Favorite Bass Players

There is a thread for favorite drummers, but the bass player just ain't gettin' no love. He (or she) is just as much the heart of the band as the drummer is so.....


Victor Wooten of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones



John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin


John Entwistle of The Who


Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead


Mike Gordon of Phish

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"Like all dreamers, Steven mistook disenchantment for truth."

Bassists are typically underrated sadly. Here's a few of my favorites.
John Entwistle-The Who
John Paul Jones- Zeppelin
Brian Ritchie- The Violent Femmes
Les Claypool- Primus

Steve Harris of Iron Maiden.



He was a metal doG, man.

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"Today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

In no particular order:


Les Claypool.


Terence "Geezer" Butler


Jaco Pastorius


Bootsy Collins


Jack Bruce


Aston Barrett


Lemmy


Mike Watt


Bill Wyman


John Paul Jones


Oteil Burbridge


Victor Wooten


Roger Waters


Steve Harris

I think we did this one in some other thread, possibly the "best guitarist" thread. But anyway...

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Peter Hook New Order



As Pid says, bass player as guitar hero (even though thesedays he looks like a middle-aged man in leather trousers who's had a bit too much ale at a wedding party). The shame in recent New Order albums is that Barney and Hooky don't get on and often his bass solos get dumped too far down in the mix...

Donald 'Duck' Dunn Booker T & The MGs

Part of the great Stax house band in the '60s. I saw Booker T & The MGs backing Neil Young at Slaine in 1993 (93ish anyway, it was a summer around then though I was rarely sober enough to take notice of such ephemeral things as 'years' in those days). 'Duck' was a very cool presence on stage, monitoring Neil's scuzzy guitar solos and counting them down when he thought the audience's ears were beginning to bleed...

Looks like George Lucas though.



Mike Mills REM

A bit 'Hooky' in that early REM songs had their melody in the bassline. Very subtle though.

Looks like Bill Gates' slightly less nerdy brother.



Martyn P Casey The Triffids, The Bad Seeds

Fantastic bass player, full of power and authority. Met him in the mid-90s and can report that he's a thoroughly nice bloke too - even though The Bad Seeds look like the dregs from last orders at a serial killers' convention.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

John Paul Jones
Roger Waters
Paul McCartney
Victor Wooten
Les Claypool
Geezer Butler

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Remember, remember, the 5th of November
I'm afraid I must bid you adieu.
He woke up one night with a terrible fright
And found he was eating his shoe.

John Myung - Dream Theater