Without getting real personal, we liked our bass player Ed. He was a great guy and he was a good bass player but his playing was suited for a different style of band.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I knew when I got to play with Al Jackson I would be a better bass player because he was the best drummer in the world. I worshipped him.
From the first moment that I can remember, I had identified myself as a bass player and it had everything to do with my father, who was a bass player. And he loved music, you know, as much as anybody I've ever seen. And that dynamic I just thought as somehow was a straight pass to me.
I'm a bass player from way back and Paul is a guitar player and we've been in many bands.
Later in high school, I met Hillel Slovak, who was the original guitar player of the Chili Peppers, and we became really close. We had a band, and we didn't like the bass player, so I started playing bass, and I got a bass two weeks later.
That was the reasoning behind learning to play bass, and then after that it was more like it was neat to play songs together - for me to play bass and for him to play guitar.
I didn't follow the standard rules of bass playing, and many musicians on many different instruments who became noteworthy for their unique or particular style did a very similar thing.
It wasn't a class system where I was the better guy and he was the second-rate guy. That was his role and my role was to play the solos. But he took great pride in his technique as a rhythm guitarist.
I always got great respect as a bass player.
I am more of a solo bass player and he needed somebody who would keep the role.
None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.