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Because Larry, by then, was a drummer, who would sort of get bored and tired, and rather stand up and blow kisses to people. So we needed the bass to sort of drive along.

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.

The beauty of jazz is that it's malleable. People are addressing it to suit their own personalities.

I always say that the problem with jazz accessibility is not the content of the music, it's people's ability to access it.

We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.

In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead.

Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.