, handmade Tobias Basic 5-string off of a guy out in Los Angeles. My hands felt the difference right away, and it eased some of my technical issues just as I began settling into a gig where I could play as fast or slow as I wanted. My confidence as a player was never higher.

My confidence in my career choice was another matter. I was nearing graduation. Playing bass had gotten me out of Westfield, into Berklee, and socially accepted. I really enjoyed it when I was playing music I liked. Now I had to make a career out of it. I thought a lot about how many other things I enjoyed more than lugging around gear from venue to venue, to say nothing of what kind of living I was going to make doing so. But what the hell else was I going to do? Go back to eighth grade and do it all over again? Besides, even though Joe Travers had left for L.A., the blues band-100 Proof-was still going strong. In the summer of 1993, we made plans to take our blues band to New York City and give it a shot there.

Then, three weeks before we were scheduled to move, I got the call from Joe and Dweezil regarding the audition for Z. I was going to have a chance at a private audition to-after all these years, I can finally say this forthrightly-replace the legendary but famously ornery Scott Thunes. Z was no blues band. This was, outside of straight-up shredder bands, the most technically demanding rock band in existence at the time. I laughed darkly to myself, thinking I was in the right place at the right time, but the wrong guy. But I was the guy, so what the hell. I had two weeks to learn the entire album Shampoohorn, plus two other things: 1) some '70s medley they kept talking about; 2) a song called "Purple Guitar", which Joe described as "kind of hard."

It was just like the first two years of Berklee all over again. The album took a week to learn, leaving another week for the "two other things." My hands simply couldn't play some of the licks in "Purple Guitar," but I could hear what they were, and I faked them as best I could. (Remember, this section is supposed to be about me and the bass guitar; more detailed information on my experience with Z can be found at the Z section of my "rap sheet".) The medley, though scary at first, ended up right in my wheelhouse. It was all ears, memorization, and feel. I got it in two days.

The audition was four days. I had to keep exhorting myself silently-while I was playing-that I could, in fact, play these songs well enough to get the gig. I kept thinking that they'd see through me, that they'd notice my technical chops weren't up to it, or that I barely had a handle on what I was doing. Keneally especially; he watched my every finger movement like a hawk. Instead, somehow, the illusion held. I got the gig and moved to L.A., leaving a life of blues bands and simple bass playing behind for good.

And I remember thinking over and over again: If I had chosen any instrument other than bass, technically I would have been left in the dust long, long ago.

* * * * *

Part 5: Of Irony And Pigeonholes

Overnight, I went from just another bassist to a guy in a band with two sons of Frank Zappa and another guy who toured with Frank himself. I wasn't just a guy who got a gig-I was one of those guys.

Sure, it wasn't like being in Frank's band, but the rep followed nonetheless. I was supposed to be some freak of nature, a guy who could play anything while smiling and hopping around on one leg. It was a high irony that a technically-challenged, non-Zappa-freak bassist such as myself was now in the position of being lauded for his technical prowess. Fraud, anyone?

Honestly, I never felt comfortable with my role as bassist for Z. A different guy probably could have made it a better band. It called for every player to be a standout monster, and I wanted to play a more supporting role than was called for. But my connection with Joe Travers was real and undeniable, and once again he saved me from falling flat on my ass. I learned about playing on real stages, with real gear, real monitors, techs, studio work.mostly the hard way, but I learned regardless.

Somewhere along the line, probably by osmosis, I became a better player once again. I didn't realize it until I listened back to some Berklee recordings. Maybe it was the regular five-hour rehearsals Dweezil led, or the constant challenge of having to learn Dweezil's often-nonsensical licks by ear as quickly as Keneally and Travers. For once, I didn't have the fastest ear in the band. That didn't mean it wasn't good already-it meant that, after a year of fine tuning, it was something I had no reason to be ashamed of, even at a professional level. Another reason for my improvement, more obvious in retrospect, was the influence of one Scott Thunes. No, I never started banging on a P-Bass with a pick, but his sense of reharmonization and counter-melody against a perfectly normal rock song began creeping into my playing.and I liked it.

It was in late 1993 that I first heard Keneally's music, and instantly-and I mean instantly-I knew that this was the music I was meant to play. Without going into too much detail (else I'll spoil the Mike Keneally section of the rap sheet), it was a perfect fit for me as a bassist. It tickled my brain and used my ears to the fullest of their capacity without abusing my fingers too badly. It connected me to the instrument in a way I'd never felt before. I'd never had a spiritual relationship with the bass guitar, but the bond I developed with Keneally's music allowed me to have one-if only "by marriage."

I officially scored the Keneally gig in late 1994. Suddenly I was a bassist in bands led by both Frank's son and his last "stunt guitarist." Press interest and endorsements followed quickly. In a matter of months, it was official: I was a bassist that you called when you needed complicated material handled quickly. Even when Steve Vai called and I auditioned for him (detailed in Act 16 of The Life Of Bryan), it wasn't my technical ability that stood in the way of me getting the gig. After all, I played with Dweezil and Keneally. Of course I could handle the material, right? I really was one of those guys.

It still seems ridiculous, even today. I can't imagine anything more incongruous than my route to becoming a bassist worthy of mention by Bass Player Magazine, or any magazine for that matter. I can only think back to the days spent after school in third grade, trying in vain to cut nice, round circles in pieces of cardboard stock paper, and shake my head in wonderment.

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Part 6: So, Why Bass?

I've always seen my role as a bassist as one of support, even while crazy musical things are going on around me. I've never enjoyed soloing, a sticking point; you're not supposed to be one of those guys and not like to solo, let alone not be consistently good at it (as I'm not).

That's why Keneally's music is such a perfect fit. Even inside detailed song forms, he's improvisational to the point of reckless. I'll go there, but always with one foot on the ground. We've changed drummers more times than Clint Eastwood's taken out the bad guy at the end of the movie. I know the drum parts so well by now, if I possessed the technical ability, I could sit down and play them myself. And I tailor my bass playing to how well the drummer knows the tune, what his tendencies are, and what Keneally wants in a certain section. I'll play in unison with the vibes for a small part, or play straight whenever the band is going wild, or steer the groove back into kilter if the wheels come off-that's what I really enjoy. It's the thrill of being "the power behind the throne" that really gets me off as a player.

I like complex music. A lot. I just don't like being the most complex part of it all the time.

As a matter of fact, I don't like playing bass 24/7 in any regard. I have other pursuits that thrill me just as much, if not more. As you can see, I adore writing. I'm a mountain freak, and I love day trips up scraggly roads and day hikes up scraggly trails. I have a job that I value highly, and one that allows me to preserve my finite mental reserves when it comes to playing bass.

When I do play, at least as of late, I'm enjoying taking slightly more prominent turns as a bassist. Some new gear has helped a lot in that department. But for the most part, I love that I never have to stand at the front of the stage if I don't want to. I've never had that desperate desire to be on a stage anyway, to be publicly adored. I'd rather do it from behind a curtain, and would if I could.

Musically, I have it very clear in my head. If I can contribute to a musical atmosphere that brings the band closer to taking a particular song or section into flight, I've fulfilled my greatest ambition as a musician.

And as the natural bridge between harmony and rhythm, I can't think of a better instrument to do that on than the electric bass. Even if I got there by accident.