Time & Perspective Quote by Eberhard Weber

There’s a quiet rebellion tucked into Weber’s phrasing: bass wasn’t “enough,” not because the instrument lacks power, but because the culture around it insists on treating that power as invisible. He’s describing a discovery that’s as much social as musical. In most popular and even much jazz tradition, the bass is tasked with service: keep time, outline harmony, don’t draw attention to yourself. “Background instrument” isn’t a neutral description; it’s a role assignment.

The subtext reads like an artist bristling at a job title. Weber isn’t rejecting low frequencies, he’s rejecting the hierarchy that turns the low end into labor. The line “even to this very day” lands with a weary bite, suggesting he’s watched decades of musical evolution while the status of the bass stubbornly lags behind. It’s not just about stage positioning or solo space; it’s about who gets credited as the “voice” of a band and who gets treated as infrastructure.

Context matters: Weber emerged in European jazz as the instrument was being reimagined, especially with electric bass, new recording aesthetics, and an ECM-era emphasis on atmosphere, sustain, and melody. His own work often pushes the bass into the foreground as a lyrical lead, not merely a rhythmic anchor. So this isn’t a complaint; it’s a mission statement. He’s naming the constraint so he can break it, insisting that “background” is a convention, not a law of music.