And all of that changed by the middle of '60s. I think the alternative FM radio stations had a tremendous impact at that time too, and of course that's kind of gone now in the age of playlists and all of that stuff. KBFA in San Francisco was an incredible source for music that I had been unfamiliar with. And then as I said, we would drive across the country in a VW bus and settle into the Bay area for three or four weeks at a time. There was a club in Sausalito called the Trident that we played on several occasions for extended stays. And then we'd go down to L.A. and play Shelly's Manne-Hole for two to three weeks. These were the waning days of that kind of circuit, and of those kinds of clubs.
And so were spending a lot of time in the Bay area and I was listening to the kind of alternative radio that grew out of San Francisco. Gary and I were making decisions to move in certain directions and to move the band's music in certain directions, but that's not the whole story: of equal importance I think is, is that we just happened to be where we were when we were there. It was just a time when various musics were finally making their way into the consciousness of a pretty substantial audience, and we were a part of it.
I'M IMAGINING BASED ON WHAT YOU'VE SAID THAT THE GUITAR WAS VERY INFLUENTIAL ON HOW YOU PLAYED BASS. Yeah. Undoubtedly. Yeah, and my proximity to a succession of really wonderful guitar players in Gary's band. My love for the guitar I think really started with the time I spent playing with Art Farmer's quartet when Jim Hall was the guitarist. Although that was, you know, a half-dozen years or so before I first touched an electric bass. I was deeply impressed by the way Jim sang on the instrument, that he was able to play with such a fluent legato style. And he often talked about Charlie Christian and Lester Young as the sources for a lot of what he was doing, and they subsequently, when I started playing the electric bass, became primary sources for me too, and still are.
YOU TALK ABOUT HATING ELECTRIC BASS BEFORE THAT. AND I WAS WONDERING, OTHER THAN GUITARISTS, WAS THERE ANYTHING THAT GAVE YOU AN IDEA OF "WELL, OKAY, I COULD ACTUALLY DO WHAT I WANT TO DO ON AN ELECTRIC BASS"?— No. There really wasn't anybody. I was aware that Monk Montgomery was playing the electric bass but I can't recall that I ever actually heard him until well after I'd made the switch myself. No, it was — again it wasn't something I did, it was something that happened to me. I picked up an electric bass and just fell in love. It was a kind of shattering experience. This happened to me and it was — the feeling hit me like a ton of bricks and my immediate response was: "Oh shit. I'm in deep trouble here. This could really make life difficult." But my attraction to the instrument was, it was really a physical attraction, you know, primarily a left hand attraction was so strong that there was no denying it, not for a moment, and my hands and my brain were engaged in furious disagreement. My brain was saying, "Don't! Put that thing down! Don't ever pick it up again!" And my hands were saying, "Sorry, nope. Can't do it."
