Creativity Quote by Eberhard Weber

Weber is describing an artistic jailbreak: the moment a “support” instrument refuses to stay supportive. In most popular and jazz settings, the bass is expected to be felt more than heard - a stabilizing shadow that makes everyone else look good. His phrasing, “pretty soon,” is quietly defiant. It suggests impatience with inherited rules, as if the traditional role wasn’t merely limiting but aesthetically dishonest to what he heard in his head.

The line about doing “more than just play bass in the background way” signals a broader cultural shift in late-20th-century jazz and European improvisation: the move from hierarchy to conversation. Weber’s intent isn’t to brag about virtuosity; it’s to redefine function. A bass line can carry melody, harmony, and atmosphere at once, especially when you bring in sustain, space, and tone as compositional tools. That’s why his innovation is framed as “a kind of playing,” not a single trick. He’s talking about building a language.

The subtext lands in the second sentence: innovation is lonely. “Only a handful of musicians accepted” reads less like bitterness than a realistic account of gatekeeping and taste. New approaches don’t just challenge technique; they threaten the social contract of a band. If the bassist steps forward, everyone else has to recalibrate their own roles. Weber’s context - a European scene more open to chamber-like textures and ECM-style spaciousness - made the experiment possible, but never fully comfortable. The quote captures the price of refusing to be “background”: you gain a voice, and you lose easy consensus.