"In 1972, I got my first electric bass and started playing the kind of instrument I play now. I found that the majority of musicians couldn't bear that. They are not used to listening to the bass because they think the bass is in the background to support them"
About this Quote
Weber is describing a small technical choice that detonates a social order. The electric bass, in his hands, stops being stage carpentry and starts behaving like a lead voice: melodic, foregrounded, demanding attention. That one move exposes how many ensembles run on an unspoken hierarchy where the bass is “support,” meaning: stay useful, stay quiet, make everyone else feel centered.
The sting in “couldn’t bear that” is telling. He isn’t saying other musicians didn’t understand; he’s saying they resisted. The subtext is less about taste than about comfort and control. When the bass steps forward, everyone else loses a little: the soloist’s spotlight, the drummer’s gravitational authority, the composer’s tidy arrangement. Listening becomes work. Weber frames that work as unfamiliar because the habit of ignoring the bass is baked into training and tradition, especially in jazz and classical settings where low frequencies are treated as infrastructure rather than argument.
The context matters: 1972 is post-Jaco but pre-bass-as-pop-hero; electric instruments were still negotiating legitimacy in “serious” music, and European jazz was carving out a sound distinct from American bebop orthodoxy. Weber’s intent reads like a quiet manifesto for role liberation: the bass can be narrative, not just reinforcement.
His best line is also his indictment: “they think the bass is in the background to support them.” It’s not just about where the sound sits in the mix. It’s about who gets to be heard, and how quickly musicians mistake arrangement for entitlement.
The sting in “couldn’t bear that” is telling. He isn’t saying other musicians didn’t understand; he’s saying they resisted. The subtext is less about taste than about comfort and control. When the bass steps forward, everyone else loses a little: the soloist’s spotlight, the drummer’s gravitational authority, the composer’s tidy arrangement. Listening becomes work. Weber frames that work as unfamiliar because the habit of ignoring the bass is baked into training and tradition, especially in jazz and classical settings where low frequencies are treated as infrastructure rather than argument.
The context matters: 1972 is post-Jaco but pre-bass-as-pop-hero; electric instruments were still negotiating legitimacy in “serious” music, and European jazz was carving out a sound distinct from American bebop orthodoxy. Weber’s intent reads like a quiet manifesto for role liberation: the bass can be narrative, not just reinforcement.
His best line is also his indictment: “they think the bass is in the background to support them.” It’s not just about where the sound sits in the mix. It’s about who gets to be heard, and how quickly musicians mistake arrangement for entitlement.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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