Creativity Quote by Noel Redding

There’s a clipped, almost weary triumph in that “now.” Noel Redding isn’t just reminding you he stood next to a legend; he’s pointing at the long lag between doing the work and getting credit for it. In rock history, bassists often get flattened into background furniture while the frontman becomes myth. Redding’s line pushes back on that lazy script: Hendrix didn’t simply tolerate a bassist, he needed a particular kind of musician to make the machine move.

The subtext is reputational triage. Redding spent decades living under the shadow of a guitarist so luminous it distorted everyone’s outline. Even within the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the story tends to reduce the rhythm section to “support,” as if the songs arrived fully formed from Hendrix’s fingers. Redding’s phrasing suggests vindication by hindsight: listeners, musicians, and historians have started to hear the architecture. Bass isn’t just low-end; it’s narrative control, the thing that keeps psychedelic chaos from becoming soup.

Context matters, too. Post-’60s reassessments have been kinder to “secondary” figures, and the internet era has accelerated forensic listening: isolated tracks, remasters, documentaries, musician-to-musician appreciation. Redding’s remark reads like a quiet correction to a cultural habit, not a tantrum: if you’re finally “realising,” it’s because the music always contained the evidence. You just had to stop staring at the fire and notice what was holding the room together.