Geddy Lee Lists His 10 Most Influential Bassists
It’s always interesting to see who your favorite bassist counts as their influences. In a new interview with Amit Sharma for MusicRadar.com, Rush bassist Geddy Lee named ten of his top bass influences, and it’s quite a list.
More specifically, the list is of bassists that “blew his mind” and Lee readily admits making the list leaves out so many amazing players. It’s not in order of importance, though the first two names were his earliest influences. Without further ado, here is Lee’s list:
- Jack Casady
- Jack Bruce
- John Entwistle
- John Paul Jones
- Jaco Pastorius
- Chris Squire
- Jeff Berlin
- Les Claypool
- Flea
- James Jamerson
The chat comes a week before the release of his new book, Geddy Lee’s Big Beautiful book of Bass, which has been his main priority since Rush decided to stop touring three years ago.
“I haven’t done anything musical that I would care to share yet because I’ve mainly been focusing on this – which was and is a labour of love for me,” he explains. “To be honest, right now I have no plans to do anything, but I probably will do something eventually. I have no idea what it will be, now that the book is done, I need some time to get to know myself again as a player and see what I feel like creating.”
Check out the rest of Sharma’s interview on MusicRadar.
How can Geddy Lee not have Billy Sheehan on his list. He’s WAY better than Flea and Les Claypool.
He has his influences and you have yours.
Dude; (Milesramstein) ~ it’s Geddy Lee’s list! Not yours! Thus, your comment was…totally insulting, disrespectful…and immature. I just had to call you on this, because I’ve seen so many people try to ‘flip life around’ and try to sell it like it’s normal, acceptable or…it’s okay; and I’m calling BS on YOU! ~ yeah, WTF! Really dude? ? Billy Sheehan is awesome! but if he told me who his top 10 fav players were, I wouldn’t ask…’how come so-and-so is not on that list! That would be disrespectful! Y’know? Yeah, because HE’s Billy Sheehan, and I’m NOT; that’s MY point. ?
ps; Geddy Lee is probably not on Billy Sheehans top 10 fav bass players list either. ? ??
Funny that almost every bass Player on his list starts J. Makes sense that he plays a J-Bass… ^^^
Well he has the greatest bass player ever on his John Paul Jones ,Sing should be on the list!
Flea and John Entwistle?
O.o
Geddy Lee is just awesome period. I like the fact that two of his fav bassists are Flea and Les Claypool. It shows that even someone as great as himself has his ears to ground on younger talent. Both Flea and Les are monsters. There attack and sustain are ferocious few can match.