Time & Perspective Quote by Billy Sheehan

Optimism is a funny flex coming from Billy Sheehan, a player whose whole career has argued - loudly, technically, sometimes obnoxiously to purists - that the bass can be the main character. When he says the future looks great not just for "music" and "musicians" but pointedly for "bass players", he is doing more than cheerleading. He is staking a claim in an industry that has repeatedly treated instrumentalists as replaceable labor while elevating the front-of-stage persona. The line reads like a corrective: the low end matters, the people who build the groove matter, and the culture is finally catching up.

The phrasing is deliberately plain, almost anti-mystical. No talk of "authenticity" or the death of rock, none of the elegiac doom that often follows older virtuosos around. That restraint is the subtext: someone who survived the eras of gatekeeping (labels, radio, magazine critics) is betting on abundance. In the streaming and creator economy, niche excellence can actually find its audience; a bass player can be a brand, a teacher, a YouTube rabbit hole, a touring specialist, a collaborator across genres.

"All we love about music" quietly shifts the argument from commerce to community. It is less about formats and more about the rituals: learning, obsessing, gear talk, shared songs, the feeling of locking in with a drummer. Coming from Sheehan, that warmth is also strategic. Virtuosity can read as ego; optimism reframes it as stewardship, a veteran telling the next generation: there is room for you in the mix.