A Quote by Wendy Starland

Eventually as a teenager, I was pulled up on stage by James Brown's saxophone player, Maceo Parker, during one of his concerts and scatted on his stage for 20 minutes. After I was done, Maceo's bass player got down on one knee as if he were proposing, took a string off of his bass guitar and coiled it up around my ring finger. He hushed the crowd and said into the microphone, "Wendy, from this day forward you are married to music. You have a gift from God. You must devote your life to using this gift or else you will deprive the world of something so special." I got the chills.
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.
I was with Miles Davisfor a couple of years as his bass player, and it was a beautiful experience. After two years I said to him, "Listen, man, I want to leave your band." He goes, "Why?" I said, "Because I want to develop not just as a bass player, but I want to get more into composition, into producing, and I'm working with Aretha Franklin and Luther Vandross and all these guys, and I want to really see how much I can grow and develop." He actually gave me his blessing.
My favorite guitar now is my Martin HD-7 because it's got everything. It's got the jingle-jangle thing from the twelve string, it's got the flexibility of the six string, and the bass notes where you can do bass runs and that sort of thing.
I was in bands, but they were punk bands, and you plug in the guitars, you turn them up really loud, you've got four or five other people on stage with you, you've got some protection from when they throw lighters. You can always hide behind the lead singer or the bass player.
To be a great band it's like you have that telepathy. You know when the bass player's in back of you without even looking. You know when your guitar player's coming up to you to lean up to you and sing into your microphone. You just know these things. You feel it. You feel the energy of it.
I don't ever have any bass in my monitors at all; I instead like to lock in with the guitar. I know the bass player has got to be locked in with the drummer, but to me, metal music is about the guitar and drums locking in and operating like a machine together. I played with my brother forever, and we were magically locked in together.
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.
I wasn't allowed to play in some universities in the United States and out of twenty-five concerts, twenty-three were canceled unless I would substitute my black bass player for my old white bass player, which I wouldn't do.
He pulled the Carstairs family ring from his finger and held it out to Will. "Take it." Will let his eyes drift down toward it, and then up to Jem's face. A dozen awful things he could say, or do, went through his mind. One did not slough off a persona so quickly, he had found. He had pretended to be cruel for so many years that the pretense was still what he reached for first, as a man might absently turn his carriage toward the home he had lived in for all his life, despite the fact that he had recently moved. "You wish to marry me now?" he said, at last.
A bass player has to think and play like a bass player. A drummer has to play and think like a drummer, and stay out of the way of the vocalist. The guitar player has to respect everybody else.
You have to understand that the bass guitar is the party instrument. It only has four strings. If you see a bass player playing five strings, take your shoe off and throw it at him.
For my money, Ray Brown is the greatest living bass player. Every great thing that's happened on bass since Ray Brown -- all of us point back to him. That's where it started, you know. Ray Brown is definitely a walking master, and to get to play with him is obviously an opportunity that no one should ever pass up.
I was lucky enough to get to perform on stage in front of 20 million people on TV, and 150 thousand in concerts. For 15 minutes I got to be a rock star, the 15 minutes is great! It turns into Spinal Tap after 20 minutes.
I used to aspire to being more of a traditional bass player, to be honest. People say I play it like a guitar - and I was a guitar player when I was growing up. I started learning when I was eight, and that's what I was fascinated with in my teen years.
At the time, I didn't know that bass would not be enough for me. I'm not a bass player because bass is always a background instrument even to this very day.
When I hear about a player losing his money, I'll rarely, if ever, point a finger at the player because I know how difficult it is. It's not always, 'Look at this idiot who got paid all these millions of dollars and lost it all.' It may be more like, 'This naive kid with a million things going on in his life put his faith in the wrong people.'
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!