Creativity Quote by Chris Squire

“A nightmare is two bassists on stage” lands because it’s a musician’s joke that’s only half joking. Chris Squire wasn’t some anonymous sideman tossing shade; he was Yes’s melodic engine, a bassist who played like a lead instrument. So when he frames “two bassists” as a horror scenario, the punchline isn’t that bass players are useless (the oldest, laziest trope). It’s that bass is a job defined by negotiated space. Two people trying to occupy the same low-end real estate turns the mix into mud, the groove into a tug-of-war, the band into a committee.

The line also smuggles in an argument about hierarchy. Rock culture loves the myth of the singular hero: one frontperson, one guitarist, one “voice.” Bass, when it’s working, is often invisible by design, binding drums to harmony without demanding the spotlight. Put two bassists up there and you’ve got competing definitions of responsibility: Who anchors? Who decorates? Who gets to be interesting? Squire, famously interesting, is acknowledging that the instrument’s power is structural, not merely expressive.

Context matters: in prog, where arrangements are busy and tones are meticulously carved, the idea of doubling bass isn’t just redundant, it’s destabilizing. The “nightmare” isn’t technical incompetence; it’s social and sonic. It’s a warning about clutter, ego, and the fragile physics of a band that works when everyone agrees what not to play.